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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.