Good Blood (8 page)

“It’s gorgeous, fantastic,” Julie said. “It must cost a fortune to take care of.”

“Oh, I think Vincenzo can afford it,” Phil said with a laugh.

“Vincenzo’s the owner?”

“Well, there really isn’t any ‘owner.’ The de Grazia family owns the estate in perpetuity. They got it in the fourteenth century-along with the titles of ‘Count’ and ‘Countess,’ if you can believe it-when somebody’s great-uncle-twice-removed was Holy Roman Emperor for about five minutes. But Vincenzo de Grazia is the current padrone. He’s my cousin. Well, he’s my mother’s cousin, what does that make him? My uncle, I guess, but we’re the same age.”

“He’s your first cousin, once removed,” Gideon said, shaking his head. “What kind of a cultural anthropologist are you, anyway? Didn’t they teach you about kinship systems?”

Phil shrugged. “Sure. You want to know about the exopatrilocal kinship structure of the Arunta? That I understand perfectly. Ours I never got straight; too complicated. Anyway, Vincenzo’s father-my uncle Domenico-was the previous padrone, and Vincenzo’s son Achille will be the next one, and so on, yeah, into the far-distant future. So he gets this humongous inheritance and he gets to live there- he has to live there, actually; that’s in the covenant, if I understand it right. If he doesn’t, he forfeits the inheritance.”

“Not too bad a deal.” Gideon said, more and more taken with the island’s beauty as they came nearer. “I think I could live with that.”

The boat had slowed down now and was steering toward the stone quay, which led up to the courtyard by a wide flight of stone steps with two full-size palm trees in enormous pots at their head. The fabric of the building, the windows, the worn steps themselves, the many statues and plants they could see-all looked meticulously cared for, as if cleaning and pruning crews had been out that morning.

“Yeah, but it’s not all gravy,” said Phil. “See, the deal is, anybody else in the family who wants to live there also has the right to do it, no charge, for as long as he wants, and Vincenzo has to put up with him and foot the bill unless he can come up with some kind of justification not to-moral turpitude, murder, something along those lines. So aside from the oddball, so-called relatives who come and go, Vincenzo’s had… let me see… four people-no, five-who’ve been there just about forever and are never going to leave; not in this lifetime. And there are all kinds of rules about them: They have to dine with the padrone if they want to, they have to be consulted in family matters, and so on. It’s all very medieval and complicated. Vincenzo tried to get it overturned once, but no luck. It’s foolproof, written in stone.”

“On second thought, maybe not such a good deal,” Gideon said.

As the boat entered the still pool between the two curving arms of the quay and worked its way around the tied-up launches, a dark, lean man in mirrored sunglasses, black suit, black T-shirt, and mirror-shined black shoes emerged from the shade of a lawn umbrella, where he had been sitting in a folding chair, apparently working a puzzle in a magazine. Never turning his head away from them, he used his heel to grind his cigarette out on the pavement, shrugged both shoulders to set his suit coat better, tugged at the cuffs of his sleeves, and sauntered toward them.

“Who’s this?” Gideon whispered. “He looks like a leftover extra from The Godfather. ”

“You’re closer than you think,” Phil told him.

The dark man reached the head of the steps as the captain leaned over the boat’s prow with a boat hook, making ready to tie up. “Proprieta privata,” he said without expression. “Non entrate.”

“Cesare, how’re you doing?” Phil asked in Italian.

The man pushed his sunglasses an inch down his nose and peered mistrustfully over them. Then, abruptly, he smiled, like a piano lid opening to show the keyboard. “Fili? Hey, nobody told me you were coming.”

“Nobody knew. I thought I’d give everybody a nice surprise. So is it all right if we tie up?”

The man jogged down the steps, inspecting Julie and Gideon. “Who are your friends?”

“Old pals. Americans. Known them for years and years.”

Cesare nodded. “All right, go ahead and tie up,” he said to the captain, who’d been waiting with the rope in her hands. And to Phil: “The guy, I’ll have to pat down. Better tell him.”

“I understand Italian,” Gideon said.

“That’s nice. Climb out and lean your hands against the wall here. No offense, I hope.”

“Help yourself,” Gideon said, following instructions, while Julie looked on with wide eyes.

“I should have mentioned it,” Phil said to her in English. “They have to do it with strangers.”

“Not to me, I hope.”

“I don’t think so.”

The pat-down was quick and professional. Cesare was lighting another cigarette and Gideon was zipping up his windbreaker when Cesare uttered a soft curse. “I knew it, damn it, here comes the old man. He sees everything.”

Gideon looked up to see a tall, elderly, goateed man in a too-small, old-fashioned suit, starched white shirt, and tie standing at the head of the stairs and peering down at the scene below him with obvious displeasure. Gaunt and frail-looking, he leaned on a silver-headed, metal-tipped cane but stood extraordinarily upright. Gideon thought he might be wearing a corset to keep him so straight. He was accompanied by an ancient dog, as old in dog years as the man was in human years; a fat, panting, waddling Corgi on a leather leash.

“In my brother Domenico’s time,” the old man said in a thin but steady voice, “all who wished to come were welcome on Isola de Grazia. The stranger was trusted no less than the relative.” He spoke more in sadness than in accusation, in a flowery textbook Italian that Gideon had seen in books but had never before heard spoken. It sounded beautiful.

Cesare hung his head respectfully. “I’m sorry, signore, I’m only following orders.”

The old man sniffed. “Vincenzo’s orders.”

“These are dangerous times, signore.”

“Terrible times,” said the old man, shaking his head.

“Hello, Grandfather,” Phil said, “it’s wonderful to see you looking well.”

The old man started. “No…” He peered hard at Phil. “Fili, is it you?”

Laughing, Phil ran up the steps. The old man opened his arms, letting the cane and the leash drop. He was trembling as Phil gently embraced him and they exchanged happy greetings.

Coming up the steps with Julie, Gideon picked up the cane, noticing that the silver knob atop it was a beautifully wrought feline paw “holding” what appeared to be a flower bud on a stem, some of the features worn blunt from years of use. When the old man let go of Phil, Gideon handed it to him.

“I thank you, signore,” de Grazia said, then looked eloquently at Phil.

Phil looked back at him for a couple of seconds before he got the message. “Oh. Right. Uh… Grandfather, may I present my good friends Dr. Professor Oliver and Mrs. Dr. Professor Oliver. Gideon and Julie, my respected grandfather, Signor Cosimo Giustiniano de Grazia.”

De Grazia bent his head to kiss Julie’s hand, then shook Gideon’s. “I’m very pleased to know you.”

“They’re Americans, Grandfather,” Phil said.

“Americans!” the old man cried. He gathered himself together, and in halting, heavily accented English, said: “You are here most welcome.”

“Molte grazie, signor de Grazia,” Julie said in equally deliberate Italian, and the old man mimed good-natured applause, and everyone laughed pleasantly.

“Ah,” said Cosimo. “Well. So.” Suddenly sobering, he grasped his grandson’s wrist. “Thank you for coming in this time of crisis.”

“I felt it was my duty to come, Grandfather,” Phil said. The old man nodded his approval, then turned his attention to the dog, which now had its leash in its mouth and was uttering plaintive whimpers.

“Yes, Bacco, we’ll go now,” he said, taking the leash and smiling once again. “My dog,” he told Gideon, “is a de Grazia through and through, a follower of tradition. At ten o’clock I am required to accompany him on his morning constitutional-twice around the villa, out to the swan fountain, and back. This I must do rain or shine, crisis or no crisis, visitors or no visitors. No variation is permitted.”

Another round of shaking hands, another graceful hand kiss for Julie, and a few more words in delightfully accented English for Julie-“Forgive, signora, I regret I no’ speak so well English.”-and man and dog shuffled slowly off.

“What an old charmer!” Julie said.

Phil laughed. “He is that, and I love the guy dearly. He pretty well raised me after my mom brought me here. That’s the one thing I thank my lousy father for-if he hadn’t walked out on us, I’d never have gotten to really know that great old man. Come on, let’s go meet the rest of the clan.” He rolled his eyes. “Might as well get it over with.”

They began walking toward the house. The entire courtyard, Gideon saw, was paved with smooth black, white, and rose-colored pebbles embedded in concrete in floral patterns. In the center was a circular mosaic of the same materials, sun-faded and very old, arranged into a larger version of the same feline paw and bud that was on Cosimo’s cane, plus a six-pointed star on either side.

“Family crest?” Gideon asked.

Phil nodded. “Lion’s paw holding a tea bud. The de Grazias are supposed to have brought tea to Italy. I forget what the lion has to do with it. Nobody takes that heraldic crap too seriously anymore. Well, except for my grandfather, of course, God bless him.”

“What was that he said about a crisis? Did we come at a bad time?”

Phil shrugged. “I doubt it. Nonno Cosimo isn’t always… well, he kind of lives in his own world-namely the pre-1946 world, before the dissolution of the aristocracy. Anyway, he’s well into his eighties, and sometimes, you know, the skylight leaks a little? In a charming way, of course. ‘Time of crisis’ probably means Bacco didn’t take his morning dump.”

“Fili, welcome to the island, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

It was spoken in Italian, with impatience-if not irritation-and it didn’t sound like much of a welcome. They turned to see a trim, wiry, gray-headed man dressed in a perfectly tailored cashmere sport coat; tie; pale, flawlessly pressed trousers; and tasseled loafers striding, with every appearance of authority, toward them. Ah, the boss man, Gideon thought. Vincenzo de Grazia, il padrone.

The corners of Phil’s mouth turned down just a little. “Hello, Vincenzo. When have I ever told you I was coming?”

Vincenzo uttered a flat, one-note laugh. “That’s true enough. But at a time like this? You might have let me know.” Gideon noticed that the usual Mediterranean embrace wasn’t in evidence.

“At a time like what? Is something the matter?”

“Are you serious? You didn’t know? Achille-” He stopped and peered at Gideon. “Who are these?” he said to Phil.

“These are my friends Professor and Mrs. Oliver,” Phil said.

“Americans?” Vincenzo asked, and on receiving nods, switched without comment to fluent English. “You’re welcome here, but we are having a problem. My son has been kidnapped.”

Phil gaped at him. “Achille?”

“Do I have another son?” Vincenzo said tartly.

“I’m sorry, I only-”

“I know, I know. I apologize, I’m a little tense. It’s good that you’re here, Fili. We’re about to hold a… you know, a consiglio. ..” He groped for the English word.

“A council,” Gideon supplied. He didn’t want to seem to be hiding from Vincenzo the fact that he had some Italian.

“A family council, that’s right.” Vincenzo said, unimpressed. “They’re all waiting in the gallery. When Cesare told me you’d come, I assumed that was why.”

“I didn’t know anything about it. But I’d like to sit in, if that’s all right. Maybe there’s something I can do.”

“Of course it’s all right. You’re one of the family, aren’t you?” Then, after another joyless laugh: “More than most of them, anyway.” He turned to Gideon. “In the meantime, perhaps you and your wife would care to-”

“I’m afraid we’ve picked a bad time for a visit,” Gideon said. “We’re sorry for your trouble, signore. I think it’d be best if my wife and I just went back to Stresa.”

But Vincenzo wouldn’t allow it. “Certainly not. It won’t take us long. Make yourselves comfortable in the breakfast garden. My man will see to refreshments. And the island is yours to explore. The animals are tame.”

“Grazie, signore,” Julie said.

“Jesus, Vincenzo, I really am really sorry about this,” they heard Phil saying as he was led back to the villa. “Is he all right? When did it happen? Jesus.”

The gallery, in which the consiglio was to be held, was a smallish room without windows on the ground floor, the faded, red-flocked walls of which were covered floor-to-ceiling with portraits of defunct de Grazias, some in medieval armor; some in frilly seventeenth-century courtiers’ garb, some in military uniforms or 1930s businessmen’s suits, and in one case, the reason for which was no longer known, in a balloon-trousered Turkish pasha’s outfit complete with turban and jeweled dagger. Furnished with the oldest, ugliest, and least comfortable furniture in the house-dark, slab-backed, hard-seated wooden chairs from the Italian Gothic (apparently a time when human anatomy was imperfectly understood)-and with a couple of massive, grim commodes to match, the gallery had been Vincenzo’s choice for familial consigli from the day he took the reins from his father. He frequently said it was because it imbued their councils with the fitting ambience of family tradition. But the prevailing view, in which Phil shared, was that he’d picked it because the uncomfortable seating guaranteed that the meetings would be brief. There was even a rumor that he’d had an inch taken off the front legs of all the chairs to help speed people on their way.

On the way there, Vincenzo took Phil aside, into the music room with its two harpsichords and virginal-tuned every three months without exception and dusted weekly, but never, to Phil’s knowledge, played-to fill him in on the current status of things. Achille had been taken from a company limousine the previous Thursday, four days earlier. There had been shooting and two people were dead, but Achille was believed to be all right. Nothing at all had been heard until a few hours ago, when the carabiniere in charge of the case, Colonel Caravale, had telephoned. It seemed that a fax from the kidnappers, with their demands, had been sent to Vincenzo’s office in Ghiffa and automatically diverted, as were all faxes and telephone calls for the time being, to carabinieri headquarters.