The Cardinal's Sin

by Robert Lane

  “How so?”

  “You know of his progressive views?”

  “I do. The critics in Rome censored him. He was like a Broadway hit; everybody hated him except the audience.”

  Morgan nodded. Hadley III jumped onto his lap from the top of the grill. Damn cat walks all over him and Kathleen but glares at me like she’s waiting for me to drop dead.

  “Precisely.” He took a slow sip from his glass. Morgan was never in a hurry with food or people. “And that love stemmed not only from his gregarious personality but also his liberal views on religion. Those views and opinions, and hence his immense popularity, started around two years ago.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “You won’t understand what I’m telling you unless you understand Giovanni.” He took another bite of cheese. “Dinner, right?”

  “You’re looking at it.”

  “You know the law of preceding generations?”

  “You just made it up.”

  “No, what—”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “We receive our initial set of values and beliefs from our parents. Language, religion—both indoctrinated into us. Passed down, often unquestioned, from one generation to another. No one passes along science theory over the dinner table, nor do we engage in traditional science holiday gatherings. Therefore, science, unburdened with yesterday’s dogma, is free to explode ahead. Indeed, it’s expected to change.”

  “Can we skip?”

  He stroked Hadley III’s back, and the furball fired up her diesel. “Understand, Antinori’s parents were Old Catholic. They embraced beliefs that for the most part had gone unchallenged not for mere generations but centuries.”

  “And about to change.”

  “Radically. Not many priests these days peddle indulgences. Yet at one time they were blatantly abused to help finance Saint Peter’s Basilica. A sham that, in part, led to Martin Luther and John Calvin initiating the Protestant Reformation.”

  “Was this part of the hundred?” Morgan had been required by his parents to read one hundred books of their choosing before he left the sailboat and traveled on his own. I hit the bottom of my glass and remembered that my liquor cabinet was running on fumes. Might have to take a run tomorrow and restock. My mood lightened. Buying alcohol always cheers me up; the mere thought of it puts me in Happyville.

  “Religion was a fascinating segment, although, admittedly, not up with the war books.” He claimed the last chunk of cheese. ‘“War makes rattling good history, but peace is poor reading.’”

  “That’s it.” I shot him a glance. “You get that from Kathleen?” I hadn’t been able to recall Hardy’s exact quotation when I’d stood in the war room of her condo.

  “No. Why?”

  “I had to paraphrase—never mind. Two years ago, Antinori, the man, not the wine.”

  “It all changed for him. His comments—did you read the one, ‘If there is only one god, there can be no gods’?”

  “I missed that.”

  “My father says that. If one religion is right, then all the others must be wrong. Therefore, no one can believe in their god if there is just one god.”

  “Unless you picked the winner.”

  “You’re missing the—”

  “I got it.”

  He gazed out to the water, where there was nothing except the lights across the bay. Twenty-eight streetlights span the bridge. I count them every night.

  He turned back to me. “Something happened in your cardinal’s life two years ago to force him to make such an abrupt turnaround on his beliefs. Something that—”

  “Perhaps he’d been having doubts for years.”

  “We all do. But there was a triggering event in Giovanni’s life that caused him to become outspoken. He is—was—a bright guy. He was aware of the consequences of his words, the reverberation of his speech, the impact of his dissension. Something tipped the man, and he was never the same again.”

  “And this has what to do with why he was at Kensington Gardens?”

  “Haven’t a clue.” He put his wineglass down. “You still got red filets?”

  “I do.” He had hooked them as he brought Moon Child in the other night. They went in my refrigerator, as my screened porch—my living room—also served as the ad hoc dining room.

  He stood, and Hadley III darted into the house as if a Florida panther was hot on her trail. “All I’m saying,” he said, “is the man you killed was two years old. He held very different beliefs than he had ever known. Look at me.”

  I’d been mesmerized by a center console idling past the end of my dock. I turned my head and met his eyes.

  “This man’s beliefs,” he continued, “were all he had, everything he was. Like you and I harbor the sun, the moon, the water. How these define our world? His world was his beliefs. His job, his standing in the community—everything centered on his beliefs. You cannot imagine how traumatic it must have been for him to renounce what he was born into, to renounce the faith of his father—to blaze a radical new path. Do not make light of that. Fire up the grill.”

  I started to protest—not his comment about the grill—but couldn’t muster the effort. He vanished into the kitchen. I was glad he was gone. There are times in our relationship when, quite unintentionally, I’m sure, Morgan makes me feel inferior—as if everyone’s laughing except me. I drained my glass and opened the Weber’s heavy lid.

  Richard Harris’s voice came from the Magnavox. It was one of Morgan’s father’s favorite albums. As I snuffed out my half-smoked cigar, Morgan came back with two empty plates, forks, and a plate of red filets bathed in olive oil and lightly seasoned. He also carried a bottle of red and the margarita pitcher. I took the filets before he dumped it all and placed them on the fish tray. A few minutes later we sat eating as the drawbridge across the bay opened and closed like a heart valve in slow motion. Barbara’s side door quietly latched. She’d let her dog, Happy, out for the last time.

  After the fish and the wine were gone, the Magnavox was silent, and the rustle of palm fronds filled the night, Morgan stood and said, “You got it?”

  “Two years, right?”

  “Two years. The cardinal buried one life and started another.”

  “Got it,” I replied more to please him than as an affirmation of my belief. “Port?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Do it again tomorrow?”

  “I’ll pass. Tomorrow,” he drained his glass, put it down, and gave me a nod, “is another good night.”

  He vanished through the door and across my dark lawn. Hadley III snuck out with him. Morgan’s comment affirmed our joint belief that the sweet spot of the day lay toward the end. I wondered if he, Kathleen, and I would ever see those days again, get that rhythm back.

  I took my twenty-year-old port to the end of the dock.

  Two years ago, Antinori decided that his beliefs were a house of cards. Renée joined WAP. It was if I had a file folder labeled ‘Two Years,’ but it held more questions than answers, more mystery than substance.

  None of it getting me closer to Paretsky.

  I’d forgotten to bring up the program itinerary on the website that Bretta had mentioned to me. I wanted to talk to people who had served on the same panel that Renée had. Tomorrow. I was finished for the day; when the day is done, I’m done with the day. I corked the bottle before I went in too deep.

  He came again that night, but this time Cardinal Antinori didn’t speak. He looked upon me with merciful pity, as if my stupidity summoned his empathy. I tried to talk, but my jaw was frozen and sluggish, and no words came out. His face was kind and sad, and he kept peering at me like we were brothers. I got tired of the mind game, brought up my gun, and shot him in the face. It had no effect. I shot again and again and again as if I were at a carnival shooting booth, and if I hit the clown’s head in an exact spot I’d win a stuffed animal for the girl who was no longer mine.

  CHAPTER 13

  Binell
i said, “My source expects a two-way street.”

  “No promises.” I traded my phone and banana peel, shifting the phone to my right hand and the peel to the left. I was sitting on the balcony of the hotel after another brutal workout in which I tried to kill myself and failed. Keep the faith; there’s always tomorrow.

  “I’m not playing games with her,” Binelli said. “I’ll tell her what I can deliver and not one iota more. Understand? If you expect to use these people in the future, you need to establish and practice fair reciprocity.”

  “I was never good at reciprocity.”

  “Time you learned.”

  I rubbed my head. I wasn’t in the mood for reciprocity; I didn’t even like the sound of the word. “I don’t know if I have that much to offer, but tell her I’ll play.”

  “Already did. Ball’s in your court.”

  “I thought you weren’t meeting until lunch?” A woman at the table two down from me lit up a cigarette, crossed her cigarette legs, tilted her face toward the sky, and exhaled.

  “She called and moved it up. I didn’t think you—”

  “What do you got?”

  “Two.”

  “Two?”

  “More like twins. We—”

  “Two what?”

  I stood, tossed my banana peel at the seashell waste can, and moved away from the smoker. I rounded a corner to the front of the balcony that faced the resort’s two pools and bar. The smell of breakfast emanated from the restaurant off to my right. On the flat waters of the gulf, a paddleboarder made her way south.

  “You listening?” Binelli prodded me.

  “All ears.” I sat on the concrete love seat.

  “The FBI thinks that Paretsky works with a partner—serves as a sort of bodyguard for Paretsky, or at the very least a decoy. We further believe that his partner may even carry out some of the kills himself. That’s why it’s been so hard to track or identify him. It’s not one man—it’s two.”

  “Why would my organization only feed me information on one, and what do you have on the second man?”

  “I can’t speak for whatever branch of the bloated uncle you work for. I can say this: we—and by that I mean the people on our end who are hunting Paretsky—believe there are two men. Others do not. Perhaps they feel that pursuing two will only hinder their cause. Sometimes madness has a method, usually not. It’s a big world, buster, room for lots of opinions, and you need to consider then all. That is why you befriended me in the first place.”

  Considering Lambert’s visitor and the man who corralled Renée Lambert at the Valencia—possibly the same person—I was warming to the two-man theory.

  “OK,” I said. “My agency decided to send me after one man because they may not swallow the two-man theory, or maybe they just think I can run faster after one. Maybe they sent another team after two. Doesn’t really matter. Tell me what you know about Paretsky’s supposed partner.”

  “Nearly zilch.”

  “Come again?”

  “You heard me.”

  “How can you build a theory on zilch?”

  “Nearly zilch.”

  The concrete bench was hard and I traversed back around the corner. Cigarette Legs was still there. Her right leg was crossed over her left, and her right foot bounced in the air like a nervous habit. I said, “What constitutes nearly?”

  “We caught a break eight months ago. Busted a guy for drug trafficking. Turns out he was close to doing a deal with Paretsky. He was eager to trade us information for a lighter sentence. He didn’t have much, but he said Paretsky indicated another man he worked with might be the one to actually pull the job. We didn’t think much of it until the Venice hit, south of you. Know about it?”

  “I do. Couple walks out of a grocery store and smack into two head shots. Their son was in covert.”

  “Exactly. My source has reason to believe that Paretsky was 2,500 miles away that day and—”

  “Doing what and where?”

  “Not sure on the first, and Europe on the second. But if he works with another, it explains a few holes we’ve needed patched for some time.”

  “Name? Description? Anything?”

  “Not much. They had handles for each other. Paretsky supposedly called his colleague the Guardian.”

  “Say that again.” Both the cardinal and Lambert had used the word. I had dismissed it. A common word, not meant to connote a single person. Was the Guardian an actual man? If so, who was the Pope? Paretsky?

  Binelli cut through my thoughts. “Called him the—”

  “Who called who what?” I walked over to the garbage can, picked my banana peel off the side, and dropped it into the container. For the life of me, I cannot make that shot.

  “I said, Paretsky referred to his partner as the Guardian, and that guy referred to Paretsky as—”

  “The Pope,” I blurted out as I remembered Cardinal Giovanni Antinori’s last words to me. Words I hadn’t paid attention to at the time, and now I wished to hell I had.

  “How’d you know?” Binelli came back in, but I wasn’t listening. It was my turn to hang up on Natalie Binelli. I sprinted down the steps and across the street toward my truck. I gunned it down Gulf Boulevard to Donald Lambert’s house. When I was five minutes out, PC called. I didn’t answer. I knew I was too late.

  CHAPTER 14

  PC’s Camaro with the Endless Summer plate and flame-painted sides was tight against the curb. He and Boyd got out of the car. I quietly closed the truck’s door.

  PC said, “I tried to call you jus—”

  “I know. What do you got?”

  Nothing appeared unusual at Lambert’s house. Perhaps my paranoia had gotten the better of me. It’s often like a fire alarm blaring in the middle of the night. It has also saved my life on more than one occasion, which is a decent trade-off for a few false alarms.

  “A boat,” Boyd said. He usually let PC take the lead. They both wore the same clothes they had on yesterday. “I saw it come down the canal, from the open end, you know?” He arched his back, reached under his T-shirt with his left hand, and scratched his chest. “Didn’t think much of it. Twenty—thirty minutes tops—it saunters out real slow like.”

  “Idles,” PC said. “Boats idle, man. Not saunter.”

  Boyd considered the point. “I thought that was when Caesar was killed.”

  My eyes drilled Boyd. “Why do we care about the sauntering boat?”

  Boyd stared at me with a brew of guilt and fear in his eyes. “It never went past the house, Jake. You know? We didn’t think anything of it until after it left, and then we realized—”

  “Maybe the guy anchored and dropped a line,” PC said in his clipped speech. “Maybe he had engine trouble. Who knows? Here’s the thing, Jake-o.” He glanced at the house and kept his gaze there as he spoke. “Those blinds in the front? Never down. Even at night. But we noticed after the boat left that they were down.”

  The living room blinds were down. The same blinds that I’d noted earlier looked permanently open because the trimmed hedge neatly blocked the lower half of the window.

  “We checked,” PC continued. “The view of the back of the house from the other street? The rear blinds are drawn as well. Maybe he’s going someplace, and he closes up shop before he leaves. We can’t say for certain when those blinds were drawn. Follow me?”

  I went to my truck and got my Belly Band holster out of the backseat. I strapped it around my waist under my T-shirt and put my Smith & Wesson into one of its two sleeves. My five-inch, folding Boker knife went in my shorts pocket. Bad guys don’t wear shorts. I got a pair of latex gloves from a box and reached over the seat and grabbed a pair of old boat shoes. I had just bought a new pair and didn’t want to wear them into the house. A habit of sprinting out of the house in bare feet and had taught me to keep the last few pairs in the truck.

  “I’m going in,” I said, but the hopes of a false alarm were crashing. I smelled smoke. “PC.” He looked up at me. “Leave. Go
now. If there’s any problem, I don’t want you two around. Leave and—”

  “Jake-o, if I listened to people, I’d still be wasting away in chemistry cl—”

  “If the heat comes, you want to introduce yourself?” PC and Boyd had a couple of juvie arrests on their records. “We’ll draw too much attention out here. I’m sure everything’s fine. I’ll go in and talk to Lambert and call you later. Vamoose.”

  Boyd turned around and headed back to their car. PC did likewise but not before he shot a glance at the latex gloves in my right hand. He knew. And he knew that I knew that he knew.

  My gloved finger rang the bell. The Westminster Quarters chimed. I pounded the door before the second quarter. A white van crawled down the street. Plumbing. Most likely scouting for an address. It slowed and pulled to a stop five houses down on the opposite side of the street. I tucked around the corner of Lambert’s house. The great white egret was standing at attention at the sliding door. The blinds were drawn. The bird didn’t give any ground when I approached. I could have reached out and patted it on what little head it had. I drew my gun and slid open the door just enough to allow myself in. I closed it behind me.

  Lambert lay on his kitchen floor in a pool of blood. His open eyes stared up, as if in death he was fascinated with the popcorn ceiling. I stepped around him and cleared the house. Every drawer was empty, every closet trashed.

  Lambert had been shot in the right knee, the chest, and the head. Despite the condition of the interior, the mop and water bucket stood upright against the oven. Lambert’s left hand stopped just short of the bucket, as if in his last act he’d tried to touch that simple and unassuming thing that, different for us all, is what we want to be left alone to do and seems so little to ask of the world.

  My guess was that his assailant knew torture would be a waste of time—what man gives up his daughter? But why kill Lambert if you gained no information? Was there some reason he needed to be dead, or was whoever committed the deed merely not taking any chances?

  “I’m sorry,” I said, gazing down at the body. “I should have—” My shoulders drooped, and my breath blew out. I took in a slow, deep breath. I smelled cough drops.