The Assassini (83 page)

“I’d sure as hell like to find out,” I said.

His laughter rumbled across the silent expanses of garden. “Sounds like a good idea to you, does it? Now poor Pietro wouldn’t have seen the humor of that.” He looked at me sharply. “He had no sense of humor. Maybe that’s what was wrong with him.” He shrugged.

“There sure was something wrong with him.”

“Agreed.” There was a memory, a bit of sorrow in the old man’s voice.

“Since I’m quite a heathen—”

“Agreed, once more.”

“—and no respecter of clerics, I can ask you an impertinent question. The next time I hear about you, will it be your elevation to the papacy?”

“Maybe. If I want it, Summerhays will probably arrange to buy it for me. But I’m getting on. Does the Church need a long-term or a short-term leader? That’s the question, isn’t it?”

We walked to the place I’d entered. The penny had dropped: forgive Archduke … because he may just buy you the papacy!

“I think I’ll walk awhile longer, Benjamin.” He turned to face me, squinting at me from those hooded eyes. It was as if someone were living—had scraped along as best he could and then taken shelter—inside the aged hulk, peering out, plotting, occasionally feeling. “But let me give you one small bit of advice. When are you going home?”

“Tomorrow,” I said. I didn’t relish his advice, but then you never knew. He was a gnarly old bastard, he’d survived a hell of a lot more than I would ever see, maybe I should pay attention. The sun was sinking and the palm trees looked lonely against the dome of sky going gray.

“Forgive yourself, Benjamin.”

“I beg your pardon, Eminence?”

“That’s my advice. Forgive yourself. Take a leaf from my book, son. I don’t know what it is you’ve done, but you should have learned recently that there is far, far worse. It’s part of being alive, that’s my guess. Bad things occur in one’s life … one
does
things.” He was trying to light a black cigarette in the wind, finally succeeded
and took a deep breath. “Forgive yourself your deeds, your trespasses, your sins.… I’m not speaking as a priest, or even as a Catholic, but just as a man who has lived his life. Forgive yourself, my son.”

Artie Dunn said he was staying in Rome for a few days, doubtless hatching some ungodly plot with D’Ambrizzi, so we had a last Roman dinner together. He seemed to have something on his mind but I couldn’t shake it loose. Somehow we got to talking about my parents and Val’s death and the suicide—Father Governeau, who had to sleep his eternal rest outside the fence, outside consecrated ground. By mistake, of course, since he’d been murdered. Ah, God is great, God is good. He told me to wish my father well and badger him about reading the books he’d left. I promised that I would. He said he’d call when he got back to New York.

We spoke only circumspectly about Indelicato’s and Sandanato’s deaths. He’d heard from D’Ambrizzi, too, and we knew we’d speak of these things later when the dust had cleared.

“D’Ambrizzi said something that struck me rather sideways this afternoon.” We were walking back toward the Hassler, climbing the Spanish Steps. “I asked him if he thought he’d be elected pope—”

“You just asked him?” Dunn’s fuzzy gray eyebrows rose. His eyes twinkled mischievously.

“It’s what
he
said …”

“Which was?”

“He said if he decided he wanted to be pope, Summerhays was prepared to buy it for him. Summerhays.”

“Not entirely a scoop, Ben. I mean, it’s a growth industry, isn’t it? Summerhays, your father, Lockhardt, Heffernan … and others, I’m sure.”

“You miss the point. Summerhays.
Archduke
. Don’t you see the … the amorality of it? Archduke betrayed him to Indelicato and the pope forty years ago … and now he says Archduke will buy him the papacy. I call that pretty damned astonishing.”

“Sounds like excellent use of human resources to me,” Dunn said. He winked at me.

* * *

I wasn’t quite sure what saying good-bye to Elizabeth was going to be like: I was going to miss her but the door wasn’t closing. That was the important thing. So I called her. The phone conversation was cryptic.

“I’ve got things to tell you before I go,” I said. “Important things. Have you seen or heard from the cardinal?”

“Yes, yes, I have.” She was cutting me short. “Look, don’t say anything. I don’t know who’s listening—we have to meet. When are you leaving?”

I told her.

“All right.” I heard her thumbing her Filofax. “Look, I can blow off my next two hours if you can. Are you at the hotel?”

“Sure. I’m free, whatever you—”

“Meet me at the bottom of the steps. Fifteen minutes.”

I stood at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, waiting. Then she was calling to me, out of breath. I took her shoulders in my hands. “Stand still,” I said. She looked at me expectantly. “It seems a month since I last saw you.” She smiled and I kissed her softly on the mouth. It was the most normal thing in the world. She was wearing her blazer with the rosette of the Order in the lapel.

“Come on,” she said, tugging me along behind her. “How much do you know?”

“More than I can quite believe,” I said.

“You know Indelicato’s dead?”

“Know? Elizabeth—D’Ambrizzi and I turned the body over … we saw the knife at the same time—”

“Knife? What knife? What are you talking about?”

“Florentine dagger, to be precise.”

She was staring at me as if I were mad. She pulled up short, pulled at my sleeve, led the way into a small park. A crowd of children had gathered around a puppeteer’s stage. It was a peculiar show with Pinocchio cast as a lying cleric in Roman collar, nose growing ever longer, as he boasted to a pretty girl about how brave he was. While he blabbered on of his mighty victories over evil,
a huge black knight clad in armor and riding a horse with snarling lips was prancing up behind him. The pretty girl with blond hair didn’t know how to interrupt him to warn him. It looked to me like Father Pinocchio was about to get it in the neck. The cries of the children, shrill and full of half-hysterical laughter and cries of warning, rose and fell with the action on the tiny stage. We walked off to the side and sat on a bench beneath trees with their crowns full of wind.

“Ben, Cardinal Indelicato died of a heart attack.” She gave me a severe look. “D’Ambrizzi called me this morning. He told me Indelicato had a coronary while talking with Callistus, collapsed, and died, but they’re saving the news until tomorrow—”

“Did he mention how Callistus is taking it?”

“No, but—”

“Look, trust me on this one. I was there. Cardinal Indelicato was murdered by … by—now, don’t bail out on me here—murdered by Callistus.”

“You don’t mean—”

That’s how the conversation went. Callistus the killer, now in a coma. Sandanato dead by Horstmann’s hand. It wasn’t that she fought the story: she knew so much, she wouldn’t have wasted time fighting the truth. But it was rather a lot to take in.

When I had finished, Pinocchio and the black knight were gone and the uniformed schoolchildren and the younger ones with their mothers and nurses were slowly scattering. The sunny sky had grayed over. The wind was pushing a chill this way and that. Christmas was coming.

“I can’t help thinking like an editor,” she said, the flecked green eyes staring across the park. She raked her fingers through the tawny, heavy hair. Her fingers were long and slender and strong. “What a story it would be.” She couldn’t keep from grinning. “My God … what an ending. The pope killing a—”

“It was Salvatore di Mona who killed Indelicato.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. And now he’s in a coma. So D’Ambrizzi lied to me.” She stood up.

“One more thing. Simon told him to do it. To kill Indelicato.”

“Simon … D’Ambrizzi?”

“Yes. He put it in a note reminding Callistus that he’d been one of the
assassini
and he had a job to do. I saw the letter. It was on Callistus’s bed when we found him.”

“D’Ambrizzi sees me as the press, I suppose,” she said. “So he didn’t tell me. But he must have known you’d tell me.”

“Of course. And he knew you’d never violate the confidence.”

“Well,” she said, “what would be the point? How could I ever prove any of it? Where’s the smoking gun?”

We were walking back toward her office, the traffic yapping and sputtering.

“Think of the toll in human life,” she said. “I wonder how many there were? Ones we know nothing of?”

“Who knows? There must be the odd stiff tucked away in shadowy places.” I blurted out, “My God, I’m going to miss you, Elizabeth.”

“I should think you would. You
are
in love with me, Ben.”

“Making light of my affections?”

“Making light of your sad face.”

“I make no apologies for this face. It’s been through a lot lately. Good reason to be sad, things taken all in all. And I
am
in love with you, now that you mention it.”

“Then don’t be sad. Love is happy. Val would tell you the same, you know.”

“Not if it’s a one-way love affair.”

“What’s that got to do with any of this?”

I smiled. “What, indeed?”

“Let’s say good-bye here, Ben.” We were about to cross a busy square.

“I keep wondering. About Summerhays. Not just buying the papacy for D’Ambrizzi, but …”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why was he in Avignon? He never explained that—what was he doing? Why did he have Marco with him?”

“Well, it’s over. What does it matter?”

“But it’s never over, don’t you see? Not if Summerhays is Archduke …”

There was no point in going on, holding her there. “Look, Elizabeth, keep well—I don’t know what else to say.” It was time to go.

“Give your father my blessings at Christmas, Ben. And just stay steady-on, all right? I need—we both need some time to get it all straight. You do understand?”

“Sure.”

“And we’ll talk soon.”

“When?”

“Not knowing, that’s the point, Ben. Don’t be impatient with me.”

I gave her a look that said I hoped she knew what she was doing.

I watched her cross the square.

She waved her hand once over her shoulder without looking back.

I climbed aboard the plane for the flight home, sank into the seat, and my exhaustion hit me like a hammer blow. I hovered in that limbo between sleep and wakefulness and I had plenty of company. It was their presence that kept me from going all the way under, from diving down into the darkness where the ghost waited.

I was surrounded by all the faces, past and present, the photograph from the drum came to life but the figure holding the camera still in shadow, a mystery … and I saw Richter and I wondered who would partner him—and his interests—within the Church now that Indelicato was dead … and I saw LeBecq in his art gallery in Alexandria, his face frozen with terror as I pushed him, as my sister had.… The beautiful nun who had pointed me on my way and had had dinner with me, it seemed so long ago, and lovely Gabrielle, whom I would never see again … all the faces, the Torricelli nephew, such a snot, and Paternoster with his incredible nose and the tramps cooking dinner in the rain in the Place de la Contrescarpe … and Leo and the time in the fog on the rocky shingle with the surf shaking the world and my soul dying, drowned in fear … and Artie Dunn with his
story of the D’Ambrizzi memoir, Artie Dunn appearing like a genie, almost in a puff of smoke, in Ireland … and Sister Elizabeth sobbing in Val’s room that rainy night in Paris … Avignon, Erich Kessler, Summerhays and his little protector moving like dream figures … and Horstmann finding me in the little church, mocking my plastic gun, telling me to go home … Elizabeth confiding her secrets to me in Avignon and my anger and hatred of the Church disfiguring everything, everything I needed … and then Rome …

The shade was drawn on the plane window, shutting out the endless, bright day as we flew westward. A couple of drinks, something to eat, and finally I could no longer resist the plunge into the dark pool.

And she was there, waiting. The same tired old act.

My mother in the role of the specter from beyond never changed the material.

She was still calling to me, reliving a moment my conscious mind denied ever existed. She was still talking about Father Governeau, the poor bastard.…

You did it.… It was you! You, you, you did it
.…

Her finger was pointing at me.

She was absolutely sure.

T
he jack-o’-lanterns, the witches on broomsticks, and the hobgoblins in Nixon masks had all gone, replaced by merry, plump Santa Clauses, snowmen, elves, and reindeer with red noses. The campus lay under several inches of snow, crusty and windswept, and the big gate on Nassau Street was shiny with ice. It was an unusually early, oddly frigid winter. The street was rutted and frozen and the wind whistled nastily up your sleeves and you could hear the carols pouring from outdoor speakers. Shop doors tinkled happily, the gifts sparkled in the decorated windows. It was Christmastime, all right, time for the family to come together if the fates allowed, time to have yourself a merry little Christmas.