A Season for the Dead nc-1

by David Hewson

  She never spoke when she was in the car. She never said anything after a visit, whether it was to Denney or someone on the Cardinal’s list. She simply sat there, as lovely and serene as a portrait in a church.

  Then things got bad with Denney, and Gino Fosse was driving only occasionally, when there was no one else for the job or the destination was too delicate.

  A month ago, in disgrace for nothing more than a rough encounter with a hooker, he’d been exiled to the place in the Clivus Scauri. They had given him the ridiculous and mind-numbing task of comforting the dying and the bereaved in the hospital at the top of the road. And he’d begun to change, begun to understand that he was becoming something else.

  It started two weeks before, in the dark echoing belly of San Giovanni in Laterano, taking a break in the church from the weary round of hospital visits. In front of him was the papal altar with its ornate Gothic baldachino. Behind a curtain, the history books insisted, were the heads of Peter and Paul, preserved in silver reliquaries. Gino Fosse had stared at this hidden space, wishing he could see into it.

  From his childhood in Sicily to his present unhappy state in Rome, the Church had enfolded him constantly, warming his nights with its comforting promises, easing his mind when the demons—and demons there were, real ones with horns and gleaming teeth—came to him and forced his hand, made him mad and bold and violent. One needed imperfect people in the world. Without them the Church would lose its meaning. Everyone would go straight to God and learn nothing, feel nothing, along the way. Peter and Paul were no strangers to anger and deceit. One had denied the Lord not once but three times, the other was a persecutor of Christians, a supreme, cruel servant of the Roman state. And now they were saints. Now their mummified heads rested in silver caskets in a hidden partition of the canopy that stood before him.

  Gino Fosse would recall this moment for the rest of his life. It was here, in the black maw of San Giovanni, that something wormed its way into his soul, wound itself around his neck and whispered in his ear what he already half suspected: He was a fool and worse. It spoke of what he had done on the sweaty bed in the medieval tower on the Clivus Scauri. It taunted him with the bright, vivid memories. It reminded him of the sinful ecstasies: the warmth of a woman panting on his neck, the feel of her flesh against his as he writhed and moaned above her. And it asked: Where, in all this delight, is the sin? Where, in all this feverish, mindless conjoining of bodies, was there room for the old, dead myths passed down by generations of men whose primary purpose was to serve themselves?

  There were no heads in the canopy’s reliquaries. Or if there were, they belonged to some hapless corpses which had been appropriated for the sake of the Church. Peter and Paul were distant shadows. If they lived, they may never have come to Rome. If they were martyred, their remains were now dust on the wind, particles inhaled and exhaled by black and white, young and old, Christian, Muslim and atheist. These early martyrs weren’t hiding inside an ornate metal container in some vast, overweening basilica in Rome.

  He was deceived. And if they tricked him about this, what else was true?

  He found himself sweating. His head ached. His eyes burned. When he looked down at the marble floor to make sure it was still there, it seemed to shift beneath his feet like water moving in a slow and relentless swell.

  They lied. Every one of them.

  He was amazed it had taken so long for him to see through their deceit. At that moment, Gino Fosse burned with anger and shame and there was scarcely a waking second afterward when these bitter, acrid sensations abated. Then, later, there was the ultimate revelation, in a smaller, darker place, with the Irishman’s dank, tobacco-stained breath in his ear, bringing with it a new and terrible kind of sense and order.

  It was in the basilica of San Giovanni that he began to lose the faith of his childhood and that was worse than anything he could imagine, worse than going blind or becoming a cripple. In a few terrifying moments, he was transformed. He became an outsider, a man beyond the Church that had been a kind of parent to him for as long as he could recall. From this point on, he would live outside the normal bounds of humanity.

  Yet a faith remained, hidden, silent, waiting for him to recognize it.

  Later, when that occurred, Gino Fosse would know he was not alone. In his soul there was a profound, inexplicable certainty. Beneath all the trickery there was a God, one Peter and Paul knew and the modern world had forgotten. Not the God of bureaucrats and basilicas. Not the God of love and reconciliation, the comforting face of Jesus hanging over a child’s bed. The true God still lived on from the Old Testament, a supernatural deity, angry, vengeful and hungry, ready to punish those who betrayed Him. This God would become a constant presence inside Gino Fosse’s head, his one bulwark against a cruel and shallow world. From time to time He spoke, offering the promise of eventual redemption. He accompanied Gino when the work began, wakeful and watching in the church on Tiber Island, on the shore of the dead river, in the upstairs room where the sinning bitch Alicia Vaccarini would take her first step on the road to deliverance.

  And He took them all to His bosom, even the vilest. The bloody harvest served its purpose. All were, against their own instincts, snatched from the darkness to His side.

  Fosse thought about this as the red hair of the prostitute bobbed beneath his hand. One day it would be his turn and he would go willingly, knowing his sins would be washed clean. This was a world of shadows, an unreal, transitory place of stinking bodies and vile physical couplings. He was a part of it, and a part of Him too. The reconciliation of these two was under way.

  She moved more rapidly. He felt the heat rise and pushed her away.

  She went to the sink. He listened to the sound of her there. It seemed an act as commonplace as brushing one’s teeth. This woman’s body had been subverted for a purpose. He was stunned by the realization that she was not to blame.

  “What are you called?” he asked across the room.

  She turned and looked at him, puzzled. “You want to know my name?”

  “Is that so odd?”

  “You bet.” Her voice had an odd, tinny quality, as if she struggled with the soft vowels of Italian.

  “Well?” he insisted.

  “Irena.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Kosovo,” she answered a little nervously.

  “Orthodox? Or the other?”

  “Neither,” she said sharply. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Just asking.”

  “Where I come from you don’t ask that. Good people don’t. Just the ones looking for someone to kill.”

  “I’m sorry.” There was a lifetime of fear and grief inside her. He could see it behind her pretty, blemished face. “My name’s Gino,” he told her. “I won’t hurt you, Irena. I just want you to do something for me. Here…” He pulled out a sheaf of notes from his jacket pocket. She stared at them. It was big money for her, he guessed. They had been generous and he’d robbed from Alicia Vaccarini’s purse too. “What do you make in a day?”

  “A hundred and fifty. Two hundred sometimes. Maybe more.” She toyed with her hair. “Don’t get to keep it. I’m not what you’d call top-shelf goods.”

  There was something else inside this damaged half-child. Something still young, still unspoiled, in spite of everything. “Looks don’t matter. It’s what’s in here”—he patted his heart—“that counts. And you don’t look bad either.”

  “Thanks.” The pebble teeth shone wanly in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the window.

  “Here’s three hundred. You get this every day you’re with me. In exchange, you don’t turn any tricks. You just do what I say.”

  She came over and took the money. There was a stupid, puzzled smile on her face. “If I do some tricks, we get more money,” she said.

  He took her arm gently. “No tricks.”

  She smiled. “Okay. It’s fine by me.”

  “Now. Go get me a phone book. I want s
ome wine too. Red. Sicilian. Some bread, cheese. Whatever food you like. I don’t care.”

  “Sure,” she said, grinning. “And when I come back we’ll have fun. I’ll show you things. Things you don’t get in Italy.” A black, angry look rose on his face. She took a step back. “But only if you want…”

  “If I want,” he repeated.

  She scuttled out of the room hastily. It was almost two hours before she returned with what he asked for. Surreptitiously he stood next to her, letting the smell enter his nostrils. He expected a stink to her, of sweat and something else he recognized, and a guilty look in her lost eyes. There was nothing. She looked up at him, smiling, then, for no reason at all, kissed him on the cheek.

  “What was that for?” he asked.

  “For being kind,” she told him.

  She lived in a lost world too, one in which an absence of cruelty counted as gentleness. She was a part of a greater mechanism, small, unimportant. She was, in a sense, very like him.

  Thirty-One

  Nic Costa and Luca Rossi stood in the Via di Porta Angelica, watching the Swiss Guards kicking their heels in the private entrance to the Vatican quarters opposite. Only three days before they had been in St. Peter’s Square seeking out bag-snatchers. That seemed a lifetime ago.

  The city had turned strange and deadly since. Their own relationship had shifted toward sourness too and, it seemed to Costa, that change stemmed from more than his newfound assertiveness. The big man was unhappy, deeply unhappy, and reluctant to explain why.

  Rossi cast an evil glance at the blue uniforms across the street, then complained, “If you hadn’t had that damned scanner stuck to your ear none of this would have happened.”

  “None of what?” Costa asked, dumbfounded. “You mean these four people would be alive? And all the world would be sweet and peaceful? All because I left the scanner at home?”

  “Maybe,” Rossi grumbled. “Who’s to know?”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, kid. You wouldn’t have that hole in your shoulder and a face that looks like you’ve been head-butting the wall all day. And you wouldn’t have that woman stuck in your father’s house, messing up your imagination all the time.”

  “That’s crap, Rossi.” He heard the harshness of his own voice and heard too how he’d used the big man’s surname. It was all so foreign.

  “Yeah, it’s crap,” Rossi shot back. “Here’s some more crap too. I talked to a couple of criminal friends of mine early today. Asked them if the name Cardinal Michael Denney meant anything. You know what? I was right. It’s not just us that gets twitchy every time we hear about this cardinal. There are whole brigades of bad bastards out there itching to get their hands on him. Except they don’t really want the conversation side of things. They just want to tear the heart out of his chest and leave it somewhere for the rats to gnaw on. He screwed some important people very badly and they don’t take kindly to that sort of thing. Are you listening to what I’m saying? There’s a bounty on this guy, kid. You could probably pick up fifty thousand dollars or more if you handed him over to a couple of thugs right now.”

  Costa pointed to the Vatican gate. “So why don’t they just walk in and do it? We stay out because we have to. It’s not like it’s a fortress in there, except where the boss lives. They could go in if they wanted.”

  “Get real.” Rossi was shaking his head, looking at him with contempt. “You don’t understand a damned thing, do you? These people who want Denney, they’re all good Catholics to a man. Sure, they kill. They maim. They steal. They sell people stuff that ruins their souls. But they think of themselves as honorable men. They’ve got rules. They don’t even kill cops unless they have to, though judges, that’s a different thing. These guys have got a code and it says that place in there’s safe. As far as Denney’s concerned he’s living in some mink-lined sanctuary as long as he’s behind those walls. He’d just better not step out, that’s all. Or if he does, he’d better be gone from here real fast and surface someplace else looking nothing like he did before.”

  Costa felt tired. His shoulder was aching. A vein was pumping through the bruise on his temple. “So what?”

  The big man leaned down into his face. “So we take care, Nic. We watch what we say, what we do, who we trust. This is a complicated world.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.” Costa looked at his watch. “Right now I have an appointment. I’ll catch you tomorrow.”

  “I can come along,” Rossi unexpectedly offered. “No problem. I don’t mind.”

  “You heard what Falcone said? He wanted me there, alone.”

  “Yeah. I heard what Falcone said. I can still come. We’re supposed to be partners, aren’t we?”

  But they weren’t. Something had happened to open up a gulf of mistrust between them. “I appreciate the offer, Uncle Luca. Don’t get me wrong.”

  The big man snorted as if he were expecting the rejection. “Sure. Nice to be appreciated. Well, you just go do what Falcone wants, and make sure you do it to the letter. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Luca? What’s wrong?”

  The flabby, bloodless face fell. Luca Rossi looked lost. “Nothing. Everything. This stupid job. You. You more than anything, if you want the honest answer.”

  Costa was silent. He felt hurt and responsible too somehow.

  “When this is over, Nic, I want a change. Maybe they can give me a job somewhere pushing paper. I’m sorry. I lied. It’s not just you. It’s this line of work. It depresses me. It follows me everywhere. I want to sleep at night. I want to sit in a park and not notice the hypodermic needles on the ground. I want to go for a walk and never wonder why some creep is standing by a car on the other side of the road, handing stuff out to kids who happen by. Most of all I want to meet women who talk about their clothes and where they shop, not about whom they dissected that morning and what they found in his gut.”

  “If you date a pathologist…”

  Luca Rossi sighed. “Yeah. Point taken. I’m stupid. Sorry. Sure you don’t want to reconsider my offer?”

  “And get ourselves into deeper shit with Falcone?”

  “Sometimes,” Rossi said, “you have to be your own man.” It sounded like the kind of thing his father would say. Rossi waited until he saw there was going to be no answer. Then he turned on his heel and shambled off toward the metro station and the long journey back to the apartment in the suburbs.

  Nic Costa watched him go, asking himself what he could do to repair this breach. He wasn’t ready to lose Luca Rossi just yet. He needed some pillars in his life. In the brief time they had known each other, he had become convinced this sad, big man could fit the bill somehow. Partly because they could, Nic thought, learn to lean on one another from time to time.

  Disconsolate, he looked at the gate into the Vatican. Hanrahan stood there, in a dark suit, watching him from across the road. Nic Costa remembered why he was here, threaded his way through the tourists, sweating in their shorts and T-shirts, wandered down to the piazza and, for the third time in four days, found himself in a foreign country.

  They walked along a narrow road running parallel with the main public street. The tall buildings on either side cast some welcome shadow on the pavement. The place was deserted. The crowds and the visitors were elsewhere, in St. Peter’s and the grand piazza outside. These were the administrative quarters of the Vatican state, with a few blocks set aside for residences.

  Hanrahan looked him up and down. “You’ve been in the wars.”

  “Nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad too that you took my offer of last night seriously. You’ll find me a good friend, you know. I’ve a little influence beyond these walls. I know people who don’t cross your path ordinarily. You never know when I might be able to help.”

  Costa looked skeptical.

  “Now, now,” Hanrahan continued. “A friendship has to be based on some kind of exchange. Otherwise it’s
not friendship at all. It’s just one person using another. This is the oldest kind of relationship in the world, Nic. I give you something, you give me something back.”

  “Something you owe me anyway, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Hanrahan opened the door to a gray block that could have been an office building. “But you are, Nic. I don’t have to give you anything. Please remember that. It’s most important.”

  Nic walked inside. Hanrahan followed. They were in a dark, narrow stairwell with ancient stone steps leading up. Costa’s surprise must have shown on his face.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” the Irishman said. “You’re thinking, what’s a cardinal of the Catholic Church doing living in a dump like this? Do you know something, Nic? Our man here’s asking himself the same question too.”

  “And the answer?”

  Hanrahan held his arms open wide. “We all pay for our transgressions in the end. What more can I say?”

  They went up to the third floor. Hanrahan rang the bell. Nic saw an eye glint at the peephole, heard two sets of chains rattle, then watched the heavy wooden door fall back to reveal the slim form of Cardinal Michael Denney. The Cardinal looked more like an old matinee star than a churchman. He had a fine, chiseled face that was still handsome in spite of the lined cheeks and the wrinkles at the corners of a straight and humorless mouth. His lips were gray and thin, his teeth when he smiled briefly white and perfect. He had a full head of straight, silver hair cut unfashionably long so that it hung over his ears and his collar. He was a tall man with the slight stoop that came from perpetually looking down to the people he was addressing.

  “Come in,” he said in an educated American accent.

  Nic Costa walked through and found himself in a modest apartment, meagerly decorated save for a few expensive-looking paintings that were, he decided, Denney’s own. Then he looked more closely and saw one that was familiar: a copy of Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, the same canvas that had caught Luca Rossi’s attention as they left San Luigi dei Francesi. There was a threadbare three-piece suite, a low table in front of the sofa, and a small desk covered in papers. The two main windows were small. Even on this bright, dazzling day Denney needed the extra illumination of a lamp to work at the desk. The place was minuscule, smaller even than Nic’s own home. Denney had surely come down in the world.