Day of Confession, Page 2

  But, at that moment, what Harry thought or what had kept them apart hadn’t mattered. All Danny wanted was to hear Harry’s voice, to somehow touch him and to ask for his help. He had made the call as much out of fear as love, and because there had been nowhere else to turn. He had become part of a horror from which there was no return. One that would only grow darker and become more obscene. And because of it, he knew he might very well die without ever being with his brother again.

  A movement down the aisle in front of him shook him from his muse. A man was walking toward him. He was in his early forties, clean shaven, and dressed in a light sport coat and khaki trousers. The man had gotten on the bus at the last moment, just as it was pulling out of the terminal in Rome. For a moment Father Daniel thought he might pass and go into the lavatory behind him. Instead, he stopped at his side.

  “You’re American, aren’t you?” he said with a British accent.

  Father Daniel glanced past him. The other passengers were riding as they had been, looking out, talking, relaxing. The nearest, a half dozen seats away.

  ”—Yes…”

  “I thought so.” The man grinned broadly. He was pleasant, even jovial. “My name is Livermore. I’m English if you can’t tell. Do you mind if I sit down?” Without waiting for a reply, he slid into the seat next to Father Daniel.

  “I’m a civil engineer. On vacation. Two weeks in Italy. Next year it’s the States. Never been there before. Been kind of asking Yanks as I meet them where I should visit.” He was talky, even pushy, but pleasant about it, and that seemed to be his manner. “Mind if I ask what part of the country you’re from?”

  “—Maine…” Something was wrong, but Father Daniel wasn’t sure what it was.

  “That would be up the map a bit from New York, yes?”

  “Quite a bit…” Again Father Daniel looked toward the front of the bus. Passengers the same as before. Busy with what they were doing. None looking back. His eyes came back to Livermore in time to see him glance at the emergency exit in the seat in front of them.

  “You live in Rome?” Livermore smiled amiably.

  Why had he looked at the emergency exit? What was that for? “You asked if I was American. Why would you think I lived in Rome?”

  “I’ve been there off and on. You look familiar, that’s all.” Livermore’s right hand was in his lap, but his left was out of sight. “What do you do?”

  The conversation was innocent, but it wasn’t. “I’m a writer…”

  “What do you write?”

  “For American television…”

  “No, you don’t.” Abruptly Livermore’s demeanor changed. His eyes hardened, and he leaned in, pressing against Father Daniel. “You’re a priest.”

  “What?”

  “I said you’re a priest. You work at the Vatican. For Cardinal Marsciano.”

  Father Daniel stared at him. “Who are you?”

  Livermore’s left hand came up. A small automatic in it. A silencer squirreled to the barrel. “Your executioner.”

  At the same instant a digital timer beneath the bus clicked to 00:00. A split second later there was a thundering explosion. Liver-more vanished. Windows blew out. Seats and bodies flew. A scything piece of razor-sharp steel decapitated the driver, sending the bus careening right, crushing a white Ford against the guardrail. Bouncing off it, the bus came crashing back through traffic, a screaming, whirling, twenty-ton fireball of burning steel and rubber. A motorcycle rider disappeared under its wheels. Then it clipped the rear of a big-rig truck and spun sideways. Slamming into a silver-gray Lancia, the bus carried it full force through the center divider, throwing it directly into the path of an oncoming gasoline tanker.

  Reacting violently, the tanker driver jammed on his brakes, jerking the wheel right. Wheels locked, tires shrieking, the enormous truck slid forward and sideways, at the same time knocking the Lancia off the bus like a billiard ball and sending the burning coach plunging off the highway and down a steep hill. Tilting up on two wheels, it held for a second, then rolled over, ejecting the bodies of its passengers, many of them dismembered and on fire, across the summer landscape. Fifty yards later it came to a rest, igniting the dry grass in a crackling rush around it.

  Seconds afterward its fuel tank exploded, sending flame and smoke roaring heavenward in a fire storm that raged until there was nothing left but a molten, burned-out shell and a small, insignificant wisp of smoke.

  3

  Delta Airlines flight 148, New York to Rome.Monday, July 6, 7:30 A.M.

  DANNY WAS DEAD, AND HARRY WAS ON HIS way to Rome to bring his body back to the U.S. for burial. The last hour, like most of the flight, had been a dream. Harry had seen the morning sun touch the Alps. Seen it glint off the Tyrrhenian Sea as they’d turned, dropping down over the Italian farmland on approach to Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport at Fiumicino.

  “Harry, it’s your brother, Danny….”.

  All he could hear was Danny’s voice on the answering machine. It played over and over in his mind, like a tape on a loop. Fearful, distraught, and now silent.

  “Harry, it’s your brother, Danny.…”

  Waving off a pour of coffee from a smiling and pert flight attendant, Harry leaned back against the plush seat of the first-class cabin and closed his eyes, replaying what had happened in between.

  He’d tried to call Danny twice more from the plane. And then again when he checked into his hotel. Still, there had been no answer. His apprehension growing, he’d called the Vatican directly, hoping to find Danny at work, and what he’d learned, after being passed from one department to another and being spoken to in broken English and then Italian and then a combination of both, was that Father Daniel was “not here until Monday.”

  To Harry that had meant he was away for the weekend. And no matter his mental state, it was a legitimate reason why Danny was not answering his phone. In response, Harry had left a message on his answering machine at home, giving his hotel number in New York in the event Danny called back as he said he would.

  And then Harry had turned, with some sense of relief, to business as usual and to why he had gone to New York—a last-minute huddle with Warner Brothers distribution and marketing chiefs over this Fourth of July weekend’s opening of Dog on the Moon, Warner’s major summer release, the story of a dog taken to the moon in a NASA experiment and accidentally left there, and the Little League team that learns about it and finds a way to bring him back; a film written and directed by Harry’s twenty-four-year-old client Jesus Arroyo.

  Single and handsome enough to be a movie star, Harry Addison was not only one of the entertainment community’s most eligible bachelors, he was also one of its most successful attorneys. His firm represented the cream of multimillion-dollar Hollywood talent. His own list of clients had either starred in or were responsible for some of the highest-grossing movies and successful television shows of the past five years. His friends were household names, the same people who stared weekly from the covers of national magazines.

  His success—as the daily Hollywood trade paper Variety had recently put it—was due to “a combination of smarts, hard work, and a temperament markedly different from the savagely competitive young warrior agents and attorneys to whom the ‘deal’ is everything and whose only disposition is ‘take no prisoners.’ With his Ivy League haircut and trademark white shirt and dark blue Armani suit, the Harry Addison approach is that the most beneficial thing for everyone is to cause as little all-around bleeding as possible. It’s why his deals go through, his clients love him, the studios and networks respect him, and why he makes a million dollars a year.”

  Dammit, what did any of that mean now? His brother’s death overshadowed everything. All he could think of was what he might have done to help Danny that he hadn’t. Call the U.S. Embassy or the Rome police and send them to his apartment. Apartment? He didn’t even know where Danny lived. That was why he had started to call Byron Willis, his boss and mentor and best fri
end, from the limo when he’d first heard his brother’s message. Who did they know in Rome who could help? was what he had intended to ask but hadn’t because the call had never gone through. If he had, and if they had found someone in Rome, would Danny still be alive? The answer was probably no because there wouldn’t have been time.

  Christ.

  Over the years how many times had he tried to communicate with Danny? Christmas and birthday cards formally exchanged for a short while after their mother’s death. Then one holiday missed, then another. Finally nothing at all. And busy with his life and career, Harry had let it ride, eventually accepting it as the way it was. Brothers at opposites. Angry, at times even hostile, living a world apart, as they always would. With both probably wondering during the odd quiet moment if he should be the one to take the initiative and find a way to bring them back together. But neither had.

  And then Saturday evening as he’d been in the Warners New York offices celebrating the huge numbers Dog on the Moon was realizing—nineteen million dollars with Saturday night, Sunday, and Monday still to come, making a projected weekend gross of thirty-eight to forty-two million—Byron Willis had called from Los Angeles. The Catholic archdiocese had been trying to reach Harry and was reluctant to leave word at his hotel. They’d traced Willis through Harry’s office, and Byron himself had chosen to make the call. Danny was dead, he’d said quietly, killed in what appeared to be a terrorist bombing of a tour bus on the way to Assisi.

  In the emotional gyration immediately afterward, Harry canceled his plans to return to L.A. and booked himself on a Sunday-evening flight to Italy. He would go there and bring Danny home personally. It was the last and only thing he could do.

  Then, on Sunday morning, he’d contacted the State Department, requesting the U.S. Embassy in Rome arrange a meeting between himself and the people investigating the bombing of the bus. Danny had been frightened and distraught; maybe what he had said might help shed some light on what had happened and who had been responsible. Afterward, and for the first time in as long as Harry could remember, he had gone to church. And prayed and wept.

  BENEATH HIM, HARRY HEARD the sound of the landing gear being lowered. Looking out, he saw the runway come up and the Italian countryside fly past. Open fields, drainage ditches, more open fields. Then there was a bump and they were down. Slowing, turning, taxiing back toward the long, low sunlit buildings of Aeroporto Leonardo da Vinci.

  THE UNIFORMED WOMAN behind the glass at Passport Control asked him to wait and picked up the telephone. Harry saw himself reflected in the glass as he waited. He was still in his dark blue Armani suit and white shirt, the way he was described in the Variety article. There was another suit and shirt in his suitcase, along with a light sweater, workout gear, polo shirt, jeans, and running shoes. The same bag he had packed for New York.

  The woman hung up and looked at him. A moment later two policemen with Uzi submachine guns slung over their shoulders walked up to her. One stepped into the booth and looked at his passport, then glanced at Harry and motioned him through.

  “Would you come with us, please?”

  “Of course.”

  As they walked off, Harry saw the first policeman ease the Uzi around, his right hand sliding to its grip. Immediately two more uniformed police moved in to walk with them as they crossed the terminal. Passengers moved aside quickly, then turned to look back when they were safely out of the way.

  At the far side of the terminal they stopped at a security door. One of the policeman punched a code into a chrome keypad. A buzzer sounded, and the man opened the door. Then they went up a flight of stairs and turned down a corridor. A moment later they stopped at another door. The first policeman knocked, and they entered a windowless room where two men in suits waited. Harry’s passport was handed to one of them, and the uniforms left, closing the door behind them.

  “You are Harry Addison—“

  “Yes.”

  “The brother of the Vatican priest Father Daniel Addison.”

  Harry nodded. “Thank you for meeting me…”

  The man who held his passport was probably forty-five, tall and tanned, and very fit. He wore a blue suit, over a lighter blue shirt with a carefully knotted maroon tie. His English was accented but understandable. The other man was a little older and almost as tall but with a slighter build and salt-and-pepper hair. His shirt was checkered. His suit, a light brown, the same as his tie.

  “I am Ispettore Capo Otello Roscani, Polizia di Stato. This is Ispettore Capo Pio.”

  “How do you do…”

  “Why have you come to Italy, Mr. Addison?”

  Harry was puzzled. They knew why he was there or they wouldn’t have met him as they had.“—To bring my brother’s body home…. And to talk with you people.”

  “When had you planned to come to Rome?”

  “I hadn’t planned to come at all…”

  “Answer the question, please.”

  “Saturday night.”

  “Not before?”

  “Before? No, of course not.”

  “You made the reservations yourself?” Pio spoke for the first time. His English had almost no accent at all, as if he were either American himself or had spent a lot of time in the U.S.

  “Yes.”

  “On Saturday.”

  “Saturday night. I told you that.” Harry looked from one to the other. “I don’t understand your questions. You knew I was coming. I asked the U.S. Embassy to arrange for me to talk to you.”

  Roscani slid Harry’s passport into his pocket. “We are going to ask you to accompany us into Rome, Mr. Addison.”

  “Why?—We can talk right here. There’s not that much to tell.” Suddenly Harry could feel sweat on his palms. They were leaving something out. What was it?

  “Perhaps you should let us decide, Mr. Addison.”

  Again, Harry looked from one to the other. “What’s going on? What is it you’re not telling me?”

  “We simply wish to talk further, Mr. Addison.”

  “About what?”

  “The assassination of the cardinal vicar of Rome.”

  4

  THEY PUT HARRY’S LUGGAGE IN THE TRUNK and then rode in silence for forty-five minutes, not a word or a glance between them, Pio at the wheel of the gray Alfa Romeo, Roscani in the back with Harry, taking the Autostrada in from the airport toward the ancient city, passing through the suburbs of Magliana and Portuense and then along the Tiber and across it, passing the Colosseum, and moving into Rome’s heart.

  The Questura, police headquarters, was an archaic five-story brownstone-and-granite building on Via di San Vitale, a narrow cobblestone street off Via Genova, which was off Via Nazionale in the central city. Its main entrance was through an arched portal guarded by armed uniformed police and surveillance cameras. And that was the way they came in, with the uniforms saluting as Pio wheeled the Alfa under the portal and into the interior courtyard.

  Pio got out first, leading them into the building and past a large glassed-in booth where two more uniformed officers watched not only the door but also a bank of video monitors. Then there was a walk down a brightly lit corridor to take an elevator up.

  Harry looked at the men and then at the floor as the elevator rose. The ride in from the airport had been a blur, made worse by the silence of the policemen. But it had given him time to try and get some perspective on what was happening, why they were doing this.

  He knew the cardinal vicar of Rome had been murdered eight days earlier by an assassin firing from an apartment window—a crime analogous in the U.S. to killing the President or other hugely celebrated person—but his knowledge was no more than that, limited to what he’d seen on TV or scanned in the newspaper, the same as several million others. That Danny had been killed in the bombing of a bus shortly afterward was an obvious, even logical, line to follow. Especially considering the tenor of his call to Harry. He’d been a Vatican priest, and the murdered cardinal a major figure within the Church. A
nd the police were trying to see if there was some connection between whoever killed the cardinal and those responsible for bombing the bus. And maybe in some way there was. But what did they think he knew?

  Obviously it was a bad time and the police were reeling anyway because so public and outrageous a crime had happened in their city, and on their watch and on television. It meant every detail of their investigation would be under the closest scrutiny of the media and therefore even more emotionally charged than it already would have been. The best thing, Harry decided, was to try to put his own feelings aside and simply answer their questions as best he could. He knew nothing more than what he’d wanted to tell them in the first place, which was something they would soon find out.

  5

  “WHEN DID YOU BECOME A MEMBER OF THE Communist Party, Mr. Addison?” Roscani leaned forward, a notepad at his sleeve.

  “Communist Party?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am most certainly not a member of the Communist Party.”

  “How long had your brother been a member?”

  “I wasn’t aware that he was.”

  “You are denying he was a Communist.”

  “I’m not denying anything. But as a priest he would have been excommunicated…”

  Harry was incredulous. Where did this come from? He wanted to stand up and ask them where they got their ideas and what the hell they were talking about. But he didn’t. He just sat there in a chair in the middle of a large office, trying to keep his composure and go along with them.