Death bbwwim-7

by James R Benn

  “No, we were in a soundproof room, doing the broadcast.” This voice came from Robert Brackett, who stepped closer and knelt beside the body.

  “What broadcast?” I asked, wondering about Brackett’s mental state after what Nini had told us. He must have been in one of his good moods to be out this late.

  “Vatican Radio broadcasts the names of POWs we get from the Red Cross, to let relatives know they are alive,” Bruzzone explained. “Tonight it was Americans. We always hand over the list to the ranking diplomat when it is over.”

  “Monsignor, I suggest you call in the gendarmes. They’ll have a lot of questions.”

  “I can only imagine,” he said as he retreated into the building.

  Brackett reached out to check Soletto’s pulse, but then thought better of it. Dead was dead.

  “What is this?” A sharp voice broke through the night air. Bishop Zlatko appeared on the path, carrying a briefcase.

  “Commissario Soletto, unfortunately. The gendarmes have been called.”

  “What happened?” Zlatko asked, glancing around the small group hovering near the body. “Is he dead?”

  “Yes. Stabbed.”

  Zlatko stared at the body, then looked at me, making his opinion obvious. “I said you would cause trouble. I must go inside, I have a broadcast scheduled. I will pray for his soul.” He didn’t mention my soul or anybody else’s. I guess he preferred to pray for the dead rather than the living.

  “Not the most charming guy,” Brackett said. “Personality or politics.”

  “Couldn’t agree more. You should go inside, too,” I said. “The less you’re involved, the better.”

  “Yeah, okay. Hey, Abe, how you getting along?” Brackett gave Abe a small wave.

  “Can’t complain,” Abe replied.

  “You two know each other?” I asked, as Kaz told a couple of the radio technicians to move back.

  “Sure,” Brackett said. “I know all the American POWs who stay here. Part of the job. Abe’s not in trouble, is he?”

  “Why would he be?”

  “For one thing, he’s standing over a dead body.”

  “We were all in the garden and heard a scream. We ran up here and found Soletto like this. Did anyone leave the studio before you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Brackett said as he opened the door. “But I wasn’t keeping track of everyone. Who do you think did it?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  “Well, good luck.”

  I was going to need it. As the door shut behind him, I heard the pounding of boots as gendarmes flooded across the gardens and up the hill.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Dad always said to choose the smallest interrogation room there was. Put yourself and your partner between the suspect and the door, and you’re halfway home. For all the fancy statues, paintings, and polished marbled floors around here, the Vatican’s interrogation room could have been one of my old man’s Boston favorites. Small, plain, and cold. One cop across from me, seated behind a stout wooden table. Another in a chair by the door. Me, in the corner, on an old wooden chair that creaked every time I moved. I had to admire the setup. Still, we’d been at it a solid hour, and they showed no signs of believing a damn thing I said.

  “We know you are an Allied agent,” the guy behind the desk said. For the thirtieth time. He was tall, about my age with short brown hair and a thin slit of a mouth I was thinking about punching. At some other time.

  “Everybody knows that,” I said.

  “You admit this?”

  “What? That everybody knows I’m an agent, or that I am?”

  “That you are an Allied agent.”

  “I’m a US Army lieutenant. Sent here to investigate a murder. I was chosen because I was a detective back home before the war,” I said, repeating myself with a sigh.

  “You were sent to investigate a murder that was already solved? Or were you sent to commit murder?”

  “I haven’t murdered anyone. And do you really think Commissario Soletto solved Monsignor Corrigan’s murder?”

  “You were upset with him, yes? About his handling of the investigation? You argued with him in his office, in front of a witness, yes?”

  “Yes.” It was better to give a short, decisive answer than to argue. It gave him less to work with.

  “And then tonight, you arrange to meet him at the radio station and stab him. Why did you do that?”

  “I didn’t arrange to meet him. Or stab him.”

  “So you claim,” he said, throwing a glance at his partner. His big, silent partner whose eyes bored into me. He was older, thicker at the waist, with a good coat of gray up top.

  “What’s the Italian word for incompetent?” I snuck in the question as he paused. Interrogators don’t like their rhythm being disrupted, and especially don’t want to answer questions. A shoe on the other foot thing. But he spoke excellent English, his only accent hinting at a Brit as his language teacher. Maybe he wanted to show off.

  “Incompetente,” he said. “Now tell me why three of you were needed to kill one man. Or were the other two unwilling dupes?”

  “Is the Vatican City Gendarmerie Corps so incompetente that none of you can find a murder weapon? Soletto couldn’t, and a dozen or so of you couldn’t tonight. If I killed Soletto, what did I do with the knife? There were witnesses within seconds of our arrival.”

  “Ah, within seconds of when you said you arrived. You could have been waiting to ambush the commissario. You stabbed him, hid the knife, then returned with your accomplices.”

  “So the knife would be within a hundred yards or so? Not in the radio tower, since it was filled with people. Outside, in the gardens. How long did it take you to find it? Or is everyone who wears that fancy dress outfit incompetente? ”

  His mouth twisted in an angry grimace as he tried to reply. “Why did you kill the commissario? ”

  “What’s my motive?” I spread my arms in wonderment. “You’re more pissed off at me than I was at Soletto. Are you ready to murder me? ”

  The big guy interrupted, asking a question in Italian. Thin mouth answered and they laughed. I figured the big guy for his boss, and that he spoke English, but not enough to know what “pissed off” meant.

  “Incazzato,” big guy said. “Yes, you are making us incazzato, yes?”

  “I am.”

  “I think maybe you are police in America, as you say.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that you did not kill the commissario.”

  “Yes.” We were on a roll, no reason to interrupt the guy.

  “The little priest, Dalakis. He is with you.”

  “Yes. He’s really British Army.”

  “And the American sergente? ”

  “We ran into him in the gardens. We were all together when we heard the screaming, and ran to the tower.” No mention had been made of the salmon and condensed milk, and I thought it best not to bring it up, out of solidarity with cops of any nation. Made me kind of homesick.

  “Hmmm,” was all big guy said. He nodded to thin lips, who went back to his questioning.

  “Who arranged for you to see Commissario Soletto?”

  “Robert Brackett, the American deputy charge d’affaires. Or he asked the Pontifical Commission, in any case. They assigned Bishop Zlatko to be present at the meeting.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I guess to act as a buffer between us. But Zlatko didn’t seem too glad to see me.”

  “No, the good bishop has made that known,” thin lips said, with enough emphasis to tell me Zlatko might not be his best pal.

  “What did Bishop Zlatko say at the meeting with the commissario? ”

  “He translated, until Soletto got angry enough to use his English.”

  “You make him incazzato too, eh?” big guy said, laughing.

  “It’s a gift,” I said. “The only thing Zlatko actually said to me was to ask about the diamonds.” I watched their eyes for a reaction.


  “What diamonds?”

  “Listen, I don’t want to offend the memory of your boss,” I said. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the memory of a Fascist informer, but I wanted them to ask me, to demand I tell them my theory. That might open their minds to the possibility.

  “Please, speak freely,” thin lips said.

  “One policeman to the other,” big guy said, giving me an encouraging nod.

  “Severino Rossi was a jeweler by trade. He left Vichy France when things got too hot for Jews there. He made his way to Genoa, then on to Rome. All we know about him here is that he was found asleep in the columns, near where Corrigan was murdered. He was covered with an overcoat drenched in blood, but he wasn’t wearing it. When I searched Corrigan’s room, I found a single diamond. My theory is that the killer stole the diamonds from Rossi, who must have converted everything he owned into diamonds, to pay for bribes, papers, food, whatever he needed.”

  “Why did Monsignor Corrigan leave a diamond in his room?” Thin lips was writing in his notebook as he asked the question. A good sign.

  “I don’t think he did. I think the killer planted it there, to draw suspicion away from himself and create confusion. I’d bet that the killer paid Soletto in diamonds to finger Rossi as the murderer and get rid of him quickly.”

  “The blood,” big guy said. He was right with me.

  “Yes, the blood. After the struggle, the killer dragged Corrigan up the steps, into your jurisdiction. And he learned something too.”

  “What?” He said it with a lift of the brow that told me he’d already figured that one out.

  “He made a mess of things stabbing Corrigan. But he finally found the spot. Up through the rib cage, into the heart. Just like the single thrust that killed Soletto, between the third and fourth ribs.”

  “Commissario Soletto searched the monsignor’s room himself,” thin lips said. “But he did so without assistance.” He raised an eyebrow in the direction of his boss, who shrugged that most elegant of Italian shrugs, the one that says, Perhaps, yes, but we will never know, and sadly that is the way of the world.

  “I told Soletto that I had found more diamonds,” I said.

  They looked stunned. Thin lips looked to big guy, who rubbed his chin. “But that was not true,” he said.

  “Right. I wanted Soletto to think the killer had held out on him.”

  Some quick Italian went back and forth between them.

  “It appears, then, that you are responsible, at least indirectly, for the commissario’s murder,” thin lips said, writing in his notebook. “You caused him to press the killer for more diamonds, if we are to believe your theory.”

  “No. Greed caused him to do that. And fear probably caused Corrigan’s killer to take another life.”

  “Fear of being blackmailed?”

  “Maybe. Or fear of someone who would always know what he did.”

  “Colpa,” said big guy. “Guilt.”

  “Yes. Very Catholic, colpa.”

  “Andiamo,” he said to thin lips, who closed his notebook and left the room. “Some things are best said to few people, eh? You think a priest is the killer?”

  “I think it is a man with much to lose. There are others here, but refugees have already lost almost everything. My money is on someone who still has position and power. Otherwise, what would be the point?”

  “Yes, many have taken sanctuary here. Also diplomats. Brackett. He is a little strange, yes?”

  “I’ve heard that. But not strange enough to kill. I don’t think he’s the type.”

  “I agree. He is — malinconico? ”

  “Melancholy. And at times the opposite. I think he has been here too long.”

  “Like the Germans, yes?” He dug out a pack of cigarettes from inside his uniform jacket and offered me one. I declined, but I was glad we were on friendlier terms now.

  “Yeah, like them. You’ll be glad to see them go?”

  “They and the Fascists with them. Italy is in ruins, all for what? Mussolini and his empire? Bah!”

  “I take it you and Soletto didn’t agree on politics?”

  “You must understand this about the Holy See. There are factions and factions within factions. Yet we all work here, in this same space. For the Church. For His Holiness. We fight among ourselves, but never with him. This is not like the world. Not like your world. You should not have come.”

  “A murder was committed. A good man was killed.”

  “Yes, a great loss. But so many people are dead. And now one more. For what? Nothing. The commissario did not bring justice, but he also did not threaten the Holy See.”

  “And I do?”

  “Yes, I think so. Before, all sides balance each other. Capisci? Now you come, and Soletto is dead. Bishop Zlatko speaks against you to the Pontificia Commissione. Maybe the Germans find out about you and come for you. More dead. I do not threaten; I warn. The commissione will act. You go.”

  “How much time do I have?”

  “They like to talk. So I give you one day, no longer.”

  “Then I’d better hurry. May I see the body? Commissario Soletto?”

  His narrowed eyes drilled into me as he ground out the cigarette with his heel. Then he stood, and pulled at his blue tunic, straightening it out. “Let us see if he helps you more dead than when he was alive. Come.”

  We didn’t have to go far. The small morgue was down a dank hallway. An attendant wearing a leather apron was pouring a bucket of water over Soletto’s naked body, laid out on metal table. His clothes were stacked and folded on a nearby desk.

  “Nothing unusual in his pockets,” my new friend said after speaking with the attendant and pawing through the stuff. He leaned over the wound, squinting in the light of the bare bulb above. “Look.”

  It was pretty much as I thought. Between the third and fourth ribs, left center. He clearly duplicated the thrust that finally brought Corrigan down. No wild slashing this time, but one single wound straight to the heart. I felt the attendant’s eyes on me, and realized he was waiting for me to do something holy, but I wasn’t in the mood.

  “That wasn’t a wide blade,” I said. The entrance wound was small, a clean cut. “But sharp.”

  “Of course,” he said. “The misericorde. How stupid of me.”

  “The what?”

  “Let us collect your friends, quickly. I know where the murder weapon is. If it has been returned.”

  I followed in his wake as he shouted orders that gendarmes jumped to obey. Doors slammed and men scattered as he moved upstairs. He introduced himself as Inspector Cipriano and still called me Father Boyle, even though he knew differently. Kaz and Abe appeared, and within seconds we were off, trailed by a couple of gendarmes, the first rays of dawn lighting our way. I really didn’t need Abe tagging along, but I didn’t want to cut him loose either. I had plans for the little crook.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, gasping for breath. Cipriano was damn fast for a big guy.

  “The barracks of the Swiss Guard. Arsenale,” he said, searching for the English word.

  “Armory,” Kaz said, trotting along beside me.

  “What’s a misericorde? ” I asked Cipriano.

  “A kind of medieval stiletto, designed originally to dispatch badly wounded knights,” Kaz said. Of course he would know. “It is from the Latin misericordia, meaning mercy. A long, thin, sharp blade, made for going between the gaps of armor plate.”

  “One was reported missing several weeks ago,” the inspector said. “The Swiss Guard keeps every weapon they ever had. One was gone from their collection of pugnali.”

  “Daggers,” Kaz explained. Abe gave a little upturned hand gesture that the cops couldn’t see. Don’t blame me.

  “Yes,” Cipriano said as we passed through the Medieval Palace, guards snapping to attention. “Then one day it was returned. I thought it was harmless at the time; perhaps one of the men misplaced it, or took it to wear.”

  “Let me guess,�
� I said. “That was right after Corrigan was killed.”

  “I think so, yes. I am un idiota! ”

  I knew what he was feeling. Sometimes the answer was right in front of you, but you couldn’t see it because you’d asked the wrong question. Not where was the knife, but why had someone put it back?

  We entered a courtyard and Cipriano made for the far end marked by a castle tower, which I figured was the armory. There were more salutes and we were taken inside, guided by a Swiss Guard in gray battle dress. The vast room was low-ceilinged with several brick archways dividing the chamber. Rows of rifles were arranged alongside suits of armor, long swords, halberds, and crossbows. Machine guns shared space with pikes and medieval helmets. It looked like the guards hadn’t thrown anything out in five hundred years.

  “There,” Cipriano said, pointing to a rack of knives, all long and thin. “Stilettos, rondels, misericorde. Yes, this is the one that was missing.” He tapped his finger on the pommel and spoke to the guard.

  “May I?” I asked, my hand hovering over the knife.

  “Yes, but hold it carefully. I doubt there will be fingerprints, but just in case. The guard says the armory is locked but there is no sentry. Anyone with a key and access to the barracks could have gotten in.”

  I held the knife by the hilt, bringing it up to the light. Cipriano was right; if someone went to the trouble to replace the knife, he certainly would have wiped it down. This one looked spotless, like the others displayed on the rack. I ran my fingers over them, and the faintest trace of dust showed on the upright hilts. Not so with this one, which was clean as a whistle. I licked a fingertip and rubbed it in the groove where the blade met hilt and grip. Tiny reddish flakes stuck to my skin. Soletto’s blood.

  “This is from the sixteenth century,” Cipriano said as he took the knife from me, wrapping it in a handkerchief. I looked at him, wondering what that had to do with anything.

  “It has killed enough,” he said, sounding sad that this piece of old, cold steel had once again been plunged into flesh. “It has no purpose other than death. Perhaps it feels at home in this century, eh?”

  “How many people have a key to the armory?” Kaz asked. Cipriano kept staring at the knife, as if it might speak to him.