Death's Door (21 page)

“Yeah, like them. You’ll be glad to see them go?”

“They and the Fascists with them. Italy is in ruins, all for what? Mussolini and his empire? Bah!”

“I take it you and Soletto didn’t agree on politics?”

“You must understand this about the Holy See. There are factions and factions within factions. Yet we all work here, in this same space. For the Church. For His Holiness. We fight among ourselves, but never with him. This is not like the world. Not like your world. You should not have come.”

“A murder was committed. A good man was killed.”

“Yes, a great loss. But so many people are dead. And now one more. For what? Nothing. The
commissario
did not bring justice, but he also did not threaten the Holy See.”

“And I do?”

“Yes, I think so. Before, all sides balance each other.
Capisci?
Now you come, and Soletto is dead. Bishop Zlatko speaks against you to the
Pontificia Commissione
. Maybe the Germans find out about you and come for you. More dead. I do not threaten; I warn. The
commissione
will act. You go.”

“How much time do I have?”

“They like to talk. So I give you one day, no longer.”

“Then I’d better hurry. May I see the body? Commissario Soletto?”

His narrowed eyes drilled into me as he ground out the cigarette with his heel. Then he stood, and pulled at his blue tunic, straightening it out. “Let us see if he helps you more dead than when he was alive. Come.”

We didn’t have to go far. The small morgue was down a dank hallway. An attendant wearing a leather apron was pouring a bucket of water over Soletto’s naked body, laid out on metal table. His clothes were stacked and folded on a nearby desk.

“Nothing unusual in his pockets,” my new friend said after
speaking with the attendant and pawing through the stuff. He leaned over the wound, squinting in the light of the bare bulb above. “Look.”

It was pretty much as I thought. Between the third and fourth ribs, left center. He clearly duplicated the thrust that finally brought Corrigan down. No wild slashing this time, but one single wound straight to the heart. I felt the attendant’s eyes on me, and realized he was waiting for me to do something holy, but I wasn’t in the mood.

“That wasn’t a wide blade,” I said. The entrance wound was small, a clean cut. “But sharp.”

“Of course,” he said. “The
misericorde
. How stupid of me.”

“The what?”

“Let us collect your friends, quickly. I know where the murder weapon is. If it has been returned.”

I followed in his wake as he shouted orders that gendarmes jumped to obey. Doors slammed and men scattered as he moved upstairs. He introduced himself as Inspector Cipriano and still called me Father Boyle, even though he knew differently. Kaz and Abe appeared, and within seconds we were off, trailed by a couple of gendarmes, the first rays of dawn lighting our way. I really didn’t need Abe tagging along, but I didn’t want to cut him loose either. I had plans for the little crook.

“Where are we going?” I asked, gasping for breath. Cipriano was damn fast for a big guy.

“The barracks of the Swiss Guard.
Arsenale
,” he said, searching for the English word.

“Armory,” Kaz said, trotting along beside me.

“What’s a
misericorde?
” I asked Cipriano.

“A kind of medieval stiletto, designed originally to dispatch badly wounded knights,” Kaz said. Of course he would know. “It is from the Latin
misericordia
, meaning mercy. A long, thin, sharp blade, made for going between the gaps of armor plate.”

“One was reported missing several weeks ago,” the inspector said. “The Swiss Guard keeps every weapon they ever had. One was gone from their collection of
pugnali
.”

“Daggers,” Kaz explained. Abe gave a little upturned hand gesture that the cops couldn’t see.
Don’t blame me
.

“Yes,” Cipriano said as we passed through the Medieval Palace, guards snapping to attention. “Then one day it was returned. I thought it was harmless at the time; perhaps one of the men misplaced it, or took it to wear.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “That was right after Corrigan was killed.”

“I think so, yes. I am
un idiota!
”

I knew what he was feeling. Sometimes the answer was right in front of you, but you couldn’t see it because you’d asked the wrong question. Not where was the knife, but why had someone put it back?

We entered a courtyard and Cipriano made for the far end marked by a castle tower, which I figured was the armory. There were more salutes and we were taken inside, guided by a Swiss Guard in gray battle dress. The vast room was low-ceilinged with several brick archways dividing the chamber. Rows of rifles were arranged alongside suits of armor, long swords, halberds, and crossbows. Machine guns shared space with pikes and medieval helmets. It looked like the guards hadn’t thrown anything out in five hundred years.

“There,” Cipriano said, pointing to a rack of knives, all long and thin. “Stilettos, rondels,
misericorde
. Yes, this is the one that was missing.” He tapped his finger on the pommel and spoke to the guard.

“May I?” I asked, my hand hovering over the knife.

“Yes, but hold it carefully. I doubt there will be fingerprints, but just in case. The guard says the armory is locked but there is no sentry. Anyone with a key and access to the barracks could have gotten in.”

I held the knife by the hilt, bringing it up to the light. Cipriano was right; if someone went to the trouble to replace the knife, he certainly would have wiped it down. This one looked spotless, like the others displayed on the rack. I ran my fingers over them, and the faintest trace of dust showed on the upright hilts. Not so with this one, which was clean as a whistle. I licked a fingertip and rubbed it in the groove where the blade met hilt and grip. Tiny reddish flakes stuck to my skin. Soletto’s blood.

“This is from the sixteenth century,” Cipriano said as he took the knife from me, wrapping it in a handkerchief. I looked at him, wondering what that had to do with anything.

“It has killed enough,” he said, sounding sad that this piece of old, cold steel had once again been plunged into flesh. “It has no purpose other than death. Perhaps it feels at home in this century, eh?”

“How many people have a key to the armory?” Kaz asked. Cipriano kept staring at the knife, as if it might speak to him.

“Not many,” he finally said. “It should be simple to find who could have gotten in.”

“Well, that might not amount to a hill of beans,” Abe said, strolling back to our group. I hadn’t noticed him wander off. “That door is probably as old as that pig-sticker. It’s got a warded lock, looks like original hardware.”

“Beans? Pig-sticker?” Cipriano asked. Kaz gave him the basics in Italian, and then nodded for Abe to continue.

“You got a primitive lock there, one of the oldest. There’s things inside called wards. They get in the way unless you got a key with notches that match. One of them old-style keys, you know?”

“Well, it’s an old place,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is the key. You see, what unlocks the wards is what ain’t there. The gaps in the key, ya know? So to make a skeleton key, or passkey, all you need to do is to file away most of the warded center. It’ll open any simple warded lock.”

“Impossible,” huffed Cipriano. “If that were true, half the doors in Rome could be opened with such a passkey.”

“Remember, Inspector, this door has its original hardware,” Abe said, sounding like he was correcting an overenthusiastic student. “Warded locks did get more complex, with added security. But this one ain’t never replaced. It belongs in a museum.”

“What makes you so expert?” Cipriano asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“I was a locksmith before the war,” Abe said. “Back in the States, you might find a lock like this on an old cabinet or the like, but not where you want to stash anything really valuable.”

“So what are the chances someone could get his hands on a skeleton key around here?” I asked.

“Do you have any idea of how many locked doors there are within Vatican City?” Cipriano said. “How many sets of keys for each, and where they are all stored?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Nor do I,” he said. “The only thieves we have are pickpockets. We lock our doors to protect areas from the curious and the lost. Not to protect against a murderer stealing weapons. If a resident of the Holy See has access to keys, he is trusted.”

Inspector Cipriano shot off a series of instructions to his cops and the Swiss Guard. He handed one of the gendarmes the knife and they scurried off to do his bidding. He told us to follow him, and we did, me at the tail end, watching Abe to make sure he wasn’t tempted by any ancient locks.

Cipriano was a cop after my own heart. His next stop was the Swiss Guard mess hall, where the cooks served up what tasted like real coffee.

“I sent my men to look for keys at headquarters,” he said. “And told the Guard to find who keeps the keys for the barracks.”

“You must have keys for every building,” I said.

“Yes, duplicates of all keys are kept at headquarters. But no one checks them routinely. As I said, we have little need for them.”

I drank my coffee, and decided to take a chance with Cipriano, who seemed like he might be a decent guy. “Inspector,” I said, “what do you know about the Regina Coeli?”

“To stay away from it,” he said.

“What’s the Regina Coeli?” Abe asked.

“It means Queen of Heaven,” Kaz said, which satisfied Abe for the moment. Kaz understood where I was going with this, and wisely didn’t want to worry our light-fingered pal.

“I mean who runs it? The Gestapo?”

“No, although they make use of it. It is an Italian state prison, built about a half century ago. Very modern at the time. Why?”

“Do you know anything about the prisoners there, how they’re treated?”

“I know it is very crowded. People can be taken in for minor offenses or for treason. If treason, they do not live long. If they violate curfew or are missing identity papers, they may come out soon. The
Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell’Antifascismo
, OVRA, runs it now. Many OVRA men went north with Mussolini, but some stayed here to work with the Nazis. So it depends on how the prisoners were picked up. If by the Germans in a roundup, there may be a chance. If by OVRA, then less.”

“Do you know Pietro Koch?”

“The worst creature in Italy. Do not cross paths with him unless you plan to put a bullet in his head.”

“I’ve heard he wants all the nuns held at Regina Coeli released into his custody.”

“Are you certain of this?”

“I have good reason to believe the person who told me.”

“I will look into it. If it is true, I will inform Cardinal Maglione.”

“The secretary of state,” Kaz said. “I hope they will listen to him.”

As we debated the usefulness of a Vatican diplomatic protest, both a Swiss Guard and a gendarme showed up and handed keys to Cipriano.

“Look,” Cipriano said to Abe, laying them out on the table. They were all the old-fashioned style of key, some tarnished and some polished. “These are the passkeys found here in the barracks and at headquarters. Could any of them open the armory door?”

Abe picked them up one by one. Most of the ends had been cut down to a nub. “These four,” he said. “Any of ’em would do the trick.”

“Three of them are from the barracks office, one from Gendarmerie headquarters,” Cipriano said with a sigh.

“I’d bet there’s others,” I said. “The porter at the Medieval Palace had a bunch of keys hanging in plain sight.”

“Sadly, you are right, Father Boyle,” Cipriano said as Abe put the keys back in the pile. “We have a murder weapon, but are no closer to the murderer.”

“We know he has access to a passkey and is someone who would
not evoke suspicion in the barracks. We know he is smart, to use this knife and hide it in plain sight.”

“Yes,” Kaz said. “In a peaceful place like the Vatican, it would be unusual to have a knife outside of a kitchen. This is one way to obtain a killing tool and not have to worry about hiding or disposing of it.”

“Yes, yes,” Cipriano said. “He is a genius. Thank you, gentleman. I will let you know as soon as I hear anything, from the commission or about Koch.”

We shook hands, and I chalked it up to the long night that Cipriano didn’t notice Abe palm one of the skeleton keys. You gotta love a thief. Especially when he’s your thief.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“N
O
I
AIN’T
,”
was Abe’s response when I informed him he was in deep trouble. We were in our room at the German College, and I’d done my best to set up the interrogation. Kaz in a chair by the door, me in a comfortable armchair, and Abe in the corner. I’d told him to sit on the edge of the bed, thinking that would put me above him. Evidently he’d been in a few interrogation rooms himself, and responded by lying down, plumping the pillow, and crossing his clodhoppers on my clean blanket. “You got nothin’ on me. No authority, and them Holy Joes is about to hand the both of youse yer walkin’ papers. You got trouble, pal, not me.”

“Why were you breaking into the storeroom?”

“I didn’t break nothing. I opened the door,” Abe said.

“With the picks you made from the metal scraps on the tool bench,” I said. “Guy like you, Abe, you could make a set of picks out of most anything. But they gave you tools, everything you needed. It was almost criminal of them, leaving all that stuff around.”

“Don’t know what you mean. Now you tell me, who the hell are you guys? You ain’t no priests.”

“We are Allied agents,” Kaz said, “sent here to find out who killed Monsignor Corrigan. General Eisenhower wants any illegal activity among Allied forces sheltered in the Vatican dealt with swiftly.”

“And we’re short on suspects, Abe. Maybe it was you, skulking
around at night. Did Corrigan find out you were stealing from the refugees?” We were both laying it on a bit thick, but I wanted Abe to think he was in Dutch.