Melia Ridge Page 2

  That question brought me to Roberto Fierro, the late Vinny Fierro’s brother, a man we were previously unaware of despite our long association with Don Vincenzo and his son, Fredo.

  I’d called Fredo when the postcard first arrived and asked if he could recommend anyone who understood the workings of the church in Rome. I was looking for an insider, someone privy to the Vatican’s secrets. He told me to hang up, hang tight, and answer the phone when it rang again, which it did 20 minutes later.

  Don Roberto, Freddy’s uncle, and Vinny’s younger brother as it turned out, was on the other end. I learned in time that he was a man who thoroughly understood the mysterious, secretive workings of the church … perhaps even better than the pope himself.

  Yeah. It’s who you know, all right.

  So I laid it out for him during the phone call: the postcard, the context, the idea that the unsigned mailing may well have come from Caeli’s uncle – even though Caeli’s uncle, the one-time archbishop of Armagh, was supposedly dead, an event we’d witnessed as the guns were blasting away and the wind was howling and the birds, impervious and majestic, were soaring above the noise and chaos below.

  “I can’t prove it, but I suspect he’s still alive and is being held at the Vatican – perhaps because he set this up as a fallback, or perhaps against his will,” I told him. “I need to find out.”

  “Let me see what I can learn,” he’d said and severed the connection.

  The whole conversation didn’t take but a couple of minutes, and most of that was me providing background … the same background I’m offering here.

  He called again, long days later.

  “He is under house arrest,” Don Roberto said matter-of-factly.

  “Son of a seagull,” I muttered, and he laughed softly.

  “This surprises you – even if you suspected it was true?”

  “We saw him die,” I said. “We were there. We watched it happen.”

  “Another reason, I think, to believe the polizia when they say even eyewitness accounts are notoriously … unreliable. Yes?”

  “In this case, at least,” I said.

  He laughed again, heartily this time.

  “I have been able to learn, through favors owed and others to be paid, this relative of your fiancée, Miss Caeli Brown, is restricted to the Vatican grounds, at least for now. But he is under constant … what is the word?”

  He paused here, considering his options, and then said, “Yes, I have it. He is under constant surveillance from the pope’s own Guardia Svizzera, along with that of another exceedingly powerful force at the Vatican, which has also taken an interest in your archbishop, it seems. At least two men are assigned permanently to watch over him, both in …”

  I got the long pause again, and it dragged on for half a minute or more this time. I wasn’t in a position to help or otherwise make a suggestion to allow him to move forward again because I wasn’t certain where he was going.

  “How good is your Italian, truly?” he asked at last.

  “I can work my way around a menu all right,” I said, choosing to be a bit more modest than was necessary.

  “This is not my understanding, Commendatore Blake, but I appreciate your reluctance to … open up. Still, my command of your own language fails me this time. The Italian phrase is poliziotto in borghese,” he said.

  “Yes. I understand,” I said. “A plainclothes officer, sans the official uniform.”

  “Ah. Si. My English is mostly good, the product of a generally excellent education. But I sometimes pause over words that are not used often, or at least not by me,” he said.

  “I do the same in Italian,” I said.

  “So how did you know borghese?”

  “That’s me, more or less,” I said, “although, to place a fine point on my current occupation, I’m actually a private detective in my spare time.”

  He mumbled in Italian.

  “Fin qui tutto bene, ma …”

  But he must have caught the language slip, so he tried again in English.

  “Not to place too fine a point, to borrow your own phrase,” he said, “but a private detective is a investigatore privato in Italian. It’s not quite the same – you would agree?”

  “Si. Vero. But it’s also true that neither one, a plainclothes officer or me while I’m in my private detective job, wear a uniform, which was my point.”

  “Molto bene,” he said. “Capisco. My brother spoke well of you, and often. I have heard of the arrangement he made with you and Miss Brown, to provide consiglio to young Fredo.”

  “Does that surprise you – or concern you, perhaps?” I asked.

  At this stage, I knew precious little about the man, despite polite inquiries, and was fearful that close family ties might mean that bad blood would leak into Freddy’s relationship with his uncle, who for all I knew had sought the role for himself.

  Maybe Roberto already despises both Caeli and me, I thought. Maybe I can’t trust a thing he says.

  But he instantly put me at ease.

  “Not worry,” he said, adding quickly, “Did I say that correctly?”

  “Almost,” I said. “You either want ‘Not to worry’ or ‘No worries.’ Both forms are essentially the same thing. Non c’e problema.”

  “Yes, I see. Molto interessante. This is what happens when you grow old, as I have. My mind isn’t what it once was, and my …” – I got the pause again here – “… my aptitude for something new is also not what it once was.”

  He drew a deep breath before continuing.

  “You have nothing to fear from me, my friend. Don Vincenzo and I were brothers, it’s true. And although we were far different – or is it different by far? – with varying interests, we had much in common and remained generally close. But he was in Oregon, in exile, I like to think, and I was here, in Roma, tending to different parts of the same ship. From what I understand, Fredo is happy in America. I do not understand how or why that is so, but he assures me he is quite content, as did his father, many times through the years.”

  “Fredo is American through and through, Don Roberto,” I said. “He doesn’t think of himself as Italian, although I suspect he’s proud of his heritage.”

  “Yes. I know,” he said softly. “He even thinks in American … in English, I mean. But, as they say in your country, not to worry.” He chuckled at that, an indication that his aptitude for learning wasn’t so slow after all.

  Then he added this:

  “Just so you know, Professor Blake, I have spies everywhere, and I see everything – not just events inside the church.”

  “That’s encouraging to know,” I managed after a moment, wondering where he was going with the line … and why.

  This time he laughed at my expense.

  “Come now. It’s not as bad as that.” He mumbled some words in Italian that I didn’t catch, despite the exceptional quality of the telephone connection, before adding, “Chief among my spies are two longtime guardia del corpo – men who protected Don Vincenzo and who now devote their lives to his son.”

  “Elmore and Leonard,” I said.

  “Yes, your adopted names for the pair, as I understand,” he agreed. “I, of course, know them by their real names, along with their families and, in the case of Marcus, at least – Elmore to you – his place of worship and reading materials and a great deal more. His partner, the man you call Leonard, is a great deal harder to read, harder to know – especially from such a long distance. But I could tell you much about him as well, if you cared to know such things. I could even tell you his given name.”

  I was surprised at the admission and couldn’t help myself from nudging him gently along.

  “So you were snooping on Don Vincenzo through his bodyguards?” I said, striving for a lighth
earted tone, although I’m sure that it sounded like a statement rather than a question to him.

  But he laughed again, which came across as a soft tinkling on the line, seasoning added to a juicy steak.

  “On my brother? Hardly, Professor Blake. You must watch too much American television or see too many of the British 007 spy movies. It was one of the kindnesses I paid to Vincenzo. There is a word in English explaining what I was doing, with my brother’s consent, of course, but it escapes me. It means, let me see, in English …”

  “Vetting,” I suggested before he could get there.

  “Yes. That is the precise word I was seeking. Grazie. It was one of the services I provided for my brother, and now for his son. I know all about you, of course … and about your fiancée, Miss Brown. Would you like me to take a moment and share? Your favorite wine, perhaps, or your fondness for fast American cars with far too much horsepower – you really should look more closely at Italian automobiles, you know – or your choice of German firearms, although why Americans insist on the use of firearms at all is a mystery to me, yes?”

  “No need,” I said, without bothering to provide an explanation to any of his observations. “But I am curious: Did you do this particular line of vetting for Don Vincenzo, or for Don Fredo?”

  He laughed again, and I could visualize him waving the question off from thousands of miles away, even if I was unable at that point to attach a face to the voice.

  “It is not important. Enough of this,” he said easily. “You wanted to know about whether the man who sent Miss Brown the Irish postcard was in fact her late uncle. And I can tell you with full confidence, the man who was once the archbishop in the north of Ireland is as alive as either one of us. He mailed this most curious message to your home in Oregon precisely … would you care to know the exact date?”

  I muttered another soft curse, and he again laughed gently.

  “You have plans, no doubt, to … to do something with this knowledge, or perhaps about this knowledge,” he said. “May I ask what it is?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Ask all you want. But at this stage, I have no idea what to do or even what say about it – not to Caeli, anyway, and especially not to you.”

  “You do not trust me?”

  “I have no reason not to trust you,” I said. “But your interests lie elsewhere. Beyond that, I don’t know what to do with the information, if anything.”

  “Yes, I see. You are concerned your actions now could upset your Miss Brown. I share your unease, although … she also could find the truth by some other means and learn that you knew of the situation and chose not to share it. This would be another consideration for you … something to chew on, yes? But of course, I am overstepping my … what is the word?”

  “Bounds, as a rule,” I said, thinking to myself how much his voice and verbal intonations, and even his English lapses, reminded me of his brother. “Your assessment is correct. Still, I need time to process this, before I make a decision about what to do next.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Should you need my assistance, on this matter or in anything I might do for you and your intended, or for the newly anointed heir, I would trust you to ask – no need to use Fredo as a broker.”

  Most excellent, I thought, though I’ll confess here to not thoroughly thinking through the full ramifications of his offer.

  As much as I’d enjoyed my friendship with Don Vincenzo, a man deemed by the FBI to be the capo di tutti capi of the entire western seaboard of the United States, I used to joke that it was good to have friends in low places. But with Don Roberto, I figured, just the opposite was true – or so I thought in that moment, anyway.

  What I said to him was this:

  “Grazie mille, Don Roberto. Si è più gentile.”

  “Non è niente,” he said. “It is nothing.”

  We parted with an exchange of private telephone numbers and a promise to remain in touch as needed. I knew only, as I swiped the red button on my smart phone and the clock started ticking as to what I’d decide to tell Caeli when she got home, if anything at all, that I could take the matter at hand in a dozen different directions, none of which would be ideal.

  Looking back, I simply wonder whether I should have kept my big mouth shut entirely and destroyed the damn postcard in the fires of hell itself.

  Allow me to note one other point of interest before kicking this portion of the story down the highway. During our initial telephone conversation, Don Roberto mentioned that in addition to the Swiss Guards, the elite force that protects the pope, a second Vatican contingent, one he referred to as powerful, had taken an interest in Caeli’s uncle.

  I only wish that I’d been paying greater attention at the time.

  TWO

  Breaking (the news) Badly

  I waited two full days to let Caeli know what was going on, and then only after Roberto Fierro, the late Don Vincenzo’s younger brother, provided at my insistence detailed photographic evidence that Uncle Jack was in fact ensconced at the Vatican.

  I felt awful about the delay in relaying the news. But I wasn’t about to take a chance of floating the idea that Jack might be alive and capable of mailing out messages, either of distress or reassurance, without absolute proof. Can you imagine Caeli’s reaction if I’d told her that, based on a guess and a hunch and a mere postcard sent from Vatican City, I was guessing that her uncle was possibly alive … and then we found out later that, well, not so much?

  Not gonna happen – not on my watch.

  The photos arrived, after some back-and-forth from Rome, showing three distinct images of a furtive Uncle Jack, his face pale and his eyes sunken and haunted, scurrying across the papal grounds close to St. Peter’s Basilica.

  True, it wasn’t a video capture. But you still got the sense that he was walking hurriedly and that he also was being followed. In two of the three photos, it was easy enough to spot two middle-aged men in nicely tailored suits who didn’t appear to be tourists and certainly weren’t priests, tagging along in reluctant pursuit. Their clothing alone suggested Italian gumshoes of one sort of another, although whether they were employed by the church (a distinct possibility) or by some other organization (and a dozen or more sprang instantly to mind, Interpol especially, considering Uncle Jack’s immediate past misdeeds), it was impossible to say with no more evidence than what I now had in my hands.

  A third photo showed Uncle Jack running, actually running, with two Swiss Guards in comical pursuit, given the elaborate uniforms they wear.

  How Don Roberto came by the pictures, I have no idea, and I asked him about it when he called. He demurred, giving me the Italian equivalent of “I have my ways,” and I was forced to reluctantly let it go. But there was no doubt that the former archbishop, or at least his doppelganger, was upright and moving, if not looking particularly comfortable while doing so.

  How did Caeli react?

  Let’s just say that she took the news better than expected, although her anger rose gradually as she thought it through.

  Looking back, I can speculate that some of Caeli’s ire was directed at me – for keeping the cat in lockup for as long as I did. Still, I’ll tell you here, just as I explained it to her at the time, that I considered my conduct to be wholly admirable.

  Still do, in fact.

  With photographic evidence in hand, I had every intention of telling Caeli about my conversations with Roberto Fierro and the confirmation that not only was her uncle alive and scurrying but also that he was at least temporarily safe within the confines of the Vatican’s stout borders inside the urbs aeterna, the Eternal City.

  I was just trying to figure out a good time, and a decent setting, to spill what I’d learned.

  But nothing is easy. Hell, nothing is ever easy. And if in similar circumstances you ever find yourself looking fo
r the perfect place and the perfect time to drop a perfect bomb as large as this one, well, good luck to you, buddy. Years could slip by.

  I spent some additional time with the photographs, enlarging them after placing them into the enhancing software program on the computer, fine-tuning their clarity and sharpness, and then printed them out on a high-quality digital machine with better-than-average resolution. I was tempted to call Don Roberto once more and ask him whether he or his people could provide any additional details about the content of the photos or the context in which they were taken, particularly relating to the identity of the two likely detectives who appeared to be keeping an eye on Caeli’s uncle during his hurried stroll around the grounds. But I figured after a brief pause that the whole affair would be better placed in hands other than my own.

  If Caeli wants to do something about it, well then, she can do something about it, I reasoned … rather lamely upon reflection.

  Caeli was at the salon, getting her nails trimmed and buffed and painted and polished and whatever else they do to a woman’s nails these days, while much of this behind-the-scenes subterfuge was taking place. She eventually returned in a congenial mood, all else being equal, to the stacks of partially packed moving boxes and discards that cluttered the house – and that’s saying something. Moving is hard work. Moving to a foreign land, one that’s an entire ocean plus an entire continent away, prohibits your taking along much of what you own and is even more difficult.

  “What’s for dinner?” she asked when she entered and caught me at the computer. “I thought you’d have cooked up a gastronomical storm while I was out – or at least put on some stir-fry.”