The Cardinal's Sin

by Robert Lane

  We settled into the backseat of the car, and the tension evaporated from my body. I wondered why my departure had been moved up. The commercial flight certainly had nothing to do with it. Maybe the cleaning crew had another trail to erase. As we headed toward the airport, Kathleen finished dabbing on her makeup while I checked my phone. Nothing. I leaned my head back against the headrest and stared out the window. As frantic commuters scurried about on bike and foot, backpacks weighing them down, the cardinal’s last words played in my mind. I couldn’t decipher exactly what he’d said.

  Not that it mattered.

  CHAPTER 3

  I stretched out in my first-class seat and, before the plane backed away from the gate, reviewed my deed.

  The faux cardinal’s name was Alexander Paretsky, although there was little trace of any such man. He was a paid assassin (as, evidently, am I, although we’re going to let that slide) whose modus operandi was that he rarely appeared as the same person. He even varied his height with an extended heel in his shoes. He could enter a scene at one height and leave it three inches shorter or taller.

  Birth parents unknown, he was adopted in France and raised by his adopted sister after their parents abandoned them. They hopscotched to various parts of Eastern Europe and then disappeared from public records. He purportedly killed for any cause that was proficient at wiring money to various bank accounts throughout the world. The only picture I’d been shown of him was taken in the Caymans, time unknown, as he walked out of a bank in George Town. He hadn’t looked much like that picture this morning, except for something about his eyes, but it had been dark.

  According to the colonel, Paretsky had previously never operated against US interests. However, after a security breach had leaked the identity of numerous US personnel, he started a new game. Paretsky, and whoever funded him, nurtured greater diabolical desires than merely hitting hit men. My brethren’s parents were executed as they left a Publix grocery store in Venice, Florida. That alarm sent US intelligence agencies to parade attention. Hope that it was a onetime event was decimated when, three weeks later, a young woman was cut down in Conifer, Colorado. On her finger was her new engagement ring from her special ops fiancé. Next was a sister in San Antonio. Taught third grade. Teacher of the year. Mother of three. She was a recipient of a head shot from two hundred yards.

  The message was clear. Our enemies had taken a page from the Mexican-drug-lord playbook. There is something worse than dying: causing the death of those you love. The witnesses, few that there were, gave varied and often diametrically opposed descriptions.

  Even different heights.

  Paretsky was put on the short list. Whether he was acting alone or abetted by an accomplice, we didn’t know. A tip came in. Paretsky, for unknown reasons, would often dress in full cardinal wardrobe and stroll through Kensington Gardens an hour before sunrise. London had long been suspected as one of his homes. Whether his holy stroll was a new ritual or not didn’t matter. The source, who purportedly knew things that proved his intimacy with Paretsky’s history, was positive. The current location of all cardinals was tabulated, and the ones on British soil were trailed for two weeks. None had the early Kensington habit. Our information was deemed to be accurate. My number came up.

  Vacation or not.

  The plane started its backward motion; there is no power on heaven or earth that can keep me awake when that occurs. My eyes closed. I was back at Kensington Gardens. The cardinal—Paretsky—faced me. He had thin eyebrows, like a woman’s. He mumbled again about the pope and his guardian.

  Forgive me my sin.

  I bolted up as my head tumbled forward like a loose rock.

  “Would help if you slept at night,” Kathleen said. I looked past her out the window and saw England leaving us. I’d slept through the thrust of jet engines defying gravity. “You bounced around like a busted bag of popcorn in a microwave. Bad dreams?”

  Her hair was tight behind her head; not a free strand had survived the revolution. The scarf was wrapped around her neck, and she wore a pale-blue blazer. Regardless of the temperature, Kathleen was always cold in airplanes. I caught a faint whiff of perfume, just enough to make me want more.

  “No,” I lied again. “Looking forward to being home?”

  Instead of answering, she glanced out the window. She knew I often threw a question back in response to one I didn’t want to address. I doubted I had fooled her now. I doubted I had ever fooled her. “How does it go?” She turned back to me. “Forever lies a corner of England?”

  “‘That there’s some corner of a foreign field. That is forever England.’”

  “I like that. And I always thought you could substitute whatever you felt like for ‘England.’”

  “I think that Brooke would approve.”

  She smiled, and my eyes, as always, were drawn to the edge of her smile, where a thin line of age was just starting. It was not an indication of what was leaving her as much as a promise of what was to come.

  “I am,” she addressed my question, “looking forward to being home. Fall in Florida is my favorite time.”

  “The fields of yellow mustard, the sunset maples, the—”

  She swatted my shoulder. “You know what I mean. The humidity’s gone, and the winter crowds haven’t arrived. I do wish, though, that I’d bought that dress at Harrods. The black-and-white one? I just couldn’t decide.”

  “You want it more because you didn’t get it.” I crossed my ankles. She had looked stunning in it. I was surprised when she passed, but she claimed to have enough black-and-white dresses. “What’s the book?”

  She lifted the book off her lap and showed it to me. It was How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn. “So far,” she said, “it’s good. I think you might like it.”

  “I believe I read it. My rare first edition contains pictures of nude Welsh maidens frolicking in the country—”

  “What can I get you two?”

  I turned as the stewardess was upon us. “Bloody Mary.” I impolitely jumped in front of Kathleen. “The sooner, the better.” Kathleen requested coffee.

  The stewardess moved back a row and repeated her question in the same chirpy yet indifferent tone. She could have changed her pitch a bit, made us feel a little special.

  “And you?” Kathleen said.

  “And me what?”

  “Reading.”

  “Later,” I told her as I rummaged through my carry-on bag and extracted a pair of earphones. I wasn’t going to attempt reading. I was beat. I selected a playlist from my phone. “When I fly, I like to fly.”

  “I was going to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “I forget. It’ll come to me.”

  When the drink landed in front of me—under a minute, not bad—I gave the stewardess a five without leaving my world where music was making me comfortably numb.

  We landed at TPA and found a young man waiting for us with my name on his tablet. He was dressed in black and looked as if he were going to a junior high prom.

  “You old enough to drive?” I said.

  He nodded and smiled. “Si.”

  “Wonderful.”

  We collected our overweight luggage and followed Junior to his black Suburban. I asked him if he needed a stool to get in with. He nodded and smiled. It would have been the same reaction if I’d told him I got his sister pregnant. An iPad mounted to the dash gave him directions to Kathleen’s condo in Spanish. She lived in downtown St. Pete, nine floors above Tampa Bay. My block bungalow was on an island less than half a mile from the Gulf of Mexico. We opted to decide later if we were getting together that evening. “Let’s decide later” was our code for each of us staying in our own homes. We never broached discussing our secret message; it worked, and we were either content with that or too afraid to bring it up. Probably both. We pulled up under the building’s portico. I instructed Junior to wait. Nod and smile.

  “I got your sister pregnant,” I said in a cheery voice
.

  Nod and smile.

  “Jake, that’s mean,” Kathleen said. “What if he understands some?”

  “I wasn’t talking to him.”

  She punched me—hard. We got out of the SUV.

  Her private elevator was undergoing repairs, so we took the general elevator to the ninth floor. It opened into a small library.

  “Not a bad little reading room,” I said. “You ever run into any of your cellmates out here?” The condo association, Kathleen had explained a week ago, had converted each floor to a themed library while we were gone. Looking for a means, I assumed, to justify the $1,200 monthly HOA fee.

  “I’m the only one here right now. Other two units are empty.”

  I recognized some of the titles and then picked up on the theme. “War books?”

  “That’s what I was going to tell you on the plane.” She fished for a key in her purse. “I received an e-mail last week. Each floor houses a collection, and I got Genghis Khan. Just below me? The poets. Above? O’Connor, Austen, Brontë. But nooo…I get the testosterone room.”

  “Not a bad draw,” I said. “After all, war makes rattling good reading. Peace, not so much.”

  “That’s not you, is it?” She unlocked her door.

  “Hardy, and not the boys.” I couldn’t remember the exact line of the quote. That bugged me. I must be slipping. Too much booze?

  I placed her two suitcases on stands in her walk-in closet. Her carry-on went on her bed. My phone buzzed an incoming text. I ignored it.

  “Sandwich?” she asked from the kitchen.

  “I’m fine.”

  I went to her window and gazed out over the waters of Tampa Bay. I like extended travel—relocating myself for several weeks at a time. Hemingway said homes were good for coming and leaving. His point was well made, but I need a base. We all do. Mine is the salty, sandy strip of the west coast of Florida.

  “You sure?” Her voice came again from the kitchen. She’d make a good mother; she never took no for an answer when trying to feed someone. It had been a waste explaining to her that I was a highly functioning human being, fully aware of the consequences and meaning of my answers. Her voice again from the kitchen: “I can whip something up real fast.”

  What do you do with that?

  “I’m gone,” I said, as I entered the kitchen. I bundled her in my arms and gave her a kiss. Our trip, so eagerly planned, was over. I placed a finger over the line at the corner of her mouth. “Paris is dim,” I said, “and crying without you. Rome’s senators are back in chambers collecting a tax to pave in gold the streets that your feet graced. English poets are rising from the dead to pen words they sought for eternity to describe you. Your—”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Us, Jake. The poets have never seen anyone like us, not even in their itty-bitty-witty poet brains. Besides.” She gave me a return peck. “When did you get so Victorian? Paris cries, Roman senators bow, and English poets burn their pens.”

  “OK.” I stifled a yawn. It was all catching up with me. “Works for me.”

  I told her I’d give her a call tomorrow, a totally useless comment, and hit the elevator. I gave my address to Junior, a totally useless exercise, then grabbed the iPad and punched it in. Fifteen minutes and two bridges later—my pad’s on an island off another island—I entered my base. Hadley III, my cat, greeted me by promptly yowling and darting out of sight. Cats. Missed you too. Don’t think I paid money for the furball or rescued her from some shelter; I’m temporarily watching Hadley III for a friend who permanently moved away. Usually while I’m gone my neighbor Morgan looks after her, but Morgan was sailing, so my other neighbor, Barbara, had graciously accepted the honor.

  While unpacking, I came across the wallet-sized picture that had been in Paretsky’s hand. I didn’t recall him reaching into his pocket to retrieve it. Did he routinely clutch the photograph while taking his predawn stroll? That didn’t seem right. I stuck it in a drawer.

  I poured a few ounces of Graham’s 20 Year Old Tawny Port and headed down the dock. I’d started drinking port in Europe and learned to differentiate between the ten-, twenty-, and thirty-year vintages. It was a challenge picking up the nuances, but I was dedicated to the task. I think that’s what they mean when they say you should continually grow as a person and embrace being a Triple L: Lifelong Learner. I might tackle opium next.

  It felt strange not being with Kathleen after spending the last month together. Did she feel the same way? It felt like a question a fourteen-year-old would have. I thought of jumping back in my truck and going to her. Instead I took a seat at the step-down at the end of the dock, my toes a few feet off the water’s surface.

  The red channel marker came on for the night. A dolphin blew; I hadn’t heard that sound for twenty-seven days. Hadley III arrived beside me. I took a sip of the port. Life was good. Maybe I’d do some fishing tomorrow. The only thing going on was that I was expecting a call any day to schedule delivery, within a two-hour window, of my new guest-bedroom furniture. I’d already donated the old bed and dresser to the local thrift shop. Better not inconvenience me too much; I detest being beholden to someone else’s schedule.

  My phone rang. It was Garrett.

  “Want to come down, do a little kitesurfing?” I asked.

  “You read the text?”

  My phone had buzzed at Kathleen’s, and I’d forgotten about it. Something in Garrett’s voice urged me to get to the point of his call. “Tell me.”

  “From the colonel, he copied me—”

  “And?”

  “Your job in London?”

  “What about it?”

  “You clipped the wrong bird.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “You there?” Garrett said.

  “Playing with me, right?”

  “Sorry, Jake.”

  His use of my name eliminated any doubt about a sick joke. Besides, Garrett was humorless. “You—they sure? Positive ID? It wasn’t Paretsky?”

  “Got the same message you did. I checked the British papers. Take a look yourself. You plugged Cardinal Giovanni Antinori. Thirty-two years with the church. The—”

  “No way.” I stood and faced my house. “No fucking way.” He could have used a more sympathetic word than plug. Why care about nomenclature at such a time? “You’re telling me some real cardinal just happened to be at the exact spot at the wrong time. I don’t buy—”

  “Get online. They—”

  “I was set up.”

  I punched out my breath. A fish jumped to my left. Was it leaping to get food or to keep from becoming food? It goes both ways. My own mind was leaping around at a frenzied speed. There were so many questions jostling for attention I didn’t even attempt to prioritize them. I threw it back to Garrett. “What now?” As I asked the question I knew that in all likelihood he had exhausted his knowledge of the situation.

  “Not sure. Just wanted to make sure you saw the text. Knew you were traveling today.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Rule out a coincidence. That—”

  “What a shit show. No way was this Antinori bird not complicit in some manner.”

  “No one’s saying he wasn’t complicit. He just wasn’t the mark. That leaves us with a couple of choices. Someone who knew we wanted Paretsky dead also wanted Antinori dead. That’s a stretch. What’s not implausible is that Paretsky got wind of it and sent out a decoy. Somehow he convinced Cardinal Antinori to take an early-morning stroll. Paretsky, assuming it’s him behind this, wants us to know that—”

  “If we go after him,” I said, picking up the thread, “the most innocent and undeserving will die.” While I spoke I thought, I murdered a cardinal.

  “That is the new war. He used the cardinal to deliver a message that he’ll do what he wants, and our interference will only cause harm. And in an ugly twist…”

  He had pulled up short of hanging me, so I did the honors. “We’re the ones who plug the innoce
nt.”

  “Looks like it.” He didn’t need to agree that fast, either.

  “He wasn’t surprised.”

  “Who?”

  “Ani…Is it Anitori or Antinori?”

  “Antinori.”

  “He was calm, like a man who knew his time had come. How do you explain that?”

  “I bear no explanations. He—”

  “They checked, right? For two weeks they trailed the cardinals, and never once did one of them do the Peter Pan route.”

  “That’s correct. Did—”

  “Fucking shit show.”

  “—he question the gun?”

  “Unbelievable. I assumed that Paretsky recognized when his time was up.” I was trying to convince myself, but I knew it was a losing effort. His eyes…he was trying to communicate something with childlike innocence. I slapped away my second-guessing, but I knew that sucker would circle around with a Louisville Slugger. “What do you have on Antinori?”

  “Mary Evelyn is rounding up everything there is on the man; you can look him up.”

  Garrett was a corporate lawyer in Cleveland—that was his bottle. Mary Evelyn was his assistant.

  “Keep me posted,” I said and disconnected. I was too disgusted to talk any further.

  I stood at the seawall and gazed out toward the end of the dock where I had sat just minutes before, sipping my port, counting my lucky stars, and wondering during what two-hour window of a totally unencumbered day some smiling shitbag was going to ring my doorbell, whistle in with a bed, and then urge me, as he waltzed back out, to go online and take a customer satisfaction survey. That life was gone.

  I’d killed a cardinal.

  What do you do with that?

  I looked at my house. My grass. My boat, Impulse. The familiar objects soothed me, provided me with a sense of calm that I desperately needed. I thought of contacting the colonel. He distrusted satellite phones, which are not positively secure. I could be at MacDill within forty-five minutes and use one of the SCIF phones. The air force base was headquarters for SOCom; Special Operations Command. Garrett and I believed that was where the colonel’s funding came from, but he never confirmed or denied our allegation. On more than one occasion, we had flown in and out of the base and also utilized its communication equipment.