The Death of an Irish Consul (21 page)

In the middle of the room sat Paolo Cervi and some ten feet away from him Moses Foster, who was reading the statement Cervi had given McGarr, O’Shaughnessy, and Alfori.

After a while, Foster folded the statement and motioned it to Falchi, who took it from him. Foster then turned to Cervi. “That’s your signature at the bottom of the pages?”

Cervi nodded. He did not once look at Foster.

“And you gave that statement freely, not under duress?”

Cervi glanced at McGarr. He was still somewhat frightened. “What’s the difference? It’s the truth.”

Foster too glanced over at McGarr, but he smiled. He shook his head. “Do I get a touch of that thing?” He meant the bottle of Irish whiskey.

“After,” said McGarr.

“O.K.—but
I
did not pull the trigger on those guys in Ireland, get that? Even he”—Foster indicated Cervi—“swears to that. I just went along for the ride.

“Now, don’t put any water in that glass, just booze and right to the top.” He added, “Please,” and smiled broadly.

While Foster drank, he recounted the details of the assassinations of Hitchcock and Browne. Everything matched Cervi’s story perfectly. Foster signed the statement. McGarr gave him another drink. Foster said, “You little runt—I don’t know why I should like you, but I do.”

McGarr said, “Sure, you’d say that to any old leper brandishing a whiskey bottle.”

That was when Rattei was brought into the room. For a moment the sight of Cervi and Foster together seemed to disconcert him, but he quickly regained his aplomb. Two lawyers carrying briefcases flanked him.

Falchi handed him Cervi’s statement.

From the outer office McGarr could hear a typewriter clacking. When Foster’s statement was ready, a copy of that was handed Rattei. He and his lawyers never took seats but just stood like a triptych under the bare and dim light bulb reading the statements.

All the while Foster kept sipping from the glass, keeping his eyes on Rattei. One thing that Foster had never mentioned was how much Rattei had paid him or where the money was. McGarr knew that Foster, un
like Cervi, would never have accepted any payment but cash.

When, at length, Rattei looked up from the second document, he looked right into Foster’s eyes, which were shining now. Foster was smiling the same smile McGarr had seen in the Siena train station before the Palio—that of a large black house cat smiling down into a saucer of milk.

Rattei said, “This means nothing.” With a flick of the wrist he tossed the copies at Falchi. They fell on the floor by the carabinieri commandant’s foot. “The testimony of two
scarafaggie
—one a killer, the other a common thief. I denounce these statements as nothing but inept attempts at character assassination. Some one of my enemies has put them up to this.”

Rattei’s lawyers were watching him, admiring him. One began smiling.

As did Foster, but more fully. “A
what
assassination?”

Rattei turned to him sharply. “A
character
assassination—that of me, Il Condottiere Rattei, the founder of ENI, chairman of AGIP,…” he began to enumerate his titles and accomplishments.

But Foster’s laugh drowned him out. It was stunning and contagious. Even Rattei’s other lawyer managed a thin smile by the time Foster had exhausted himself.

McGarr poured him yet another drink. He had earned it.

Rattei’s face was flushed. He tried to leave in a huff, but Falchi stopped him in the outer office. For the third time in a week, new charges had been lodged against him. This time it was conspiracy to commit the murders of Hitchcock and Browne. Rattei had hatched those plans in Chiusdino.

McGarr imagined it would be many months before the Irish Republic brought the four men to justice.

BARTHOLOMEW GILL
is the author of fifteen Peter McGarr mysteries, among them
The Death of an Irish Sinner, The Death of an Irish Lover, The Death of an Irish Tinker
, and the Edgar Award nominee, The Death of a Joyce Scholar. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Mr. Gill writes as Mark McGarrity for the
Star-Ledger
. He lives in New Jersey when not in Dublin.

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