A Season for the Dead

Thirty-Two

By seven that evening the case of Gino Fosse occupied most of the resources of the Rome state police. More than thirty officers were on duty guarding the men Sara Farnese had named as former lovers, all of whom had now been swabbed for DNA and the samples passed, along with that illicitly taken from Michael Denney, to the big police lab near the river. A team of four had been assigned to go through the personnel file from the Vatican which Nic Costa had brought back to the station.

Nothing looked promising. Fosse had been raised in Sicily by peasant farmer parents. At six he had gone to board at a local church school. His parents rarely visited. His record there was one of promising academic achievement and persistent, violent misbehavior.

Falcone pointed out a significant event: When Fosse was nine he’d been found torturing a young cat in a wood by the school playground. The inspector got one of the detectives to track down a retired teacher who’d known the boy. The details were revealing: Fosse had skinned the animal alive, then nailed the corpse to a tree. A year later, a stray dog was tethered to a set of railings, doused in petrol and set on fire. Fosse denied all knowledge. No one believed him but, if they had proof, no one came forward with it. Gino had, said the former teacher, an intense curiosity in one particular field of study: the lives and, most of all, the deaths of the early martyrs.

He grew older and discovered new interests. At thirteen, he was reported for a serious sexual assault on a schoolgirl. Two years later he was accused of an almost identical offense. Both cases were dropped, for no obvious reasons.

At twenty, he entered the seminary. From that point on he had occupied a series of junior positions in Palermo, Naples, Turin and finally Rome until joining the administrative staff of the Vatican five years before. Falcone set men calling the cities where Fosse had worked, talking to the local cops and any priests they could persuade to come to the phone. They soon picked up a picture, as much from what was not said as the details they gleaned from the reluctant parties on the other end of the line. Gino Fosse was constant trouble.

In each job he’d been moved on for some misdemeanor. In Naples he had been accused of sleeping with prostitutes in his own parish. In Turin, money had gone missing and he had become involved in a fistfight with the senior detective who had been assigned to investigate the theft. There were darker rumors too, all unproven, of sadistic sexual encounters. Yet he was never charged, never dismissed from his position. Fosse drifted from post to post, falling apart after a few months, often with disastrous consequences. Still, he made steady progress toward Rome, toward the Vatican and the pinnacle of Church bureaucracy. Finally he found himself in the job he had occupied until only a few weeks before, working on the clerical staff for Denney, typing, phoning, driving.

“So why does he keep on going up and up like this?” Falcone asked Costa.

“I don’t know. Maybe they try to keep people in the fold.”

“Bullshit. Look…”

It was a single-page report someone had gleaned from the anti-Mafia squad: six years old and scarcely the stuff of scandal. It said that a young trainee priest, named as Gino Fosse, with the details of his parents’ farm in parentheses, had stayed at the home of one of the city’s most notorious Mafia bosses for three months while attending studies in a nearby college.

Falcone tapped the page. “Friends. Look at that. He knows the wrong kind of people. He’s a houseguest of the biggest hood in Palermo.”

“So the Mafia could ease his way in the Church? They could get him off the hook when he walks into trouble?”

“Are you serious? How long have you been a cop, kid? These people can call the Quirinale Palace direct and ask if the president’s at home. That’s not the issue. The real question is, why? Why keep some farmer’s punk out of jail? Why keep him groping up the slippery ladder like this? Does someone in the Vatican really think he’s cut out for better things?”

That was surely impossible. Fosse appeared to be a dangerous loser, a liability for anyone to have around.

Falcone dashed the folder on the desk. “And I’m supposed to let that bastard in the Vatican go for this? Hanrahan honestly thinks he can trade for Denney’s freedom with a bunch of personnel records?”

Costa had been thinking of Denney ever since he left the apartment. The man seemed desperate but defeated too, as if he were waiting for some unknown fate to overtake him. He wanted to escape the gloomy prison the authorities had made for him. Costa doubted there was much joy in the prospect either, or much hope of redemption. Even when he talked about home, about Boston, the Irishman seemed downcast, as if he knew that too was a pipe dream.

“Perhaps that’s all the Cardinal has. He’s clutching at straws.”

“Now, that,” Falcone replied, “I do doubt. You must never take anyone in that place at their word. Hanrahan least of all.”

“So you’ll tell him there’s no deal.”

“He can sweat until tomorrow. Then we’ll see.”

Tomorrow, he nearly said, there could be another corpse. And Michael Denney would still be screaming to get out of that dismal apartment. He tried to think straight and found his eyes closing, the drowsiness taking over. Falcone’s hand on his good shoulder jolted him awake.

“It’s been a long day for all of us, especially for you. Go home, Nic. Talk to that woman. Try to make more sense of this than I can. Come back in the morning and tell me how it all fits.”

“Are you sure?” The inspector’s sudden amiable mood took Costa by surprise. He was dog tired. All the same, there was so much happening. He hated being anywhere else.

Falcone looked him up and down, something not far from sympathy on his face. “You’re no use to me here. And I don’t want to be bawling you out for anything else today. It may just make me feel guilty. It was your own damn fault Fosse nearly killed you this morning. That doesn’t stop me feeling bad about it. So no solitary running, mind. That partner of yours is pissed off enough as it is. As am I. On your way. You earned a break.”

Costa looked outside the office door. Beyond the glass Luca Rossi was bent over the computer, stabbing awkwardly at the keyboard with a big index finger.

“Rossi wants out,” he said without thinking, then cursed himself. It was the big man’s prerogative to break this news.

Falcone seemed unmoved by the idea. “I know. He told me. People get like this in the middle of a bad case. Don’t think anything of it. Don’t take it personally.”

“But it is personal. There’s something about me that bugs him.”

“Age. You’re getting older. You’re starting to want to be on top. Rossi’s just feeling everything winding down. His life’s a pile of shit. He’s got no future. He’s just looking for someone else to blame.”

Costa was incensed. “That’s unfair. Luca’s a good cop. An honest cop. He’d do anything, for you, for me, anyone on the force.”

“Yeah. But he’s spent, kid. Just a burnt-out case and I’ve got no room here for people like that. When this is done he can ship out and lick envelopes or something. Or take his pension and go drink himself to death in Rimini. Who’s to care?”

“Me.”

Falcone’s face turned sour again and creased with disgust. “Then you’re an idiot. One of these days you’ve got to decide whose side you’re on. The winners’ or the losers’.”

“You’re going to say that when some young buck comes in and thinks you’re a loser, sir?”

“Not going to happen,” Falcone replied emphatically. “I go when I choose to go. Look at him. Four years older than me. That’s all. Do you think anyone would believe that? He’s run to seed. No use to anyone. He has no power over himself. A man has to possess that. If he doesn’t, somebody else will take it from him or, worse, he just gives up on everything and blows with the wind. That’s what your friend’s doing and he doesn’t even care much where it takes him.”

Costa stood up and walked out of the room, not wishing to hear another word. He passed the big man at the desk and patted his huge shoulder gently. “Good night, Uncle Luca.”

Two puzzled watery eyes looked up at him. “What’s wrong with you, junior?”

“I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

Rossi snorted. The sound was like a walrus choking on something. Costa was pleased. It was good to see he could still raise a laugh in the man. Then Luca Rossi’s face turned serious. “Don’t let her tuck you in, Nic. Not just yet, eh?”

Costa walked down two flights of steps, out into the open air. The night was humid and oppressive. There was scarcely anyone on the street. The usual bum was occupying his usual position by the café the cops liked around the corner next to the station car park. He was hunched on the street, head between his legs. He stank to high heaven.

The familiar bearded face looked up as he walked by. Costa stopped and reached into his pocket. “Why do you do this?” the bum snapped, half drunk already. “Why the hell’s it always you?”

“Does it matter?” he replied, surprised. “It’s just money.”

The vagrant had an ageless face. He could have been thirty or twice that age. He was, Costa understood this, lost already. His money made no difference. It went on drink straightaway, only hastening the inevitable. “Not for you, it isn’t,” the bum said. “For everyone else it’s just small change. They don’t notice me. I like that. Not you. With you I have to earn it. I have to talk. I have to act grateful. You know what I think?”

Costa felt dog tired. His head hurt. “Tell me.”

“This is for you. Not me at all. This is just a little ointment for your conscience, huh? A little something to help you sleep at night.”

Costa looked at the miserable figure on the ground. He held out a hundred-euro note: ten times the usual amount. The bum’s eyes glinted in the gloom. “Want it?”

The tramp held out his hand.

“Fuck you,” Nic Costa said, then dropped the money in his pocket and walked into the car park, only half hearing the slurred stream of curses directed at his back.

It was the first time in years he hadn’t given that second gift.

Falcone had made his point.