A Season for the Dead Read Free Page A

it was supposed to be banned.
    “Hey,” Rossi growled. “Don’t you think I get bored too? If Falcone hears you’ve been messing with that thing, he’ll kick your ass.”
    Costa shrugged his narrow shoulders and smiled. “I was trying to find some football for you. What’s the problem?”
    Rossi stuck up his big hands and laughed. “Okay. You got me there.”
    They watched the thin crowds shuffle across the square in the enervating heat. It was too hot for the bag-snatchers, Rossi decided. The weather was doing more to reduce the Rome crime rate than anything a couple of cops could ever achieve. He could hardly blame Costa for playing with the scanner. None of them liked being told there were places in the city where they weren’t welcome. Maybe Costa had some anticlerical thing in his genes, however much he told everyone he was apolitical, the opposite of his father. And the Vatican
was
part of the city, whatever the politicians said. It was crazy to think some thieving little bastard could snatch a bag in front of them then scuttle off into the milling masses inside St. Peter’s and suddenly become untouchable, the property of the Pope’s Swiss Guards in their funny blue uniforms and ankle socks.
    Costa was never going to hear anything of import on his little pocket scanner. Too little went on in the Vatican for that. But just listening was a form of protest in itself. It said:
We’re here.
    Rossi eyed a long crocodile of black nuns who followed a woman waving a little red pennant on a stick. He looked at his watch and wished the hands would move more quickly.
    “Enough,” he announced, then, to his surprise, felt Costa’s hand on his arm. The young detective was listening intently to a squealing racket in the earpiece of the radio.
    “Someone’s been shot,” Costa told him, suddenly earnest. “In the Library Reading Room. You know where that is?”
    “Of course,” the older man said, nodding. “Might as well be Mon-golia, as far as we’re concerned.”
    Costa’s sharp brown eyes pleaded with him. “Somebody’s been shot. We’re not going to just stand here, are we?”
    Rossi sighed. “Say again after me: ‘The Vatican is another country.’ Falcone can put it more clearly for you if you want.” Falcone could, Rossi thought, put it very clearly indeed. He didn’t even want to imagine what that conversation would be like. He’d been very glad that the last five years had been spent outside Falcone’s reach. He only wished it could have been longer.
    “Sure,” Costa agreed. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t look. They never said we couldn’t go in there. They just said we couldn’t arrest people.”
    Rossi thought about that. The kid was right, up to a point.
    “That’s all you heard? Someone’s been shot?”
    “Isn’t that enough? Do you want to go back and tell Falcone we didn’t even offer to help?”
    Rossi patted his jacket, felt his gun there, and watched Costa do the same. They looked down the Via di Porta Angelica toward the entrance to the private Vatican quarters. The Swiss Guards who were normally there checking visitors’ papers were gone, doubtless called to the event. Two Roman cops could walk straight in without a single question being asked. It seemed like an invitation.
    “I’m not running,” Rossi growled. “Not in this damned heat.”
    “Your call,” Costa answered, and was off, out of the square, through the open gate, legs pumping.
    “Kids . . .” Luca Rossi grunted, and shook his head.

3

    By the time Rossi arrived at the Library, some seven minutes later, Nic Costa had quietly established that the man who lay on the floor, head ripped apart by at least three bullets, was indeed dead. He had watched the injured attendant being taken away by two scared-looking medics. He had quietly, carefully, made a few inquiries. The room was in utter chaos, which suited Costa just fine. The terrified Guido Fratelli had immediately assumed that Costa was some