Canto for a Gypsy Read online

In return for a request on stolen church stationery with a simple tracing of Administrator Burns’ signature, Odrich received copies of St. Patrick’s foundation, plumbing and electrical plans from the city archives. He studied them for three days and returned to the cathedral on the last night.

  The cardinal’s residence was a mirror image of the administration building. A patrolman kept an informal duty on the sidewalk, and Odrich was sure that the doors and windows would be connected to the local precinct house.

  Odrich turned the corner of Madison to Fiftieth Street. At Fiftieth and Fifth there was another patrolman. Odrich went up the steps to the entrance of St. Patrick’s south transept. In the shadow of the church door, he studied the rear face of the cardinal’s house.

  The residence was three stories high. A private covered passageway from it almost touched the church. The rest of the face was a sampler of Victorian carving, particularly the window bays and gables. Twin Moorish windows on the second floor were topped by a single Gothic window, and flanking both was a two-story window with a gable that touched the roofline.

  Odrich ran at the stone passage. His hands caught the top and he rolled up over it. He lay on his stomach while a patrolman walked from the corner to the middle of the block, turned and went back. There were lights in the room with the Moorish windows. He looked in and saw a man at a writing desk. A fire engine wailed its way up Madison without disturbing the writer’s concentration. Odrich grabbed the stone gutter above the window and hoisted himself past it. He only had to walk up the side of the large gable and he was on the roof.

  The roof contained an air-conditioning unit, a chimney and an exit from the top floor. The exit door had no outside knob, but he was delighted to find its lock was no more than what he would have put on a bathroom. Using a plastic credit card, he chivied it open.

  The third floor was a work area and a library. On the second he saw a light from the room he’d passed on the way up. He padded down the stairs to the first-floor offices.

  The cardinal’s office was the largest and the least decorated. An immense desk sat between two windows, and outside he could see the patrolman on his beat.

  One drawer was locked, and Odrich went immediately for that, using his credit card again rather than bothering to pick it. As he jerked the card up, the drawer popped out. He waited, holding it. Nobody came down the stairs. Instead, he heard the flush of water pipes.

  The list he was looking for was on top. One name was checked.

  He left the list in the drawer. It took him twenty minutes to reach the roof again and go down the way he’d come. On Fifth Avenue, he took a cab to his rooms at the Plaza.

  After removing a congratulatory bottle of cold Würzburger from the suite’s refrigerator, he called the Commodore Hotel. There were no indications that he had been scaling a building, no crease in his summer suit or a lock of his silver hair out of place. He wore a wristwatch but no rings that might snag when he climbed. His face was tanned and powerful, with gray eyes as deep-set and patient as a doll’s.

  The phone was answered in Italian.

  “The pictures are still drying in the bathroom.”

  “The films?” Odrich asked.

  “Tomorrow. We had to take those to a laboratory. Is there anything else?”

  “I have a name for you.” Odrich wrote it in the condensation of the glass as he spoke. “Roman Grey. Find out where his shop is so we can pay him a call.”

  There was a hesitation on the other end.

  “Won’t that be difficult? To influence him, I mean?”

  “Any antique dealer is a fraud; it’s the nature of the business, Jozsef. I imagine we can offer him enough money. If we can’t, that’s his misfortune.”

  “I already found the black boy you wanted.”

  “Very good. Keep him around, in case.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No,” Odrich answered after a moment’s thought. “The chief of security, Reggel. I’ve decided it would be wiser to put him out of the way if possible. It can look political or like an accident.”

  After hanging up, the tension persisted in Odrich. He paced the room and stared out the window onto Central Park. Finally, he went to the refrigerator for a second bottle of beer. From the closet he took a suitcase and opened it on his bed.

  The suitcase was full of boxes containing, as its customs slips said, costume jewelry: necklaces, tiaras and bracelets of gaudy paste set in gold-plated bronze. He removed one large box.

  He drank some more, not so much for the taste of the beer as to prolong the moment. Then he lifted the top off the box and set it beside the bottle. The newspaper padding inside he laid by the pillow. Only when the last of the bottle was poured into his glass did Odrich allow himself to look directly at the red-gold bows, green-gold diadem, gems and enamel, and distinctively crooked cross that marked the crown as Saint Stephen’s, the Holy Crown of Hungary.

  4

  Dany Murray wore a bathrobe of Roman’s as she dropped clothes piece by piece into a suitcase. She had wide-apart hazel eyes, brown hair as shiny as a page in Vogue, full lips pouted in thought and long legs that unconsciously stood, shifted and stood according to the basic poses of the professional model. Every move was as mindlessly graceful as a swan’s and every move was a lie about the girl inside. Habit was hard, though. Roman was allowing her only one small suitcase for the car, and she had already packed it ten times. After each practice she looked at the closet, and the model in her was appalled to see the absolutely essential items she was leaving behind: Bill Blass boots, a hair dryer and Valentino slacks, just to mention a few.

  “Why doesn’t Kore like me?” she asked. “Does he think I’m going to slow you down?”

  The answer was in Romany. Dany left the pyramid of clothes and went into the living room. Roman was at his desk making an inventory of the antiques left in the apartment.

  “Could you say that again?”

  “I thought you were trying to learn Romany.”

  “Sometimes I understand everything. That one I didn’t.”

  “It’s simple, Dany. The tu is the same as French.”

  “You know I can’t speak French. Where is a girl going to learn French in Detroit?”

  He sighed.

  “You’re angry,” she said. It was warm and Roman was stripped to the waist. She massaged his shoulders.

  “I’m not angry. I’m just wondering who the hell you’re going to talk to besides me when we get there.”

  Dany was unfazed. She was happy talking to Roman.

  “Tell me again where we’re going,” she asked.

  “Barcelona. Sofia. Budapest.”

  A little unease crept into her stomach but she kept a game smile.

  “You know, Gypsies would make marvelous spies.”

  She placed her hands on his head and watched her fingers snake through the black coils of his hair. It was blacker than black, she thought, blacker than color could be.

  “You’re happy I’m coming, aren’t you?”

  Roman laid his pencil aside and twisted around in his chair. He pulled an edge of the bathrobe aside and kissed her breast.

  “I’m taking you because I love you. Is that enough? Now, will you go finish your packing? And don’t worry about taking bras. Nobody who’s anybody in Gypsy kumpanias is wearing them this year.”

  He squeezed her leg. Dany laughed and stepped away.

  “Okay, I forget what I came in here to ask you, anyway.”

  Roman watched her walk out of the room and continued staring at the empty doorway.

  A fashion model wouldn’t last long on the road with a kumpania of Gypsies. In New York he was half gaja. That was the in-between man she wanted to marry. She had to know that life wasn’t lived in an apartment furnished with the expensive overflow from his shop. That reality was a car driven all night fr
om one border to another to avoid police, plumbing consisting of the nearest river and Gypsies a people who would regard her as an outsider and a fool. It was strange languages, dirt and monotonous danger. She wouldn’t break during the first month, despite Kore’s predictions, because she had determination. But determination would take her only so far. Her fascination of Rom would turn to disgust. Their car would carry the stench of sweat and anger. She wouldn’t fight, she would just go home. Roman knew it as certainly as he knew at this moment she couldn’t believe it would ever happen. That was why he was taking her, because she didn’t believe him. And if he didn’t go, he would lose more than Dany.

  “I won’t give myself away by talking,” she called from the bedroom. “I’ll just sit and smolder like the other Gypsy girls.”

  The doorbell rang. Roman closed the bedroom door before he answered it.

  It was Kore with two teenage boys. The boys entered excitedly, gawking at the spectacular collection of antiques.

  “They want to come along,” Kore reported.

  “The Petulengro brothers, aren’t they?”

  The boys’ dark eyes grew, amazed someone so famous in their small world knew who they were. They looked around the room again with respect that one man could steal so much.

  “They saved some money from putting up bill posters,” Kore said.

  “I drive the car,” the smaller boy explained. “John runs out and puts the poster up. We can do three hundred in a day and we’ve never been caught.”

  “Only their grandmother is alive, so they haven’t been on the road for years. That’s no way for boys to grow up, staying in one place,” Kore pointed out. “How can they be expected to know other families unless they leave home?”

  “Besides, the lawyer said we’d have to go to jail no matter how old we are if we get caught again.”

  “I thought you never got caught,” Roman reminded him.

  “But that was for stripping cars,” the taller boy replied. “It’s John—he can’t run as fast as I can.”

  “They were caught taking the transmission from a car outside some embassy.” Kore held his hand out. “They told the fellow from the embassy what he could do. Would you believe he understood Romany? But the judge wouldn’t have recognized them if they were on the road.”

  Dany had been listening from the other side of the bedroom door without understanding a word of the conversation. She opened the door and came in, discreetly changed from the bathrobe to a pantsuit. When she saw the boys, she smiled.

  “I heard some talking,” she told Roman.

  “This is John and Racki Petulengro. They’ll be going with us.”

  Racki turned and asked Kore a question in Romany. Kore started to answer as coolly as he dared in front of Roman.

  “Yes, I am going,” Dany answered for him.

  Kore and the boys almost gaped. In the next second they were in control again, but she had her moment of pride.

  “Dany is my chi,” Roman told them.

  * * *

  Odrich operated with an instrument shaped like a dental pick. Once the pick had wedged a tumbler aside he snapped his wrist, leaving a centimeter of soft metal that held the tumbler clear. It took Odrich no more than a minute to subvert the lock, and no early morning passersby disturbed him or the four men with him. The men followed Odrich into the antique shop, and he cleaned the lock from the inside. Beng ran out of the back room crying for breakfast.

  “What should we do about the cat?”

  “Don’t kill it,” Odrich said. “Find something for it to eat; it’s hungry.”

  The front room had a haphazard flavor that annoyed Odrich. He went into the rear of the antique shop and found crates ready for packing. The cat’s bowl, he noticed, was Spode.

  “There is some very good stuff here,” Jozsef said. He, like the others with Odrich, was in his middle thirties and had the clean-cut robustness of an Olympic athlete.

  “Run like a junk shop. I can’t understand why they chose a man like him.” Odrich felt a growing distaste for the faceless Roman Grey. He set a chair next to the door to the front room. “We can wait here.”

  “What will you offer him?”

  “Whatever he asks,” Odrich answered. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Beside his chair was a bucket of more Spode ware and water. He dipped a finger in the water and tasted it. Baking soda. Next to the bucket was a cluttered toolbox. He picked up a long serrated knife from it and put it back when he saw a short stiletto.

  “If Grey does prove to be a saint, Jozsef, use this instead of your own. I’m sure he hasn’t been informed yet. People will think it was nothing more than a robbery, or perhaps a connoisseur driven mad by this mess.”

  He leaned back so that he could see the window and door without being seen. The others played with the cat.

  Five minutes had elapsed when Beng suddenly ran to the window.

  “Here he is,” Odrich whispered.

  He watched a dark man cross the street to the shop.

  “My God! He’s a Gypsy!” Odrich exclaimed. “What could be better?”

  Beng pressed his face against the window and purred. Roman tapped the window and smiled. He unlocked the door and began turning the knob.

  “Remember, let him get back here.”

  Roman looked to the side, his smile widening. A short man in a suit that seemed to be off the wrong rack crossed in front of the other window and the two men shook hands.

  “Nothing helps business like a detective loitering around,” Roman said loudly.

  The detective’s round face went from bland to embarrassed.

  “I came to say good-bye and good luck.”

  Roman slapped the detective on the back.

  “Come on in and have some tea. You can keep me company while I pack.”

  “Damn,” Odrich whispered.

  The one holding the knife put it away and, like the ­others, took out a .22 automatic.

  “Some other time,” the detective replied.

  “Okay. But I have to start working if I’m ever going to get out of here.”

  Roman unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  “Come on,” Odrich urged.

  A hand on his arm stopped Roman. The friendliness in his eyes cooled.

  “Why didn’t you say you came here on police business? Come in and look at the bills of sale if you want. You’re not going to find any mistakes now, though.”

  They stopped breathing in the back room. Beng jumped to the door and tried to paw the door farther open.

  “It’s nothing like that,” the detective tried to explain. “You have to take a ride with me.”

  “An arrest?”

  “No. I got this call to pick you up. I really was coming to wish you luck anyway. Look, we’re not going to headquarters, so don’t worry about that.”

  “Sergeant Isadore, I’m not moving from this spot until you tell me where you want to take me.”

  “Roman,” the detective flushed, “Roman, I’m taking you to church.”

  The antique dealer regarded his nonplussed friend. ­Finally, he shut the door and locked it. The two men went off together.

  Odrich got out of his chair.

  “That eliminates him. He would talk and the detective would listen. A peculiar pair.” He turned his attention to the others. “Clean up the cat’s bowl and put it where you found it. I want to see this boy you found. He’ll have to do now.”

  On the way out, frustration inspired him to think about killing the cat.

  “No,” he corrected himself aloud, “best to leave this alone.”

  5

  John Cardinal Killane crossed the few steps between St. Patrick’s and his residence, distance enough for him to change from confessor to ecclesiastical prince. He let himself in by his private passage a
nd stepped into a hall decorated with children’s drawings of the saints. One that seemed to have four legs and no head had him stumped. He would have asked his staff, but they were suspicious enough of him ­already. He couldn’t afford not to know his headless saints.

  A plate of breadsticks and a cup of black coffee waited for him on his desk as a reward for slipping into his office without seeing his secretary or his secretary’s secretary.

  Cardinal Killane was a tall man. His narrow forehead was scalloped by curved temples and his pink skin was only a little sullied by liver spots. His long hands were still strong and he could walk into the ground any priest in the archdiocese. On a less complicated man his blue eyes would have been called twinkling. But people like to look into twinkling eyes, and he noticed a great number of people looked away from his. Not the people he cared about, though. It was the sort of judgment he never would have indulged himself in when he was younger. Or was it adversity that brought out this asperity? he asked himself.

  His creation as cardinal of the Apostolic See of New York was not universally popular. He’d started out right, an Irish boy from Boston’s Brighton neighborhood. Never mind that his father was a devout atheist—a lot of good Irishmen were. Graduated Fordham University, highest honors, class of 1929. Ordained after much soul-searching about his vanity in the spring of 1933. He wanted to stay in the city and work with those crushed by the Depression, but his superiors saw in him the beginnings of a messiah complex and they sent him instead to the British West Indies, which for reasons of access fell into the New York diocese. There he helped Trinidad blacks against the British and developed a messiah complex that was truly colossal.

  Father Killane was a problem, and the then-cardinal Hayes decided on the traditional answer to overly bright and aggressive priests: Rome. There Killane entered the Vatican’s American College with an assigned curriculum of Asian studies, a regimen designed to increase his humility. With perverse pleasure, Killane took to the subject, going from the college to a minor position in the Vatican archives where he collated centuries-old reports from long-dead missionaries. He might have continued in that library for the rest of his life, metamorphosed into an actual bookworm, he thought, while Italy and the rest of the world were shot to hell. It wasn’t to be. As the war against the Japanese drew to an end, France began reorganizing its Indochina empire and it sought Vatican aid, because the French colonial records had been destroyed. A forty-year-old American priest with not only a command of French and the major Indochinese languages but also a superb memory of the religious and political alliances of the region was dispatched on the first plane for Hanoi. Killane served two years traveling through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and the reports he turned in were ­almost uniformly pessimistic. Which was why, on his return to the Vatican, his superiors were surprised by a new request that the archivist be lent to the French command in Algeria.