Shadow of Death

by William Kienzle

  During this outburst, Koesler seemed to be recoiling as he withdrew deeper and deeper inside himself. “Those murders are still in your unsolved file,” he said, almost in an undertone.

  “That’s true,” Koznicki said, as if to himself.

  “Does this mean, then,” Koesler asked at length, “that you will not work with Toussaint?”

  “I have been known to state that I would take a lead from the devil himself if it would help break a case.”

  “Then you will!” Koesler’s relief was evident.

  “But how is this possible? When last heard of, Toussaint was working in San Francisco.”

  “No, he’s here. He’s in Rome. I spoke with him earlier today. He is here to help. He is determined to help. The only question was our cooperation.”

  “I, too, have a question: This man was a suspect in an extraordinarily bizarre murder case. Do we count on him as our ally, or our enemy?”

  “He is in our camp, Inspector. No doubt about it. He, as we, deeply admires Cardinal Boyle. It was Cardinal Boyle who ordained Toussaint a deacon. While he was in Detroit, Toussaint and the Cardinal were comparatively close.” Koesler hesitated, then having obviously reached a decision, continued.

  “I have not had an opportunity to speak with Toussaint at any length, but he does agree with my hypothesis. I don’t know how much he knows . . . or what exactly prompted him to come here . . . but he has come to Rome to try to protect the Cardinal and to stop whoever is responsible for all this. I assure you, Inspector, we will be far ahead of the game with Toussaint in our corner.”

  Koznicki looked searchingly at Koesler. “Then you feel that the Reverend Toussaint’s presence in Rome and his reason for being here confirms your hypothesis?”

  Koesler looked sheepish. “Yes. But I was afraid that if I led with Toussaint you might have rejected the whole idea out of hand. I felt that only if you reached the same conclusion in the same fashion I did—based on your own evaluation of the facts, possibilities, and coincidences—would you be amenable to Toussaint’s collaboration.”

  “You were wrong.”

  “I’m glad,” Koesler said simply.

  “When can we get together?”

  “Tomorrow. After the concelebrated Mass in St. Peter’s.”

  “Not till then?”

  “He told me he had to establish some contacts here. He said he should be able to do so by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “So be it, then. Tomorrow afternoon.”

  5.

  Irene Casey was by no means alone in finding St. Peter’s Basilica incomprehensibly huge. This, the largest church in Christendom, is so big that it is difficult to believe that its dimensions are as colossal as they actually are.

  Here, in St. Peter’s Square, where Irene now stood contemplating the view, one-third of a million people regularly gather at one time to hear the Pope speak. In the center of the square stands the red granite obelisk that Caligula took from Heliopolis and Nero later had placed in the Circus Maximus.

  Then there are Bernini’s columns. The double colonnade surrounding the square consists of four rows of columns and spreads out from the Basilica, opening, as someone once said, “as in an ideal embrace from Christianity offered to the world.”

  The facade of St. Peter’s alone is 374 feet long and 136 feet high. The famous central dome is 139 feet in diameter and 438 feet above ground.

  Inside St. Peter’s, the central aisle is an eighth of a mile in length; a seemingly infinite number of people can be packed into the church. For the usual papal functions, some 70,000 tickets are distributed.

  As she rehashed these figures, Irene studied the ticket she held. It was a pass to this Friday morning’s Mass to be concelebrated by Pope Leo XIV and the new Cardinals. A few thousand of the Cardinals’ closest friends had been invited to attend. The service would include the ceremony of bestowing on each Cardinal his strikingly simple ring of office.

  Irene’s ticket did not disclose much. During this week of juggling tickets to various ceremonial events, Irene, as well as almost everyone else involved, discovered that identical information was printed on every ticket. An announcement of the event for which the ticket would gain admittance, the time, and the place of the event.

  What mattered, everyone soon learned, was the color. Depending on one’s ticket color, one saw, heard, or even participated in the event. Or, one became part of the great unwashed, stuck behind barricades so that if one’s height were not well in excess of six feet, one had a magnificent view of chests, backs, and shoulders, depending on which way people were facing.

  Or, one just might be stuck in Outer Darkness, where many had found themselves for the red hat ceremony, and where many had gnashed their teeth.

  Irene’s ticket to this event was gold. She wondered what that augured.

  “Hi!” It was Pat Lennon. “What color do you have?”

  “Oh!” Irene was startled. “Oh, it’s gold. How about you?”

  “Blue.” Joe Cox did not attempt to conceal his disgust. “Blue has not been kind to us this week.”

  “Mine’s blue, too,” said Lennon, echoing Cox’s tone. “Say,” she continued, “I have an idea. How would it be, Irene, if Joe and I tag along with you? You show the official your gold ticket and we’ll try to follow you in.”

  “It’s all right with me. But do you think it’ll work? Isn’t it risky?”

  Lennon laughed. “They’re not going to throw us into the Sacred Penitentiary.”

  “And besides, if you’re determined, they don’t insist on perfect compliance,” said Cox, missing Lennon’s allusion to the former Vatican office that once dispensed, among other things, indulgences.

  “O.K.,” said Irene, “let’s try it.”

  The three walked briskly toward the basilica.

  As they walked, Irene’s thoughts turned to yesterday’s startling events. She had not been in the Sistine Chapel when Cardinal Gattari had been attacked. As far as her work for the Detroit Catholic was concerned, it didn’t matter that she hadn’t been there. Her paper was a weekly, and by the time it went to press, the world would know what had happened to the late Cardinal. She would cable color stories to her publication. But today, the Cardinal’s death was on everyone’s mind.

  “Wasn’t it terrible what happened yesterday?” Irene said. “Were you there?”

  “Were we there? Joe, here, chased the killer!”

  “No kidding!” Irene turned to look at Cox. “What happened? Did you catch him?”

  “No, I didn’t catch him. But I did learn what dreadlocks are.” Cox threw an indignantly scornful glance at Lennon.

  “Oh, you mean the way a black person’s long hair hangs after it’s washed,” said Irene.

  “How come everybody but me knows about dreadlocks?” Cox spread his hands wide.

  “Oh, don’t feel bad, Joe,” said Irene. “We lived in a mixed neighborhood for years. So I know all about dreadlocks and do-rags and so on.”

  “Look out!” Cox snapped.

  Lennon was forced to literally jump to get out of the path of about fifteen nuns, swiftly advancing in close order drill, heads down and single-mindedly taking the shortest route between two points.

  “Whatinhell was that?” asked Cox.

  “I don’t know their religious order,” Irene smiled, “but those are Italian nuns.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Partly intuition. Plus there aren’t that many national groups that still have nuns dressed from head to toe in yards and yards of wool. And the Italian nuns have a habit of staying close to each other like that contingent.”

  “Like an army of red ants,” Lennon commented. She was not all that happy at having been nearly run over.

  The trio approached one of the officials who was scanning tickets, then sending people off in various directions. Irene flashed her gold ticket and was directed to the left. She was closely followed by Lennon and Cox, neither of whom so much as glanced at the official. No w
ord was said, so they blithely continued on their way. Soon, following the crowd, they entered the right transept, off to one side from the main altar and to the right of the Chair of the Confession. Excellent. Pound for pound, the best seats in the house.

  But the seats were going like hotcakes. With the exception of the first few rows, which were reserved for visiting dignitaries, it was first come first served. Fortunately, there were several chairs together in the third from the last row. Irene, Lennon, and Cox immediately staked their claim.

  “I wonder where we’d be if we’d used our blue tickets,” mused Lennon.

  “Somewhere out there.” Cox indicated the nave of the basilica where sawhorses had been placed to segregate and contain the crowd.

  As Cox looked into the main section of the basilica, his attention was captured by something out of the ordinary in the second section from the front. Several officials were moving the crowd aside to allow a woman carrying a baby to stand at the very edge of the middle aisle. He pointed this maneuver out to Lennon. Neither could fathom what it signified.

  Lennon looked at her watch. “It’s 9:30! This thing was supposed to start at nine! And there’s no sign it’s about to start anytime in the near future.”

  Irene patted her hand. “Dear, tardiness is Continental. But in Italy, it’s an art form. Maybe you’ve read in the past that there has been a good deal of rancor, insults, and even bottle-throwing on Christmas day at the Cave of the Incarnation in Bethlehem. It’s because each of the Christian sects has its appointed hour to celebrate its Christmas liturgy there. The Italians are always late starting and late finishing. Sometimes that becomes the final straw for the Armenian Christians. And then the bottles fly.”

  “Sure,” Cox affirmed, “you remember, honey, the other day when we were lunching with those Italian journalists at the cafe on the Via Veneto. We had to file our regular stories. That guy, what was his name, Valentine, kept saying, ‘One more glass of wine.’ We tried to tell him we had deadlines. As a journalist he certainly should have been able to understand that. Remember what he told us? ‘If there’s any story out there that’s really big, it will find you!’”

  Perhaps it was a combination of the long delay in starting this ceremony, combined with a periodic fluttering of the curtain covering the entrance through which the procession would come. But every so often, with greater frequency as time passed, the crowd would come alive. Someone would shout, “He’s coming!” and the cry would be picked up by others. Only to die away in disappointment.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lennon noticed unusual movement. Two of those small Italian nuns were inching their way down the steps toward the front row. For some reason, she could not take her eyes off them.

  All these false starts were beginning to get on Cox’s nerves. He had been jumpy anyway since yesterday’s turmoil. It happened every time and any time he worked on a hot story as he was with this Gattari killing. He just couldn’t come down quickly from his high. The adrenalin just continued to pump. This—working on a breaking story or uncovering an investigative story—was mother’s milk to him. He could not believe that the death of Gattari was the end of it. There had to be more. And the sequel could come from anywhere. He had to be ready for it. And he was. His restless eyes roamed the basilica. With each false start, with each mistaken cry of anticipation, Cox’s heartbeat accelerated. If only something—anything—would happen.

  “Look! Down there!”

  Cox’s concentration was so intense that Lennon’s screech almost catapulted him out of his chair. Neither Cox nor Irene immediately identified what Lennon wanted them to see even though she was pointing.

  “Down there! The front row!”

  Cox sighted down to the front row directly before them. He saw figure after figure of uniformed or grandly attired people. Heads of state, ambassadors, royalty, and other Very Important Persons. Then, in the midst of the august assemblage, he saw it: the sore thumb. Two, actually.

  “How’d they get in there?” Cox exclaimed.

  “Oh, my dear!” Irene spotted the two little Italian nuns sitting composedly among the VIPs.

  “I’ve been watching them inch down to the first row,” Lennon explained. “They moved in just behind the first row. Behind the very seats they’re in now. When that last false alarm was sounded, the two men sitting there stood and stepped to the railing to see if the Pope was really coming. Now, I’m not kidding, those two crazy nuns vaulted over the backs of the chairs and sat in them! When the two men turned back to their seats, they found them taken. You could see it written all over their faces: What could they do—throw two sweet little old nuns out?”

  By now, Cox and Irene focused on the two very dignified, lavishly bemedaled gentlemen shrugging and making their way out of the front row and moving up the aisle toward the rear of the section.

  The three onlookers had a good laugh.

  Suddenly, “This is it!” Cox heard himself exclaim, though he didn’t quite know why.

  In any case, there was no doubt the procession had indeed commenced. The noise began as with the previous false alarms. But instead of slowly dying out as had the earlier cheers, this one surged and swelled to a mighty roar.

  Cries of “Viva il Papa!” rose from the throats of everyone, including those who did not understand Italian, as well as those who did not even know what they were yelling. As the Pope passed, borne aloft in his sedia gestatoria, flashbulbs and strobe lights exploded throughout the scene, creating the appearance of bolt after bolt of lightning crackling within the basilica.

  Pope Leo XIV all the while beamed an ear-to-ear grin as his chair gracefully swayed from right to left, left to right, right hand tracing benedictions over the crowd, then alternating that gesture with a scooping motion of both hands. They were playing his song. And it went, “Viva il Papa!”

  It was virtually impossible not to be caught up in the excitement. Even Joe Cox, nonpracticing unbeliever that he was, found himself on his feet applauding and popping in an occasional “Viva!”

  Then without warning, the Pope’s chair stopped while the procession of functionaries and prelates moved on toward the altar without him.

  “Look!” cried Cox, with a note of triumph, “the woman with the baby! The woman with the baby! The Pope is kissing the baby! It’s the Designated Baby!”

  That was it. The woman whom Cox had earlier spied being moved to the edge of the middle aisle had lifted her child toward the pontiff. As if by prearrangement, the chair porters had halted before the exact spot where the woman stood. The Pope reached down and took her baby. He kissed the child and returned it to the mother.

  The crowd loved it. There were mixed cries of “ooh!” and “aah!” and the good old faithful, “Viva il Papa!” by the unimaginative, and some explanation by Italians for the benefit of their foreign guests, “Da Papa, shesa lova da bambino!”

  The Pope having demonstrated his love for little children, or at least for this designated baby, the procession moved on as cheers continued to ricochet through the basilica.

  The sedia gestatoria was lowered when the Pope reached the main altar of St. Peter’s. Leo XIV completed two circles around the fringe area of the altar, pressing the flesh of princes and princesses, heads of state, ambassadors, and two small Italian nuns. The strobes and flashbulbs continued to pop, even from the rear of the cathedral whence their light affected only the consolation of the amateur photographers who were popping them.

  Once the actual Mass began, matters not only became more solemn, they grew in beauty. Amplified voices of the Sistine Choir proved this was one of the world’s most exceptional singing groups.

  But Joe Cox had a difficult time concentrating on a ceremony he neither understood nor believed in. His mind and his gaze wandered. He focused on the delegation of American Cardinals in attendance.

  “Pat,” he whispered, “look at the American Cardinals over there.” He gestured in their direction. “Do you notice anything out of the ordinary?�
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  “No, not really. Like what?”

  “You were telling me how the vestments of the Cardinals had been simplified. How, instead of long red robes and ermine capes, they now wear just the red cassock and white surplice, right? Well, with that in mind, look again.”

  Lennon focused more seriously on the group. “Well, I’ll be-that so-and-so from Los Angeles is wearing a gold surplice!”

  “Just in case anyone forgets that California is the Golden State!”

  It was time for bestowing the ceremonial ring of office, a surprisingly simple circle of silver with no stone, only an inscription.

  Since the new Cardinals were in alphabetical order, Cardinal Mark Boyle was the first to be escorted up to Pope Leo XIV. Boyle knelt before the seated pontiff, who positioned the ring while intoning, “Receive the ring from the hand of Peter and know that your love for the Church will be reinforced by love for the prince of the Apostles.”

  Cox thought that a rather self-serving statement. He did not know that diocesan priests, when they are ordained, are not called upon to promise to serve the people to whom they will be sent. Rather, they promise reverence and obedience to their ordaining bishop and his successors.

  Again Cox mentally wandered from the ceremony at hand.

  “Hey, look over there!” He nudged Lennon.

  “Where?”

  “The Chicago Cardinal—what’s his name?”

  “Cardinal William Hitchcock.”

  “Yeah, Wild Bill Hitchcock. I think he’s sitting on two chairs.”

  “Go on!” But as everyone, including Cardinal Hitchcock, stood, it was obvious he had, indeed, been sitting on two chairs. Cox snickered.

  “Joe! Pay attention!” Lennon scolded.

  But there was nothing further to which to pay attention. The ceremony was concluded. The ecclesial dignitaries formed in procession and began the long march out. Again the Pope was carried, surrounded by guards and accompanied by cheers and illuminated by flashbulbs and strobe lights.