Authors: The Sacred Cut
"You
forgot something."
"Miss--"
She
flashed the police ID at him. "
Doctor
."
"
Doctor
Lupo. I will take these things and make sure they go to the proper
place."
"Yes,
well, you won't mind if I make sure."
"What?"
She
sighed, as if she were trying to keep her patience. "You left them in the
Pantheon, Morrison. I had Joel Leapman screaming down the phone at me this
morning as if it were my fault or something."
"What?"
he asked again.
"You
came to pick up the body, didn't you?"
"Yeah!
Which we did. Hell, I'm not running some damn funeral-home service here. We
shouldn't be doing this kind of stuff anyway."
She
tapped her shoe on the shiny reception floor. "You took the body. You
left her stuff. You wouldn't be
fit
to run a funeral home. If it
wasn't for me, these things could have been lost for good. Not that
I'm getting any credit for it. Do you wonder Joel Leapman's going
berserk over this?"
The
woman behind the counter was starting to stare now. She had a little
"serve you right" smile on her face. Joel Leapman couldn't be
that popular around here, Teresa thought. But maybe Cy Morrison wasn't
either.
Morrison
walked a little way away from the desk to get a touch of privacy. "Listen,"
he said in a low, furious voice, "I'm not interested in what Joel
Leapman thinks. I don't work for him. I'm damned if I'm
supposed to clean up whatever mess he leaves behind either. Just give me the
things and it's done."
"No,"
Teresa snapped. "I'm not having him screaming at me because you
fouled up again. I want to see them in there. If they turn up missing again
he's going to go ballistic again and I don't want that coming in my
direction."
"Dammit!"
Morrison yelled. "Since when did you get the right to give orders
here?"
She
took out Emily's security card and waved it in his face, keeping the photo
side away from him, hoping, hoping. "Since Joel Leapman told me to go see
"that moron Morrison," gave me this and told me not to let go of
this stuff until I saw it safely on his desk with my own eyes. Now, do you want
to accompany me there? Or should I just find my own way? God knows," she
lied, "I've seen enough of that place and that man these past few
days."
Cy
Morrison peered at the security card. Someone like Joel Leapman wouldn't
give these things out lightly, Teresa guessed. It had to mean something. Still,
Morrison ought to at the very least check the photo, and some inner reminder of
that seemed to be just beginning to work its way into his consciousness.
"Plus,"
she improvised, wondering if she was going to foul up here, and what trying to
talk your way into a secure office in the US embassy meant for your career,
"he needs these
urgently
."
Teresa
Lupo dug deep into the bottom of the box and retrieved one of the bags
she'd taken from the apartment the previous day.
"This
was yesterday's woman," she said. "You heard about that?
Turns out she was American too. Maybe I'll be calling you to pick up
her
corpse before long. She was decapitated," Teresa said, getting his
attention on the bag. "While wearing this nightdress."
The
scarlet garment lay in a large evidence bag, the bloodstains black and stiff
beneath the plastic. Morrison eyed the bag sideways. He looked queasy.
"Of
course if you want to take responsibility yourself..." he managed,
"I'd just have to tell Leapman you'd done that, you
understand. So if it went missing, if anything got tampered with, damaged,
lost, altered in any way which meant it couldn't be used in a court of
law..."
Scaring
men was fun sometimes, she thought. A skill to be cultivated.
"You
do know about rules of evidence, don't you?" she demanded. "You
do understand what happens if this doesn't get handled in exactly the
right way? If one thumbprint goes in the wrong place?"
"Frankly,"
Morrison muttered briskly, "I don't give a shit. If the guy gave
you his card, go wherever the hell you want. And find your own damn way out
too."
With
that he stormed off, in the opposite direction, away from the office she
wanted, the one just round the corner and down the hall.
Teresa
Lupo whistled a little tune as she walked there. Then she ran Emily
Deacon's ID through the security slot, waited for the lock to retreat and
walked in.
She'd
been thinking this through all the way there, phrasing the right message,
tweaking the nuances. She'd had an uncle who took her hunting once, when
she was a kid. She'd hated the entire experience. All except for the dog.
The wonderful dog who was as lovable as they came but could flush out a single
pheasant in a field of corn just by scenting where the bird lived and emitting
a single bark in its direction.
A
minute. That was all it would take to type a simple e-mail, swiped with
Emily's ID card to authenticate it as genuine, mark the message as urgent
as hell, hit Send and stand back to see what happened.
She
hammered the keyboard with her fat, clumsy fingers.
"Now
run, you bastard," Teresa Lupo said to herself and hoped to God this made
a difference. Those hard canisters she felt as she hugged Emily Deacon's
scared, skinny body kept popping pictures into her head of what they could
deliver on her cold, shining table if anything went wrong.
"That
was a piece of cake," Teresa Lupo whispered to herself. "You should
do this more often."
The
box lay on Leapman's desk now. Rightfully most of the contents belonged
to him. But not the nightdress from the apartment. She had just brought that
along as a last resort, for effect. And that was evidence of her own, something
she could need for a crime that remained in the jurisdiction of the state
police.
"Wasted
on these people," she sniffed. "All of it."
They'll
know, too, she thought. When the dust settled, Leapman would be able to look at
that odd box on his desk, retrace her steps, work out how this was done.
"What
the hell?" Teresa Lupo murmured, then picked up the evidence packet with
the blackened, stained silk shift, dropped it in her bag, went out and called a
cab for the centro storico.
"LOOK
AROUND YOU,
gentlemen. Enjoy the view
."
Costa
had placed the phone on the empty chair next to Emily. Now they crowded close
to it, listening to Bill Kaspar's voice crackling out of the speaker,
clear and determined.
"
Can
you imagine being in a hellhole like that, watching your buddies going down one
by one, clinging to a piece of webbing as if it could keep out the fire? All
because some asshole you thought you could trust wants a cut of the action
?"
"We
get the point," Leapman grumbled.
There
was a pause. "
OK. I hear you. The man from the Agency. Or wherever.
Right
?"
Viale
made a gesture to Leapman:
Pursue this
.
"Listen,
Kaspar," Leapman continued. "It doesn't matter who I am. All I
want to do is make sure you understand something. We know what happened.
Washington's got no doubts. Not anymore."
"
You
think you know--"
the tinny voice interrupted.
"You
got screwed! Live with it! You're not the first. So you and your people
went down there. That's tough. In war you get casualties."
Kaspar
waited before answering. It was a scary moment. "
We were
"casualties"
?"
"You
and lots of others. Except they let it go. I don't know. I don't
get..."
Leapman
was struggling. Viale sat down and stared at him, disappointed.
"
You
don't get the symmetry
," Kaspar said calmly. "
Understandable.
I guess you needed to be there
."
Leapman
fought to get a grip on himself, glanced at Emily, then said, "Look. Dan
Deacon fooled us all. You, me, Washington, everyone. We never even began to
guess until a good way through all this. I'm sorry. Is that what you want
to hear?"
The
voice on the phone--hidden somewhere they could only guess
at--sighed. "
Ignorance--such a rotten excuse. Being
smart's not about when or where you're born, you know. It's
about who you are. That's history, man. The guy who built that place
you're in--he was called Hadrian, a little history for you there. He
could fight battles. Run empires. Think about life. He could sit right where
you are now and imagine a whole cosmos in his head
."
Leapman
blinked hard, looked at Viale and made the "crazy" sign with his
right index finger.
"
I
slept above his mausoleum last night
," Kaspar continued. "
I
thought I'd dream about him. I didn't. It was just the same damn
shit I always hear. Which doesn't make sense, since they're all
supposed to be dead now. You follow
?"
"So
we're going through all this because of your dreams, Kaspar?" Leapman
asked. "Are you listening to yourself? That's how crazy people
sound. That's what--"
The
voice from the tinny speaker cranked up several decibels. "
Crazy!
CRAZY! This seem crazy to you
?"
There
was a sudden, unexpected noise behind them. Something coming out of Emily
Deacon's jacket and not a phone this time, a
pop
, like the
report of a small gun, and she was screaming again, terrified to move,
terrified to stay still. A bright spark, alive and fiery, was worming its way
out of the uppermost yellow canister on the vest.
The
men were scattering again. Costa took a good look at the jacket, walked over,
tried to hold her still, wrapped a handkerchief around his fist and jabbed at
the burning object. It came out, stinging his fingers. He threw it to the
floor, where it fizzled ominously.
"Don't
play games," Costa barked at the phone. "She didn't deserve
that."
"
You
don't know what you deserve
!" Kaspar yelled back. "
You
don't have a clue
."
Costa
wasn't listening. He was back with Emily, hand to her head, noting the
tears in her eyes, the look of terror there.
"I'm
sorry," she gasped. "I'm so sorry."
Kaspar's
laugh rattled out of the phone. "
Good! Are you people learning
something here? Improvisation's everything. A man needs tricks up his
sleeve. What you got there was the demo. A little firecracker to keep you on
your toes, folks. Still leaves me with seven real ones, though. Plus the set I
got here, somewhere you'd never guess, full of lots of people who surely
wouldn't want to die without knowing what Christmas presents
they've got. Ask your munitions moron to stick his nose round Little
Em's vest. This is real, people. Don't ever forget that
."
"This
is real," Emily Deacon murmured to no one, head down.
Viale,
Leapman and the two Americans were slinking back to the centre of the hall now,
looking somewhat ashamed.
Costa
scowled at them, picked up the phone, turned off the speaker and held the
handset to his ear, ignoring Leapman's protests. "My name's
Nic Costa. Rome police. Tell me what you want, Kaspar, and I'll tell you
if they can give it to you."
A
pause on the end of the line. A wry, amused laugh, and Costa knew somehow: he
was dealing with someone very smart. "
Finally. Mr. Costa. Are we
talking privately, son
?"
The
voice in his ear had changed. The person behind it sounded closer. More human.
And just a little apprehensive too.
"Yes,"
Costa replied and listened, very carefully, as he watched Gianni Peroni
restrain the furious Leapman from grabbing the phone.
"
I
like that. So you think you can convince them to let you out of that place with
something
?"
"Yes,"
Costa said, and tried to sound convincing.
"
Good.
I'm impressed
."
"Meaning?"
That
laugh again. "
Meaning we're halfway there already. "Cos I
got something for you
."
Then
the line went dead. Nothing, not a single background noise, a half-heard word
from a third party, gave Costa a clue about where Kaspar was really located.
Leapman
was shaking with fury. Peroni released him. The American pointed at Falcone and
spat, "That was not part of the deal!"
"You
were losing it," Falcone said coldly. "If you'd gone much
further she'd be dead, and the rest of us too, probably. Save your thanks
for later."
"You--"
"Shut
up!
Shut up
!" Emily Deacon looked ready to break. She was
hugging herself inside the deadly parka, gently rocking backwards and forwards,
tears streaming down her cheeks.
"For
God's sake," she pleaded, "either give him what he wants, or
just get the hell out of here so he doesn't kill the rest of you
too."