Cry Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  If you got there early, a secretary would offer you a seat and ask you to wait. It was one of the games that political people played, especially in the smaller provinces. He could use the time more profitably in the comfort of his car, look through the documents, decide how much to tell her. The situation left no room for error. He wanted President Donatella Pignatti to understand that he had taken the trouble to come to her, but not to praise or flatter her. If you took the evidence at face value, she was no better than a housemaid that you couldn’t trust. Let her roam around on her own and she’d steal the family silver.

  The press didn’t call her the ‘Queen’ for nothing, though the file his men had put together said a great deal more about the highest-ranking politician in the province. The new president of the county had got herself into a fix, shifting people about and making enemies, getting rid of some and filling the empty seats with people who would do her bidding. She knew there was an official investigation going on but she couldn’t know how wide the net had been cast. Magistrates in Rome were digging up dirt on the construction company that the Queen was about to pass judgement on. Favourable judgement, obviously. Millions of euros were up for grabs. What the magistrates didn’t know was who the construction company really belonged to.

  Only General Corsini knew.

  And the Queen, obviously. She was the key to the plan that was forming in his mind.

  Had he been superstitious, a gypsy might have told him that a young woman with spiky red hair held his future in her hands. Then again, if the Queen had been offering her palm for a reading, the gypsy would have warned her to be on the lookout for an older man in a dark blue uniform who could pull her out from under an avalanche of serious accusations: abuse of power, corruption, speculation and a great deal more. And that was what he meant to do, of course. Save her and save himself. They would see eye to eye, he was convinced of it.

  His telephone trilled the first five notes of a march by John Philip Souza.

  ‘Corsini,’ he said quietly into the mouthpiece.

  A smooth voice wished him a very good morning, thanked him for all the trouble he was taking and hoped that the traffic wasn’t too heavy. Finally, the voice asked him the question that he had been expecting.

  General Corsini listened politely. ‘Inform the president that I can’t be there any earlier,’ he said. ‘I’ll see her at eleven o’clock or shortly after, as we agreed.’

  He snapped the phone shut and smiled. The Queen was nervous. She wanted to get the meeting over with. She couldn’t wait to find out what it was all about. And if the tone of the secretary’s voice told him anything at all, the Queen was running scared.

  He lowered the dividing glass again. ‘Pull in at the next service station, Gianfranco. They do an excellent espresso. We’ve got all the time in the world.’

  Paolo Gualducci put the phone down.

  ‘No chance. He must have another appointment lined up first.’

  Donatella Pignatti – Doctoressa Pignatti, as everyone called her, making the effort to show respect for her academic background and lick her shapely backside at the same time – let fly a wrathful curse. ‘They say that he’s a shit. He’s full of himself, apparently.’

  If her private secretary had been the only person there, she would have said a great deal more, and with far more virulence. She signed the papers that the bald clerk was holding in front of her then waited until the door closed behind him. The clerk would carry the message around the building: ‘Watch out, she’s in a royal mood today.’ As a rule, they dressed her temper up in brighter tinsel, saying what a tough pair of balls she had.

  She sat back in her padded leather seat. ‘What is this general doing here, Paolo? What’s his game?’

  Gualducci shrugged his shoulders. ‘Someone in Rome might know.’

  Donatella Pignatti ran her fingers lightly through her gelled hair, conjuring up the spikes.

  ‘Ask them? You must be joking! It would be all over party headquarters in less time than it takes to …’ She let out a sigh. ‘Those bastards would be turning somersaults if they knew that he was on my tail. The question is which cards is he holding in his hand?’

  ‘A pair of sevens, at least. He must have something worth betting on,’ Gualducci said. ‘Still, looking on the bright side, he isn’t here officially. It is a courtesy visit.’

  ‘Courtesy, my arse! I’ll be quaking by the time he gets here. I can’t even talk to my lawyer.’ She stood up, walked to the window and looked down on the traffic in the square, the stream of people coming out of the building like a file of ants, all heading for the nearest bar. ‘Last night I dreamt that a handsome stranger handed me a string of pearls,’ she said.

  ‘A gift’s a good sign,’ Paolo reassured her. ‘A string of pearls. Wow!’

  The Queen turned on him, her face dark with rage. Lipstick had bled at the corner of her mouth, but who had the courage to tell her?

  ‘Bollocks, Paolo! Pearls mean tears. Don’t you know that?’ She ran her fingers through her hair again. ‘Those horrid black uniforms – like giant bloody crows. You know what they bring. Shit, and more shit!’

  Paolo Gualducci had only seen her once before in such a state: a party delegation had come up from Rome the month before, bringing news that they were thinking of backing a different candidate in the next regional election. Too many rumours were going around on her account, they said, and none of them were good. She had started off magnificently, showing the balls that everyone was always going on about, but then the mask had started to slip.

  Today, he thought, she sounded like a housewife at the wrong time of the month.

  SEVENTEEN

  The same morning, Spoleto

  Donna Tardioli had been the mayor’s secretary for two months.

  She’d been working in the registry office previously. She was still in the same building, but up on the top floor now, with more responsibility and a better salary. There had been a shorthand test and a personal interview with Mayor Truini, and Donna Tardioli had come out top of the list. The other girls were jealous, obviously. They called her Prima Donna, or Belladonna. It wasn’t only on account of her office skills she’d been promoted, they said. That low-cut frock she’d worn to the interview had made the most of what she had to offer, but hadn’t they all dressed up for the mayor that day? Now, word was going round that Mayor Truini had his eye on Sandra Panetti, and that Donna was heading for the chop. As a consequence, all the other secretaries – except Sandra, obviously – had warmed to her in the last couple of weeks. She was generous to a fault, they said, and she had one talent that nobody could deny: she could tell what the mayor was thinking just by looking at him.

  She studied the way he parked his car in the forecourt, the way he walked into the town hall, the way that he dressed. She was as sharp as Jim the cabin boy in Treasure Island, someone said, always quick to let the whole staff know what to expect that day: calm, changeable, stormy weather, strong gales. She even used the right nautical terms when she warned them to batten down the hatches, clear the decks or lower the mainsail.

  The mayor arrived that morning giving off the strangest signals.

  Even Donna Tardioli couldn’t make sense of them. He was dressed to kill, but his green shirttail was hanging out beneath the flap of his white linen jacket. In his summer clothes he handed out smiles and compliments as a rule, inviting councillors and visitors, the female ones especially, to join him later in his office for coffee.

  As Donna stood up to greet him, he glared at her.

  ‘Don’t break my balls,’ he said. ‘Call Landini. Tell him to get here fast.’

  He strode past her, barging into his office, and she noticed something else. He was wearing the blue leather moccasins that generally went so well with his pink jeans, green shirt and ivory-coloured linen jacket – they were good weather signs as a rule – but there was mud caked on the toes of his loafers, and traces of mud on his jeans as well. It was as if the mayor had been for
ced to trudge across a ploughed field or dig a hole for some reason.

  Donna tried the bank, then rang the mayor on the inside line.

  ‘Landini isn’t in his office this morning.’

  ‘Get me the manager, Franzetti, then,’ the mayor snapped.

  A couple of minutes later she had to call him back. ‘Signor Franzetti’s at the swimming pool. He goes there every morning …’

  The mayor exploded. ‘Phone the pool and get him out of the water! I want him in my office inside fifteen minutes.’

  The phone went dead in her hand.

  Ruggero Franzetti was in the middle of his morning session.

  As he breaststroked down the pool, eleven lengths already done, he saw one of the lifeguards standing there, hands on hips, muscles like Mister Universe popping out of his white string vest. The lifeguard raised his right hand and wiggled his forefinger, telling him to swim a bit faster.

  Franzetti touched the edge of the pool, then started to tread water.

  ‘Truini wants you in his office,’ the lifeguard said, his tone imperative. ‘Now!’

  The lifeguard owed his job to the mayor, like a lot of other people in town.

  Franzetti didn’t have time for a hot shower. If Truini had sent for him so early in the day he must have a good reason. He pulled on his brushed cotton slacks, trying not to touch the damp tiles. The trousers had cost him a fortune from a tailor’s shop in Jermyn Street, London. One leg trailed in a puddle.

  Shit!

  Ten minutes later, Franzetti was at the town hall.

  ‘The mayor?’ he asked, panting with the effort.

  Whether it was the swimming or running up the stairs that had done it, Donna Tardioli couldn’t say, but he did look a mess. She pointed to the closed door and watched the bank manager walk towards it. He looked so bedraggled, his hair uncombed, and the left leg of his trousers was wet. Some sort of emergency was up, she realized, as Franzetti knocked on the door and a voice boomed out: ‘Come!’

  Mayor Truini cut straight to business.

  ‘Where the fuck’s Landini?’

  Ruggero Franzetti was the manager of the bank. Cosimo Landini was the director.

  ‘I saw him the other day,’ Franzetti began to say. ‘He doesn’t tell me when he is or isn’t coming into the office …’

  The mayor cut him off. ‘A certain businessman … a mutual acquaintance. He called me up an hour ago.’

  Franzetti knew at once who the mayor was talking about. Cosimo Landini had handled the negotiations, while Franzetti had drawn up all the contracts. ‘What did he have to say?’

  ‘They want to start building straight away.’

  Franzetti blew out air. ‘That’s all we need, Maurizio,’ he said. ‘Does he have any idea how tricky it is to move all this cash around without alarm bells going off? Landini was telling me to slow things down as much as possible. I mean to say, if the Ministry of Finance were to latch on to it—’

  ‘You both knew what you were getting into when you started doing business with Luigi Corbucci,’ the mayor burst out, managing to keep his voice low, the veins standing out in his neck. ‘Put your mind to it, Ruggero. You’ll find a way to handle it. Tell Landini. He’ll go along with it, I’m sure.’

  Franzetti’s face was white with fright. Then again, Truini thought, it probably matched the expression on his own face. He wondered whether somebody might have left a ‘gift’ in Franzetti’s car boot, and whether Franzetti had been out digging holes, too, before he went to the swimming pool.

  ‘We barely handle so much cash in a normal fiscal year,’ the manager was saying. ‘OK, we’re handling a lot more money this year, what with the earthquake and the reconstruction, but we’re talking about millions …’

  Truini ran a hand through his hair. ‘Didn’t they teach you anything at that London School of Economics?’

  ‘The Harvard Business School,’ Franzetti corrected him.

  ‘Wherever,’ Truini snapped. ‘We’ve got no choice in the matter. They’re going ahead and I’ve got problems of my own. I’ll have to put the proposal to the council next week. They’ll approve it like a shot. It means work, jobs, future votes, a bulky envelope here and there. Then, Corbucci …’ He stopped and lowered his voice. ‘Then, they’ll come looking for you and Landini. Invent something fast, that’s my advice.’

  Ruggero Franzetti let out a sigh and furrowed his brow. ‘There is a way,’ he said, ‘but we’d need a lot of names.’

  ‘What sort of names?’

  ‘People who wouldn’t know what the inside of a bank looks like.’

  ‘Who, for instance?’ Truini growled, his patience running out.

  ‘OAPs, foreign residents, immigrants, vagrants. People who could open an account, technically anyway, but they don’t have a cent, or they don’t need an Italian bank account. People who would never even know if there was a bank account made out in their names. Dummy accounts that I can handle personally. That’s what I need to set up.’

  Truini was silent for a moment. ‘How many names do you need?’

  ‘The more, the better, so I can spread it around.’

  ‘A hundred?’

  ‘That would do it.’

  ‘You’ll have a list tomorrow.’

  Franzetti’s eyes gaped wide. ‘Where will you find them?’

  ‘Nursing homes, religious orders, orphanages, people who lost their homes in the earthquake, plus all the ones you mentioned before. How does that sound?’

  ‘It sounds good,’ Franzetti said, his voice brighter now.

  ‘Let me know what Landini has to say, OK?’

  Donna Tardioli noticed that the bank manager had smoothed his hair, and that he had more colour in his cheeks as he left the mayor’s office that morning. She caught a glimpse of Mayor Truini, too, before Franzetti closed the door.

  The expression on his face was as black and stormy as before. Maybe even blacker. It didn’t sit well with his green shirt and pink jeans.

  EIGHTEEN

  The same morning, Perugia

  ‘General Corsini!’

  The Queen raced forward to greet him.

  ‘I’ve been looking forward to this moment – meeting you in person. It is such an unexpected honour!’

  The general lifted the Queen’s hand towards his lips and kissed air.

  The only sound he made was the sharp click of his leather heels. The fact that he had chosen not to don his uniform that day made the scene less formal. He was wearing a light grey suit, impeccably cut. A slim black leather briefcase dangled from his left hand.

  Donatella Pignatti felt a gripe deep down in her stomach. Was that where the danger was lurking? ‘Shall we make ourselves comfortable?’ she asked.

  One corner of the large room was fitted out as a sitting room, with two padded Frau sofas and matching armchairs in smart red leather, and a coffee table in the centre laid out with a spread of national magazines. On two of them the face of Donatella Pignatti smiled out at the world. Her face might have been on all the other covers, too, and why not, after all? She had seemed to be going places: a woman who was young, attractive in an aggressive sort of way, a politician who had carved a place for herself in a galaxy that was dominated by grey-haired men.

  Those magazines were a few years old, and Arturo Corsini knew it.

  ‘I’ll … er, leave you alone then.’ Paolo Gualducci made a half-bow, hoping that one of them would invite him to stay.

  Donatella Pignatti glanced at the general, who didn’t say a word. ‘I’ll call you later, Paolo,’ she said.

  Gualducci closed the door and Donatella Pignatti sat back, hooked one leg over the other and smiled at the general, hoping that the smile didn’t look as tense in the general’s eyes as it felt on her face. ‘How can I help you, General Corsini? I hardly expected a private visit from a man in your position.’

  Corsini’s mouth pulled tight at the corners.

  If that was a smile, she thought, things were worse than she feare
d.

  ‘The reason is in here,’ Corsini said, laying his hand on the briefcase that he had placed beside him on the sofa.

  The Queen felt her heart throb painfully, but she managed to smile back at him. Dampness flushed beneath her armpits. She prayed no stain would appear on the white cotton blouse she was wearing. She must not reveal a hint of the tension that was creeping over her like a paralysis.

  She watched without a word as Corsini took a fountain pen from his pocket – a gold Mont Blanc Meisterstuck 84 – and wrote on a notepad in handwriting that was large and a trifle infantile: Is there a room where we can speak?

  The Queen leaned forward and read what he had written, not quite sure what the sentence was supposed to mean. She looked at him with an expression of confusion on her face. When he raised his forefinger and twirled it in the air, she suddenly saw the light. In the same instant, she realized that General Corsini’s visit might not be quite as menacing as she had feared.

  She jumped up with a smile. ‘May I offer you coffee? We have … well, it’s only a vending machine. Down in the basement. But the coffee is surprisingly good.’

  Corsini stood up, briefcase in hand. ‘I’d be delighted,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have time this morning.’

  They walked down the corridor towards the lift, passing a number of employees as they went. All of them acknowledged the Queen with a deferential smile. General Corsini guessed that she kept them under her thumb by alternating moments of apparent joviality with explosions of controlled rage. Her underlings had the look of whipped dogs that dared not bite the hand that fed them.

  ‘Congratulations on your presidency,’ Corsini said. ‘Finally, talented women are beginning to make their mark in a jungle run by alpha males.’

  ‘The same cannot be said of military life,’ the Queen joked back.

  ‘It takes us a lot more time,’ the general admitted. ‘First we need to find a tailor who can cut an elegant uniform. Then again, a firm male hand on the rudder … It isn’t such a bad thing. Especially if the captain knows which direction to take.’