by Stuart Woods
He laughed. “They’re thick on the ground, all right, but there’s something you don’t understand.”
“What’s that, my darling?”
“I’m a priest. Not just by education and title—it’s what I am, through and through, and I can’t do that and be with you all the time, too.”
“You can go on being a priest,” she said. “I’d rather like that.”
“How on earth could I continue as a priest and simultaneously be with you?”
“Become an Episcopalian. They would welcome you. I’ll buy you a good church. They’ll deal just like anybody else. A contribution to whatever they like, and you get your pick of churches.”
“Sweetheart, I’m a Roman Catholic priest. If I couldn’t be that, I’d slowly die.”
Dolce began to feel her blood getting warm, and her face became pink. She felt herself becoming desperate. “You’d reject me, just like that?” She snapped her fingers.
“Don’t you think I’ve dreamed about doing just what you suggest? I’ve thought of it again and again, but the Church is there, tugging at my sleeve. Always and forever. That is my only destiny.”
“I see,” Dolce said, rising. She walked into the kitchenette and got a bottle of water from the fridge, then she took a boning knife from the wooden block that held the implements and held it, blade up her sleeve. “Come here, Frank,” she said. “There’s something I want to show you. She set down the water, because her hand was trembling.
He got up and came toward her; they met in the center of the room. She took his arm and maneuvered him onto the plastic drop cloth.
“What do you want to show me?” Frank asked.
“Only, this,” she said, drawing back the knife and swinging it at him in a wide arc. The razor-sharp blade found its mark, leaving a six-inch slit that included both the carotid artery and the jugular vein.
Frank clutched at his throat, trying to speak, but making only a gurgling noise. Blood poured down his chest.
She took his arm and tugged. “This way a little bit,” she said. “We don’t want to make a mess, do we?”
Frank’s knees buckled and he sank onto the plastic drop cloth. At first, a pool of blood spread, but then it stopped.
“I’ll just get some tape,” Dolce said. She came back with a thick roll of masking tape and had a good look at him. He was already gone. Then she went to work.
An hour later, after a rest to calm herself, Dolce walked back to the main house and rang for Pietro.
The man appeared quickly. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Pietro,” Dolce said, “my father always told me that you were a man who could be relied upon in any situation.”
“I am proud that he thought so,” Pietro replied. “I was at his beck and call, as I now am at yours. My duty is anything you should require.”
“I have a job for you,” she said, and she explained.
Pietro made a little bow. “It shall be done,” he said.
“And don’t forget his luggage, upstairs.”
She poured herself a drink, avoiding the Irish whiskey, and sat down, taking deep breaths, allowing her heart and respiration to return to normal.
Stone, Peter and Hattie, Ben and Tessa, and Dino and Viv gathered in the rear library room of the Writing Room for dinner. It occurred to him that he was the only stag there; he wished Ann could be there, too. It also came to him that, one day, one of these dinners would be their last together. He hoped that would not be for a long time.
They ordered drinks and dinner, and Stone found an excellent Cabernet on the wine list and ordered two bottles.
Then Stone heard a knife rapping on a glass and the table became quiet.
Peter spoke up. “Ben has an announcement to make,” he said. “The floor is yours, partner.”
“Thanks, Peter,” Ben said, keeping his seat. “Peter and I have been having some serious conversations lately, and with his agreement, I’ve made an important decision in my life.”
Stone noticed that Dino seemed to have no idea what was coming.
“Peter and I have made a wonderful team, and we will continue to collaborate. However, Centurion Studios has offered me the job of head of production for the whole studio, and I just can’t resist it. I’ll be moving to an office in the executive building, but I’ll keep my office at our building, too. This is all effective next week.” He stopped and looked around.
It was quiet for a moment, then everybody cheered and clapped. Dino walked over, stood him up, and hugged him. “Now you’re going to be making more money than your old man,” he said, pounding Ben on his back.
“Dad,” Ben said, “I hate to break this to you, but I’ve been making more money than you since I left Yale.”
Everybody laughed, no one harder than Dino.
Dino’s phone vibrated. He picked up his drink, stepped away from the table, and entered into earnest conversation.
“The NYPD never closes,” Viv said.
Dino came back and sat down with his drink. He didn’t say anything.
“Come on, Dino,” Stone said, “let us be the first to hear the news.”
“What news?” Dino asked.
“The news you just got on the phone.”
“Oh, that news.”
“Come on, Dad, give!” Ben said.
“It’s not going to go very well with the osso buco.”
“We’ll live.”
“All right: a couple of hours ago a trawler in Jamaica Bay pulled in the trawl and found, in addition to many examples of marine life, a severed head in a weighted plastic bag. Quite fresh, too.”
“Ugh,” Tessa said, and made a face.
“I warned you, but my friend and my son just had to know.”
“Whose head was it?” Hattie asked.
“The full resources of the NYPD are now directed at answering that question,” Dino replied. “How soon we know will depend on whether the gentleman has a DNA record or dental records on file somewhere.”
“I guess there are no fingerprints,” Ben said drily.
Groans from all present.
Dinner arrived, Stone tasted and poured the wine, and they all dug into dinner.
They had just finished the dessert wine and were on coffee when Dino got another call. As before, he stepped away from the table to answer it. He talked for five minutes or so, then returned and sat down. “I can now answer your question, Hattie,” he said.
“Oh, please. Is it anybody we know?”
“No,” Dino said. “Sorry to disappoint. The head belongs to an Irishman.”
“You can get DNA records from Ireland on such short notice?” Peter asked.
“Yes, but in this case, not from Ireland, but from the Vatican, which keeps those records on all its employees, including the Pope. The Irishman was a priest. His name is Father Frank Donovan, and he was executive assistant to the head of the Vatican Bank, Cardinal Penzi.”
“A priest?” somebody asked.
“A priest and a banker.”
“There’s a history of suicide connected to the Vatican Bank, isn’t there?” Ben asked.
“Somehow, I don’t think this one was a suicide,” Dino replied, and everybody laughed again.
“I thought the Vatican Bank had been cleaned out of executives and was under new management,” Stone said.
“This guy was new management,” Dino replied.
“Well,” Hattie said, “if I may paraphrase Ronald Reagan, where’s the rest of him?”
“Arrangements are being made now to drag the bay, starting at first light tomorrow,” Dino said. “We’ll reassemble him, if we can.”
Somebody changed the subject and the mood lightened again.
Stone got himself out of bed in time to have breakfast in the kitchen with the kids before they left for the airport.
“So what’s next for you, Peter? Got a picture in mind?”
“I have a good script, but the new head of production is going to have to approve it before we start casting,” Peter said.
“All right, all right,” Ben said, throwing up his hands. “Your script and your budget are approved. I’ve already read it, and I did the budget.”
“I hope he’s this easy to work with in the future,” Peter said.
Stone walked them out to the car, where Fred waited. “The luggage is aboard,” Fred said. “These young people travel light, they do.”
Stone hugged everybody and put them into the car; he waved them off and went back to the front door. He paused there to look at a man on the other side of the street who seemed to be watching him or his house. He wore a black overcoat and a gray felt hat, and a muffler that partially obscured his face. Apparently aware that he had been noticed, the man began walking quickly toward Third Avenue. Stone watched him hail a cab at the corner and drive away. Who, he asked himself, would be watching him or having him watched? He couldn’t come up with an answer.
Stone went back upstairs, showered, shaved, then dressed and went down to his office. Joan was putting some mail on his desk. “Did you notice someone watching the house from across the street earlier?” Stone asked.
“Nope. Has some husband put a detective on you?”
“The women I see don’t have husbands,” Stone said.
“A distraught old flame, then?”
“My old flames are never distraught, they’re relieved.”
“Except for one,” she said, then left the room.
It took Stone a moment to get it. “She’s out of the picture!” he called as she turned into her office.
Joan stuck her head out. “Funny, I thought she was back in the picture.” She disappeared again.
Stone found the thought unsettling. He hoped to God that the whole thing with Dolce wasn’t starting over.
• • •
Dolce slept in until she was awakened by Pietro’s rap on the door. “Come in!”
The butler opened the door and stuck in his head. “A dozen crates have been delivered,” he said. “Where would you like them put?”
“In the new studio, please, and ask them to unpack them very carefully and dispose of the crates.”
“Yes, madam. By the way, the task you asked me to perform has been completed.” Pietro vanished.
Dolce ordered her breakfast and showered while she waited for it. She felt curiously lighthearted at the absence of Frank Donovan; he hadn’t been good enough for her, and she had disposed of him, and that was that. Breakfast came, and she didn’t give Frank another thought.
She thought about Stone Barrington, though. She had liked being Mrs. Barrington, while it lasted. Many of her memories of that time were cloudy, or simply absent. She knew she had done some bad things, but in retrospect, they didn’t seem all that bad.
Later that morning she had Pietro bring a ladder to the old barn, and she began hanging pictures on the wall opposite the one where the painters were at work.
“We found some spots of red paint on the floor, ma’am,” one of them said to her. “Funny, we aren’t using any red paint, but we cleaned it up. It didn’t leave a stain.”
“Thank you,” Dolce said, and returned to her work.
• • •
Stone came back from lunch and found a note from Dino. He returned the call.
“Hey,” Dino said.
“Sounds like you’re in the car.”
“I’m headed up to the archdiocese,” Dino said. “Our divers found most of the rest of Father Donovan.”
“How much is most?”
“Both legs, the torso, and the right arm. I called ’em off. I don’t see any reason to pay overtime for a left arm, when we’ve got all we need.”
“I hope you’ll put that a bit more tactfully to the cardinal.”
“Oh, I will be the soul of tact when I speak to His Grace.”
“Did you get a cause of death?”
“The ME says his throat was cut before the head was severed. Seems pretty straightforward. Now I’ve got to go unload the remains on the archdiocese.”
“That would seem the simplest way to get rid of them.”
“I hope they don’t insist on finding the other arm,” Dino said. “Did the kids get off okay this morning?”
“Right on schedule.”
“Imagine a son of mine, head of production at a Hollywood studio!”
“Peter’s a little upset about that, but he doesn’t want to show it. He’s fortunate in having Billy Burnett to take up the slack.” Stone waited for Dino to mention Teddy Fay, but he didn’t.
“Gotta dump you for the cardinal,” Dino said. “Talk to you later.”
Stone was on the phone with a client that afternoon when Joan came and stuck her head in. “Just a minute,” he said, then covered the phone. “What is it, Joan?”
“There’s a man out here who insists on seeing you, but he won’t give his name.”
“Describe him.”
“Five-eight or -nine, a hundred and forty, late thirties, early forties. Black overcoat.”
It sounded like the man watching from across the street. “Tell him I’m on a phone call and to wait.”
“He looks as though he might bolt at any minute.”
“If he bolts, he bolts.” Stone went back to his call. It took another ten minutes to ease his client’s mind, then he hung up and buzzed Joan.
“Send him in.”
“He bolted.”
“Check outside and see if he’s hanging around.”
He waited while she looked, then he heard the chime that meant the front door was open, and Joan said, “Please go right in there.”
The man appeared in the doorway, holding his hat and looking nervous.
Stone had never seen him, but he thought he knew who he was. “Come in, Congressman, and have a seat.”
Joan appeared behind the man. “May I take your coat?”
He jumped, then reluctantly gave up his coat and hat and sat in the chair that Stone indicated.
“Good morning,” Evan Hills said.
“Good morning. Why didn’t you come in earlier?”
“You seemed to be involved with your family. I didn’t want to intrude.”
“One of the young men is my son, the others are his friends.”
“Ah.”
“What can I do for you, Congressman?”
“That’s difficult to say.”
“Try. And by the way, I admire what you’re doing.”
Hills’s shoulders slumped. “I just want out.”
“You can do that, if it’s really what you want. The Times already has your statement, and they won’t reveal your identity.”
“I mean out of everything.”
Stone began to realize what he was dealing with. “I’d like to help,” he said. “What can I do to help?”
“I don’t seem to have any alternatives.”
“There are always alternatives, it’s just that sometimes none of them seem attractive. It seems to me you have at least three choices: One, you can continue as you are, and when your political colleagues suspect you, deny everything. The only evidence that you might be involved is your presence at that meeting, and that applies equally to the other two dozen people who were there. Two, you can resign from Congress and go home to Philadelphia, or wherever else in the world you might like to go, blaming ill health. Three, you can make a public statement, associate yourself with the Times piece, and resign from your party, become an independent or a Democrat.”
“You’re right, none of those alternatives is very attractive.”
“Tell me, in the best of all possible worlds, what would you like to be doing a y
ear from now?”
Hills sat and thought. “I’d like to have a law practice in some small town in Pennsylvania.”
“Is that within your means?”
“Yes, I’m quite well off.”
“Then why don’t you do just that?”
“They’ll find me,” he said. “They’ll hunt me down and . . .”
Stone waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.
“Let me pose another question, then: During the next year, what is the worst thing that could happen to you?”
“I’d be hounded out of Congress and the party, most of the people I think of as my friends wouldn’t ever speak to me again, I’d be thrown out of my old law firm. Or, it might even be worse.”
“All of those things sound like a predicate for your doing what you want to do, except the last one. What would be worse?”
“I might be dead.”
“Are you ill?”
“No, I’m very fit.”
“Do you suspect someone of wanting you dead?”
“Half the people I know—if they knew what I’d done.”
“What you’ve done is courageous and good,” Stone said. “Has it occurred to you that, if it became known, you would gain many new friends?”
“You mean Democrats?”
“I mean people who will admire what you’ve done. Many of them might be Republicans who don’t like what’s happening to their party.”
“I’m not really cut out for being a rebel.”
“The rebelling is already behind you. You just have to figure out what you want and go do it.”
“They won’t let me do that.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Powerful people who don’t show their faces to the world.”
“For every one of them who wants to destroy you, there’ll be others who want to help.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“If you’re concerned for your safety, I can arrange protection. If you want to disappear, I own the house next door, and there’s a comfortable guest apartment that you’re welcome to, for as long as it takes.”