The nun looks again at the pile of papers on the nightstand, and for some reason she seems in a hurry to finish now.
As she tidies the bathroom, I step over to look at the papers. Then I freeze.
The wheels of the nun’s cart whine. The last thing I hear her say, before she closes the door behind her, is, “Father, I’m going to have to send someone up here. I don’t think this is really your room.”
It isn’t a pile of papers after all. It’s a pile of photographs.
Photographs of me.
* * *
MY HAND SHAKES AS I pick up the camera. I scroll through the backlog of pictures. Me, walking in the gardens. Me, standing outside the Palace of the Tribunal. Me, holding hands with Peter in the courtyard below. Near the end, I find it. Me, exiting the Casa. The same photo that was slipped under my door with the threat written on the back.
I try to think. But the fear is spilling through me.
A name. A face. I need something.
I throw open the closet. From the hanger dangles a black, buttoned robe. A Roman Catholic cassock. The nun must’ve known it couldn’t be mine.
I check the tag. In a country of identically dressed men, we write our names in our clothing. But there’s nothing here, just the faded insignia of a tailor shop near the Pantheon. On the next hanger is a ferraiolone, the long cape that Roman priests wear to black-tie events. Finally it clicks. I’m looking at a priest’s best cassock and formalwear. This man is preparing for Ugo’s exhibit tomorrow night.
I need a way to identify him. I lay the cassock on the bed and open the penknife on my key chain. Just below the back of the collar, I make a cut through the fabric. It’s almost invisible. But when the cassock is stretched over a man’s shoulders, it’ll pucker, and I’ll be able to see his white shirt from behind.
I hear a sound in the hallway. I rehang the cassock and start to leave—when a thought comes to me.
I backtrack to the desk, checking the drawers. It must be here somewhere. I find a lunch receipt, and what appears to be a parking ticket. I stash them in my cassock. Then, on the nightstand, I see it. Under a loose sheet of paper is the pad of Casa stationery. I open the shutters and lift the pad in front of the slanting light of sunset. Just faintly, I see the impression of handwriting. The five digits of my phone number.
This is where the scrap from Ugo’s car came from. This must be the room that called me three times on the night before Ugo died.
Two priests have been sleeping here. One of them broke into my apartment while the other was breaking into Ugo’s car at Castel Gandolfo. Everything converges here, in this room. If only I had stopped the maid before she threw away that basket of trash. There must’ve been more inside it than an empty bottle of Grappa Julia.
Suddenly the door opens. A nun steps inside. Behind her is the housekeeper.
“Father! Explain yourself.”
I step back.
“You don’t belong here,” she exclaims. “Come with me this instant.”
I make no move.
Behind her appears a Swiss Guard. The same one I saw in the stairwell.
“Do what she says, Father,” he commands.
An idea comes to me.
“Den katalavaino italika,” I say to the guard. “Eimai Ellinas.”
I don’t understand Italian. I’m Greek.
He frowns. Then it dawns on him. “He’s one of them from upstairs,” the guard says. “He keeps going to the wrong floor.”