Vessucci was beaten down on a political level, and badly.
Angullo reached blindly for the knob, his eyes remaining focused on Vessucci as his hatchet-thin face held the winning glow of achievement. “Think about it, Bonasero. Your weakness has become my strength.”
“I have as much right to the position as you do,” he finally said, but not as self-assured as before.
“As does anyone else,” he said. And with that he left the papal chamber, closing the door behind him.
Vessucci exhaled as if he had accumulated his frustrations and vented them with a long sigh in catharsis. Nevertheless, he remained solid in his convictions to believe that Pope Gregory did not fall by his own miscalculation.
He went back to the rail and peered over the edge to the bricks below. Despite Angullo’s countermeasures, there was no doubt in his mind that he was not a desperate man, but a man of conscience and reason.
He would politick and try to sway the Electors that he is just as strong a candidate as he was during the last election within the conclave six months earlier. He would once again provide them with his strengths, his weaknesses, and lay everything out as to the direction the Church should head. And then hope that his bidding would secure him the throne.
People continued to mill about the Square. And once again Cardinal Vessucci sighed. Cardinal Angullo was a strong adversary whose name was thrown into the arena at the last election. And as secretary of state he held the notoriety of being the pontiff’s closest ally.
This was going to be an uphill battle all the way, he thought.
And with that thought on his mind he dolefully returned to the Domus Sanctæ Marthæ.
CHAPTER TEN
Kimball Hayden was working the trash canisters along the casino floor when Louie tapped him on the shoulder.
“You haven’t given me an answer. And we have only five days left.”
“I thought my lack of an answer was answer enough,” said Kimball, tossing a trash bag into the cart. Around him slot machines and video games chimed their wins and losses with the winning screens lighting up in cartoonish displays of coins dropping into the winner’s trough.
“There’s a treasure chest lying at our feet,” said Louie, stabbing a finger in the air as if to harshly punctuate his point. “And all you have to do is get into the ring. But you’re kinda giving me the feeling that you’re gutless. Is that what you are, J.J.? Gutless.”
Kimball smiled at Louie’s adolescent attempt at peer pressure. “Look, Louie, I’m not interested in cage fighting. I never was and I never will be. Okay?”
“So this is what you want to do for the rest of your life? To pick up trash?”
“It’s an honest living. I told you that.”
“You also told me that you’d think about the ring.”
“I did… for about a second.”
Louie shook his head. “You have all the tools, J.J. You even have the look. What an awful waste.”
“So I have the look, huh?”
Another nod. “You look like a warrior, J.J. It’s in your eyes. It’s in the way you move, the way you walk. It’s all about you and here you are diving into trash cans.”
“Like I said, it’s just a temporary gig. And then I’ll move on.”
Louie grabbed Kimball by the elbow. “Can I show you something?”
“If it moves you — yeah, sure.”
Louie ushered him to the end of the aisle that led to the Sports Book. Once there he released him and pointed to an aging African-American who looked jaded, his face hanging as if perpetually distraught. Like Kimball, he was shagging trash bags from receptacles and discarding them into carts. “See that man right there?”
Kimball shrugged. “It’s Tyrone. So what?”
“Tyrone said the same thing thirteen years ago,” he said. “That exact same thing: ‘It’s temporary.’ But look at him. He’s become someone without hope or ambition.” He turned to Kimball. “And that’s going to be you, J.J. — a man without hope or ambition.”
“So fighting in a caged arena like an animal is supposed to give me a sense of hope or ambition? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“All I’m saying, J.J., is to give yourself a chance to be what you were meant to be, and to stop wasting your life.” He looked at Tyrone, then back to Kimball. “We both know you were never meant to do this. You were meant to be someone special.” Then in imploring manner, “Don’t become like Tyrone. Don’t waste your life when there’s opportunity knocking at your door.”
Kimball looked at Tyrone and noted that the man looked older than his fifty years. His face hung with aged looseness. And his back began to take on the fatigued shape of bowing into a question mark.
“I can’t, Louie. I’m not like that anymore.”
“J.J., I can tell that you were a fighter at one time, a warrior even. The scars are all over you. But don’t ever forget that you can never truly walk away from what you really are. A fighter will always be a fighter. A loser will always be a loser. And a dreamer will always be a dreamer. If you think for one minute this is only temporary, then you’re sadly mistaken.” He pointed at Tyrone. “Take a look at your future, J.J. I hope it ain’t so, but take a good, long look.”
Kimball did, seeing more than just the tired assemblage of a man who once dreamed that his life held so much promise, but eventually lost that potential over time, his dreams fading. When Kimball turned to say something to Louie, the man was gone.
He had finally given up on Kimball.
The fight was obviously off.
And Tyrone was aging by leaps and bounds.
While in Vegas, Kimball had become a creature of habit. The moment he clocked out of work he bought his $1.99 parfait glass of shrimp, watched the overhead show of the Freemont Experience, and then went home. There were no back-alley surprises, no meth whores looking for a quick buck or gangbangers sizing him up as he passed them by. Unlike most nights, tonight was uneventful.
He sat in his apartment with the lights and TV off, nothing but dark shadows.
Nor did he shower — the stink of garbage all over him.
Louie had provided him with an opportunity. He also told Kimball the truth about himself, even though he tried to turn a blind eye to what he truly was: a warrior, a fighter, a killer. Not a man who was elbow deep in trash.
But Kimball was a man convicted to make a change.
But it was hard, if not impossibly difficult, since the blood of a soldier still coursed through his veins.
The moment the Vatican Knights were disbanded by Pope Gregory XVII, Kimball wondered what lie in his future. Honest jobs with meager wages? Little hope of anything else other than to believe that one lousy job was just a setback? And that every job would be something ‘temporary’ until something better came along. What he learned was that life beyond the auspices of the Vatican was far more difficult than he had imagined.
Kimball stood up and parted the drapes, allowing a ray of gray light to filter in. In the distance he could see the flashing lights along Boulder Highway. And to the west the dazzling lights that the Las Vegas Strip was known for.
Change was not easy, he told himself. And Louie’s words were beginning to strike him hard.
He was growing older, like Tyrone. And whether or not he wanted to admit it, he was becoming just as jaded. ‘Temporary’ was becoming ‘permanent.’