“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.”

TWO

In Stresa the headquarters of the Polizia Municipale and the offices of the regional carabinieri are separated by only five short, pleasant blocks, but they might as well be in different universes. The Polizia’s office is in the bustling, upscale heart of Stresa, on the lakefront, just off the busy, modern Corso Italia, where it shares a handsome building with the ferry company and the city’s chamber of commerce. Carabinieri headquarters, on the other hand, are hidden away on a little-traveled backstreet, next door to the overgrown garden of an empty, moldering nineteenth-century villa, in an unappealing concrete blockhouse of a building, utterly-almost purposefully-without charm.