The Fifth Gospel(126)

            I look away from Ugo, feeling as if I’ve invaded his privacy. This was a man who kept two dead bolts on his door and a safe bolted to his office floor. A man who in all the time we worked together never showed me a picture of his family, if he even had any to speak of. Maybe that’s why his body is still here, three days later, languishing in a back room with no vigil or word of a burial Mass.

            “Ugo,” I say aloud, “I’m so sorry.”

            For being here. For interrupting your peace. For ignoring you when you came to me for help.

            I look away and scan the wheeled cart in front of me, searching for his belongings. Instead I find a manila folder labeled NOGARA, UGOLINO L. The first page is a diagram of a man’s skull covered with handwritten notes. Mindful of my fingerprints, I pull a pair of latex gloves from the dispenser on the wall before touching it.

            A black hole is drawn on the right side of the diagram’s skull. Measurements are beside it. An exit wound is drawn on the left side, likewise measured. On the next page is a full-body silhouette listing the scars and discolorations on Ugo’s skin. At a glance I see the word jaundice, followed by a reference to page eleven in the patient history.

            I skim forward. The file has mostly been compiled during the past eighteen months, beginning just before Ugo’s first trip to Edessa, when he was vaccinated for typhoid and tetanus. This spring, he tested positive for liver disease. Then failed a vision test. After that, the entries become more frequent. Ugo seems to have visited the doctor every time he was back in town. Page eleven, referenced in the autopsy report, was made less than a month ago.

            Patient exhibits secondary delusions consistent with alcohol dependency. Fears losing job. Fears being followed, harmed. Evidence of possible confabulation. Tested for Korsakoff, but no evidence of amnesia. Retest for memory loss in six months. Prescribed thiamine; referred to specialist.

            The date of this visit is shortly before he sent me his final e-mail. The doctors, seeing that he was an alcoholic, ignored everything else. I feel a second wave of guilt.

            Returning to the autopsy report, I finally find the inventory of personal effects. It mentions the absence of wallet and watch. It says nothing about a Casa key—with or without a nick taken out of the fob. This strengthens my suspicion that the scrap I found under his floor mat wasn’t his.

            The inventory also says the pockets of Ugo’s pants, shirt, and suit jacket were empty. But my suspicion was right. In the inner breast pocket of his raincoat, the examiner found Ugo’s mobile phone.

            No mobile phone was ever listed in an inventory of evidence Mignatto mentioned to me. I begin to search the metal trays for another red-sealed evidence bag, when my eyes catch one last line in the notes.

            Staining of both hands.

            I stop, and look again. Then I rifle through the pages for another reference. Beside the full-body diagram, a line item mentions the gunshot residue found on Ugo’s shielding hand, the one he defended himself with. But that isn’t what the notation said. It said staining of both hands.

            Thinking back, I remember what the Swiss Guard said about Ugo’s body to Simon and me in the cantina just hours after he died.

            I heard there was something wrong with it. Something about his hands or feet.

            I stare at the hump under the sheet on the metal table. And I dread what I need to do now.



            ONLY SIMON WAS ALLOWED to see Father’s body in this room. Two days afterward, when I leaned over the open casket to kiss the holy icon on his chest, I smelled the cologne the mortician had put on him, and I knew my father was gone. The body before me had become a stranger. No Greek priest wears cologne. But that smell has stayed with me, folded among the buried memories in the corners of my own skull. It returns now as I step toward the table.

            I stare at the white sheet. At the bulging landscape of Ugo’s corpse. Then I don the priest’s familiar armor against death. There’s nothing to fear here. The soul doesn’t die. As surely as Ugo lived before, he still lives, just dislocated from his body.