Day of Confession (5 page)

8

Rome. Tuesday, July 7, 7:45
A.M
.

JACOV FAREL WAS SWISS.

He was also Capo dell’Ufficio Centrale Vigilanza, the man in charge of the Vatican police, and had been for more than twenty years. He had called Harry at five minutes after seven, waking him from a deep sleep and telling him it was imperative they talk.

Harry had agreed to meet with him, and now, forty minutes later, was being driven across Rome by one of Farel’s men. Crossing the Tiber, they drove beside it for a few hundred yards, then turned down the colonnaded Via della Conciliazione, with the unmistakable dome of St. Peter’s in the distance. Harry was certain that was where he was being taken, to the Vatican and to Farel’s office somewhere deep inside it. Then abruptly the driver veered off to the right and through an arched portal in an ancient wall and into a neighborhood of narrow streets and old apartment buildings. Two blocks later he made a sharp left to stop in front of a small trattoria on Borgo Vittorio. Getting out, he opened the door for Harry and escorted him into the trattoria.

A lone man in a black suit stood at the bar as they came in. His back to them, his right hand rested beside a coffee cup. He was probably five foot eight or nine, heavy-set, and what little hair he might have had left had been shaved to the skull, leaving the top of his head shining in the overhead light.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Addison.” Jacov Farel’s English was colored by a French accent. His voice was husky, as if he’d chain-smoked for years. Slowly the hand pulled away from the coffee cup and he turned. Harry hadn’t been able to see the power of the man from the back, but he could now. The shaved head, the broad face with the flattened nose, the neck as thick as a man’s thigh, the burly chest tight against his white shirt. His hands, big and strong, looked as if they’d spent most of their fifty-odd years wrapped around the handle of a jackhammer. And then there were his eyes, deep-set, gray-green, unforgiving—abruptly they flashed toward the driver. Without a word, the man took a step backward and left, the click of the door sounding behind him as it closed. Then Farel’s eyes shifted to Harry.

“My responsibilities are different from those of the Italian police. They protect a city. The Vatican is its own state. A country inside Italy. Therefore I am accountable for the safety of a nation.”

Instinctively Harry glanced around. They were alone. No waiter, no barman, no customers. Just he and Farel.

“The blood of Cardinal Parma splattered my shirt and my face when he was shot. It also fell on the pope, soiling his vestments.”

“I’m here to do anything I can to help,” Harry said, quietly.

Farel studied him. “I know you talked to the police. I know what you told them. I read the transcripts. I read the report Ispettore Capo Pio wrote after he met with you privately…. It’s what you didn’t tell them that interests me.”

“What I didn’t tell them?”

“Or what they didn’t ask. Or what you left out when they did, purposely, or because you didn’t remember or perhaps because it didn’t seem important.”

Farel’s presence, considerable before, now seemed to fill the entire room. Harry’s hands felt suddenly damp and there was sweat on his forehead. Again he looked around. Still no one. It was after eight. What time did the staff come to work? Or people come in off the street for breakfast or coffee?— Or had the trattoria been opened for Farel alone?

“You seem uncomfortable, Mr. Addison…”

“Maybe it’s because I’m tired of talking to the police when I’ve done nothing and you people keep acting like I have…. I was happy to meet with you because I believe my brother is innocent. And to show you I’m willing to cooperate any way I can.”

“That’s not the only reason, Mr. Addison…”

“What do you mean?”

“Your clients. You have to protect them. If you had called the United States Embassy as you threatened—or arranged for an Italian lawyer to represent you in your talks with the police—you knew there was a very good chance the media would find out…. Not only would our suspicions about your brother be made public, they would learn about you as well. Who you are, and what you do, and who you personally represent. People who would not want to be linked, however distantly or innocently, to the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome.”

“Who do you think I represent that—?”

Abruptly, Farel cut him off, naming half a dozen of his superstar Hollywood clients in rapid succession.

“Should I keep on, Mr. Addison?”

“How did you get that information?” Harry was shocked and outraged. The identity of his firm’s clients was carefully guarded. It meant Farel had not only been digging into his background but also had connections in Los Angeles capable of getting him whatever he asked for. A reach and power that was frightening.

“Your brother’s guilt or innocence aside, there is a certain practicality to things…. That’s why you’re talking to me, Mr. Addison, alone and of your own free will and will continue to do so until I am done with you…. You have to protect your own success.” His left hand found its way up to caress his skull just over his left ear. “It’s a nice day. Why don’t we go for a walk…?”

THE MORNING SUN was beginning to light the top floors of the buildings around them as they came out and Farel turned them left, onto Via Ombrellari—a narrow cobblestone street without sidewalks, the apartment buildings interrupted here and there by a bar or restaurant or pharmacy. A priest walked by across from them. Farther down, two men noisily loaded empty wine and mineral water bottles into a van outside a restaurant.

“It was a Mr. Byron Willis, a partner in your law firm, who informed you of your brother’s death.”

“Yes…”

So Farel knew that, too. He was doing the same thing Roscani and Pio had done, trying to intimidate him and get him off guard, let him know that no matter what anyone said, he was still a suspect. That Harry knew he was innocent made little difference. Law school years had made him more aware than most of the long history of jails, prisons, and even gallows that had been peopled with the guiltless, men and women charged with crimes far less grievous than the one being investigated here. It was unnerving, if not frightening. And Harry knew it showed, and he didn’t like it. Moreover, Farel’s digging into his professional world gave everything a calculated spin. One that gave the Vatican policeman added power, because it let him inside Harry’s life, and told him there was nowhere he could go that Farel couldn’t find out about.

Harry’s concern about publicity had been one of the first things he’d addressed yesterday, as soon as he’d left Pio and checked into his hotel, calling Byron Willis at his home in Bel Air. By discussion’s end they’d enumerated, almost word for word, the reasons Farel had just given for Harry’s keeping a low profile. They’d agreed that, tragic as it was, Danny was dead, and since whatever involvement he’d had or not had in the murder of Cardinal Parma was being kept quiet, it was best for all of them to let it stay that way. The risk that Harry’s clients might be revealed and his situation exploited was something neither they, nor he, nor the company needed, especially now, when the media seemed to rule everything.

“Did this Mr. Willis know Father Daniel had contacted you?”

“Yes…. I told him when he called to notify me of what had happened…”

“You told him what your brother said.”

“Some of it…. Most of it…. Whatever I said, it’s in the transcripts of what I told the police yesterday.” Harry felt the anger begin to rise. “What difference does it make?”

“How long have you known Mr. Willis?”

“Ten, eleven years. He helped me get into the business. Why?”

“You are close to him.”

“Yes, I guess…”

“As close to him as to anyone?”

“I guess so.”

“Meaning you might tell him things you would tell no one else.”

“What are you getting at?”

Farel’s gray-green eyes found Harry’s and held there. Finally his gaze moved off and they continued to walk. Slowly, deliberately. Harry had no idea where they were going or why. He wondered if Farel did, if it was simply his manner of interrogation.

Behind them, a blue Ford turned the corner, drove slowly for a half block, then pulled over and stopped. No one got out. Harry glanced at Farel. If he was aware of the car, he didn’t acknowledge.

“You never spoke with your brother directly.”

“No.”

Farther down, the men loading bottles finished, and their van pulled from the curb. Parked beyond it was a dark gray Fiat. Two men sat in the front seat. Harry glanced back. The other car was still there. The block was short. If the men in the cars belonged to Farel, it meant they had essentially sealed off the street.

“And the message he left on your answering machine… you erased.”

“I wouldn’t have done it if I had known how things were going to turn out.”

Abruptly Farel stopped. They were nearly to the gray Fiat, and Harry could see the men in the front seat watching them. The one at the wheel was young and leaned forward in his seat almost eagerly, as if he hoped something would happen.

“You act like you don’t know where we are, Mr. Addison.” Farel smiled slowly, then swept his hand at the yellow stained and paint-peeled four-story building in front of them.

“Should I?”

“Number one-twenty-seven Via Ombrellari—you don’t know?”

Harry looked down the street. The blue Ford was still there. Then his eyes came back to Farel.

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s your brother’s apartment building.”

9

DANNY’S APARTMENT WAS ON THE GROUND floor, small and exceedingly Spartan. Its cubicle of a living room faced a tiny back courtyard and was furnished with a reading chair, small desk, floor lamp, and bookcase, all of which looked as though they had come from a flea market. Even the books were secondhand, most of them old and dealing with historical Catholicism, with titles such as
The Last Days of Papal Rome, 1850–1870, Plenarii Concilii Baltimorensis Tertii, The Church in the Christian Roman Empire
.

The bedroom was sparer yet—a single, blanket-covered bed and a small chest of drawers, with lamp and telephone on top, which served as a bedside table. His closet was as meager. A suit of the classic priest’s vestments—black shirt, black slacks, and black jacket all on one hanger. A pair of jeans, a plaid shirt, worn gray sweat suit, and pair of old running shoes. The chest of drawers revealed a white clerical collar, several pairs of well-worn underwear, three pairs of socks, a folded sweater, and two T-shirts, one with the logo of Providence College.

“Everything just as he left it when he went to Assisi,” Farel said quietly.

“Where were the cartridges?”

Farel led him into the bathroom and opened the door of an ancient commode. Inside were several drawers, all of which had locks that had been pried open, presumably by the police.

“The bottom drawer. In the back behind some toilet tissue.”

Harry stared for a moment, then turned and walked slowly back through the bedroom and into the living room. On the top shelf of the bookcase there was a hot plate he hadn’t noticed before. Beside it was a lone cup with a spoon in it, and next to that a jar of instant coffee. That was it. No kitchen, no stove, no refrigerator. It was the kind of place he might have rented as a freshman at Harvard, when he had no money at all and was there only because he’d earned an academic scholarship.

“His voice—“

Harry turned. Farel stood in the bedroom doorway watching him, his shaved head looking suddenly too large and disproportionate to his body.

“Your brother’s voice on the answering machine. You said he sounded frightened.”

“Yes.”

“As if he might be afraid for his life?”

“Yes.”

“Did he mention names? People you would both know. Family? Friends?”

“No, no names.”

“Think carefully, Mr. Addison. You hadn’t heard from your brother in a long time. He was distraught.” Farel stepped closer, his words running on. “People tend to forget things when they’re thinking about something else.”

“If there had been names I would have told the Italian police.”

“Did he say why he was going to Assisi?”

“He didn’t say anything about Assisi.”

“What about another city or town?” Farel kept pushing. “Somewhere he had been or might be going?”

“No.”

“Dates? A day. A time that might be important—“

“No,” Harry said. “No dates, no time. Nothing like that.”

Farel’s eyes probed him again. “You are absolutely certain, Mr. Addison…”

“Yes, I’m absolutely certain.”

A sharp knock at the front door drew their attention. It opened, and the eager driver of the gray Fiat—Pilger, Farel called him—entered. He was even younger than Harry had first thought, baby-faced, looking as if he were barely old enough to shave. A priest was with him. Like Pilger, he was young, probably not thirty, and tall, with dark curly hair and black eyes behind black-rimmed glasses.

Farel spoke to him in Italian. There was an exchange, and Farel turned to Harry.

“This is Father Bardoni, Mr. Addison. He works for Cardinal Marsciano. He knew your brother.”

“I speak English, a little, anyway,” Father Bardoni said gently and with a smile. “May I offer my deepest condolences…”

“Thank you…” Harry nodded gratefully. It was the first time anyone had acknowledged Danny in any context outside of murder.

“Father Bardoni has come from the funeral home where your brother’s remains were taken,” Farel said. “The necessary paperwork is being processed. The documents will be ready for your signature tomorrow. Father Bardoni will accompany you to the funeral home. And the following morning, to the airport. A first-class seat has been reserved for you. Father Daniel’s remains will be on the same plane.”

“Thank you,” Harry said again, right now wanting only to get out from under the authoritarian shadow of the police and take Danny home for burial.

“Mr. Addison,” Farel warned, “the investigation is not over. The FBI will follow up for us in the States. They will want to question you further. They will want to talk to Mr. Willis. They will want the names and addresses of relatives, friends, military associates, other people your brother may have known or been involved with.”

“There are no living relatives, Mr. Farel. Danny and I were the last of the family. As for who his friends or associates were, I couldn’t say. I just don’t know that much about his life…. But I’ll tell you something. I want to know what happened as much as you do. Maybe even more. And I intend to find out.”

Harry looked at Farel a beat longer. Then, with a nod to Father Bardoni, he took a final look around the room, a last, private moment to see where and how Danny had lived, and started toward the door.

“Mr. Addison.”

Farel’s voice rasped sharply after him, and Harry turned back.

“I told you when we met that it’s what you haven’t said that interests me…. It still does…. As a lawyer you should know the most insignificant pieces sometimes make the whole…. Things so seemingly unimportant, a person might pass them on without realizing it.”

“I’ve told you everything my brother said to me.”

“So you say, Mr. Addison.” Farel’s gaze narrowed and his eyes grasped Harry’s and held there. “I was washed with the blood of a cardinal. I will not bathe in the blood of a pope.”