by Aaron Elkins
He released the safety on the semiautomatic and focused both handguns on the driver. “All right, now raise your hands. Up high, push them against the roof. Marcello, if he moves, you kill him.” He pulled open the back door and leveled the two guns—he liked this two-gun stuff—to point down at the floor. “Okay, kid, come on out of there. Hurry up.”
Achille didn’t move. He was on his knees, scared to death, milk-faced and shivering. “Just tell me what you want, I know I can—”
“All I want is you. Now don’t make me—”
“My father will kill you for this. Do you know who my father is?”
“Yeah, I know who your father—”
A movement by one of the driver’s hands caught his eye. “Hey!” he said. “What did I tell you? Marcello, you—Ai!”
His first thought was that a bee had stung him on the wrist, but then he heard a clink, and when he looked down, his own .357 magnum, which he’d thought was still in his right hand, was on the pavement, and his wrist was spouting blood, and he knew he’d been shot. Before he could tear his eyes from his shattered wrist, there was a second stinging jab—he heard the shot this time—in his abdomen, dead center, a little below the breastbone. More like a punch than a jab, and this one really hurt. That bastard driver, he’d had a second piece, some stupid little-old-lady gun, tucked down his back behind his neck. And now he’d ducked down and was rolling around on the front seat, getting off shots, twisting and coiling like a snake, almost too quick to see. Where the hell was Marcello?
Now, hardly aware of what he was doing, Ugo was shooting too, spraying bullets from the driver’s semiautomatic in his left hand—crakcrakcrakcrak—at the writhing, whirling body. “Bastard, you shot me!” Crakcrakcrak. The little pistol flew out of the driver’s hand. For a moment Ugo thought he was throwing it at him, but then the man arched, gave a shuddering sigh, and lay still on his back, one foot sticking out the door on Ugo’s side. There was blood all over his face and on his shirt. Next to his head, the leather seat was wet.
Ugo was shaking. He’d never been shot before. He’d never killed anyone before. He was losing a lot of blood, he saw now, rhythmic gouts from the wrist, a thick, pumping flow from his abdomen. He pressed his right hand against the hole below his breastbone and stuck his wounded left hand under his right arm, but he could still feel the blood pushing out. He struggled to make himself move, to make himself think, but he’d grown confused. He felt frozen, petrified, as if time were flowing by somewhere outside him, too blindingly fast for him to step back into it. He’d lost track of the semiautomatic. He began to worry that he wouldn’t be able to make it back to the car.
“Ugo!” Marcello said, coming tremulously back into sight from where he’d been crouching behind the hood of the car. He looked terrified.
“You lousy—you lousy—” Ugo screamed. “You just let him—you just let me—”
Marcello was staring into the car. “Ugo, Ugo, you shot him!”
“Yeah, I shot him! Where the hell were you?”
He was having a hard time focusing. His pant leg was blood-soaked, clinging to him; his shoe was squishy with it. “Marcello, I’m not . . . uh . . .”
He was sitting on the pavement, his back against the jamb between the limo’s front and rear doors. He didn’t remember going down. “Marcello, you better get me back to the car,” he said, only his head was rolling around on his neck and his mouth didn’t work right, and all that came out was this horrible mewling, like a cat that had been run over. He could no longer move his head, but from the corner of his eye he saw Big Paolo running heavily toward them from the rear car. Paolo—big, dumb, stupid Paolo—had forgotten, in his excitement, to put on his mask.
“Paolo,” he heard Marcello say urgently from around the far side of the limo, “the bastard kid’s giving me trouble. Help me out.”
“No, please—” It was the kid’s voice, cut short by a little gasp as Paolo swatted him.
Don’t forget about me, Ugo tried to say, don’t leave me here, but this time not even the mewling sound came out. His chin was on his chest. He couldn’t lift his head; it was as if someone were pushing down on the back of his neck. All he could see were his pants, black and glistening with blood, and even that small field of vision was rimmed with a darkening pink haze, as if he were looking out from a tunnel. The stocking mask was squeezing him, cutting off his air. He couldn’t breathe.
“What about Ugo?” Big Paolo asked. “We’re not gonna leave him here?”
“Forget Ugo,” Marcello said. “Look at him, he’s dead.”
Am I really? Ugo wondered as the pink haze darkened and the tunnel walls squeezed slowly in.
OFFICER Favaretto waited in the open doorway of Comandante Boldini’s office while his chief finished his not-so-polite conversation with the mayor of Stresa, who could be seen through the window, gesticulating in his own office just across the Corso.
“I can’t help that, Mr. Mayor,” Boldini was shouting into the telephone. “I know there’s a French tour bus on your front steps, all I have to do is look out my window to see it. Have you looked at my parking lot? You don’t seem to understand, we’re going to have to get a crane in there, for God’s sake, and police business will have to come first. We—” He paused, fuming, holding the receiver away from his ear and rolling his eyes. “Well, that’s too bad, but you’ll just have to wait,” he said abruptly and slammed down the receiver. He wiped a wadded handkerchief around the inside of his stiff, braided collar and stared blackly at the telephone. “Some people,” he muttered. “Does he think I’m Superman?”
Favaretto tapped gingerly at the pebbled glass pane of the door. “Comandante?”
Boldini hauled himself up and used both hands to hitch his pants up over his spreading hips. A bad sign. Here it comes, Favaretto thought sourly. Because I tried to do something, this whole thing is going to get blamed on me. Next time I’ll just pretend I never saw anything and stay the hell out of it. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time he’d been driven to make such a promise to himself.
“Favaretto, I thought you told that truck driver to come and see me.”
“I did, sir. I told him—”
“Well, he never did, how do you explain that? He just left the truck sitting out there and walked off, what do you think of that? The worst traffic jam in the history of Italy, and you, you don’t even bother—What, damn it?” he yelled at the telephone, which had just buzzed twice at him, the signal that his adjutant was on the other end of the line.
“You, don’t go away,” Boldini commanded, leveling a finger at Favaretto, who had indeed been thinking about making his exit. “I want to talk to you.” He turned his back, picked up the telephone, and held it to his ear. “What?” he said roughly. “What?”
He fell into his leather chair as if the carpet had been jerked from under him. “What?” he said again, but far more softly. A few moments later there was an even softer, more tremulous “Who?” followed almost immediately by “Oh, my God.”
The phone was falteringly replaced on its base the way an old, old man—and a blind one at that—might, and then Boldini pivoted his chair around to look at Favaretto. His face, which had been dangerous a minute before, was now a dazed, sick white.
“Favaretto,” he said weakly, “tell Maria to get me the carabinieri on the telephone. Colonel Caravale. Personally.”
TWO
IN Stresa the headquarters of the Polizia Municipale and the offices of the regional carabinieri are separated by only five short, pleasant blocks, but they might as well be in different universes. The Polizia’s office is in the bustling, upscale heart of Stresa, on the lakefront, just off the busy, modern Corso Italia, where it shares a handsome building with the ferry company and the city’s chamber of commerce. Carabinieri headquarters, on the other hand, are hidden away on a little-traveled backstreet, next door to the overgrown garden of an empty, moldering nineteenth-century villa, in an unappealing concrete blockhouse of a building, u
tterly—almost purposefully—without charm.
But in this case appearances are deceiving, for the carabinieri are an accomplished national police force whose simple black uniforms command universal respect, while the Polizia Municipale, despite their flashier outfits and imposing sidearms, generally (and wisely) confine themselves to matters of local traffic control and minor crimes. They are quick to hand off any hot potatoes to their carabinieri colleagues who are, fortunately, only a telephone call away.
And when the phone call was made person-to-person, on a secure line, from Comandante Boldini of the Polizia to his carabinieri counterpart, Colonnello Tullio Caravale—an event that had occurred but five times in six years—Caravale knew even as he picked up the receiver that it wasn’t just another hot potato, but one of which Comandante Boldini was more than usually anxious to wash his hands and to do it in a hurry.
He was right. The longer he listened, the worse it got. The extraordinary accident that had completely stopped downtown traffic for the last hour, it was now clear, had been a meticulously planned ruse, a clever kidnapping plan that had kept the police cars helpless in their lot, while at the same time forcing their quarry to detour into the narrow, deserted side streets. There the object of it all—a vintage Daimler limousine, no less—had been hemmed in and trapped on Via Garibaldi by two cars with armed hoodlums in them. The kidnapping had been successful but there had been a shootout that had left two men dead: the uniformed driver of the limo, who was sprawled on his back on the blood-smeared front seat, and one of the attackers, apparently left to bleed to death by his accomplices. Still wearing his stocking mask, he had been found mumbling beside the car but had died before the medics could get to him.
“Has anything been moved?” Caravale asked.
“No, no, Caravale, nothing’s been touched. I thought you would want your people to examine the scene.”
“Very good, Boldini, that’s exactly what I want.”
In his mind’s eye, he could imagine Boldini’s grimace of disapproval. In a meaningless ceremony a few years ago, the city council had made the comandante an honorary maresciallo of Stresa in recognition of his “invaluable service commanding the extensive traffic reorganization necessitated by the repaving of the Strada Statale del Sempione.” And in Boldini’s eyes, since marshals outranked colonels, he was entitled to call Caravale by nothing more than his last name—but not the other way around—and he was patently miffed when Caravale didn’t see it that way. And so, of course, Caravale called him “Boldini” every chance he got.
“All right, Boldini, I’m on my way, then,” he said. He began to hang up, then spoke again. “As to who was kidnapped—I take it you don’t know yet?”
Boldini hesitated. “Actually, we do. It was, ah, Achille de Grazia.” His voice was as somber and reverent as a muffled church bell.
“I see.”
“Sixteen years old, the son of Vincenzo de Grazia.”
“Yes, all right.”
“You do know Vincenzo de Grazia. . . ?”
“Yes, Boldini, I know Vincenzo de Grazia. The son, was he hurt?”
“That we don’t know for certain. There is a witness, Carlo Muccia, a grocer—my men are holding him for you—he says the boy was definitely alive, but they had to drag him to their car—it took two of them—so, yes, it appears he may have been injured.”
Or it could be that he just preferred not to go. “Thank you, Boldini, we’ll take over from here. You’ve informed de Grazia?”
“Ah, no, as a matter of fact. As you may know, Signor de Grazia has honored me by making it clear that he does prefer to conduct any local police business through my office. However, in this case, I think the nature of the circumstances, the regrettable nature of the circumstances, ah, suggests that you be the one to inform him, don’t you agree?”
So. That accounted for the person-to-person call. Now we were getting down to it. It wasn’t the shooting, it wasn’t the two dead men, it wasn’t even the kidnapping, per se. Boldini just didn’t want to be the one to tell Vincenzo de Grazia that his son had been taken. Well, his attitude, weak-kneed as it was, was understandable. The comandante served at the pleasure of the Stresa city council, after all, and Vincenzo, as everyone knew, was one of the powers behind that august group.
As a colonel in the federal police, however, Caravale didn’t have to worry about local “powers.” True, Vincenzo had a long reach; no doubt he could put in a good—or bad—word for him in Rome and significantly affect his chances for advancement in the force. But that didn’t make any difference either. Caravale was that rare thing—a man not interested in advancing. No ambition burned in his belly, no resentment at the progression of friends and enemies through the ranks stuck in his craw. He was exactly where he wanted to be. When he’d been a boy of ten, he had sometimes accompanied his sainted grandfather on his ice wagon runs in Stresa, sitting with him up in the driver’s box and working the reins if the traffic wasn’t too bad. And one rainy day Nonno Fortunato, his words whistling through the gap where other people’s front teeth were, had said, out of nowhere: “Tell me, Tullio, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Out of nowhere, Caravale had answered, “A policeman, Grandfather.”
“A policeman!” the old man had said, beaming. He’d raised his arm, stood up in the driver’s box, and pretended to make an announcement to the world at large. “Honored ladies and gentlemen, you see this little fellow sitting next to me? This is my grandson, Tullio Caravale. Remember his name, because someday he is going to be the comandante ”—he’d pointed to a building they were passing—“right there.”
The building was carabinieri headquarters, and for Caravale, that had been that. Dreams of being an actor, a pilot, an international soccer star, were gone from his mind. Despite his father’s often-voiced reservations about the police, he knew from that time on exactly what he wanted to do, and where he wanted to do it.
And here he was.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll take care of telling de Grazia. I’ll go see him.”
“Now?”
“Give me a chance to look at the scene and see what’s what first. Then I’ll talk to him. His company’s up in Ghiffa, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Aurora Construction, but these days he’ll be at his field office in Intra. It’s on Corso Mameli, a block north of the old port, right across—”
“I know where it is. You’ll release no information before I see him?”
“No, no, not until you tell me. Do you . . . did you want me to accompany you?”
“That’s not necessary. It will be simpler if I do it myself.”
“Well . . . all right, then, if you’re sure that’s best . . . ?”
Even over the telephone, his relief was palpable.
“Definitely,” said Caravale.
INTRA, a quick ten kilometers north of Stresa, was the western shore’s commercial and small-industry center. Anywhere else it would have been commonplace, but along this stretch of Lake Maggiore it stood out: a homely, workaday few blocks in the midst of the dreamlike promenades, elegant villas, and grand hotels that otherwise lined the lakeshore. Caravale felt at home here. He’d lived in nearby Caprezzo, one of the backward little villages that dotted the flanks of Mount Zeda, until he was fourteen, and he’d worked in Intra three afternoons a week from the time he was twelve.
In those days, there had been a withered, green-toothed ancient named Verrucchio who had owned a dry-cleaning shop (now a hardware store) only a block away from what was now de Grazia’s field office (then a pharmacy). As a youngster, Caravale had spent a lot of after-school hours behind the counter, waiting on customers and straightening out accounts, while old Verrucchio, who could neither read nor write, sweated buckets in back and breathed in the corrosive fumes that would do him in a few years later.
On the day after Caravale’s fourteenth birthday, his father, who had lived in America for five years after he got out of the Italian Army, had landed a jo
b teaching English in Cremona and had taken the family with him. It was in Cremona a few months later that young Tullio heard about Verrucchio’s death. He was shocked to learn that the shrunken old man had been only forty-seven.
The Aurora Construction Company had been a far smaller enterprise back then. The old man, Domenico de Grazia, had still been alive, and under his patriarchy the de Grazias did not willingly stoop to commerce. They had still owned untold hectares of land on the eastern shore then, and they lived like the titled aristocrats they’d been since the fifteenth century. A significant part of their income had come from timber and mining leases, but when those had begun dwindling away about twenty years ago, Domenico, looking to the future, had sold off much of the de Grazia land and put the money into several local businesses, with (so Caravale had heard) generally unfortunate results. But among them had been Aurora Costruzioni, a small construction contractor in Ghiffa that specialized in concrete work. With the help of his son, the young Vincenzo, who had been sent off to the University of Pisa and the London School of Economics for degrees in architectural design and business management, he had built Aurora into a profitable operation, with projects throughout the region.
But it had been the son, Vincenzo, who had turned it into what it was today. Gradually taking over as the old man had aged, and infusing the company with the money from continuing land sell-offs and with his own intelligence and energy, the young Vincenzo had transformed it into one of northern Italy’s largest general contracting companies. After Domenico had died, Vincenzo had taken the company public and had himself installed as CEO and chairman of the board of directors. From there, things had really taken off. Aurora now had projects throughout Piedmont and Lombardy, and even, if the stories were true, consulting contracts as far away as Ireland and Gibraltar, building everything from plastic-recycling facilities to high-rise condominiums. With its fleet of heavy equipment, and its ninety permanent employees and more than two hundred seasonal and temporary workers, Aurora Costruzioni was now Ghiffa’s largest employer by a factor of ten, making Vincenzo one of the area’s most influential businessmen, which was the way he liked it. Unlike his aloof and courtly father, Vincenzo loved to be center stage. He was a mover and a shaker, a natural entrepreneur who relished the power plays and wheeler-dealer mentality of land acquisition and development.