Death of a Salesperson

by Robert Barnard

  JUST ANOTHER KIDNAP

  The kidnap went badly almost from the first. At five minutes past eleven Arrigo Furlani (manager of the Banco Nazionale Piemontese, and treasurer of the Rome branch of the Christian Democratic party) stepped out of the portals of the Bank’s headquarters in Via Sparafucile, Rome. He was gesturing angrily with his one free hand (an Italian with a briefcase is a man half-crippled) and sending a machine-gun rattle of orders and expostulations in the direction of his obsequious underlings in the shadow of the portals.

  ‘Presto! Presto! Via!’ he concluded, half-turning in their direction as he surged ahead, and barging oblivious through the paths of passers-by. He did not see the dirty blue Fiat parked near his own Mercedes, nor did he heed the presence of the leather-jacketed young men some yards away on the pavement, who were observing his departure from the corners of their dark eyes.

  The seizure was the work of a moment. A burst of machine-gun fire killed the chauffeur, and then the young man holding the gun turned it inwards and sprayed the doorway of the Banco Nazionale as a warning. None of the obsequious underlings showed sign of wanting to fight the thing through. Arrigo Furlani found a gag in his mouth and his hands handcuffed behind his back. In the scuffle to get him into the waiting Fiat he dropped his briefcase, and in seconds he was in the front seat and the car was beginning to career off eastwards down Via Sparafucile.

  It was then that things began to go wrong. As the seizer of Furlani tore open the back door of the Fiat a shot rang out from the west end of the street. He fell at once. The two other gunmen, who had nearly gained their own car, which they were to drive in the other direction, looked round as they dived into it, and it was the last thing they did. As the dirty Fiat swerved on two wheels into Viale Mascagni the bullets took over around the headquarters of the Banco Nazionale, leaving a spectacle of leaking petrol tanks, broken glass and spilt blood. To the dead chauffeur were added the bodies of the three members of the Red League, sprawled in melodramatic attitudes of abandonment around the middle of Via Sparafucile. Three for one: it seemed a reasonable proportion. Before long the newspaper boys would be calling it a triumph for the carabinieri.

  • • •

  Mario Galbani, sweating profusely, drove like a maniac with one hand on the wheel up Viale Mascagni. In front, around and behind were other people driving like maniacs with one hand on the wheel. The back door, left open as his companion fell to the first bullet, had shut itself during the perilous two-wheel turn into Viale Mascagni. There was nothing to mark his car off from the other Rome motorists. No one paid any attention to him, or if they did, and connected him with the gunfire that was still to be heard in the distance, they made sure that their attention would not be too obvious.

  ‘Just another kidnap,’ said a good Roman citizen to his wife, and edged himself into the furthest lane.

  Mario’s free hand held the gun, which had been poked unnervingly into Arrigo Furlani’s side from the moment he was dumped in the passenger seat. Furlani had his eyes open, and was making convulsive movements with his mouth around the gag. Mario kept his foot on the accelerator as they neared the end of Viale Mascagni. Left, then right, then right again. They’d drummed it into him so many times. Why in God’s name had he been chosen to drive? He, who’d only been three times in Rome. Why, in the name of Jesus, he had asked? Because you’re too stupid to shoot anyone, they had replied. And who the hell is this Jesus you keep talking about?

  Left, on two wheels, with shrieking brakes, into the Via Mastromiei, the sweat pouring down his face like Alpine streams in springtime. Left, then right. Right into Viale Corbaccio, keeping with the stream of traffic, but keeping ahead of the crowd. Left, then right, then—left again, wasn’t it? As he swerved left and saw with horror a tide of advancing traffic he imagined—surely it must have been imagination?—a muffled voice from the seat beside him:

  ‘Turn right, you idiot.’

  With a soprano screech of brakes Mario swerved the car around and, careering wildly, continued the progress out of Rome.

  • • •

  It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive before they would get there, and long before that Mario decided he was going mad with tension and frustration. His gun hand went to sleep. Cautiously he transferred the weapon to his right hand, and drove with his left. As they emerged from the city into the Campagna he stole glances at his companion. The glances were returned—operatically, contemptuously. The sun beat down on them. Mario wiped his brow with his free hand, and the Fiat swerved unnervingly towards the ditch. Peremptory cursings came from behind the gag. Mario would have liked to open the window, but he didn’t quite dare to let go of the wheel for that long. They careered along at 130, like any Italian family out for a day at the coast.

  By midday the sun was unbearable. Mario was dying for a drink. Typical of his friends, Mario thought, that they’d spent last night reading On the Condition of the Working Classes in England, and hadn’t even thought to buy in a few bottles of Coke. ‘Maniacs,’ he muttered. Then, wondering about their fate, he crossed himself. The car swerved madly towards the ditch again.

  It was nearly three by the time they arrived at the ruined castle of Orvino-Montevedere. Never much of a castle, it had been abandoned not long after the Risorgimento by its family (which was not much of a family either, and had later sunk to being pork butchers in a suburb of Naples). Now it was a three-storey ruin, with collapsed roof, holes for windows, and a ridiculous tower which nobody but a fool would ascend. The road to it was hardly more than a path. But at least the members of the Red League (Orvino-Montevedere branch) had thought to remove the worst of the boulders. Mario did not slacken speed until he drove into the dusty circle which served as a courtyard. Then he came to a halt in an anguished scream of brakes.

  ‘Get out,’ he squeaked threateningly, his gun still pointed.

  ‘Mmmm—nnn—ttt—’ spluttered Arrigo Furlani.

  Mario had to admit that he had a point. With his hands handcuffed behind him, Furlani was in no condition to let himself out. His gun still pointed nervously at the passenger seat, Mario got out, went round the back, and opened the right side door. Almost as if he were Furlani’s chauffeur.

  ‘In there,’ he shouted uncertainly. ‘Pig.’

  He waved his gun towards the Grand (and crumbling) Entrance. Stiff with the discomfort of a long journey with his hands behind him, Furlani stumbled forward. They came into the high, dark hall. At least here there was some shade from the appalling sun.

  ‘Up!’ shouted Mario, his voice now having sunk to its usual tenor. ‘Up, capitalist leech!’

  Furlani looked at the rickety stairs and turned to expostulate. Mario, his hand trembling, pointed his gun at the banker’s substantial gut. Furlani turned and stumbled up the stairs. Straight ahead of them on the first floor was a large room, perhaps in palmier days the seignorial bedroom.

  ‘Forward, lackey of bourgeois democracy!’ cried Mario, his relief at the end of his ordeal making him a touch more confident. ‘Sit! On that chair!’

  And so their journey ended. The handcuffs were removed, and Mario tied Furlani’s chest and shoulders, and then his ankles, to the chair. Then at last he could throw away his gun.

  Oh yes, but there was one more thing. The comrades had insisted upon it. Mari turned to his captive.

  ‘Comrade Furlani,’ he proclaimed, his voice going skywards again at the unusualness of the task, ‘you are a prisoner of the Red League, a captive of the people, and your seizure is a just expression of the anger of the proletariat at their exploitation at the hands of the international fascist-capitalist clique. You will be tried by a people’s court, at which you will be allowed every opportunity to speak in your own defence. When you have been found guilty you will be shot by democratically-chosen representatives of the people. If, however, you repent of your acts of oppression against the working class, and if—if . . .’ What came next?

  ‘If a ransom is paid, I suppose,’ came spluttering from behi
nd the gag.

  ‘Yes—and if a ransom is paid, the sum to be decided by an ad hoc general assembly of the Red League, Orvino-Montevedere branch, you may after a period of political re-education be regarded as having served exemplary punishment, and you will, subject to certain conditions, be set free.’

  Marco finished and wiped his brow.

  ‘Bravo!’ came the muffled voice.

  • • •

  ‘What,’ asked Arrigo Furlani, ‘are we waiting for?’

  His gag had been removed, because Mario was tired of asking him to repeat everything. His voice was dry, crackling, satirical.

  ‘My friends,’ said Mario. ‘We await my friends.’

  ‘Your friends,’ said Arrigo Furlani, ‘are either under arrest or dead. Remembering the bullets as we drove off, probably the latter. Even the carabinieri do not miss when they use so many.’

  ‘Dio mio,’ said Mario, in whom a religious upbringing died hard. ‘Povero Aldo. Povero Gianni. Pover—’

  ‘Yes, yes. You’re not saying your rosary. Why don’t you turn on the television and see?’

  Mario had forgotten the little battery television set they had rented two days before in Naples, procured especially (for television was a bourgeois palliative to divert the attention of the working class from their just anger and demands) to follow the reactions of the ruling cadres to the kidnapping, and to judge their intentions as to the ransom demands. Mario looked at the set, and walked uncertainly towards it.

  ‘The button on the right,’ snapped the captive.

  The set sprang to life, with gay bandstand music. It was a cartoon.

  ‘Splendid!’ said Furlani bitterly. ‘I get kidnapped, and all Italy goes on watching Mr Magoo.’

  Mario sat down in the only armchair. Soon he got quite absorbed in the cartoon. He was almost regretful when it finished and the RAI announcer came on with a newsflash.

  ‘We repeat the news that the treasurer of the Rome Christian Democrats and manager of the Banco Nazionale Piemontese, Arrigo Furlani, was this morning kidnapped in Via . . .’

  ‘That’s better,’ said Arrigo Furlani.

  ‘The chauffeur of the kidnapped man was brutally murdered, and in the subsequent police action three members of the gang were killed.’

  ‘Povero Aldo,’ breathed Mario. ‘Povero—’

  ‘Shut up! I’m listening,’ snapped Furlani.

  ‘According to police sources, Furlani was driven away in a car containing three other members of the Red League.’

  ‘Ha! I should be so lucky!’ said Mario in disgust.

  The announcer disappeared, and the screen was taken over by the scene of carnage in Via Sparafucile. In the portals of the Bank the underlings, who had remained so conspicuously inconspicuous during the attack, emerged wringing their hands to be interviewed for the nation.

  ‘Renato Capucci, under-manager,’ said the interviewer.

  ‘You’re fired!’ snapped Furlani.

  ‘What kind of man is Arrigo Furlani?’

  ‘A great man,’ said the under-manager, smiling oilily, as if he knew his boss was watching. ‘Great financier, great democrat, warm, lovable, un gentil uomo.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Arrigo Furlani. ‘Better. Go on.’

  ‘Loved by us all. All of us here at the bank knew that in him we had a true father.’

  ‘Bene!’ said Furlani. ‘Un bravo ragazzo!’ Then he was struck by a thought. ‘What did he mean, had?’

  • • •

  After a while, they ate. Mario cooked some spaghetti on the little oil stove, and heated up a tin with meat sauce in it. He slapped the results down on to two plates, and took one over to Furlani.’

  ‘Eat, pig,’ he said jauntily.

  ‘How?’ asked Furlani.

  So Mario had to sit there, spooning it into his mouth. When they had done, Furlani demanded to go to the lavatory. Mario untied him, poked the gun in his back, and took him to the improvised closet. Furlani blenched at the smell, but bravely went in, slamming the door behind him. He emerged five minutes later.

  ‘My God, what a dump!’ he complained. ‘Disgusting. You haven’t got the first idea of how to treat a hostage.’

  They went back to the big room on the first floor. Mario tied up the banker, and then sat down to eat his spaghetti. It was stone cold.

  ‘You’d better untie me next time, and I’ll eat my own,’ said Furlani spitefully.

  ‘Oh yes? Then I have to keep my gun on you, and mine still gets cold.’

  ‘What kind of Italian is this, who can’t eat his spaghetti with one hand?’ demanded Furlani, casting his eyes up to heaven.

  By eight o’clock it was time for the Telegiornale. By now the news people had got into their stride over the kidnapping. When the body-strewn street had been covered, and the policemen interviewed (by now there were four kidnappers in the getaway car, spraying bullets in their wake), they portentously announced an appeal from the wife of the kidnapped man.

  ‘Ha! Mariella! Where is she? . . . Ha! Isn’t that typical? Look at that hair—she always has that bit dropping over her forehead . . . Sloven!’

  Mariella Furlani began her piece, reading it at first as if it were a school exercise.

  ‘Hey!’ said Furlani. ‘Anyone would think she was reciting Dante!’

  Then, caught up like any true Italian by the drama of it, she left her script: there came into her voice that throb of true emotion, that catch that betrays agony, and then by the end there were tears in her eyes and her hands were cupped at the tormentors of her husband in an agony of supplication.

  ‘Better, Mariella. Make them think you care. Don’t tell them you’re already planning your wardrobe for the funeral . . . Bambini? What the hell are you talking about, woman? Bambini! The youngest is seventeen and sleeping with a garage owner . . . Oh, very nice, Mariella . . . Emotion . . . Molto patetico . . . Brava la vedova!’

  Mariella Furlani finished her pathetic plea on an impassioned note. As she came to an end, the camera backed away from her, and Mariella smirked with enormous self-satisfaction and turned her soft brown eyes towards the newsreader.

  ‘Look! See that? The cow! She’s making eyes at other men already! She always used to drool over that announcer. I’ll show her. Come on! We’ll write the ransom note now!’

  ‘I can write the ransom note,’ muttered Mario.

  ‘Of course you’ll write the ransom note, cretin,’ snapped Furlani. ‘How would it look if I wrote it myself? What do you usually write it on?’

  ‘Usually? We never done it before. This is our first.’

  ‘Oh, very nice. You choose me to practise on. Aren’t I a lucky guy! What did they use with Moro? Brown paper and thick red pen. Come on, write something. Head it Lega Rossa . . . Rossa with two s’s, you idiot. Do you want them to think you’re a gang of illiterates?’

  Mario wrote with difficulty, but in a half an hour or so the note was ready. It was a demand for one hundred and fifty million lire, penned in thick, uncertain capitals, and it ended with the injunction: GET IT READY. INSTRUCTIONS FOLLOWING. OTHERWISE FURLANI IS A DEAD MAN.

  Furlani said: ‘Very good. That will terrify them. Supposing they care. Where are you going to post it?’

  That had all been taken care of. ‘I post this one in Rome. Next one I post in Naples. After that, Pescara.’

  ‘Brilliant. Staggeringly clever. So the carabinieri draw a triangle, and they say where is the middle of that triangle, and we get police swarming up and down the autostrada and looking for deserted castles and palazzi. Bravo Mario! Bravo Lega Rossa! Listen to me: you post the first in Rome, the next in Firenze, the next in Torino.’

  It was while Mario was away in Rome next day that Arrigo Furlani wriggled himself free of the not very competently tied ropes. When Mario returned from his trip he found him sitting in the one armchair and hungrily forking a plateful of something into his mouth.

  ‘Hey, Mario! Have a good day? You try the cannelloni. It’s better than the Bolo
gnese.’

  Mario waved the gun uncertainly at him, but soon he got down to heating up a tin, and later when they settled down to the Telegiornale he forgot the gun altogether.

  The result of the ransom note was less impressive than they had hoped. The Banco Nazionale Piemontese, in the person of its national head, appeared on television the next night. The Banco Nazionale if’ed and ah’ed and but’ed: it doubted the wisdom, even while it greatly regretted, and it hoped that these dangerous and conscienceless men . . . Furlani sat before the screen, screaming his outrage at the lack of enthusiasm in their response.

  ‘See? Ingrati! Pigs! I work myself into an early heart attack, and see what the response is! I’ll cook your goose, Contini,’ he yelled at the mournfully regretful and hand-wringing National Chairman of the Banco Piemontese. He felt in the inside pocket of his now very crumpled suit. ‘See!’ He brandished a piece of paper at the screen. ‘I drop my briefcase but I still have this! Mario! Quick! Another ransom note!’

  And so another note was penned, with less concern about the spelling as they raged over the ingratitude of big capitalists and their lackeys. In this second note the sum was upped to two hundred million, and Mario added the words: SHALL THE WORLD BE TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MARCHESE CONTRACT? Furlani smiled bitterly when Mario proudly displayed the completed note.

  ‘Next time we say the Tartini contract. The time after we say the Donatelli contract. And we up the ransom. I’ve got plenty of truths about plenty of contracts, if that’s the way Contini wants to play it.’

  That, however, proved unnecessary. Mario drove to Firenze the next day. (‘Pick up some fresh meat, for God’s sake, and some vegetables. You’re ruining my digestion with these tins. And pick up a reasonable Chianti—nothing special or someone will wonder, with your appearance.’) By the following evening the Bank was grovelling all over the news media in its eagerness to fulfil the conditions of the Lega Rossa. The money, the Chairman assured a world less than breathless and mainly interested in whether it could afford its next dish of pasta, was all ready, packed up in used notes, and they waited now only for the instructions concerning the transfer.