The Deliverance of Evil Read Free

little ashamed of it and never boasted. I discovered later that he donated all his winnings to charity. His fabulous bluffs in the game were little sins for him, something that—along with his Catholic ethics—was nothing to be proud of.
    We went into the crowded bar. A group of young men were singing to the piano music, led by a beautiful black woman.
    As soon as she spotted him, she called out, “Angelo, Angelo, come over here!”
    He tried to wave her away, but she kept calling him. In the end he went over and the girl pressed his lips to hers. I saw him blush and step back. Then she raised his arm, as if declaring him the winner, and turned to the crowd.
    “This is my friend Angelo, the best undiscovered vocalist in Rome, who will now sing for us.”
    In the field of singing, too, he was in a class by himself. He performed every song the crowd requested and ended with a rendition of “My Way” almost worthy of Sinatra himself. After his performance, he introduced me to the woman, then left us alone just long enough for me to get her phone number. He’d figured me out.
    It was after three when we left.
    “Michele, let’s go to Ostia.”
    “Ostia? It’s January. What would we do at the beach?”
    “There’s a little bakery there. At six they bring out the best pastries anywhere near Rome.”
    He wanted to talk. Me too. This was really strange because, over the years, my desire to socialize with other men had worn off. We went in his beat-up Fiat 500, and half an hour later we were parked on the promenade. The stars were out. It was cold, but there was no wind. We opened the windows to smoke. The sea was a millpond; we could smell the sea air and hear the waves lapping a few yards away from us. There was nobody around.
    Unlike me, Angelo was always willing to talk about himself. He was born poor in a Rome where everyone except his parents was getting rich, some legally and some less so. He’d grown up in the poorest area of Rome. He was the son of a small-time singer and a fortuneteller, two starving wannabe artists who later moved to the country; two failures, at least by societal standards, both dead from cirrhosis of the liver when Angelo was still a teenager. But he said they had both given him a great deal. His vocalist father had given him his singing voice, and from his fortunetelling mother he learned to bluff and think on his feet.
    In time he had gained two things: a well-off girlfriend, Paola, who worshipped him and would marry him within the year, and a small real estate business, thanks to her uncle, Cardinal Alessandrini. The cardinal was just over fifty and was responsible for arranging housing for the thousands of priests and nuns who came to Rome to study or else a few days of pilgrimage and sightseeing. The Vatican owned hundreds of convents, hostels, and apartments and their running had been entrusted to Angelo Dioguardi who, although he’d given up on his education, was a good Catholic and was obviously to be the husband of the Cardinal’s niece. Although Angelo was manifestly unsuited to an office job, he applied himself with dedication and energy—exactly the opposite of how I handled my employment. And he was the opposite of me when it came to women, too. He knew a lot of them, but he never took advantage because of his unshakeable loyalty to Paola. In love, he was an idealist in search of the single perfect relationship. This would turn out to be the ideal situation for someone like me, who was always on the prowl: Angelo drew them in, and I closed the deal.
    “Are you really completely faithful to Paola?” I asked. I was expecting him to give a speech on love in reply, but Angelo surprised me.
    “She’s beautiful, kind, smart, rich, and the niece of a cardinal who gave me a job, and I’m a poverty-stricken nobody who didn’t finish school. I can only be thankful; I’ve no right even to desire anyone else.”
    We were still there at dawn. We got out to stretch our legs. The