The Village of Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy, the Present
It was the blue Honda that had started it, both traffic policemen agreed afterward.
The two veteran traffic officers, spruce and natty in their crisp blue uniforms and their caps, belts, and crisp white shirts, were just discarding their cigarettes and pushing through the glass doors of the Polizia Municipale building to report for the morning shift when the blast of noise-squealing tires, blaring horns, warning shouts-made them turn back toward the street.
The little Honda was trying to do the impossible or at the very least the idiotic-to pass another car on the Corso Italia in the middle of the morning rush. True, the Corso was ample by local standards, the widest avenue in Stresa, a beautiful concourse that ran picturesquely along the lakefront, with two lanes in each direction. And as rush hours went, Stresa’s wasn’t anything to brag about, but that didn’t mean you could expect to lane-change as if you were on the motorway around Rome. And certainly not with a big semitrailer truck-a Mercedes-Benz cab hauling an empty flatbed-bearing down on you in the oncoming lane and more than filling it.
There was nothing they could do but stand there and watch it happen. The driver of the truck slammed on his brakes-they could see him pulling on the wheel so hard (as if it made any difference) that he was standing up, like a wagon driver hauling back on the reins. The truck slewed to the left, veered in front of the oncoming traffic, bounced heavily up over the curb, scattering pedestrians, and went scraping and grinding across the entrance to the police parking lot until its huge left front wheel sank squarely into one of the planting beds that bordered the entrance.
The only damage to city property that they could see were a couple of bushes that had been run over, but the truck was in sorry shape. The flatbed in the rear, carried forward by its momentum, had swung around to the right, snapping or twisting something in the trailer connection, so that it ended up tilted and jackknifed, with its rear end clear on the other side of the street, almost up to the sidewalk and thoroughly eliminating any possibility of through traffic for hours to come. And as if that weren’t bad enough, an oncoming French tour bus had also veered wildly to avert disaster, and had ended up directly across from the police station, drunkenly sprawled in the Piazza Matteoti, which the city hall shared with the upscale Cafe Bolongaro. Cafe tables and chairs, unused at this time of the morning (so there was one little piece of luck, at any rate), had been overturned and now littered the little square. The bus passengers sat in their seats like statues, silent and white. Below the line of stunned faces, printed in bright red letters on the side of the bus, was the tour company’s slogan: LE PLAISIR DE VOYAGER.
As for the blue Honda that had caused it all, it had managed to scoot out of the way back into its lane and was long gone.
The two constables were running toward the driver before the truck tire had finished sinking into the soft earth. “Hey there, are you all right? Are you hurt?” Officer Giuseppe di Paolo called up to him.
The poorly shaven, gray-mustached man raised his head from the steering wheel, looking shell-shocked. “All right? Yes… it wasn’t my fault… there was a car…”
“We saw, we saw,” the officer said. “Did you get the license plate?”
“No, I couldn’t… it was… no.”
At this point Officer Gualtiero Favaretto asserted his natural authority (he was senior by four months) and took charge. “You,” he commanded the driver, “sit there a minute, make sure you’re not injured. Then go inside at once and tell them what happened.” His tone grew more somber. “You’d better ask for Comandante Boldini.”
The driver nodded wanly. “Yes, sir.”
Favaretto turned to his partner. “Giuseppe, this is going to create the mother of all snarls. Nobody’s going to be able to get through town. I’ll do what I can to get started cleaning up here. You better go in and tell them we need to put somebody out on the Corso up by the Regina Palace, and somebody else down at the Villa Palavicino turnoff, to divert traffic.”
Di Paolo started docilely in, then stopped and gestured vaguely in the direction of the warren of narrow, winding alleys and pedestrian streets that constituted Stresa. And in the other direction was the lake. The only avenue of any substance in the town was the Corso itself. “Divert to where?”
“That,” Favaretto replied magisterially, “is their problem. And Giuseppe,” he added, waving at the obstructed police lot, “tell him they’ll have to get there on foot. There will be no vehicles leaving here for some time to come.”
Enrico Dellochio saw the whole thing too; unfortunately for him, from the best seat in the house-behind the wheel of the dove-gray, perfectly kept-up 1978 Daimler limousine that had been trailing the flatbed truck. He’d been stuck in its wake for three blocks, ever since the lumbering flatbed had turned unexpectedly out of Via Prini and cut directly in front of them, forcing him to jam on his brakes and bringing a petulant complaint from Achille de Grazia in the back seat. Enrico would ordinarily have had his suspicions about a truck cutting them off like that, but an empty flatbed with nobody visible in it but the driver? Not much threat there. Still, he checked the rearview mirror to satisfy himself that no one had come up behind to hem them in. No, nothing, just some tourist on a rented moped, driving with the frozen concentration of a man who wished he was anywhere but on it.
Enrico had spotted the blue Honda coming toward them, darting in and out of traffic like a bug, apparently well before the truck driver had. By the time the big rig’s brake lights flashed on, Enrico had already eased the limo to a gentle, anticipatory standstill. He watched with a mixture of satisfaction and disgust-he hated idiot drivers-as the rig made the disastrous, swerving, locked-brake attempt at a stop that would leave it splayed like a beached whale across the full breadth of the Corso Italia. Meanwhile, here came the Honda, picking up speed as it slipped by the careening flatbed and getting back into its own lane barely in time to avoid the now stationary Daimler. It scooted by, gunning its engine, its rear end shimmying, and with maybe ten inches to spare. If they’d both been standing still, he could have reached out and grabbed the Honda’s driver by the neck, which he wouldn’t have minded doing.
“Crazy bastard!” Enrico shouted after him, applying the appropriate finger arrangement.
“Let’s not have any of that,” came the adenoidal injunction from the backseat.
Enrico muttered to himself. He still tried to think of Achille as a polite, quiet kid who respected his elders, but that had been years ago, when Enrico had first started work for the boy’s father, Vincenzo de Grazia, and it had been a misapprehension at the time. Since then, he’d come to know Achille only too well as the snotty, overbearing little turd he was. So much for what being born to a life of privilege could do for a kid.
“Sorry, sir,” Enrico said politely. “I couldn’t help myself.”
It had been a few months now since Achille had suggested that Enrico address him as “sir,” even in private, and it still rankled. Enrico was fifty-one years old, for Christ’s sake. What was Achille, sixteen? And age differences aside, Enrico didn’t take kindly to calling someone wearing a Hootie and the Blowfish T-shirt “sir.”
By now the boy had taken in the mess in front of them. “Oh, no, I don’t believe it. Can we squeeze around that?”
“Not a chance,” Enrico said. “Sir.”
“Well, what are you going to do? My French class starts in twenty minutes. My father will kill me if I miss another one. You better think of something, or you’re in big trouble, Enrico, I’m telling you.”
That was another thing that got to him-this empty, pointless, throwing around of his puny weight-but Enrico had lots of practice repressing the urge to give the kid a whack across the chops. “It won’t be a problem, sir. That lane on our right, that’s Via Principe Tomaso. We can-”
“That’s a pedestrian street, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, technically, but it’s early, the crowds aren’t out yet, we can get away with it. There are only a couple of tight corners. Principe Tomaso takes us up a block to Via Ottolini, where we can do a short left on Via Mazzini, which-”
“All right, all right, do it. Jesus Christ.”
“I have to back up a little first.”
Enrico stuck his head and arms out the window and made pushing motions with his hands. The moped driver was slow to understand, but finally rolled back a few feet. Enrico waved his thanks, reversed for a few feet, and turned up Via Principe Tomaso, a cobblestoned alley that ran between the sides and backs of buildings that faced the Corso, and was only just wide enough for the Daimler. Instinctively he glanced up at the mirror to see if anybody was following, but there was no one. There wouldn’t be many people who’d be aware that you could get back onto the Corso by circling around this way. Fifty yards up the street, he turned into the equally narrow, equally empty Via Ottolini, edged cautiously around the planter boxes set out in front of the Hotel da Cesare, jogged around the blind corner at the intersection of Via Mazzini (where a surprised grocer setting his wares out on the pavement grumblingly made room for him to pass), eased with care onto Via Garibaldi-
“Enrico, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Yes, I know what I’m doing.” Achille had been in a fouler mood than usual from the start this morning, and Enrico, who was supposed to have had a day off today, was starting to feel a little testy himself. “Don’t get excited, we’ll be back out on the road in two minutes. All we have to do is turn left on Via Rosmini there.”
“Then why are we just sitting here?”
Then why don’t you look out the damn window and see? “There’s a car in our way, sir. That Audi up ahead, it’s blocking Rosmini. It just backed out of the church parking lot, and it takes a while to get straightened out in these little alleys.”
Achille said something but Enrico didn’t hear. He had made another one of his automatic rearview mirror checks and this time there was something there; a gray Opel hatchback with one man in it had drawn up behind them, no more than ten yards away.
Now they were blocked front and back. An edgy little prickle slid up the nape of his neck. Not that there was anything really unusual about the situation-this kind of thing was bound to happen all the time on Stresa’s constricted old streets, and often did-but it was exactly the kind of predicament that he wasn’t supposed to get into, the kind of predicament he was paid to avoid: a narrow, virtually windowless alley hemmed in by walls of stone and stucco, a car in front and a car behind, and no room to get by either one of them.
He tapped the horn. “Come on, come on, let’s go!” he yelled to the one in front, still jiggling its way into a position from which it could drive forward. That one, he saw now, had two men in the front seat. He got a little edgier. This had been really stupid of him. The hell with the kid’s French class. He’d known better, he should have used his head. They should have waited it out with everybody else on the Corso.
“Enrico, for Christ’s sake,” Achille said angrily, with his hands to his ears, “you could at least warn me before you blow that thing. With these stone walls-”
“Shut up,” Enrico said. “Get down on the floor.”
Achille was shocked into stuttering. “Wh-wh-what is it? Those men-”
“Get the hell down! Now!” Enrico snapped when the boy didn’t move, and Achille hurriedly dropped out of sight behind him.
Enrico’s eyes were fixed dead ahead. The Audi’s doors had opened. The men were clambering out, brandishing handguns, their heads covered by stocking masks, their hands gloved. His nervousness had hardened into a sort of instant, stony calm. His mind was suddenly still, focused, stripped of extraneous thought. It was an instinctive reaction that had once made him a good cop and, later, a more-than-good soldier-for-hire. And it made him good at what he did for a living now.
Acting with disciplined speed, he made sure the doors were locked, pressed the button to roll up all the windows, flicked open the snaps on his holsters, jogged the grips of the handguns to make sure they were at the ready, and hit the memory button on the cell phone to dial the carabinieri. The two men ran up to the limo, one on either side, looking like a couple of monster twins, their features squashed and deformed by the stocking masks.
“Put the phone down!” Ugo Fogazzaro shouted through the gauzy skin of the mask, hammering on the window with the heel of his hand. “Put the goddamned phone down!”
They’d just begun but already things were going wrong. If the boss was such a great planner, how come nobody had mentioned the phone? From the first day he’d had a bad feeling about this job.
The window glass was tinted, but Ugo could see that the driver had the telephone to his ear but wasn’t speaking into it yet. Whoever he was calling hadn’t yet answered. The driver stared ahead, stiff-faced, without moving, ignoring the guns directed at him from either side. Ugo whacked the window with the butt of his gun, a heavy, snub-nosed Ruger. 357 magnum. The safety glass held up. He hit it again, harder, and this time it buckled, a hole opening up in the middle. Now he could hear the driver’s voice.
“I’m in a car on-”
Using the barrel of the gun, Ugo reached in and batted the phone away. A welt appeared on the driver’s temple, where the muzzle had scraped it, and quickly beaded with blood. The driver didn’t move. Ugo put the Ruger up against the corner of his jaw. “Turn off the engine.”
The driver did as he was told.
“Now unlock the doors, all of them.”
“The ignition has to be on.” He was still staring stolidly ahead, his jaw muscles working. A tough guy.
“No, it doesn’t. Don’t mess with me!” He shoved the muzzle hard against the man’s jaw and clicked back the hammer with his thumb. “Hurry up!”
There was a soft tick as the locks unlatched. Ugo pulled open the front door. On the passenger side, Marcello did the same.
“Keys,” Ugo said.
The driver took them from the ignition and handed them to him. Ugo flung them over a stone garden wall beside the church.
“Now,” he said, “both hands on the wheel, up at the top. Okay, now use your left hand to get your gun out of the holster. Two fingers only.”
“I don’t carry a-”
“Don’t bullshit me! I told you once.” He dug the muzzle of the pistol with its jutting front sight into the tender place where neck and jaw intersected, and twisted. He could feel ligaments grind in there, and the driver grunted and tried to pull his head away. What do you know, not so tough after all.
The driver’s gun-one of those pretty little German 9mm semiautomatics-was withdrawn between thumb and forefinger. Ugo snatched it out of his hand, a welcome fringe benefit; the damn thing was worth three times as much as his.
He released the safety on the semiautomatic and focused both handguns on the driver. “All right, now raise your hands. Up high, push them against the roof. Marcello, if he moves, you kill him.” He pulled open the back door and leveled the two guns-he liked this two-gun stuff-to point down at the floor. “Okay, kid, come on out of there. Hurry up.”
Achille didn’t move. He was on his knees, scared to death, milk-faced and shivering. “Just tell me what you want, I know I can-”
“All I want is you. Now don’t make me-”
“My father will kill you for this. Do you know who my father is?”
“Yeah, I know who your father-”
A movement by one of the driver’s hands caught his eye. “Hey!” he said. “What did I tell you? Marcello, you-Ai!”
His first thought was that a bee had stung him on the wrist, but then he heard a clink, and when he looked down, his own. 357 magnum, which he’d thought was still in his right hand, was on the pavement, and his wrist was spouting blood, and he knew he’d been shot. Before he could tear his eyes from his shattered wrist, there was a second stinging jab-he heard the shot this time-in his abdomen, dead center, a little below the breastbone. More like a punch than a jab, and this one really hurt. That bastard driver, he’d had a second piece, some stupid little-old-lady gun, tucked down his back behind his neck. And now he’d ducked down and was rolling around on the front seat, getting off shots, twisting and coiling like a snake, almost too quick to see. Where the hell was Marcello?
Now, hardly aware of what he was doing, Ugo was shooting too, spraying bullets from the driver’s semiautomatic in his left hand- crakcrakcrakcrak -at the writhing, whirling body. “Bastard, you shot me!” Crakcrakcrak. The little pistol flew out of the driver’s hand. For a moment Ugo thought he was throwing it at him, but then the man arched, gave a shuddering sigh, and lay still on his back, one foot sticking out the door on Ugo’s side. There was blood all over his face and on his shirt. Next to his head, the leather seat was wet.
Ugo was shaking. He’d never been shot before. He’d never killed anyone before. He was losing a lot of blood, he saw now, rhythmic gouts from the wrist, a thick, pumping flow from his abdomen. He pressed his right hand against the hole below his breastbone and stuck his wounded left hand under his right arm, but he could still feel the blood pushing out. He struggled to make himself move, to make himself think, but he’d grown confused. He felt frozen, petrified, as if time were flowing by somewhere outside him, too blindingly fast for him to step back into it. He’d lost track of the semiautomatic. He began to worry that he wouldn’t be able to make it back to the car.
“Ugo!” Marcello said, coming tremulously back into sight from where he’d been crouching behind the hood of the car. He looked terrified.
“You lousy-you lousy-” Ugo screamed. “You just let him-you just let me-”
Marcello was staring into the car. “Ugo, Ugo, you shot him!”
“Yeah, I shot him! Where the hell were you?”
He was having a hard time focusing. His pant leg was blood-soaked, clinging to him; his shoe was squishy with it. “Marcello, I’m not.. . uh…”
He was sitting on the pavement, his back against the jamb between the limo’s front and rear doors. He didn’t remember going down. “Marcello, you better get me back to the car,” he said, only his head was rolling around on his neck and his mouth didn’t work right, and all that came out was this horrible mewling, like a cat that had been run over. He could no longer move his head, but from the corner of his eye he saw Big Paolo running heavily toward them from the rear car. Paolo-big, dumb, stupid Paolo-had forgotten, in his excitement, to put on his mask.
“Paolo,” he heard Marcello say urgently from around the far side of the limo, “the bastard kid’s giving me trouble. Help me out.”
“No, please-” It was the kid’s voice, cut short by a little gasp as Paolo swatted him.
Don’t forget about me, Ugo tried to say, don’t leave me here, but this time not even the mewling sound came out. His chin was on his chest. He couldn’t lift his head; it was as if someone were pushing down on the back of his neck. All he could see were his pants, black and glistening with blood, and even that small field of vision was rimmed with a darkening pink haze, as if he were looking out from a tunnel. The stocking mask was squeezing him, cutting off his air. He couldn’t breathe.
“What about Ugo?” Big Paolo asked. “We’re not gonna leave him here?”
“Forget Ugo,” Marcello said. “Look at him, he’s dead.”
Am I really? Ugo wondered as the pink haze darkened and the tunnel walls squeezed slowly in.
Officer Favaretto waited in the open doorway of Comandante Boldini’s office while his chief finished his not-so-polite conversation with the mayor of Stresa, who could be seen through the window, gesticulating in his own office just across the Corso.
“I can’t help that, Mr. Mayor,” Boldini was shouting into the telephone. “I know there’s a French tour bus on your front steps, all I have to do is look out my window to see it. Have you looked at my parking lot? You don’t seem to understand, we’re going to have to get a crane in there, for God’s sake, and police business will have to come first. We-” He paused, fuming, holding the receiver away from his ear and rolling his eyes. “Well, that’s too bad, but you’ll just have to wait,” he said abruptly and slammed down the receiver. He wiped a wadded handkerchief around the inside of his stiff, braided collar and stared blackly at the telephone. “Some people,” he muttered. “Does he think I’m Superman?”
Favaretto tapped gingerly at the pebbled glass pane of the door. “Comandante?”
Boldini hauled himself up and used both hands to hitch his pants up over his spreading hips. A bad sign. Here it comes, Favaretto thought sourly. Because I tried to do something, this whole thing is going to get blamed on me. Next time I’ll just pretend I never saw anything and stay the hell out of it. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time he’d been driven to make such a promise to himself.
“Favaretto, I thought you told that truck driver to come and see me.”
“I did, sir. I told him-”
“Well, he never did, how do you explain that? He just left the truck sitting out there and walked off, what do you think of that? The worst traffic jam in the history of Italy, and you, you don’t even bother-What, damn it?” he yelled at the telephone, which had just buzzed twice at him, the signal that his adjutant was on the other end of the line.
“You, don’t go away,” Boldini commanded, leveling a finger at Favaretto, who had indeed been thinking about making his exit. “I want to talk to you.” He turned his back, picked up the telephone, and held it to his ear. “What?” he said roughly. “What?”
He fell into his leather chair as if the carpet had been jerked from under him. “What?” he said again, but far more softly. A few moments later there was an even softer, more tremulous “Who?” followed almost immediately by “Oh, my God.”
The phone was falteringly replaced on its base the way an old, old man-and a blind one at that-might, and then Boldini pivoted his chair around to look at Favaretto. His face, which had been dangerous a minute before, was now a dazed, sick white.
“Favaretto,” he said weakly, “tell Maria to get me the carabinieri on the telephone. Colonel Caravale. Personally.”