Aaron Elkins: Good Blood

Once in the darkened observation booth next to the interrogation room, Inspector Lombardo rapped sharply on the wall to let the interrogator, Inspector Aldo Rigoli, know that they were there.

“Now then, Signora Galasso,” Rigoli said in his courteous, hesitant manner, “these microphones will record our conversation and a typed transcript will be prepared from it.”

Rigoli and Lombardo were two of Caravale’s better interviewers, but two very different types. Rigoli was an unassuming, bespectacled man who looked and spoke like an assistant bank teller. Unlike the hulking Lombardo, he didn’t frighten people. When it seemed more desirable to put the fear of God into the interviewee, it was Lombardo who took over.

“Afterward, the transcript will be sent to you so that you may-”

“Yes, yes,” Francesca interrupted. “May we get on with it, please? I’d like to get done as quickly as possible. I assume it’s the damned loan you want to hear about again?”

The only makeup she wore was a touch of eyeliner and a vivid slash of dark red, almost black, lipstick on what otherwise would have been a wide but thin-lipped mouth. Her long, squared-off fingernails were painted the same predatory shade. She was in a work outfit: a scarf wrapped tightly around her head like a turban, a high-collared, open-throated white shirt with bloused sleeves, a single strand of black pearls, spike-heeled, open-toed shoes, and trim slacks narrowed at the ankles. The slacks were made of a glossy gray fabric-sharkskin, Caravale thought, but maybe that was because sharkskin seemed right for Francesca Galasso.

It occurred to him that they might have done better to use Lombardo for this.

“If you please, signora,” Rigoli said.

“Very well. It’s exactly as I told you before.”

Matter-of-factly, but with a distinct air of condescension, as if it might be difficult for police minds to grasp, she explained. As the company’s chief financial officer, she had signed off the previous week on a five-million-euro loan to Eurotecnica Servizi, a Milan subsidiary of Aurora Costruzioni that specialized in preparing historical buildings for restoration. In actuality, however, Eurotecnica Servizi performed only three or four jobs a year, had no permanent staff (other than Vincenzo himself), and existed chiefly as a dummy corporation, a repository in which to bury occasional loans to Vincenzo when one or another of his varied investments needed an infusion of cash.

“In your opinion-” Rigoli began.

“You want to know if, in my opinion, such an arrangement is legal.” She folded her graceful hands on the table in front of her. “In a technical sense, possibly not. But when the cash flow problems were repaired, the money would be promptly repaid, so where exactly was the harm? In effect my brother was borrowing from himself, and paying himself back. Who suffered? And the economy, the companies he invested in, obviously, they benefited.”

“And the loans, they were always paid back? There are none outstanding?”

“Yes, absolutely, do you think I would have been a party to it otherwise? You can examine the books for yourself if you wish.”

“We’ve done that,” Lombardo told Caravale. “What she says is true. Seven loans to Eurotecnica in the past ten years, all of them paid back in full, with interest, well inside the loan period.”

“And now,” Francesca went on, speaking louder, working her way into a righteous indignation, “we turn to the same mechanism to rescue my dear nephew from these repulsive bastards. Of course we do, what choice did we have? Time was short, the money had to be raised within a few days. Are you now going to accuse us of doing wrong? Should we have let them kill him? You’ve seen the boy-how grateful he is to be home, how relieved the entire family is that he is safe. The money will be returned the day the insurance is paid. What would you have had us do? Do you think we did wrong?”

“Personally? No,” said Rigoli.

“Personally, neither do I,” Caravale said, “if that’s all there is to it.” And a moment afterward, to Lombardo: “Don’t tell anybody I said that.”

“And I would like to make it quite clear for the record,” Francesca said, speaking directly to the microphones rather than to Rigoli, “that I did this voluntarily, eagerly. I was in no way coerced by my brother. It was I who suggested it. As chief financial officer, it was my responsibility, my duty, to decide, and I decided. I accept full responsibility. I would do it again.”

“I see,” Rigoli said.

“Are we done? I would like to be taken back now.”

“Yes, signora, you may go. However, please keep yourself available for further contact in the event-”

“Thank you.” She was up and striding to the door on her three-inch heels.

At the door she stopped and nodded an ostentatious good-bye to the one-way glass, just to let them know they hadn’t put anything over on her.

As she shut the door, Rigoli turned to look straight at them too, dipped his chin, and tugged his lower eyelid down with his forefinger: Whew, how about that one?

“Interesting,” Caravale said, turning from the window. “Now I want-”

“Wait, stick around another minute, Colonel. I think you’ll want to hear this too.”

A moment later, a nervous, somewhat tousled Basilio was led in, looking confusedly around him, as if he’d been prematurely roused from hibernation.

“Now then, Signor Barbero,” Rigoli said in his reassuring voice, pointing to the chair that Francesca had just vacated, “what I’d like you to do is to tell me again what you were telling me just before we came here.”

“About the chauffeur, you mean?”

Caravale looked at Lombardo. “The chauffeur? What about the chauffeur? What’s he talking about?”

Lombardo smiled and put a finger to his lips. “Patience.”

“That’s right, the chauffeur.”

“Should the microphones be closer?” Basilio asked. “I should probably speak directly into them, because, you see, I’ve found that my voice is difficult to record clearly. It has something to do with a defect of the soft palate-”

“No, just continue to speak normally to me, as you are. The microphones will do their job.”

“Very well. Enrico. A sad case. What exactly do you want me to say?”

“What you told me before. The facts, that’s all. About how he never should have been there… all that.”

Caravale frowned. “What’s he talking about? Never should have been there…?”

“Just listen, will you?” Lombardo said. “For God’s sake.”

Caravale muttered something, fumbled in a pocket, and stuck half of an unlit cigar in his mouth.

Basilio, having already told his story several times that day, was unusually concise. Aurora Costruzioni employed two chauffeur-bodyguards. On the day of the kidnapping, Enrico Dellochio, the one who had been killed trying to protect Achille, had actually been scheduled to have the day off. His alternate, Casimiro Praga, regularly worked mornings and generally was the one who drove Achille to school. But on this particular day Praga had telephoned half an hour before he was due to arrive, complaining of a severe stomachache. The office had called in Dellochio instead, and it was he, to his very great misfortune, who had been driving at the time of the kidnapping.

At the same moment that Rigoli’s heavy-lidded eyes flickered in the direction of the one-way glass, Caravale impulsively clenched his fist, inadvertently snapping the half-cigar in two. The pieces fell to the floor.

“An inside job!” he said excitedly. “Of course! It’s all coming together now. Praga is in on it. He’s supposed to go along with it. At the last minute he loses his nerve, he backs out. He’s replaced by Dellochio, who has no idea what’s going to happen. That’s why there was all that shooting.”