Day of Confession Read online

  “He went out here.” Castelletti’s voice echoed as he inched his way backward on elbows and knees.

  “Could he have come in that way?” Roscani yelled back.

  “Not without a ladder.”

  Roscani looked to the lead dog handler. “Let’s find where he came in.

  Ten minutes later they were back in the main tunnel, following the path Harry had taken when he left Hercules’ encampment, the dogs following by the scent from a pullover sweater taken from Harry’s room at the Hotel Hassler.

  “He’s in Rome for only four days—how the hell does he know his way around here?” Scala’s voice bounced off the walls, the harsh beam of his flashlight cutting a path behind the dogs and their keepers, whose own flashlights lit the way ahead for their animals.

  Suddenly the lead dog stopped, its nose upward, sniffing. The others stopped behind it. Quickly, Roscani moved ahead.

  “What is it?”

  “They’ve lost the scent.”

  “How? They got this far. We’re in the middle of a tunnel. How could they—?”

  The lead handler moved past his animal, sniffing the air himself.

  “What is it?” Roscani came up beside him.

  “Smell.”

  Roscani sniffed. Then sniffed again.

  “Tea. Bitter tea.”

  Stepping forward, he flashed his light on the tunnel floor. There it was, scattered over the ground for fifty or sixty feet. Tea leaves. Hundreds, thousands of them. As if they had been broadcast by the handful for the very purpose of throwing the dogs off.

  Roscani picked a few from the floor and brought them to his nose. Then let them fall in disgust.

  “Gypsies.”

  41

  The Vatican. Same time.

  MARSCIANO LISTENED PATIENTLY AS JEAN Tremblay, cardinal of Montreal, read from the thick dossier on the table before him.

  “Energy, steel, shipping, engineering and construction, energy, earth-moving equipment, construction and mining, engineering equipment, transportation, heavy-duty cranes, excavators.” Tremblay turned the dossier’s pages slowly, skipping over the names of corporations listed, emphasizing instead the businesses in which they were engaged. “Heavy equipment, construction, construction, construction.” Finally he closed the document and looked up. “The Holy See is now in the construction business.”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes,” Marsciano answered Cardinal Tremblay directly, fighting the dryness in his mouth, trying not to hear the echo of his own voice inside his head as he spoke. Knowing that to show weakness would be to lose. And if he lost, Father Daniel would be lost too.

  Cardinal Mazetti of Italy, Cardinal Rosales of Argentina, Cardinal Boothe of Australia—like members of a high court, each man sat with his hands folded on top of the now-closed dossiers, staring at Marsciano across from them.

  MAZETTI: Why have we gone from a balanced portfolio to this?

  BOOTHE: It’s too heavily weighted and ungainly. A world recession would leave us and every one of these companies literally stuck in the mud. Factories frozen, equipment parked like so many multiton sculptures, useless, except to look at and marvel at the expense.

  MARSCIANO: True.

  Cardinal Rosales smiled and raised his elbows to lean on his chin. “Emerging economies and politics.”

  Marsciano lifted a glass of water and drank, then set the glass down. “Correct,” he said.

  ROSALES: And the guiding hand of Palestrina.

  MARSCIANO: His Holiness believes the Church should extend, in both spirit and manner, encouragement to less fortunate countries.

  Help them take their place in the expanding world marketplace.

  ROSALES: His Holiness or Palestrina?

  MARSCIANO: Both.

  TREMBLAY: We are to encourage world leaders to bring the emerging nations up to speed in the new century, while at the same time profiting from it?

  MARSCIANO: Another way to look at it, Eminence, is that we are following our own beliefs, and in doing so, attempting to enrich them.

  The meeting was running long. It was nearly one-thirty and time to break. And Marsciano did not want to report to Palestrina that a vote had not yet been taken. Moreover, he knew that if he let them go now without a positive consensus, they would talk about it among themselves at lunch. The more they talked, the more, he knew, they would begin to dislike the entire plan. Maybe even sense there was something intangibly wrong with it, maybe suspect they were being asked to approve something that had other purposes than what was apparent.

  Palestrina had purposely kept himself out of it, wanting none to sense his influence over something he ostensibly had no part in. And as much as Marsciano despised him, he knew the power of his name and the respect and fear that came with it.

  Pushing back from the table, Marsciano stood. “It is time to break. In all fairness I should tell you I am meeting with Cardinal Palestrina over lunch. He will ask me about your reaction to what has been discussed here this morning. I would like to tell him that in general your response has been positive. That you like what we have done and—with a few minor changes—will approve it by the end of the day.”

  The cardinals stared back in silence. Marsciano had taken them by surprise and knew it. In essence he had said, “Give me what I want now or risk dealing with Palestrina yourselves.”

  “Well—?”

  Cardinal Boothe raised his hands as if in prayer and stared at the table.

  “Yes,” he murmured.

  CARDINAL TREMBLAY: —Yes.

  CARDINAL MAZETTL: —Yes.

  Rosales was the last. Finally he looked up at Marsciano. “Yes,” he said sharply, then stood and walked angrily from the room.

  Marsciano looked to the others and nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

  42

  Still Friday, July, 10. 4:15 P.M.

  ADRIANNA HALL SAT IN HER TINY OFFICE AT the Rome bureau of World News Network watching the Harry Addison video for something like the tenth time, trying to make some sense of it.

  She’d spent less than three hours with him—granted, a very passionate and provocative three hours—but in that short time, after all the men she’d known, the one thing she knew about Harry Addison, if she knew nothing else, was that he was not someone who could kill a policeman. Yet the police believed he had, and had his fingerprints on the murder weapon to prove it. She also knew that a Spanish-made Llama pistol recovered from the scene of the Assisi bus explosion was missing from Pio’s car, and the police believed Harry took it as he fled after killing Pio.

  Abruptly she put both hands flat on her desk and pushed back in her chair. She didn’t know what the hell to think. Then her phone rang, and for a moment she let it before picking up.

  “Mr. Vasko,” her secretary said. He was calling for the third time in the last two hours. He hadn’t left a call-back number before because he was traveling but said he would call back again. And now he was on the phone.

  Elmer Vasko was a former professional hockey player and Chicago Blackhawks teammate of her father’s who had later worked with him when he’d coached the Swiss team. In his halcyon days on the ice they’d called him “Moose.” Now he was a gentle giant, a kind of distant uncle she hadn’t seen for years. And here he was in Rome calling her at the worst of all possible times, when an enormous story was on fire and burning all around her.

  Adrianna had come back from Croatia early that morning at her own request when news of the Harry Addison story first broke. Going straight to the Questura, she’d arrived at the tail end of Marcello Taglia’s impromptu interview. She’d tried to corner him afterward without success and then looked for Roscani, ending with the same result.

  Going home for a shower and quick change of clothes, she’d been drying her hair when the Metro tunnel business happened. She’d gone there on the back of her cameraman’s motor scooter with her hair still wet. But the media, all media, were being kept out of the tunnels and away from the action. Afte
r an hour, she’d retreated to the studio to start putting the story together and to watch the Harry Addison video for the first time. And then she’d gone out, and when she came back, there were the Elmer Vasko messages. And now he was calling again. She had no choice but to take it.

  “Elmer. Mr. Vasko. How are you?” She tried to sound up and gracious even if she wasn’t. “Mr. Vasko…?”

  The phone was silent and she started to hang up when the voice came on.

  “I need your help.”

  “Oh fuck!” Adrianna felt the breath go out of her.

  It was Harry Addison.

  HARRY STOOD IN A PHONE BOOTH near a small café across the Piazza della Rotonda from the ancient circular structure that was the Pantheon. By now he had his hat, a black beret bought easily at a corner shop selling hats of all kinds and pulled down to cover the bandage at the top of his forehead. His still-bandaged left hand he kept in his jacket pocket.

  “Where are you?” The surprise was gone from Adrianna’s voice.

  “I…”

  There’d been no way to know if she was back from Croatia, but he’d taken the chance she was. He’d called her because he’d added up his options and realized she was the only one he could call. The only one who would know what was going on and whom he dared trust. But now that he actually had her on the phone, he wasn’t sure if he could trust anyone. She knew the police, relied on her relationship with them for access to stories she might not otherwise have; would she agree to meet him somewhere and then bring the police with her?

  “Harry, where are you?” Her voice came again, stronger than before.

  Again he hesitated. Unsure. The dull ache still in the back of his head, reminding him he wasn’t as alert as he might have been.

  “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

  A group of schoolgirls suddenly walked past, giggling and joking among themselves. They were loud, and he turned away trying to hear. As he did, he saw two mounted carabinieri on horseback slowly crossing the piazza toward him. They were in no hurry, simply on patrol. But still every policeman in the country was on the lookout for him, and he had to take every precaution he possibly could to avoid them. In this case it probably meant staying right where he was until they passed. Turning ever so slightly away from them, he spoke into the phone.

  “I didn’t kill Pio.”

  “Tell me where you are.”

  “I’m scared to death the Italian police are going to kill me.”

  “Harry, where are you?”

  Silence.

  “Harry, you called me. I assume because you trust me. You don’t know Rome, you don’t know Italian, and if I told you to meet me somewhere, you’d have to ask someone, and that could get you into trouble. If I know where you are, I can come to you. Reasonable?”

  The carabinieri were closer now. Both young. Both on big white horses. Both with side arms. And they weren’t just on patrol, they were watching the people they passed carefully.

  “Police on horseback coming toward me.”

  “Harry, for Crissake, where are you?”

  “I… don’t…” Turning, he glanced around, trying not to look at the police but to see a street sign, the name of a building, a café, anything that would tell him where he was. Then he saw it. A plaque on the side of a building twenty feet away.

  “Something rotunda.”

  “Piazza della Rotonda. At the Pantheon?”

  “I guess.”

  “Big circular building with columns.”

  “Yes.”

  The carabinieri were almost on top of him, their horses moving slowly, their eyes searching the crowd in the piazza, the people at the outdoor cafés surrounding it. Now one officer pulled up and both stopped, only feet away.

  “Holy fuck,” Harry breathed.

  “What is it?”

  “They’re right here. I could touch the horse.”

  “Harry, are they looking at you?”

  “No.”

  “Ignore them. They’ll move on in a minute. When they’re gone, cross the square to the right of the Pantheon. Take any side street and walk two blocks to the Piazza Navona. Near the fountain in the middle are benches. The piazza will be crowded. Pick a bench and I’ll find you there.”

  “When?”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  Harry looked at his watch.

  4:32

  “Harry?”

  “What?”

  “Trust me.”

  Adrianna clicked off. Harry stayed as he was, the phone in his hand. The police were still there. If he hung up and they saw him, he’d have to leave. If he didn’t hang up, with one end of the line dead, he took the chance the phone company might report it as a phone suddenly out of service, something the police, in their heightened state of awareness, might be looking for. He looked back. And his heart sank.

  Two more carabinieri on horseback had ridden up and were talking with the others. Four policemen. Only feet away. Slowly he hung up. He couldn’t stay there without making another call, and there was no call to make. He had to do something before one of them looked over and saw him just standing there. And he did. Simply stepped out and walked past them. Moving across the square toward the Pantheon.

  One of the carabinieri saw him go, even watched him for a moment, then his horse tugged at its bit, and he had to pull him back. When he looked back Harry was gone.

  43

  ROSCANI ABSENTLY CRUSHED A CIGARETTE into the ashtray in front of him as he read the Italian translation of a fax sent down from Taglia’s office. It was a notification from Special Agent David Harris in the FBI’s Los Angeles office that Byron Willis, a senior partner in Harry Addison’s Beverly Hills law firm, had been shot and killed outside his home the night before by an assailant or assailants unknown. The motive appeared to have been robbery. His wallet, wedding ring, and Rolex watch were missing. Los Angeles homicide detectives were working on the case. An autopsy was pending. Further information would be forthcoming.

  Roscani ran a hand over his eyes. What the hell did this mean? Without more information he had no choice but to take the murder as a coincidence. But he couldn’t. It was too close to what was going on. Still, what would be the purpose of killing Harry Addison’s partner? Something he knew about Harry? Or Father Daniel?

  Roscani typed a response memo on his computer and sent it to his secretary for translation and transmission to Harris/FBI/Los Angeles. In it he thanked the FBI for their cooperation and asked to be personally kept advised of new developments, suggesting—what he was certain the FBI was already doing—that they question close friends and business associates of Harry Addison to see if there was some universal thread, a common knowledge some or all might share; and then to put them on alert for their own personal safety.

  His phone rang as he finished. It was Valentina Gori, the speech therapist and lip reader he had brought in to analyze the Harry Addison video. She had viewed it a number of times and was downstairs. Did he have time to join her?

  HARRY’S FACE WAS FROZEN on the large video screen as Roscani entered, took Valentina’s hand, and kissed her on the cheek. Valentina Gori was fifty-two, red-haired, recently a grandmother, and still very attractive. She had a degree in speech therapy from the University of Leuven in Belgium, had studied mime in the French theater in the 1970s, and, afterward, worked as an actress dubbing foreign sound tracks for the Italian film industry while at the same time consulting on speech and speech patterns for both the carabinieri and the Italian police. She had also grown up in the same Roman neighborhood as Roscani and knew his entire family. Moreover, when she was twenty-two and he was fifteen, she had stolen his virginity just to show him he wasn’t as much in control as he thought he was. It was a relationship they carried to the present. Besides his wife, she was the one person in the world who could look him knowingly in the eye and make him laugh at himself.

  “I think you’re right. It looks like he is about to say something, or is trying to say somethi
ng just before the tape ends. But I’m not sure he wasn’t just looking up.”

  Turning the remote toward the screen, she touched the PAUSE/STILL button. Harry’s mouth began to open as the tape inched forward, and Roscani heard his voice growl with the slow-motion sound. And then they reached his last words. He finished, started to relax, then his head made an awkward and abrupt upward move with his mouth open. That was when the taped ended.

  “It almost looks like an i…”

  There was a slow hissing sound, like wind being expelled by an inebriated giant.

  “I what?” Roscani was locked on the screen and Harry’s frozen image.

  “I’m not so sure he wasn’t just finished and tired and was simply going to let out a breath.”

  “No, he was trying to say something. Again,” Roscani said, and Valentina played it over. In stop motion. Slow motion. At half speed and then normal. Each time Harry reached the same point, there was the brief hissing sound and then the tape was over.

  Roscani looked at her. “What else?—How many thousand films have you seen? You must have other ideas about what’s going on up there on the screen.”

  Valentina smiled. “A thousand ideas, Otello. A hundred scenarios. But I can only go from what I see. And hear. And from that, we have a tired man with a lump on his head who has done what has been required of him and would like to rest. Maybe even sleep.”

  Roscani turned abruptly to look at her. “What do you mean required of him?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.” Valentina winked. “Occasionally we all do things required of us when our heart isn’t entirely in it.”

  “We’re not talking about sex, Valentina,” Roscani said flatly.

  “No—” This was no time for Valentina to break through his veneer, and she realized it. “Otello, I’m not a psychologist, just an old broad who’s been around a little. I look at the screen and see a tired man apparently speaking his mind but who sounds more like he’s doing what he thinks somebody wants. Like a child reluctantly clearing the dishes off the table so he can go out to play.”