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“DOMINIC, EXACTLY WHAT do you mean we can’t call the police?” Tonita didn’t wait for an answer. “Just watch me.” She grabbed for the telephone.
“Tonita, no!” Dominic reached the telephone before she did. He pulled it away, placing it behind his back.
“Oh, that’s nice. Do you think we’re playing a game of hide and seek now?”
“Don’t be a smart ass.”
“Don’t be a dumb shit.” Her lips pouted and her entire body took on attitude.
An attitude that sent Dominic’s senses reeling. “If only I had lived a different life, Tonita.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You know, you don’t make any sense to me? No wonder you’re so screwed up.” She put her hand out. “Are you going to give me that phone?”
He was screwed up. She was right. He couldn’t help but to agree with her, at least silently. They had only met about ten weeks ago and she already knew him.
Could I be that transparent?
He thought about it for moment and concluded that he could and probably was.
“I can’t.”
“Then, I’m leaving,” she said, taking up her coat from the floor and heading toward the door.
“No, no, no.” He took a step in her direction, then stopped. “You don’t understand.”
She turned. “Try me,” she said, placing her hands on her hips, giving him more of that attitude.
Dominic bit on the inside of his cheek, a bad habit that he was trying to break. “He knew me.”
“He?” Tonita raised an eyebrow. “Who? Who knew you?”
Dominic glanced to the body lying near the kitchen.
Her eyes widened. “He knew you? The dead guy?” Tonita dropped her coat to the floor and made her way into the living room. She paced between the sofa and the chair, sitting on the arm of the chair then getting up again. “I thought that you had no idea why this guy was in your apartment?”
“I didn’t.” Dominic brushed his hand through his hair, trying to keep it out of his face. “I still don’t.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “Look, you’re either trying to make this difficult or you’re trying to cover something up? Be honest with me, Dom.”
Dominic sat down sinking into the worn leather chair, he pushed his hair back from his face—a nervous habit that he internally added to the list of tics and vices he was trying to break—I’m trying to change too much too soon. And not changing a damn thing. He sighed letting the breath flow from him. “I went out for a walk. You know the usual thing. Late night, alone...” He gave her a nod. “I slipped on the street and landed pretty hard. Luckily, I caught myself and I thought that I was all right. But when I got back, I noticed blood on my hands and pants.”
“You cut yourself?”
“No, that’s just it. I checked and I wasn’t cut. I wasn’t bleeding anywhere.” He looked up at Tonita, showing her his hands. “Nothing.” He turned his hands over inspecting them once again as though he may have missed something. “It was his blood.” He glanced at the body. “He was waiting for me.”
“Why do you say that? Maybe you just happened along.” Tonita took a few steps toward the body. “He was injured, stabbed by that cross ice pick thing, and then you came along and he followed you in.”
“That’s what I thought at first. I didn’t see anyone when I was walking. Sometimes, I see a few people, but not tonight. No one was out.”
“He could have been hiding.”
“True.” He let out long sigh. “If he was, he was hiding in here. Waiting for me.”
“And that’s why you think he knew you?”
“That, and then he said, ‘help me.’”
Tonita walked back to him. “Dom, the old man was dying. Of course he asked for your help.”
“It’s not just that he said, ‘help me’. It’s the way that he said it. Three times.” He paused, looking directly into her eyes. “Once in Latin, once in Greek, and once in Hebrew.”
“So, he didn’t know what language you spoke and he was just covering all the bases.”
“Then why not Italian? We’re in Rome for God’s sake. At least Italian would have made sense. But instead he uses three languages. And one of them Latin? A language that almost no one uses.”
“All right, I give up. Why?” She crossed her arms and focused on him.
“Because. Well, I think because,” he paused thinking it through, then continued, “they are the three languages used on the plaque placed on Christ’s crucifix.”
“Okay, you’ve lost me.” She dropped her arms and shook her head.
“You’ve seen it abbreviated as I.N.R.I. on a board just above Jesus’ head in paintings. Pontius Pilate placed the titlum on the cross...”
“The what?”
The titlum. The plaque. The piece of wood.”
“Okay. Continue.”
Dominic sighed, “Pilate placed the titlum to identify the crime that Jesus was being crucified for. Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.” Dominic stood up and walked the few steps to a bookshelf in the corner of the room, “It was a common practice by the Romans to place a plaque above the head of the crucified, letting everyone that saw the dying man know what crime he had committed. Let me show you.” He pulled a book out from under several others and handed it to Tonita. “Here’s a good example from Nicolas Tournier. He painted it about 1635.”
She glanced at the cover of the oversized art book. The scene was of the crucifixion of Christ on the cross, surrounded by an old man, two women and another person that Tonita could not decide if it was a man or a woman.
“See the titlum is above Christ’s head.” Dominic pointed to the place on the painting.
“I see it, but I don’t understand how you get from this plaque on a cross to the conclusion that the man over there knew you.”
They both could not help but glance quickly to the body.
“It wasn’t just that he spoke those languages, it was in the order he used them. Latin first, then Greek, then Hebrew. In the bible, John says that the titlum was written in Hebrew first, then Greek, and the Latin was last. That’s the common belief and if you asked anyone that’s what they would say.”
“I doubt that.”
“No, really.”
Tonita smiled. “You missed the sarcasm. I don’t think that almost anyone would know that.”
“You’ve got a point,” he said, then continued with his own point, “Theological historians will tell you that the titlum was actually written in Latin first, then Greek and then Hebrew. The language of official Rome, the government, was Latin. However, because of all the lands that the Romans conquered many people spoke Greek. Pilate was Roman, and he was the Governor of Judea. So protocol would have mandated that the titlum be written in Latin first, since that was the official language of the Roman government. And the act of crucifying Christ was a government act.”
“That’s a great little history lesson, but I don’t get anywhere near—that man on the floor of your kitchen knowing you—from the title thing on the cross.” Tonita turned a page in the book to a painting entitled the “Denial of Saint Peter.” She noted the caption and closed the book quickly, handing it back to Dominic.
“There’s more.”
Tonita looked at him. Waiting.
“He said one more thing. And this is why I am certain that he knew me.”
“Well?” Tonita crossed her arms in front of her. “What did he say?”
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Dominic waited a moment as he watched the expression on Tonita’s face change to complete recognition. “He knew that I’m a priest.”