end of Tim Trinity’s biography, seemed like an attempt to apply it to Trinity himself.
—PRAYER FOR LENT
As he told the taxi driver to take him to Piazza del Popolo, Father Giuseppe Sorvino was careful to speak in broken Italian with a heavy German accent. He barked the destination as an order, waving a tourist map in the air between the seats, and he did not say please. Giuseppe’s brother was a taxi driver and had complained about German tourists often enough—they were supposedly the only ones ruder than Americans. Accurate or not, that was the stereotype, and it fit Giuseppe’s need to come across as a
But it’s harder to be forgettable when you’re missing an arm, so Giuseppe was wearing his special windbreaker. The left sleeve below the elbow was filled with foam rubber and a tennis ball was glued inside the elastic cuff and pinned inside the left pocket. It wouldn’t pass close inspection, but if you stayed in motion, moving through people’s field of view, you didn’t jump out as an amputee. Otherwise he was dressed as any other casual tourist, with nice blue jeans and a lime-green polo shirt under the windbreaker. Nothing to identify him as a priest.
Sticking with bad Italian and still holding the map out, he added, “I know where it is, so do not get the idea to take me for a long ride.”
The driver sneered and turned to face the road. “
At the west end of the piazza, Giuseppe told the driver to stop, paid the fare, and got out beside the fountain of Neptune and his two pet dolphins. He walked—not too quickly—toward the center of the vast oval, which had served in centuries past as a favorite location for public executions. Reaching the center, he put on his sunglasses and stopped at the Egyptian obelisk of Ramesses II.
The obelisk had been brought to Rome by Augustus in 10 BC and later moved to this spot in 1589, and every Roman knew its history. Giuseppe had seen it thousands of times, but he stopped and pretended to be a German seeing it for the first time. He walked slowly around it while scanning the tourists milling about the piazza to be sure he wasn’t followed. Then he shoved the map in his windbreaker and pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the back pocket of his jeans. He strode to the east side of the piazza, where he lit a cigarette and puffed away, not enjoying it. He normally smoked Marlboro Lights, but for the next taxi driver he would be French, and so these were Gitanes Brunes, which carried a distinctive odor that would linger in his hair.
This time he spoke French, with a perfect Parisian accent.
It happened whenever he was particularly tired or stressed, this feeling of the phantom limb. Years ago it had been painful, like paper cuts on his fingertips, bee stings on his forearm. The pain had faded over time, but what lingered was the aggravating feeling that he
The driver stopped in front of the French church. Giuseppe waited until the taxi was out of sight before crossing the street and descending the Spanish Steps, navigating around tourists and college kids, all the way down to the Piazza di Spagna and past the Fontana della Barcaccia, which to Giuseppe’s eye was the least interesting fountain in Rome. He crossed the square and rounded the corner to a small newsagent and tobacco shop—the sign above the door read
Giuseppe entered and browsed magazines while the old man behind the counter announced he was closing for lunch. Once the shop was empty of customers, the old man looked at him and said, “Lock the door.”
Giuseppe locked the door and stepped forward to the counter, now rubbing his stump through the windbreaker. “I need to speak with Carter Ames.”
The old man shook his head. “You have something to report, you file a report, let it work its way up the chain. Foundation protocol.”
“This is not just a report. And we don’t have time.”
The old man looked at him for almost a full minute. “Do you know what you’re asking?”
“I do.” Giuseppe scratched his stump harder, willing his phantom hand to recede. “I do understand. But it’s already in motion and they’ve sent a priest to investigate. Tell Mr. Ames it is about a preacher named Tim Trinity. And tell him I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Professor Cindy Elder, head of Speech Pathology at Emory University, led Daniel into her book-lined office and offered him a seat. “I haven’t spoken to Father O’Connor since my wedding,” she said. Then she peered over the rims of her elegant glasses. “Sorry to say, I’m a bit of a lapsed Catholic.”
Daniel smiled. “We’re all lapsed, in one way or another. Anyway, I came for your professional advice. I promise I’m not here to measure your faith.” Then he added, “I told Father O’Connor I needed the best.”
The professor seemed appropriately flattered. “Well, I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
Daniel opened his notebook. “If I wanted to learn how to speak backwards, how would I go about that?”
Cindy Elder’s eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon?”
“Speaking English backwards, say, so if you recorded it and played it in reverse and sped it up a bit, it would sound normal.”
Cindy Elder shook her head and smiled. “I’m guessing you don’t know anything about speech pathology.”
“You’re guessing right,” said Daniel.
She picked up the telephone receiver, punched in a number. “Gerry, is the sound lab free? Great, meet me there in five. Thanks.” She hung up the phone and stood. “Let’s go,” she said.
The lab looked like a scaled-down control room at a recording studio—a large mixing board on a counter, facing a window that looked onto a small room with microphones and sound-deadening foam lining the walls.
