Good Blood

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, utterly—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.”