The Assassini (18 page)

“It could have been anyone,” she said, “dressed like a priest—the nun’s testimony notwithstanding. We mustn’t be so gullible! There’s always someone trying to blacken the Church, tear it down—”

“But,” I said, “who else could have it in for Val? Who was she bugging but the Church?”

“That’s just it—
we don’t know, Ben!
”

“Look,” Dunn said, “I’ve been trying to treat this like one of my plots. Let’s take the time now to do it right. What do you say—will you humor me?” The Regulator clock over the refrigerator ticked loudly. Sleet had begun again, blowing against the window. “Let’s just see what we’ve got.”

I said it was fine with me and looked at Elizabeth. Dunn bothered her and she had reservations about taking him into her—our—confidence. But I sensed she was fascinated by his role and how he functioned within the Church’s power structure. I realized also that she was looking on the two of us, who shared our love of Val, as a team. She didn’t want Father Dunn leading me down
strange, treacherous paths. She didn’t want him breaking up the home team.

“Sure,” she said at last. “You want to play games, I’ll play.” Dunn’s iconoclastic attitude was forcing her into defending the Church. She sensed it and she was off balance.

We adjourned to the Long Room, where there was a fire and a long table with captain’s chairs and a record player. I put the Elgar cello concerto on the CD spindle and pushed the repeat button. With the haunting music filling the room, we drew our chairs to the table: a lawyer, a journalist, a novelist, three people who lived by their abilities to organize awkward bits and pieces of information.

We began with Val’s itinerary. Paris. Rome. Alexandria, Egypt. Los Angeles. New York. Princeton. She stayed with the limousine after dropping Lockhardt at the Rockefeller Center ice rink. Records showed that she had been delivered to the house at 3:45 that last afternoon.

She made two calls, the one to Sam Turner about the hanged priest and the other to me in New York. By which time both Lockhardt and Heffernan had been murdered by the lethal “priest.” Sister Elizabeth insisted on the quotation marks.

At some point while she was at the house Val hid the photo from Paris during the war—at least that was Dunn’s placement of it—in the drum, presumably so that I would find it if anything happened to her: she knew she was in danger even in Princeton and she was counting on me to do something once I found the photo. The picture showed four men, one of whom was D’Ambrizzi. A fifth man took the picture and Elizabeth included him in the group. What in the world made this snapshot so important? Would D’Ambrizzi remember it?

Val then went to the chapel—roughly five-thirty or six o’clock—where she was killed by the same gun that killed Lockhardt and Heffernan. Certainly by the same man. Who left behind a shred of his black raincoat: Dunn said it was a priest’s raincoat.

The killer then returned to the house, found Val’s briefcase, and took it with him.

And finally Rupe Norwich told us that the hanged priest had in fact been murdered in 1936 and a cover-up from on high dictated that it be ruled a suicide. What were they scared of? And who was being protected?

By the time we finished we may have had the known facts clear in our minds, but as Father Dunn observed, they could tell a thousand stories. The fire had burned low, the guard was on duty outside, and there was nothing left to do but try to get some sleep.

H
e looked the part.

That was my first thought upon meeting Monsignor Pietro Sandanato. He looked the part, as if by an accident of physiognomy his life’s course was dictated forever, as if free will had been denied him by the simple fact of his face. He looked like a tortured Renaissance saint painted on countless canvases, hung in countless museums, an artistic convention. Of course, on the other hand, he looked like a Mafia hit man I once met. Sensitive, troubled, tired, with permanent purple smudges beneath eyes that glittered like anthracite under heavy, dark lids.

He had the look of a Giacometti statue, emaciated, but with a boyishly smooth, swarthy face, straight black hair, a single pockmark on his left cheek like a brand marring an otherwise perfect hide. He wore the collar, a black topcoat draped over his shoulders, a soft black Borsalino, black kid gloves which he removed when Father Dunn led the way into the foyer and introduced us. It was past noon and Dunn had met him at Kennedy and made the long drive to Princeton.

“Mr. Driskill,” Sandanato said softly, his voice husky with jet lag, “I bring messages of the deepest sympathy from your sister’s dear friend Cardinal D’Ambrizzi, as well as from His Holiness, Pope Callistus. Our sorrow at this tragedy is profound. I, too, knew your sister, of course.”

I took them into the Long Room and Sister Elizabeth came in from Margaret Korder’s command post. Sandanato
turned to her and they shook hands. “Such a tragedy, Sister,” he murmured.

Mrs. Garrity served coffee and, after Sandanato refused the offer of lunch, I sat watching the three of them talk, Church professionals. I wasn’t really paying attention to what they said. Sandanato was going to be my houseguest for a few days and I was trying to size him up. I couldn’t recall ever having seen anyone drawn quite so taut. The face, the carriage, the haunted eyes, set off a chain reaction of references in my mind, ecclesiastical and Roman, and now so utterly foreign to my life. I kept coming back to the agonized saints in the galleries, the face of Christ with the crown of thorns and the blood running down his forehead that I remembered from the dark end of the hallway at school, to the strained Giacometti statuary, but I was also reminded of the sort of perfectly cast minor characters Fellini used to dress the set, to create in a stroke or two the world of the Vatican. His hair shone like glass. In the time I watched him he smoked three cigarettes. His hand shook slightly, giving the impression of someone wound so tightly that there was the risk of a broken mainspring, a disaster.

Eventually Garrity took Sandanato’s bags up to his room and my guest followed, a dark wraith wearing Gucci loafers. I said to Artie Dunn, “Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Four hours a night suits me fine. The sleep of the just. I also catch the odd catnap, which reminds me of Hairball. I must be going.”

“I beg your pardon?” Elizabeth said.

“Hairball,” Dunn said. “My cat. Her name is Hairball. She didn’t have a name for two years—then it came to me. My cat is synonymous with hairballs. Besides she sort of looks like a hairball. Very irritating animal. But don’t get me started—”

“Believe me, I wouldn’t have,” she said, “if I’d known. It’s disgusting.”

“That’s what I say.” Dunn smiled at her. “I must go feed the little wretch.”

When he’d gone she turned to me. “What a remarkably weird little man! He has an agenda of his own—I’d
give anything to know what it is. There’s something about him that scares me.”

“Speaking of weird, or scary, or
something
,” I said, “tell me about Sandanato. What’s his number?”

“I’ve never seen him without D’Ambrizzi—I mean, he’s D’Ambrizzi’s creature, he owes his career to D’Ambrizzi. D’Ambrizzi picked him out of an orphanage, brought him along, now depends on him every single day. Sandanato is his second in the ongoing battle with Cardinal Indelicato—”

“What are they fighting over?”

“The future of the Church, the nature of the Church. They’ve been at each other’s throats all their lives, fifty years of sniping, or so people say. And now—well …” She shrugged and began rearranging a spray of dried flowers in a copper pot on the sideboard.

“And now what? I know I’m not in the Catholic inner circle, I’ve lost my membership card, but you can trust me—”

“I only thought you wouldn’t be interested in shop talk—”

“Just try me, Sister.”

“I was just going to say that it’s odd how the two of them have come fifty years, through all the battles, wins and losses and draws, to this point—two old men, both within reach of the final triumph, the papacy.”

“Aren’t they awfully old? Neither one of them could get the Church to the next century—”

“They’re both very vigorous,” she said, “and age isn’t really all that important. The job is to set the priorities, get the Church on track. And, frankly, we’re a little weak on younger candidates. Federico Scarlatti maybe, but he’s too young, only fifty.”

“So would you call Sandanato D’Ambrizzi’s campaign manager?”

“You know it doesn’t work that way, Ben—”

“The hell it doesn’t. The party line is wasted on this old Jesuit, Elizabeth.”

She gave me a tolerant smile. “You’re impossible, but I suppose you take pride in that. In any case, Sandanato wouldn’t be the man. He’s more like chief of staff. If you
insist on a campaign manager, I suppose it might have been Curtis Lockhardt. That’s only a guess on my part, but with Heffernan and Lockhardt meeting, it seems a good guess.”

“What conclusion does that suggest? That someone who didn’t want D’Ambrizzi to win—”

“My God, you don’t
win
the papacy, it’s not a ball game!”

“Of course you do, and of course it is, Sister. So somebody killed Lockhardt and Heffernan to derail D’Ambrizzi’s chances? Does that sound possible?”

“It sounds absurd! Really, Ben, this isn’t one of Dunn’s thrillers, no matter what he says!”

“Absurd? I think it’s absurd that three people have been murdered in cold blood. But that they were killed without a reason … now,
that
would be absurd. There was a motive, Sister. Believe me. And I’m damned curious about it. I want the man who killed my sister to pay—but he won’t be found until his reasons are known. And in the world of the Church, the papacy may well be worth killing for.”

I was wound up and had run on longer, more vehemently, than I’d intended. My anger was showing through and it took even me by surprise. It was like catching a glimpse of the red-eyed thing behind the mask of sanity.

She gave me a hard look, her arms folded across her chest. The wheels were going around in that regal head and finally she gave the tawny mane a shake. She’d assessed the situation. Her face softened as if she were going to give me another chance.

“Nevertheless,” she said, “it
sounds
absurd. I know these men. They are not murderers, Ben. I don’t pretend to have any idea what’s been going on here. But I’m not jumping to the conclusions that seem to fascinate you and Artie Dunn. Let’s say I’m trying to keep an open mind.”

“Just so it’s not empty,” I said.

She laughed, giving up on me, reminding me so damned much of Val. “You
are
spoiling for a fight.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I goddamn well am.”

“Well, I guess I’ve been warned. You’re Val’s brother all right.”

“And my father’s son. Don’t forget that. There’s one ruthless son of a bitch inside me.” I sank into a chair and willed the tension away. “I’ve just got to work my way through this situation. I haven’t even begun to face her death—you see, Sister, I don’t know yet what it is I’m going to do about things. I think I know but I’m not quite sure how—just humor me awhile. Just talk to me, tell me some more about Sandanato, and then I’ll tell you something I noticed about him. Talk to me, Sister.”

She sighed. “Well, I’m of two minds about the good monsignor. Some days I think he’s the total Vatican insider, the perfect technocrat, cold and calculating, the man who knows how it works and can play the system like a Stradivarius … but the next day I’ll decide he’s the complete religious, practically a monk. He’s fascinated with monasteries and maybe that’s where he belongs. Either way, for Sandanato the Church is the world, the world is the Church. That’s the difference between him and D’Ambrizzi. The cardinal realizes there is a Church
and
a world and, most important, he knows the former must exist within the latter. Cardinal D’Ambrizzi is probably the most worldly person I have ever met.”

“They sound like an oddly matched pair.”

“In the end,” she said, staring out the window at the chapel sitting bleakly on the frozen turf with the white frosted roof, “I think Sandanato is D’Ambrizzi’s conscience. Of course, Val thought Sandanato was a zealot, a maniac.” She laughed at the memory.

A silence settled across the room. It was gloomy outside, and shadows were gathering like the enemy. I was thinking about Val, imagining what kind of man could kill her. I was thinking about what I might do if I could find him.

She snapped on a lamp, then another. A gust of wind whistled down the chimney and ashes puffed out across the hearth.

“You were going to tell me something you noticed about him,” she said softly.

“Oh—sure. He’s in love with you, Sister Elizabeth.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, and slowly blushed. For a moment she was speechless. “Now, that
is
absurd, Ben Driskill. And ridiculous! And insane! I can’t imagine how you could come to such an idiotic—”

“Sister, be calm. It was just a passing observation. It’s perfectly obvious. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you for more than five seconds at a time. I thought it was sort of cute.”

“Oh! Val told me how irritating you could be, but this—”

“Sister, I didn’t say
you
were in love with
him
. Relax.”

She rolled her eyes, still flushed. “You’ve got a lesson or two to learn, buster.” Then she walked all the way down the room, stopped to look back at me before leaving. She couldn’t think of anything to say at the last minute and just stalked off. I heard her going upstairs.

My own anger was gone for the moment. I went back to thinking about the killer. Whoever he was, wherever he was.

My father lay quite still on the crisp white sheets, his face gray as putty. His eyes were closed but the lids were fluttering softly, like tiny beating wings. The room looked like something from television melodrama, right down to the monitoring machine making faint beeping noises, background music. It was a private room, spare and utilitarian, but the closest thing to a presidential accommodation the hospital offered. Even hooked up to the machine and looking more dead than alive, he was a hell of a specimen. Massive, solid: I must have expected him to look old and frail and weak, the way he’d looked and felt in my arms at the bottom of the stairs. But I was wrong. I suppose he was in much better condition now than he’d been then.