by David Hewson
“If you choose.” Both men looked at the case. It seemed so small, so insignificant.
“Have a good journey, Michael. Call me when you’re settled.”
“Of course,” he answered, and extended a hand. Hanrahan looked at it.
“Come on,” Denney laughed. “I’m not a leper. And you’ve got what you want, haven’t you? No embarrassing revelations. No more scandal.”
Hanrahan took his hand and pumped it in a summary fashion. “Call me.”
“Yeah,” Denney replied as he started to climb into the passenger seat, taking the case with him. “If I don’t just disappear into thin air.”
Fifty-Six
He abandoned the car in the street and dashed through the thickening rain, looking for her, knowing she would be trying to hide. Nic Costa had no idea what was driving Michael Denney to the church but he felt certain his daughter would join him there. Teresa Lupo’s news had cleared his head. He could begin to see a direct, linear connection linking her actions now. When he had time to sit down and think it all through, he would see more. For now that was a luxury. The truth seemed apparent. She was intent on joining her father in his flight from Rome, unaware of the fate Falcone had in mind for Denney.
The crowds milled around the backstreets of the Pantheon, trying to escape the slow, greasy rain. Costa pushed through them, ignoring the curses he got in return, praying she was not already inside. Then, in a narrow alley a minute from the church, he saw her. She wore a silk scarf over her hair and had the collar of her light raincoat up to her face. She was huddled in a doorway, avoiding the rain, avoiding a decision too, perhaps.
He ran across the cobblestones and faced her, holding out his arms, barring the way. Her green eyes were dark in the half-light of the coming storm.
“Sara,” he said, gently taking her by the shoulders. “I know.”
“Know what?” she murmured, pulling away from him.
“There’s no need to pretend anymore. I understand.”
She leaned back against the damp, grimy wall. “Don’t, Nic. I’d rather not hear this.”
He hesitated. There was so little time. “The labs have been looking at evidence. About you. About Gino Fosse. You’re Denney’s daughter, not his lover.” He made sure to see the effect of what came next.
“Gino’s your brother. Did you know that?”
She groaned. “Can’t you ever stop prying?”
“There are people dead, for God’s sake. It’s not done yet. Did you know about Gino?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “Michael… my father told me some weeks ago. He thought it unwise to tell him as well. Gino couldn’t handle himself.
Michael wanted me to know for my own sake. He only told me he was my father last year. Before that I just thought he was a friend from the convent in Paris. Someone who administered the estate of the people I believed were my parents.”
She turned her face toward the wall, fighting back the tears. “You can’t imagine the joy I felt when he told me that. There was a part of me alive, outside myself.”
“A year ago. Exactly when he began to realize he needed help to get out of that place.”
Her green eyes stared into his and he wondered what emotion was there: love, pity, hate? Or a little of all three. “You only think you understand what’s happening, Nic. Stay out of this.”
“No. There’s more. Someone else knew what was going on. When they found out about Gino they had the weapon they needed.”
“What weapon? Gino is… what he is.”
“Perhaps. But he was primed. I know it. Pretty soon I may be able to prove it too.”
“What?” Her head went from side to side. Her eyes were wild. “What are you talking about?”
“This was what they wanted all along. Your father dead. Everything began from that. Gino was just a tool they used to try to make your father run. I know what he was doing for Denney. Driving you to these people. Taking those pictures for blackmail if he needed it. Then handing them to Denney, who used them to try to buy his freedom. What Denney didn’t know was that he was being watched all the time too. By someone who eventually told Gino who you really are. That’s what drove Gino over the edge. He realized what Denney was doing to his own sister. That’s what we’ve been chasing every step of the way.”
“Who would tell him that? Why?”
“Denney’s former friends. Crooks. Maybe some people in authority too. Maybe all three. Why? Think about it. He could put them all in jail. He’s stolen from them. They want to feel safe. Maybe they want payback.”
“Nic!” she said, despairing. “Don’t make this worse than it is. He’s leaving. It said so on the news. They’re letting him go back to the States. He’ll be out of everyone’s life there.” She paused.
“Including mine. I just want to see him before he goes. That’s all. He’s made this arrangement so that we can say good-bye.”
She looked at him in a way he’d forgotten. It was the expression she’d worn when they first met, the one full of suspicion and doubt. The one in which he was a cop, nothing more. “I suppose you know that anyway,” she said bitterly.
He held her hands, not knowing what to say, wanting to believe her.
“You know what I did for him?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“He’s my father, Nic. I thought I could help. The person who did all that… it wasn’t me.”
“I know. I knew all along, I just couldn’t work it out.”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. She was, he realized, embarrassed. “Was I supposed to say no? What wouldn’t you do to save Marco?”
He didn’t say a word. She understood his silence.
“Because Marco would never have asked, would never have allowed such things to happen? You’re right. The trouble is, most of us aren’t trying to be perfect like you and your father, Nic. We accept that we’re flawed. We do our best to cope with that.”
He touched her face, gingerly. “What’s done is done. All I care about now is what’s ahead.”
“I have to see him,” she insisted. “Stay away, Nic. You don’t have to do this for me.”
“If I stay away he’s dead. This isn’t just about you. I’ve lost a partner. I don’t forget things like that.”
She looked down the alley. The rain was falling steadily now. The crowds were dispersing into doorways. “Leave me alone with him. Just for one minute. After that…”
“I can’t. It’s not safe.”
“What is?” she asked. “Nic, this church is where he met my mother. Our mother.” She waited to see his response. “It means something you can’t begin to appreciate. Something that doesn’t concern you.”
He turned away from her, scowling.
“Are you jealous of him?” she asked. “That we’re close, in spite of everything?”
The words hit home. “Maybe. Baffled too. I don’t know how he could do this to you.”
“He was at his wit’s end. He needed my help. He was dying behind those walls. You didn’t see him.”
“This was about help?” he retorted bitterly. “He keeps his existence secret from you for years. He reveals it only when he needs you. Is that an act of love?”
“No, desperation. Sometimes love grows out of despair. He wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I was alone. I’ve been alone all my life. I told you, Nic. We’re not perfect people. We never will be. I didn’t have a family around me like you. I knew when he told me, about my mother, about the choice they were forced to make… I knew I’d do anything for him. Anything.”
“And you still will?”
“Do you think it was easy for me? Sleeping with these people? Knowing I was being watched… used.”
“Then why do it?” He couldn’t keep the note of disapproval out of his voice.
“I’ll never make you understand. We’re too different. My father’s a frightened, vulnerable man. He’s wronged people. He’s wronged me. In a way I can’t explain that made it all simpler. I cou
ld either abandon him, or I could… I could do what he wanted and hope one day he’d be free. I did what I did for both of us. To set him free. To restore to my own life something that had been taken from me. Given the same choices again I’d make the same decision. What’s one night with a stranger if it brings your own father back from the dead?”
“You’re right there,” he admitted. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t do this to me. You’re as frightened of a world on your own as I am. That’s the one thing we do have in common.”
He didn’t argue. He didn’t even want to think about it.
“I want him safe,” she insisted. “And Gino too, whatever he’s done. He doesn’t deserve this.” She looked down the street. “You think the church is where they…” She couldn’t go on.
He scanned the street, looking for someone, anyone, he knew. There were only tourists, skulking in doorways. Perhaps they were there already. “Falcone agreed he could go to the church. It’s insane. In the circumstances. Falcone wouldn’t go along with the idea without a reason.”
“What can you do?”
“Something, maybe.” It wouldn’t be easy. He was on his own. He’d no idea whether the calls he’d placed would work. Or whether they’d been intercepted. “I don’t know, Sara. If it’s Falcone, some enemies he’s made among his own people, some crooks from outside too…”
She was silent. It was impossible for him to guess what she was thinking.
“I’ve talked to some people I can trust,” he replied, struggling to understand the situation himself. “My father’s spoken to some of his contacts. I can’t guarantee this will work. I know I can’t just walk away. Luca’s dead because of what they did. If they get away with killing your father, they get away with everything.”
“You don’t have to be there.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
It happened so suddenly. She reached forward, took his face in her hands and kissed him. He tasted her mouth. Memories flooded back. For a moment he was drowning in them.
“I wanted to tell you,” she whispered. “I despised myself for not having the courage. Don’t hate me for this. Please…”
When she looked at him like this he knew there was no point in protesting, knew he was lost.
“When we get there, when it’s safe, I want a minute with him, Nic. Alone. That’s all. You have to give me that. You have to trust me.”
His fingers gripped her soft, fine hair. “I could never hate you.”
“He’s my father. He’s all I have.”
She kissed him again, hard. He wanted to hold her like this forever, locked tight against each other, perfect, safe, until all the world went quiet.
“You have me,” he said.
The taste of her filled his head. He was lost in her anguished beauty.
Fifty-Seven
The church was in a medieval lane that ran from the Corso Rinascimento, by the side of the Piazza Navona, into the square of the Pantheon. Years ago, city authorities had raised the pavement at each end and turned it into a dark, narrow corridor for scurrying pedestrians who walked in the shadow of the high Renaissance buildings on both sides.
The unmarked police car crossed the Tiber into the dawdling traffic of Vittorio Emanuele, the two men in the front seats arguing about where to park. Michael Denney sat in the rear and closed his eyes, listening, thinking. Then he turned and looked around him. It was impossible to judge but somewhere in the snarl of traffic winding its way out of the Vatican there had to be others. For a moment he thought he glimpsed a Fiat saloon with the brown face and silver beard of Falcone in the rear. Then it flashed past, slipping away over the river in front of them.
He listened to the plainclothesmen getting nowhere nearer a conclusion, then said, “Just park in Rinascimento. It’s closest. I won’t be long. You’re police. I guess you won’t get a ticket.”
The two sets of sunglasses looked at each other. One of them, the man in the passenger seat, turned and asked, “You’re sure you want to go to this place at all? We can take you straight to the airport if you want.”
The driver swore under his breath, hissing at his colleague. The bass roar of approaching thunder rattled down the river and shook the roof of the overchilled car.
“I’m sure,” Denney answered. “This is my church. No one knows it better. And it’s arranged, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want to get you boys into trouble.”
They were silent after that. As they passed the Oratorio dei Filippini, the sky abruptly darkened and thick, black rain began to fall, slowly at first, as if uncertain of its intent, then in heavy, driving columns that rebounded from the pavement. The city looked like the bowl of some fantastic fountain designed by a drunken Bernini. The driver flipped on his headlights. It was now as gloomy as night. He screwed up his eyes and looked for the turning. Denney patted him on the back, guiding, giving advice. The black Mercedes pulled in at the end of the lane. Denney looked along into the black cavern which led to the church, seeing nothing but people racing for shelter from the deluge.
He tugged his jacket around him, took hold of the suitcase below their line of sight and said, “Ten minutes. Are you coming?”
“We’ll see you to the door,” the driver answered. “They said to let you have some privacy inside. Only one way in, one way out of that place. So I guess we trust you. Let’s face it.” The black glasses peered at him. “Where are you going to go?”
His companion said nothing, looking out at the downpour in the street.
Neither of them seemed much minded to remove the sunglasses, in spite of the weather.
“Where indeed?” Denney replied, patting the driver on the back again before opening the door and stepping out into the rain, holding the case out of sight as best he could, hiding it with his body. The two cops followed and immediately dashed under the paltry shelter of a nearby building.
Michael Denney stood motionless for a moment. The rain drenched his gray hair in seconds. He didn’t care. He was free in Rome for the first time in over a year. It made his head feel light. It was a delight beyond anything he could ever have expected. He looked around him. He was the only human being not trying to escape the torrent from the gloomy sky above. It would be so easy to walk away, to try to escape. But the two cops were young. They could soon retake him.
And, as they said, where would he go? He walked along the lane, in the center, not minding how wet he got. The cops dogged his footsteps from a distance, dashing from place to place to avoid the storm. Finally he reached the door to the church.
Denney closed his eyes, remembering her, trying, too, to remember himself all those years ago. A time when he understood a little of the word “love.” So much had been lost in the intervening years.
He threw the little case into the corner, satisfied they hadn’t seen it. “Ten minutes,” he yelled through the rain. “You’re sure you won’t join me?”
“Absolutely sure,” the one who’d been in the passenger seat bellowed back. The driver struggled with a cigarette. The flame of his lighter looked like a frail beacon trying to hold back the night.
Two successive claps of thunder burst over their heads. They pulled their jacket collars up and leaned hard into the wall, staring at nothing but the black stonework with water streaming down its face.
Michael Denney smiled at both of them, then stepped inside, picked up the case, turned left, away from the interior of the church, and walked into the small vestibule. It was, as he had hoped, empty, and just as he remembered it. Even the old sofa, where they’d made love so many times, was still there. He walked to it, touched the ancient, dry fabric, remembering the feel, the scent of her, all those years ago.
“I was a fool,” he said softly to himself. Even so, a small inner voice said, she was dying already. As they coupled with such ecstatic delight on the dusty sofa, the worm of sickness was beginning to turn somewhere inside her. Had they married, she would still be gone, leaving him with two children to
raise, no career, and an exile from his own family.
It would have been worth it, Michael Denney thought. Just for those few short years. Even so, a part of him said that what had happened was for the best. In this place, his route of his life forked in two possible directions, and bitterness lay down both. At least there was a part of her still in his life now, though she was not undamaged, for which he was entirely to blame.
“I’m still a fool,” he said. He put the suitcase on a chair and opened it. Then he took off his jacket, removed the long priest’s surplice and pulled it over his head, letting the black gown fall down toward his ankles. He went into the case again, came out with the hair coloring and dabbed it carefully on his silver head, rubbing in the dark dye, running it through his locks with his fingers, wiping his hand with a cloth when the job was done. He looked at himself in the mirror. His hair had an unnatural sheen to it. Apart from that and a few extra lines, he could have been the priest he was more than thirty years before, ministering to the poor, deprived Irish areas of Boston. An anonymous man. One who hardly merited a second glance.
He smiled at this image of himself. Then he looked up at the boxes on the wall which had, as he hoped, not changed in three decades.
Methodically, working quickly, knowing there could be no delay, he began to turn off the lights in the church, one by one, leaving the switch covering the vestibule till last. Finally he threw that too and San Luigi dei Francesi fell into darkness. From beyond the door he heard noises: cries of surprise in the interior, fear perhaps, and a loud report, like a bulb bursting. Or perhaps a gun. A few people made for the door immediately. The storm had shut down the city by now, he guessed. There would be little light. Caravaggio would have recognized the scene.
When he walked out into the nave it was illuminated only by the spare, warm candlelight of the offerings in the chapels. Something was happening. There was fear in the darkness. Then it occurred to Denney he had forgotten one thing. The switch for the meters on the paintings was separate from the rest. He had left it turned on. Sure enough, there was a round, rich sea of light on one of the canvases: The Vocation of Matthew. It reflected on the image and threw back a waxy yellow tint onto the confused faces of the visitors who had gathered to admire the work.