Immaculate Reception (21 page)

“It wasn't my fault. They made me do it,” Zoda yelled, in his old hoarse voice.

I was right. And then I thought the entire plot through. “Oh, God,” I said, and I rocked back, realizing the full horror of what Zoda must have done in 1939.

In that instant, the man below me kicked around and tried once more to topple me. I yanked up desperately on his right arm, and for all I know I may have broken it, but the tough old demon kicked again. My short skirt ripped up its side seam as I tumbled off onto the floor. I tried to scramble up to my knees and just saw the lethal heel of his shoe coming down as he stomped it into my face.

I moved my head to the left and I swung at his grinding foot with both hands, hauling him back down to the ground with a desperate tug.

This time he didn't land on his stomach, so I leaned my forearm against his Adam's apple, pressing as hard as I could. His fall had him winded. As I straddled him again, I swiped my free hand into my shoulder bag searching for the phone and came up instead with my leather pack. Before Victor could catch his breath, I flipped open the pack with one hand and pulled out my prize.

Chefs like to keep their favorite tools close. I extracted my boning knife and before the old devil knew what was happening, I held the small stunningly sharp blade up to his throat.

Xavier had been praying. At least that's what I thought he was doing. He was speaking in Latin. But when he saw me grab the knife, he spoke to God in English. “Why doesn't someone come?” Xavier asked, agitated beyond his normal calm and frustrated to distraction by being tethered.

I didn't know if he could handle watching me stick the old man. But I was face to face with a murderer. The last time that had happened I was not prepared to fight. I guess I was learning exactly what I had in me.

“Maddie,” Xavier said, pleading. “Maddie, don't hurt him. It's not worth it.”

“She won't hurt me, young brother,” Victor Zoda hissed, spittle flying from the corner of his mouth. “She doesn't have the stomach for blood.”

“I wouldn't bet the house in Encino on that, Victor,” I said, huffing a little as my breath became more even. “I was quite a good student when it came to butchering. Best in my class. I want you to know that I won an award for boning a turkey. I removed all the major bones from its carcass, while leaving the meat intact. And I did it with my lucky knife.” I pressed slightly on the boning knife at his clavicle and I detected the slightly nauseating smell of urine. Since I was astride his chest, I dared not look back.

“Maddie, please,” Xavier pleaded with me. At that exact
moment in time, perhaps he, of all people, could imagine in what high regard I held men. “Madeline,” he said as if he were trying to find me again, “leave justice to God.”

“God's had sixty years, Xavier. Waiting for God's justice has cost Frank del Valle his life. It almost cost you yours. Or don't you care?”

“Maddie, it's your soul I care about. Forget him.”

“Before you plead for mercy for this man,” I said to Xavier, “perhaps we should hear the entire story of Brother Ugo. After all, that's the terrible secret he's been trying to protect. To keep the secret of Brother Ugo, he was willing to kill Frank and you and even Monsignor Picca.”

“NO!” shouted Zoda, his Adam's apple constricting in fright, almost impaling himself on the knife at his throat. “Never, never did I kill Benny. I won't believe these lies.”

“You were there!” I shouted. “You saw him the day he died.”

“I did nothing to him. We had a disagreement, nothing more. We have always disagreed about the propriety of Benny publishing his research. He and I both believed the information he had gathered was valuable, but we agreed not to release the data in our lifetimes.”

“How convenient for you,” I said. “As long as Benny's papers weren't published, no one would know about Pope Pius XI's missing encyclical. Without that, they would never guess your treason.” I held the knife steady, looking into Zoda's dark eyes. He must have been wondering if I would really stab him. I wondered the same thing, but went on, “All these years and Monsignor Picca never even knew you were involved.”

“Involved in what, for God's sake?” Xavier yelled at me, at the breaking point.

“The murder of Pope Pius XI,” I said, still staring at the old man beneath me. He spit up into my face, his saliva hitting my cheek and dripping into my hair. I almost reflexively moved my hand to wipe the foul stuff, but I caught myself, and kept my knife in place.

“We warned Pius he was in the gravest danger. The
Nazis were like serpents. I had inside information, you see? From my contacts. They would never permit the encyclical be delivered. The Holy Father was told the Gestapo would see him dead rather than allow him to denounce Hitler to the world. But he wouldn't listen. The Nazis ordered his assassination.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “But you're the one who did it, didn't you? You killed the pope.”

“You know nothing!”

“Xavier,” I said, not taking the chance to look away from Zoda. “What is Jesuit Working Rule Six? In that Book of Rules, the Custom Book of the Society of Jesus.” I remembered the day I had flipped through that old book. “The Rules of the Cook.”

Xavier took a moment to focus on this new shift in subject. “It has to do with the Infirmarian.”

“Tell me,” I said.

“Rule Six states: ‘He shall allow nobody, except the Infirmarian, to cook and prepare food for any special person, nor do the like himself, without permission.'”

“And would Pope Pius XI be considered a ‘special person'?”

“Of course. Do you mean to say that when Pius XI visited the papal villa in the Alban Hills in 1939, his own kitchen was sabotaged?”

“Yes. I believe that's what the old Latin confession we found meant. Brother Ugo Spadero, the mild Jesuit baker at the Castel Gandolfo, was guilty of breaking Rule Six. He must have allowed someone to prepare food or drink for the pope, or witnessed it without thinking to speak up. Certainly he couldn't have imagined the evil intent. I'm convinced he noticed someone tampering with the pope's food, someone who was not the Infirmarian, whatever that is.”

“The pope's health specialist. A priest, of course,” Xavier said, struggling to understand the enormity of what we, alone on earth, had discovered.

“That's why you were so desperate to get your hands
on all the copies we made of Ugo's confession. Isn't that what you did?” I asked Zoda, who was pale and was now breathing shallowly beneath me. “Didn't you poison Pope Pius XI to prevent him from ever issuing the secret encyclical? Didn't you then poison Brother Ugo when he threatened to confess to breaking working Rule Six? Standing in that kitchen, doing his daily routine, Ugo was a witness to the food you tampered with as you carried out the Nazi's plan to assassinate the pope.”

Just when I began to worry that the old man might be passing out, he lunged at me with both hands outstretched, grabbing for my throat with his strong bony fingers. Shocked, I watched as his reckless lunge forced the blade of my boning knife to sink into his flesh up to its short hilt. Too late, I pulled it back, and in so doing, opened a wound that began to pump out blood onto my bronze and black checked designer jacket, onto the old man, and all over the floor.

I hadn't heard myself screaming, but I did suddenly notice the room had gone blazingly bright. I looked up, but the overhead lamps were still not on. It was the sun. The clerestory windows were ablaze now that the sun had broken through the morning's thick haze.

Old Victor Zoda was scrambling to his feet, rushing away from us and out the door. Dripping blood, he stumbled into a pile of empty boxes, knocking them off to the side. We now had a clear view to the open door, with the service hall just beyond. Somewhere down that hall Victor Zoda had disappeared.

“Madeline!” Xavier shouted, “Give me the radio!”

I swiveled around on the blood-splattered floor, and finally spotted the Motorola, kicked off to one side. I handed it to Xavier and he grabbed me by the arm. “Don't go after him, Maddie.”

“But…”

He pulled me closer. I closed my eyes and I may have been hallucinating from the stress, but I felt his warm mouth kiss mine. In my exhaustion, I slipped back down
to the floor and buried my head in my hands.

From the direction of the door, I heard a faint voice say, “
Scuzi
,” and I looked up.

The light in the room had again become dazzlingly bright after all that gloom. With the passing of a cloud, the interior of the storeroom seemed to glow.

At the door stood a figure.

From my spot on the floor, my gaze first swept across the low red shoes. Astonished, my eyes traveled upward. Above the shoes, the hem of a pure white cassock. Above the cassock, I saw the short hooded red cape, the mozzetta. Beneath was the white wool pallium, the traditional circular collar embroidered with six black crosses. From his shoulders hung the pectoral cross made of gold. On his finger, the fisherman's ring.

Legs splayed, skirt ripped up the side, jacket covered in blood, I was not exactly as I had imagined myself upon being presented to the Holy Father. The pope looked at me kindly.

Xavier bowed his head in deference and made the sign of the cross.

The pope, standing utterly alone in the open doorway, spoke several phrases in Latin.

Xavier answered him. I couldn't understand a word of their exchange except for Xavier injecting the name, “Madeline Bean” in a sea of foreign words.

The pontiff's blue eyes looked at me with real caring and then he turned and disappeared down the hall.

“Xavier,” I said, not quite believing what had just happened. I pulled myself up to sit by him on the crate he was still manacled to.

“That may be the most amazing experience I will ever have in my life,” Xavier said.

“What did he say?”

“He wandered into the wrong men's room. He's been stuck in the bathroom for the last half hour. Only now did he somehow pull the door open to free himself.”

“I think the old me would be laughing now,” I said,
feeling feeble. “But, Xavier, did the pope…see us?”

“I don't know how long he was standing there,” Xavier said, “but it was amazing, Maddie. The Holy Father felt the presence of God in this room. He said it felt like a miracle.”

Numb from the combination of fighting a madman, kissing my old love goodbye, and having an impromptu audience with the pope, I said, “It's a miracle I haven't lost it.”

W
e pulled up to the valet attendant in front of Cucina Paradiso. Stepping out of the Wagoneer, I noticed the night breeze coming off the ocean, clean and cool. The fresh air was the second good reason to drive out to Redondo Beach. The first was the incredible food.

Over the past week, the press dubbed the pope's reception a stunning success. The planning, the menu, the VIPs, the fashions, the décor and even the traffic coordination had been praised on newsprint and on networks, from
People
magazine to the
Society of Jesus Weekly
. Oddly, the juiciest story—how the pope accidentally got stuck in the john—escaped notice from the army of reporters. I put it down to the masterful control the Vatican had over news leaks and the fact that the agencies responsible for the pope's security were too damn embarrassed.

The past week had been one of recognition, congratulation, and mostly recuperation. And now, five days later, Wesley and Holly and I were ready to party the way we like best. We intended to eat, big time.

Jill met us at the door with a warm welcome and showed us immediately to our table. We like to sit in the smaller room on the side, the one lined with mahogany wine racks behind glass. Our table, topped with its fresh off-white cloth, was already set with a bottle of 1985 Sassicaia, perhaps the greatest of the Italian reds. We were expected.

Our celebratory meals were, by tradition, date free,
which was actually a blessing considering the state Holly and I found ourselves in. As we took our seats, Oratzio came to pour our wine and talk about the menu. This process can take the better part of ten minutes, as Wes inquires into the ingredients that are exciting and we swap gossip on our friends in the cooking community. Someone whose restaurant opening has been delayed. Another who has decided to go back to Cannes. The subtle change in the taste of the Sonoma lamb this season. Like that.

Because we love the chef here, Wes suggested to just let Alex decide what to send us. And we finally settled down to talk.

“So,” Wes started, “shall we begin with a toast?”

We lifted our glasses.

“To friends,” Wes said.

“To enemies,” Holly offered.

“L'chaim,” I added, surprised to hear myself speaking Yiddish.

“Now,” Wes continued, setting down his goblet. “What's a safe subject here, folks?”

“I'll start,” Holly said, draining her glass and reaching for the bottle to pour herself another. “Don't everyone blow a gasket, but Donald and I are all patched up. We got it all worked out and everything.”

In the past week, Holly had said not a word about what was going on between Donald and herself. Wes and I had been too worried about her hurt feelings to bring it up, but to be honest, we were both dying to know. Each day, Wes would call me and ask if I'd heard anything. Each day, I told Wes, “Let's give her a little more time.” It seemed like time was finally up.

“But I've really got to apologize to you two. As you guys know, I left the pope's breakfast before the event was over, which was not a very professional thing to do. I'm really sorry.”

“Don't be nuts,” I said. “You weren't officially working it.”

“Still,” Holly said, sipping more wine, “it was our gig and I blew out.”

“And you did miss the governor's speech with his amazing joke about the rabbi and the priest and the minister,” Wes teased her.

“You guys are so great to me,” Holly said. “Anyway, I haven't been talking about what's been going on in my life lately because I had a pretty big shock, as you know.”

I thought about the sight of Donald tugging up his zipper while Dottie Moss stood stark naked in the men's room stall. A pretty big shock, indeed.

“But everything is great now, so don't worry.”

“I think we're missing a few minor details,” Wes prompted her, impatient for the nitty-gritty.

“I wouldn't talk to him, was my problem. I was so damn mad at everyone, I wouldn't even take Donald's calls. Then, this afternoon, he came over to the duplex and kept banging at the door until I couldn't stand it anymore. We talked it all out.”

“Wow,” I said. I was surprised that Holly had the strength to keep this whole story bottled up inside on the ride out to the restaurant. I was beginning to suspect the young lady was growing up a little. I sighed, proud of her.

“I guess it had to happen sometime. I mean about Donald and his intro to Hollywood. He's been living like this fantasy existence out here, never being shit on, never getting screwed. I mean, who lives like that out here?”

We shook our heads. It is almost impossible to become too jaded about this business. It wreaks its nasty havoc just about everywhere.

“So he gets his first movie made, groovy. And he like rules at the box office. So why should I have expected it all to turn out right?”

“Why shouldn't you, honey?” I asked. “Just because he had a little overnight success, Donald didn't have to go off and start messing around with goddamn Dottie Moss.”

“He wasn't messing around, Maddie,” Holly said. “He was ambushed.”

Our first course arrived
—primi piatti
, an assortment of the chef's best appetizers and a knockout antipasti platter that's not on the menu but is not to be missed.

“Carlos had gotten stuck in the loo. Dottie didn't buy his story, so he showed her where the sticky door was. Then later, Dottie introduced herself to Donald, coming on strong. You know the deal. He's the most talented man making movies today. He's a genius. Blah-blah-friggin'-blah. He tried to excuse himself, so he could pee, and that's when Dottie told him she needed to go, too, and she'd show him where the men's room was. So what could he do? His mamma raised him polite, so he followed her.”

“No!” Wes said, following the plot as he forked a startlingly tender morsel of fresh Maryland crab cake, swirled it in the bed of sautéed red onion and basil, and raised it up to his lips.

“Yes! You know, earlier? When Carlos got stuck? He propped the door open with a little notebook, so no one else would get into trouble. But when Dottie got there with Donald, she opened the door and must have kicked that little notebook that was acting like a doorjamb aside, on purpose! Well, you all know what a good boy Donald is. But he was getting himself alarmed. Donald told her she shouldn't come into the john and that's when that witch Dottie let go of the door so the two of them would be trapped inside together.”

In seminars advising folks how to break into show business, they often urge you to find creative ways to network. Dottie could teach the advanced class.

“So they couldn't get out. Donald swore to me he tried really hard. Anyway, while they were waiting to be rescued, Dottie began suggesting ideas for movie roles she could play. And at first, that idiot Donald took her seriously, telling her why he wouldn't be interested in updating
Gone with the Wind
to the future, with an intergalactic war and stupid old Dottie playing the part of Scarlett O'Martian. She had millions of ideas. That slut said she was ready to
audition. And that she had no objections whatsoever to full frontal nudity.”

“And that's when…” Wes said, eyes widening. He was the only one at that table who had not seen Dottie standing in the nude, so his imagination was getting a workout.

“She pitched him the idea of doing a sci-fi adventure loosely based on the story of Salome and then she began to dance around the bathroom stalls as she stripped to the skin.”

“Oh, man! Where are the security cameras when you really need them?” Wes asked.

“Oh, Holly,” I said. “What did Donald do?”

“Okay, this is the part that really convinced me that he was telling the truth. Donald said he'd never seen a body like hers dancing around like that without a stitch. So he just sort of enjoyed it. I mean there she was. He's a straight guy. He couldn't stop her,” Holly said, repeating Donald's defense. And then she looked at me and asked straight out, “Is looking wrong?”

“Nothing wrong with looking,” I agreed, hoping that was really all that went on.

“Everyone looks,” concurred Wes. “That's what this town is about.”

“But here's the real sweet part,” Holly said, tasting her
carpaccio di pesca spada
for the first time. The house-smoked swordfish was served with cucumbers, lemon, and olive oil and really deserved more attention, but she was almost at the end of her tale. “Donald never for the world wanted to hurt me, and, well, I believe him.”

Can a man ever be trusted? I found I was pretty unqualified to give any advice, so I just munched the fresh roasted peppers from the antipasto platter.

“I had to make a choice, you know? Like do I believe him and give him another chance? Or do I kick him out of my life like scum?”

“Not every man in the universe is scum,” Wes asserted.

Both Holly and I looked at him.

“That may not be the strongest argument right now,” I said.

“Well, the biggest problem I had with his explanation was how in all of Dottie's surreal dancing about did his fly come to be unzipped?”

This had also been my unspoken question. Inquiring minds want to know.

“See, he had this wicked urge to whiz. When he realized he was stuck inside the men's room with Dottie, he was literally ready to have an accident. Dottie told him not to be silly. Use the next stall.”

“Two seconds later, me and Maddie are bursting in and all hell is opening up and swallowing us whole.”

“Wild!” I said.

“Maddie, if it was you, would you believe him?”

“It's not about proof, it's about trust,” I told her. Wise old Mad Bean. What I didn't say is that trust is like faith—you have to surrender to it, something I seemed incapable of doing. I was prepared to die rather than surrender. Wasn't this the crux of my problems with men? My mind reeled.

“So you and Donald are back together?” Wes asked, finishing the grilled prawns with cannellini beans in fresh tomato and sage on my plate.

“Like Bill and Hillary!” she said, exultant, and not, I'm afraid, picking a faultless comparison. “This afternoon we had the best sex, you know where he's trying to make it up to me for all the suffering he's caused.”

“Okay, then! We are finished with the details,” Wes said, primly.

“That whore Dottie Moss thinks she can dance? Well, baby, she's got a whole lot more mileage on her than this model, no matter how far she's turned her odometer back. When it comes to dancing without any—”

“Too much information,” Wes said, interrupting cheerfully. “What about this baked wild mushrooms soufflé?”

“Oh, wait!” Holly said, remembering something as our plates were cleared and a second bottle of wine appeared.
“Mad, tell us whatever happened with the police.”

“They found Victor Zoda's body, eventually. He had run into a locked-up pantry and died there.”

“Did they determine the cause of death?” Wes asked, concerned. I had, after all, been holding the knife that Victor fell on.

“They called it a heart attack,” I said. “Although he had lost a lot of blood…”

“Don't even think it,” Wes said, concerned about me. “And Xavier gave them his eyewitness account of what occurred. You were just keeping Zoda from hurting Xavier further. You were holding him until the police came.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” I was unsure, even now, how far I would have gone. Or how far I actually did go.

“So the cops aren't going to bother you about Zoda, right?” Holly asked.

“It's over,” I said, relieved. “Chuck Honnett felt terrible. He had promised me that Zoda would be stopped before he even entered the Mayfield, but that didn't happen. Then when he checked up, he had been told that Zoda was in custody.”

“What was up with that?” Wes asked. “Why'd they put you in danger when you warned them about Zoda up front?”

“The security checkpoint was given orders to stop Zoda. And they did. They arrested Beatrice Zoda.”

“Wicked B?” Holly asked, shocked.

“They thought she looked suspicious. Her hairstyle is not typical for one invited to a conservative function. And her name was on their list. That's why Honnett was told they had Zoda. Pretty dense, huh?”

“Cops,” Wes said, who was not neutral on the subject. “What do you expect?”

“Well,” I said, with a glint of a twinkle in my eye, “I may be in for some of the makeup activity about which you cut Holly off before she got to the good part.”

“What?” both Holly and Wes shouted.

“Honnett. He wants to take me out to apologize.”

“He thinks a dinner is going to make up for almost getting you killed?” Wes asked.

“Order lobster,” Holly advised.

“I told him no. But now I'm inspired by Holly's amazing ability to forgive. I'm going to give him a chance.”

“You'll see,” Holly squealed. “When they're groveling and apologizing they are at their very best!”

Wes shook his head, in silent pain, but allowed us to get our frustrations out by this mild male bashing.

“But I thought Arlo was back in your life,” Wes asked.

“Yeah, well…”

Arlo was a hothouse flower. He needed careful attention. He could only tolerate limited temperature variations. His food requirements were tricky. In short, Arlo was high maintenance. And it must have occurred to him that without me around, there was no one to water and feed him, to say nothing of pruning his buds. He had second thoughts and wanted back.

“Well, which one do you want?” Holly asked.

“Say,” Wes interrupted, “where did you get that necklace?”

The lovely antique cross was covered in tiny diamonds and hung from a very long fine gold chain. Caught in the candlelight from the table, the diamonds sparkled magnificently.