Chapter 10 #4
Reggie and I accompanied Reata through the many passageways, with Pope Terence contributing backup troops.
The First Lady was surrounded at all times, because even within the Vatican, there were undoubtedly informants and traitors.
We moved through the Sistine Chapel, which had been cleared of tourists.
The chapel was larger than I’d expected, with the fabled ceiling high over our heads.
Our group paused briefly to crane our necks and bask in Michelangelo’s handiwork, which had undergone a cleaning and surprised viewers with the crayola brightness of the artist’s biblical rumpus, as Adam and Eve cavorted beside David and Goliath, with Jesus and what the brochure labeled “several minor prophets” all attended by so many “unknown nude youths,” or as I thought of them, “Michelangelo’s unpaid interns.
” I was stunned by the ceiling’s extreme, interlocking complexity and ferocious detail, as if hundreds of Christian tarot cards had been artfully glued into place, or a horde of sublimely drawn and colored Pokémon.
“It always reminds me of the world’s most difficult jigsaw puzzle,” commented Reata, “the one that takes you all summer.”
Our momentary gawking was ill-advised, as I realized that our group, consisting of Reggie, me, Reata, her Secret Service detail, and twelve Swiss Guards, wasn’t alone.
I lowered my chin, accompanied by the neck pain endemic to the chapel.
I saw that two rows of maybe ten cardinals each were positioned at one end of the chapel, with an equal number of bishops, in hot pink vestments, like a battalion of the most vivid lipsticks, blocking our nearest exit.
A cardinal stepped forward, announcing, “We just want the diamond. Then we’ll release the First Lady.”
Why hadn’t I seen this coming—nobody’s more superstitious than the devout.
They spend so much time praying, with middling results at best. The Clotho could supply what everyone, but especially the most godly, yearn for: a guarantee.
Dangling Reata, amid rumors of her mystical relic, was like yelling “Sure thing!” at a racetrack.
“It’s not happening,” Reata told this full-skirted mob. “The diamond doesn’t belong to you. But I love your outfits. Very mother-of-the-bride.”
The leading cardinal raised a hand, and his brethren advanced, getting within a few yards of us. I’d had a brief Candy Crush habit in eleventh grade, and these men reminded me of those maraudingly perky video bonbons, endlessly racing through a grid.
“There’s no way out,” said a bishop, taking a sawed-off shotgun from the folds of his bubblegum-hued cassock. I remembered something else Reggie had told me: Vatican City polices itself. Italy’s laws don’t apply. This was the Wild West, with gaudier accessories.
Reata and I locked eyes. We were both well educated, ordinarily polite individuals, with a secret yen for edgier behavior.
We were like five-year-olds, goading each other toward a rope swing over a rain-swollen creek, or vaping teenagers, primed for a spring break parking lot brawl.
We both also harbored workplace crushes on Reggie, and we were sketching ourselves onto the cover of some queer-nerd comic book, with a Black woman and a gay guy fighting crime and the patriarchy.
“Come and get it,” said Reggie, but the bishop dropped to the floor, having been smacked over the head from behind by a tall brass scepter topped with a gothic crucifix.
The scepter was being wielded by Timothy, dressed in an altar boy’s lace-trimmed surplice.
Timothy nimbly rotated the rod, like a rock star with a microphone stand, daring anyone else to get within range.
The bishops encircled him, as our Swiss Guards went head-to-head with the cardinals.
“I don’t want anyone getting hurt,” said Reata. “Just let us pass and we’ll be on our way.”
“Not without the diamond,” said the cardinal, who then had a rosary knotted around his neck by an adept Mikaela, in a full-length traditional nun’s black habit.
She pounded the cardinal’s head against a wall as, quite literally, all hell broke loose.
The Swiss Guards had been schooled in martial arts, and began picking off the cardinals, tripping them and sending pairs smashing into each other.
The Secret Service contingent, with their weapons drawn, were shoving the bishops toward the exit, as Timothy grabbed their leader’s shotgun, which had skidded away.
As the melee increased, I compared it with both a Wolverine/Deadpool fracas based on a medieval tapestry, and the rumble in West Side Story, only with longer petticoats and more lethal kickboxing.
“Reata!” Reggie yelled at me. The three of us were clustered amid the frenzy, with our backs to each other, the most traditional Charlie’s Angels/bank heist pose.
The Secret Service agents had cleared a path to the exit, so Reggie and I each took one of Reata’s elbows and lifted her swiftly toward escape.
When we were almost at the doorway, an especially snarling bishop, waving what looked like a bejeweled dagger, most likely filched from a display case, blocked us.
As he pointed the blade at Reata, I mustered my fight training from both Reggie and a community theater version of Sweeney Todd (I’d been a very young Sweeney, but I’d applied an effective amount of sepulchral eye makeup, so I’d resembled an Egon Schiele painting crossed with a cheerleader sobbing after a bad breakup).
I’d slashed my customers’ throats with a spurting prop razor, but today, my brain suggested something even more ingenious, so I screamed Sweeney’s high note at a pitch that caused sympathetic howling by every Roman hound in the neighborhood, while halting the chapel imbroglio entirely, as everyone tried to figure out where that unearthly shriek had originated.
It wasn’t the most manly technique, but it worked, as Reggie spun and knocked the dagger from the oncoming bishop’s hand and shoved his thumbs under the guy’s ears, causing him to collapse in a heap.
(I’d always wondered if this military “pressure points” technique was real. Question answered.)
“Come on,” Reggie said, and we brought Reata out the door, only to be confronted by three more cardinals brandishing the wooden folding chairs dispensed for overflow seating in the main cathedral.
The cardinals buckled, moaning the most secular curses, as they were shot in the kneecaps by the Secret Service crew.
“I owe you pizza,” Reata told her team.
“This way,” Reggie directed, opening a hidden door behind a column, and he went first, with Reata and me right behind him.
The steep, narrow staircase was in darkness, and of course I instantly concluded: we’re descending to the Phantom’s secret lair tucked beneath the Paris Opera House, and we’d soon be boarding a subterranean rowboat amid candelabras rising from the gloom.
I hummed the intro to “Music of the Night.”
“The movie of Phantom was truly unspeakable,” Reata told me, over her shoulder. “All that fog.”
As I was about to defend Patrick Wilson, who’d played the Phantom’s romantic rival, Viscount Raoul, in a blond pageboy wig suitable for a Park Avenue heiress, Reggie hissed, “Quiet!” and we continued our trek into whatever lay beneath the Basilica—a home theater?
a laundry room? the finished basement where everyone got high between catechisms?
We hurried through the lowest level. Bulbs flickered as we passed by, on motion sensors, and were extinguished after we’d left.
We were in the catacombs, with crypts in alcoves along with skeletons embedded in the walls.
I gasped when a bony hand brushed my face, and Reata whispered, “The Sistine Chapel is pretty, but this is my kind of place. It’s the necropolis.
It was originally a pagan burial ground, from around 54 BC, but they’ve added tombs for every pope. ”
She paused before a larger, more open, if shadowed area, captivated. “This is it,” she told me. “This may be the sarcophagus of St. Peter himself. There’s still controversy.”
“Ms. Pershing?” said Reggie, and she reluctantly kept moving.
After what felt like miles, we climbed another set of stairs, emerging into blinding sunlight from a concealed tunnel ending blocks away from the cathedral itself.
A mammoth black SUV roared up, the doors opened, and more Secret Service personnel hustled Reata inside.
As the doors swung shut, she called out, “Thank you! Find the ruby and the emerald! Save the world! And Andrew, send me your parents’ numbers so I can tell them you’re eating! ”
I’d have happily complied, but as I turned to Reggie I was hit in the head by a chunk of rock being hurled by someone seated on the back of a moped, as its driver sped off around a corner and everything went black.