Day Of Confession

11

11:30 p.m.

Harry wound his way down the Via Condotti to the Via del Corso and on, unable to sleep, looking in shop windows, just wandering with the late crowd. Before he'd gone out he'd called Byron Willis in L.A., telling him about his meeting with Jacov Farel and alerting him to the probability of a visit from the FBI, then discussing with him something deeply personal – where Danny should be buried.

That twist – one that, in the crush of everything, Harry hadn't considered – had come in a call from Father Bardoni, the young priest he'd met at Danny's apartment, informing him that, as far as anyone knew, Father Daniel had no will, and the director of the funeral home needed to advise the funeral director in the town where Danny was to be interred about the arrival of his remains.

'Where would he want to be buried?' Byron Willis had asked gently. And Harry's only answer was 'I don't know…'

'You have a family plot?' Willis had asked.

'Yes,' Harry had said. In their hometown of Bath, Maine. In a small cemetery overlooking the Kennebec River.

'Would that be something he would like?'

'Byron, I… don't know…'

'Harry, I love you and I know you're pained, but this is going to have to be your call.'

Harry had agreed and thanked him and then gone out. Walking, thinking, troubled, even embarrassed. Byron Willis was the closest friend he had, yet Harry had never once spoken to him of his family in more than a passing way. All Byron knew was that Harry and Danny had grown up in a small seacoast town in Maine, that their father had been a dockworker, and that Harry had received an academic scholarship to Harvard when he was seventeen.

The fact was, Harry never talked about the details of his family at all. Not to Byron, not to his roommates in college, not to women, not to anyone. No one knew about the tragic death of their sister, Madeline. Or that their father had been killed in a shipyard accident barely a year later. Or that their mother, lost and confused, had remarried in less than ten months, moving them all into a dark Victorian house with a widowed frozen-food salesman who had five other children, who was never home, and whose only reason to marry had been to get a housekeeper and baby-sitter. Or that later, as a young teenager, Danny had been in one scrape after another with the police.

Or, that both brothers had made a pact to get out of there as soon as they were able, to make the long grimness of those years a thing of their past, to leave and never come back – and promised to help each other do it. And, how, by different routes, both had done so.

With that in mind, how in hell could Harry take Byron Willis's suggestion and bury Danny in the family plot? If he wasn't dead it would kill him! Either that or he'd come up out of the grave, grab Harry by the throat, and throw him in instead! So what was Harry supposed to tell the funeral director tomorrow when he asked Harry where the remains should be sent after they and Harry arrived in New York? Under different circumstances it might have been amusing, even funny. But it wasn't. He had until tomorrow to find an answer. And at the moment, he hadn't a clue.

Half an hour later Harry was back at the Hassler, hot and sweaty from his walk, stopping at the concierge desk to get his room key, and still with no solution. All he wanted was to go up, get into bed, and drop into a total escape of deep, mindless sleep.

'A woman is here to see you, Mr Addison.'

Woman? The only people Harry knew in Rome were police. 'Are you sure?'

The concierge smiled. 'Yes, sir. Very attractive, in a green evening dress. She's waiting in the garden bar.'

'Thank you.' Harry walked off. Someone in the office must have had an actress client visiting Rome and told her to look Harry up, maybe to help take his mind off things. It was the last thing he wanted at the end of a day like this. He didn't care who she was or what she looked like.

She was sitting alone at the bar when he came in. For a moment the long auburn hair and emerald green evening dress threw him off. But he knew the face, he'd seen her a hundred times on television, wearing her trademark baseball cap and L. L. Bean-type field jacket, reporting under artillery fire from Bosnia, the aftermath of a terrorist bomb blast in Paris, refugee camps in Africa. She was no actress. She was Adrianna Hall, top European correspondent for WNN, World News Network.

Under almost any other circumstance Harry would have gone out of his way to meet her. She was Harry's age or a little older, bold, adventuresome, and, as the concierge said, very attractive. But Adrianna Hall was also media, and that was the last thing he wanted to deal with now. How she found him he didn't know, but she had, and he had to figure out what to do about it. Or maybe he didn't. All he had to do was turn and leave, which was what he did, glancing around, acting as if he were looking for someone who wasn't there.

He was almost to the lobby when she caught up with him.

'Harry Addison?'

He stopped and turned. 'Yes…'

'I'm Adrianna Hall, WNN.'

'I know…'

She smiled. 'You don't want to talk to me…'

'That's right.'

She smiled again. The dress looked too formal for her. 'I'd had dinner with a friend and I was on my way out of the hotel when I saw you leave your key with the concierge… He said you told him you were going for a walk. I took a chance you wouldn't go too far-'

'Ms Hall, I'm sorry, but I really don't want to talk to the media.'

'You don't trust us?' This time she smiled with her eyes. It was a kind of natural twinkle that teased.

'I just don't want to talk… If you don't mind, it's late.'

Harry started to turn, but she took his arm.

'What would make you trust me – at least more than you do now?' She was standing close, breathing easily. 'If I told you I knew about your brother? That the police picked you up at the airport? That today you met with Jacov Farel…?'

Harry stared at her.

'You don't have to gape. It's my business to know what's going on… But I haven't said anything to anyone but you, and I won't until an official okay is given.'

'But you want to see what I'm about anyway.'

'Maybe

Harry hesitated, then smiled. 'Thanks – but as I said, it's late…'

'What if I told you I found you very attractive and that was the real reason I waited for you to come back?'

Harry tried not to grin. This was the kind of thing he was used to at home. A direct and very confident sexual come-on that could be done by either male or female – and taken by the other party either in fun or seriously, depending on one's mood. Essentially it was a playful crumb tossed out to see what, if anything, would happen next.

'On the one hand I'd say it was flattering. On the other I'd say it was a particularly underhanded and politically incorrect approach to pursuing a story.' Harry put the ball back in her court and held his ground.

'You would?'

'Yes, I would.'

An elderly threesome came out of the bar and stopped beside them to talk. Adrianna Hall glanced at them, then looked back to Harry, dipped her forehead slightly and lowered her voice.

'Let me see if I can give you a slightly different approach, Mr Harry Addison… There are times when I just like to fuck strangers.' She never took her eyes from him when she said it.

Her apartment was small and neat and sensual. It was one of those things, sex that comes right up from nowhere. Heat that just happens. Somebody strikes a match, and the whole place goes up.

Harry made it clear from the beginning – when he'd answered her and said, 'So do I' – that the subject of either Danny or the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome was off limits, and she'd agreed.

They'd taken a cab, then walked a half block, talking about America. Mostly politics and sports – Adrianna Hall had grown up in Chicago, moving to Switzerland when she was thirteen. Her father had been a defenseman for the Chicago Blackhawks and later a coach for the Swiss national team – and they were there.

There was a click as she closed the door. Then she turned and came to him in the darkness. Mouth open, kissing him roughly, her tongue exploring his. The back of his hands so gently and expertly running over the top of her evening gown, teasing her breasts. Feeling her nipples harden as he did. Her hands opening his slacks, taking down his shorts. Taking his hardness in her hand, stroking him, then lifting her skirt and rubbing him against the thin silk of her underwear. All the while kissing and deep breathing as if it were for all time. And Harry slipping off her underwear, sliding her dress over her head. Unhooking her bra and throwing it into the darkness as she eased him down onto the couch, slipping his shorts from his ankles and moving up, taking him into her mouth. His head rolling back, letting her, then raising up on his elbows to watch as she did. Thinking he had never felt so enormous in his life. Finally, after minutes, easing her head away, lifting her up, carrying her through the orderliness of the living room – a giggle in the dark as she gave him directions – down a short hallway to her bedroom. Waiting, vamping really, as she pulled a condom from a nearby drawer – swearing under her breath, struggling to tear open the foil – then, succeeding, taking it out, and easing it down around him.

'Turn over,' he whispered.

Her smile enraptured him as she did, so that she faced the head of the bed. And he mounted her from behind, feeling the insertion into her warmth, beginning the stroking, the slow in and out, that he sustained almost forever.

Her moaning stayed in his mind for a long time. By Harry's count he'd come five times in two hours, not bad for a thirty-six-year-old. How, and if, she kept score of her own orgasms he had no idea. What he remembered was her not wanting him to fall asleep there. Just kissing him once more and telling him to go back to his hotel, because in two hours she had to get up and go to work.