The Assassini

by Thomas Gifford

  He wore a soft homburg straight on his head and a black cashmere scarf and black gloves, a black chesterfield with narrow, high-cut arms and very square shoulders. He could have slit a man’s throat with the crease in his trousers. His narrow face was pink in the wind that rustled leaves across the frozen lawn. We headed out past the chapel toward the orchard and the pond beyond where we ice-skated in years gone by.

  “Curtis Lockhardt,” Summerhays began as soon as we were clear of the babble of the house, “saw himself in a great many roles, like an actor moving on from one play to another. But at bedrock he knew he was an old-fashioned fixer with a lineage that ran back to Boston in the years following the Revolutionary War. You might say that Lockhardts had always been fixers, the way other men might work with their hands and could build a shelf or a stair or a chicken coop or a lobster trap.…”

  Summerhays described a man who would always be among those composing the “secret government,” the “government within the government,” and the “Church within the Church.” Lockhardt had learned his lessons at my father’s knee.

  “But,” Drew Summerhays was saying as we stood among the leafless trees in the orchard where my father had found Father Governeau dangling from a limb, “Curtis always reckoned his greatest accomplishment was taking little Salvatore di Mona and turning him into Pope Callistus IV. You had to hand it to Lockhardt, you really did. He set out to buy a pope and, by God, he did.”

  It had come about because he sat on the board of the Conway Foundation in Philadelphia. Lockhardt had watched in curious wonder as Ord Conway, known as “the old fart” by his employees, concluded that he wanted his own personal pope. In the end Ord had turned to Lockhardt and Lockhardt had acquired a pope for 5.8 million dollars and change, fifteen million less than it cost Nelson Doubleday to buy the New York Mets. The fact was, only a very few people even knew you could buy a pope. Ord lived two years into the reign of Callistus IV, but then, it was common knowledge that life positively abounded with amusing ironies.

  For a time Lockhardt had thought Ord Conway a somewhat dim, conventional old Fascist, the weak tail-end to a great family line. Ord simply liked the Church the way it had been when he was a kid working on his catechism. Lockhardt watched the process, sensed the man’s degree of commitment to undoing a few reforms and reversing the trend toward what he called “a democratic Church.” Ord had always said that democracy was all right in its place, but, goddammit, the Church wasn’t the place. “Catholics,” he used to say, “ain’t supposed to vote on what the fuck they’re gonna believe! They ain’t got a say in it—that’s the whole damn point!”

  Lockhardt was working on a plan. The realization that Conway was only trying to bring back the old days and make peace with his own psyche made him the perfect tool. There was a lovely symmetry to the elements. Conway wanted to believe he would see a return to the Church of his boyhood. Monsignor Andy Heffernan wanted to get on the inside track to a cardinalate. And Lockhardt wanted to preserve the status quo, more or less. It would take some money, but that was no problem: Ord Conway was begging to be separated from some of his. And there would have to be a deal made: the nature of things demanded it. Curtis Lockhardt was in his element.

  The birth control clinic in Bolivia was the perfect vehicle. It was liberal but not too liberal. That was a sign of how much things had changed. A lot of Catholics in positions of power, if not in that bastion of bureaucratic conservatism the Roman curia itself, believed the clinic was a strong, socially responsible step. It no longer was in opposition to the great subtext of Church teachings, not since Pope Paul’s commission, which had been the pivotal event of the Church’s recent history.

  Curtis Lockhardt loved nothing more than putting these puzzles together. Give him just a few oddly shaped pieces and he could put his flair to work. He could fix it. Not for nothing had Cardinal Salvatore di Mona, on the eve of his subsequent election, told Lockhardt that he had missed his calling. “You belong in this scarlet robe, my dear Curtis, this robe and this biretta. There’d be no stopping you.”

  Lockhardt had been pleased. “But there’s no stopping me in any case, Eminence.”

  But that moment came long after Lockhardt had seen a way of using Paul VI’s poor battered soul as a lever in what he’d come to think of as the Conway affair.

  It had begun with John XXIII. It had been his birth control commission to begin with. Then it had passed to Paul, who increased its size, removed it from Vatican Council control, and thereby made it hugely important. The world’s Catholics had been turning to the pill all through the sixties, tens of millions of Catholics ignoring the official teachings of the Church. Now Paul’s commission had a mandate from the pontiff himself to find a loophole in official doctrine—to find a way to make honest Catholics once again of all those practicing birth control. Obviously, if Paul had wanted no change in doctrinal interpretation, he’d have “dropped the commission in the Tiber,” as one cardinal observed at the time.

  When the commission’s report was complete, they had indeed found the loophole, concluding that as long as a whole marriage relationship was open to the bearing of children, then each individual act of intercourse within it did not have to be open.

  That was it, the crucial doctrinal breakthrough that might have brought the Church, in Lockhardt’s view, fully into the twentieth century. And might have returned so many of the faithful back to the fold.

  But Paul’s conscience—and the backstage maneuvering of Vatican conservatives playing on that conscience—had caused him, miraculously, to ignore the commission’s report. His encyclical, Humanae Vitae, utterly rejected the commission’s findings and delivered the Church a blow from which it had not yet recovered. There was always a turning point, Lockhardt believed, and in his view Humanae Vitae had marked the end of the old conservative Church. It was now going to go one way or the other, backward or forward. Either the Church would remain in the hands of the conservatives and crumble to dust, or it would be seized by the moderates and liberals who had a vision of a new future and a changing, adapting Church.

  The issue was far from decided—the turning point might, after all, last for years, decades—when the Conway affair began. Lockhardt had seen it all at once, the beginning and the middle and the end, one afternoon at the Conway Foundation board meeting. It must have been akin to the moment when I’d suddenly grasped the pure essence of football. Lockhardt had had his game and I mine.

  “It was at this point,” Summerhays said as we stood looking out across the shallow iced pond toward the gray horizon, “that Lockhardt turned to a couple of fellow board members—your father and me—and suggested a drink once the meeting was over. Lockhardt modestly believed that Hugh Driskill and I were his only equals at fixing things on earth.”

  The three of them met at a club Lockhardt used in Philadelphia. Hugh Driskill had listened quietly, then said, “The question, Curtis, is simply this. Can you convince Ord Conway that you can trade a birth control center in Bolivia and six million bucks for his idea of a fairly conservative pope?”

  “I can.”

  “All right, Curtis,” Hugh Driskill said, cocking an eye at Summerhays. “Tell us how.”

  Like so many great ideas, it was essentially simple.

  Conway would present six million dollars to the Church, via the good offices of New York’s Monsignor Heffernan. It would be earmarked for the birth control center, which would co-opt some moderate, progressive third world cardinals, some European intellectuals. But the money would in fact be used to collateralize a loan from a Roman bank to a bank in Panama and then shipped on to the Bolivian government. Conway’s six million dollars would exist both on that piece of collateral paper and in another guise as well—would in fact become twelve million dollars. Or more. The point was, men like Lockhardt and Hugh Driskill and Summerhays and Cardinal D’Ambrizzi, who oversaw for the pope L’Instituo per le Opere di Religione—the Institute for Religious Works, as the Vatican Bank was euphemistically
called, understood how you had to do business when it came to the Vatican.

  “What was the second six million for?” Summerhays asked rhetorically. His eyes were fixed on a dog testing the ice of the pond, venturing out carefully, shaking each forepaw as it went. “To buy a pope. Your father and I agreed, Ben. It bore the stamp of a master.”

  In those days Octavia Cardinal Fangio presided over the Sacred Congregation for Bishops, which was located in a small square called the Square of Pius XII, the Savior of the City, just off St. Peter’s. Fangio was a moderate, pragmatic, relatively greedy man who had more influence in the naming of bishops than any other man in the world. Popes took his advice and he was good at his job. From the ranks of his favorites came not only the bishops and archbishops but the cardinals as well. Fangio had let it be known that he was a candidate for the papacy—one of the papabili—but he was too young and he knew it. In another ten or twenty years, Fangio would no longer be too young and he would have made a lot of friends.

  Hugh Driskill tumbled to it first. “You want to make the six million available to Fangio?”

  “In a way,” Lockhardt said. The fact was, Fangio’s brother Giovanni was a failed lawyer in Naples. Substantial investments had bottomed out for him. The villa in the mountains, the ancestral home, might be lost. Some of the six million would save the villa and set poor Giovanni back on his feet once again.

  “And,” Hugh Driskill murmured, “you suggest a small quid pro quo from Cardinal Fangio.”

  The pope had recently announced a new consistory—the selection of twenty-one new cardinals to replenish the dwindling supply. Lockhardt suggested that he, Hugh Driskill, and Summerhays might discuss these prospective cardinals with a couple of curial friends and Cardinal Fangio, arriving perhaps at the names of fifteen mutually acceptable candidates. For his efforts Fangio would salvage his brother and simultaneously create a hard core of support for his own papal candidacy when somewhere down the long road, when Lockhardt’s present candidate had passed from the scene, his own candidacy would arise. And in the meantime the fifteen would vote as Fangio suggested. Monsignor Andy Heffernan could gain in Fangio an enormously valuable friend on a very fast track which led toward a cardinal’s red hat for himself. Everybody would win, including Ord Conway, who would have in effect named the pope, at Lockhardt’s suggestion, of course.

  Summerhays turned and stared back through the naked orchard to the house. Darkness was drawing in on us. “Lockhardt spent a year or so putting this all together. And Fangio’s men had proven good soldiers. And so it was, Ben, that Sal di Mona, an organization man, a good listener, a moderate, had become Callistus IV. And now Curtis Lockhardt was coming to New York to meet with Andy Heffernan while Callistus lies dying in Rome. Curtis knew the game was afoot again, don’t you see? But now he won’t know how it all turns out. Still, as the English would say, Curtis had a good innings.” He sighed and looked at his watch. “Time to be going. Well, Ben, a word of advice in your ear. Get past all this as quickly as possible—Val’s death, I mean. She’s gone and she had a good innings, too. Don’t you see? There’s dangerous business here, serious players. Just step back and make it easy on yourself. Don’t try to make sense of all the chips on the floor. You’ll never succeed, you’ll never see the outline of her killer. Speaking as one, to a man who once was one, let me say it’s the Catholics, Ben. Best leave them to their own devices. Life’s too short as it is.”

  He took my arm. He felt nearly weightless. Almost as if he’d begun to depart already, preparing for the final exit.

  On the way back to the house I showed him the snapshot Val had left behind. He shook his head, said it meant nothing to him. He did identify D’Ambrizzi but his mind was on other matters. What difference could an old photograph make?

  6

  DRISKILL

  The day after my sister’s funeral was clear and cold and bright. I’d finally gotten to sleep the night before, but it hadn’t been easy. My circuits were overloading and in the courtroom of my mind Drew Summerhays had been the last witness. Before I fell asleep I’d decided what I had to do. Only then had I realized—there had never been any doubt, none at all.

  Monsignor Sandanato was in New York paying a courtesy call on Archbishop Cardinal Klammer. Sister Elizabeth was leaving for Rome that afternoon. I wanted to tell her my plan and if possible enlist her help. I wasn’t prepared for it all to go wrong.

  We were waiting for Father Dunn to pick her up. He said his car knew the way to Kennedy. The house was quiet and in the Long Room bowls of fresh flowers brightened things a bit. Sun streamed through the windows. There was a glare from outside and it was bitterly cold, the ground frosty and white. We were approaching a record low. I’d sent the Garritys home at noon and Margaret was attending to business at her HQ at the Nassau Inn. She handled the press and television people there. Sam Turner had kept the lone guard on duty outside. Sam was planning to keep him there until, in his words, everything blew over.

  “Ben, it’s been good seeing you,” she said. She was dressed for travel, as she’d been when she arrived on Halloween night. “I wish I didn’t have to go back now … everything seems so unfinished. But I’ve got to get back to the office. Callistus could die at any moment and then everything in my world will hit the fan—I’ve got to be there. But”—she put her hand on my arm, looked into my face with her searching green eyes—“I’m worried about you. I’ve been thinking about what you said, how you’re ruthless, your father’s son, and I’m wondering.” She dropped her hand and stepped back from me as if she were suddenly embarrassed at having come too close, figuratively and literally. “So, I suppose you’ll be going back to work yourself—” The sound of her voice had changed, grown remote.

  “Not for a while,” I said. “I’m taking a leave. I was on the phone to my partners this morning. You’re right, Sister. It’s unfinished. It’s barely begun. I’m going to see it through. I’m going to finish it.”

  She looked up at me, startled, as if I’d cried out. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to find out who killed my sister.”

  “How? What can you possibly do?”

  “She would have wanted me to try. That’s why she left me the snapshot, remember? I’m not going to let her down. That’s all.”

  “You’re wrong, you know.” She dropped the words on me with precision. “Val would never have wanted you to put your life in danger. Oh, it sounds fine and I don’t blame you—you’re going out there and avenge her death. But face it, Ben, you don’t have any real chance. The man is gone, there’s nothing to follow.…”

  “Look, I know what I’m doing—”

  “Oh, Ben! Please just leave it! I’ve been thinking, too. I was up all night thinking, and it really hit me for the first time that Val was killed. Three people have been killed … and maybe all of it had to do with whatever Val was doing. Killing you would mean nothing to them at this point. And you know nothing about them, but they’re watching you—don’t you realize that? They could kill you anytime they want.” She looked at me, perplexed, as if I were a backward schoolboy. “If you get too close, Ben, do you think they’d hesitate to kill you? Try to understand, this is like one of Dunn’s novels.… Please leave it, Ben, just leave it!”

  “I’m not going to argue with you, Sister. I’m going to see this thing through. Let’s not quarrel.”

  “All right, suppose you do—what then? You learn what’s going on, they kill you. Look, Val knew what she’d gotten into, she knew the risks but she believed it was worth it. Ben, for God’s sake, you don’t even know what she thought was so important—”

  “You’re wasting your breath,” I said.

  “I wish you’d just leave it to the authorities—”

  “They haven’t a hope in hell and you know it. You seriously think Val would have wanted me to walk away from this?”

  “Val’s dead, Ben. She’s out of the game. Listen to me. Val … was … rash. She was brave but she was foolh
ardy—and I’m not. I hope to God you’re not. She was out manning the barricades while I was observing, writing about it. Just because she pushed something too far and was killed—that doesn’t mean we are honor bound to follow in her footsteps.… I know myself and I know I wasn’t cut out to die for my principles. Were you? Really?”

  “I’m not doing this because of my principles. I don’t give a damn what my sister found out about your damned Church—”

  “A madman in the Church—maybe. But not the Church itself! I won’t listen to that, Ben, I just won’t—”

  “All right! Christ! Somebody killed my sister and somebody’s going to pay! Why can’t you see that, Elizabeth? It’s simple enough.”

  “And why can’t you see that the person most likely to pay is you?”

  “Then you’ve made up your mind,” I said. “You’re going to just walk away from it.”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  I shrugged.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m going to walk away from it—they’re not going to carry me away from it. And I’m going to get on with my life—real life. The police can handle this, and there’s the Church itself.… In Rome, when Sandanato makes his report, when they hear what Dunn’s got to say, they’re bound to do something.”

  “You could write about it. You were Val’s best friend. You have a magazine—”

  “Write wild suppositions about killer priests and torn pieces of raincoat and tattered snapshots and even a bestselling priest at the scene of the crime … you think I should write this? Ben, come on! There’s a time to be realistic and this is it. It’s one thing to sit around a table in the middle of the night making up a plot. It’s something else to—”

  “You simply don’t care anymore, do you? It’s become inconvenient for you—”

  “That’s a hateful thing to say, Ben. The truth is, I’ve had time to think, time to get things in perspective.”