by Aaron Elkins
“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 worki
ng 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.
EIGHT
WHILE the consiglio met in the gallery, Gideon and Julie sat at a wrought-iron table in the breakfast garden, a flagstone-tiled patio overlooking the formal plantings and classical statuary of the three terraces that made up the rest of the island. The crescent-shaped terraces nestled, each one within the curve of the one above, and descended in measured, eighteenth-century perfection from the rear of the villa down to the shore.
They had meant to stroll the attractive, well-kept paths, but when Vincenzo’s “man” Clemente appeared with a pitcher of iced coffee, two frosted glasses, and a tray of anise and poppy seed cookies, a pleasant, jet lag-induced laziness got the better of them and they stayed where they were, sitting in the warm breeze from the lake, inhaling the thick, lush scents of oleanders, camellias, rhododendrons, and citrus, chatting about nothing, and half-dozing.
A white peacock strutted up and down in front of them, showing off its tail feathers for a while before concluding that neither one of them was a likely prospect for love, and at one point a pint-sized monkey with a body no bigger than a fist scrambled up onto their table to balance on the edge and scowl at them like the outsiders they were. Contemptuously turning down an anise-flavored cookie but deigning to accept a poppy seed one, it briefly scolded them, stuck the sweet in its mouth for safekeeping, hopped down, and scuttled irritably off.
“Cute little fella,” Julie said, smiling. “Kind of crabby, though.”
“Marmoset,” Gideon said. “Family Callithricidae, genus Callithrix, species jacchus flaviceps.”
“I knew that.”
“The most primitive of the New World monkeys. They lack opposable thumbs.”
“Aw, is that why he was so crabby?”
Other than these island fauna, and the venerable, elephantine Clemente, who lumbered back twice simply to pour their coffee for them, the only sign of life they saw was a drab, narrow-shouldered woman in sneakers who came around the side of the villa from the back, smoking a cigarette and pulling her thin sweater around her despite the day’s warmth. When she saw them, she turned on her heel and went quickly back around the corner.
“I’m afraid we spoiled one of the maids’ break times,” Julie said. “What do you say we take that stroll after all, and leave the tables to the staff?”
“You’re on,” Gideon replied. “Just let me gather my strength for a minute.”
But they were still gathering their strength five minutes later, when Vincenzo and Phil came out to find them. Vincenzo offered a curt, pro forma invitation to the three of them to stay for dinner, but they declined and went back to Stresa with Colonel Caravale in the police launch. Squalls were dancing over the lake, so they were inside, sitting knee-to-knee on the U-shaped, cushioned bench in the tiny cabin. After a little small talk about the weather, conversation flagged. Caravale was terse and preoccupied, and his glowering, thuggish looks hardly invited socializing. With his ostentatiously decorated military headgear, grim black uniform, epaulets, Sam Browne belt, and holstered sidearm, he could have been a corrupt police chief in some tinpot republic. If nothing else, he looked as if he’d be a good man with a rubber hose or an electric prod.
“You speak English extremely well, Colonel,” Julie said, searching for something to say.
He turned from the window he’d been staring through. “I’d better, signora. This is a tourist region. A lot of the people I have to deal with here don’t speak anything but.”
“Victims or perps?” Phil asked.
Caravale gave them a brief smile. “A little of both. There are English courses at the academy, signora.” He touched the brim of his cap and went back to looking out the window.
“But you speak it so idiomatically,” said Julie, who was hard to deter when she wanted to get someone talking. “Where did you learn? Surely not in a class?”
“No, I learned in Connecticut.” He turned toward them again, more fully this time, and with an air of resignation. Apparently these Americans weren’t going to let him think in peace.
“My father was a supply master in the Italian Army. He was captured in 1942 and spent the rest of the war at a POW camp in Colorado. He had a wonderful time, he couldn’t say enough about America. So after the war, before I was born, he went back and lived in New Haven with my aunt and her family for five years, until he came back home to get married. Later, he sent me back there every summer but one from the time I was twelve until I was seventeen. I still visit with my own children every few years. And so now I speak Italian with a Connecticut accent, and Connecticut with an Italian accent. Nobody understands what the hell I’m talking about.”
It was a joke—Caravale’s English was excellent—so everyone laughed, but then the conversation died again, until Phil spoke up with the air of a man who’d just come up with a terrific idea. “You know, Colonel, I was just thinking. Dr. Oliver might be able to help you out on this case.”
“Oh, really?” Caravale’s stiffened slightly, which Gideon, an old hand at this, correctly read as a danger sign.
Not Phil, however. “Oh, yeah, absolutely. He’s famous. They call him the Skeleton Detective, you’ve probably heard of him, he—”
“I’m a forensic anthropologist,” Gideon put in quickly. He knew enough about policemen to know that they did not always—well, just about never—welcome unsolicited “help” from unknown outsiders, particularly nonpolicemen, particularly nonpolicemen who were foreigners. Even solicited help wasn’t always gratefully received. Besides, that wasn’t what he was here for, and anyway, what did he know about kidnapping?
“I wouldn’t be of any use to you in something like this, I’m afraid,” he said to Caravale. “In forensic anthropology it’s mostly skeletal material that we deal with. We—”
“I’m aware of what forensic anthropo
logists deal with,” Caravale said shortly. “Believe it or not, we have them in Italy too. As a matter of fact, I myself worked with one on a case involving bones several years ago.”
“Really?” Julie prompted politely when he showed no sign of continuing.
“That’s right, a local doctor came upon the headless skeleton of a little girl in the woods near Baveno and contacted us. So I called our expert—our forensic anthropologist—in Rome and talked to her before doing anything. And at the site I took pains to have my men follow her instructions to the letter. We did everything: photographs, drawings, layered excavation with trowel and brushes, sifting the soil into buckets, everything. It took us six hours, but we recovered every scrap of bone there was and sent it off, numbered, bagged, and cross-recorded, to the criminalistics lab. They said it was the most thorough job they’d ever seen.”
“Did you ever catch the killer?” Julie asked.
“Unfortunately, no, but I have good reason to believe that the perp”—a quick, wry glance at Phil—“was a red fox that had been seen in the area.”
“A red—?”
“The skeleton was that of a rabbit,” Caravale said impassively. “I understand it was a source of amusement at the laboratory for some time and is now something of a legend there.”
Julie and Phil made sounds of commiseration but Gideon was annoyed at the undertone of reproach. Whose fault was it that the thick-jowled Caravale, let alone this Italian doctor of his, couldn’t tell the difference between a human child and a rabbit? To be fair, though, it was far from the first time he’d run across a physician who didn’t know animal bones when he saw them. It really wasn’t surprising. Differentiating human from nonhuman bones wasn’t part of any medical school curriculum that he knew of, and why should it be? But for cops it was a different story.
If you’d taken the session I put on at the International Conference on the Forensic Sciences when it was held in Rome a few years ago, Gideon thought but didn’t say, you’d have taken one look at the pelvis, or a scapula, or any long bone, and saved yourself five hours and fifty-nine minutes of work.
