James Benn: Death

Back in the room, Kaz shrugged, indicating nothing out of the ordinary. We waited some more. The bells tolled eleven. We took turns watching through the crack in the door. Anybody coming up the staircase from the main entrance would be in our line of sight, whether or not they were headed to our floor or the floor above. I hadn’t wanted to insult the monsignor, but I preferred him out of the way. First, he was too important to all the POWs and refugees hidden in Rome, and second, he seemed too kindhearted for the work that might need to be done tonight.

More time passed, and the bells chimed midnight. I began to have doubts. Corrigan, Soletto, and Rossi might not have the justice they deserved. Maybe I’d overthought things. Maybe I was dead wrong.

I heard a noise. So did Kaz from his post at the door. He moved it open, wincing as it squeaked. No one was in the hall. Another sound, this time from the room across the hall. We both tiptoed, golf clubs in hand, and I had a fleeting thought of how ridiculous we must look. I put my hand on the door handle, and slowly opened it.

Another noise, but the room was empty. The bed, where we had made up pillows and blankets to look like a sleeping man, was pulled apart, feathers from the pillow strewn about.

The door to the balcony was open, and I sprinted outside in time to see a form drop from the balcony onto the staircase. Bruzzone, Zlatko, or Brackett, I couldn’t tell.

“Kaz, go out the main door,” I whispered.

I went out on the balcony and saw in an instant. He’d come up from the staircase, using a drainpipe for leverage, and pulled himself up over the balcony. I leapt onto the stairs, losing my balance, tumbling down, the golf club slipping away. There was a sharp pain in my knee, and I rolled over, trying to get up, but my knee buckled.

“Is there no end to this?” It was the voice of Monsignor Bruzzone, a white-handled knife grasped in his hand, feathers still clinging to his black shirt. He towered over me, his arm pulled back, ready to plunge the knife into my chest.

There was a thud, and Bruzzone sank to his knees, the knife dropping from his hand. His eyes rolled up as he wavered for a moment, then fell over.

“ There’s an end for you,” Diana said from behind him, wielding a length of stout lumber from the scaffolding in the cemetery. O’Flaherty, with Kaz one step behind, came on the run and skidded to a halt in front of Bruzzone, a look of stunned admiration on their faces.

Kaz and O’Flaherty dragged Bruzzone’s unconscious hulk inside and up the stairs to the monsignor’s room. We needed some privacy. I limped behind them, Diana helping me along.

“Thanks,” I said. “You saved my life. Was that you I spotted earlier?”

“Yes. And I’m happy to return the favor,” she said, her arm tucked under mine. “I knew you would argue with me about waiting outside, so I decided not to mention it. It worked out well, wouldn’t you say?”

“Can’t argue,” I said. “Let’s call it quits though, okay? No more needing to be saved for either of us.”

“Deal,” she said, even though we both knew it might be a promise broken.

Kaz got Bruzzone trussed up in a chair while O’Flaherty cleaned the blood from his head. Bruzzone moaned, half conscious at best after Diana’s whack with a two-by-four.

“I cannot believe it of him,” O’Flaherty said. “Did you suspect him more than the others?”

“I was suspicious about his leaving the Vatican. Abe had made a crack about a heist and cutting in some German guards right after Bruzzone returned. It made me think about the reasons he might have for sneaking out overnight. One possibility was to enlist the aid of the Krauts, to help him get away. It was the only thing that made sense, for a guy who had been afraid to step over that line for so long.”

“Aye, he refused to explain himself to me as well,” O’Flaherty said with bitterness as he threw a glass of water into Bruzzone’s face. “Wake up and explain yourself!”

“Let me go,” Bruzzone said thickly, blinking his eyes and wincing from the pain. “I have done nothing.”

“No,” I said. “You only happened to steal a knife, scale a balcony, and then shred a pillow in the room where we told you Severino Rossi was sleeping.”

“No, I was out going to prayers. Matins.”

“I saw you come out of the room,” Diana said. “I didn’t see you go in, but it was you plain as day coming out.”

“Hugh, are you going to take the word of these spies?” Bruzzone’s eyes were wide with fear, beseeching his comrade.

“Listen to yourself, Renato, my friend. You sound like Bishop Zlatko. What have you done, man? This isn’t the fellow I knew when we worked up north,” O’Flaherty said, moving in on Bruzzone as anger overcame him and his voice rose in a shuddering rage. “What happened to you? Who have you become?”

Bruzzone had started to put up a good front. Sometimes, in the face of overwhelming evidence, the best thing to do is deny everything, blame everyone else. I’d seen high-priced lawyers make that work in court. But this wasn’t a Beantown courtroom. This was a guy tied up in a chair in the dark hours of the night, blood trickling down over his white clerical collar.

I picked a feather from Bruzzone’s sleeve and let it drop in his lap. Then I held the knife in front of him, not threatening, just letting him see it.

“You were going to murder Severino Rossi, God rest his soul, with that very knife!” O’Flaherty yelled. “You, a priest, who has saved lives. How could you possibly take one?”

“I have done nothing,” Bruzzone said. He shook his head and gazed down at the floor. I had the feeling he was speaking truthfully, but not about the murder.

“You betrayed Severino Rossi, didn’t you?” I asked, as gently as I could, trying to pry the truth out of that statement.

“Leave me alone, please,” Bruzzone said, his eyes avoiding mine.

“Renato, we all trusted you,” O’Flaherty said. “Tell him it cannot be true, for the love of God!”

Bruzzone faltered in the face of his friend’s anguish. His lip quivered, and I watched him begin to slowly disintegrate as his facade of respectability and innocence crumbled. The small quiver turned to a grimace as he tried to hold back the reservoir of emotion that had been dammed up for so long. I saw it shatter, the guilt and shame overflowing, wiping away his desire for survival, his ability to lie and scheme, to believe his own protestations. He burst into tears, like a child reprimanded by an angry but loving parent. I’d seen it before, in interrogation rooms and back alleys. The desire to be freed from a great and terrible burden overwhelming the instinct for self-preservation.

“Why did you do it, Monsignor?” I whispered. Bruzzone held his head in his hands, tears dripping through them. I pulled his hands away, holding them in mine, knelt in front of him, and asked again, eyeball to eyeball. “Why did you do it?”

“Because I was afraid,” he wailed. “I did not want to die. I did not want to suffer the pains they promised me. Do you understand? I am a coward, and I did not want to die!”

“Tell us how that led you here tonight,” I said, as soothingly as I could, coaxing him along like a recalcitrant child.

“Once I began, once I gave in, I was too ashamed to be found out for what I had become. I lusted for my own life, and sacrificed others. Forgive me, scusami.”

Tears without end seeped from his eyes, a constant flow that soaked into his black shirt.

“It began in Genoa, didn’t it? Where you first met Severino Rossi?” I asked.

“He is dead, truly?”

“Yes. After you had him turned over to the Fascist police, Koch took him and tortured him for sport. We got him out, but it was too late.”