Day Of Confession

6

'MERRY CHRISTMAS from the Addisons' Harry could still see the card, the decorated tree in the background, the posed faces smiling from it, everyone wearing a Santa Claus hat. He had a copy of it somewhere at home, tucked in a drawer, its once bright colors slowly fading, now almost pastels. It was the last time they were all together. His mother and father would have been in their mid-thirties. He was eleven, Danny eight, and Madeline almost six. Her sixth birthday was January first, and she died two weeks later.

It was Sunday afternoon, bright and clear and very cold. He and Danny and Madeline were playing on a frozen pond near their home. Some older kids were nearby playing hockey. Several of them skated toward them, chasing after the puck.

Harry could still hear the sharp crack of the ice. It was like a pistol shot. He saw the hockey players stop short. And then the ice just broke away where Madeline was. She never made a sound, just went under. Harry screamed to Danny to run for help, and he threw off his coat and went in after her. But there was nothing but icy black.

It was nearly dark when the fire department divers brought her up, the sky beyond the leafless trees behind them a streak of red.

Harry and Danny and their mother and father waited with a priest in the snow as they came across the ice toward them. The fire chief, a tall man with a mustache, had taken her body from the divers and wrapped it in a blanket and held it in his arms as he led the way.

Along the shore, a safe distance away, the hockey players, their parents and brothers and sisters, neighbors, strangers watched in silence.

Harry started forward, but his father took him firmly by the shoulders and held him back. When he reached shore, the fire chief stopped, and the priest said the last rites over the blanket without opening it. And when he had finished, the fire chief, followed by the divers still with their air tanks and wet suits, walked on to where a white ambulance was waiting. Madeline was put inside and the doors were closed and the ambulance drove off into the darkness.

Harry followed the red dots of taillights until they were gone. Finally he turned. Danny was there, eight years old, shivering with the cold, looking at him.

'Madeline is dead,' he said, as if he were trying to understand it.

'Yes…' Harry whispered.

It was Sunday, January the fifteenth, nineteen seventy-three. They were in Bath, Maine.

Pio was right, Ristorante Cinese, Yu Yuan, on Via delle Quattro Fontane was a quiet place at the end of the street. At least it was quiet where he and Harry sat, at a highly lacquered back table away from the red-lanterned front door and spill of noontime customers, a pot of tea and large bottle of mineral water between them.

'You know what Semtex is, Mr Addison?'

'An explosive.'

'Cyclotrimethylene, pentaerythritol tetronitrate, and plastic. When it goes off it leaves a distinctive nitrate residue along with particles of plastique. It also tears metal into tiny pieces. It was the substance used to blow up the Assisi bus. That fact was established by technical experts early this morning and will be announced publicly this afternoon.'

The information Pio was giving him was privileged, and Harry knew it, part of what Pio had promised. But it told him little or nothing about their case against Danny. Pio was just doing what Roscani had done, giving him only enough information to keep things going.

'You know what blew up the bus. Do you know who did it?'

'No.'

'Was my brother the target?'

'We don't know. All we know for certain is that we now have two different investigations. The murder of a cardinal and the bombing of a tour bus.'

An aging Oriental waiter came up, glancing at Harry and grinning and exchanging pleasantries in Italian with Pio. Pio ordered for both by rote, and the waiter clapped his hands, bowed crisply, and left. Pio looked back to Harry.

'There are, or rather, were, five ranking Vatican prelates who serve as the pope's closest advisers. Cardinal Parma was one. Cardinal Marsciano is another…' Pio filled his glass with mineral water, watching Harry for a reaction that never came. 'Did you know your brother was Cardinal Marsciano's private secretary?'

'No…'

'The position gave him direct access to the inner workings of the Holy See. Among them, the pope's itinerary. His engagements – where, when, for how long. Who his guests would be. Where he would enter and exit what building. The security arrangements. Swiss Guards or police or both, how many – Father Daniel never mentioned things like that?'

'I told you, we weren't close.'

Pio studied him. 'Why?'

Harry didn't respond.

'You hadn't spoken to your brother for eight years. What was the reason?'

'There's no point getting into it.'

'It's a simple question.'

'I told you. Some things just build up over time. It's old business. Family things. It's boring. Hardly about murder.'

For a moment Pio did nothing, then picked up his glass and took a drink of mineral water. 'Is this your first time in Rome, Mr Addison?'

'Yes.'

'Why now?'

'I came to bring his body home… No other reason. The same as I said before.'

Harry felt Pio starting to push, the way Roscani had earlier, looking for something definitive. A contradiction, a diverting of the eyes, a hesitation. Anything to suggest Harry was holding something back or was flat out lying.

'Ispettore Capo!'

The waiter came grinning, as he had before. Making room on the table for four steaming platters, setting them between the men, chattering in Italian.

Harry waited for him to finish, and when he left, looked at Pio directly. 'I'm telling you the truth. And have been all along… Why don't you keep your promise and tell me what you haven't, the particulars of why you think my brother was involved in the cardinal's murder?'

Steam rose from the platters, and Pio gestured for Harry to help himself. Harry shook his head.

'All right.' Pio took a folded sheet of paper from his jacket and handed it to Harry. 'The Madrid police found it when they went through Valera 's apartment. Look at it carefully.'

Harry opened the paper. It was an enlarged photocopy of what looked like a page taken from a personal phone book. The names and addresses were handwritten and in Spanish, the corresponding telephone numbers to the right. Most, from the heading, seemed to be from Madrid. At the bottom of the page was a single phone number, to its left was the letter R.

It didn't make sense. Spanish names, Madrid phone numbers. What did it have to do with anything? Except that maybe the R at the bottom of the page referred to Rome, but the number beside it had no name at all. Then it came to him.

'Christ,' he said under his breath and looked at it again. The telephone number beside the R was the one Danny had left on his answering machine. Abruptly he looked up. Pio was staring at him.

'Not just his phone number, Mr Addison. Calls,' Pio said. 'In the three weeks leading up to the killing, Valera placed a dozen calls to your brother's apartment from his cellular phone. They became more frequent toward the end, and of shorter duration, as if he were confirming instructions. As far as we've been able to tell, they were the only calls he made while he was here.'

'Telephone calls do not make killers!' Harry was incredulous. Was this it? All they had?

A newly seated couple looked in their direction. Pio waited for them to turn back, then lowered his voice.

'You were told there is evidence of a second person in the room. And that we believe it was that second person and not Valera who killed Cardinal Parma. Valera was a Communist agitator, but there is no evidence he ever fired a gun. I remind you your brother was a decorated marksman trained by the military.'

'That's a fact, not a connection.'

'I'm not finished, Mr Addison… The murder weapon, the Sako TRG 21, normally takes a.308 Winchester cartridge. In this case it was loaded with American-made Hornady 150-grain spire-point bullets. They are bought primarily at specialty gun shops and used for hunting… Three were taken from Cardinal Parma's body… The rifle's magazine holds ten rounds. The remaining seven were still there.'

'So?'

' Valera 's personal phone directory was what sent us to your brother's apartment. He wasn't there. Obviously he had gone to Assisi, but we didn't know that. Because of Valera 's directory we were able to get a warrant to search…'

Harry listened, saying nothing.

'A standard cartridge box holds twenty rounds of ammunition… A cartridge box containing ten Hornady 150-grain spire points was found inside a locked drawer in your brother's apartment. With it was a second magazine for the same rifle.'

Harry felt the wind go out of him. He wanted to respond, to say something in Danny's defense. He couldn't.

'There was also a cash receipt for one million seven hundred thousand lire – just over one thousand U.S. dollars, Mr Addison. The amount Valera paid in cash to rent the apartment. The receipt had Valera 's signature. The handwriting was the same as that on the telephone list you have there.

'Circumstantial evidence. Yes, it is. And if your brother were alive, we could ask him about it and give him the opportunity to disprove it.' Anger and passion crept into Pio's voice. 'We could also ask him why he did what he did. And who else was involved. And if he had been trying to kill the pope… Obviously we can't do any of that…' Pio sat back, fingering his glass of mineral water, and Harry could see the emotion slowly fade.

'Maybe we will find out we were wrong. But I don't think so… I've been around a long time, Mr Addison, and this is about as close to the truth as you get. Especially when your prime suspect is dead.'

Harry's gaze shifted off, and the room became a blur. Until now he had been certain they were mistaken, that they had the wrong man, but this changed everything.

'What about the bus…?' He looked back, his voice barely a whisper.

'Whatever Communist faction was behind Parma 's murder, killing one of their own to shut him up?… The Mafia doing something else entirely?… A disgruntled bus company employee with access to, and knowledge of, explosives?… We don't know, Mr Addison. As I said, the bombing of the bus and the cardinal's murder are separate investigations.'

'When will all this be made public?'

'Probably not while the investigation continues. After that we will, in all likelihood, defer to the Vatican.'

Harry folded his hands in front of him and stared at the table. Emotions flooded. It was like being told you had an incurable disease. Disbelief and denial made no difference, the X rays, MRIs, and CT scans stared back from the wall just the same.

Yet, for all of that – for all the evidence the police had presented, one solid piece stacked upon another, they still had no absolute proof, as Pio had admitted. Moreover, no matter what he had told them about the substance of Danny's phone message, only he had heard Danny's voice. The fear and the anguish and the desperation. It was not the voice of a murderer crying out for mercy to the last bastion he knew, but of someone trapped in a terrible circumstance he could not escape.

For some reason, and he didn't know why, Harry felt closer to Danny now than he had since they were boys. Maybe it was because his brother had finally reached out to him. And maybe that was more important to Harry than he knew, because the realization of it had come not as a thought but as a rush of deep emotion, moving him to the point where he thought he might have to get up and leave the table. But he hadn't, because in the next moment another realization had come: he wasn't about to have Danny condemned to history as the man who had killed the cardinal vicar of Rome until the last stone had been turned and the proof was absolute and beyond any doubt whatsoever.

'Mr Addison, it will be another day at least, perhaps more, before the identification procedures are complete and your brother's body can be released to you… Will you be staying at the Hassler the entire time you are in Rome?'

'Yes…'

Pio took a card from his wallet and handed it to him. 'I would appreciate it if you kept me informed of your movements. If you leave the city. If you go anywhere where it would be difficult for us to reach you.'

Harry took the card and slipped it into his jacket pocket, then his eyes came back to Pio.

'You won't have any trouble finding me.'