Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [102]
THE NEARLY BALD, middle-aged night porter opened the door to room 327, turned on a bedside lamp, then set Harry’s bag on a luggage rack next to it and handed Harry the key.
“Thank you.” Harry reached in his pocket for a tip.
“No, Padre, grazie.” The man smiled, then abruptly turned and left, pulling the door closed behind him as he did. Locking it—a habit now—Harry took a deep breath and glanced around the room. It was small and faced the lake. The furnishings were well used but hardly shabby. A double bed, chair, chest of drawers, writing table, a phone, and a television.
Pulling off his jacket, he went into the bathroom. Turning on the water, he let it run cold, then wet his hand and ran it over the back of his neck. Finally he raised his head and saw his face in the mirror. The eyes were not the same as those that had peered so intently into another mirror in what seemed a lifetime ago, watching as he made love to Adrianna; they were different, frightened, alone, yet somehow stronger and more determined.
Abruptly, he turned from the mirror and walked back into the room, glancing at his watch as he did.
11:10
Crossing to the bed, he opened the small suitcase Adrianna had given him. In it was something the police had overlooked in their hasty search of the bag. A page torn from a notepad of the Hotel Barchetta Excelsior in Como, with the telephone number of Edward Mooi.
Picking up the bedside phone, he hesitated, then dialed. He heard it ring. Once, twice. On the third, someone picked up.
“Pronto,” a male voice answered.
“Edward Mooi, please—I’m sorry to be calling so late.”
There was a silence, then:
“This is Edward Mooi.”
“My name is Father Jonathan Roe from Georgetown University. I’m an American. I just arrived in Bellagio.”
“I don’t understand…” The voice was guarded.
“It’s about the hunt for Father Daniel Addison…. I’ve been watching television—“
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“As an American priest, I thought I might be able to help where others couldn’t.”
“I’m sorry, Father. I don’t know anything. It’s all been a mistake. If you’ll excuse me…”
“I’m at the Hotel Du Lac. Room three-two-seven.”
“Goodnight, Father.”
CLICK.
Slowly Harry clicked off his own phone.
Harry heard the thinnest crackle of static just before Edward Mooi hung up. It confirmed what he had feared. The police had been listening.
71
Bellagio. Tuesday, July 14, 4:15 A.M.
NURSING SISTER ELENA VOSO STOOD IN THE grotto’s main tunnel listening to the lap of water against the granite walls, hoping Luca and the others would come back.
Above her, the ceiling rose at least twenty feet, maybe more. And the wide corridor beneath it stretched another hundred to the canal and boat landing at the far end. Rudimentary benches, now fractured and worn by the years, had been hacked out of the natural stone walls and ran the full length of it on either side. Two hundred people could sit there easily. She wondered if that had been the purpose for cutting the benches in the first place, as a site for numbers of people to hide. If so, who had done it, and when? The Romans? Or peoples before them or after? Whatever its origin, the cave or really series of caves, as one chamber opened onto another, was now wholly modern—with electricity, air vents, plumbing, telephones, a small kitchen and large central living room, off of which ran at least three private suites, decorated luxuriously and complete with opulent baths, massage rooms, and sleeping quarters. Somewhere there, too, though she hadn’t seen it, was what was supposedly one of the most extensive wine cellars in all of Europe.
They had been brought there Sunday night by the soft-spoken, erudite Edward Mooi, moments after their arrival at Villa Lorenzi. Alone and at the wheel of a sleek, shallow-bottomed motorboat, Mooi had taken them south in darkness. Hugging the lake’s shoreline for a good ten minutes, he had finally turned in through a narrow cut in what seemed