Brother Eduardo's Mortal Fate: The Santore Story III

By Rudy Leeman

Near the stable was a door in the basement side of the mansion. Eduardo saw a doorknob and metal plate with the standard slot for a key. He crouched and peered through the keyhole. It was dark inside. He placed his mouth close to the keyhole. “Tasha, are you there?” An eye looked at him from the inside. An imploring voice came to him

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781951886998

Rudy Leeman

Rudy Leeman, retired public education teacher and Lutheran clergyman, began writing historical novels. His earlier Tate Publishing release, For Everything a Season, covers eight generations of a family of strong men and stronger women suffering torture, imprisonment, and death. His Santore Story trilogy is a spin-off of one his characters in Season, set in explosive nineteenth-century Italy. He completed it after moving with his wife, Carol, from California to their new home in Georgetown, Texas.

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Copyright © 2019 by Rudy Leeman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Printed in the United States of America.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

So many people were part of the thinking, planning, and evolution of the final plot that became Mortal Fate. I appreciate all of your inputs.

Producing the book by Tate Publishing was a pleasant and efficient matter due to the skill and expertise of those at Tate. My project manager, Abigale Bermejo, deserves praise for tying together the first two parts of the trilogy with this final part and assuring consistency in all the elements.

The art department, with its talented staff, understood my intent and produced just the cover I sought to enhance the horror of children put into servile captivity and treated as chattel and victims of unbridled abuse.

Carol, my ever-patient wife, was again my severest critic and manuscript evaluator. I’m happy to report she spent far more time laughing and crying through the story than criticizing my efforts. She even admitted I was beginning to get the hang of it. I so appreciate her gracious involvement.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: Circumstance and Evil

Chapter 2: Fruit Bearing

Chapter 3: The Drivel of Evil

Chapter 4: Harvesting

Chapter 5: Evil vs. Good

Chapter 6: A Measure of Good

Chapter 7: Practicing Good

Chapter 8: Struggling for Patience

Chapter 9: Exercising Good upon Evil

Chapter 10: Practicing the Good

Chapter 11: In This House I Will Always Dwell

Maps

PREFACE

This final portion of Eduardo Santore’s story shares the burden of slavery that women and children carry. To this day— in this century—it infests the world more than ever. Types of slavery are only modified, not changed . In the twenty-first century, teens and younger are stolen, only to suffer unbelievable suffering and death as their organs are harvested.

The organs are sold to persons who will pay incredible sums to avoid long lines in medical clinics for organs. As the theme of the Brother Eduardo series illustrates, human trafficking remains a constant evil within nations, the third greatest crime against humans (the drug trade being second and trafficking of arms being the first).

Eduardo knows the immensity of the problem of slavery—one where he has, to date, had only the slightest impact. The story of the brave sparrow illustrates the struggle of Inspector Santore:

Lying on his back with his legs in the air, the sparrow is aware the sky is about to fall.

The next day the sky falls.

There he lies, pushing up on a small piece of the sky. Atlas walks by, spying the sparrow and laughs heartily. Suppose your spindly legs will hold up the sky?

The sparrow turns his head and grunts, One does what one can.

Theocratic and patriarchal societies practice control over women and children in cultures dedicated to the power of men over women and children (Mortal Sin). It murders the innocent as part of its activities (Mortal Crime) and corrupts culture and society (Mortal Fate).

Only honoring all humans equally as a central tenet of a country’s constitution affords the possibility of evolution, of improvement—change of perception, status, and relationship from the rest of the world—can finally effect any change. I know only one constitution in the world that offers that tenet as a principle of its social format. Even at that, it took centuries to effect change in America. Below the surface, the practice still persists because people still practice evil.

Chapter headings, hinting at the contents within each, are taken from Psalm 1. Psalm 1 contrasts those living by God’s intent to those who practice evil:

One who refuses to behave in concert with evil, join in it with others, or support those who mock the good, such a person holds honor and respect. That person remembers and acts out the intent of God for man with one’s fellowman at all times. He is like a fruit-bearing tree, a refreshing example to a world disdaining good; such a one produces a harvest of good among people, is never tiring of this behavior and demonstrates the positive results that give people value. The evil pitted against such a person is meaningless drivel, soon forgotten and disappears. Evil cannot stand against the good and fails the standards society finally raises as its measure of good. God’s intent for man endures in the lives of persons who practice the good; practitioners of evil simply self-destruct. (Rudy Leeman’s translation)

So how do we practice the good? A twenty-first century translation of the be-attitudes in Matthew sums it up:

The Be Attitudes

Your humility defines your relationship to others and to God.

Value your neighbor as you desire to be valued.

Your passion for the respect of persons fosters fellowship and true comfort.

Those who desire honor through truth receive both.

Peacemakers are God’s blessing to this world.

Those persecuted for upholding truth give life meaning.

Give honor and allegiance to God after honoring your neighbor.

Be as salt to your fellowman; that makes life worth savoring.

Those who rely on God’s love inherit the meaning of earth’s value.

God comforts those who attend to the plight of others all over the world.

Those who exemplify God’s intent for man live with inner peace.

God honors those who offer mercy in place of man’s vengeance.

When you act with a pure heart toward others, you experience God.

You are the light of the world; others will see how your love enriches all life.

—Rudy Leeman’s translation

I

ntroduction

The timeline of Brother Eduardo Santore’s Mortal Fate involved the birth of a nation. It brought him to a final realization of his mortal fate. The 1860s through 1880s is described as one of the most exciting yet violent historic eras for Italians. It’s their dream come true—the creation of one constitutional monarchy, Italia, whose boundaries the world recognizes today as the boot plus islands. It’s a nation unified under secular law. It’s no longer a rule in part under the church. It’s a time late in history when Italians redefined the temporal church; it became its own national entity, limited to a western corner of Roma known as the Vatican.

The era struggled to amend cultural idiosyncrasies and fit into a world of industrial expansion and realignment of influence. Nations redefined borders and national goals. Allies became newly minted as nations regrouped; they alienated themselves from neighbors and formed new alliances. In such a cauldron of change, evil flourished and expanded exponentially as nations promoted new definitions of culture and values.

Technology becomes crucial for evolving nations as railroads and instant communication over thousands of miles provided access to all portions of Europe, Italy, and America. They expand throughout Europe and the near east. The continent linked with England through a telegraph cable ran underwater across the channel. There’s talk about extending that link to America!

Though the spirit of nationalism was high, the ability to create one nation was seriously hampered by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, convened by European nations after the fall of Napoleon III in France. The congress redrew the map of Europe. Italy was separated into numerous states with the papacy owning one third of the peninsula and other nations claiming ownership of many Italian states. Austria had in mind to take over the states in northeastern Italy as its own. It claimed Italy as no more than a geographic designation of area.

This caused revolutions throughout the century, wars of states united against Austria’s invasions of the state of Venetia and a deepening conviction by Italians to resist all attempts at dividing the peninsula between nations. The emperor of Sardinia on the northwest corner of the Italian peninsula became hero with his large army to prevent loss of any state to either Austria or any Western countries, particularly France and Spain.

It was, indeed, King Vittorio Emanuele II of Sardinia who first gathered then protected various states and areas of Italia until it became, under his leadership, one nation under civil law.

The first modern war, the Crimean War of the 1850s, forced nations to reexamine the 1815 Vienna division of nations; the race to unify Italy was begun anew.

King Emanuele II and his Piedmontese Army pointed the way; the renowned General Giuseppe Garibaldi led it at one time. It’s the king, directing General Raffaele Cadorna, who breaches the military position of the Vatican with the city of Roma in 1870 that eliminated the last army of the Vatican that once divided Italia. The king of Sardinia immediately became the unifying leader of Italy. He surrendered his leadership to local leaders under a new Italian Constitution the following year, 1871. The capital in Florence was replaced with the new capital in Roma.

In the midst of this, Eduardo Santore became an agent of the king. His task was to infiltrate the Vatican and amass accountancy evidence necessary to cause Pope Pius IX to surrender the Holy See to the king. As a result of Eduardo’s discoveries undercover, he aided the king, who won the battle with pen rather than sword.

Eduardo infiltrated Rome. What he discovers is far more than what he was asked to find. What he was forced to do for the sake of stolen children and secure, from a papacy tainted with corruption, the evidence the king sought, led to an almost bloodless victory, on XX Settembre 1870. It freed boys, girls, and maidens. It produced one other result.

It sealed Eduardo’s mortal fate.

1

Circumstance and Evil

Firenze May 1858

Eduardo’s Home

The room seemed to spin very slowly around him. Eduardo stood by the crib with his three-month-old daughter, Anna, in his arms. She lay limp and silent; she was without breath. His mind raced in fear.

What’s happened here? I fed my little Anna Gabriela. I cleared her air with gentle pats. I rocked her to sleep. I set her gently in the crib. I did everything right. I leave for four minutes and return to be sure all is well. But she’s not living.

His gentle patting produced no change.

"It can’t be. I’ve lost her! Think. Think! What did I do? What should I do to stop this?" Silence runs a timeless span.

He looks at the still, stiffening form and surrenders to the questions one asks of the dead.

"How do I tell you, Anna, anything about a world you will never know? How will you discover a world made brighter and better just with your angel presence for one hundred years? You must live!

Worse, how will you ever know the love that was already waiting to be showered on you every day, forever? Eduardo set her down in her crib and fell to the floor, his body shaking as his sobbing grew more desperate, more terror-filled, each sob causing him to shake more violently.

His mind was racing with disjointed thoughts.

"Cosette and Zia will be home any minute. How do I tell them our Anna died? I don’t know, my darling. She was breathing when I set her down. A few minutes later I check back and she’s flat like the air went out of her. What did I do wrong?"

He sobbed as he lifted his shaking body and began to move Anna a bit in the crib. He held her up and slowly rocked her. Nothing changed. He set her down just as he heard the front door open and the chatter of Cosette and Zia Gabriela. He froze where he stood; then he turned and rushed from the room, down the hall, and into the small foyer to meet the women and the terror the next moments would hold for them all, to will away if he could, the pain to come.

Cosette saw him first. The look on his face transferred instantly to her mind.

What’s wrong, where’s Anna? she almost shouted. What happened?

Then Gabriela saw him, dropped the package she held, and ran past him into the hall.

Cosette held the question in her face and asked again more softly in a more frightened tone.

What’s wrong?

She’s not breathing, Eduardo uttered desperately. I went to check on her—

That was all he could get out before Cosette rushed past him down the hall. In that second, he heard a wail arise from the bedroom, and a moment later, a scream from Cosette.

It was a sound he heard only once before in his life, the utterly terrifying sound young Coretta made when they were children. It came as she shoved her sister and brothers away from the front door through which she just saw her mother’s body, impaled on the glass and blood-covered rock wall outside.

He was too terrified to move down the hall. His feet were secured to the floor. With all his might, he willed himself to turn around and face the hall. The wailing continued; it forced his feet to move to the bedroom door and its consequence.

Pain without end.

Firenze

Florence’s Finest Footwear

establishment October 11, 1858

6:48 p.m.

The well-dressed gentleman groaned as the fist sank into his soft stomach. He sank to the polished floor of his office, bathed in early evening moonlight that shown through the ornate window. The attacker reached down, lifted him to his feet, released him, and hit him hard (this time in his groin). The owner of Florence’s Finest Footwear yelled and fell again; this time he curled up on the floor with his hands thrust between his upper legs. His mind alternately felt immense throbs of pain and wondered how it was one could experience such pain and be out of breath as well.

He raised one hand into the air, waving it in a feeble supplication. He groaned so deeply he couldn’t form words.

A moment passed; he began to pant words between the slow throbs and a concurrent return of breath.

Please, please, no more. I will do what you want. Please, no more.

He began crying. It reduced itself to a whimper.

The attacker reached down and lifted the man by the scruff of his collar and pushed him into his desk chair.

He hissed into the storeowner’s ear, "Eight hundred lira plus a penalty of four hundred for first refusal. Refuse me again and I will break your legs and demand twice the monthly fee for protection.

"Get twelve hundred lira now," he grunted as he heaved the owner to his feet.

The injured man groaned as he moved to a safe hidden in a bookcase. He removed what amounted to fifteen hundred liras that were snatched from his hand. For that effort, he was given a rough shove back to his desk. His outstretched hand landed on the surface by the lantern, and he remained bent over with his other hand pressed against his groin.

As the man left the office, the owner heard over his shoulder, "Next month, eight hundred for protection or it will be sixteen hundred for arguing with me.

One more thing, tell anyone like the police, and I burn down your stupid store.

All that the owner heard were footsteps fading down the hall.

All he felt was pain.

Firenze

February 1, 1859

Office of Commissario Gaspari

Commissario Gaspari called Eduardo and Rai into his office. Sit. He pointed.

"First, Eduardo and Rai, you both seem intent on doubling the population of Italy as quickly as possible. I haven’t seen rabbits as busy as you two. So congratulations on the upcoming births in your families. I am excited for you, Eduardo. No tragedy as you suffered should overwhelm your life. As deeply as it affected you, I believe you are on the threshold of bringing life into the world that will long outlast your feeble attempt at immortality.

Rai, take this to heart. If it is a lad, you will be looking up into his face as we are forced to do with you. It will serve you right to suffer as have we in this office.

His grin slowly gave way to a look of administrative frustration.

"I have to tell you, the latest lunch I had with the mayor last week was about failing businesses that should be successful. I asked but got nothing but financial garbage I could never hope to understand.

Anyway, it turns out a number of businesses are beginning to fail. I received another note from the mayor’s office. He seems really concerned. Therefore—he pointed at the folder on his desk—"it’s now yours.

"I’m assigning it to you because snooping around businesses financially suits you perfectly, Eduardo. Companies are losing funds for no reason. It didn’t show up in their financial records. Your accounting firm was not their keeper of books. It was not competition on the open market. Their prices, service, and quality of products are very competitive.

The fact that their plight drew the attention of the mayor was that eleven companies suffer the same blight.

"There doesn’t seem to be a connection between these companies. They deal in different products, and in the case of three, services. The income is disappearing and not because of the seeming lack of sales of products or services. They’re not saying what is wrong, but the rumors outside their businesses suggest things seem to be going from good to bad to worse.

"We’re getting the rumors from, surprise, employees, those still working and those who have been let go from their positions because the businesses are going downhill.

"Look at the file. I can’t make sense of it but then, I’m not a numbers man. Florence, growing larger by the hour, doesn’t thrive when businesses close their doors. Tell me what’s happening and what to do about it. Letting me know today would be best. Actually, whenever you uncover the secret, let me know.

"Fact is, I already know, but your discovery will make you think you’re smarter than you really are, especially if you said, ‘That’s what I was thinking!’

"Other than that, I have no more weighty or gruesome matters to lay before you. I have some need for a draft of rum. You, of course, won’t have time to join me today. Perhaps later, when the case is solved. The mayor is beginning to annoy me with his notes on the matter.

"I want the puzzle of these businesses solved before Pope Pius IX declares, ‘Hell has frozen over!’ He’ll issue another of his endless encyclicals, this one to remind you to wear your warm coat and bring your skates.

The door is where you left it when you entered.

The two of them entered the Accounting for Your Success office. Eduardo called three of his specialists to join him in his office as soon as they could free themselves from what they were doing. He and his partner, Inspector (second class) Rai Andreini, moved to Eduardo’s office. They waited about five minutes before the first of the three entered and four minutes more for the other two to arrive.

Sorry for the delay, said the third man. Eduardo waved them to the chairs.

"No apologies needed. It’s terrible to tear someone away from what they’re focused on at the moment. It takes me time to disengage from what I do to focus on something else.

"I have this file from Commissario Gaspari given to me this morning. After examining the cases here, I came to believe something or someone is slowly destroying a number of business enterprises here in Florence financially.

I want to see if my conclusion fits any profile you may discover. You draw your conclusions. The missing cash seems to be in the till and then removed by someone. The money can’t be accounted for, as receipts are not created for the money. And most telling, the same thing goes on in each of these businesses.

The men, taking notes, examined the file for a quarter hour at the conference table while Eduardo and Rai took the time at the desk to destroy a few pastries and a cup of coffee. Then the men called the two to the conference table. They took turns reporting what they found. The first specialist spoke, It’s obvious someone has his fingers in the till. If it were an employee, the figures would show the source of the shortage through sales and receipts. It seems to be missing only at the end of the day—that’s when the discrepancies appear. So, I conclude it has to be the owner or a key manager taking these funds.

The other two men nodded. One spoke up.

You know, it was obvious to me all receipts were missing no money at point of sale. When I checked the movement of their products, there was not one missing receipt or invoice miswritten. Only the funds were short...and only at the end of the accounting day.

Eduardo nodded. If the owner removed the money, it had to be for a personal reason for which he refused to account in the books. From my perspective in the short time we’ve been looking, the shortages seem to be in the range of 20 to 35 percent. No business can afford that kind of shortage. Someone with their fingers in the till was the only conclusion from my examination.

The second man nodded. It has to be the person in charge of the funds at the end of the day. That points to the owner or manager.

But why, chimed in the third specialist, would an owner or manager want to ruin his business?

Eduardo nodded. "It’s why the word extortion came to my mind."

The specialists nodded in agreement.

Thanks for the confirmation, Eduardo said smiling. There’ll be a bonus for this extra work you’ve done for me.

The men rose and left the office.

Rai stood and looked at Eduardo. "Do we need crusty bread salami and cheese and an quart of ale to figure out how we’re going to handle this case, friend?"

His friend nodded and they headed for nearby Rosa’s fine ristorante to plan.

After food and drink were on the table, Eduardo started. I’m convinced we can draw the leaders out of the bushes if we take out the runners who pick up the money. Runners disappear. Money never shows up. Higher-level toughs are sent out and don’t return.

Eduardo pointed the edge of his half-eaten sandwich at Rai. Vallini gave us names of mafioso. We get a ‘franco type’ to give up the leaders on our list and they all go down. The missing ones, I suspect, Vallini’s already cashiered.

Rai nodded then added, "Problem is, Mafia will send up new leaders from Sicily. Even if Vallini makes it clear Florence is Camorra territory, it doesn’t keep a war from happening. We need something to keep mafioso out of Tuscany."

Eduardo again pointed his now mostly eaten salami-and-cheese roll at Rai. "It has to start with sending one of their men back to convince them it’s not profitable to invade Firenze. That’s where the solution lies, Rai. It may take more than one quart of beer to solve it."

Rai held up two fingers toward the waiter nearby. Solution drinks would momentarily arrive. More food would also help. He signaled for more crusty bread salami and swiss cheese, enough for two still-hungry men. They talked for two more hours. It produced an idea to drop on Vallini’s desk.

They met with Gaspari the following morning. Enrico was in an unusually good mood and appeared easily receptive to their ideas.

You were quick with a solution, Eduardo. I’m surprised the results came back as quickly as they did.

"Commissario, Eduardo replied, I found the problem when I met with Vallini. He described it well. So credit goes where credit is due. His paper to me is in your hands. I didn’t know Mafia was working this far north of mainland Sicily. When Vallini said Mafia I realized the display of greed instead