Barely a Crime Page 9

  “How much farther?” Crawl asked.

  The Italian shrugged. “Not much.”

  “How much in minutes?”

  “Not much.”

  Crawl tried again.

  “Where’d you learn English?”

  “I don’t like use it.”

  “You talk good English.”

  “Think so?”

  “Better than I talk Italian.” Antonio nodded, satisfied.

  “So use it to tell me, how’d he come to contact you? Day, I mean.”

  Antonio shrugged again. “He just came,” he said.

  “He just walked up to you in the street?”

  “Something like that.”

  Crawl wiped sweat from his forehead and cheeks. The Fiat wasn’t air-conditioned and the day was getting hotter. “So how long’s it been?” he asked.

  “What’s been?”

  “How long’s it been since you met him?”

  Another shrug. Which, Crawl realized, Antonio seemed to do as naturally as breathing. Most Italians talked with their hands, this one talked with his shoulders.

  “Look,” Crawl said. “Let’s just talk like we’re friends, how’s that? We’ll make it a nice little trip together in your no-air-conditioning car. Tell me, what do you do for him, other than picking up Irishmen and delivering us wherever we’re going?”

  Antonio looked young, in his early thirties, tops, but he was already balding in the middle of his head. He pulled a dark blue handkerchief out of his left-side pocket and rubbed his bald spot and forehead and said, “I get things. I do things.”

  “Did you get things to set up this job? What’d you do?”

  Another shrug. “Just things.”

  They came up behind a slower-moving truck. Antonio swung around it, studying it as he passed it by.

  “You like that truck?” Crawl asked.

  Another shrug. “It’s a truck.”

  “Okay,” Crawl said. “I’ll talk. You listen. Then you can just nod your head and shrug when I get to a good part.”

  No response.

  Crawl guessed he obviously wasn’t at a good part yet.

  “I’m making a lot of money for this whatever-the-hell it is we’re doing,” he said. “I imagine you are, too. Our friend seems to be real generous, so now I want to be generous, too.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small wad of folded bills. Then he peeled a few off and held them up close to Antonio’s cheek and flagged them for a second before pulling them back.

  “This is seven hundred pounds,” he said. “That’s got to be a long way past five hundred euros here in Mother Italy. You tell me.”

  The Fiat slowed noticeably, but Antonio said nothing.

  “It’s yours, if you find me—just between you and me, now, not the boss—if you find me a semiautomatic handgun. Seven to ten in the clip, .30 caliber or better. I don’t give a damn what kind, Italian or whatever, just so it works smooth and I’ve got the rounds to go with it. An extra seven hundred euros.”

  He wasn’t thinking about how dangerous the job might be. He wasn’t thinking about the American doctor’s intrigues. He was thinking about how he would soon be trying to get away from a crime scene in the middle of Italy with a couple thousand pounds in his pocket. And he was thinking—for the first time because it was just hitting him—about the man driving the Fiat. He had known an Italian would be part of the job, but he hadn’t been smart enough to think about the man, not until now, seeing him sweating with his right hand clenching the top of the Fiat’s steering wheel and his thin neck pushed forward as he watched the road, and every five seconds shrugging at something.

  He realized that Antonio might have already been told about him and Kieran getting a good chunk of the money as cash up-front. Why hadn’t he thought about that? Antonio could easily have family in the area; brothers and cousins and friends. This skinny Italian, who spoke English and who knew how to break the law, how to get things done, could already be planning on hitting him and Kieran after the job was over, or have part of the family do it; hitting the two Irishmen in what was already getting to be the middle of nowhere, in Italy.

  He held the money out again and said to Antonio, “It’s a deal then, right?” at the same time that he said to himself, “There’s no way in hell this guy’s going to get me a gun!”

  Antonio didn’t answer but he was clearly thinking about it. He finally said to Crawl, “But you won’t need a weapon.”

  “I know. No risk, no one gets hurt, I’m sure. So the weapon won’t even come out. Which means Day never even knows about it, I guarantee you.” He held the money up next to Antonio’s right hand. “It’s just my way of feeling safe. I’m not going to have to use it, you know that.”

  “So why get it?”

  “If this whole thing is as safe as Day says, and we both know it is, what’s the difference? So. Seven hundred euros, simple as that.”

  More silence, the Italian wiping his head again with his handkerchief.

  Crawl kept at him, the money held high, well in sight, knowing that if the guy were really going to turn on them, he wouldn’t do it for five times as much. “Is it a no risk job or not? What are you saying? You saying there’s a big risk here, after all?”

  Antonio said, “He’s a serious man, Mr. Day.”

  “I’ll give the weapon back to you after the job is done, too, how’s that? You get whatever he’s paying you, plus what’s left of the seven hundred, plus the weapon. So are you smart or not? How can you go wrong?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  One more shrug. “I made my deal with Mr. Day. I don’t want to do this.”

  “No risk, it never comes out,” Crawl repeated.

  Antonio studied Crawl with dark and settled eyes in his rearview mirror. “Now I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Now let’s not talk like we’re friends anymore. How’s that?”

  Crawl set his jaw, lowered the money and sat back, staring straight ahead.

  Mountains in front, beaches behind, and now he didn’t know what, driving him to who knows where.

  It was four o’clock. The sun was nearly touching the tallest point of the Alps to the northwest. A road sign said that they were sixteen kilometers from the city of Turin, straight ahead.

  Crawl’s heart sped up.

  “Is that what we’re heading into?” he asked Antonio. “Into Turin?”

  “Not into,” Antonio said quietly. “Just near.”

  His heart beat even faster. He didn’t know exactly what the job was going to be yet, but he sure knew something important now about the doctor, and he knew something that was lying in Turin.

  “Holy hell!” he whispered.

  For another fifteen minutes they drove without hurry and without speaking over gentle hills leading closer and closer to a solid backdrop of mountains in the distance. Antonio suddenly slowed and turned right onto a well-worn path that led them down and to their right, around the base of a tall but gently rising hill. They followed the path, holding to the base of the hill, until a two-story house emerged on their left.

  It was yellow stucco with orange tiles on the roof and green shutters on each of the six visible windows. At another time, Crawl might have laughed, it was so predictable. But not now.

  The house had a chimney but no garage, and an archway built over the front entrance. It looked to Crawl as if it had at least ten rooms. There were two other cars parked near the entrance, a black Mercedes sedan that looked like new and another little sedan, a green Opel that looked even older than the car Antonio was driving.

  “Who drove the two cars?” he asked Antonio.

  They pulled to a stop. Antonio turned off the engine. “The Mercedes is for Mr. Day,” he said. “The green one will be mine. You’ll take this one after the job, over to Milan.”

  “I said who drove them here? Is there anybody here besides Day and Kieran?”

  “We got them here so you’ll have one
of your own after the job. It’ll have directions, where to leave it in Milan, in there.” He pointed to the small glove compartment. “It’ll be easy for you.”

  He opened the driver’s door and began to squeeze out. He said, “The whole job will be easy.”

  “The house is quiet,” Crawl said. “Nobody’s comin’ out or anything?”

  Antonio closed his door and bent down to speak through his still-open window. “It’s not a visit to grand-mama’s house,” he said with the beginnings of a grin. “No one’s going to rush out and hug you.”

  Crawl said, “Go to hell,” as Antonio, grinning wider, started toward the house.

  The two doors opened at the same time; Crawl swinging open the Fiat and stepping out, and Kieran opening the front door of the house and starting out to meet him. He wore a white T-shirt, blue jeans and a tight and serious expression.

  The doctor was right behind him, wearing a beige linen suit and a white shirt that shimmered like silk and the same straight expression he had worn throughout their first meeting. This time, he had no tie.

  He stopped as Antonio approached him, then put his hand on the Italian’s shoulder and began to speak to him in a low voice. But he kept his eyes on Crawl, looking interested but showing no smile to welcome him.

  Crawl emerged from the car, scrutinizing the doctor in return.

  There was still no greeting signaled from anyone, and what Crawl noticed most clearly about Kieran as he drew closer was that he didn’t look all that thrilled about whatever he had already seen inside.

  “Did you get in touch with Michael?” Kieran asked, now near enough to speak in a hushed voice.

  “A while ago.”

  Kieran whispered, “Do we know who Day is?”

  Crawl glanced past him. The man he now knew to be a doctor in biotech was patting Antonio on the back and turning, finally, to Kieran and Crawl.

  “We’re all right,” Crawl said. “We even know where he lives.”

  “I guess we’re all right,” Kieran said. “But see what you think, inside.”

  “What about it?”

  “You’ll see.”

  It was all he had time to say. The doctor was already near enough in his perfect tan suit and perfect white shirt to extend his right hand to Crawl and to say in a voice that sounded perfectly genuine, “Welcome, Mr. Connell, to an adventure which, I promise you, you will never regret, and never forget!”

  Crawl noticed that Dr. John Cleary from the Pecos Wilderness in the U.S. of A. was the only one among them who looked very sure about that.

  8

  Kieran was relieved that Mr. Day, or whatever his real name was, wasted no time, but led them directly into the house. Relieved, too, that there was no time wasted to point out wash rooms or offer some food or drink or sit down for small talk about Crawl’s trip or stay standing for a tour of the kitchen or bedrooms or grounds.

  With Antonio walking close behind them like a guard, the two Irishmen were led through a dimly lit front entrance hall rich with dark wood, potted palms and assorted works of art. The art included a pair of twenty-four-inch brass vases on four-foot-high marble pedestals. To their right, a statue of a helmeted centurion stood like a guardian knight next to two large interior doors.

  The doctor paused in front of the two doors, as if to gather himself. The others stopped behind him, waiting for the first words to be spoken inside the house.

  Kieran watched Crawl. Crawl watched the doctor. Antonio stood behind them like a second statue.

  The doctor murmured in a reverential whisper as he grasped the door’s shining brass handle and said, “Behold the man.”

  Kieran swallowed.

  Crawl raised his eyebrows.

  The doctor pulled the doors open and added, “He does not keep silent!”

  The only lights in the long room were a flood of small spotlights positioned to illuminate three heavily encased tan panels—each more than fourteen feet long and three feet wide—that had been mounted sideways, six feet from the floor, with one on each side wall and one on the rear.

  Under each one, also wedged tightly to the wall, was a thick, six-foot-long altar-like platform.

  Immediately to the right of each of the altar platforms, mounted vertically rather than horizontally, was a far simpler but equally large black and white panel.

  Unlike the tan panels, which were encased in heavy polished metal casings and covered with thick transparent lids, the three vertically mounted panels were simply identical copies of the same negative-image photograph. It showed the faint, white-on-black features of a naked male corpse. He was lying face up. His feet were several inches apart. His eyes were closed in death. His hair was long and disheveled. His hands were folded together over his groin. His folded thumbs were hidden from sight.

  All of him looked blotched and speckled and ghostly.

  Kieran’s eyes darted back and forth from the panels to Crawl, who was holding his breath.

  The doctor remained silent, watching their reactions.

  Antonio moved to where he could see their reactions too.

  “Do you recognize it?” Kieran asked Crawl in a strained whisper.

  Crawl muttered, “I think so.”

  “You recognize it?” asked the doctor.

  Crawl said, “It’s that shroud.”

  “The Shroud of Turin, yes, the most studied artifact in all of human history. The burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth.”

  Crawl said, just loudly enough for Kieran to hear, “We’re takin’ it?”

  Kieran shook his head no.

  Crawl’s eyes swept the room.

  The doctor announced, “Each full image is fourteen feet, three inches long.” He walked in solemn steps to face the first tan panel on the right wall. “Each is three feet, one inch wide.”

  His eyes were half-closed. His voice rose slightly as he began to move deeper into the room.

  “Jesus was five feet, eleven inches tall,” he said. “He weighed between one hundred seventy-five and one hundred eighty pounds. His body was anatomically perfect. This figure, his figure on the shroud, is the only human figure in medical history known to be perfectly proportioned throughout the entire body. The only one.”

  The doctor’s words leaked out slowly. “Only in the negative photographic images, only on the white-on-black, do we see his figure clearly. We see that he was crucified through his wrists, not his hands. We see that he had a large contusion on his right cheek. He had another contusion under his right eye. His nose was fractured. His left nostril was swollen and deformed. His cheekbones were swollen. Trails of blood traced down from each nostril, and it was a man’s blood, type AB.” He stared at the nearest image for several seconds, then added, “The highest concentration of type AB blood in the world is found in the Middle East. It is the most prevalent blood type in Israel.”

  Kieran stared at Crawl, wondering when he would interrupt and ask the man flat out what the job was. He knew that he would at some point. Crawl wouldn’t be put off too long by the man’s narration, or by the reminders of the dead lying or hanging all around them.

  The doctor kept speaking; his voice never speeding up, never slowing down.

  “He had deep three-inch wounds over his entire body, back and front. The principle wounds are round at the ends and straight in the middle, like barbells. They are perfectly matched to the metal flagellums that archeologists have discovered on the Roman whips of his day; metal balls that exploded the skin. That’s how archeologists describe those metal balls. They were purposefully designed to explode the skin and splinter the underlying bones.

  “One hundred and twenty flagellum lesions are clearly identified over the length of his body. The wounds were delivered by two men; one taller than the other, so the direction of his blows were more severely angled. ‘He was whipped, so that we might be healed.’ ”

  Kieran liked it less every time the man went through it, which the doctor had, for Kieran, at least twice over in the last two hou
rs.

  He had even told Kieran that he and Crawl were there in order to help him get to the real thing, which was in the cathedral in Turin. What he hadn’t said was why.

  “His head was punctured by thin, pointed objects. Twenty visible punctures can be seen across the forehead and temporal areas. The forehead was punctured over the frontal branch of the temporal artery, so he had blood streaming into his eyes.”

  Kieran looked at Crawl and saw that his eyes had narrowed again. He’s thinking hard again, he thought. Watching, putting things together, probably planning something, because Crawl Connell was always planning something.

  The doctor’s sad eyes glistened. “He couldn’t have seen well,” he continued, dropping his voice until it was barely audible. “Not with the blood in his eyes. He wasn’t able to wipe it away because his arms were pinned to the crossbeam of the cross. Both his shoulders were wounded, too; his right more severely than his left.”

  He fell silent.

  No one moved.

  The doctor’s voice was still just above a whisper as he again started inching forward. “The crossbeam weighed between one hundred and one hundred twenty pounds. It was oak. There are microscopic tracings of oak fiber from the cross still on the shroud. Oak was the most abundant tree in Israel at the time of Jesus.

  “The carbon dating that was attempted in 1988 could not have been accurate. It’s been since demonstrated that the fibers of the shroud are coated with a bioplastic compound. Bacteria caused it. In 2005 the shroud’s fibers were tested by chemists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory who took all the previous findings into consideration. They found that the 1988 tests were conducted on a patch of cloth that had been applied to the shroud in medieval times. They dated the actual age of the overall shroud at between 1,300 and 3,000 years.”

  Stretching his arms across the wooden altar toward the second of the tan replicas, he slowly tapped at a rusty blotch on the linen’s bottom edge.

  “No one knows how the image could have been made on the linen cloth. Even today, we have no idea of how it could have been made. Every painting and staining technique known to exist has been considered and disproved. A nuclear reaction of some kind is, from a purely scientific perspective, the most probable causal event. Whatever it was, it’s known that it must have happened very quickly. The linen was only on the body for a very short time. The stains would have been markedly different if the shroud had stayed on the man’s body for an extended period of time.”