Good Blood

“I’m sure they’ll be desolated,” Julie said. “Didn’t some superstar chef kill himself a few years ago when his restaurant didn’t get into On the Cheap?”

“No, that was Michelin,” Phil said seriously. When it came to On the Cheap, his sense of humor was rarely in evidence.

They paused to watch half a dozen slim, attractive, trendily dressed people in their twenties and thirties come out of an elevator and sit down at the far end of the lobby, chattering and laughing like movie extras who’d been told to look rich and happy. “Look at them. So confident, so... entitled. They act like they think they deserve to stay in places like this, like they have it coming to them—”

“Strange talk coming from a bona fide representative of the gentry,” Gideon said. “You sound like your buddy, Dante Galasso.”

“Representative of the gentry, where do you get that from? Bite your tongue, man.”

“You are, though, Phil. You’re a member in good standing of the de Grazia clan. I’ve seen you at their consiglio with my own eyes. You might as well face it.”

“Might as well own up to it,” Julie said. “No point in denying it. What’s true is true.”

“I,” said Phil, squaring his shoulders, “am an Ungaretti and damn well proud of it. As far as I’m concerned, you can take that whole bunch of patronizing, condescending, self-satisfied...well, except for my grandfather ...you can take them and... hell...” He subsided, muttering, into his Beck’s.

“If you feel that way about it,” Julie said, “why are you staying on with them at the island for our last few days? Why not keep your room at the Primavera?”

“Yeah, well.” He wiped foam from his upper lip with the back of his forefinger. “My grandfather, you know... if I didn’t spend a couple of nights there, Cosimo’d really be hurt.”

“Uh-huh, I see,” Gideon said, letting a moment go by while he took a flinty, freezing sip of his martini and set down the stemmed glass. He’d ordered it straight up instead of on the rocks for once because it seemed like the right drink for the Grand Hotel. “Oh, by the way... will your cousin Lea still be there? Just wondering.”

“Well, what the hell—”

“Inquiring minds wish to know,” said Julie.

“Jesus,” Phil said, looking around the room with a sigh. “What do you say we pick on someone else for a while now, or is that too much to ask?”

“Phil,” Julie said, “seriously—are you sure it’s such a good idea to be there? I mean, one of them could be a murderer, a kidnapper...”

She looked at Gideon, who had told them earlier about the extraordinary string of events in the forty-eight hours or so since he’d last seen them: the abortive theft of the bones, the attack on him, the identification of Big Paolo (both as a kidnapper of Achille and as Gideon’s assailant), and the death of Dr. Luzzatto.

“One of them almost certainly is a murderer and a kidnapper,” Gideon said. “Big Paolo ties Achille’s kidnapping and Domenico’s death together, and the de Grazias are the only ones who knew about finding Domenico’s bones. And they’re sure as hell the only ones who heard Luzzatto say he knew what was bothering Domenico. Counting Achille’s driver, that’s three murders we’re talking about. That’s some family you have there.”

“Shee,” said Phil.

“Oh, and you’re a suspect too. Caravale’s going to be talking to you. I thought you’d want to know.”

“I’m a suspect?”

“Because you were there with them when the news came about Domenico. And you heard what Luzzatto said too. I tried to tell Caravale that you probably weren’t guilty, but of course I couldn’t say for sure.”

Phil grumbled something and swilled the last two inches of his beer. “Boy, I’m sure glad I came out with you guys. This is turning into a swell evening.”

The waiter glided over, whispered that their table was ready, and pointed the way down an arched corridor lined on either side with gilded mirrors that alternated with nineteenth-century paintings.

“Who has any appetite anymore?” Phil grumbled.

But once they’d taken their seats in the quiet, softly lit dining room, he found his appetite again, and all three of them ordered the fixed-price, multicourse menu of the day, choosing to see what the chef came up with.

“For sixty-five bucks this better be good,” Phil said.

It was. They worked steadily through the antipasto, the seafood crepes, and the port-laced consomme, and started on the main course of poached Lake Maggiore whitefish stuffed with prawns and olives before the talk veered away from the food.

“I’m telling you, I just can’t believe it,” Phil said, putting down his fork. “One of those people murdered my uncle Domenico? It’s been going round and round in my mind. I mean, yeah, they had some grudges, like any family—you saw the way they are, Gideon—but kill him? I don’t think so.”

“I wouldn’t quite say like any family,” Gideon said. “What do you mean, ‘grudges’?”

“Well, like...you were talking about Dante before.” He paused. “Dante’s married to Francesca,” he explained to Julie. “Francesca is—”

“Vincenzo’s sister,” Julie said. “I know. Gideon explained your family tree to me.”

“As far as I can figure it out,” Gideon said.

“Okay, well, the thing is, Domenico couldn’t stomach Dante. You have to understand, at the time Dante Galasso was this wild-eyed radical professor. You name it, he was for it: armed revolt, aristocrats to the wall, the elimination of private property and differential incomes, the whole schmear. It was really hard on Domenico, because Francesca’d always been his favorite, even more than Vincenzo. Everybody knew it. You know, firstborn and all that.”