A Season for the Dead nc-1

by David Hewson

  “It’s all a single man needs,” Denney said, watching the way Costa took in the room. “Can I get you something to drink? A beer maybe?”

  “Nothing.”

  Denney picked up a bottle of Peroni and swigged from the neck. He was wearing a cheap gray sweatshirt and jeans. Costa found it hard to think of him as a priest at all, least of all a cardinal. “You don’t mind if I do? Damned hot today. Don’t worry about Hanrahan here either. Never seen him touch the stuff. Worried your guard might drop, eh, Brendan?”

  The Irishman sat down in one of the chairs. “Drink and work don’t mix in my experience, Your Eminence. And I tasted enough of it when I was young, thank you very much.”

  “See,” Denney told Nic with a grin. “The perfect servant of the Vatican. Brendan here’s a true diplomat, son. Not a made-up priest like I was. He understands this place better than anyone.”

  Hanrahan shot him a savage glance. “May we get down to business now?”

  “Sure.” Denney sat down heavily on the sofa, spreading his long legs wide in a way Costa associated with Americans. “So, Mr. Costa, what have you got to give me?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Safe passage,” Denney said instantly. “Just a car to the airport with a blue light on the top, not flashing, I’d like some privacy. And a nice convoy back and front to keep any unwelcome spectators away. My colleagues here would rather I was gone. I think there are plenty of others outside these walls who feel the same way. To be frank with you, it would make me happy too. I’ve a fancy to go back home. There’s some little places I knew back in Boston when I was a kid. There are some people who’ll help me start anew if I ask them right. Thought I might change my name, get a life back. Not a lot to ask.”

  Hanrahan was watching Denney avidly, Nic realized, as if judging every word, and making notes on a pad.

  “Cardinal,” Costa said. “I can tell you there are three judicial warrants in preparation for your arrest right now. The moment you step onto Italian soil any number of people—not just me but the Finance Ministry and the tax people too—have a duty to arrest you. I don’t know how I can even begin to address that kind of demand.”

  “So why are you here?” Hanrahan asked brusquely. “If you’ve got nothing to offer, what’s there to talk about?”

  Nic thought about the long briefing he’d had from Falcone. It had been precise and most definite in its terms. “What I’m authorized to say is this: If you cooperate with us on the Gino Fosse case, turning over every item of information you possess, I can guarantee that you will be placed somewhere secure, pretrial and after, if there’s a custodial sentence. You’ve plenty of friends.”

  Denney snorted and looked out of the meager windows, disgusted.

  “No one wants to see you in jail,” Costa continued. “Not least because I don’t think we could guarantee your safety there. It would be somewhere comfortable. Somewhere you could have access to the people you want to see.”

  “Jesus,” the Cardinal snapped. “Do you think I don’t have that much here? I’d just be swapping one prison cell for another. Don’t you understand? I don’t want your protection. I don’t want to talk to the judiciary. There’re plenty of government people here who wouldn’t like that either. I just want to disappear back where I came from.”

  Costa was unmoved. “This isn’t a parking ticket you’re asking us to tear up.”

  Hanrahan sighed and closed the notebook on his lap. “I apologize, Your Eminence. I’ve wasted your time. I thought these people were serious. Clearly I was wrong.”

  “No,” Costa insisted. “We’re serious about treating you fairly. And about keeping you alive, and that may not be so easy. From what I hear, I don’t think you could just fade away into the backstreets of Boston and lose these people. They’re persistent. They’re angry. They want your blood.”

  Denney stared at his long, thin hands. He had the fingers of a pianist, Nic thought. For all his dignity he was beginning to look like a broken man.

  “Gino Fosse is dangerous, violent and unpredictable,” Costa said. “He’s killed four people that we know of and caused the death of one more. He could be out there right now working out how to kill someone else. You want to bargain your freedom from justice for helping us find a man like that?”

  “Justice?” Denney went over to the desk, opened a drawer and took out a blue file. It had Fosse’s name on it and an official Vatican stamp on the cover. Hanrahan watched him, worried.

  “Look,” Denney said. “Fosse was some junior employee who worked for me. I fired him when he got out of hand. Everything anyone knows about him is here in his personnel record. From the moment he went to school till last week when, as far as anyone knew, he was doing a routine job in a hospital. The man is all in this file. His problems are too. I never knew about them at the time we took him on. I swear that. But I’ve checked since. He was never someone we could be proud of. Still, the Church looks after its own. As much as it can. Everything’s here. You’re telling me that’s not worth anything?”

  Costa eyed the folder. “I didn’t say that. I offered you preferential treatment. I offered you security. You wouldn’t be getting that if you were some working-class hood from Testaccio. You still have to answer for what you’ve done. I can’t avoid that.”

  “'I can’t avoid that',” Denney repeated. “You’re sitting in judgment on me? Let me tell you something, son. I know what I’ve done. I know what others have done too. We all get judged sometime, and not by some bent and stupid judiciary either.”

  Nic remembered Falcone’s instructions. “Can I have that beer now?”

  Denney looked bewildered. He walked to the corner of the room, opened the fridge and came out with two fresh ones. “Salute,” the Cardinal said.

  Costa raised the bottle in his face. “Salute. Oh, and go to hell. This man’s killed. He’ll kill again and he’ll go on killing until we stop him. How can you ask for something in return? Is that what it means being a Catholic these days? Is that where your conscience lies? In your own self-interest?”

  It was worth a try. He was weary of Denney’s tricks. He was sick of Hanrahan’s silent, oppressive presence. Denney said nothing and stared at the beer bottle in his hands.

  “See that picture,” Costa said, nodding toward a painting on the wall. “What’s that doing here?”

  Denney looked at the Caravaggio. The painting seemed to spark some interest in his face, as if he had forgotten it existed and was grateful for the reminder. “Old times’ sake,” he said eventually, and left it at that.

  Costa wondered whether to take the risk. There was nothing to lose. The painting was a good copy of the original. The figure of the murderer, sword in hand, half-naked, and bathed in the same light of Grace that fell on the dying Matthew, prone and bleeding on the ground, dominated it, raging at the martyr. Onlookers fled from the scene in terror. Only one face, half hidden in the shadows, was still, and keenly curious, with that familiar, pained expression, one that Nic Costa had recognized and understood since his father first told him the story.

  “Let me tell you something.” He stood and beckoned for Denney to join him. “You know who this is?” He pointed to the bearded figure almost lost in the shadows.

  Denney let out a low murmur of pleasure. “Hey, I remember that now. What is this? A cop who knows art?”

  “I’m curious. That’s all. So who is it?”

  “Caravaggio. It’s his self-portrait; he put himself into the scene.”

  “Why?” Costa asked.

  “As a witness. As a sympathizer.”

  “And as a participant too. Look at his face. Isn’t he asking himself why he has to paint this scene? Why he’s partaking of Matthew’s blood as if it were some sacrament? And, most of all, why he’s creating this drama out of his own head in the first place, since none of this has any historical authenticity? What he’s saying is: We’re all involved, we’re all part of the story, whether we recognize it or not.”
<
br />   “Nice sermon,” Denney said, nodding. “You missed your calling.” Then he went back to his chair, fingering his bottle of beer. Costa followed him, wondering whether he had made his point.

  “You’re an unusual young man,” Denney observed. “Do you get many cops in church these days?”

  “I just go where the paintings are. There’s nothing religious in it.”

  “That may be true, I guess. Or at least you could think so. To be honest, I haven’t looked at that picture in years. You forget what’s important sometimes. You take it for granted. I loved that church when I first came to Rome. It seemed to me to be what being a Catholic was all about, much more so than…” He waved a hand in the direction of St. Peter’s. “Hey. I’d better watch my mouth. That right, Brendan?”

  The Irishman squirmed uncomfortably in his seat.

  “To hell with it,” Denney said abruptly. He threw the folder on the table. “Take the thing. No price. No deal. Just tell your man Falcone I expect him to think about what that’s worth. Think of the risks I’m running letting private Vatican files out of this place. Then, maybe, he might consider doing me a favor in return.”

  Hanrahan leapt from his chair and tried to grab the file. Denney’s slender hand slammed the cover. “No, Brendan,” he said firmly. “My mind’s made up.”

  “Jesus, Michael,” Hanrahan pleaded. “Give him that and we’ve got nothing left to bargain with.”

  “I don’t care. I won’t have any more deaths on my conscience. Let them have it.”

  Hanrahan swore but returned to his chair. “Well, that concludes our business, I think. Quite what else there might be to discuss is beyond me now.”

  Costa looked Denney directly in the face. “Do you know Sara Farnese?”

  “Who?” He didn’t even blink.

  “The university lecturer in the papers. The one who seems to have sparked this.”

  “Ah.” Some recognition rose in Denney’s sallow face. “I did read about her.” He shrugged.

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “You’re an insistent little bastard, aren’t you?” Denney observed dryly.

  “Like I said. Just curious.”

  He sniffed. “Well, you don’t need to be that curious to know I’ve had a taste for women in my time.”

  “I was asking a specific question,” Costa insisted.

  “Do you have a picture of her? The ones in the papers didn’t jog my memory.”

  “No. I gave you her name. Sara Farnese.”

  “Names?” He smiled at Hanrahan. “He thinks names are important, Brendan? What kind of people are the police recruiting these days? Liking art I can understand. But this naiveté…”

  Hanrahan stared miserably at the folder and said nothing.

  “Let me be honest with you, son. When a man like me wanted a woman, I got one sent. I can’t afford affairs. Long-term relationships. All those things are just too messy if they go wrong. So if the mood took me, I’d get someone to place the call. Understand?”

  “Does the mood still take you?”

  Denney’s head moved from side to side. “You’re getting personal. That’s out of bounds.”

  “So you’re saying that if you met her it was because she was a hooker.”

  “Your words, not mine. If I met her. And that’s an end to it.”

  “Okay,” Costa said. “Do you mind? I need to go.”

  He walked into the small bathroom and turned both taps on full.

  Falcone had suggested the toothbrush or a comb if there was no alternative, though it could have alerted Denney to what was going on.

  Instead, Costa rifled through the waste bin. There, beneath a spent shaving-foam canister, was what he wanted: a paper tissue with a tiny bloodstain, doubtless from shaving. He picked it up and placed it inside a plastic bag, then hid the thing in his pocket.

  The two men weren’t even looking each other in the eye when he returned.

  He picked up the folder, waved it at Denney and said, “Thank you. I’ll pass on what you said.”

  Denney nodded. Then he and Hanrahan watched the young cop walk out the door. When they heard his footsteps die away on the stone staircase below, Denney turned to the Irishman. “Well?”

  “A good job, Michael,” Hanrahan said. “I couldn’t have done better myself. I’ll have you safely out of here. And that’s a promise.”

  Thirty-Two

  By seven that evening the case of Gino Fosse occupied most of the resources of the Rome state police. More than thirty officers were on duty guarding the men Sara Farnese had named as former lovers, all of whom had now been swabbed for DNA and the samples passed, along with that illicitly taken from Michael Denney, to the big police lab near the river. A team of four had been assigned to go through the personnel file from the Vatican which Nic Costa had brought back to the station.

  Nothing looked promising. Fosse had been raised in Sicily by peasant farmer parents. At six he had gone to board at a local church school. His parents rarely visited. His record there was one of promising academic achievement and persistent, violent misbehavior.

  Falcone pointed out a significant event: When Fosse was nine he’d been found torturing a young cat in a wood by the school playground. The inspector got one of the detectives to track down a retired teacher who’d known the boy. The details were revealing: Fosse had skinned the animal alive, then nailed the corpse to a tree. A year later, a stray dog was tethered to a set of railings, doused in petrol and set on fire. Fosse denied all knowledge. No one believed him but, if they had proof, no one came forward with it. Gino had, said the former teacher, an intense curiosity in one particular field of study: the lives and, most of all, the deaths of the early martyrs.

  He grew older and discovered new interests. At thirteen, he was reported for a serious sexual assault on a schoolgirl. Two years later he was accused of an almost identical offense. Both cases were dropped, for no obvious reasons.

  At twenty, he entered the seminary. From that point on he had occupied a series of junior positions in Palermo, Naples, Turin and finally Rome until joining the administrative staff of the Vatican five years before. Falcone set men calling the cities where Fosse had worked, talking to the local cops and any priests they could persuade to come to the phone. They soon picked up a picture, as much from what was not said as the details they gleaned from the reluctant parties on the other end of the line. Gino Fosse was constant trouble.

  In each job he’d been moved on for some misdemeanor. In Naples he had been accused of sleeping with prostitutes in his own parish. In Turin, money had gone missing and he had become involved in a fistfight with the senior detective who had been assigned to investigate the theft. There were darker rumors too, all unproven, of sadistic sexual encounters. Yet he was never charged, never dismissed from his position. Fosse drifted from post to post, falling apart after a few months, often with disastrous consequences. Still, he made steady progress toward Rome, toward the Vatican and the pinnacle of Church bureaucracy. Finally he found himself in the job he had occupied until only a few weeks before, working on the clerical staff for Denney, typing, phoning, driving.

  “So why does he keep on going up and up like this?” Falcone asked Costa.

  “I don’t know. Maybe they try to keep people in the fold.”

  “Bullshit. Look…”

  It was a single-page report someone had gleaned from the anti-Mafia squad: six years old and scarcely the stuff of scandal. It said that a young trainee priest, named as Gino Fosse, with the details of his parents’ farm in parentheses, had stayed at the home of one of the city’s most notorious Mafia bosses for three months while attending studies in a nearby college.

  Falcone tapped the page. “Friends. Look at that. He knows the wrong kind of people. He’s a houseguest of the biggest hood in Palermo.”

  “So the Mafia could ease his way in the Church? They could get him off the hook when he walks into trouble?”

  “Are you serious? How long
have you been a cop, kid? These people can call the Quirinale Palace direct and ask if the president’s at home. That’s not the issue. The real question is, why? Why keep some farmer’s punk out of jail? Why keep him groping up the slippery ladder like this? Does someone in the Vatican really think he’s cut out for better things?”

  That was surely impossible. Fosse appeared to be a dangerous loser, a liability for anyone to have around.

  Falcone dashed the folder on the desk. “And I’m supposed to let that bastard in the Vatican go for this? Hanrahan honestly thinks he can trade for Denney’s freedom with a bunch of personnel records?”

  Costa had been thinking of Denney ever since he left the apartment. The man seemed desperate but defeated too, as if he were waiting for some unknown fate to overtake him. He wanted to escape the gloomy prison the authorities had made for him. Costa doubted there was much joy in the prospect either, or much hope of redemption. Even when he talked about home, about Boston, the Irishman seemed downcast, as if he knew that too was a pipe dream.

  “Perhaps that’s all the Cardinal has. He’s clutching at straws.”

  “Now, that,” Falcone replied, “I do doubt. You must never take anyone in that place at their word. Hanrahan least of all.”

  “So you’ll tell him there’s no deal.”

  “He can sweat until tomorrow. Then we’ll see.”

  Tomorrow, he nearly said, there could be another corpse. And Michael Denney would still be screaming to get out of that dismal apartment. He tried to think straight and found his eyes closing, the drowsiness taking over. Falcone’s hand on his good shoulder jolted him awake.

  “It’s been a long day for all of us, especially for you. Go home, Nic. Talk to that woman. Try to make more sense of this than I can. Come back in the morning and tell me how it all fits.”