CHAPTER 25

That evening, Thomas popped open a beer in his room and called St. Anthony’s rectory in Chicago. Jim sounded genuinely pleased to hear from him, but his tone quickly became anxious.

“They are looking for you,” he said.

“Who?”

“Not sure. Homeland Security for sure,” said Jim, “though I also got a call from Senator Devlin’s office. Both want you to call them.”

“They’re probably worried I’m getting too much sun,” said Thomas. It was funny the way he slid back into a comfortable familiarity with this priest he barely knew. It was like talking to Ed in the old days, before everything between them soured.

“They sounded sort of urgent,” said Jim. “Like something had come up. The DHS guy was one of the ones who came here: Kaplan, his name was. Said to call him directly.”

“But I haven’t been charged with anything right?” said Thomas. “And it’s still a free country.”

Jim agreed, but grudgingly, and Thomas wondered if the priest was suffering in his place.

“You doing okay?” said Thomas.

“Sure. I’m used to dealing with stuff by myself.”

“Got to say,” said Thomas, opting for bluster as a way of lightening the mood. “I don’t know how you do it. Being a priest, I mean. Must be kind of lonely.”

“Oh, it’s like a lot of things,” Jim said. “You have good days, when you feel involved, productive, part of everything, you know? Other days . . . all I can hear is Paul McCartney singing about Father McKenzie writing the words of the sermon that no one will hear. You know the one? ‘Darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there.’ That’s life, I guess. It’s only really lonely when it feels pointless.”

Thomas said nothing, unsettled by the priest’s sudden confidence. He had never said so much when they had been together. Why now? Was it just that the phone made some things easier, or living in the hollow where Ed had been or . . . something else?

“Well,” said Thomas. “At least you have your faith.”

It was impossible to say it without sounding condescending, and he was about to take the remark back when Jim said, “Most of the time, yes.”

Thomas felt out of his depth.

“You okay?” he said, again.

“There’s a Baptist church on the other side of town,” said Jim. “It has one of those signs outside that you can switch the letters around so you post different messages each week. A couple of months ago it said Doubt is the opposite of faith.” He said it slowly, letting the words of the quotation ring like separate bells.

“And?”

“I guess I think the opposite,” said Jim. “That if you have one without the other, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Tough way to live,” said Thomas.

“Sometimes,” said Jim, “but better than the alternatives.”

“It will be okay, Jim,” Thomas said, directing the conversation back to where they started. “It’s just some bureaucratic screwup. It will blow over.”

“I guess,” said Jim. “Oh, and you had another call.”

“Yes?”

“Your wife.”

“Ex.”

“Right.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing,” said Jim. “Just asked if you were here, then asked if you were going to Japan.”

“Why would I go to Japan?”

“No idea. She sounded relieved when I said you weren’t.”

“I’ll bet,” said Thomas.

 
Thomas massaged his knee. It hurt less than it had when he left Chicago, and his exertions in Herculaneum seemed to have caused no ill effects. A little gentle exercise would probably do him good, so long as it didn’t involve tangling with people who wanted to kill him.

Odd, he thought, the way his almost suicidal apathy had been so completely eclipsed by his desire to unravel what had happened to Ed. He felt energized, driven, even though the investigation itself seemed slow and indirect at best, as if he were meandering along unmapped country roads looking for a freeway. Was it for Ed, or did he just need to know the truth? Both, probably. His bullish tendencies had been awoken, given something specific to charge at after years of seeing red everywhere. Yes, that was it. He had spent half a decade pounding around his paddock looking to gore anything he could reach, usually managing only to injure himself.

But this was different. What had happened to Ed was something he could discover, a truth he might be able to bring to light. What that truth would finally mean to him he could not begin to guess and preferred not to consider. He would go running, something he knew no doctor would have endorsed, because he knew the pain in his knee would dwarf his other concerns.

 
 
“Mr. Knight,” said the concierge.

Thomas, wheezing from his run and halfway to the elevator, turned.

“Something to show you,” said the man at the desk. He crooked his finger and got up, proffering his seat. “You watch. I’ll get you a drink. Beer? Wine?”

“Beer’s good,” said Thomas. His knee hurt, but not as much as he had feared, and he felt as if he had worked out some of the stiffness pounding through Naples’s crowded, dusty, and sweltering streets. He would see how it felt in the morning, but right now he needed a long draught of something very cold.

He sat at the lobby desk and looked at the six-inch video monitor under the counter. A thirty-second snatch of tape was playing in a continuous loop. It was fuzzy, monochrome, and discontinuous, but what it showed was unmistakable: a man in dark glasses carrying a satchel, taking a key from the storage unit behind the desk, checking over his shoulder as he did so, and making for the elevator. Then the same man returning, replacing the key, and leaving the building as another guest came in. The two incidents had taken place in the middle of the day, twenty minutes apart.

At first, Thomas could see nothing beyond the proof that someone had indeed been in his room, but as the sequence wound through a fourth time he developed a hunch.

He’s Japanese.

He watched again, trying to home in on why he thought so. The man’s face was indistinct and the shades gave little away, though it was possible that he was Asian.

He watched it again, and two things struck him. First, there was the man’s gait. You couldn’t see much when he was close to the counter, but as he walked up to the elevator there was a curious shuffling to the way he walked, a dragging of his feet.

At the school where Thomas had taught in Japan, everyone took off their shoes as they entered the main office building and put on plastic slippers stored in a bin by the door. The slippers virtually demanded that you dragged your feet to keep them on. He recalled the way his students trod down the backs of their own shoes even outside, something necessitating a certain shuffling movement his wilder kids seemed to equate with cool.

He looked back at the video monitor. There was a momentary pause as the other guest came in. Thomas watched it again and saw that minute and surely involuntary bob of the head . . .

A reflex and rudimentary bow. He’d know it anywhere. The guy was Japanese.

Thomas felt a rush of doubt touched with an old anxiety. He didn’t know why a link to Japan made the break-in feel worse, but it did.

“Your beer,” said the concierge, handing Thomas a chilled bottle of Peroni featuring the Italian World Cup team from 2006. “You want I call polizia?”

Thomas shook his head. With nothing missing the police would do nothing.

“Just keep your eyes open in case this guy shows up again,” he said. “And thanks.”

He turned toward the elevators, beer in hand, and then stopped.

“One other thing,” he said.

The concierge looked up from his copy of Il Mattino.

“What’s the Fontanelle?”

The concierge, normally urbane to the point of carelessness, seemed to hesitate.

“It’s closed,” he said, at last, his voice low, his gaze level and guarded. “You can’t go there.”

“What is it?” said Thomas, his curiosity mixed with an unaccountable dread.

“A bad place. Forget about it.”

“And no one can go there?” said Thomas.

“Only the dead.”