by Jack Barnao
"What about the getaway car? I gave the number to the first man on the scene."
He dropped his shoulders. "It was stolen here, in Firenze, this morning. My men and the Vigili are all looking for it but it will be left somewhere, very soon."
"Damn." I'd expected as much, professionals wouldn't use a traceable car but it was the only lead we had.
Capelli held out his hand. "I must ask you for the gun which you found under the couch in your room this morning and were coming to give to me," he said.
"I guess so. But will your maggiore let me have my own back now?" I took out the Beretta and unloaded it and handed it to him.
He took it, and the magazine and put them into his pocket. "I am not sure. The maggiore is a good policeman but he does not help you. He would not let me put extra men on duty with you. He says that Americans are too excited, there will not be another kidnap."
"Much he knows," I said. "If we'd have had another man here we'd have stopped them." I felt like a trapeze artist who had just missed the bar. I wished Capelli's man had been there to be my safety net.
He shrugged. "I am sorry. When I asked for the man for you I was told no. All our men are working on a pickpocket investigation. The maggiore was worried about missing wallets. Now we have a missing boy." He paused.
"We will take a statement from you and then you should go back to the hotel and wait. We will put a tap on your telephone and try to trace anyone who calls."
"You think they will?"
He opened the car door and sat down in the driver's seat, wearily. "I know they will. The contract says the boy is worth one billion lira to the men who take him. That's half a million American dollars."
"Jesus. His father doesn't have that kind of money."
"He will need more, much more. These pigs are only the workmen. Once the contractor has the boy he will want to make his own profit."
I swore again and he shrugged and indicated the seat beside him. "Come. We must go to the station and take a statement."
It was the typical police station, if you discounted the doorway that looked as if it belonged on some cathedral. Uniformed officers were typing, checking reports, talking on the phone and doing their best to look busy and there was the underlying smell of disinfectant and urine that let you know there was a drunk tank somewhere close by. Capelli turned the prisoners over to one of the uniforms and then led me out back to the detective squad room. It had a couple of old desks with typewriters and overflowing ashtrays and there were mug shots taped to the fine marble walls.
"Sit," he said and I did. He wound a piece of paper into the typewriter. "I will type this in Italian, you will trust me that I am doing it right?"
"Sure." I started giving him the story and he rattled at the machine with four fingers, pausing from time to time to gaze at the wall and think of the proper translation. We were almost finished when the phone rang. He answered it and said "Sì" a couple of times, then beckoned to me with one finger. I stood up.
"The maggiore will see you now," he said.
The maggiore was a wheel. His office was as big as a squash court, filled with antique furniture and a couple of good oils, reproductions from some of the Renaissance paintings I had brought Herbie here to see. The man himself was not tall but he had the assurance of rank. He looked about fifty-five. His hair and mustache were gray and he looked up at me out of stone-gray eyes. I got the impression he could happily have worked for Mussolini. Not a man to fool around with.
"Signor Locke?"
"Yes, maggiore." Politeness was vital. If he decided he didn't like me I'd be in one of his cells within minutes and it would take all the civil servants in Ottawa a year to get me out.
His English was stiff and formal as if he'd learned it from a diplomat and he wasn't comfortable with it. He paused often between words. But his accent was clear. A proud man.
"Tell me about the man who employs you, this Signor Ridley."
"He's a wealthy man, he controls a company with maybe five hundred million dollars in assets. But he does not have a lot of personal money. He will not find it easy to raise a ransom for his son."
He didn't say anything. He reminded me of my colonel in the SAS. I felt the same respect. This was a man who dealt only with facts. He had a kidnap on his hands and what could I do to help. Not a lot, by the sound of it, so he wasn't wasting words. I was glad he was in charge.
He spoke to Capelli in Italian. Capelli answered, standing very erect, not gesturing. I felt his arms must be breaking under the strain of staying still.
The maggiore swung his head back to me, like a hawk contemplating its breakfast. "The tenente tells me that three men tried to hold you but you held them."
"I was lucky they didn't use guns, signor." He had sounded as if he were impressed but he said nothing more. He stood up and walked to the window, a stiff strut that would have looked pompous if I didn't know how much clout he had. He looked down into the quiet side street. "This has never happened before in Firenze." He swung back and stared at me as if it were all my fault. I could feel the cell doors swinging open.
He went on. "The tenente tells me you also stopped two men last night, two men with guns. You seem to be very lucky, Signor Locke."
"I was in the army, maggiore. I am trained to fight. I am a bodyguard."
He shrugged. "You say." He sat down again. "As a policeman I wonder how it is that one man can do so much damage and still the man he is guarding gets away."
You could have etched your initials on the atmosphere in there. I realized that I was a suspect. It made sense. Any copper would have thought the same thing. A sudden rush of violence in a town as free from crime as rural Vermont. This was the test and I kept my mouth shut and waited.
Capelli spoke now, respectfully and slowly, in Italian. The maggiore listened, gazing at the bust of Caesar he had on his desk. He could have been Lorenzo the Magnificent hearing a request for a drop in taxes while he knew he still had a palace to finish.
When he spoke again he ignored Capelli and spoke to me. "The tenente thinks you are a good man," he said. Three cheers for Capelli. I'd buy him a whole bottle of Johnny Walker once we got the kid back. If we got the kid back. "He is setting up the operation to find the boy. Work with him. Do as he says. Do not try to find the boy yourself. Do you understand?"
"Yes sir." Seven years of army training almost made me come to attention as I answered. This was a guy you obeyed.
He waved us away and picked up a folder. Capelli nodded, a quick bow of the head and then nodded to the door. We left.
"Shit. That man is scary," I said.
"He is a good policeman," Capelli said. I could see he was breathing fast. He didn't get called in there for compliments, that was certain. He'd been as uptight as I had.
"What happens now?"
"Now the work begins," Capelli said. "We will get men working among our contacts. And we are looking for the car. Perhaps when they changed, someone saw them. Perhaps."
"You think he'll still be in Florence?"
He opened the door of the squad room and ushered me in. "Of course. We have already put up roadblocks on all the roads out of town, everything is being searched. And I will talk to the men you arrested. I don't think they will know where the boy is being taken. They were hired to stop you from protecting the boy. The men in the other car are different." He sighed. "It is a big nuisance, Signor Locke."
"Call me John." It was the least I could do for him.
"Okay, John. Today we cannot keep it from the newspapers. It will be everywhere by noon. What will you do?"
"I guess I'll go back to the hotel and wait. I have to tell his mother. And I guess I have to phone Canada and tell his family there."
"She will not do that?" Capelli was surprised.
"They're divorced. She hasn't seen the boy for four years. Her ex-husband is remarried."
"Indeed," he said and I could see his policeman's mind whirring.
"You don't think she's in
volved, do you? Hell, those hoods last night tried to rape her."
"I don't know who is involved," Capelli said. "But she appears and all at once we have two kidnap attempts, one of them successful."
"Hell, no. She's straight arrow." He frowned at the expression and I explained. "She's clean, she thinks the world of her son."
Did she? I wondered. Was I thinking with my brain or my glands? Who could tell.
It took only a minute or two longer and my statement was finished. I signed it and left. Capelli offered me a ride but I needed space so I walked back to the hotel, writing the script for the most painful phone call I'd had to make since the last time one of my squad was shot through the head by an IRA marksman. That had happened often enough that I had developed a formula to minimize the pain on both ends of the line. This one I had to think about.
It was six p.m. Toronto time but Ridley wasn't home. He was out in Calgary. His wife said she would contact him for me. She was honey and molasses on the phone but I told her nothing. I thanked her, hung up, and waited. After ten minutes the phone rang.
"John Locke speaking."
"Yeah, Locke, I was called out of a meeting for this, what's the big deal?"
"I have bad news, Mr. Ridley."
"The kid's been busted for goosing some Italian broad, a nun likely. Right?" The anger poured out of the phone like molten lead. "Goddamnit. You're there to look after him."
"It's worse than that. Since we arrived in Florence there have been two attempts to kidnap your son. The first one failed. I stopped the men who tried it. The second time they used more men, seven altogether. I stopped four of them but the second car, with Herbie in it, was gone before I could hold them."
"Kidnapped? You've lost my son? The bigshot SAS hero lost my son." He hadn't paused for a second. I wondered whether he was more pleased at my embarrassment then worried about Herbie. He took the phone down from his mouth but I could hear him telling whoever was in the room. "My son's been kidnapped. I hire a bigtime bodyguard to take him around Florence, the quietest city you'd ever want to visit and the boy is taken right out of his hands."
Why? I wondered. Why was he saying all of this? Did he really hate the kid that much? Would he even bother trying to raise a ransom? Was he glad that the final loose end of his first marriage was tied up? What a cold-blooded bastard.
He brought the phone up again and said, "So what are you doing about it? What's happening?"
"The police have the number of the car that took Herbie. They also have the four men I stopped. They are talking to them now. If they know where Herbie is, we will have the answer soon."
If I expected any congratulations on stopping four hoods, I was whistling his bride's favorite tune. I'd failed. That was the stick he was beating me with.
"Do the police have any ideas? Does this happen a lot?"
"Not in Florence. But the men I caught yesterday said that there is a contract out to kidnap your son. The price they were promised is one billion lire, that's about half a million dollars."
"Half a million dollars?" His voice ran up so high only the dogs in Calgary could hear him. "Half a million bucks? How in hell do they expect me to find that kind of money?"
"I'm wondering how they knew Herbie was here." It was time to add a little muscle to the argument. I'd taken my kicking. Now it was his turn. "The police are asking exactly who knew the boy was coming here." I was winging this but it was coming clearer as I spoke. "And they also wonder if you have been contacted by anybody in Canada who might have a grudge against you or want to hit you for money?"
He almost laughed at me. His anger was a bray. "I'm sitting in a real estate office in Calgary. How many fucking Mafia people do you think there are in Calgary for Crissakes? And what right does some greaser cop have suggesting that I'm involved with those scumbags?"
"These are the kind of questions the RCMP will ask you, the answer may help. Please think hard, Mr. Ridley," I said, reminding myself that I had not mentioned the word "Mafia" before he used it. When he didn't speak I threw him the obvious question.
"Will you come over here to handle the transaction yourself?"
"Of course I will." Again he dropped the phone and did some poor-mouthing about the ineptitude of John Locke. Anger. Anger. Anger. Where was the fear? He lifted the receiver again and said, "I'll be there on the first flight. Where are you staying?"
"The Hotel Rega, it's on Lungarno delle Grazie. And, one other thing, Mr. Ridley. The first Mrs. Ridley is here. She's in town on business. She contacted us yesterday."
"You keep that bitch away from my son," he said, then added, "Goddamnit. She must have done this," and clattered the phone down. Nice guy!
After I'd sat and thought for a few minutes I called the front desk and asked them to look out for Kate Ridley in the bar at noon and send her right up. The chances were that she would hear about the kidnap before then. Nothing much has happened in Florence since the flood of '66. News of a kidnap would spread fast. She would probably run into reporters when she reached the hotel.
After that I sat and tried to form a plan. I'd done everything I could. Dammit, I'd stopped one kidnap attempt and put four men inside on the second one. And Herbie wouldn't be harmed, not for a while anyway, not until his loudmouth father arrived and started saying he wasn't going to pay. After that, if he was dumb enough to say it out loud, anything could happen.
Finally I settled down to the fact that I had lost the boy. Instead of getting mad, I thought about what I could do to get even. The only idea I had right away was to call Martin Cahill back in Toronto and see if he'd found out anything. It made more sense than studying the wallpaper any further. I could have written a doctoral thesis on it by that time. It had small blue flowers on a gray background. Very restful. I calculated there were twenty seven hundred and some flowers on the north wall. Very productive, Locke. I picked up the telephone with real enthusiasm.
Martin was at home. "Just about to eat the expense account TV dinner," he said. "Wondering how the poor people are doing over there in Italy."
"Not good. My kid was kidnapped today."
"Really?" He dropped the joking. "What happened?"
I filled him in and he listened without commenting. Then he said, "This smells."
"You've checked out the kid's old man?"
"Yeah. An' the news is not good. According to Jimmy Mahood, the Ridley business is stretched thinner'n a jar o' jam in a family of twelve. Ridley invested in oil, heavily, a couple of years back when OPEC was turning the screws. He got greedy. Then the price started coming down and he was stranded. He's had to do everything short of kite checks to keep afloat."
I thought about that one for long enough that he asked, "You still there?"
"Yeah, just wondering what that means at this end. He likely can't afford a ransom for one thing. The kid's in big trouble."
"Well, I don't wanna make your day altogether but it gets worse. Apparently some of his real estate dealings have been with the Bonaventura Corporation. They're legit, on the face of it, but we happen to know that the principals are all Mafia heavies, guys from Montreal."
"Whichever way I look at this it comes up ugly," I thought out loud. "Mafia, Italy, kidnap, short of cash. Sounds to me like he might have gone in over his head on a six-for-five loan. Now he can't pay and the Mob is leaning on him."
"They'll have to find some way of getting it out of the kid," Cahill said, his voice suddenly distorting in and out on some atmospheric wave. "Because they won't get much more'n kind words out of his dad."
"If that. Anyway, thanks Martin. I'll be around with a bottle of Bushmills, soon's I get back."
"Better you should take me to Kentucky Fried Chicken," he said in disgust. "I just burned my goddamn Salisbury steak. Shit. I'm gonna have to get married again." He hung up on my laugh.
I sat and thought about his news. It didn't make things any easier for me, or for Herbie. There was no doubt about it. I was going to have to get the kid back, wit
hout payment. But even as I thought about it I was wondering, Why did a man as hard up as Ridley invest a couple or three grand in sending his kid to Italy? Don't get suspicious, Locke, I reminded myself. His grandmother sent him. She's probably paying for all of it, just as she's paying for me. But still the same question nagged. Why Italy? Why now?
The phone began to ring about an hour later. Newspapers. I hung up after each one and called the desk to try to get them to weed out reporters but my lack of Italian held me back so I took the calls one after another. And then, at noon, Kate Ridley came in.
I heard her coming up the corridor. I knew it was her from the babble of Italian that followed her like a swarm of mosquitoes.
The door was unlocked. She came in, not quite weeping, and asked me: "Is it true?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. There were two carloads of men, one to get Herbie, one to stop me. I stopped one group but the others got away with Herbie."
The tears spouted from her eyes. She walked blindly over to the window, her face streaming. I didn't presume on the night before to hold her or try to comfort her. I was furniture, a chair that had given way and hurt her kid.
The phone rang and she snatched it up. Then she put it down again without speaking. "A reporter," she said and sighed a long shuddering sigh and began to calm herself.
I left her alone while she went into her bedroom and got tissues to wipe her eyes. I'll bet Ridley's new wife would have repaired her makeup. Kate didn't. She came back into the room and sat down. "What are we going to do?"
"The police told me to wait here. They believe the kidnapper will call with a ransom demand. Capelli is coming over to join us in a little while. They're going to put a recorder on the phone. I guess they'll also shut the reporters up."
The phone rang again. Another reporter. I hung up.
"His father will have to be told," Kate said. She was sitting with her knees together, toes neatly pointed, contained and business-like. She would be strong.