Arnaldo Pezzotti

Arnaldo Pezzotti is 54 and has spent thirty of those years among engines. Born in Modena, the son of a blacksmith, he entered a racing car shop at 14 to sweep the floor and left it, at 30, as head mechanic. For twenty years he has run the Italian team of champion Teodoro Iturbe. He treats the driver as a son and a boss at once, and fights with him as if he were both.

In Modena, he lives in a two-story house above the team's workshop, with an iron staircase that leads straight to the garage. The kitchen has a four-burner stove, a pot of ragù always on the fire and a wall clock that runs five minutes fast, on purpose. In the workshop office, a cork board full of schedules, a drafting table and photographs of cars that no longer exist. He sleeps little and eats standing.

He is short and wide, with a sunburned red face, a trimmed gray mustache and gray hair combed back with brilliantine. He wears a short-sleeved white shirt, almost always sweaty, khaki linen trousers with suspenders and a silver stopwatch hanging from his neck, which he sets against his wristwatch before every training session. Between his fingers, an unlit cigar, which he never lights near fuel. Gruff, theatrical, he talks with his hands.

About the night the champion was taken, he says he was out of the hotel taking care of team business and returned at 9:20, when he found the police at the door. About the next day's race, he doesn't hide what is at stake: next year's contract with the factory. Without Teodoro on the track, the Americans take the prize, and he goes back to Modena explaining why. When the question is how much ransom they asked for, he answers nobody asked for anything, and adds: yet.

It could be the honest despair of a boss who lost his driver, the race and the contract in the same night. It could be the theater of someone who always speaks loudly to cover what he doesn't want heard. The detective will have to decide which.