Good Blood

SEVEN

“‘We have 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-than-thou 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 implied he knew a great deal more than he was letting on. At the previous meeting, Caravale, briefly suspicious, had wondered if that was indeed the case with Dante, but he was soon convinced that it was merely Galasso’s everyday, know-it-all expression. He was, after all, a onetime professor, and a Red one at that, so it was hardly surprising. Galasso’s jet-haired wife-Francesca, was it?-stared at the ceiling, manifestly not listening to her husband.

The only person he hadn’t met before was the bearded American, Filiberto-Phil-Boyajian, a cousin of some sort. Improbably enough, Caravale had taken to him almost on sight, probably because he seemed as out of place among the de Grazia clan as Caravale himself. Phil, wearing walking shorts, had sat with his hands in his pockets, saying nothing during the reading, but he was the first to speak up afterward.

“What do we do now, Colonel?”

“That’s up to Signor de Grazia,” Caravale said, looking at Vincenzo, and six other pairs of eyes swung toward the padrone.

Vincenzo jerked his head angrily. “It’s more than I thought they’d ask, damn them. Five million.”

“Your insurance company will cover it and then some, so what’s the problem?” Dante Galasso asked. “They can afford it. They make millions every year from bilking the ignorant and the greedy.”

With a brief, lancing look at Dante (“Who asked for your opinion?” he might just as well have said), Vincenzo directed his response to Caravale. Argos, like most kidnap insurers, didn’t actually pay ransom demands directly, he explained; they reimbursed you for what you paid (minus a 250,000m deductible in Argos’s case) from your own resources, and only on proof that the ransom had indeed been paid.

“But if the insurance company guarantees payment,” Phil said, “can’t you just borrow on their guarantee? Argos is a big firm, they have a good reputation.”

Unfortunately no, Vincenzo explained. As with other kidnap insurers, It was strictly against the rules, and possibly against the law, to use the policy itself as collateral. Doing so would invalidate it, so he had to come up with the money on his own. His Aurora stock alone would more than provide the necessary collateral, never fear. He was surprised-angry-that they would demand so much, that was all.

He turned again to Caravale. “What do you propose, Colonel?”

“Well…” Caravale began.

He already knew what Vincenzo had just told them about Argos because he’d looked into it on his own the day after the kidnapping. He also knew that the policy explicitly required that there be cooperation with the police, which meant that Vincenzo’s posturing the other day about how much he trusted him had been so much buttering up. He thought he understood the point of it too. To Vincenzo he was just another version of Comandante Boldini, a petty functionary who was supposed to swell with pride and loyalty at being brought into the confidence of the noble de Grazias. Well, not bloody likely.

In the expectant hush that followed his “well,” he had scribbled two lines at the bottom of the sheet. “Here is the reply that I propose. ‘Prestigious villa, near Oggebbio, mountain view, 1,000,000m;. Contact signor Pinzolo’-that’s me, of course, how do you do?-‘telephone 032358285, fax 032358266.’”

There was a spatter of confusion and surprise.

“One million…!”

“But they said…!”

“How can you…!”

Caravale raised his hand, wrist cocked, like the traffic policeman he’d once been. “It’s not a good idea to give in too quickly to their initial demands. If we do, they’re likely to conclude they asked too little and come back with a higher ransom demand. Better to offer less, but to show at the same time that we’re willing to negotiate.”

Vincenzo was shaking his head doubtfully. “They were very explicit, Colonel-no counteroffers would be accepted. How much clearer could they be? I understand what you’re getting at, but this is my son’s life we’re talking about, not some game. We de Grazias-”

“Signore,” Caravale interrupted before Vincenzo could tell him what “we de Grazias” would or wouldn’t do, “I have to tell you that in a case like this, you can never know for sure what they will do, but I think it’s safe to assume that their threats are empty. What would be the point of harming or killing their captive? What would they gain? They’d come away with nothing at all but the carabinieri hot on their trail. And I assure you, they do not expect to get five million euros.”

“That makes sense,” said Phil. “Otherwise, why would they have made the amount part of the ad they want us to place? It would have said something else-it could have been anything-and not mentioned money at all. Putting in an amount must have been a way of giving us a chance to respond with a different amount.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s so,” said Vincenzo, obviously impressed.

Caravale was impressed too. This rather subtle point hadn’t occurred to him either. He wondered if the kidnappers realized it themselves.

“If we are in agreement, then,” he said, “I expect matters to proceed about like this: We’ll go ahead and offer the one million. They’ll express outrage but make a counteroffer of, oh, four million. We’ll offer two, they’ll come down to something like three-fifty, and we’ll probably settle for three million or thereabouts. It shouldn’t take too long once the process begins.”

Dante laughed. “If it’s as cut-and-dried as all that, why not offer them the three million now and eliminate all this busy work?”

“I’m sorry you don’t find the discussion more worthwhile, Dante,” Vincenzo said. There was no love lost between those two.

“On the contrary, I’m fascinated. I can’t wait to see it happen. It’s like a lesson in the capitalist ethic. One party has a commodity to sell, another party wishes to buy it. They freely work out a price between themselves, without the interference of regulations or the intrusion of government. Do we not have before us the free market system at its most elemental?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Francesca said, again lifting her eyes to the low, hammer-beamed ceiling, something she seemed to do pretty often with Dante around. She must once have been quite beautiful, Caravale realized. She still was, he supposed, but now she’d weathered into a collection of hard angles and sharp edges.

The stern, thin, measured voice of Cosimo de Grazia was heard from his corner. “My nephew is not a commodity.”

“Certainly not, Uncle,” Vincenzo agreed. “Colonel Caravale, when do you suggest this advertisement be placed?”

“Not until you do have the money available. It would be a mistake to mislead them on that score.”

“A million, do you mean? That’s no problem. I’ll go into Milan tomorrow morning and see my banker. To be completely safe, the advertisement can appear the following morning. Wednesday.”

Caravale showed his surprise in spite of himself. “You can raise-borrow-a million euros cash in one day?”

De Grazia smiled. “But it’s not cash, Colonel, it’s a wire transfer. No money actually changes hands. Very up-to-date. I assure you, it involves far less in the way of logistics than trying to collect a million euros in ten- and twenty- euro notes, or whatever you’re used to.”

“Of course,” Caravale said, but the truth was that he hadn’t given much thought to this aspect of the demand. All of the kidnap-ransom cases that he’d dealt with had concerned cash ransoms. And de Grazia was right about the logistical difficulties involved. As it happened, Caravale knew from personal experience exactly what one million euros in ten-euro notes involved. It took one hundred thousand ten-euro notes-no easy thing to collect-and when you had them all together, they weighed two hundred pounds and filled four garbage bags to bursting. Even the crooks in that case had been taken aback when they saw what they had to deal with.

He was going to have to get himself filled in on electronic money transfers before this went much further. He didn’t like being behind the times. And he didn’t like being patronized by Vincenzo de Grazia.

“I’ll see that the advertisement runs Wednesday then,” he said. “Who knows, they might even accept, although that’s doubtful. But if not, it’ll give you a chance to raise more while we negotiate.”

“One moment, please,” Bella Barbero said, her nail-chewed fingers playing over her pearls. “I realize I don’t know much about such things, but it seems to me you’re putting quite a lot of confidence in these gangsters knowing these, these ‘rules’ as well as you do.”

“Yes, that’s so,” exclaimed her husband Basilio. “For all we know, we could be dealing with crazy people, or amateurs who don’t know how such things are supposed to work.”

“Oh, I think we can assume that these gangsters, as you properly call them, signora, belong to the class of experienced, professional kidnappers of which Italy, unfortunately, has no shortage. The abduction of Achille was”-a work of art, he almost said-“meticulously planned. The diversion on the Corso, the blockage of the police cars on their lot, were executed with foresight and precision. There was nothing amateurish about them.”

“That may be so, but I don’t agree with your conclusions,” Bella said, openly challenging him. “What about the kidnapping itself? It could hardly have been more botched. All that wild shooting, two people dead. They might easily have shot…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“True, signora, the execution of the plan was bungled, but that was the fault of those that were hired to do it, not of the men behind it. Kidnappers for ransom often use hired thugs for the most dangerous aspects.”

“I don’t quite see how you can be so confident anybody hired anyone,” Vincenzo said irritably. “Why is it necessary to conjure up some hidden mastermind behind it all?”

Caravale shook his head. “I don’t know about any ‘mastermind, ’ but we do have an ID on the dead one. His name is Ugo Fogazzaro, and he is-he was-a Milanese hoodlum who survived partly through his own petty crimes, and partly by making himself available, for a fee, to others who could come up with grander schemes. It seems reasonable to assume the other men involved in the actual kidnapping were of the same type. I might be wrong in this, but I don’t think so. I can tell you this much: Ugo Fogazzaro didn’t think this up by himself.”

Vincenzo nodded slowly. “So you have been working on your own.”

“I told you I would.”

“Yes.” He looked as if he wanted to comment further but changed his mind. “All right, does anyone else wish to say anything before we close?”

“Colonel,” Phil said, “are you able to tell where the fax was sent from?”

“Yes, we know that, but unfortunately it came from the biggest, and busiest, public copy facility in Milan. I’m afraid there’s no help there. No one can remember who sent it.”

“All right then, is there anything else?” Vincenzo asked. He was getting out of his chair. “I’m sure Colonel Caravale wants to-” He sighed and dropped back down. “Yes, Uncle, you wish to say something?”

“A question, if it’s permitted?” said Cosimo.

From Vincenzo, a resigned dip of the chin, barely this side of polite.

“What about Achille?” the old man asked. “Is he all right? How can we be sure? How do we know these people who sent the message really have him, as they say they do?”

Well, bless the old buzzard, Caravale thought. Somebody in this room full of cold fish finally expressed some concern for the boy. And naturally, it would be Cosimo. It was strange-the old man was the snootiest of them all, the most like Caravale’s idea of an arrogant, time-warped aristocrat, and yet there was something about him he liked, something that reminded him, of all people, of his beloved grandfather, his loving, morally upright, steadfastly old-fashioned maternal grandfather Fortunato, who had been a humble ice-wagon driver all his life.

“That’s a good question, Signor de Grazia,” he said, “and it’s the first thing that must be established. When they call, I will ask to speak to Achille myself.”

“And if they refuse?”

“I expect they will. In that case, I will have ready-with your help, ladies and gentlemen-a set of questions that no one but Achille could answer. They will have to provide me with his replies, not only then, but at each step before we proceed further. I don’t expect this to come as a surprise to them. Even in a kidnapping, there are certain conventions, certain rules, that are to the advantage of all.”

“Rules again,” muttered Bella Barbero with a toss of her head.