“Until we can read you your rights,” explained Rosenkrantz.
And snapped the cuffs around Harry’s wrists. Really hard.
When Dan Kearny returned to the San Filippo Neri convent, the chapel and kitchen were dark, the office closed and locked, the TV turned off in what had probably been the sewing room. The polite nun from India who had checked him in was nowhere about. He was vaguely disappointed. He enjoyed talking with her. Nobody else even knew he was in Rome and he was a little lonely.
He got into the tiny elevator, punched three. When it shuddered to a stop at his floor and he turned toward his room, a nun passed him in the hall. Her black veil and starched wimple were unlike the habits of the nuns of San Filippo Neri, and left little of her demurely downturned face to be seen.
“Good evening, sister,” Kearny said as they passed.
“Buona sera,” she replied in a muffled voice.
At his room, the heavy slatted wooden window shutters he had left open on the latch let in just enough light for him to see the unsealed envelope on the floor inside the door. He stepped back into the corridor to read the bold block lettering.
He had been wrong. Someone in Rome knew him after all.
Fifty-one
Just north of the Aurealian wall lies the 17th Century Villa Borghese, six kilometers in circumference and still a place of harmony in the heart of the Eternal City. Twelve hectares are given over to the Giardino Zoologico. At 4:00 P.M... an iron-haired, stern-faced priest entered the zoo through the main entrance and did a quick tour of the grounds. Dan Kearny had noticed that the clergy seemed able to move around Rome without anyone noticing them; with his lack of the language, he needed any edge he could get.
The zoo seemed to have too many bears and large cats, not enough primates. But a new small modern-looking building caught his eye. A large sign on its locked door announced grandly, INSTITUTO DEI PRIMATI.
“This’ll be it,” he muttered to himself.
At four-fifty, when the zoo started closing for the night, he buried himself in a dense thicket near the new facility. It was a warm evening and the light lingered until nearly ten o’clock. After the voices of departing patrons died down, he dozed off.
Just at midnight, a dozen dark figures passing close by woke him up. He followed them discreetly.
Looking like a Rom was an asset for this scam. Nanoosh Tsatshimo and Wasso Tomeshti, dressed in Gypsy garb, let half a dozen of the English-speaking believers they had encountered in the bar in Piazza Leonina into Freddie’s room after collecting their hefty fee. Rudolph was waiting outside Freddie’s cage to give note paper and an envelope to each mark.
“In the thirties,” Staley told them, “the Gypsy saint, Ceferino Jiminez Malla, traveled throughout Spain with Freddie’s grandfather as his companion. Jiminez Malla could foresee the future and God let him pass this gift on to his beloved ape.”
Make it mysterious enough and hard enough to believe, and the marks would fight to give you their money.
“Jiminez Malla’s beloved companion finally died, but Freddie, last of the line, still has the gift of second sight. Seal your question about the future in the envelope, and be careful to let no one see it. Not even Freddie will ever see it — but he will answer your questions even so.”
The marks did as directed. Rudolph presented the sealed envelopes to Freddie. He selected one and pressed it against his forehead. He shut his eyes. He swayed. He opened his eyes. He tossed the unopened envelope into the waste bin attached to the wall under the observation window. He went to his computer.
Freddie started hitting his keys. Unseen behind the one-way glass, Willem started hitting his, and the answer showed up on the screen in Freddie’s cage. Freddie pointed at the words.
RED DRESS WOMAN STOP SAD. BEATRICE HAPPY IN HEAVEN. SAY BINGO GET WELL SOON.
In the observation room, Immaculata Bimbai retrieved the sealed envelope from the open back of the phony waste bin, tore it open, and handed it to Willem. She watched through the one-way glass as Willem quickly scanned the first real question and Freddie pressed the next envelope against his shiny black forehead. He grimaced and swayed. He typed. So did Willem.
LAURA LOVE YOU. SHE FAITHFUL. MARRIAGE BLESSED.
Dan Kearny had the impression that he had already met the receptionist. Dark eyes, arched brows, a strong-bridged nose, black hair pulled back to tumble down her back in a single twisted braid. No. He had been seeing that same classical Roman face all week long in the art museums on saints, angels, martyrs, Madonnas. This one, 21st Century instead of 17th, gave him a big smile. She gestured at the closed door behind her.
“Please go in. The curator can see you now.”
Willem Van De Post, curator of the Rome zoo, was a large, fit man in his early 60s with ashy thinning hair. Piercing blue eyes looked up from the papers on his desk and widened in surprise as Kearny spoke without preamble.
“I was locked in your zoo last night by accident. At midnight some Gypsies...”
“Surely not, Father!” exclaimed Van De Post.
“Tell me about the orangutan, my son.”
“It’s a long story,” said Willem. “Making this zoo a world-class primate center has been my life’s dream. People don’t come to the zoo to see hedgehogs and foxes, you know. Our board of directors supported the idea of such a center, but could not budget it. When I became curator I got a chance to buy an old silverback gorilla from the Munich zoo, but until now there have been only two great apes in the primate center.”
“The gorilla and who else?”
“Myself, Father.” Willem leaned back and waved a hand at the computer. “I was exchanging e-mails with Dr. Ulysses Seal, a medical doctor in Minnesota and a prodigiously energetic conservationist. He put me in touch with captive breeding specialists in many zoos. But I had no money to buy a large primate, and had no animal of like value to exchange.”
“But then Our Lord sent you Freddie.”
Willem looked at him quizzically. “I suppose you could say that. I’ve known Robin Brantley for years from various wildlife conferences around the world, and of course knew his work training Freddie in language skills. As the date for the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong approached, he learned that the Peking Zoo wanted to take over Freddie. He flew my wife and me to Hong Kong as his guests to meet his pupil.”
“And he asked for your help,” said Kearny.
“Yes. Brantley made me an offer. If we could find enough money for him to get them both out of Hong Kong clandestinely, he would give Freddie to the Rome zoo. My wife’s family are animal trainers, we both agreed that Freddie would suffer great psychological trauma if removed from Brantley’s custody. For me it was the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“How did Marr get into the picture?”
“Marr has the collector’s disease. He heard of Freddie he wanted him, and he took him. The rest you know... Mr. Kearny.”
Kearny shrugged. “I do indeed. It cost DKA ten thousand dollars to mount the Xanadu operation to rescue Freddie, Baron.”
“How long have you known?” demanded Willem.
“Since a few days ago. When I learned that Marr had stolen the animal from a man in Rome, I knew you were either that man or his agent. When you stayed in the Observation Room rather than meet Freddie yourself, it was because Freddie knew you. You couldn’t let him see you. I followed a hunch — and the Gypsies — to Rome instead of Berlin.”