that well, I would have told you and Inspector Minutolo?”
“No.”
“Well, the moment he heard the news, my client called me up, extremely upset. He was in tears. He realized that this discovery was like cementing his feet and throwing him into the sea. Death by drowning, with no chance of ever coming back to the surface. Inspector, that duffel bag was not his. He’d put his money in a suitcase.” “Can he prove it?”
“No.”
“And how does he explain that police found a duffel instead of a suitcase?”
“He can’t explain it.”
“And he’d put the money in this suitcase?”
“Of course. Let’s say roughly sixty-two bundles of five-hundred-euro bills totaling three million ninety-eight thousand euros and seventy-four cents, rounded off to the euro, and equaling six billion old lire.” “And you believe that?”
“Inspector, I have to believe my client. But the point is not whether I believe him. It’s whether the public believes him.”
“But there may be a way to prove that your client is telling the truth.”
“Oh, really? What?”
“Simple. As you yourself said, Mr. Peruzzo had very little time to scrape together the ransom money. Therefore there must be bank documents with the related data attesting to the withdrawal of the amount. All you have to do is make these documents public, and your client will have proved his absolute good faith.” Deep silence.
“Did you hear me, Counsel?”
“Of course. It’s the same solution I promptly suggested to him myself.”
“So, as you can see—”
“There’s a problem.”
“What?”
“Mr. Peruzzo didn’t get the money from any banks.”
“Oh, no? Then where did he get it?”
“My client agreed not to reveal the names of those who so generously consented to assist him at this delicate moment.
In short, nothing was written down on paper.” Out of what filthy, stinking sewer had come the hand that gave Peruzzo the money?
“Then the situation seems hopeless to me.”
“To me, too, Inspector. So hopeless, in fact, that I’m beginning to wonder if my counsel is still of any use to Mr. Peruzzo.” So the rats, too, were getting ready to abandon the sinking ship.
o o o
The press conference began at five-thirty sharp. Behind a large table sat Minutolo, the judge, the commissioner, and Dr.
Lattes. The conference hall was packed with journalists, photographers, and cameramen. Nicolo Zito and Pippo Ragonese were there, too, at a proper distance from one another. The first to speak was Commissioner Bonetti- Alderighi, who thought it best to start at the beginning—that is, to explain how the kidnapping came about. He pointed out that this first part of the account was based on declarations made by the girl. On the evening of the abduction, Susanna Mistretta was returning home on her moped, along the road she normally took, when, at the intersection with the San Gerlando trail, right near her house, a car pulled up beside her and forced her to turn onto the dirt road to avoid collision. Upset and confused by the incident, Susanna barely had time to stop before two men got out of the car, their heads covered by ski masks. One of them lifted her bodily and threw her into the car.
Susanna was too stunned to react. The man removed her helmet, pressed a cotton wad to her nose and mouth, gagged her, tied her hands behind her back, and made her lie down at his feet.
In confusion, the girl heard the other man get back in the car, take the wheel, and drive off. At this point she lost consciousness. Investigators hypothesize that the second man had gone to remove the motorbike from the road.
When Susanna woke up, she was in total darkness. She was still gagged, but her hands had been untied. She realized she was in an isolated place. Moving about in the dark, she gathered that she’d been put inside some sort of concrete vat at least ten feet deep. There was an old mattress on the ground.
She spent the first night this way, despairing not so much over her own situation, but for her dying mother. Then she must have drifted off to sleep. She woke up when someone turned on a light, a lamp of the sort used by mechanics to light up a car’s motor. Two men in ski masks were watching her. One of them took out a small portable cassette recorder, and the other came down into the vat on a ladder. The man with the tape recorder said something while the other removed Susanna’s gag. She cried for help, and the gag was put back on. They returned a short while later. One of them came down the same ladder, removed her gag, then climbed back up. The other took a Polaroid snapshot of her. They never gagged her again. To bring her food—always canned—they always used the ladder, which they would lower each time. In one corner of the vat there was a pail for bodily functions. As of that moment the light remained on.
At no time during her confinement was Susanna subjected to any mistreatment. She had no way, however, to attend to her personal hygiene. Nor did she ever hear her abductors speak. And they never once answered her questions or addressed her in any manner. They didn’t even say she was about to be freed when they had her come up out of the vat.
Later Susanna was able to lead investigators to where she was released. And there, in fact, police found the rope and the handkerchief that had been used to gag her. In conclusion, the commissioner said, the girl was in fairly
