The Fifth Gospel(128)

            The judges need to hear these messages. They need to draw their own conclusions about why this evidence has never been collected. Mignatto will be furious at what I’ve done, but I unplug the phone and put it in my pocket. Then I check the room for anything I might’ve left behind, bless Ugo’s body one last time, and return to the lobby.

            Outside, in the small parking lot between here and the autopark, a car pulls up. Its lights strafe the vertical blinds, but it’s only one of my neighbors who emerges, yawning, on his way home for the night. I wait for him to disappear inside, then I pad out and lock the door with Mona’s key.

            It’s midnight. I consider calling Mignatto but decide it can wait until morning. We will meet at the courtroom in eight hours. He can rage at me then for what I’ve done. Once the anger passes, he’ll see how much easier his job has become.





CHAPTER 25





I’M WOKEN AT half past five by a phone call from Michael Black.

            “Where are you?” he says.

            “Michael,” I say groggily, “it’s not even dawn here. I’m not running to a pay phone.”

            “Your message said you needed to talk to me?”

            “I need you to get on a plane,” I say. “We need you to testify.”

            “Come again?”

            “The Secretariat won’t release your personnel file. We have no other way to prove you were attacked.”

            Already his tone is changing. “You want me to stick out my neck for your brother?”

            “Michael—”

            “What would I even say? He never told me anything.”

            I sit up in bed and turn on the lamp. I press the sand out of my eyes. My mind is turning at half speed, but I know I need to be careful. He never told me anything: surely untrue. Ugo’s letter referred to Michael as Simon’s “follower,” and when Michael was beaten up at the airport in Romania, it seems to have been because he was helping Simon invite Orthodox to Ugo’s exhibit. That he won’t admit as much to me in private tells me it will be hard convincing him to testify in court.

            And yet he called. Some part of him is still willing to help.

            “As soon as you get to Rome,” I say, “I’ll tell you everything I know. But I don’t want to do this over the phone.”

            “You know what? I don’t owe you anything.”

            “Michael,” I say in a harder voice, “you do owe me. You didn’t just tell those people where to find my apartment. You told them where to find my spare key.”

            Silence.

            “The police won’t help us,” I say, “because they don’t think anyone really broke in.”

            “I apologized for that.”

            “I don’t want your apologies! I want you to get on the next plane to Rome. Call me when you’re here.”

            Before he can say another word, I hang up. And I pray it was enough.



* * *



            TWO HOURS LATER, I arrange an impromptu playdate for Peter with Allegra Costa, the six-year-old granddaughter of two Vatican villagers. At her doorstep, Peter and I take longer than usual to say our see-you-laters. We have a ritual of never saying good-bye to each other, another residue of Mona’s disappearance. She is always there, turning up in the field of our lives like the potsherds Roman farmers find when they plow. For Peter’s sake, I need to call her back soon. But the thought flees when I glance at my wristwatch. Everything tightens inside me. There’s another place I need to be.