Day Of Confession

43

Roscani absently crushed a cigarette into the ashtray in front of him as he read the Italian translation of a fax sent down from Taglia's office. It was a notification from Special Agent David Harris in the FBI's Los Angeles office that Byron Willis, a senior partner in Harry Addison's Beverly Hills law firm, had been shot and killed outside his home the night before by an assailant or assailants unknown. The motive appeared to have been robbery. His wallet, wedding ring, and Rolex watch were missing. Los Angeles homicide detectives were working on the case. An autopsy was pending. Further information would be forthcoming.

Roscani ran a hand over his eyes. What the hell did this mean? Without more information he had no choice but to take the murder as a coincidence. But he couldn't. It was too close to what was going on. Still, what would be the purpose of killing Harry Addison's partner? Something he knew about Harry? Or Father Daniel?

Roscani typed a response memo on his computer and sent it to his secretary for translation and transmission to Harris/FBI/Los Angeles. In it he thanked the FBI for their cooperation and asked to be personally kept advised of new developments, suggesting – what he was certain the FBI was already doing – that they question close friends and business associates of Harry Addison to see if there was some universal thread, a common knowledge some or all might share; and then to put them on alert for their own personal safety.

His phone rang as he finished. It was Valentina Gori, the speech therapist and lip reader he had brought in to analyze the Harry Addison video. She had viewed it a number of times and was downstairs. Did he have time to join her?

Harry's face was frozen on the large video screen as Roscani entered, took Valentina's hand, and kissed her on the cheek. Valentina Gori was fifty-two, red-haired, recently a grandmother, and still very attractive. She had a degree in speech therapy from the University of Leuven in Belgium, had studied mime in the French theater in the 1970s, and, afterward, worked as an actress dubbing foreign sound tracks for the Italian film industry while at the same time consulting on speech and speech patterns for both the carabinieri and the Italian police. She had also grown up in the same Roman neighborhood as Roscani and knew his entire family. Moreover, when she was twenty-two and he was fifteen, she had stolen his virginity just to show him he wasn't as much in control as he thought he was. It was a relationship they carried to the present. Besides his wife, she was the one person in the world who could look him knowingly in the eye and make him laugh at himself.

'I think you're right. It looks like he is about to say something, or is trying to say something just before the tape ends. But I'm not sure he wasn't just looking up.'

Turning the remote toward the screen, she touched the pause/still button. Harry's mouth began to open as the tape inched forward, and Roscani heard his voice growl with the slow-motion sound. And then they reached his last words. He finished, started to relax, then his head made an awkward and abrupt upward move with his mouth open. That was when the taped ended.

'It almost looks like an i…'

There was a slow hissing sound, like wind being expelled by an inebriated giant.

'I what?' Roscani was locked on the screen and Harry's frozen image.

'I'm not so sure he wasn't just finished and tired and was simply going to let out a breath.'

'No, he was trying to say something. Again,' Roscani said, and Valentina played it over. In stop motion. Slow motion. At half speed and then normal. Each time Harry reached the same point, there was the brief hissing sound and then the tape was over.

Roscani looked at her. 'What else? – How many thousand films have you seen? You must have other ideas about what's going on up there on the screen.'

Valentina smiled. 'A thousand ideas, Otello. A hundred scenarios. But I can only go from what I see. And hear. And from that, we have a tired man with a lump on his head who has done what has been required of him and would like to rest. Maybe even sleep.'

Roscani turned abruptly to look at her. 'What do you mean required of him?'

'I don't know. It's just a feeling.' Valentina winked. 'Occasionally we all do things required of us when our heart isn't entirely in it.'

'We're not talking about sex, Valentina,' Roscani said flatly.

'No-' This was no time for Valentina to break through his veneer, and she realized it. 'Otello, I'm not a psychologist, just an old broad who's been around a little. I look at the screen and see a tired man apparently speaking his mind but who sounds more like he's doing what he thinks somebody wants. Like a child reluctantly clearing the dishes off the table so he can go out to play.'

'You think he made the tape against his will?'

'Don't ask me to draw conclusions from the air, Otello. It's far too difficult.' Valentina smiled and put a hand on his. 'It's not my job, anyway. It's yours.'