Good Blood

She smiled. “Have I changed so much then?” She wore a thin, button-up, old-womanish sweater over a nondescript collared blouse and tan pants, along with a pair of bulky, multicolored running shoes.

“You haven’t changed at all. I just didn’t expect to see you, that’s all. You look wonderful.”

She looked, he thought, like absolute hell. Lea Pescallo, the daughter of Bella and Basilio Barbero, had been an early love. He had first known her—and then forgotten her—when they had both been children at the villa. But later, on a family visit when he was eighteen, he had fallen passionately, hopelessly in love with her. At that age, he had been pretty much a younger version of what he was now in his forties: knobbly, gangling, vaguely ill-formed. (He’d been desperately shy, too, but that, at least, he’d been able to overcome with the years.) But Lea... Lea had been heartbreakingly beautiful; seductive and ethereal at the same time, like something out of Botticelli.

“That one will die young. You can see it in her face,” his mother had remarked years before, but Phil had found Lea’s fragile beauty, her gentle, wonderfully graceful hands, her soft voice, her quiet, modest ways, heartbreakingly attractive ...and miles beyond anything a misfit like him might conceivably hope for. Around her, he’d turned into a nitwit, blushing and perspiring after every dumb thing he’d said.

They had somehow become friends in spite of this, and had carried on a chaste, pointless, increasingly intermittent correspondence for years, until she had fallen in love with and married the impossibly dashing Raffaele Pescallo, he of the gleaming white teeth, a rising star on the European motocross circuit. As a sort of self- punishment—for what he wasn’t sure—Phil had come to the wedding, a predictably flashy affair in Arona. It was the last time he’d seen her and it was clear that the intervening seventeen years had been brutally hard on her. Someone seeing her now for the first time—the defeated shoulders, the faint pink smudge of mouth, the puffy, watery eyes underscored with bruiselike streaks of fatigue—would have a hard time believing that this drab, beaten-down woman had once been beautiful, and not such a very long time ago at that.

“Are you here for the consiglio?” Phil asked, searching for something to say. It wasn’t only her appearance that had devastated him, but her question: “Have I changed so much then?” No effort at irony, just a melancholy, rueful query—more a statement, really—to which she already knew the answer.

“The consiglio? Oh... no, I wouldn’t feel comfortable at that. I don’t really belong. No, I’m just . . . visiting.”

“Ah. Well. Are you still working for that hotel group?” The last he’d heard, she was some kind of consultant for a consortium of hotels that operated throughout Europe.

“Oh, yes. And you, do you still... the tours, the travel books?”

“Yes.” He was wildly pleased that she remembered. “That’s really why I’m in Italy now, doing a tour.”

“Ah. Well...” She was getting ready to go.

“Is Raf here with you?” he asked.

“Raf? No. I’ve left him, didn’t you know? No, why would you know? It was three months ago. I’ve been staying here, with my parents, until...well, until I can figure out where I go next.”

“I’m sorry.” He waited to see if she’d tell him anything more, and after a few seconds she did.

“I was wrong and everybody else was right about Raf,” she said humbly. As her lips pressed together, he noticed for the first time the dry, middle-aged lines that radiated from their corners. It was as if a pincer squeezed his heart. “He was never cut out to be a husband. I thought he would change. I should have known better.”

To his shame, a surge of something like vindication flowed through him. If you had married me instead of Raf, you would still be beautiful. I would have made you happy. You should have married me. The fact that he had never asked her to, or even hinted at it, was forgotten for the moment.

“You should have married me,” he said to his own surprise. And to his astonishment, he was blushing again, something he’d thought he’d gotten over twenty years ago.

She looked down, but he could see she was smiling. “Maybe I should have.”

He was relieved to hear Vincenzo’s rough, dismissive voice from across the corridor, at the entrance to the gallery:

“You all know Colonel Caravale. Shall we get started? Where’s Fili?”

SEVEN

“‘WEhave your son,’” Caravale read aloud.

“‘He is in good health. If you would like him back you will need to pay five million euros. Payment will be made by means of a wire transfer to our account. You will receive detailed instructions later. “‘Do not try to get in touch with us at this point. As soon as the money is available, you are to place a classified advertisement in La Stampa. The advertisement is to be under Real Estate for Sale and must say “Prestigious villa, near Oggebbio, mountain view, 5,000,000 euros. Cash only,” followed by the name, telephone number, and fax number of the person we are to contact. You have exactly one week. Do not waste our time with counteroffers, delays, or explanations, we are not interested and will not respond. If this advertisement does not appear by Monday, June 23, you will not see your son again. His fate will be on your head.’”

He laid the fax down, readjusted the glossy, white Sam Browne belt that ran diagonally down the front of his tunic, folded his hands on the small, homely table that had been provided for him, and looked around the room while he waited for the buzz to die down.

He was in a bad mood and having a hard time not showing it. This “galleria” was, he thought, probably the least favorite room he’d ever been in; at any rate among those that didn’t have a dead body in them. All those deceased, self-satisfied, better-than-thou de Grazias looking down their noses at him. All those live, self-satisfied, better-thanthou de Grazias looking down their noses at him. This archaic “consiglio” business annoyed him too, more than he liked to admit, even to himself. It was irritating to let all this blue-blood nonsense get to him, but he couldn’t help being put out by it. Like father like son, he supposed. An old story.

Vincenzo, to whom he’d shown the fax a few minutes before, sat scowling, resting his chin on his hand. Most of the others were talking, some of them to themselves. Having met them at a previous consiglio the day after the kidnapping, and then talked individually with them, he was beginning to know what to expect from each of them. Old Cosimo sat removed in the far corner, gravely conferring with his dog, who listened with rapt attention. Basilio Barbero chattered excitedly to his wife Bella, who shrugged as if to say: “What could you expect with a family like this?” Near them, Dante Galasso muttered to his wife with that smirk of his that