'It wouldn't have mattered,' McCabe said. 'They were going to demand the ransom no matter who they had.'
'You can identify the kidnappers?' Ferrara said.
'They wore bandanas over their faces,' McCabe said, 'like western bandits, and I was blindfolded part of the time, but I saw two of them. They thought I was sleeping and came down to the cellar to check on me.'
Frank Rady, with his big white freckled arms on the table, said, 'Were they Eye-talian?'
McCabe frowned. 'Yeah, they were Italian.' What did he think they were?
'Don't get smart, McCabe,' he said. 'We're trying to help you here.'
Captain Ferrara opened the laptop that was on the table in front of him. It was a Dell.
'You look at this,' he said. 'I believe you will see the ones who kidnap you.'
He turned the laptop screen toward McCabe and slid it over to him.
Rady said, 'Who's he looking at?'
'The criminals, the known offenders,' Ferrara said. 'Many are in a gang. They work for the Camorra, 'Ndrangheta, or the Sicilian Mafia.'
McCabe studied the first screen, three rows of headshots.
'If you recognize one of them, ' the captain said, 'click on the image to make it larger, fill the screen.'
McCabe went through half a dozen screens, scanning rows of faces and saw the big guy, no mistake about it, same heavy beard, thick neck and double chin. He clicked on his face, Luigi Bagnasco, it said under the photo. McCabe remembered them calling him Noto. He clicked through ten more faces and saw the stocky guy with red hair, Sisto Bardi, remembering him from the newspaper article, one of the men who had escaped. He kept going and hit the jackpot, saw Mazara. He put the cursor on him and clicked, his face looking younger, thinner, filling the screen. Roberto Mazara.
It was interesting to think about the name fitting him. Yeah, he could see it: Bob Mazara, trying it out. Captain Ferrara studying his face as he studied the computer screen.
'You recognize one of them?' the captain said.
McCabe shook his head. 'I don't think so.'
'You are sure?' the captain said.
'Yeah,' McCabe said.
He scanned through the rest of the faces, stopping on the last one. 'That's it,' McCabe said. 'I don't see any of them, but this guy reminds me of De Niro in Goodfellas.' He turned the screen toward Captain Ferrara and slid the laptop over to him.
' Quel bravi ragazzi,' Ferrara said.
McCabe said, 'That's the translation for Goodfellas, huh? You like him?'
'Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, la sfida, I see them all.'
McCabe said, 'What's la sfida?.'
'Hot, I think it is called.'
'You mean Heat,' McCabe said.
'Yes, Heat. I love the cinema.'
'If he doesn't see them here,' Rady said to the captain, 'who do you think they are?'
'It is difficult to say. They could be a new gang we do not know,' Captain Ferrara said. 'Unfortunately, Signor Rady, there is nothing more we can do until they spend the money. We record the serial numbers of the euro notes.'
McCabe watched a pigeon circle around the Fountain of the Four Rivers, land on the obelisk and fly off. A waiter approached the table with a tray of drinks. He said, ' Due birre, uno cappuccino,' and put stemmed glasses of Moretti in front of McCabe and Chip and the cappuccino in front of Senator Tallenger. He said, ' Va bene,' and walked away. They were at a cafe in Piazza Navona.
Senator Tallenger said, 'McCabe, I know you're angry, but do me a favor, will you? Let it go. There's nothing you can do.'
'You're lucky to be here,' Chip said.
'He's right,' the senator said. 'I looked into it, found out more than half of the kidnap victims never make it home. They find them shot to death or strangled.' He paused. 'McCabe, am I getting through to you?'
Yeah, he heard him. But he was thinking of a way to get the money back. To do it he had to find the girl.
Chapter Thirteen
Mazara was thinking about the last time he came here. Don Gennaro was studying a painting on one of the walls in his office, a room that had to be twenty meters one way and thirty the other way. The don turned and looked at him and said, 'Do you know what this is?'
It did not seem complicated. It was a painting so that is what Mazara said, and the don looked at him like he was a moron.
'Do you know Bronzino?'
The man made him nervous. Who was this Bronzino? The name was vaguely familiar. 'I think he played goalie for Lombardy. Is that right?'
Don Gennaro said, 'He was the court painter for Cosimo de Medici.'
Mazara said, 'Who?' He stared at the painting on the wall, naked people running around. It looked like a fun party. 'What are they doing?' It looked like an orgy.
'It is an allegory,' Don Gennaro said. 'Do you understand?'
Mazara had no idea what he was talking about and decided not to say anything else.
Don Gennaro said to Mauro, 'Give him the money and get him out of here.'
That time the don had hired him to steal a painting from a villa near Florence. The don saying the owner had stolen it from the Uffizi. The Uffizi? Did he mean the museum?
This time the don was having lunch on the veranda with someone he had never seen before. They were drinking wine and talking. He could see the bodyguards at the edge of the olive grove. They were alert, but keeping their distance, the grove extending behind them as far as he could see. The bodyguards wore berets and had shotguns on straps slung over their shoulders like Sicilian peasants.
Mauro, the don's secondo, had met him at the front door, searched him for weapons, and looked in the paper bag he was carrying that contained money, the don's share of the ransom. Mauro was a weird, quiet Sicilian, wiry, with dark skin, almost as dark as a Tunisian. Mazara had been escorted out to the veranda that was made of stone and built on two levels, wrapping around the back of the villa. There was a swimming pool at one end. There was a wicker couch and chairs and a low table with a glass top in the middle of the veranda and a long table at the far end under a wrought-iron pergola that was covered with vines. He admired the house and the grounds, thinking, this son of a peasant, who did not finish his fifth year of school, had done well for himself. Roberto stood only five feet from the man's table now, Don Gennaro ignoring him, making him stand there like a servant. They were eating roast chicken and fried potatoes, washing it down with a chilled bottle of Terre di Tufi. He recognized the tiny label. Seeing the food was making him hungry. When he finished here Mazara would drive back to Rome, pick up Angela and celebrate.
The don finally looked up at him and said, 'Why are you here, interrupting my lunch?'
'I bring your share of the money,' Roberto said. 'The ransom.'
The don said, 'Oh, the ransom.'
Of course, the ransom, what did he think it was?
The don said, 'Do I have to count it?'
Roberto said, 'If you prefer.'
'No,' the don said. 'Do I have to count it?'
The man sitting at the table next to the don said, 'Unk, want me to count it?' He was American.
The don ignored him, staring at Roberto, and Roberto froze. He did not know what to say, the don was
