The Dante Game

by Jane Langton

  “Oh, but Roberto had figured it out so cleverly.” Mary stopped at a traffic light and waited for the green Avanti. “As soon as Roberto fired at the pope they were going to hurry forward in their compassionate black gowns and pick him up on their stretcher and carry him off to one of the Misericordia ambulances and rush him to the hospital around the corner. Whether he lived or died, they would have been thought of as angels of mercy, not murderers.”

  “Good lord,” said Homer, “that’s diabolical. I mean it’s such a brutal desecration of the long history of the Misericordia. And what about the gun? What about that .22-calibre Ruger automatic with the silencer? It wasn’t about to vanish into thin air.”

  “Right,” said Mary. “I asked her about that. She said Roberto intended to drop it somewhere, easy enough in all the confusion. He was wearing gloves. He didn’t think there was any way it would ever be associated with him.” Mary glanced at Homer. Her face changed. “It’s Julia I don’t understand. Oh, Homer, Lucretia is bitter about Julia.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Homer drily.

  “Apparently it was Roberto’s decision to use a hostage, and Matteo’s to take Julia Smith. Lucretia didn’t like it much, but she telephoned Matteo on a day when Julia was going to be alone at the villa, a time when all the rest of you were going out.”

  “I remember. We all went off to that monastery near Siena.” Homer held up a cautionary hand. “Watch it, dear.”

  Mary slowed down behind a fleet of motorbikes tearing along the street three abreast. “So they took her to that farm in the country, and hired two or three guys to keep an eye on her. And then I can imagine what happened. You know how men are around Julia. Roberto was no different from anyone else, no matter how grandiose his motives were. You talked to Julia, Homer. What did she say?”

  “Oh, she was very candid. Truthful. She told me she gave up resisting, the last few days at the farm. There had been an attraction between them, and she had fought against it, but at last it was just too overpowering. For a couple of days they were lovers, there at the end.”

  “Captor and captive,” murmured Mary. “Oh, lord, poor Zee.”

  “And at the same time he instructed her in what she was supposed to do. I don’t know how the girl kept her head, in the midst of all that. Julia told me she decided to go along with the whole thing, and play her part, hoping she could do something to stop it at the last minute.”

  “And she did,” said Mary. “She really did.”

  Homer stared at the fast-moving traffic. “Did Lucretia know about Julia and Roberto?”

  “Matteo told her. What a little rat. He called her up on Good Friday and told her. And she couldn’t bear it. She had to find out if he was telling the truth, so she hurried off to the farm to see. And when she got there she couldn’t find Roberto in the house, and one of the men pointed up the hill, so she went stalking up there and found them together.” Mary looked at Homer, her face reflecting Lucretia’s wretchedness.

  “Keep your eyes on the road, dear,” warned Homer, as a truck labeled BEVETE COCA-COLA rattled past them on the wrong side. “But if that’s true, why did she go on? I should think she would have said, Go to hell.”

  “Don’t forget, she was a woman of intense conviction. And the cause was no longer personal. It had become a matter much larger than her own case.”

  “So she nobly clung to her original lofty purpose, the assassination of the supreme head of the Catholic church.” Homer gave his wife a sardonic glance. “Bully for Lucretia.”

  CHAPTER 56

  …We have won beyond the worlds, and move

  Within that heaven which is pure light alone:

  Pure intellectual light, fulfilled with love …

  Paradiso XXX, 38–40.

  Inspector Rossi was skeptical about Julia Smith. He summoned her to the Questura. His warrant for her arrest was already made out. He had it in a drawer.

  Homer and Zee sat with her in front of Rossi’s desk. Homer glowered self-righteously. Zee clasped Julia’s hand.

  “You were an accomplice,” Rossi told Julia. “And Signorina Van Ott says you kill Roberto Mori with Roberto’s gun. How can I know you not try to kill the Holy Father?”

  “No, no,” said Julia. “It wasn’t like that at all.” She looked around the inspector’s office, which had the usual complement of typewriters, calendars, in-baskets, out-baskets and wastebaskets. A humming fan turned slowly on the windowsill. Pictures of the inspector’s family hung beside his desk on the wall. Julia took courage from the pretty wife and three pretty children. “The shot that killed Roberto came from somewhere else.”

  “Listen, Inspector,” protested Homer Kelly, “for God’s sake, give credit where credit is due. Julia didn’t kill Roberto Mori. She saved the life of the pope. Roberto tried to kill him, and she knocked his gun aside. Look here, Inspector, she deserves a medal, not an appearance in court. Even if she did kill Roberto, which she didn’t, it would have been an act of heroism.”

  They all looked up as the door opened. Agent Piro came in with a folder in his hand. Staring at Julia he blundered into a chair, then walked around it to put the folder on the inspector’s desk. “Grazie,” said Rossi, and Piro went out again. “Mi scusi,” murmured Rossi, opening the folder. In a moment he handed it to Homer without a word.

  It was a dry report from the medical examiner and the ballistics department at the Questura. Roberto Mori had been fatally wounded by a six-point-five millimeter projectile entering the left pectoral on a downward path and striking the heart.

  “Six-point-five millimeter?” Homer put his finger on the significant number and showed it to Julia. “That’s a rifle, not a handgun. It was probably a sharpshooter on the roof of one of the buildings around the square, using a weapon with a telescopic sight.” Homer looked up at Inspector Rossi. “Are you sure it wasn’t one of your own men?”

  “Certamente. I am sure.”

  “So Julia had nothing to do with Roberto’s death,” said Zee triumphantly. “She was there under duress anyway. Mio Dio, she was very nearly killed herself.”

  Inspector Rossi turned solemnly to Julia. “That is true? Signorina Van Ott, she try to kill you, vero?”

  “Well, not really,” said Julia. “I mean not when the moment actually arrived.”

  “Come on, Julia,” said Homer, “tell the inspector what you told me. Tell him what Lucretia said.”

  Julia looked calmly at Inspector Rossi. “It was Dante.”

  “Prego?” said Rossi, bending forward politely.

  “The Purgatorio,” said Homer, butting in happily, unable to restrain himself. “The discourse on free will. You remember, Inspector, when Dante describes the inborn counselor in all of us? Well, that’s what she said.”

  “I do not see,” said Rossi, shaking his head, bewildered. “Signorina Van Ott, what do she say?”

  “You still possess within yourselves the power of mastery,” explained Julia. “That’s what she said. And then she didn’t fire at me, she fired at the wall.”

  “Ah, capisco!” Inspector Rossi grinned with delighted understanding. “La nobile virtu, the noble faculty! Signorina Van Ott, she choose not to kill. It is a Divina Commedia we are having here now, seven hundred years after Dante Alighieri.”

  “The seal of form,” cried Homer in a state of transport, “and the wax of matter, giving way to the will, the free deliberate will, choosing to transform itself. Brilliant, Inspector, you’ve got it, I’m proud of you, you are a true scholar. Now can she go, la Signorina Julia?”

  And then Inspector Rossi, in a rare moment of self-pride and vainglory, taking pleasure in the aesthetic balance of the case, the harmony of then and now, the miraculous geometry of the squaring of the circle, the obvious presence in the room of Dante’s pure intellectual light, let Julia go, and she went out into the hall to fall into Zee’s arms and go home to the Villa L’Ombrellino.

  But the long months of captivity had not left Julia unscathed. Sh
e couldn’t put aside forever the memory of Roberto Mori and the two warm April days in which they had given themselves up to each other. It was true that even in capitulation she had maintained a small cold center of balance. She had figured out what to do, and then at the moment of crisis she had done it. But Roberto’s face, his voice, his carriage, the loving murmur of his talk—no, she could never put him away forever.

  Zee understood, and suffered, and made no reproach.

  Homer Kelly did not go home with Julia and Zee. He still had a terribly important question to ask of the inspector.

  He settled back into his chair in front of Rossi’s desk. “What about all those big cardinals in the Vatican? I mean, if there’s really a conspiracy against the pope, shouldn’t somebody be looking into it?”

  Inspector Rossi grinned, and showed his ratlike teeth. “Perhaps, but I do not think they are real, those big important cardinals.”

  “Not real? But Lucretia said—”

  “Has she ever seen them? No. Nor Roberto Mori? No. He also never saw them. Matteo give Roberto letters from them, but these letters, they have no envelopes from Rome, no names. Roberto too send letters, but only to a box number in Florence.”

  “But you saw the letters in Roberto’s room at the farm, the ones he received from all those cardinals. You think they were phony?”

  Rossi looked puzzled. “Phony?”

  “Oh, sorry. You think they were not genuine, not real?”

  “Si. They were not real. I think Roberto and Lucretia were—what is the word you call it—dupes, the dupes of professional criminals. The princes of the church know nothing, the members of the Curia in Rome, no, no. They are innocenti.”

  “You’ve looked into the box number in Florence?”

  “Si. It belong to a false name, probabilmente, but the clerk in the post office on Via Barbadori, he say it is an Americano.”

  “An American!”

  “He look like a criminal, says the clerk, not like a messenger from the Vatican. Something is, like you say, phony.” Proudly the inspector produced another American word, “Screwy.”

  “So right now you’re looking for Matteo Luzzi and Raffaello and the other two hoodlums, right?”

  “And the rifle that kill Roberto Mori. We explore all the buildings around the cathedral, the top of the roofs. We look especially for Luzzi. You remember the cook, Alberto Fraticelli? We find him in Milan. He tell us Matteo know much, very much about guns.”

  “How did Alberto know that?”

  “One day he tell Matteo he like to shoot birds. Matteo, he is interested. Alberto show him his shotgun. Matteo tell him it is in bad condition. Show him how to clean it, talk about guns.”

  “Those must have been his, then, that room full of firearms at the farm.” Homer had one more question. “Tell me, Inspector, how was this whole affair hushed up? Does the pontiff know he was the target of an assassination attempt? What about the archbishop in charge of the Easter celebration here in Florence, does he know?”

  Inspector Rossi clasped his hands as if in prayer. “The body of Roberto Mori, it was carried into one of the sacristies of the cathedral by the guardsmen. We tell them, Stai fermo e zitto, you must keep still until we find Matteo and the others. We want that the missing ones feel safe and think it is over. His Holiness, he do not know. The archbishop”—Inspector Rossi shook his head sorrowfully—” I cannot make myself to tell His Excellency. He is happy. He think the anniversario go well.”

  “You’ve been to the farm in Caldine?”

  “Oh, si. We turn it up-goes-down. We talk to the farmer and his wife.”

  “Oh, yes.” With distaste Homer remembered the slaughtered pig, the murdered chickens.

  “They say they know nothing. They rent their podere, that is all.”

  “Julia says they knew she was a prisoner.”

  “They say they think her a madwoman, una pazza.” Rossi shrugged his shoulders.

  “Hey, what about the stolen reliquary? You know, the one with all those pieces of the true cross inside it? I don’t suppose you found it there at the farm?”

  “No,” said the inspector sorrowfully. “We look there. We do not find. That bad ragazzo, Raffaello, I think he take it away, along with the compass of Michelangelo Buonarroti.” Inspector Rossi looked severely at Homer. “The compass, you have returned it to the museum?”

  “Of course we’ve returned it. And I’ll bet you’re right about the reliquary. It must have been in Raffaello’s little truck when Zee and I saw all those things falling out of it all over the road. I’ll bet he’s still got it. Can he sell it? Look here, Inspector”—Homer burst out impulsively with a confession of his lapsed faith”—I’m a delinquent Catholic, una pecora perduta, a lost sheep, but even I couldn’t sell a holy relic. I’d be afraid of bad vibrations.”

  Inspector Rossi looked puzzled. “Vibrations?”

  “Oh, sorry. I mean it might bring me bad luck. I’d be afraid the heavens would fall on me. What about a kid like Raffaello? Wouldn’t he be afraid of the consequences? I mean, to sell the very cross of Christ?”

  Rossi turned pale, and held up his hands to repel the sacrilege.

  And as it turned out, Homer was right. The reliquary was too hot to handle, too sacred for Raffaello’s rudimentary conscience. During the first morning mass on the Sunday after Easter it appeared on the high altar of the cathedral, its golden putti shining, its jewels winking in the light of the candles, its sacred relics clearly visible within the four great crystal arms.

  No one noticed it at first, among the tall candelabra on the altar. It was only after the Communion, while one of the deacons was placing the unconsumed hosts in the tabernacle, that the archbishop noticed the dazzling object half-hidden by a giant vase of flowers.

  In his astonishment he dropped the lid of the ciborium, and had to stoop to pick it up, fumbling for it with one of the altar boys, who rushed forward to lend a hand. When it was time for the recessional, His Excellency murmured in the ear of the assisting priest, who obediently put his hands on the heavy reliquary and lugged it into the sacristy, making an effort to hold the precious object upright, as befitted its legendary value and sacred dignity.

  But the bolt-action Beretta sporting rifle with the high-resolution telescopic sight was never found, because Matteo Luzzi carried it down to the rear of the Bigallo and handed it to the American tourist, the man called Earl. Earl was ready. like a peace demonstrator from the 1960s, he thrust a spray of roses into the barrel, then wrapped the whole thing in florist’s paper with the roses sticking out at the top. Walking carelessly to the river in the homegoing crowd, he ambled across the Ponte Vecchio to the open loggia in the middle—one tourist among many—and dropped the package over the railing into the mud at the bottom of the Arno.

  The roses fell out on the way down and floated on the yellow surface of the water, heading for Pisa and the open sea, a pitiful memorial to Father Roberto Mori.

  The Arno did not release the rifle, but a few days later it returned another unwanted thing. At a narrow place in the river, just beyond the bridge where the A-1 crosses to the other side, a child throwing stones in the water discovered a body washed up on the shore. It was the bullet-ridden remains of Matteo Luzzi.

  Earl, too, ran into a spot of bad luck—at noon directly in front of the ancient church of Santi Apostoli.

  “He was walking in the middle of the street,” the priest explained, shouting above the blasting horns of the furious cars trapped behind the Misericordia ambulance. “The car came, smack! and knocked him down and drove away.”

  “American tourists, what do they come here for?” said the mayor of Florence, who happened to be on ambulance duty that day. “They don’t walk in the middle of the street in New York City. Why do they do it here?”

  That week the number of deaths in the city of Florence was a little higher than usual. The name of Raffaello Biagi turned up on the list, and when Inspector Rossi saw it, he uttered a pious curse. He w
as also suspicious of a couple of items at the bottom of the page, a pair of sconosciuti, unknown men.

  In the company of Julia Smith, he went to the morgue to take a look. Julia recognized them at once as Carlo and Pancrazio, and her eyes filled with tears, remembering their awkward grace at the game of soccer, their laughter, playing cards.

  So they were all gone—Roberto Mori, Matteo Luzzi, Raffaello Biagi, Carlo and Pancrazio. Frustrated, Inspector Rossi went back to the Questura, wanting to reach out his hand beyond them to someone else, someone more competent, more powerful, more clever. It was like groping behind a curtain, trying to touch the flesh of a person you think is there, a hidden figure manifest only as a break in the hanging folds or a slight motion of the filmy cloth.

  Inspector Rossi had a few small pieces of evidence to examine. There was the crumpled note Matteo Luzzi had dropped in front of the street sweeper, the one the inspector had snatched up at the last minute before it was devoured. It had been written in a neat script that looked familiar to Rossi. He was sure he had seen it before. And there were Roberto’s letters from “the cardinals.” Some of them were typed, but some had also been written by hand. Perhaps a study of all these pieces of paper would reveal something useful. Rossi was eager to begin.

  Fumbling among the papers on his desk, he began looking for something he vaguely remembered. Failing to find it, he turned to the fat folder on the shelf behind him, the folder labelled Pasqua, Easter. In it there were letters from His Excellency, the archbishop. Surely the note had not been written by that saintly hand? No, of course not. The archbishop’s writing was large and quavering, altogether different.

  Then Rossi came upon a letter that began, Spettabile Ispettore, Your plan is magnificent…

  The script was small and precise. Thoughtfully he withdrew the letter from the file and laid it on his desk beside the crumpled note.

  But at that moment his examination was interrupted. Agent Piro came running in with a sweeping new order from the Questore himself. The entire apparatus of the polizia was in crisis. The alarm had begun with the squadra narcotici, but now it was to consume the attention of every other section as well, and every office of the polizia in the city of Florence. The matter was too big, too frightening to be handled by a single department.