Day of Confession Read online

  The fact was, Harry never talked about the details of his family at all. Not to Byron, not to his roommates in college, not to women, not to anyone. No one knew about the tragic death of their sister, Madeline. Or that their father had been killed in a shipyard accident barely a year later. Or that their mother, lost and confused, had remarried in less than ten months, moving them all into a dark Victorian house with a widowed frozen-food salesman who had five other children, who was never home, and whose only reason to marry had been to get a housekeeper and baby-sitter. Or that later, as a young teenager, Danny had been in one scrape after another with the police.

  Or, that both brothers had made a pact to get out of there as soon as they were able, to make the long grimness of those years a thing of their past, to leave and never come back—and promised to help each other do it. And, how, by different routes, both had done so.

  With that in mind, how in hell could Harry take Byron Willis’s suggestion and bury Danny in the family plot? If he wasn’t dead it would kill him! Either that or he’d come up out of the grave, grab Harry by the throat, and throw him in instead! So what was Harry supposed to tell the funeral director tomorrow when he asked him where the remains should be sent after they and Harry arrived in New York? Under different circumstances it might have been amusing, even funny. But it wasn’t. He had until tomorrow to find an answer. And at the moment, he hadn’t a clue.

  HALF AN HOUR LATER Harry was back at the Hassler, hot and sweaty from his walk, stopping at the concierge desk to get his room key, and still with no solution. All he wanted was to go up, get into bed, and drop into the total escape of deep, mindless sleep.

  “A woman is here to see you, Mr. Addison.”

  Woman? The only people Harry knew in Rome were police. “Are you sure?”

  The concierge smiled. “Yes, sir. Very attractive, in a green evening dress. She’s waiting in the garden bar.”

  “Thank you.” Harry walked off. Someone in the office must have had an actress client visiting Rome and told her to look Harry up, maybe to help take his mind off things. It was the last thing he wanted at the end of a day like this. He didn’t care who she was or what she looked like.

  SHE WAS SITTING alone at the bar when he came in. For a moment the long auburn hair and emerald green evening dress threw him off. But he knew the face; he’d seen her a hundred times on television, wearing her trademark baseball cap and L. L. Bean-type field jacket, reporting under artillery fire from Bosnia, the aftermath of a terrorist bomb blast in Paris, refugee camps in Africa. She was no actress. She was Adrianna Hall, top European correspondent for WNN, World News Network.

  Under almost any other circumstance Harry would have gone out of his way to meet her. She was Harry’s age or a little older, bold, adventuresome, and, as the concierge said, very attractive. But Adrianna Hall was also media, and that was the last thing he wanted to confront now. How she found him he didn’t know, but she had, and he had to figure out what to do about it. Or maybe he didn’t. All he had to do was turn and leave, which was what he did, glancing around, acting as if he were looking for someone who wasn’t there.

  He was almost to the lobby when she caught up with him.

  “Harry Addison?”

  He stopped and turned. “Yes…”

  “I’m Adrianna Hall, WNN.”

  “I know…”

  She smiled. “You don’t want to talk to me…”

  “That’s right.”

  She smiled again. The dress looked too formal for her. “I’d had dinner with a friend and I was on my way out of the hotel when I saw you leave your key with the concierge…. He said you told him you were going for a walk. I took a chance you wouldn’t go too far—“

  “Ms. Hall, I’m sorry, but I really don’t want to talk to the media.”

  “You don’t trust us?” This time she smiled with her eyes. It was a kind of natural twinkle that teased.

  “I just don’t want to talk…. If you don’t mind, it’s late.”

  Harry started to turn, but she took his arm.

  “What would make you trust me—at least more than you do now?” She was standing close, animated, breathing easily. “If I told you I knew about your brother? That the police picked you up at the airport? That today you met with Jacov Farel…?”

  Harry stared at her.

  “You don’t have to gape. It’s my business to know what’s going on…. But I haven’t said anything to anyone but you, and I won’t until an official okay is given.”

  “But you want to see what I’m about anyway.”

  “Maybe…”

  Harry hesitated, then smiled. “Thanks—as I said, it’s late…”

  “What if I told you I found you very attractive and that was the real reason I waited for you to come back?”

  Harry tried not to grin. This was the kind of thing he was used to at home. A direct and very confident sexual come-on that could be done by either male or female—and taken by the other party either in fun or seriously, depending on one’s mood. Essentially it was a playful crumb tossed out to see what, if anything, would happen next.

  “On the one hand I’d say it was flattering. On the other I’d say it was a particularly underhanded and politically incorrect approach to probing a story.” Harry put the ball back in her court and held his ground.

  “You would?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  An elderly threesome came out of the bar and stopped beside them to talk. Adrianna Hall glanced at them, then looked back to Harry, dipped her forehead slightly and lowered her voice.

  “Let me see if I can give you a slightly different approach, Mr. Harry Addison…. There are times when I just like to fuck strangers.” She never took her eyes from him when she said it.

  HER APARTMENT WAS SMALL and neat and sensual. It was one of those things, sex that comes right up from nowhere. Heat that just happens. Somebody strikes a match and the whole place goes up.

  Harry made it clear from the beginning—when he’d answered her and said, “So do I”—that the subject of either Danny or the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome was off limits, and she’d agreed.

  They’d taken a cab, then walked a half block, talking about America. Mostly politics and sports—Adrianna Hall had grown up in Chicago, moving to Switzerland when she was thirteen. Her father had been a player for the Chicago Blackhawks and later a coach for the Swiss national hockey team—and they were there.

  There was a click as she closed the door. Then she turned and came to him in the darkness. Mouth open, kissing him roughly, her tongue exploring his. The back of his hands so gently and expertly running over the top of her evening gown, teasing her breasts. Feeling her nipples harden as he did. Her hands opening his slacks, taking down his shorts. Taking his hardness in her hand, stroking him, then lifting her skirt and rubbing him against the thin silk of her underwear. All the while kissing and deep breathing as if it were for all time. And Harry slipping off her underwear, sliding her dress over her head. Unhooking her bra and throwing it into the darkness as she eased him down onto the couch, slipping his shorts from his ankles and moving up, taking him into her mouth. His head rolling back, letting her, then raising up on his elbows to watch as she did. Thinking he had never felt so enormous in his life. Finally, after minutes, easing her head away, lifting her up, carrying her through the orderliness of the living room—a giggle in the dark as she gave him directions—down a short hallway to her bedroom. Waiting, vamping really, as she pulled a condom from a nearby drawer—swearing under her breath, struggling to tear open the foil—then, succeeding, taking it out, and easing it down around him.

  “Turn over,” he whispered.

  Her smile enraptured him as she did, so that she faced the head of the bed. And he mounted her from behind, feeling the insertion into her warmth, beginning the stroking, the slow in and out, that he sustained almost forever.

  Her moaning stayed in his mind for a long time. By Harry’s count he’d come five time
s in two hours, not bad for a thirty-six-year-old. How, and if, she kept score of her own orgasms he had no idea. What he remembered was her not wanting him to fall asleep there. Just kissing him once more and telling him to go back to his hotel, because in two hours she had to get up and go to work.

  12

  Wednesday, July 8, 4:32 A.M.

  AGAIN HARRY GLANCED AT THE CLOCK. TIME crept. If he slept at all, he didn’t know. He could still smell Adrianna’s perfume. It was almost masculine, like citrus and smoke. Getting up, going to work in two hours, she’d said. Not just to work like most people, but to the airport and a plane to Zagreb and then into the Croatian backcountry for a story on human rights abuses committed by Croats against Croatian Serbs who had been driven from their homes and slaughtered. It was who she was and what she did.

  He remembered, somewhere during their circus, breaking his own rule of not talking about Danny and asking what she knew about the investigation into the bombing of the Assisi bus.

  And she’d answered directly, not once, even in tone, accusing him of trying to use her. “They don’t know who did it…”

  He’d looked at her in the darkness—her bright eyes watching his, the gentle rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed—trying to judge if she was telling him the truth. And the truth was, he couldn’t tell. So he let it go. In two days he would be gone, and the only time he would see her again would be on television, in her baseball cap and L. L. Bean field jacket, reporting some kind of struggle from somewhere. What mattered now, as he watched her, moved down to caress her breasts, encircle her nipples with his tongue, one and then the other, was that he wanted her once more. And once more after that. And then again, until there was nothing left, everything gone from his mind but this thing that was Adrianna. Selfish, yes. But it wasn’t entirely one-sided. The idea, after all, had been hers.

  Running his fingers slowly up the inside of her thigh, he’d heard her whimper as he reached the sticky wetness where her legs came together. Fully aroused, he was easing up, about to mount her, when abruptly she shifted, rolling him over and getting on top, pulling his erection sharply inside her.

  Moving back, she dug her feet into the tuft of the bed and then leaned forward, hands on either side of his head, eyes wide open, watching him. Slowly she began her work, sliding up and down the length of him. Masterfully. Her full weight behind each calculated thrust. And then, like a rower listening to the cadence of her coxswain, she picked up the beat. Moving faster, and faster, then still. The jockey testing the heart of the creature beneath her. Riding loud and hard and with no mercy. Until she became the thoroughbred herself. Pounding the inside rail. Tasting the Crown and thundering savagely toward the finish. In the blink of an eye she’d made it a new game. What before had been desire had suddenly become a leviathan competition.

  Nor had she made a mistake in choosing Harry. Long ago having vowed to master the fine art of “swordsmanship,” he watched her every move, then met her stride for stride. Thrust for thrust. Beast against beast. A heart-stopping, all-out match race. A thousand to one as to who would explode first.

  They crossed the line together. A howling, sweating, photo finish of orgasmic pyrotechnics that left them sprawled side by side and gasping for air, wholly spent, their inner workings worn raw. Quivering in the dark.

  Harry had no idea why, but in that moment a far-off part of him stood back and wondered if Adrianna had picked him—not because he might be a lead player in a major story and it was secretly her style to establish an early personal relationship—not either because she simply liked to have sex with strangers—but for another reason altogether… because she was afraid of tomorrow—of going to Zagreb. Because maybe this was one time too many and something would happen and she would die somewhere in the Croatian countryside. Maybe what she wanted was to breathe as much more life as she could before she went. And Harry just happened to be the one she chose to help her do it.

  4:36

  Death.

  In the dark of room 403 at the Hotel Hassler, there were shutters closed and drapes drawn against the approaching dawn, and yet sleep still did not come to Harry. The world spun, faces danced past.

  Adrianna.

  The detectives Pio and Roscani.

  Jacov Farel.

  Father Bardoni, the young priest who was to escort him and Danny’s remains to the airport.

  Danny.

  Death.

  Enough! Turning on the light, Harry threw back the covers and got up, going to the small desk by the telephone. Picking up his notes, he reviewed business deals he’d worked in the hours before he’d gone out. A television contract to pick up a series star for a fourth year at an increase of fifty thousand per episode. An agreement for a top screenwriter to do a month’s polish on a script that had been rewritten four times already. Writer’s fee, five hundred thousand dollars. A deal in the works for two months for a major A-list director to shoot an action film on location in Malta and Bangkok for a flat fee of six million against ten percent of the first dollar box office gross, finally done. Then undone a half hour later because the male star, for reasons unknown, abruptly pulled out. Two hours and half a dozen phone calls later, the star was back in, but by now the director was considering other offers. A call to the star at lunch at a trendy West L.A. restaurant, another to the studio head in his car somewhere in the San Fernando valley, and still another to the director’s agent ended in a four-way conference call to the director at home in Malibu. Forty minutes later the director was back on the picture and getting ready to leave for Malta the following morning.

  By the time it was over, Harry had negotiated deals worth, give or take, seven and a half million dollars. Five percent of which, roughly three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, went to his firm, Willis, Rosenfeld and Barry. Not too shabby for somebody working on anxiety, autopilot, and very little sleep in a hotel room halfway around the world. It was why he was who he was and doing what he did… and why he was paid what he was paid, plus bonus, plus profit sharing, plus…. Suddenly it all felt very hollow and unimportant.

  Abruptly Harry shut out the light and closed his eyes against the dark. When he did, shadows came. He tried to push them away, tried to think of something else. But they came anyway. Shadows moving slowly along a distant iridescent wall, then turning and coming toward him. Ghosts. One, two, three, and then four.

  Madeline.

  His father.

  His mother.

  and then

  Danny…

  13

  Wednesday, July 8, 10:00 A.M.

  THEIR FOOTSTEPS WERE SILENT AS THEY CAME down the stairs. Harry Addison, Father Bardoni, and the director of the funeral home, Signore Gasparri. At the bottom Gasparri turned them left and down a long, mustard-colored corridor with pastoral paintings of the Italian countryside decorating the walls.

  Deliberately, Harry touched his jacket pocket, feeling the envelope Gasparri had given him when he’d come in. In it were Danny’s few personal belongings recovered at the scene of the bus explosion—a charred Vatican identification, a nearly intact passport, a pair of eyeglasses, the right lens missing, the left cracked, and his wristwatch. Of the four, it was the watch that told most the true horror of what had happened. Its band burned through, its stainless steel scorched, and its crystal shattered, it had stopped on July 3 at 10:51 A.M., scant seconds after the Semtex detonated and the bus exploded.

  Harry had made the burial decision earlier that morning. Danny would be interred in a small cemetery on the west side of Los Angeles. For better or worse, Los Angeles was where Harry lived and where his life was, and despite the emotional ride he was on now he saw little reason to think he would change and move elsewhere. Moreover, the thought of having Danny nearby was comforting. He could go there from time to time, make certain the grave site was cared for, maybe even talk to him. It was a way that neither would be alone or forgotten. And, in some ironic way, the physical closeness might help assuage some of the dist
ance that had been between them for so long.

  “Mr. Addison, I beg you”—Father Bardoni’s voice was gentle and filled with compassion—“for your own sake. Let past memories be the lasting ones.”

  “I wish I could, Father, but I can’t…”

  The thing about opening the casket and seeing him had come only in the last minutes, on the short drive from the hotel to the funeral home. It was the last thing on earth Harry wanted to do, but he knew that if he didn’t do it, he’d regret it for the rest of his life. Especially later on, when he got older and could look back.

  Ahead of them, Gasparri stopped and opened a door, ushering them into a small, softly lit room where several rows of straight-backed chairs faced a simple wooden altar. Gasparri said something in Italian, and then left.

  “He’s asked us to wait here…” Father Bardoni’s eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses reached out with the same feeling as before, and Harry knew he was going to ask him again to change his mind.

  “I know you mean well, Father. But please don’t…” Harry stared at him for a moment to make sure he understood, then turned away to look at the room.

  Like the rest of the building, it was old and worn with time. Its plaster walls, cracked and uneven, had been patched and patched again and were the same earthen yellow as the hallway outside. In contrast to the dark wood of the altar and the chairs facing it, the terra-cotta floor seemed almost white, its color faded by years, if not centuries, of people coming to sit and stare and then leave, only to be replaced by others who had come for the same reason. The private viewing of the dead.

  Harry moved to one of the chairs and sat down. The grisly process of identifying and then examining the bodies of those killed on the Assisi bus for explosive residue had been managed quickly and pragmatically by a larger-than-usual staff at the request of an Italian government still shaken by the murder of Cardinal Parma. The task completed, the remains had been sent from the morgue—the Istituto di Medicina Legale at the City University of Rome—to various funeral homes nearby, there to be placed in sealed caskets for return to their families for burial. And despite the investigation surrounding him, Danny had been treated no differently. He was here now, somewhere in Gasparri’s building, his mutilated body, like those of the others, sealed away for transport home and final disposition.