Gospel (53 page)

The emcee of the show was a stereotype of bad Italian show biz with his plastered-down jet-black hair, singing a tuneless song, while the topless women swarmed around him, representing all the countries of the world: a blond woman had a stein for Germany, a dark woman had a Carmen Miranda hat of fruit from South America somewhere, a wholesome slender blonde had a Lady Liberty hat.

“I go for Holland,” said the rabbi.

She had a working windmill whirring atop her head as her breasts crowded the screen for attention.

O'Hanrahan and his friend then heard some light laughing of women, perhaps the Sisters of Jesus who were staying in the hostel for a convocation: St. Peter's was crawling with young, nubile third-world nuns. The rabbi dove for the channel and turned it as they passed the room. Anything on? they asked. Nope, just sports, O'Hanrahan said back in Italian. The nuns went away, and the rabbi turned the TV back to
“Colpo Grosso.”

“I'm going to close the door,” said O'Hanrahan, doing just that and locking them inside the public TV room.

Soon there was a knock. “Dr. O'Hanrahan, are you in there?”

“Go away, Lucy.”

“Dr. O'Hanrahan, open up!” She sounded upset.

“I excommunicate you, anathema, anathema!”

But then she nearly beat the door down: “I said
open up!
”

“I'm coming, for God's sake, hold your horses…”

Lucy stood there out of breath and visibly emotional. Waiting a few yards from her was Gepetto the Cabdriver. That's odd, Lucy was in the same clothes as last night—

Lucy: “
Well?
Aren't you going to ask me where I was?”

“The Colosseum?”

“Dr. O'Hanrahan, I go missing for nearly two nights and you think I'm sightseeing at the Colosseum?”

“Missing?”

“Damn right…” He thought “damn” sounded funny coming from her mouth, as if she was trying out the word. She entered the TV room, raging at him: “Haven't you got the police looking for me? I disappear for a day and you don't even notice!”

O'Hanrahan explained about the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign and just assumed she was asleep or out on the town. Lucy looked near tears and she stood between him and the TV; on
“Colpo Grosso”
two women were making uh-oh! faces as their skimpy blouses fell away.

“Signore,”
pleaded the taxi driver from the hallway, who made a request for money.

“Jim wasn't a diocesan priest,” Lucy snapped, “didn't go to Notre Dame, didn't see your lectures there or in Bologna, for starters.”

“Who was he?” said the professor, leaning a little to the right to see the woman with the—

“Could you turn this off?”
Lucy shrieked.

The rabbi turned off the TV and there was silence.

Lucy: “Jim turned out to be an Ignatian prelate. And they want their scroll back.”

Inwardly, O'Hanrahan was relieved that it was only the fringe Jesuit group. The rabbi turned around testily in his chair. “What did I tell you, Paddy? Now what did I just say about the criminal element and Lucy here?”

O'Hanrahan: “Did you tell them we didn't have it?”

“They didn't believe me when I told them that, because they knew that the Ignatians had given it to
you
back in Ireland. And until I convinced them, they thought you and the rabbi had merely staged the robbery in Ballymacross.” She refused to be embarrassed about the next part: “I said the Franciscans had stolen it.”

O'Hanrahan was horrified. “You told them everything?”

“They
kidnapped
me, Dr. O'Hanrahan! I didn't know what they were going to do to me. The Jesuits toppled countries! They set up inquisitions.”

“No, that was the Dominicans, but go on. Did they do anything harmful to you?”

Lucy regained her composure. “No.”

The cabdriver leaned into the room.
“I soldi, per favore…”

Lucy quietly interjected, “Could you pay the driver for me?”

O'Hanrahan dug into his pocket and gave the driver two 10,000-lire bills. The driver said it was more, but O'Hanrahan waved him away.

O'Hanrahan thought out loud: “So they know the Franciscans have it, and that we don't. No great harm done, I suppose—”

“No harm done?” snapped the rabbi. “The Ignatians have the resources to steal the thing from the Franciscans, don't they? How secure is it at the Franciscans'?”

O'Hanrahan felt defensive for the Friars Minor and their little squeaking safe on wheels. “Uh, it's pretty safe.”

“I bet not safe enough to keep the Ignatians from stealing it back. And if the Ignatians
do
get it back, do you think they'll be eager to deal with us?” Rabbi Hersch creased his eyebrows and shot a disgusted glance at Lucy: “I knew you were going to be trouble.”

Lucy shot back angrily, “I don't intend to be ‘trouble' much longer, Rabbi. I'm getting on the first plane out of here.”

O'Hanrahan smiled wanly watching this exchange. He would be alone again soon. Fair enough, Lucy had been a trouper. Above and beyond the call of duty.

The rabbi: “Paddy can take you to a travel agent tomorrow—”

Lucy: “Fine with me!”

And wouldn't you know, he had begun to get used to her. Her scholarship might have been helpful further along, her company appreciated. Good job, Paddy, he told himself. You had your chance to include her in the project, befriend her, but you were suspicious and selfish and inconsiderate of her feelings.

(A familiar story with people in your life.)

“I think that's an excellent idea,” said the rabbi.

“First plane I can get on…” she predicted.

But then again, O'Hanrahan soothed himself, I've always been a solo act. Yes, even when married, even Beatrice smothered me when I was out in the field, on the trail of something. Your first expeditions and discoveries—you young buck, you—were solitary missions. And now it will end that way too, Patrick Virgil O'Hanrahan, the hermit, the modern-day monk poring over the tomes in the candlelit chamber. It is a noble ending. Decry us as you will, Sister Marie-Berthe, but it is we old crotchety bachelor men, alone and misanthropic through the centuries, in monastery and library: we have left the world civilized and enlightened! He sensed a sad foretaste of the lonesome hours ahead.

“C'mon, Luce,” said O'Hanrahan. “You'll excuse us, Morey? I'm going to get Miss Dantan a calming drink of grappa.”

“I don't want anything to drink, Dr. O'Hanrahan,” she said, being led from the room, her face red from consternation. “It'll upset my stomach and I already have, you know … indigestion from all this.”

The rabbi waited for them to leave the lounge, then turned on the TV set again as O'Hanrahan shut the door behind him. O'Hanrahan then put an arm around Lucy's shoulder. “You had me worried at first, there, Luce.”

She didn't say anything as they walked to his room.

“I thought, Sister Lucy, you'd fallen into more criminal hands.”

“Don't think that wasn't occurring to me, too.”

“Where'd they take you?”

“We ended up at Il Gesù for the first night. Then we went to a church called Sant' Irene for lunch the next day and I talked to some very persuasive priests. They were the guys I told everything to. They were perfect gentlemen; the food was good. Then they let me go tonight. I got a cab from right outside the church and came straight back to here. Fortunately I remembered the name of the hosteleria—”

“What did you say?” O'Hanrahan looked panicked. “You found
that
cabdriver outside of Sant' Irene,
waiting
for you?”

“What about it?”

Both looked up to see Gepetto emerge from the shadows. He reached into his jacket and flashed a gun, and with a jerk of the head urged O'Hanrahan to unlock his door and go inside his hotel room. Lucy too.

“Tip not big enough?” asked O'Hanrahan.

“Il vangèlo, signore,”
he requested shakily.

He's new at this, reasoned O'Hanrahan. Probably owes some Mafia family a favor and staking out this hotel, stealing my scroll is it. He's no murderer. I can tell by his face …

“Hurry hurry,” he said in accented English.

O'Hanrahan would have preferred to play out a credible scene of resistance giving way to fear but he could take no chance that tonight's emissary might put the gun to Lucy's head. Slowly, O'Hanrahan went to his bed and creakingly knelt down. The robber cautioned him, reasserting the gun, not to do anything sudden or foolish. O'Hanrahan reached under the bed and slid from the slats of the bedbox the round tube of a scrollcase.

The robber grinned, almost laughing, his chore almost over.

“But Dr. O'Hanrahan,” Lucy began to mumble.

“We have no choice but to give them the
Gospel of Matthias,
Lucy,” said the professor, enunciating.

The robber opened the end of the scrollcase and slid out the vellum manuscript.
“San Matteo, si?”

“Si,”
O'Hanrahan performed, dejected, forlorn.

The man traced a small circle with the gun and O'Hanrahan knew he was expected to roll up the scroll and put it in the bag the cabdriver tossed to the floor. The cabdriver picked up the bag and kissed it, crossed himself. A relic of the Thirteenth Disciple didn't come along every day, thought O'Hanrahan, impressed by this operative's Catholicism.

Then the robber left after picking up O'Hanrahan's key. He closed the door and then locked Lucy and the professor inside O'Hanrahan's room. O'Hanrahan and Lucy listened until his footsteps could be heard down the hall.

“What did he just steal?” asked Lucy, one hand clutching the other, feeling faint.

O'Hanrahan sat on the edge of his bed. “A 14th-Century medieval forgery. Ought to keep the Mafia busy for awhile.”

“The
Mafia
? Lucy cried. She touched her temples, then raised her face in cold serenity. “I want to go home immediately.”

O'Hanrahan went to the window and surveyed the street. The man had scurried to his cab and driven off. O'Hanrahan thought aloud, “Next person who comes into the hostel, I'll shout down to. I'll tell them to get the hostelkeeper to come up and unlock us.” He clapped his hands, trying out a smile. “Now, how about that drink I promised you?” he added, eyeing the grappa.

Lucy just glowered at him.

J
ULY
6
TH
–7
TH

The next day O'Hanrahan escorted a very paranoid Lucy to a travel agent and discovered the day was completely booked for flights to New York connecting to Chicago, but come tomorrow TWA had a place. And so they reserved a seat with the omnipotent credit card, a five
P.M.
flight from Leonardo Da Vinci, and Lucy conceded that at last she was homeward bound.

On the day she was to leave, to her surprise, O'Hanrahan sought her out at nine
A.M.
and knocked on
her
door.

“Who is it?”

“International black market killers,” he said.

When O'Hanrahan entered he could tell that Lucy had been up for hours and was all packed. She had put on the polka-dot dress he had bought in Florence.

“After a pastry and a cappuccino,” he said, “I got a small itinerary planned. God, I hate days where you gotta travel. All that time to kill.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I hate it too.”

They locked glances briefly but quickly turned away, both fearing a ceremonial goodbye. After all, thought O'Hanrahan as he watched Lucy turn the key in her door, it won't do to have berated her company for three weeks and then suddenly beg her to stay.

O'Hanrahan knocked on Rabbi Hersch's door, who cried “Whadya want?” from within. The professor offered an invitation for a last coffee at a café, but the rabbi wouldn't join them because he had one more thing to look up in the Judaica section in the Vatican stacks.

“Oh, and Morey,” said O'Hanrahan, annoyed that he had to talk through the closed door, “Lucy's flight is this afternoon like yours, from Leonardo.”

“So?”

“You'll accompany her to the airport, won't you?”

An unwilling pause. There had been a great coolness since the taxi-driver incident as Rabbi Hersch made it plain that Lucy was an impediment and that he was counting the minutes until she left.

“Uh yeah, whatever,” he said. “If it gets her on the plane.”

O'Hanrahan whisked Lucy into the alleys of Trastevere, having a surprise up his sleeve, a wicked smirk which could mean anything. The surprise was an appointment at a student-frequented hairdressing salon near Santa Cecilia, radiating a trendy 1990s decor of chrome and stained wood, staffed by a brood of Italian prettyboys, all sporting frizzed-out and piled-up hair themselves.

O'Hanrahan: “I'm tired of your page-boy, Sister Lucy. You shouldn't look like Buster Brown.”

“Who?”

“That hairstyle ain't you, Luce. Like that horrible sweater, that old tent-bag.”

“Just for you, sir, I'm going to throw it away before I leave, okay?” She looked on at the flurry of activity, and the three beautiful Italian girls having their hair done, their long crossed legs, bracelets on thin tan arms, dressed in light summer yellows and oranges, chattering away as their earnest hairdressers in black cossack blouses fidgeted with their hair, coaxed and seduced it into shape.

Lucy asked how O'Hanrahan ever found this place.

“The
suora
downstairs has a teenage niece. This is
the
place in Trastevere, trust me.”

“You don't have to—”

“Silence. My mission to make you over has been a failure. If I can't get you cussing, smoking and drinking, I can at least get you looking like the cosmopolitan beauty you are.”