Good Blood

Achille said something but Enrico didn’t hear. He had made another one of his automatic rearview mirror checks and this time there was something there; a gray Opel hatchback with one man in it had drawn up behind them, no more than ten yards away.

Now they were blocked front and back. An edgy little prickle slid up the nape of his neck. Not that there was anything really unusual about the situation—this kind of thing was bound to happen all the time on Stresa’s constricted old streets, and often did—but it was exactly the kind of predicament that he wasn’t supposed to get into, the kind of predicament he was paid to avoid: a narrow, virtually windowless alley hemmed in by walls of stone and stucco, a car in front and a car behind, and no room to get by either one of them.

He tapped the horn. “Come on, come on, let’s go!” he yelled to the one in front, still jiggling its way into a position from which it could drive forward. That one, he saw now, had two men in the front seat. He got a little edgier. This had been really stupid of him. The hell with the kid’s French class. He’d known better, he should have used his head. They should have waited it out with everybody else on the Corso.

“Enrico, for Christ’s sake,” Achille said angrily, with his hands to his ears, “you could at least warn me before you blow that thing. With these stone walls—”

“Shut up,” Enrico said. “Get down on the floor.”

Achille was shocked into stuttering. “Wh—wh—what is it? Those men—”

“Get the hell down! Now!” Enrico snapped when the boy didn’t move, and Achille hurriedly dropped out of sight behind him.

Enrico’s eyes were fixed dead ahead. The Audi’s doors had opened. The men were clambering out, brandishing handguns, their heads covered by stocking masks, their hands gloved. His nervousness had hardened into a sort of instant, stony calm. His mind was suddenly still, focused, stripped of extraneous thought. It was an instinctive reaction that had once made him a good cop and, later, a more-than-good soldier-for-hire. And it made him good at what he did for a living now.

Acting with disciplined speed, he made sure the doors were locked, pressed the button to roll up all the windows, flicked open the snaps on his holsters, jogged the grips of the handguns to make sure they were at the ready, and hit the memory button on the cell phone to dial the carabinieri. The two men ran up to the limo, one on either side, looking like a couple of monster twins, their features squashed and deformed by the stocking masks.

“PUT the phone down!” Ugo Fogazzaro shouted through the gauzy skin of the mask, hammering on the window with the heel of his hand. “Put the goddamned phone down!”

They’d just begun but already things were going wrong. If the boss was such a great planner, how come nobody had mentioned the phone? From the first day he’d had a bad feeling about this job.

The window glass was tinted, but Ugo could see that the driver had the telephone to his ear but wasn’t speaking into it yet. Whoever he was calling hadn’t yet answered. The driver stared ahead, stiff-faced, without moving, ignoring the guns directed at him from either side. Ugo whacked the window with the butt of his gun, a heavy, snub-nosed Ruger .357 magnum. The safety glass held up. He hit it again, harder, and this time it buckled, a hole opening up in the middle. Now he could hear the driver’s voice.

“I’m in a car on—”

Using the barrel of the gun, Ugo reached in and batted the phone away. A welt appeared on the driver’s temple, where the muzzle had scraped it, and quickly beaded with blood. The driver didn’t move. Ugo put the Ruger up against the corner of his jaw. “Turn off the engine.”

The driver did as he was told.

“Now unlock the doors, all of them.”

“The ignition has to be on.” He was still staring stolidly ahead, his jaw muscles working. A tough guy.

“No, it doesn’t. Don’t mess with me!” He shoved the muzzle hard against the man’s jaw and clicked back the hammer with his thumb. “Hurry up!”

There was a soft tick as the locks unlatched. Ugo pulled open the front door. On the passenger side, Marcello did the same.

“Keys,” Ugo said.

The driver took them from the ignition and handed them to him. Ugo flung them over a stone garden wall beside the church.

“Now,” he said, “both hands on the wheel, up at the top. Okay, now use your left hand to get your gun out of the holster. Two fingers only.”

“I don’t carry a—”

“Don’t bullshit me! I told you once.” He dug the muzzle of the pistol with its jutting front sight into the tender place where neck and jaw intersected, and twisted. He could feel ligaments grind in there, and the driver grunted and tried to pull his head away. What do you know, not so tough after all.

The driver’s gun—one of those pretty little German 9mm semiautomatics—was withdrawn between thumb and forefinger. Ugo snatched it out of his hand, a welcome fringe benefit; the damn thing was worth three times as much as his.

He released the safety on the semiautomatic and focused both handguns on the driver. “All right, now raise your hands. Up high, push them against the roof. Marcello, if he moves, you kill him.” He pulled open the back door and leveled the two guns—he liked this two-gun stuff—to point down at the floor. “Okay, kid, come on out of there. Hurry up.”

Achille didn’t move. He was on his knees, scared to death, milk-faced and shivering. “Just tell me what you want, I know I can—”

“All I want is you. Now don’t make me—”

“My father will kill you for this. Do you know who my father is?”

“Yeah, I know who your father—”