Day of Confession Read Free

later it came to a rest, igniting the dry grass in a crackling rush around it.
    Seconds afterward its fuel tank exploded, sending flame and smoke roaring heavenward in a fire storm that raged until there was nothing left but a molten, burned-out shell and a small, insignificant wisp of smoke.

3
    Delta Airlines flight 148, New York to Rome.
    Monday, July 6, 7:30 A.M .
    DANNY WAS DEAD, AND HARRY WAS ON HIS way to Rome to bring his body back to the U.S. for burial. The last hour, like most of the flight, had been a dream. Harry had seen the morning sun touch the Alps. Seen it glint off the Tyrrhenian Sea as they’d turned, dropping down over the Italian farmland on approach to Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport at Fiumicino.
    “Harry, it’s your brother, Danny….” .
    All he could hear was Danny’s voice on the answering machine. It played over and over in his mind, like a tape on a loop. Fearful, distraught, and now silent.
    “Harry, it’s your brother, Danny.…”
    Waving off a pour of coffee from a smiling and pert flight attendant, Harry leaned back against the plush seat of the first-class cabin and closed his eyes, replaying what had happened in between.
    He’d tried to call Danny twice more from the plane. And then again when he checked into his hotel. Still, there had been no answer. His apprehension growing, he’d called the Vatican directly, hoping to find Danny at work, and what he’d learned, after being passed from one department to another and being spoken to in broken English and then Italian and then a combination of both, was that Father Daniel was “not here until Monday.”
    To Harry that had meant he was away for the weekend. And no matter his mental state, it was a legitimate reason why Danny was not answering his phone. In response, Harry had left a message on his answering machine at home, giving his hotel number in New York in the event Danny called back as he said he would.
    And then Harry had turned, with some sense of relief, to business as usual and to why he had gone to New York—a last-minute huddle with Warner Brothers distribution and marketing chiefs over this Fourth of July weekend’s opening of Dog on the Moon , Warner’s major summer release, the story of a dog taken to the moon in a NASA experiment and accidentally left there, and the Little League team that learns about it and finds a way to bring him back; a film written and directed by Harry’s twenty-four-year-old client Jesus Arroyo.
    Single and handsome enough to be a movie star, Harry Addison was not only one of the entertainment community’s most eligible bachelors, he was also one of its most successful attorneys. His firm represented the cream of multimillion-dollar Hollywood talent. His own list of clients had either starred in or were responsible for some of the highest-grossing movies and successful television shows of the past five years. His friends were household names, the same people who stared weekly from the covers of national magazines.
    His success—as the daily Hollywood trade paper Variety had recently put it—was due to “a combination of smarts, hard work, and a temperament markedly different from the savagely competitive young warrior agents and attorneys to whom the ‘deal’ is everything and whose only disposition is ‘take no prisoners.’ With his Ivy League haircut and trademark white shirt and dark blue Armani suit, the Harry Addison approach is that the most beneficial thing for everyone is to cause as little all-around bleeding as possible. It’s why his deals go through, his clients love him, the studios and networks respect him, and why he makes a million dollars a year.”
    Dammit, what did any of that mean now? His brother’s death overshadowed everything. All he could think of was what he might have done to help Danny that he hadn’t. Call the U.S. Embassy or the Rome police and send them to his apartment. Apartment? He didn’t even know where Danny lived. That