Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [28]
“You have encountered the police and Jacov Farel. So have we all…. Did your brother conspire to kill Cardinal Parma? Or perhaps even the Holy Father? Did he actually fire the shots? Was he, at heart, a Communist who despised us all? I cannot answer…. What I can tell you is that for the years I knew him he was kind and decent and very good at what he did, which was controlling me.” The hint of a smile flickered, then left.
“Eminence,” Harry said, intensely. “Did you know he’d left a message on my answering machine only hours before he was killed?”
“Yes, I was told…”
“He was scared, afraid of what would happen next…. Do you have any idea why?”
For a long moment Marsciano said nothing. Finally he spoke, directly and quietly. “Mr. Addison, take your brother from Italy. Bury him in his own land and love him for the rest of your life. Think, as I do, that he was falsely accused and that one day it will be proven so.”
* * *
FATHER BARDONI SLOWED the small white Fiat behind a tour bus, then turned onto Ponte Palatino, taking Harry from Gasparri’s and back across the Tiber to his hotel. Midday Rome was loud, with bright sun and filled with traffic. But Harry saw and heard only what was in his mind.
“Take your brother from Italy and bury him in his own land,” Marsciano had said again as he’d left, driven away in a dark gray Mercedes by another of Farel’s black-suited men.
Marsciano had not talked of the police and Jacov Farel without purpose; his not answering Harry’s query, too, had been deliberate. His charity had been in his indirectness, leaving it to Harry to fill in the rest—a cardinal had been murdered, and the priest thought to have done it was dead. So was his colleague in the murder. So, too, were fifteen others who had been on the Assisi bus. And whether Harry wanted to believe it or not, the remains of that priest, the suspected assassin, were officially and without question those of his brother.
To make certain he understood, Cardinal Marsciano had done one more thing: turned and looked at Harry severely as he’d walked down the steps to his car, his glance more telling than anything he’d said or implied. There was danger here, and doors that should not be opened. And the best thing Harry could do would be to take what had been offered and leave as quickly and quietly as possible. While he still could.
15
Ispettore Capo, Gianni Pio
Questura di Roma
sezione omicidi
HARRY SAT IN HIS HOTEL ROOM, TURNING Pio’s card over in his hand. Father Bardoni had dropped him off just before noon, saying he would pick him up at six-thirty the following morning to take him to the airport. Danny’s casket would already be there, checked in. All Harry would have to do would be board the plane.
The trouble was, even in the shadow of Marsciano’s warning, Harry couldn’t. He could not take a body home and bury it for all time as Danny’s when he knew in his heart it was not. Nor could he take it home and, by burying it, make it easy for the investigators to officially close the book on the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome; an act that, for all intents, would brand Danny forever as his killer. And this, after his meeting with Marsciano, was something Harry was more certain than ever was not true.
The problem was what to do about it, and how to do it quickly.
It was twelve-thirty in the afternoon in Rome, three-thirty in the morning in Los Angeles. Whom could he call for help there right now who would be able to do anything other than be sympathetic? Even if Byron Willis or someone in the office could arrange for a prominent Italian attorney