Immaculate Reception (14 page)

It was short. It said, simply, “Call with Q's” and next to it, “Doesn't want to talk about it,” and then underneath was a telephone number. With a Valley area code.

Naturally, I dialed it.

A
fter only one ring, the phone was answered by a man.

“Hello,” I began. “I'm sorry to disturb you this evening. I'm the event planner in charge of the pope's official reception tomorrow. My name is Madeline Bean.”

“Yes?”

“I was doing some work and I came across your telephone number. I wonder if I might ask you some questions.”

“Of course,” the man said, quietly. He spoke with a slight Italian accent and the more words I heard him speak, the more I was convinced he was not young.

“Perhaps it would be convenient for you to come to my house,” the unknown man suggested.

“Your address?” I asked, nonchalantly. I follow the rule of never looking a gift horse in the mouth, or, for that matter, any of the animal's other private parts.

“Didn't they give it to you? Oh, my,” he said.

He sounded like he had been expecting me to call. Now, how on earth…? I jotted down the address.

Encino. The suburb was pure San Fernando Valley: lawns, strip malls, and those personality-deficient single-family homes that spread across both sides of Ventura Boulevard like diaper rash. It was one of those middle-class, flat ranch-style neighborhoods that sprung up like a tract of mushrooms after the war. While real estate prices had shoved the area upscale during the eighties, the homes
were a hodgepodge of remodeling jobs, displaying widely varying degrees of taste.

I took my bodyguard, Holly, along. She rode shotgun in my old Jeep Grand Wagoneer, not taking a breath between confirmation calls on the cell phone that was now growing out of her ear. With her notebook PC and extra batteries, she was a triumph in mobile workaholism. Gotta love her.

The house we were looking for was standard-issue Encino. It managed to present about four thousand square feet of lateral living space in the blandest architectural style possible. The exterior was covered in the ubiquitous stucco, this time painted a sad shade of washed-out green. Color trends being what they were, the tint of the stucco alone proclaimed that no one had prettied the place up in forty years.

These were the fixers that real estate bloodhounds sniff around for on Sundays. They've got “potential” if for no other reason than they are so butt ugly. If you simply replace the aluminum windows with wood sash, put in French doors in place of the old aluminum sliders, repaint the outside white with taupe trim, slap the front door with a coat of high-gloss black, rip the green shag wall-to-wall off the hardwood underneath, and whitewash the interior, you can turn around and sell it for $75,000 more than you paid for it.

It was dark out and nearing 9 p.m. I parked at the curb and left Holly to work in the car. As I stepped outside, I noticed the deep front yard. Globular bushes, shaved into strange perfectly round shapes, dotted a tangle of overgrown ivy. This yard had apparently not been updated since the fifties.

The doorbell was answered quickly. I stared at the man at the door, startled to find I recognized him.

“Would you care to come in?” he asked with a shy smile.

“Thank you,” I said to the little old man. He was the self-same one I'd observed on the morning I'd visited the mayor of Los Angeles. He had been sitting in the waiting
room with the flamboyant young woman. His name was…

“You must be the one who called,” he said, leading me though the dark house until we reached a family room at the back. “Madeline Bean, was it?”

What the hell was his name? I knew I had it deep in there, somewhere. The mayor called him by name. It was…

“Would you like a cookie?” he asked me as we got settled on the brown Naugahyde, he on the sofa, I on the matching love seat. He offered me a box of Thin Mints. The Girl Scouts in this neighborhood had a rep. Man, they could hustle.

“Is this about Security, then?” asked the man. His name was on the tip of my tongue. It was like watching
Jeopardy!
when you know you should know.

“For the Pope?” I asked, startled, wondering how this elderly gentlemen fit into the picture.

“Of course,” he said, kindly. “That's why you wanted to see me, isn't it? Is there a need for more money? I can get my checkbook.”

Victor. His name was Victor. But how could I call a man old enough to be my grandpa by his first name. “I'm sorry to confuse you,” I said, “but my visit has nothing to do with security.”

“Oh. I only thought…” he petered out. In the stillness of his pause, he chose a Thin Mint. Then he explained.

People do that. If you can just stay quiet enough. I find that people will most graciously rush into the void and explain everything. I just have the devil of a time keeping my mouth shut long enough for it to work.

“I suppose you know my secret,” he said. He still had a bit of cookie in his mouth, so he continued to chew.

“Your secret?” This is the way caterers work. We wait until the client gets all their ideas out. We don't judge or jump in too fast. If they really love the idea of having an Apollo 13 party for their son, and adore the notion of building a replica of the capsule in their backyard so that a dozen eight-year-olds can be locked inside, we listen. There are
other times to come back at them with our concerns about feeding macaroni and cheese to a bunch of kids through a tube, and to offer a saner alternate suggestion. Although, even then, we rarely allow ourselves the luxury of screaming at them, “Are you crazy?”

“Well, I hoped to keep it a secret,” Victor Somebody explained. “About my contribution.”

“You…paid for the extra security.” Somehow I pulled it together. This must be the generous man I'd heard about who was helping support the pope's visit. The morning I'd eavesdropped, his great granddaughter was making a fuss about the money he'd donated. Small world.

“But I don't like too many people to know,” he confided, small and gnomelike, swallowed up by the giant sofa he sat on.

“You can count on me,” I assured him.

“Thank you, Miss Bean.”

“Please call me Madeline,” I said.

“A nice old-fashioned name, like my great-granddaughter. Her name is Beatrice. She is an artist, of sorts. Or so she tells me. She never lets me come to see her.”

I remembered the serious buzz-cut and the nose ring. I was sure I knew to which great-granddaughter he was referring.

“So what is the problem?” asked Victor. “Does His Holiness require something that I can provide?”

“I'm here to ask some questions about Monsignor Benecio Picca,” I said, quickly. “You do know him?”

“Why, yes. Of course. We go back a very long way,” he said pleasantly. “Do you know Father Picca, too?”

I suspected he had not yet heard the sad news and realized I would have to tell him.

When I finished explaining, he sat still and didn't speak. After a time, his nose became redder and a tear escaped from each eye. Victor pulled a snow-white linen handkerchief from his shirt pocket, the old-fashioned kind, and rubbed his cheeks. It cannot be easy to be close to ninety
and hear that all your friends are dying off, one by one.

“So,” he finally said.

“The monsignor was doing research and he let me look at his journals,” I said.

Victor carefully folded his handkerchief and tucked it back into his pocket.

I told him that I was concerned about an obscure baker who died in the late thirties. He nodded as I talked and waited until I was through.

“Oh, my, Rome is a magnificent city,” he said. “Have you been there?”

“Why, yes. When I was studying cooking,” I said.

“The food. Yes, it is without equal, in my humble opinion,” he said, and found the spirit to smile, faintly. Food will comfort us all.

“You lived in Rome?” I asked.

“Yes, yes. I was born there. I lived there for many years. That is where I first met Benny. We were boys together. I wanted to go into the government. He went into the church, but we remained friends. It was always good, in Rome, to have friends inside of the Vatican, yes?”

I understood how that goes. Sort of like here, it's nice to have friends who work for Universal.

“So you read my old friend's journal,” Victor said. “He and I would meet, to work on various research projects. It was just a hobby, you see? We had other friends from the old days, but many of them have passed.” He crossed himself. “When Benny Picca and I moved to Los Angeles, after the war, we became even closer. Expatriates, both of us.”

“Did you ever hear of this Jesuit baker I'm investigating, Brother Ugo Spadero? Maybe when you were living in Italy? He worked in the kitchens of the pope's summer villa in the late thirties. We think he may have been involved in some trouble.”

“There were a lot of troubles, to be sure, but I do not recall his name.”

Another dead-end. This was really the last time I'd go
chasing after such a flimsy trail. I didn't know what I was expecting to find, anyway. The old man was looking at me, waiting for a response.

“What do you mean, there was trouble?” I asked.

“Ah, well. With the Nazis, of course. Do you know, the Holy See had a very chancy time just surviving those animals.”

With less energy than he'd had when he met me at the door, he dipped again into the Thin Mints. I figured the local scouts had him pegged as an addict. His address is probably circled in red and fought over in a troop turf war of fierce proportions. I imagined the bruised carcasses of uniformed Brownies littering the battle zone of Encino. And then I realized what happens when I don't get enough sleep.

“I have been reading about the Nazis in the monsignor's journals,” I said. “And I have been wondering about something he reported that seems almost impossible, about a secret document.”

“Ha!” Victor laughed. “Yes, we were two old peas in a pod. We both had our obsessions, you see? Secrets, that's what we loved. Two old hunters of secrets. The monsignor was always searching for evidence about the missing encyclical, as you must know.”

“Was there really such a document?” I asked.

“Oh, my, I should say there was,” Victor answered, leaning back with his fifth or sixth cookie. I noticed he had not taken a sip from the mug of tea that was placed on the side table.

“This was Benny's pet project. He was there, you see, at the secret meetings in the Vatican. He heard the pope's orders.”

“What happened?” I asked. I hadn't eaten in hours and eyed the box of cookies. There were only a few left.

“You know about LaFarge?” he asked, his sharp eyes darting to meet mine.

“Yes. I just read about him. The French Jesuit who believed in equality for all people,” I said.

“An unknown,” Victor scoffed, “which suited His Eminence especially well. The encyclical was a bombshell. And there were many inside the Vatican who found the idea of such a public statement a little too close to an act of suicide for our church.”

I was content to help this old guy finish off his cookies and listen to the tale of long ago. I love puzzles and, hearing about the secret encyclical from his old friend, Victor, made me feel a little closer to that man whose journals I'd been reading.

“Ah,” said Victor, shaking his head, “the encyclical was madness.”

“But it was the right thing to do,” I said. “Wasn't it?”

“There are often many right things, and then how does one choose? Eh?”

“With one's heart?” I suggested, and in my sleep-deprived state began to look at the issues that had tormented me regarding Xavier's decision in a different light.

“You are a nice young lady,” Victor said, smiling, “but you know very little of politics. Power and survival, they are very important to men. But where was I? Oh, yes.

“I was speaking about the men who were charged with the task of writing the pope's position paper regarding the Jews. LaFarge, along with three other Jesuits, worked on the draft of this possibly revolutionary encyclical all through the summer of 1938. They worked throughout the oppressive heat of Paris. They called their draft
Humani Generis Unitas
, ‘The Unity of the Human Race.'”

“Did they ever finish it?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Late in 1938, LaFarge went to Rome to deliver it to the pope himself. And that is all we know.”

“But what happened?” I offered the box with the last Thin Mint to Victor. He took it and smiled.

“There are many theories. Our friend, Monsignor Picca, believed Pius XI meant to deliver the speech revealing the encyclical to the world, but was hampered by poor health. He was not well. A few weeks later, on February ninth, nineteen thiry-nine, Pius XI died. And then, mysteriously,
the paper just vanished and has never been heard of again. This is why Benny continued his studies. He truly believed word of the encyclical, even at this late date, would correct a long-standing misconception of the Holy See's responsibility during the war. Some day, he felt, the document would surface.”

“It disappeared?” I wondered if this could in any way be connected to Brother Ugo. His death was near enough to these times to require further investigation.

“It was an old man's romantic quest,” Victor said, shaking his head sadly. “And my dear old friend will no longer pursue this, or any other quest on earth.”

“It's late,” I said, rising.

“Stay a minute longer, Miss Bean,” Victor said. “Let an old man tell you about his own passionate quest.”

I sat back down, aware I had left Holly too long in the car and there was work pressing for me as well. But when a ninety-year-old man has just lost one of his oldest friends, it seemed the right thing to do to sit with him a few minutes more.

“Benny Picca was searching for clues to the location of a piece of paper,” Victor said, encouraged. “But I am looking for a lost room.”

“I'd love to hear about it,” I said with as much sincerity as I could manage.