The Shroud Key Read online

  “Three reasons,” I say, slipping my hand inside my bush jacket for my cigarettes, but then quickly realizing that they are stuffed into the plastic bag along with my lighter and my bullets. Oh well, I’ve been trying to quit on and off for years now. “One, writing is a solitary existence. It gets mighty lonely. Second, guiding, detecting and sandhogging—not sanddogging—provides me with badly needed human contact and it also makes for good story material now and again. Third, the money is good and on occasion great. Royalties are good too but not always so consistent. You with me here, Cip? Just think of me as a Renaissance man living and thriving in the home of the Renaissance.”

  He spins the gun on his thick index finger like a little boy and his plastic six-shooter, bites down on his lip.

  “You know I don’t like that you are able to carry this in my peaceful town of art and culture.”

  “Money talks,” I smile. “Especially in Italy. Just ask the American GIs who saved your ass from Nazi enslavement during World War Two. And you personally signed off on my permit, don’t forget. Besides, this isn’t your town anyway, Cip. It’s Brunelleschi’s town, or haven’t you noticed that big giant marble dome occupying the center of the city?”

  “You’re not getting any younger, Chase. Soon you will not be so attractive to the young women who travel to this beautiful country. Perhaps you will now consider spending more time with your daughter in New York City.” Working up a smile. “You know, grow old gracefully. With dignity.”

  “The food is better here. So is the wine. And I’m forty something. I’m not even close to old, yet.”

  Cip sets the gun down on top of his desk. Opening the small wooden box set beside it, he pulls out a cigar, cuts the tip off with a small metal device he produces from his jacket pocket and gently sets it between his front upper and bottom teeth. Firing the cigar up with a silver-plated Zippo, he sensually releases a cloud of blue smoke through puckered lips. Then, slowly straightening himself up in his swivel chair, he reaches across the desk with his free hand, pushes the box of cigars in my direction.

  “Thought you’d never ask,” I say.

  Stealing a cigar from the box, I bite off the tip, spit it onto the wood floor. Leaning over the desk, I allow the cop to light me up.

  “You always were a class act, Cip,” I say, sitting back. “When do I get my gun back?”

  “Not yet,” he says. “I have a favor to ask of you first.”

  I exhale the good tasting and very smooth Cuban-born smoke. If silence were golden, we’d be bathing in the stuff.

  Finally I say, “Okay, Cip, you’ve got that look on your face like we’re going to be working together again whether I like it or not. What do you need? You want me to dig up some dirt on someone? Maybe follow some cheating hubby around Flo for a while?”

  He shakes his head, smokes.

  “Not exactly,” he explains. “But you’re right. It’s possible I have a job for you.”

  “I’m listening, so long as it pays.”

  He gets up, comes around the desk, approaches the set of French windows behind me, opens them onto the noises of the old city.

  “I need you to find a missing man for me,” he says after a time.

  I turn in my seat, looking at his backside as he faces out onto the cobbled street below.

  “Find him where?” I say, knowing the question sounds like a silly one since if Cip knew where the man was he wouldn’t be asking me to find him in the first place. But it’s a good place to start.

  “Somewhere in the Middle East would be my best guess. Egypt, perhaps.”

  I smoke a little, visions of my sandhogging days in and around the Giza Plateau pulsing in my brain.

  “Egypt,” I repeat. “Not the safest of places at this point in modern global history.”

  “Especially if you’re an American. And the man I want you to find is indeed an American.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Cip backs away from the window, returns to his desk. Only instead of reclaiming his place behind it, he takes a seat on the desk’s edge, left foot dangling off the edge, the right foot planted.

  “His name is Dr. Andre Manion. A biblical archeology professor from a small Catholic college in your Midwest. An expert on the historical Jesus of Nazareth and said to have discovered some relics belonging to the Jesus family.”

  The name strikes home. So much so that a lesser man would allow the small electrical shock of the name to show on his face. But I’m not a lesser man. Or so I pretend.

  “Did you say relics? Jesus relics?”

  “Yes I did. Priceless antiquities, which no doubt stir your juices, perhaps more than Mr. Doyle’s wife did last evening. Manion’s over here on a teaching sabbatical at the American University. Or supposed to be here teaching, I should say. Early last month he went missing and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”

  Cip is right. The name Manion when combined with relics and antiquities does indeed stir my juices.

  “Fact of the matter is this, Cip: I worked as a sandhog for Manion eight years ago in and around Giza where we were in search of some prized Biblical treasures. Perhaps the most prized Biblical treasure of all. But we never did find much of anything, and truth is, Manion ran out on me, leaving me hopelessly hung over and alone.”

  “Sounds very dramatic, Chase,” Cip smiles. “I thank you for your honesty.”

  “Don’t mention it. Obviously my life has improved in leaps and bounds since those days.”

  “Obviously,” Cip says. “That prize fight performance in the Piazza Del Duomo is proof of that.”

  “Very funny,” I say. Then, “Thought you said Manion was in Egypt?”

  “That’s the best possible guess based upon what we’ve put together thus far. I didn’t say there weren’t any clues as to his specific whereabouts inside the embattled country. I said, he himself hasn’t been seen, other than on airport security video in both the Florence and Cairo airports.”

  “He travelling alone?”

  “Don’t know the answer to that.”

  “Exactly what relics has Manion uncovered?”

  I feel my heart race as I ask the question.

  “Don’t know the answer to that either,” he admits. “But I’ve heard a rumor that he uncovered the small tomb that housed the bones of Joseph, Jesus’s father. But that was a while ago now and in any case, finds of this magnitude would naturally be snatched up by the Vatican. That is, the finds can be verified in the first place. Naturally you would be familiar with such a process.”

  “Naturally,” I say. “Or at the very least, the relics would go to the highest bidding private collector. Perhaps someone from Moscow. Or maybe one of your richer-than-God friends in Florence, Cip.”

  The top cop smokes, glares at me for a moment, like he’s waiting for the stink from my comment to dissipate.

  I add, “I assume your support staff has done everything in their power to locate him?”

  “And then some. We’ve even gotten Interpol involved. But they too have come up short. Egypt is not the most cooperative of countries since its revolution and the election of a radical Islamist backed government.”

  I reach into the right-hand pocket of my bush jacket, pull out a small notebook and a Bic ballpoint that Short, Stocky Guard Sergeant failed to relieve me of before tossing me into the pen with the drunk Peruvians. I click on the back of the pen with my thumb, jot down the name Manion, as if I need to. Then I write the name, Jesus, as if I need to do that also. Finally I scribble in a dollar sign, just for good measure. Makes me smile when I look at it.

  “Manion got a wife? A mother? A boyfriend? Someone I can speak with who might help me out here?”

  I can’t recall if the professor was married at the time we were digging all over Egypt. I recall him mentioning a woman now and again. But I don’t recall her name.

  “His wife is in town. She teaches English at the same college her husband teaches at. She’s been here for a couple of week
s now. She desperately wants to find him. In the meantime, she can be a wealth of information for you, if you play her the right way and keep your dick in your pants.”

  “Hey, you know me,” I smile.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Who would I be working for? You or her?”

  “If you take the job, you’ll be working directly for her. She’s independently wealthy I’m told.”

  “My kind of client.”

  He slides off his desk, goes around it to his top drawer, which he pulls open. He slides out a manila envelope and tosses it across the desk so that it lands on the desk’s edge. I take the package in hand and go to open it when he stops me.

  “Take it home,” he insists. “Examine it. Take your time. You should know that this one won’t be easy. It will also be dangerous.”

  “You mean I can actually say no for a change?”

  “Sure you can, Chase. Under one condition.”

  “And that is?”

  “You pack up and head back home to the states, since I will personally revoke your temporary work permit and your permit to carry a firearm in Italy.”

  “Those are my choices?”

  “Take them or leave them.”

  I smoke and pretend to think about taking the job.

  “Can you perhaps give me a hint about what it is Manion was working on and why he was willing to disappear in order to find it?”

  But then, I already know precisely what he’s working on. I just want to hear it from the good detective’s smoky mouth.

  “My guess is that Manion is being paid by a private investor to locate something of extreme sensitivity in religious circles.”

  “Which means it would be worth a lot of money in people circles,” I say, my eyes no doubt, lit up like the lights on a Christmas tree.

  “Watch yourself, Chase,” Cip warns. “If what Manion is in search of is as important as I think it is, more than one person will be willing to die in order to get their hands on it.”

  I feel the weight of the package in my hands.

  “What the hell is Manion after, Cip?”

  I need to hear it, to believe it…

  Exhaling, he says, “I don’t know for sure since you will have to speak to his wife. But it’s possible that the professor has stumbled upon something that is liable to shake up the very foundation of Christian belief as the world knows it.”

  The words aren’t exactly what I want to hear, but on the other hand, the words can only mean one thing. I stand up, my head feeling a little lightheaded from the cigar and from what Cip is telling me.

  “And that is?” I press.

  “The bones of Jesus himself.”

  There, he said it. Said what I wanted him to say.

  For the love of God, the quest for the mortal remains of Jesus begins again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I grew up with Jesus. The product of a Catholic school guarded by yard-stick wielding nuns who could make the toughest of corrections officers look namby-pamby, I grew up fearing the big guy. My mother and father might have feared him too, but they were nonetheless devoutly, overtly and hopelessly Catholic.

  My father, at one time, considered becoming a priest. But I think he knew that deep inside he could never be married to a faith, despite its impenetrable strength. A faith could never bear children, for instance. No way faith could bring in the big bucks like excavation contracting and sandhogging all over the globe could. So, instead of donning a stiff white collar and a black suit, my dad operated a backhoe, managed a shoveling crew, and he made money.

  My mother bore me and two older sisters whom I no longer kept in touch with once our parents were dead, buried, and seated beside the Lord they so revered. I don’t think of my family all too often. Try not to dwell on where I came from and how I made my way out of its confines. But I do sometimes find myself thinking of Jesus … The historical Jesus of Nazareth.

  I have no doubt that he once existed. That he must have been a great man and a powerful presence for him to be remembered so precisely, with such reverence and acclaim. Religions have been created in his name and many wars have been fought over his beliefs or, the beliefs mortal man have attributed to him. I fought in two of those wars in both Iraq and in Afghanistan. The wars were about the control of oil, but they were also about radical Muslims versus Judeo/Christians.

  As I walk back towards my apartment across the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, I picture the long-haired man of legend being lashed by Roman soldiers while down on his knees, a crown of sharp thorns piercing his forehead, the blood streaking down an anguished face. I picture him walking the narrow cobbled streets of Jerusalem, a heavy cross bearing down upon his shoulder, he dropping to his knees under the heavy burden. I picture him being nailed to that cross on an ugly rock-strewn quarry called Golgitha or Skull Place and which is located just outside the city walls, the cross being raised up slowly by the scarlet-robed soldiers, until the heavy vertical beam dropped down in place, his body falling hard against the nails that pierced both flesh and bone.

  Is it possible that Manion is finally on the true trail of the Jesus Remains?

  Walking the cobbled streets of a Medieval city filled with churches and cathedrals honoring Jesus’s name, I can help but imagine the enormous sum of cash the true bones of Christ would fetch on the private collector’s market. If Rupert Murdoch is willing to pay $100 million for the bones of Richard III, might he not be willing to scrounge up $500 million or even a billion for the remains of the Son of Man?

  Listen, I might get hot and bothered by the thought of digging up that kind of relic, but I firmly believe they belong in a museum to be studied and pondered by scholars for eons to come. However, I wouldn’t be averse from taking a few million for my efforts should I happen to come upon them during my search for Manion.

  Why?

  Bestselling author or not, the truth of the matter is this: My finances are in a shambles. As of late, neither my books nor any one of my other occupations are making me any money. As for sandhogging, that job dried up eight years ago in the hot Giza sand when Manion ditched me for a plane back to the US. I don’t live in Florence because I love it. I live there because the lease on my downtown Manhattan apartment is about to be terminated due to unpaid rents.

  You might also recall Detective Cipriani mentioning the fact that I have a daughter. That’s right. Chase Baker, free spirit, bon vivant, and all around Renaissance man is a dad.

  Maybe finding adventures and writing fictions based upon them has become a passion for me. But my eight year old, long brunette-haired, brown-eyed daughter, Ava, is the love of my life. Problem is, I’ve fallen so far behind on the support payments that no way I can fly to the states and not expect to be slapped with an injunction as soon as I get off the plane. If I’m ever to see my little baby again, I’ll have to make good on all my debts before I leave Italian soil. That means a substantial, if not huge, payday.

  Perhaps having stumbled onto the job of finding Manion is the best luck I’ve had in a long time. That in mind, I climb the stone stairs to my apartment, knowing that gripped in my hand is not just a packet of information about an archaeology professor who’s gone missing in the pursuit of Jesus.

  It just might also be my ticket back home.

  My ticket back to Ava.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lulu greets me as soon as I come through the door. Which tells me she’s snuck into the main apartment from her bed out on the terracotta-covered terrace via the open window that accesses the dining room. My fault for leaving it open. The small but muscle-bound dog jumps and yelps until I pick her solid body up in my arms and hold her for a minute or two. Then, letting her back down, I make up a bowl of the dry dog food she eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and set it onto the kitchen floor. I grab a cold Moretti beer from the fridge and sit down at a breakfast counter that abuts a set of tall French doors leading out onto the grape vine-covered terrace.

  Opening the pa
ckage I slide out the materials it contains. Not much in the way of information. A couple of eight-by-ten color glossies of Manion. He’s the man I remember. Tall, salt and pepper-haired, professorial looking. His long face is clean shaven, his cheeks sunken in a bit, lips thin and uninteresting, as are his eyes which are brown and neither large nor deeply set.

  If I didn’t already know that he is an archaeologist I would peg him for an accountant, or maybe a department store manager. In the photo he’s teaching a class, his right hand extended up at a blackboard upon which a diagram has been drawn. If I have to guess, the diagram represents a crypt of some kind. An ancient, ornate burial chamber. I’ve seen the real thing plenty of times before.

  In the second photo, the professor is shown working an archaeology dig. I can’t be sure, but it looks like he’s in Israel. I’ve dug in the Jewish state on several occasions and I recognize the unique way the sun shines down on that porous, almost hospital white rock. In the photo, the tall, gawky Manion is wearing khaki clothing and a baseball hat with cloth flaps hanging down from it in order to protect the exposed skin on his neck. If I remember correctly, the world class archaeologist has a problem with sunburn. Being of Mediterranean decent, the hot sun doesn’t bother me. Even equatorial sun. It just makes me bronze. My good luck. Good luck for the ladies too.

  Setting the photos back down, I grab the vital stat sheet Cip provided for me which is typed out on Florence Polizia letterhead.

  Manion, Andre, PhD—Archaeology/Psychology, University of Chicago, 1982, University of Chicago, 1984

  Height: 6’1”

  Color: Caucasion.

  DOB: Feb 23, 1964

  Status: Separated/Divorced

  I set the paper back down.

  “So check this out, Lu,” I say. “Manion isn’t just an archaeologist. He’s also a shrink. Funny combination. Never knew that about him.”

  Lu looks up at me from her food dish.