Dante's Numbers

by David Hewson

  It took a moment but from somewhere a shiny red apple appeared. She took it, rubbing the skin against her sweater, and made as if to eat, then stopped.

  “Food is one of life's great pleasures,” Maggie said, her green eyes holding Costa. She held up the apple. “I'll eat this on the way. So? Do you want to see a secret or not?”

  HANKENFRANK—SOMEHOW SHE THOUGHT OF them as a single entity—led her across Chestnut, past the fire station—where a few gruff words were exchanged with the poor young officer who was unlucky enough to be cleaning the engine—then down the street towards the stores a few blocks away. As they walked, Teresa saw a building rise in her vision ahead and knew somehow that this had to be their destination.

  An old and probably defunct neon sign on the side read Marina Odeon. It was attached to a grimy bell tower that rose three storeys above the low line of houses and shops on the street. Like the building itself, the tower was clad in rough white adobe plaster.

  It was a cinema. More than that, it was somehow familiar, in a way that was nagging her, exactly as the name of Carlotta Valdes had.

  The two men in identical brown clothing got to the entrance. Hank hammered on the shuttered ticket booth. Frank stood stock-still and yelled, “Anyone home?”

  She caught up with them.

  “What do you mean is there anyone at home?” she demanded. “The place is derelict.”

  “Derelict?” Hank objected vociferously. “Derelict? This is San Francisco. Dereliction is a trait of character, not a notice of death. This old Odeon's just a little careworn. That's all.”

  “It's a dump,” Frank added. “The young guy who's got it inherited the thing from his uncle or something. He opens it up when he feels like, so he can show ancient movies to ancient people like us. Good old movies, in wide-screen Technicolor, with just a couple of speakers for sound, not some goddamned rock band's racket machine like you get in the new theatres.”

  “Is the popcorn good?” she asked.

  “We are not children,” Hank pronounced, folding his strong arms. “But yes. It is. Do you want to see Carlotta Valdes or not?”

  “I do! I do! And I want to know about this place. I've seen it before.”

  Frank shook his head. His walrus moustache bristled with the pride of superior knowledge.

  “No, you haven't. You just think you have. In spite of appearances, this is not San Juan Bautista. That's ninety miles south, and you won't find the bell tower there either. That was a lie as well. We're dealing with the movies, Teresa. Remember? Every thing worthwhile usually turns out to be an invention. You don't sit in those hard, bald seats for the truth”

  She stared at the stumpy white tower. It was all coming back. An old, old film, one she'd loved when she was a teenager, juggling dreams of getting a job in Cinecittà, following in the footsteps of the greats: Fellini, Bertolucci, Pasolini. Even Roberto Tonti, for one brief teenage summer spent spellbound by a horror flick mired in gore.

  The title of the movie eluded her but she could picture it now and it was here. In San Francisco, an earlier incarnation of the city but one still recognisable. Some sights—the Palace of Fine Arts, the city streets, the view towards Fort Point and the Golden Gate Bridge—were scarcely changed. The colours were the same: the bright, sharp sun, piercing, relentless.

  The name danced in the shadows at the back of her head.

  “There's no one around,” Frank announced. “They won't mind if we walk around the back. Hell, if they didn't want visitors, they wouldn't have something like that in the garden, now would they?”

  There was a particular colour that mattered, Teresa recalled, in a way she never quite understood. It was a dark yet vivid green, the colour of a vehicle, and of a woman's flowing, elegant evening dress, all somehow iconic of a lost and deadly desire.

  “Garden?”

  They were already pushing their way through a battered wooden gate by the tower side of the cinema. She looked up and got a momentary fearful ache in her stomach. That was a memory, too. Of a man staring down from just such a campanile as this, his face creased in misery, as if all the cares and tragedies in the history of the world had fallen on his shoulders at that moment.

  “Here it is,” one of the two brothers—she couldn't see which— was shouting. “There's a donation box. We could put something in it.”

  Even for her, a Roman pathologist well used to stepping off the straight and narrow, this seemed strange. To be following two complete strangers, eccentric old firemen, well read, self-educated probably, into an unkempt backyard—it was no garden, not in her judgment—of an odd little rotting cinema in a lazy, sunny suburb of San Francisco called the Marina.

  “Just like I remembered,” Frank said. She recognised his voice this time. It was a little higher, exactly half a tone. Mirror twins. Identical in most ways. Differently similar in others.

  Teresa Lupo walked through what looked like a small junkyard, with an old white sink stained with rust, an abandoned refrigerator, and a snake-like morass of ancient piping, and found herself in a patch of open ground a few metres out of the shadow of the bell tower above them. Pansies and miniature dahlias ran around the border of a bed of pale marble chips and gravel. A grey stone urn stood in the centre, filled with fresh scarlet roses. A green silk sash—the colour sent a shiver through her, it was so accurate, so familiar—was wrapped around the neck of the vase, new and shiny.

  She stared at the headstone that stood over what could only have been a fake grave and felt her head might explode.

  The inscription, worn by the years and only just visible, read, Carlotta Valdes, born December 3, 1831, died March 5, 1857.

  “You're supposed to pay a couple of dollars to see that,” said a man's voice from behind.

  She must have jumped. She wasn't sure. This all seemed so curious: real, yet dreamlike, too.

  “Sorry,” she stuttered.

  There was concern all over his young face. He was pleasant looking, in his early thirties, wearing workman's overalls, and sturdily built.

  “You look like you've seen a ghost.” He smiled at them apologetically. “Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.”

  “It's our fault,” Hank said, taking out a ten-dollar bill. “Blame us. The lady came all the way from Rome to see this. There was no one in, but the gate was open.”

  “You mean Rome, Italy?” the young man asked, amazed.

  “There are others?” she wondered.

  “Oh yeah,” he answered, nodding. He had a vigorous, simple demeanour, like that of a farmer. “Georgia, for one. Not that I've been there either. You came all this way to see that?”

  “Not really.” Not at all, now that she thought about it. “I just wanted to put a name to a memory.”

  She looked at the tower again. “It was in Vertigo, wasn't it? Hitchcock. Nineteen fifty…”

  “Shot in ‘57,” Frank said, tapping his right temple. “Released the following year.”

  “Sounds right,” the man in the overalls agreed. “I'm not a movie fan, to be honest with you. I just inherited all this stuff. If it keeps people happy and doesn't cost a fortune, it can stay for all I care. I work construction for a living and it doesn't get in the way. Besides, the last thing Chestnut needs is another yuppie bar. My uncle was a good old guy. He claimed he was a carpenter on the set, hand-picked by Hitchcock. That's why we got to pick up a couple of props. Then he got the movie theatre when it went bust, built that stupid bell tower on it…Unique selling point, he always said. He was right about the unique part. I keep a few flowers on that fake grave there for any fans who turn up. Caught three this week, not including you.”

  He leaned forward and, in a stage whisper, added, “Tell you the truth. My uncle was a terrible liar. I reckon the whole thing's a fake. But what the hell. It's the movies. Does it matter?”

  “Are you showing it again soon?” Teresa asked hopefully.

  “Vertigo? I only open the place up when someone comes up with the money. Too expensive to
keep it open every day. We've got a little festival of fifties noir coming soon. John Huston. Nicholas Ray. Billy Wilder, Sam Fuller, Fritz Lang. Some bank is backing it, with a little help from the arts people. Those arts guys produce the program. They love this place for some reason. I just smile and hand over the keys.”

  “I shall be here every night,” Frank insisted, then elbowed his brother. “He can go slurp beer and fart alongside his bar buddies.”

  “Great.” The young man hesitated. He shooed away a couple of wasps buzzing around the place. “Damned yellow jackets. I came around ‘cause one of the arts guys thought we had a nest somewhere. Guess he's right. Anything else I can help you with?”

  “I really need to see Vertigo right now,” Teresa said hopefully. “Tonight, if possible. Maybe a DVD. Or…”

  Lukatmi, she thought suddenly.

  “…I could download it off the web or something?”

  Frank put the forefingers of his two hands together to form a cross, then pointed it in her direction, hissing all the time, like someone chasing down a vampire. “Jimmy Stewart would be turning in his grave.”

  “I rather doubt that, sir,” the young man said very seriously, and removed the ten-dollar bill from Hank's fingers. “I don't know much about the movie business, but I'm guessing he'd rather be watched than ignored. No idea about all that Internet stuff. But there's a Blockbuster down the street, if that's any use.”

  THE PRIVATE SECURITY MEN WERE EASILY SHAKEN off Maggie led Costa around the rear of the Palace, past the children's museum, to a parking lot where she climbed into a dark green vintage Jaguar, then fired up the throaty engine with visible enthusiasm. He got into the passenger seat and felt himself sinking into soft, ancient leather.

  “What kind of car's this?” he asked.

  “It's a Betsy. That's my name for her anyway. She's a loan from some company trying to sell something or other. I dunno. Corporate bonds. Doughnuts. Who cares? She turned up yesterday morning. My agent said I can keep her for a week as long as I do a photo shoot at the end. It's all by way of thanks for some romantic slush that came out a couple of months ago called On a Butterfly's Wing. The boss liked me, apparently. Did you see it?”

  “No.”

  “Ever hear of it?”

  “Vaguely…”

  She slapped the leather steering wheel and giggled in disbelief. “You are the world's worst liar, Nic. Here I am chauffeuring some foreigner around my hometown and he's never even seen my movies. Will someone please explain to me why? Where's the adulation? What's my ego supposed to survive on?”

  “It's nothing personal. I just don't go to the cinema much.”

  She crossed the busy highway leading to the Golden Gate Bridge, then pulled off to enter the pleasant open space of the Presidio. Soon they began to climb uphill, winding through a network of narrow, empty roads, past a cemetery and both modest and palatial homes, mostly set against a backdrop of lush forest.

  The windows were down. The ancient engine growled and roared as the vehicle tackled the steep inclines. Costa felt as if he'd stepped back fifty years into the frame of some old movie.

  “Some stranger lent you this car? It must be worth a fortune.”

  “That's what I said. And yes, I guess it must be worth a fortune.”

  “Isn't that odd?”

  “This life is odd. Haven't you figured that out yet? I get given stuff all the time. I could have had three new kitchens last year if I wanted. And a condo in Orlando. Yuck. It's business, not kindness. People hope the stardust will rub off and leave a little money behind. Occasionally it's some kind of trick from some sleazeball who figures it's the price of a date with a movie star. If that's what I am…”

  “I will watch every movie you've ever made,” he promised fervently. “When I have the time.”

  That amused her, though in his heart he meant it.

  “No need. Most of them are junk. No one's called about Betsy yet, mind, so perhaps I'll be spared that particular ordeal. What would you do? Send her back?”

  He patted the upholstery and ran a finger along the gleaming polished burl walnut of the dashboard. “I'd still wonder why he really did it.”

  She burst out laughing. “God, Nic. Don't you ever relax? I checked. This is a Jaguar Mark Eight. She was made in 1957. Only in production for two years. Allow me one indulgence, please. It came with these, too. I should have put them in water but I forgot. I'm not house-trained. Not really.”

  She reached over into the back seat and retrieved an odd-looking bouquet.

  Pink roses set among blue violets, tied inside a star-shaped arrangement of white lace.

  “That's the strangest bouquet I've ever seen,” he said. “They look so… old-fashioned.”

  Maggie shot him a pitying glance, then threw them on the rear seat.

  “Flowers are flowers. Beautiful whatever…Why don't men understand such a simple idea?”

  He leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes, enjoying the cool breeze, with the tang of the nearby ocean, and the peace of the Presidio.

  “It's genetic,” Costa murmured over the burbling lowing of the engine. “Where are we going?”

  “I told you. To see a secret. Where this all comes from. Where I come from.”

  He recalled the file he'd examined, guiltily, in the Questura before catching the plane.

  “I thought you came from Paris?”

  “When I was a child. But when I got older, became…” A coldness entered her voice. “…saleable, my mother moved me here. Not L.A. That was too… nouveau riche for her. We spent a year living off fast food and flying down to studios for auditions. The week I finally got a part was the week they told her she had a spot on her lungs that would kill her in a couple of years. All that smoking while she sat outside auditions. Was it worth it?”

  “What was the part?”

  “I doubt it reached Italy. Big here for a while, though. It was a corny TV comedy, L'Amour L.A. Sort of The Partridge Family but with foreigners. I was Françoise…” She glanced upwards, as if trying to recall something that was once important. “…the rebellious teenage daughter of a handsome French widower pursuing an on-off relationship with an ordinary Californian divorced mom. Ran for three seasons. Made me. Killed everyone else. My catchphrase—and I had to deliver this in a really stupid French accent—was, ‘But ‘oo can blame Françoise?' Usually uttered after I'd done something really bad. Ring a bell?”

  “I think you're right. It didn't reach Italy.”

  She smiled at the view. It was hard for him to believe they could have moved from the city so quickly. Everything was so lush and quiet and beautiful.

  “Why did I come the scenic route, not the easy one?” She sighed, slapping her forehead. “Oh, right.” She pointed at him. “Because of you.”

  “San Francisco…” he said, returning to the subject.

  “This is where I come from,” she said, serious all of a sudden. “The real me. Not the child. I grew up juggling movie parts, smiling for the camera, even learning to act sometimes. Watching my mother waste away to nothing. I was born here. I guess I'll die here, too. Not that I like that idea. I don't want to die. Not ever.”

  She pumped the pedal so that the spirited engine dropped a gear and the car lurched forward into the darkness of a eucalyptus glade.

  Their route through the Presidio and beyond ran up and down, steadily climbing along empty narrow roads that belonged in deep, isolated countryside, not on the edge of a great city. Costa found himself trying to crook his neck so that he could see in the mirror, glancing back through the Jaguar's rear window from time to time.

  They were not alone. In the distance, briefly glimpsed as the ancient Jaguar wound its way through the forest of the Presidio, then on into Lincoln Park, past solitary golfers swinging clubs in the golden sun of late afternoon, Costa could see the same car following them, a yellow sedan, maintaining a constant distance, dogging their tracks.

  WHILE TERES
A LUPO TRIED TO WATCH HER new Hitchcock DVD, Falcone and Peroni bickered in the kitchen over whose turn it was to provide dinner.

  “I cooked yesterday, Leo,” Peroni complained. “And the day before.”

  Falcone remained adamant. “I told you. If you want me to get food, I will. But in the way I choose.”

  “I am not eating that fried chicken crap again! How fat do you want me to get?”

  “I like the fried chicken. It's different. You can't get it like that in Rome. Or we could have pizza. Or Thai. Or Chinese. Or…”

  “Just cook some pasta, put the damned sauce on it, then grate some cheese,” the big man yelled. “Have you never, ever cooked for yourself before?”

  “No…” The inspector sounded dejected. “What's the point if there's only one of you?”

  “There are three of us now. And I happen to be as hungry as a horse.”

  This was impossible. Teresa turned up the volume on the huge flat-screen TV and bellowed, “Shut up, the pair of you, and come and look at this.”

  There must have been something in her voice, because for once it worked. Or perhaps they were just taking a break between rounds. The two men came and sat meekly on either side of her on the deep, soft sofa. Teresa worked the buttons, keying to the scenes so conveniently tagged on the DVD.

  “Here's Carlotta Valdes,” she said, and showed them the scene in the graveyard of Mission Dolores. “Or rather the headstone.”

  “Where is this?” Falcone asked. “Mexico?”

  “The original location is about a fifteen-minute cab drive over there.” She pointed back towards the city. “Mission Dolores was one of the Spanish missionary outposts set up in the eighteenth century when California was being colonised. It's still there.”

  The two men glanced at each other, their faces full of puzzlement and surprise.

  “Rome doesn't hold the copyright on history,” she reminded them. “Other people have their own bits, too.”

  “So Carlotta Valdes is buried in some old missionary cemetery in the middle of San Francisco?” Peroni asked.