by Sam Cabot
He hauled Livia down the center aisle toward the entrance and then over to the other side of the nave, about as far from the action as they could get. A confessional nestled between two chapels in the side aisle. The booth was of a weighty Baroque style, both priest and penitent hidden behind heavily carved wooden doors. Pulling open the penitent’s side, he told Livia, “Get in!” and then, since she seemed frozen, casting yet another look at the scuffling men, he shoved her inside and shut the door on her. Ah, Thomas, now we’re forcing reluctant sinners into the confessional? He yanked open the other door, jumped in, and pulled it to. Sitting on the narrow bench, he slid the panel, revealing the screen between them.
“What’s going on?” he whispered as he pulled his shoes on. When she didn’t answer he demanded, “The clerk—that was Ocampo, right?”
“Yes.” Livia’s own whisper was hoarse. “And Jonah.”
“Jonah? Who, the blond man? I thought that was just a good Samaritan, helping you.”
“No. Jonah.”
“The man—the . . . Noantri—who started all this? The one you’re looking for?”
He started to rise but she said, “Don’t. Listen, you can hear it. They’re both gone.”
Now her voice only sounded sad. He paused, and listened, and found she was right. He heard shouts and clamoring voices, people vying to tell their versions of what they’d seen, what they’d heard. Other voices tried to calm things down, sort them out. Nothing sounded like thrown punches, kicks, flesh striking flesh.
“How do you know they’re gone? Not just arrested?”
“Their footsteps when they ran.”
“You heard them?”
Wearily, she said, “Of course.”
Of course. Thomas sat back down. His skin felt oddly flushed and his heart still beat rapidly as he said, “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I turned and he was there. Ocampo. He must still be after the notebook because he grabbed my bag.”
“How did he find us?”
“I’m not sure. He might have caught my scent.”
“Caught your—” Thomas realized that through the confessional screen he was catching her scent, too. Or perhaps not hers—he was human, after all—but the perfume she wore: a deep, gentle fragrance, as of a tropical garden where night flowers bloomed. “All right, fine!” He shook his head to clear it. “And this Jonah? How did he find us?”
“I don’t know that, either. Or why. He must know what I’ve been told to do. And that the Conclave is prepared to . . . do it, if I fail. Why doesn’t he just stay out of sight?”
“Are they working together?”
“Jonah and Ocampo? You mean, because they’re both Noantri? If they are that’s some show they just put on.” She seemed to rouse herself, her voice beyond the screen taking on a sharper note.
Many questions elbowed one another in Thomas’s head, about Jonah, about Livia, about the Noantri; and he felt he didn’t want to ask them here, through the confessional screen. He wanted to see her face, look into her eyes. But another question had to be answered first. “Where are the police?”
“What?”
“Use your supersonic hearing! Are they still here?”
For a moment, silence from the other side of the screen. Then, “Yes. More of them. The two officers we saw, and also the man who called for the ambulance in Santa Maria della Scala. He’s with someone else. And the Gendarme! From the Colosseum station, I think he’s here, too.” She drew a sharp breath. “Two of them are heading this way.”
“All right,” Thomas said. He tried to ignore the odd sensations he was feeling, tried to concentrate on the immediate problem. “Do you remember how this goes?”
“How what goes?”
“Confession. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned’? You said you were raised a Catholic. Or is even the memory of that something you’ve dispensed with?”
“Would you absolve a Noantri if one came to you?” she snapped. “Though in fact you probably have, more than once.” Without giving him a chance to answer she intoned, “Mi benedica, Padre, perché ho peccato.”
She didn’t go on, so in soft, droning Italian, which he hoped was quiet enough to barely be heard by, and accentless enough to convince, any passing policeman, Thomas replied with the prompt. “How long has it been, my child, since your last confession?”
A pause; then, “Ninety-six years.”
Thomas tried to swallow the choking sound he found himself making. He wasn’t sure what to say, but this time, she didn’t stop.
“I don’t repent of the life I’ve lived or am living,” she said, speaking low. “I’m aware that you think I should—the Unchanged have always thought so—but that belief is born from fear and ignorance.”
Thomas started to protest, but was she that wrong? What did he know about her life—their life, these Noantri? And wasn’t he, in fact, afraid? He said nothing, only listened as she went on. As, it occurred to him, a priest in a confessional is supposed to do.
“But I committed a great sin, and it’s led to others,” she said, drawing a slow breath. “I loved a man who wasn’t mine to love. Without permission I brought him into my Community. We both could have been expelled, but instead the Community welcomed him. Now he’s threatening to destroy it.”
At a sound, Thomas glanced through the metal grillwork on the confessional door. The tiny holes that formed a cross showed him two men moving slowly up the aisle in their direction.
“This man you loved.” Something inside him resented saying those words; what was wrong with him? They had to keep talking, so he continued, “His actions aren’t your fault.”
“He’s my responsibility. Because I brought him to us. It’s one of our Laws. What’s worse is, I’ve been ordered to stop him but I fear that I can’t.”
“Failure is never a sin.”
“Failure to try, though? To do what’s right? When it comes to it, I’m afraid I’ll let him go. In fact I already did, just now. Instead of . . .” She trailed off.
Thomas paused, as understanding dawned. “Instead of killing him? Is that what you’ve been ordered to do?”
“It might be necessary.”
“To take his life? How could failure to take a life ever be construed as a sin?” He frowned as another question came to him. “Wait. He’s— How could that even be done? Throw him on a bonfire? Burn him at the stake?” Would she really do that? Just when he’d begun to think—
“No,” she whispered. “There’s another way.”
“To destroy you? You people, I mean?”
With a faint trace of amusement in her voice she answered, “I’m glad you qualified that. Yes. I—”
She stopped for a moment. He glanced through the door panel. The men walking down the aisle were coming close.
“Don’t speak,” he said to Livia. “Just let me do this. We’ll be fine.”
62
“. . . in San Francesco a Ripa,” Giulio Aventino was telling the maresciallo. Raffaele signaled him to keep his voice down—they were standing by an occupied confessional—but all Giulio did was walk a few steps farther down the aisle. They’d come over here for a little peace and quiet. Though the Carabinieri had finished their questioning, tourists and worshippers still milled around by the Albertoni chapel, each offering his own account and disputing the others. If past experience was anything to go on—and in police work, it always was—Raffaele knew the fight was growing in duration and danger with each retelling. By the time the story was told over this afternoon’s coffee or tonight’s red wine, there would have been knives, brass knuckles, and blood all over the Bernini. Meanwhile, the actual altercation had been over so fast that officers questioning tourists who’d been over here on the right side of the church had found that some hadn’t even been aware of the fight and none had seen it.
“Over by
the time we got here,” Giulio was saying. “It seems to have been a purse-snatching. A tourist. No, some good Samaritan stopped it. That was the fight. But the point is, the witness descriptions of the snatcher fit our suspect. There’s a possibility here that he’s just some kind of anti-clerical nut job.” Which was funny, Raffaele thought, coming from Giulio. “Yes, you’re absolutely right, sir, it would’ve been easier to know what he’s up to if we’d laid our hands on him. You might ask the officers why they let him get away, once they’re out of hospital.” Giulio rolled his eyes at Raffaele. “The good Samaritan took off after him. Yes, of course we need to keep the search going, but I still think meanwhile— No, I’m not suggesting you provide protection to every church in Rome. Sir. Just to warn them. Yes. All right. Well, it might, but false alarms are better than another death, don’t you think? Unless the Vatican doesn’t care that we—” He held the phone away from his ear; Raffaele heard the maresciallo sputtering, something about Giulio going too far. Giulio brought the phone back and sighed, “Yes. What? Yes, Esposito’s his name, and yes, he’s here, too. No, why? As long as they let him stay, I can use him. Yes. We will. No, we haven’t, but we’re trying. Thank you. Sir.”
As Giulio sighed and pocketed the phone, Raffaele said, “He’s not happy?”
“Have you ever known him happy? He wanted this wrapped up and it just gets worse. Come on, I need a smoke.”
As the priest in the confessional continued to assign penance—judging from the length of the list, this was a prodigal with a wide gulf of time since his or her last confession and an impressive collection of sins—Raffaele and Giulio walked up the aisle and left the church, emerging into the bright autumn afternoon.
“Raffaele,” Giulio said, cupping a Marlboro to light it, “you think we’re wrong? Esposito’s wrong? That this has nothing to do with stolen art, it really is just some lunatic with a grudge against the Church?”
“Lunatic? I’ve heard you use much more flattering words about people who feel that way.”
“Be serious.”
“You mean, is this just a wacko trying to create havoc, no worries about killing if someone gets in the way?”
Giulio nodded and blew a stream of smoke. “Il Nucleo, Interpol, all those bright bulbs, they never heard of this gang. It’s the simplest explanation: there is no gang.”
“I guess it’s possible. But it doesn’t explain what Cardinal Cossa wanted with Livia Pietro.”
“The boss asked whether we’d reached him. Try him again.” While Raffaele took out his phone, Giulio went on, “Maybe this guy’s stalking Pietro because she’s part of whatever fantasy he’s working from. Maybe he has a particular thing about her and Cossa knew it, and wanted you to keep an eye on her to protect her? Or as a way to catch him? That tourist whose purse he went for has her general build, from what the witnesses say.”
“Why didn’t the Cardinal tell me that, then? I wish that tourist had hung around. She might be able to tell us something.”
“Would you stay knowing you’d be wasting your next hour with us? If you weren’t hurt and hadn’t lost anything?”
“It would’ve been the right thing to do,” Raffaele stoutly maintained. Giulio gave him the over-the-eyeglasses look, and Raffaele admitted, “But if I didn’t do it, what I would probably do is head for the nearest café to calm my nerves.”
“Hmm. Or wine bar.”
While Raffaele dialed his uncle, Giulio dialed Dispatch, asking them to start a search for the intended victim in the cafés and wine bars near San Francesco a Ripa. Raffaele waited until Giulio lowered his phone to say, “Voice mail. So you’re thinking that Pietro—and the priest she was with—aren’t involved in anything? That there’s nothing to be involved in, just some nut?”
Giulio narrowed his eyes at Raffaele through the smoke from his cigarette. “No,” he said after a pause. “No. It makes sense and it’s simple, but no, I still think something bigger’s going on here.”
“Good.” Raffaele grinned. “So do I. Look, here’s Esposito.”
63
“You can stop,” Livia said, as Thomas droned on about Hail Marys and Our Fathers. “They’re gone.”
He did stop, and silence filled the confessional. In truth, Livia was grateful. She’d been growing oddly uncomfortable. The need for penance was something she felt acutely, and she was experiencing more than a touch of regret for the days—so long ago—when she believed some prayers and a few good deeds could wipe a slate clean.
“We’ll have to wait before we go back,” she said. “The Carabinieri are still outside. On the steps.”
“Go back where?”
“To look for the poem, of course. Though this time we’ll get a ladder. I’m not going to let you climb on the Bernini again.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“No, I’m serious. Shoes or no shoes, there’s no—”
“I mean, don’t worry, no one’s going to climb on anything. I have it.”
“You have— You found it? The poem?”
“That head was heavy, too.” She could swear she heard him grinning. “I lifted it off and the sheet of paper was wrapped around the iron bar. It’s a little rusty but I think it’s readable. I put the head back, by the way.”
“I should hope so! Read it to me.”
“How about, ‘Good work, Father Kelly’?”
“Good work, Father Kelly, now read it to me!”
64
Through the confessional screen, Thomas read to Livia the poem he’d found inside the angel’s head.
Ar penitente, quann’è arivato, ce vo’ er zonno.
J’ammolla la dorce machina lì su la roccia
lisscia com’un guanciale, ppoi casca fonno
frammezzo a ’n zzoggno: du’ lupi rampanti, ’na bboccia
granne ch’aribolle . . . E la nostra compaggnia ce stà ’ntorno.
The penitent, at journey’s end, needs sleep.
He lays the sweet machine upon the stone
that’s smooth enough for pillow, falls to deep
dreaming: two gray wolves rampant, a cauldron . . .
And dreams lead to the company we keep.
“And there are more penciled letters. A M A E E. They’re spread weirdly far apart, but they’re here. And there’s the a.” Thomas had to force himself to keep his voice down. “The missing a from aedificavit. There it is.”
“If you’re right, maybe the next three letters—I mean, the three before, reading right to left—are eam. ‘It.’ ‘Built it.’”
“All right, but who built what?”
“That other e—it must be part of another word. When we find the next poem, it will tell us.”
It was oddly thrilling, he thought. Collaboration. Working with her to solve this puzzle. Building on each other’s work, correcting, suggesting, adding. Up until now, all his scholarly work had been done alone. He taught, yes, and so was not lonely; but it was different with students. This joy of teamwork, of equals sparking off each other—he was feeling now an excitement he hadn’t felt in years.
Which must be what explained his quickened heartbeat, the tingling in his skin.
“All right,” he said. “I think the coast is clear. Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“Upstairs, of course.”
“Upstairs where?”
He was taken aback. “Really? You don’t know? This one’s so easy.”
65
Luigi Esposito was delighted. He supposed he shouldn’t have been, since the case had no breaks yet, but the Carabinieri were treating him like an equal—like a cop!—and he’d been right about that repellent Argentinian clerk. All a mistake, faulty alarm system, hogwash. It was like breathing fresh mountain air, to be working out here in the real world, where investigating crime was more important than maintaining decorum.
And Luigi had an idea.
He’d arrived at San Francesco a Ripa at almost the same moment as Ispettore Aventino and his sergeant, Orsini, which meant none of them had seen the purse-snatching, the fight, or the suspect blasting out of the church with the good Samaritan after him. They found the two damaged officers groaning on the marble floor inside. Both the suspect and his pursuer, apparently, went flying across the piazza and disappeared up Via di San Francesco a Ripa. The suspect, from witness reports, was pulling ahead, which probably meant the good Samaritan eventually gave up, patted himself on the back for the rescue, and went about his business. Carabinieri and polizia were out combing the area for the suspect; but they’d done that before, after he escaped from Santa Maria della Scala, and hadn’t found a trace. Aventino had requested a bulletin go out to the churches of Rome, ostensibly a warning because the suspect was dangerous. Luigi had caught on, though, and was impressed: the ispettore, with that one move, had provided them with many thousands more eyes.
Luigi, though, was interested in a specific set of eyes.
He stood with Aventino and Orsini on the church steps near one of the potted palms, he and Aventino smoking, Orsini scanning the piazza. The sergeant was a man who was in his element in this job, Luigi thought. As he himself would be, if the job were his. They had finished interviewing everyone willing to stay and be interviewed—and everyone who thought they’d slink out the doors; because while the Carabinieri had worked the inside, Luigi, with the help of an officer he’d been lent (a uniformed officer with a brain! Miracoloso!) had ambushed the slinkers. Afterward, they’d compared notes. The Carabinieri had told Luigi about the ruckus with the aumbry in Santa Maria in Trastevere, and though it wasn’t clear whether it was the same cast of characters involved in that one, they all agreed: the Vatican Library and three churches in the same day meant something big was going on.
