The Danger

by Dick Francis

  “For possible districts, yes.”

  “What are possible?”

  “Well . . . Not industrial areas. Not decayed housing. Not all-black neighborhoods. Not parks, museums, or government offices. Not diplomatic residential areas . . . embassies and their offices. Not blocks of flats with janitors. Not central shopping areas, nor banking areas, nor schools or colleges, nowhere with students.”

  “What’s left?”

  “Private housing. Suburbs. Anywhere without prying neighbors. And at a guess, somewhere north or west of the center, because the Ritz Carlton is there.”

  We drove for a good long while, methodically sectioning the sprawling city according to the map, but concentrating most and finally on the north and west. There were beauties to the place one couldn’t guess from the tourist round, and miles and hosts of residential streets where Morgan Freemantle could be swallowed without trace.

  “I wonder if we’ve actually been past him,” Alessia said at one point. “Gives one the shivers, not knowing. I can’t bear to think of him. Alone . . . dreadfully alone . . . somewhere close.”

  “He might be further out,” I said. “But kidnappers don’t usually go for deserted farmhouses or places like that. They choose more populated places, where their comings and goings aren’t noticeable.”

  The scale of it all, however, was daunting, even within the radius I thought most likely. Analysis of recent rentals wouldn’t come up this time with just eleven probables: there would be hundreds, maybe one or two thousand. Kent Wagner’s task was impossible, and we would have to rely on negotiation, not a second miracle, to get Morgan Freemantle home safe.

  We were driving up and down some streets near Washington Cathedral, simply admiring the houses for their architecture: large old sprawling houses with frostings of white railings, lived-in houses with signs of young families. On every porch, clusters of Halloween pumpkins.

  “What are those?” Alessia said, pointing at the grinning orange faces of the huge round fruits on the steps outside every front door.

  “It was Halloween four days ago,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, so it was. You don’t see those at home.”

  We passed the Ritz Carlton on Massachusetts Avenue and paused there, looking at the peaceful human-scaled hotel with its blue awnings from where Morgan had been so unceremoniously snatched, and then coasted round Dupont Circle and made our way back to the more central part. Much of the city was built in radii from circles, like Paris, which may have made for elegance but was a great recipe for getting lost: we’d chased our tails several times in the course of the day.

  “It’s so vast,” Alessia said, sighing. “So confusing. I’d no idea.”

  “We’ve done enough,” I agreed. “Hungry?”

  It was three-thirty by then, but time meant nothing to the Sherryatt Hotel. We went up to my room on the twelfth floor of the anonymous, enormous, bustling pile and we ordered wine and avocado shrimp salad from room service. Alessia stretched lazily on one of the armchairs and listened while I telephoned Kent Wagner.

  Did I realize, he asked trenchantly, that the whole goddam population of North America was on the move through Washington, D.C., and that a list of rentals would bridge the Potomac?

  “Look for a house without pumpkins,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Well, if you were a kidnapper, would you solemnly carve Halloween faces on pumpkins and put them on the front steps?”

  “No, I guess not.” He breathed out in the ghost of a chuckle. “Takes a Brit to come up with a suggestion as dumb as that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be at the Sherryatt this evening and at the races tomorrow, if you should want me.”

  “Got it.”

  I telephoned next to Liberty Market, but nothing much had developed in London. The collective fury of the members of the Jockey Club was hanging over Portman Square in a blue haze and Sir Owen Higgs had retreated for the weekend to Gloucestershire. Hoppy at Lloyds was reported to be smiling cheerfully as in spite of advising everyone else to insure against extortion the Jockey Club hadn’t done so itself. Apart from that, nix.

  The food arrived and we ate roughly jockey-sized amounts. Then Alessia pushed her plate away and, looking at her wine-glass, said, “Decision time, I suppose.”

  “Only for you,” I said mildly. “Yes or no.”

  Still looking down she said, “Would no . . . be acceptable?”

  “Yes, it would,” I said seriously.

  “I . . .” She took a deep breath. “I want to say yes, but I feel . . .” She broke off, then started again. “I don’t seem to want . . . since the kidnap . . . I’ve thought of kissing . . . of love . . . and I’m dead . . . I went out with Lorenzo once or twice and he wanted to kiss me . . . his mouth felt like rubber to me.” She looked at me anxiously, willing me to understand. “I did love someone passionately once, years ago, when I was eighteen. It didn’t last beyond summer . . . We both simply grew up . . . but I know what it’s like, what I should feel, what I should want . . . and I don’t.”

  “Darling Alessia.” I stood up and walked to the window, thinking that for this battle I wasn’t strong enough, that there was a limit to controlled behavior, that what I myself longed for now was warmth. “I do truly love you in many ways,” I said, and found the words coming out an octave lower than in my normal voice.

  “Andrew!” She came to her feet and walked towards me, searching my face and no doubt seeing there the vulnerability she wasn’t accustomed to.

  “Well . . .” I said, struggling for lightness; for a smile; for Andrew the unfailing prop. “There’s always time. You ride races now. Go shopping. Drive your car?”

  She nodded.

  “It all took time,” I said. I wrapped my arms around her lightly and kissed her forehead. “When rubber begins feeling like lips, let me know.”

  She put her head against my shoulder and clung to me for help as she had often clung before; and it was I, really, who wanted to be enfolded and cherished and loved.

  SHE RODE IN the race the next day, a star in her own firmament.

  The racecourse had come alive, crowds pressing, shouting, betting, cheering. The grandstands were packed. One had to slide round strangers to reach any goal. I had my hand stamped and checked and my name taken and ticked, and Eric Rickenbacker welcomed me busily to the biggest day of his year.

  The president’s dining room, so echoingly empty previously, spilled over now with chattering guests all having a wow of a time. Ice clinked and waitresses passed with small silver trays and a large buffet table offered crab cakes to afficionados.

  Paolo Cenci was there with the Goldonis and Lucchese, all of them looking nervous as they sat together at one of the tables. I collected a glass of wine from an offered trayful and went over to see them, wishing them well.

  “Brunelleschi kicked his groom,” Paolo Cenci said.

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “No one knows,” he said.

  I kept the giggle in my stomach. “How’s Alessia?” I asked.

  “Less worried than anyone else.”

  I glanced at the other faces; at Lucchese, fiercely intense, at Bruno Goldoni, frowning, and at Beatrice, yesterday’s glow extinguished.

  “It’s her job,” I said.

  They offered me a place at their table but I thanked them and wandered away, too restless to want to be with them.

  “Any news from London?” Eric Rickenbacker said in my ear, passing close.

  “None this morning.”

  He clicked his tongue, indicating sympathy. “Poor Morgan. Should have been here. Instead . . .” He shrugged resignedly, moving away, greeting new guests, kissing cheeks, clapping shoulders, welcoming a hundred friends.

  The Washington International was making the world’s news. Poor Morgan, had he been there, wouldn’t have caused a ripple.

  They saved the big race until ninth of the ten on the card, the whole afternoon a titillation, a preparation,
with dollars flooding meanwhile into the pari-mutuel and losing tickets filling the trashcans.

  The whole of the front of the main stands was filled in with glass, keeping out the weather, rain or shine. To one slowly growing used to the rigors of English courses the luxury was extraordinary, but, when I commented on it, one of Rickenbacker’s guests said reasonably that warm betters betted, cold betters stayed at home. A proportion of the day’s take at the pari-mutuel went to the racecourse: racegoer comfort was essential.

  For me the afternoon passed interminably, but in due course all the foreign owners and trainers left the president’s dining room to go down nearer the action and speed their horses on their way.

  I stayed in the aerie, belonging nowhere, watching the girl I knew so well come out onto the track; a tiny gold and white figure far below, one in a procession, each contestant led and accompanied by a liveried outrider. No loose horses on the way to the post, I thought. No runaways, no bolters.

  A trumpet sounded a fanfare to announce the race. A frenzy of punters fluttered fistfuls of notes. The runners walked in procession across in front of the stands and cantered thereafter to the start, each still with an escort. Alessia looked from that distance identical with the other jockeys: I wouldn’t have known her except for the colors.

  I felt, far more disturbingly than on the English tracks, a sense of being no part of her real life. She lived most intensely there, on a horse, where her skill filled her. All I could ever be to her as a lover, I thought, was a support: and I would settle for that, if she would come to it.

  The runners circled on the grass, because the one-and-a-half-mile International was run on living green turf, not on dirt. They were fed into the stalls on the far side of the track. Lights still flickered on the pari-mutuel, changing the odds: races in America tended to start when the punters had finished, not to any rigid clock.

  They were off, they were running, the gold and white figure with them, going faster than the wind and to my mind crawling like slow motion.

  Brunelleschi, the brute who kicked, put his bad moods to good use, shouldering his way robustly round the first bunched-up bend, forcing himself through until there was a clear view ahead. Doesn’t like to be shut in, Alessia had said. She gave him room and she held him straight: they came past the stands for the first time in fourth place, the whole field close together. Round the top bend left-handed, down the backstretch, round the last corner towards home.

  Two of the leaders dropped back: Brunelleschi kept on going. Alessia swung her stick twice, aimed the black beast straight at the target and rode like a white and gold arrow to the bull.

  She won the race and was cheered as she came to the winner’s enclosure in front of the stands. She was photographed and filmed, her head back, her mouth laughing. As Brunelleschi stamped around in his winner’s garland of laurels (what else?) she reached forward and gave his dark sweating neck a wide-armed exultant pat, and the crowd again cheered.

  I wholeheartedly shared in her joy: and felt lonely.

  They all came up to the dining room for champagne, winners, losers, and Eric Rickenbacker looking ecstatic.

  “Well done,” I said to her.

  “Did you see?” She was high, high with achievement.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Isn’t it fantastic?”

  “The day of a lifetime.”

  “Oh, I do love you,” she said, laughing, and turned away immediately, and talked with animation to a throng of admirers. Ah, Andrew, I thought wryly, how do you like it? And I answered myself: better than nothing.

  WHEN I FINALLY got back to the hotel the message button was flashing on my telephone. My office in England had called when I was out. Please would I get through to them straight away.

  Gerry Clayton was on the switchboard.

  “Your Italian friend rang from Bologna,” he said. “The policeman, Pucinelli.”

  “Yes?”

  “He wants you to telephone. I couldn’t understand him very well, but I think he said he had found Giuseppe-Peter.”

  18

  By the time I got the message it was three in the morning, Italian time. On the premise, however, that the law neither slumbered nor slept I put the call through straight away to the carabinieri, and was answered by a yawning Italian who spoke no English.

  Pucinelli was not there.

  It was not known when Pucinelli would be there next.

  It was not known if Pucinelli was in his own house.

  I gave my name, spelling it carefully letter by letter but knowing it would look unpronounceable to most Italians.

  I will telephone again, I said: and he said “Good.”

  At one in the morning, Washington time, I telephoned to Pucinelli’s own home, reckoning his family would be shaping to breakfast. His wife answered, children’s voices in the background, and I asked for her husband, in Italian.

  “Enrico is in Milan,” she said, speaking slowly for my sake. “He told me to give you a message.” A short pause with paper noises, then, “Telephone this house at fourteen hours today. He will return by that time. He says it is very important, he has found your friend.”

  “In Milan?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Enrico said only to ask you to telephone.”

  I thanked her and disconnected, and slept fitfully while four thousand miles away Pucinelli traveled home. At fourteen hours, two P.M. his time, eight A.M. in Washington, I got through again to his house and found he had been called out on duty the minute he returned.

  “He is sorry. Telephone his office at seventeen hours.”

  By that time, I reckoned, my fingernails would be bitten to the knuckle. My stomach positively hurt with impatience. I ordered breakfast from room service to quieten it and read the Washington Sunday papers and fidgeted, and finally at eleven I got him.

  “Andrew, how are you?” he said.

  “Dying of suspense.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Where are you?” he said. “Your office said America.”

  “Yes. Washington. Have you really found Giuseppe-Peter?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You remember,” he said, “that we have been inquiring all the time among horse people, and also that we were going to try some students’ reunions, to see if anyone recognized him from the drawing.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. We had drifted automatically into our normal habit of speaking in two languages, and it seemed just as satisfactory as ever.

  “We have succeeded in both places. In both worlds.” He paused for effect and sounded undeniably smug. “He lives near Milan. He is thirty-four now. He went to Milan University as a student and joined radical political groups. It is believed he was an activist, a member of the Red Brigades, but no one knows for sure. I was told it was a fact, but there was no true evidence. Anyway, he did not continue in political life after he left university. He left without sitting his final examinations. The university asked him to leave, but not because of his radical opinions. They made him leave because he forged checks. He was not prosecuted, which I think is a mistake.”

  “Mm,” I agreed, riveted.

  “So then I had his name. And almost immediately, the same day that I learned it, we had the information from the horse people. They say he is not well known in the horse world, he never goes to the races, he is the black sheep of a well-regarded family, and is banished from their house. No one seems to be absolutely certain in detail why this is, but again there are many rumors that it is to do with fraud and forging checks. Everyone believes the father repaid every penny to keep the family name out of the disgrace.”

  “But the horse world told you this?”

  “Yes. In the end, someone recognized him. Our men were very diligent, very persistent.”

  “They’re to be congratulated,” I said sincerely.

  “Yes, I agree.”

  “What is his name?” I
asked. It hardly seemed to matter, but it would be tidier to give him the proper label.

  “His father owns racehorses,” Pucinelli said. “His father owns the great horse Brunelleschi. Giuseppe-Peter’s real name is Pietro Goldoni.”

  Washington, D.C., seemed to stand still. Suspended animation. I actually for a while stopped breathing. I felt stifled.

  “Are you there, Andrew?” Pucinelli said.

  I let out a long breath. “Yes . . .”

  “No one has seen Pietro Goldoni since the summer. Everyone thinks he went abroad and hasn’t come back.” He sounded pleased. “It fits the timetable, doesn’t it? We chased him out of Italy and he went to England.”

  “Er . . .” I said faintly. “Have you heard about Morgan Freemantle? Did you read anything in the papers yesterday or today, see anything on television?”

  “Who? I have been so busy in Milan. Who is Morgan Freemantle?”

  I told him. I also said, “Bruno and Beatrice Goldoni have been here all this week in Washington. I have talked to them. Brunelleschi won the big International race here yesterday afternoon. Alessia Cenci rode it.”

  There was the same sort of stunned breathless silence from his end as there had been from mine.

  “He is there,” he said finally. “Pietro Goldoni is in Washington.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You of course knew that.”

  “I assumed that Giuseppe-Peter was here, yes.”

  He paused, considering. “In what way is it best that I inform the American police of his identity? It may be that my superiors would want to consult . . .”

  “If you like,” I said politely, “I myself will first tell the police captain in charge of things here. The captain might be pleased to talk to you then direct. There’s an Italian-speaker in his force who could translate for you both.”

  Pucinelli was grateful and careful not to sound it. “That would be excellent. If you would arrange it, I am sure it would be helpful.”

  “I’ll do it at once,” I said.

  “It is Sunday,” he said, almost doubtfully.