by John Case
Azetti pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch. ‘I have confession until eight,’ he said. ‘If you’ll come back this evening, I’ll translate it for you.’
‘Couldn’t you just –’
Azetti shook his head. ‘I can’t. It’s a small town, and by now they’re lined up three deep.’
‘Father –’
‘It’s waited thousands of years. It can wait a little longer.’
28
HE NEEDED TO think. Or, better yet, to not-think.
The priest had been trying to tell him something without breaking his vows. Something about the different hats Baresi wore and the way they came together. But it didn’t make sense. Or, if it did, Lassiter couldn’t see it.
He needed to run.
That was what he did when he faced a problem that he couldn’t solve. He put his mind into neutral and he ran. As often as not, the solution came to him unbidden, a gift.
But he wasn’t going to run in Montecastello. He’d have to circumnavigate the town half a dozen times to cover any distance. Besides, the cobblestones were ankle breakers, even in dry weather, and the streets were so filled with turns that it would be impossible to establish a pace. As for the road leading out of town and down the hill, nothing could tempt him to take it: He might as well throw himself off a cliff and climb back up.
So he did the next best thing. He got into his car and drove aimlessly out of town in the general direction of Spoleto, trying not to think, hoping the answer would come to him. Driving sometimes worked, although as a meditative technique, it was not as reliable as running.
According to the map, Spoleto was forty kilometers away, about twenty-five miles. Which was perfect, Lassiter thought. An hour out, an hour back. Take a walk around town.
But no. What the map didn’t show was the mountain range separating the two towns. The road between them was a series of switchbacks on an asphalt track carved into the mountainside. The dropoff at the side of the road was heart-stopping. And while the trip was beautiful, it took him an hour and a half to reach a sign that read, SPOLETO – 10 KM. Even so, he forged on until he found himself behind an underpowered truck that proved impossible to pass, condemning him to climb the mountain in a fog of diesel fumes. Finally, he reached an Agip station about five miles west of Spoleto and turned around. All that was left of the daylight was a faint blush behind the mountains. The dashboard clock read six-fifteen.
‘You just missed him,’ Hugh said as Lassiter came into the pensione.
‘Who?’
‘Didn’t leave his name, I’m afraid. Said he was a friend.’
Lassiter looked at him. ‘I don’t have any “friends” over here,’ he said. ‘Did this guy leave a message?’
‘No. He said it was a surprise. Then he asked where he might find you, and . . .’ Hugh frowned. ‘I said you’d gone to see the padre.’
Lassiter became very still, and seeing that, Hugh winced.
‘That was a mistake, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know. What did he look like?’
‘Big. Enormous.’
‘Italian?’ Lassiter asked.
Hugh nodded.
‘Is there a back way out?’ Lassiter asked.
Hugh blanched, then nodded vigorously. ‘Yes,’ he said, and led the way down the corridor, through the kitchen, and into the street behind the pensione.
‘I’m terribly sorry, Joe.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Lassiter replied, and started jogging toward the church.
Before long he found himself in a cul-de-sac whose only illumination came from the light that fell from a window high above the street. Overhead, the moon scudded behind a thick blanket of clouds. He knew there was a good chance that the someone – probably the Mattress – would be waiting for him at the church, or in the square, but he decided to meet the priest anyway. It was early; there would still be people around. It was a church, after all. Maybe he’d ask the padre to walk him home.
But somehow he’d taken a wrong turn. He ought to be in the piazza by now. Turning around, he retraced his steps, or thought he did, going deeper and deeper in the maze. Finally, when he was so lost he began to think he’d never find his way, he took a left, and there he was, in the Piazza di San Fortunato.
The air in front of him was a cloud of respiration vapor. He was breathing hard, but not from running. It was adrenaline. His body was flushed with it. He could feel it pouring into his heart like a waterfall, and, knowing what it could do, he paused where he was, at the entrance to the square. Took a deep breath. Held it. Let it go. And again.
Across the piazza three men stood at the parapet, looking toward the lights of Todi. Nearby, the proprietor of the Luna was closing up shop, pulling down a slatted iron curtain over the café’s facade. One of the men from the overlook called out to him, something about cigarettes, and the storekeeper muttered in reply. Then he went back inside, and Lassiter looked more closely at the three men.
He’d been mistaken. There were only two. But the second man was as big a house. And as square as a mattress.
His breath was coming normally now, and when the men turned back to the view of Todi, Lassiter crossed the square on his toes, taking the steps to the church two at a time.
Inside, the church was about as well lighted as the night. The votive candles guttered in their blood-red cups, and the electric candelabra glimmered weakly.
‘Father?’ he said, so quietly that the words barely got out of his mouth. ‘Father?’ he repeated. There was no response, which meant the priest must be in his rooms. Making his way down the aisle in the gloom, it occurred to Lassiter that by now he was more than a little late. The priest must be around somewhere, though. The church wasn’t locked.
The men were still at the parapet, smoking, when he came down the steps. He went over to the priest’s quarters, just next to the church, and knocked on the heavy wooden door. When no one answered, he tried the doorknob, and when it turned, he went in. The lights were off, but that didn’t matter. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness long before. Moving from room to room, he called the priest’s name, but got no reply.
Which was odd. It worried him. Where could Azetti be? Retracing his steps, he went back to the church, thinking that the priest might be praying in one of its chapels. Perhaps, when he prayed, the priest’s concentration was so complete that he shut off the world outside, and so had not heard him.
Lassiter had no idea what it was to pray. Not really. Once, when Josie had gone on a religious kick – it had lasted about three weeks – she’d insisted that he and Kathy take turns saying grace at meals. And before they went to bed, they’d been made to recite the Lord’s Prayer – in her presence and on their knees. He never even thought about the words he was saying. They were sounds to him, but without meaning. Hal-lo-wed be thy name.
Hal-lo-wed.
He called out again, louder this time. ‘Father Azetti! It’s Joe Lassiter.’
Nothing.
One of the votive candles flared momentarily and sputtered out, leaving a waxy smell that reminded Lassiter of a birthday cake.
Maybe the priest had walked a parishioner home. Maybe someone was ill and he’d gone to their bedside.
He decided to wait. And then he decided to light a candle for the dead. A small sign pointed toward the donation box, and without thinking about it, Lassiter took a bill from his wallet, folded it lengthwise, and eased it into the slot. It might have been a dollar, or a hundred-dollar bill. It might have been a thousand lire. He didn’t know. He didn’t really care. There was a strange, free-floating feeling in his head. The men outside. What the priest had said. The spooky town.
For Kathy, he thought, lighting a candle with a length of straw. And then a second candle, next to the first. For Brandon, he told himself, feeling as if he were borrowing someone else’s ritual – which he was.
He’d wait a little longer for Azetti, and then try to find a way out that would take him away from the squar
e. He’d sit in a pew near the back, and keep his eyes on the door.
Suddenly, his right foot went out from under him and he slipped, staggering sideways two or three steps, finally catching himself by grabbing the side of a pew.
He looked at the tiled floor where he’d slipped. The darkness robbed everything of color, but he could see a patch of something that looked black but wasn’t. Then he caught a whiff of it, and there was no mistaking the meat department smell.
He looked closer, and saw a river of blood seeping along the floor toward the pews. Raising his head, he followed the blood back to the confessional. And though he didn’t want to step in it, there wasn’t any choice. The only way to the booth was through the blood.
He’d never been inside a confessional, and when he pulled the curtain aside, his heart almost stopped when he found that it was empty. But his relief was short-lived. Glancing around, he saw the partition down the middle of the booth and instantly knew what he’d find on the other side.
The soles of his shoes were sticky, and once again his heart was slamming away inside his chest. Pulling back the curtain on the other side, he found Azetti in his seat, leaning against the partition with his head against the grille. There was a small hole in his right temple, and an exit wound the size of a fist. Without looking, Lassiter knew that the priest’s brains were clinging to the wall behind him.
A low velocity bullet, then. Soft point. A bullet that fell apart on impact, flying off in every direction. Dumdums. It used to be that you had to make them yourself, by cutting a cross into the lead point, but now you could buy the same thing, only a lot better.
The priest had been sitting in the booth with his ear pressed against the little metal grille. The killer had entered on the confessor’s side and, seating himself, took out the gun even as he’d begun his confession. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. And then he’d fired, point-blank, into the priest’s ear, using a bullet that would have killed an elephant.
It took him a minute to maneuver Azetti out of the booth and onto the floor. He wasn’t sure why he was doing it. Azetti had looked uncomfortable in the booth. He wished he had a pillow for his head, but . . .
He didn’t. He left Azetti in the aisle and went toward the back of the church, past the altar. He fumbled around in the confusing spaces back there, but there didn’t seem to be another way out. The back of the church was probably wedged up against another row of buildings which left him with a single choice: he could stay, or he could go. But if he went, it would have to be through the front door.
He opened the door with a gentle push, paused at the top of the steps, and looked out into the square. It was empty and, for the moment at least, brilliantly lighted by the moon. He quick-stepped down the church steps toward the fountain, whose gurgling was the only sound in the square. Moonlight sparkled on the water as it rolled from the lion’s mouth, a bright glimmer.
And then he saw the man.
Saw him plain, standing in the moonlight on the corner, where the Via della Felice met the square. A moment later the moon slipped behind a cloud and the man disappeared so completely that Lassiter wondered if he’d imagined him. Turning toward the second street, whose name he didn’t know, Lassiter started walking – until the darkness shifted and what seemed like a wall appeared in front of him.
The Mattress.
Lassiter turned on the ball of his foot, and found himself running. With nowhere to go.
‘Ecco! ’Cenzo!’ the Mattress called out softly. His voice was surprisingly high, almost feminine.
Lassiter’s eyes swung through the square, taking it in: the fountain, the church, the café, the wall. There was no way out. The Mattress and the smaller man were walking toward him, maybe twenty feet apart, maybe twenty yards away. He could see their teeth in the dark. They were smiling.
Lassiter began walking backward, indifferent to where he was going, so long as it was away. The smaller man reached into his jacket and came up with what looked like a Walther with the fat barrel of a suppressor on the end. He tightened the suppressor on its barrel and muttered something to his friend. Lassiter’s back touched the parapet, and that was it. End of the road.
As the men came toward him, never hurrying, he could see their faces in the moonlight. The one with the gun was young and ugly. He had the camel-like face of someone whose features had been squeezed with forceps. His eyes were heavy and protrusive, his hair so short it seemed no more than a shadow on his scalp.
The Mattress was made of different stuff – pig iron, probably. Like his body, his face was square, and looked as if it needed to be shaved at least once an hour. His hair was a mat of curls, and even at this distance Lassiter could see the fierceness in his eyes.
I could run at them, he thought. Or go the other way: vault the wall and see what happens. Neither option seemed survivable, but one might be more so than the other. He wanted to turn around so he could calculate the fall: Was it a straight drop to dead-on-arrival, or was there an incline that would break his fall? He couldn’t remember, and for the life of him – literally – he couldn’t take his eyes off the men walking toward him.
Until the smaller man began to raise his gun, and Lassiter learned that he’d already made his decision. Almost casually, he placed his left hand on the parapet, turned on the ball of his foot, and vaulted into the void. Behind him, and now from above, he heard a popping noise, three shots in rapid succession as he fell, fell through the air for what seemed a very long time.
I’m dead, he thought. Dead. Now, dead. The darkness whirled and, as he fell, his eyes were useless, the images impossible to process. And then, without warning, gravity body-slammed him into the mountainside, ripping the air from his lungs, tumbling him down the slope. He was airborne again, and again a one-man avalanche, entirely out of control. Instinctively he drew his knees to his chest and covered his head with his arms, a human cannonball.
His last coherent thought was that if he hit anything, it would be over. A rock, he thought. Head . . . rock . . . head like an egg . . . the egg cracks . . . brains everywhere. Or a tree . . . even a tree . . . tear me in half. Angle of descent. Science! Increasing velocity of mass.
And then, like a baseball player sliding into second, he found himself using his legs as a brake, stretching them out in front of him even as his hands tore at the ground. A fingernail snapped off at the quick as he knifed through the brush, eyes shut against the lash of brambles. Finally, but abruptly, he came to a stop with his foot against a boulder.
Safe.
Unless he was dead. But he couldn’t be dead. He hurt too much. There was a bonfire in the right side of his ribs, where he’d been hurt before, and his ankle felt as if a stake had been driven through it. A soprano kind of pain shot from the inside of his right foot all the way up his leg. He could taste the blood in his mouth, the skin on his cheek was raw . . . and he was afraid to move.
What if he tried to get up and nothing happened? He was hurt and confused, and paralyzed with the fear of being paralyzed. And so he lay there, gazing up at the moon as it played peekaboo with the clouds. The air was heavy with the smell of pine, and the night seemed strangely bright. In the distance he could hear a thousand birds whistling.
What?
Where am I?
Oh, yeah.
He had to get up. If he couldn’t move, he might as well start yelling, let the Mattress and his friend put a bullet in him, ending his misery.
With a gasp and a moan he rolled onto his stomach and, reaching for a pine branch, pulled himself to his feet. Swaying slightly, he glanced around and saw that he was on the hillside, just below the town wall, where the ground was relatively flat. The parking lot was a hundred yards away, and just beyond it, the soccer field, ablaze with light. He heard the whistling noise again, and realized what it was: not birds, but people booing, Italian-style. A soccer match, Lassiter thought. There’s too much noise and too much light for a pickup game.
As he brushed himself off he sea
rched the ground for a walking stick. Finding a dead pine branch, he tested it against his weight. It bent but didn’t break.
He limped toward the parking lot, trying to get a grip on the pain in his ankle. Whatever it was, broken or sprained, he could feel it getting bigger with every step. And there were a lot of steps. It took him ten minutes to get to the lot, and when he arrived, a cheer went up. Someone had scored.
The lot was a small one, filled with cars and bicycles for the match. Lassiter stood in the shadow of a cypress, looking for the car he’d rented, fearful he’d find it blocked. But no, there it was, right where he’d left it, with a clear lane to the road. He was about to walk to it when, fifty feet away, a cigarette lighter flared in the front seat of a black Rover. He couldn’t make out the face, but there were two people in the car, and they didn’t act like lovers.
He sucked in his breath.
Well, of course. There was only one way out of town. The Mattress hadn’t needed to do any heavy thinking: If he hadn’t killed himself when he’d jumped, where else could he go but go to his car? What was he supposed to do – roll down the rest of the fucking mountain and then hike to Todi?
He could go back, into Montecastello, but it was a trap. He thought about the soccer field. If he could get to it, he might be able to lose himself in the crowd. But no. His clothes were torn and covered with blood – only some of which was his own – his face a lattice of small cuts, and he was walking like Tiny Tim on a bad day. All of which added up to the fact that there wasn’t a crowd in Italy large enough for him to get lost in; if people saw him, they’d probably scream. He could start screaming; maybe the police would come. On the other hand, if he could get to the police . . . what then? They’d lock him up, at least until they found a translator. He’d be safe then, if only for a while. Unless Umbra Domini or SISMI could get to his jailers – which, this being Italy, seemed likely. In which case he’d no doubt wind up hanging from his belt by morning.