It had taken two days for the stationery to be copied and printed and another two days for the letter to be typed and posted from Rome. The letter was picked up at the local post office by two of Moreno’s men on the twelfth of February, and driven to the Puerto Ospina ranch that same day in one of Moreno’s private Toyota Land Cruisers — what the Colombian soldiers called narcotoyotas. The very next day, the holy fathers Di Bello and Fratangelo arrived by dusty jeep at the front gates of Moreno’s riverside fortress on the Equadorian border.
Each was wearing the long brown, hooded cassock of the Franciscan order, roped at the waist. Each wore a black wooden cross hanging from a silken black cord. Each wore sandals on his otherwise bare feet. Under the cassocks, each carried a nine-millimeter Uzi manufactured in Israel and equipped with a silencer. In a mixture of broken English and Sicilian Italian, they produced a letter written in English, introducing themselves to two armed guards who spoke only Spanish.
One of the guards got on a walkie-talkie and said something in rapid-fire Spanish. The two Franciscan friars stood solemnly, piously, and patiently waiting. The riverfront was alive with the sound of insects. Father Di Bello slapped at a mosquito and mumbled a Sicilian curse neither of the guards understood. At last, someone drove down from the main house in a Mercedes-Benz. He read the letter of introduction slowly, clearly struggling with the English, and then his face brightened, and he bowed to each of the priests in turn, and said in an English as halting as their own, “Please to come. Por favor. Please, my sirs.”
The grounds were sumptuous. Tropical flowers bloomed everywhere along the road as the Mercedes climbed higher and higher, away from the river. Fountains flowed. There were statues of nude women in all the gardens; the good fathers averted their eyes.
Moreno greeted them effusively, explaining in his very good English that he had no Italian, and that he hoped they could understand his poor English. Di Bello and Fratangelo nodded and beamed and told him in their hopelessly fractured English that they could only stay overnight, “Just’a for la notte, eh?” — although Moreno couldn’t recall having invited them — because there was other church business they had in Bogota. It might be good, therefore, if they discussed at once the dates available for Mr. Moreno’s audience with His Holiness, which, they assured him, His Holiness was eagerly anticipating. Actually, what Di Bello said was, “He looks very much forward, eh?” Moreno was on the edge of wetting his pants.
He poured some California wine for the prelates and then offered to show them through his mansion before dinner, an invitation they eagerly accepted because their instructions were to kill him in his bed, and to accomplish this, they had to know where he slept. He showed them his billiards room, and asked if they played, and he showed them his music room, with its grand piano (and asked if they played) and his Wurlitzer jukebox with its two hundred selections. He escorted them to a vast paneled dining room with a table that could have seated at least fifty guests, and he showed them his bar, and his living room decorated in furniture Fratangelo thought looked sumptuous but which some ungrateful guests had described — out of Moreno’s earshot — as “cheap Miami shit” and he showed them the bedrooms where they’d be spending the night, and at last he showed them his own bedroom on the second floor of the house with a mirrored ceiling over the bed, and a rose-trellised balcony looking down the hillside to the river.
Over a splendid dinner served outdoors, Japanese lanterns lining the terrace and the paths winding down to the river, they discussed the dates that might be suitable — there were several in July and several more in August — and Moreno graciously submitted that whichever date was convenient to His Holiness would be more than convenient to him. Di Bello suggested that perhaps the beginning of July might be preferable...
“Not so hot like August, eh?” he said.
... and Moreno said the beginning of July would be fine. He poured more wine for the priests and they toasted the forthcoming audience, and Moreno casually mentioned that he was a heavy contributor to the Catholic Church here in his own land, and he would love to make an offering to the Church in Rome as well. Fratangelo tut-tutted this aside, and gave Di Bello a look of unmistakable surprise, which caused Moreno to believe he’d probably pulled a gaffe. He immediately added, “If His Holiness would not consider it unseemly,” which neither Di Bello nor Fratangelo with their limited English understood. So they both merely nodded sagely and said that they had to get an early start tomorrow morning, so perhaps they all ought to call it a night.
At a minute past midnight, they left Di Bello’s bedroom and went upstairs to the ballustraded corridor that ran past Moreno’s bedroom. An armed guard was standing just outside the door. From the end of the corridor, firing with the silenced Uzi, Di Bello took out the guard with a single shot.
Inside the bedroom, Fratangelo pumped six equally silenced shots into Moreno’s face. Then — as a token nod to the anniversary of a more famous Chicago slaying many years ago — Di Bello plucked a single red rose from the trellis outside and left it on Moreno’s blood-soaked pillow.
The apartment was flooded with roses.
Valentine’s Day had come and gone three days ago, but there were roses in the living room and roses in the kitchen and dining room and roses everywhere Sarah looked in the bedroom. Roses in vases on the nightstands flanking the bed and roses on the fireplace mantel and roses on the hearth and roses standing in vases under the bank of windows fronting Broome Street. Each bouquet carried a small white card:
Sarah,
I love you,
Andrew
She was beginning to believe him.
“I thought of sending a dozen on Sunday...”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I hope this makes up for it.”
“They’re wonderful,” she said.
“I got this for you, too,” he said.
She knew it was lingerie even before she opened the gift-wrapped package from Bendel.
“Try it on,” he said.
She went into the bathroom. There were roses in a vase on the countertop. She took off her clothes and then slipped the short white nightgown over her head. She was wearing red pumps. She felt like the devil’s bride the white gown scantily covering her, the high-heeled red shoes. She posed for him in the bedroom door, one hand over her head and resting on the jamb.
“Oh, yeah, I got this, too,” he said, and handed her a tiny box.
She hoped against hope — but what else could it be? How on earth would she be able to explain...?
“Open it,” he said.
“Andrew...”
“Please,” he said.
She undid the ribbon.
As she’d feared, there was a ring in the box. A ring with a slender black band and an oval black crown with some sort of signet.
“It’s bronze,” he said. “I bought it in an antiques shop on Madison Avenue.”
“Andrew, it’s... beautiful! But...”
“The figure is some kind of half-man, half-goat,” he said.
“A satyr,” she said, nodding. “But, Andrew, how can...?
“That’s a bird he’s holding. It’s supposed to be Roman.”
He slipped the ring onto the third finger of her right hand. Wearing the short white gown and the red shoes and the black ring on the hand opposite her gold wedding band, she felt truly like the devil’s bride. She did not know how she could possibly wear the ring, it had to have cost a small fortune. She could not even imagine wearing it on a chain around her neck. Michael would surely question how it had come into her possession. But neither could she refuse it. He took her right hand in his. He brought the hand to his lips. He kissed her hand.