a stole, but it didn’t look bad. Would Angelico be offended or even notice? Darby closed the door behind him and waited.
Soon, the don stepped out into the night. A white scarf glowed visibly about his throat. He had wrapped himself in a handsome black topcoat. Darby recognized the garment as a Hart Schaffner Marx. A folded white handkerchief poked out of its lapel. A cool vapor encircled the man’s gray face. He saw Darby and walked immediately to his side. Donaldson appeared in the doorway. The lean marshal stepped out and stood by one of the urns.
“You know I have to talk,” Dominetti began. “Yesterday, it could have been my last. My uncle, the priest, would understand. So, you’ve not said if you’re a Catholic, but you’re a priest, or were one, right?” He looked up at Darby, just then noticing the stole. “You’re okay, you know that? Huh? You know what I’m tryin’ to say? Here, I will show you the kind of man I am. Take my arm, and I’ll take yours. See! Like this, and we can walk.”
Darby glanced down at his stole. “They say it’s the color of penance, in memory of the Christ’s robe, before they stripped and beat him. What do you think, Mr. Ruffini? Do I offend you?”
“Ah! You are a good one! No, no! I’m not Ruffini! I’m Angelico Dominetti. The last son of my mother’s six boys. Yes. She had six. Six boys and four girls! Ten! Ten in all. And all lived. At least for a while! Now, listen, I may not make it till next week, or long after that. The mob, they know everything. You can’t really hide from them. This program the boy there represents,” he nodded back over his shoulder, “it doesn’t work. They find you anyway. So I need to say something, to get this thing off my chest,” he coughed in a rasping voice. “I, I killed a lot of people, maybe as many as twenty. I don’t remember, nor want to. But,” his eyes grew moist and his voice broke, “I strangled a child once, yes, a little girl, ’cause we were afraid she’d talk. We didn’t mean to. You see, after we killed this guy, this little girl ran out from behind his counter. We’d gone to his clothing store to collect rents, you know, protection money. We beat the guy senseless. Then here’s this little child that runs out. A little girl! ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ she’s screaming. I grabbed her to shut her up. But she struggled. I was young, tough, I told myself. This was business. A guy doesn’t pay, so we teach him a lesson. We gave no quarter, nor wanted any. So, I’m Mr. Big, Mr. Tough Guy, you see! Sure! I placed my hands around the little girl’s mouth, as tiny as it was, and, yes,” tears welled in his eyes, “I crushed her vocal cords until her neck snapped. Mother of God, I did! I didn’t mean to, but I did! I don’t deserve purgatory. Hell and Death are too good!” He paused and inhaled a long breath. “You know, killings after that was like killing myself. I did it with gusto. I am so sorry to God and all his angels. Before Mary and all the saints, I am sorry, Father. Yes, Peterson, sorry for what I did. And it doesn’t matter if I’m forgiven or not. I just want God to know, for you to know, for a human being to know that I’m sorry for that little death. God Almighty! Holy Jesus and all his saints, I’m sorry. Listen, just one more thing. You know that Jew, the one who wrote about bad things happening to good people. He got it wrong. The Jew doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That’s not the problem. Not at all! You know what the problem is? You wanna know? The problem is this: why do good people do bad things? That’s the problem, Father. That’s the real problem, the real mystery, and there’s no answer to it, from what I know.” He stared into Darby’s face, clutched the makeshift stole, and buried his face in it. “Thank you for coming out here! Look! I am holding the hem of Christ’s robe!” he held up his hands as he gripped the cloth. “God forgive me! Holy Mother of God!”
Darby placed his arm about the Italian and let him sob.
When two days later Dominetti and the marshal left, something of Darby left with them. For several hours he wandered the grounds, up through the orchard, out to the overlook, and back behind the grand maison and its outside outbuildings. He stared down the old logging road. The imprint of the mobsters’ car’s tires was still visible. That wasn’t good. Hopefully after a rain, they’d fade away.
3. Dante, Paradiso, Canto 1.
Chapter 10
Whatever free time Darby thought he had, evaporated the next morning.
“You’re in for a shock this time,” Linda greeted him at breakfast. “A lady’s book club has booked the Inn for the evening. They plan to stay overnight. You’re going to have to be on your toes as well as on your best behavior,” she teased. “Better have something up your sleeve to say! They’re a sharp group, and the liberal warden among them will go for your jugular! She’s something! Let me tell you. You could opt out, except Garnett told them that you’d be here, and what a wonderful conversationalist you are. How’s that for friendship?”
“I can think of several words to say,” he smiled. “Tell me more.”
“Well, they like politics and social issues. They love to travel. Bore one another with pictures of children and grandchildren. They talk about where their kids are going to school, where they’ve vacationed last. Where to find great jewelry at bargain prices, antiques. Who’s divorcing whom! Other than that, they chat about their favorite menus, authors, and always exchange books,” she hummed with good humor. “You’ll survive it, I assure you. They’re just girls, doing what girls do. And don’t get that look in your eye! They’re well heeled, but ladies! There’ll be no Celeste in this crowd. She was a temptress, wasn’t she?”
“You know too much!”
“No! You can always spot a woman on the hunt. They’re eyes and lips give them away, even when they’re only studying you. You’ll be safe.”
“You had me hopeful there for a minute.”
“Just be prepared. I wouldn’t come in for dinner until you have to,” she gave him a knowing look. She smiled before filling his cup with more coffee. “Seriously, Darby, just be your charming self, that’s all.”
Being one’s charming self was hardly a reassuring thought. Darby wandered back to the cottage to peruse its bookshelves. His two favorite women philosophers were Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir. He’d often incorporated their concepts into his lectures and had urged his conservative female students to read them. So, also, some of the guys. He began scanning the bookcase. Huh! There was Arendt’s The Human Condition and The Life of the Mind shelved right alongside Plato’s Complete Works and Heidegger’s Being and Time. He looked for de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, but it wasn’t to be found. Maybe Garnett had it in his office, or in the living room. But whether the erstwhile book club’s appetite cared for such fare, would remain to be seen.
More to his sorrow was Dominetti’s conundrum about good and evil. Why do good people do bad things? Simply writing it off as a facet of inordinate pride or lustful concupiscence missed the point. Nietzsche was closer to the truth with his doctrine of resentment, or Dostoevsky with his horror of humankind’s perversity. Then, of course, there was Arendt herself, who, after the Eichmann trial, stunned the world with her catch phrase: “the banality of evil.” He shook his head. Why do good people do bad things? Out of perversity for certain, yet out of mindless indifference, too. Still, the most disgusting explanation was the one scientists labeled: “the absence of serotonin uptake inhibitors in one’s brain.” But what if closer to the truth people err and make mistakes just because they’re human? Just because “we’re mammals,” he told himself, Homo sapiens with egos and libidos?
Toward five o’clock, a Lincoln Continental, followed by a sleek black sedan, pulled up in front of the Villa and disgorged its cargo of book club members. Darby watched from the Garden as a group of four emerged from the Continental and three from the sedan. Amid laughter
