by Ian Caldwell
“You know why.”
“But Simon was at Castel Gandolfo. You must’ve seen him there.”
“I sure as hell did not.”
Suddenly, though, it clicks. It seems so clear. Why Simon has refused to say a word about what happened. Why Michael came looking for Simon as soon as he got back from Castel Gandolfo.
I say, “My brother saw you there, didn’t he?”
Michael pinches the bridge of his nose. “I wasn’t at Castel Gandolfo.”
“You were inside Ugo’s car. Trying to get his gun.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I found a sliver of your hotel key in his car. It broke off when you tried to open his gun case.”
“It must’ve been Nogara’s. I wasn’t even there.”
“You came to our apartment because you realized he saw you.”
He leaps up and shouts, “Whatever he said to you, he lied!” He digs his fists into his temples. I step back.
Immediately Leo enters the holding cell. Michael backs away and turns to stand in the corner, facing the wall. He runs his hands through his hair again and again.
“You let Ugo stay in your room,” I say, “so you could follow him to Castel Gandolfo.”
Michael says nothing.
“What did you think you were going to do?” I say.
He turns and shouts, “You think I planned to kill him? Go to hell, Alex!”
Leo steps toward him, but I motion him back.
“Why is Simon protecting you?” I say. “Because it was an accident?”
Michael’s face is the color of liver. He grabs the metal frame of the bed and grips it. He turns to Leo and chokes out, “I didn’t kill anyone. His brother killed Nogara. I wasn’t even there.”
“We’re done,” Leo says, opening the door.
But Michael lifts a hand in the air. “Please. Give me one more minute with him. Alone.”
Leo shakes his head. But I ask him to wait outside.
Michael stays in his corner. He presses his back against the wall. His eyes look around the room, one place at a time, as he tries to collect himself. This was the best man my father could find for an assistant. It must’ve been obvious, to anyone who wasn’t a child, how troubled he was. How desperate my father must’ve been if this was the best he could do. Maybe Simon was old enough to see those things. But I was still a boy.
“You know what they’re saying I’ll be charged with?” he says in a voice that rattles with emotion.
“What are you talking about?”
“For what happened tonight. They say I’ll be charged with an attack on the Holy Father.” His eyes are swimming. His voice tries to sound angry but can’t disguise that he’s frightened. “You know what I could get for a charge like that?”
I do. Here, at last, is justice. The punishment for attacking a pope is automatic excommunication and possible dismissal from the priesthood.
“I was fair to Simon in my testimony,” he says. “All I’m asking is for your uncle to put in a good word for me.”
He says it so earnestly that I wonder what he can possibly be thinking, except that he can no longer count on Cardinal Boia for help.
“Explain something to me,” I say.
He nods, mistaking this for an opening. A negotiation.
“How did you open Ugo’s gun case? Did he tell you the combination?”
Michael emits a thin, nervous laugh. “That lunatic was so paranoid he had three bolts on his apartment door. You think he told me a combination?”
My God. He did all of it. Everything. When Peter and I went to Ugo’s apartment, we found broken glass on the floor. Michael couldn’t pick the locks on the door, so he climbed in through the window.
“Leo,” I say, knocking at the door, “we’re done here. I’m coming out.”
Michael stares at me uncomprehendingly. “So you’ll help me?”
They were right, sixteen years ago, when they sent him to that treatment facility in the mountains. They knew the sort of help he really needed.
Leo opens the door and waits for me to exit.
“Pray, Michael,” I say. “Ask for forgiveness. Then you need to confess.”
CHAPTER 38
I HAVE TO FIND Lucio and Mignatto. We can end Simon’s trial tonight.
On my way home, the streets of the Vatican village are quiet. News of the exhibit hasn’t leaked yet. Or maybe these good Roman Catholics, discovering that they’ve given away the Shroud, are waiting to see what tomorrow holds.
When I get back, I hear Mona’s and Peter’s laughter coming from behind Brother Samuel’s door. I leave them be. When I let myself into the apartment, everything’s black. Neither Mignatto nor Lucio answers when I call. Even Diego isn’t picking up at the palace.
I sit at the kitchen table and wait. I unfasten my outer cassock. I breathe. When I close my eyes, even for an instant, the darkness fills with thoughts of Ugo. Memories of him. Gratitude for what he made possible tonight. Tomorrow, millions of people who never knew him will hear that the architect of John Paul’s exhibit was killed in the act of bringing a pope’s dream to fruition. And they will think of him as a martyr. A hero. He never wanted anything to do with a reunion of the Churches. But if he’d been there tonight, maybe he would’ve understood.
I peel off my sweaty inner cassock. A tiny hope begins to take root in me. I try to ignore it, but the longer the phone stays quiet, the bigger it grows. Maybe Simon is free. Now that the exhibit has accomplished its purpose, maybe Lucio and Mignatto have gone to bring him home.
I shoo the idea away, busying myself around the apartment. But Mona has done the dishes, and Peter’s room is already clean. So I take a quick shower to scrub off the residue of my meeting with Michael. Then, just as I’ve changed back into clothes, I hear a knock at the door. I hurry to let Peter and Mona in.
Standing at my threshold, instead, is a man with silver hair. A layman in black suit and tie. He’s not one of my neighbors. I’ve never seen him before. But he looks at me as if my face is familiar.
“May I help you?” I say.
“Father Andreou?”
A tiny flame of panic flickers at the bottom of my throat.
“Alexandros Andreou?” he repeats.
Alexandros. The name on my official documents. There’s something in his hand. An envelope.
“Yes, that’s me. Please tell me what’s going on.”
He hands me the envelope. It’s engraved with the words PREFECTURE OF THE PONTIFICAL HOUSEHOLD. Above the words is John Paul’s coat of arms. This man is a cursore, one of the pope’s private messengers.
“What’s this?” I murmur.
But the cursore only says, “A car will be waiting outside your building thirty minutes before your audience.” He offers a slight bow. “Good night, Father.”
Then he turns around and slips away.
I tear open the envelope. The card inside says:
YOU ARE SUMMONED TO THE PRIVATE APARTMENTS OF HIS HOLINESS
TO BE DEPOSED AT TEN O’CLOCK.
My heart pounds. I don’t understand. As Simon’s procurator, I can’t be a witness in his trial.
But the rule book has changed. The pope is above the law.
Numbly I go to my closet. I look for my best clean cassock. For my iron. But in the hallway, I stop. Out the window of Peter’s bedroom I can see the palace. Cardinal Boia’s windows are dark. All along the top floor, though, the lights are on.
The thought of those apartments gives me a slippery feeling at the bottom of my stomach. I’ll have to prepare everything I’ll say. If Michael hasn’t confessed by morning, then I’ll need Mignatto’s help.
I’m pulling out the ironing board when I hear a key turn in the lock. Peter’s voice rises as the door opens.
“A
nd usually, in the jungle?, they have poison that could kill you, but it’s only poison because they eat bugs that have poison, so in the zoo, they don’t eat the bugs?, so they’re not super poisonous. Or at all.”
I take a deep breath and step out of the closet. My foot lands on something sharp, and I stifle a curse. It makes Mona notice me as I enter the hall. She smiles.
“Tree frogs,” she explains.
Then she notices the look on my face.
“Babbo!” Peter cries, racing toward me.
I step forward and quickly lift him onto my shoulder so he can’t see the uncertainty in my eyes. I hand Mona the card from the cursore.
She whispers, “Is this a good thing?”
“I don’t know.”
Peter is ecstatic. The story of his adventures since I left comes out in a river of unintelligible sentences. I hold him in my arms and want to tell him that the man who broke into this apartment will never come back. Our home is truly ours again. But a few hours with his mother have already washed all the darkness from his life.
“Thank you,” I say to her.
Yet she’s already walking away.
“You’re leaving?” I ask.
She continues into the kitchen and finds the first-aid kit in the cabinet. “Your foot’s bleeding,” she says.
Peter looks down and points to a trail of red dots.
“Mona,” I say as she returns, “would you stay a little longer? I need to meet with someone to prepare my testimony.”
“What did you step on?” she says, kneeling to pull something out of my heel. She drops it into my hand. It looks like a red pebble.
I wait for her to answer.
“I’ll stay however long you need,” she says without looking me in the eye.
She starts to bandage my foot, but I reach down and do it myself. She takes back her hands and doesn’t follow me when I walk to the sink.
The red washes off the pebble. It’s a piece of glass.
Mona is behind me. In a quiet voice, so that Peter can’t eavesdrop, she says, “You’ve done a wonderful job with him. He’s so thoughtful. So curious about everything. Being with him makes me wish . . .”
I stare at the glass.
“Makes me wish,” she continues, “I hadn’t missed so much of his life. I can’t tell you how much I regret that.”
I step back. I look at the spots of blood leading back to the bedroom. I feel the first prick of fear.
“I know I don’t have a right to ask this,” she says, “but I would love to see him more often.”
My legs carry me down the hallway. Mona’s voice trails off. The spots lead to my closet.
A sensation wraps around me like a tentacle. I kneel and search the carpet.
“What’s wrong?” Mona says behind me.
There’s nothing else here. Not another crumb. But in the corner of the closet, I find a twinkling of glass dust. Something was hidden behind the ironing board.
“Mona,” I call back, “I need you to take Peter back to Brother Samuel’s.”
She doesn’t ask why. Hearing my tone, she just tells Peter to get his pajamas.
It could be glass from Ugo’s apartment. From the broken window Peter found.
But old panes of glass don’t break into pebbles like this. This is modern glass. Tempered glass. The kind used in car windows.
I wait until I hear the door close behind them. Then I take everything out of the closet. Every pair of shoes, every cassock, every shoebox on the top shelf. Nothing.
When I empty the laundry bag, I find a mildewed towel that must be Simon’s, from the shower he took when he came home from Castel Gandolfo. But his cassock from that night is missing.
I run through everything I can remember. After Simon showered, he limped in here to dress with his muddy cassock in his hand. But I never saw him put it in the laundry bag. We left and spent the night with Leo and Sofia in the barracks. We didn’t come back until the morning.
But Simon did.
That night, he said he couldn’t sleep. He came back here and started cleaning up.
Please, Lord. Let this not be true.
I check the trash cans. They’re all empty. In the small plastic can in the bathroom, though, stuck to the bottom, is the same dusting of glass.
My body is leaden. I look around the bathroom. This was the first place Simon had a chance to be alone. He came in here to shower and came out in nothing but a towel.
There aren’t many hiding places. A drawer beneath the sink. The toilet tank. The vent grate. All are empty.
But I’m looking in the wrong places. A man of Simon’s size wouldn’t look down. He would look up.
Standing on the countertop, I prod the ceiling tiles up, one by one. Each rises with the same resistance.
And then, one doesn’t.
I lift it. I reach into the darkness.
My hands shake as I pull out the cassock and lay it on the floor. Simon’s very best robe. The one Lucio bought for his Academy graduation. The knees are muddy. There’s no glass to be seen.
My body is rigid as I reach down and turn out the French cuffs. The inside of the right cuff is powdered with glass dust.
I close my eyes. Simon is standing in the rain beside Ugo’s car. He unfolds the French cuff. Pads his knuckles with the rich, thick fabric. Knows, like any boxer, to protect his hand. It takes him just one blow to shatter the glass.
My lungs take long, shuddering breaths. I stare at the ceiling. I know something else is up there, but I don’t want to touch it.
A single coil dangles down from the opening where the ceiling tile was. A loop of black wire.
When the judge asked Falcone how the murder weapon disappeared right under his nose, Falcone had no answer. Because no gendarme would dare to look under a priest’s cassock.
I thought the bruise around Simon’s thigh was from wearing a cilice. I realize now my brother tied the gun case around his thigh.
I slump down the wall. Taking the phone from my pocket, I dial Leo. He answers almost immediately.
“You told me,” I mumble, “you arrested Michael earlier this week. A fight over a parking ticket.”
“That’s right.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know. That’s just what Colonel Huber told me.”
I wasn’t even there, Michael insisted.
“I need you to find out,” I say.
He shuffles papers and returns to the phone. “It says Black got into a fight with two officers because we booted his car. Not sure why we did it, but the report says he got violent about it.”
I can guess why. To keep him from leaving the Vatican. To keep him away from the Orthodox meeting at Castel Gandolfo.
“Saturday afternoon?” I say.
“How did you know?”
Saturday is the day Ugo was killed.
“After you arrested him, what time was he released?”
“Just after six, it says here.”
By then, Ugo was dead. I was on my way to Castel Gandolfo. And the only thing on Michael’s mind was to get even with Simon.
That’s why he came to our apartment.
I REACH BACK INTO the ceiling. My hand follows the black chain to its source in the darkness. At the end I feel the rubberized surface of the gun case. I can’t bear to look at it. But its weight tells me the gun is still inside.
You can’t have done this. There’s nothing more evil in the world.
I sit on the floor with my head pressed against my knees. My body tightens until my hands are white on my cassock, balled in fists. The knuckles dig into my cheeks.
Ugo was a good man. An innocent man. You can’t have killed a lamb.
I push back against the racking shudder in my chest. My teeth are clenched so hard t
hat my eye sockets hurt when the tears come out.
I try to pray. But the prayer slips away like smoke, dissipating into nothingness. When I stare down the hallway, I see the coffee table where Ugo and I reviewed his gospel work. In my ears is the sound of his voice on the telephone, calling me at all hours with questions. The traces of him press in around me—the letter in my cassock; the work diary I took from his apartment; the stacks of homily paper in my bedroom, black with verses he wrote and crossed out and insisted I correct—as if the hours and days of life contained in them have condensed into something heavy and accusing. I lift myself into the bathroom doorway. It’s the only thing I can think to do. The only place on earth I feel I can go for help.
Standing on the countertop, I reopen the ceiling and put the cassock and gun case back. I clean the glass dust off the floor. Then I head for the door.
CHAPTER 39
DON DIEGO ANSWERS the door to Lucio’s apartment. He explains that Lucio’s gone. Meeting with Mignatto. I push inside and tell him I’ll wait.
The waiting, though, is endless. Diego watches me pace the apartments. Finally he says, “Your uncle told me what happened at the trial today. Is that why you’re here?”
I hold myself together. But I can’t even look at him.
Diego inspects his hands. Quietly he says, “Come with me.”
He leads me out of Lucio’s office and into a room I have almost no memory of. My uncle’s bedroom.
“Maybe it’s best,” he says, “if you wait for His Eminence in here.”
He closes the door after himself. And it takes me a moment to understand what I’m looking at.
The hospital bed is angled up, surrounded by medical devices and trays of pills. There are three large vases of flowers and a standing wardrobe. And otherwise, in this sprawling bedroom nearly as big as my apartment, there is not a single other thing except what hangs on the walls. Mementos cover every inch of space like icons on the wall of a Greek church. I see a photo of Lucio at his consecration. A newspaper article about a piano concert he gave as a young man. But every other framed object is of us.
My mother when she was young. My parents at their wedding. I cover my mouth, seeing two entire rows of Peter. Beside them are corresponding pictures of me: at baptism; on my name day; being held in my mother’s arms. My ordination. Winning my seminary prize for gospel studies. We are half of my uncle’s waking world. We, who never seemed to mean anything to him.