by David Hewson
The café owner walked to the rear of the room and opened a door to a tiny and very tidy office where a smart new computer sat on a clear and well-polished desk.
“I don't imagine either of you has ever read much Robert Louis Stevenson except for Treasure Island and Kidnapped,” Hank stated.
Teresa exchanged glances with Frank. “I think I can speak for both of us when I say no,” she responded.
Hank got up and stretched his scratched and swollen fingers, as if readying them for action.
“There was a book called The Wrong Box. He wrote it with a friend. Read it years ago. Funny story, comedic funny, that is. Cruel and heartless, too.” He peered through at the office. “Guilty people get touchy, I guess,” Hank Boynton said. “They see spooks around every corner. Get twitchy at the slightest, most innocent of things. Maybe…” He looked at them, still working this out for himself. “Just maybe, it's all in a name.”
GERALD KELLY OWNED AN ORDINARY BLACK sedan and drove it sedately through the city by a route so circuitous Costa couldn't begin to identify any of the neighbourhoods they passed. This was a conversation the SFPD captain had wanted with someone for a long time. Listening to him spend the best part of an hour outlining what he knew, it was obvious why. Without Gianluca Quattrocchi's conspiracy theory, homicide had precious little left to work on. There was a genuine crime inside Lukatmi—a missing fortune, and offshore agreements that were impenetrable to the U.S. authorities, and probably would remain so now the two founders of the company were dead. But those entailed financial offences and fell to a different team of investigators, probably federal ones. Kelly was a homicide man through and through, and in that field he was struggling for daylight.
They travelled slowly down a long straight street. At the end the Pacific Ocean sat in a pale blue line on the horizon.
“What do you think Black was trying to tell you last night?” Kelly asked.
“That there was a conspiracy within Inferno designed to generate as much publicity as possible. As far as he was concerned, that's all it was. He said Allan Prime wasn't supposed to die.”
Kelly reached the intersection, pulled to the curb, and stopped. “Don't you love the sea?” he asked. “It's so beautiful. I could sit here for hours. Used to when I was a street cop. You'd be amazed what you get to learn that way.” He looked at Costa. “Or maybe you wouldn't. Here's something that came in from the overnight people. James Conway Gaines. Former fireman who wound up working security at Lukatmi, who seems to have become some kind of lover-cum-father-figure for Tom Black. He had three convictions for violence, bar brawls, the usual. Some rough gay places mainly. Also…”
Kelly's mobile phone rang. He took it out of his jacket, answered the call, told someone he was busy and would be back within the hour.
“Jimmy Gaines was in Italy for two weeks right when all this fun began. In Rome. We found an entry in his passport and stubs for some fancy hotel that ought to be beyond the reach of someone on a security guard's wages. Flew back the day after Allan Prime died.”
He wound down the window and breathed in the fresh sea air. “James Conway Gaines was crew, too, but for the publicity stunt, not the movie set. Just like our dead photographer friend Martin Vogel. Gaines fell over a cliff. Pretty clear it was an accident and those two friends of your pathologist got lucky. But why did Vogel get killed?”
Costa thought of the conversation in the back of Gaines's station wagon. There were so many questions he wished he'd asked.
“Vogel was blackmailing Josh Jonah. However much he got paid to start with, it wasn't enough. Jonah went round to see him. Maybe to kill him. Maybe to reason with him and it turned into a fight. Maybe…”
He couldn't shake the memories.
“I still think there was someone else there that night.”
Kelly watched a gull float past on the other side of the road, almost stationary in the light marine breeze.
“I know you do. And I wish there was one scrap of evidence in that burnt-out mess to back you up. So let's assume it was the fight idea. I don't see those two geeks getting into the hit business. Dino Bonetti, on the other hand…”
“Everything we have on Bonetti we gave to you. Our people in Rome had plenty of information. The mob connections. The history of fraud.”
“Yeah. We had stuff of our own, too. Does it help? I don't know. The guy's a movie producer. Most of that business is clean. Some parts are as dirty as hell. Bonetti's been dining with crooks here and back in Italy for two decades or more. There was a time when the Feds were thinking of refusing him entrance into the U.S. on grounds of his connections. Not that it happened. Maybe a movie wouldn't have got made or something.”
“What about Tonti?” Costa asked.
“We all know he's got mob links. His wife's left him, so maybe brother-in-law Scarface isn't too happy. But I don't buy it. This is California, not Calabria. It's not worth going to jail for wasting an in-law who's a jerk. Tonti's Italian by birth, living here, and he's got friends with records. Doesn't add up to much.” He waved his arm along the seafront. “There's a dozen restaurant guys not a mile from here I could say the same thing about. We have no proof, only guesses. I'm sick of those.”
He started the car and took a right along the seafront road. Ahead was an expanse of green hillside. It looked familiar.
“Also,” Kelly added, “there's the health thing. Roberto Tonti has advanced lung cancer. He wasn't hopping in and out of Martin Vogel's apartment when the shooting started. The guy's got maybe three or four months, max. Little movie industry secret, one they'd like to keep quiet while they're raising dough to make a sequel. Yeah, I know. Sometimes a dying man feels he's been given the right to kill. We'd need a little more evidence than that, though. And a motive.” He shook his head. “Killing Allan Prime got these guys what they wanted. Why did they need more than that? How rich do you have to be? If it had ended with Prime, maybe Lukatmi wouldn't have collapsed, not with all that nice publicity to keep it afloat.”
He stomped on the horn as a skateboarder crossed the empty road directly in front of them.
“Kids.” He peered at the ocean as if wishing he were on it. “Am I missing something?”
“Carlotta Valdes,” Costa stated.
They began to climb uphill. Costa had a good idea where they were headed. They drove past golfers playing through wisps of fog drifting in from the sea and drew up in front of the elegant white building at the summit. The Legion of Honor looked just as he remembered it. Images of the paintings it held, Maggie's ghosts, flitted through his head.
Kelly turned and pointed a finger in his direction.
“I was not forgetting Carlotta Valdes. By the way, please tell your boss Falcone that I am mad as hell at him for mentioning that damned movie in the first place. So Tonti worked with Hitchcock fifty years ago. What's the connection?”
Costa took a deep breath. “Think about it. They're the same story. Inferno and Vertigo. A lost man looking for something he wants. An ethereal woman he believes can provide some answers.” He thought of what Simon Harvey had told Maggie. “For both of them, it ends in death. Beatrice waits for Dante in Paradise. Scottie sees the woman he's created in the image of Madeleine Elster die in front of his eyes, and stands alone in the bell tower, staring down at her body. He's lost everything. Including the vertigo that's been cursing him, that got him into the case in the first place.”
Kelly seemed unmoved. “You're starting to sound like Bryan Whitcombe.”
“Not really. If someone's obsessed with one, it's understandable he might be obsessed with the other. There's a connection. It's obvious when you think about it. What it means…” His voice trailed off. He'd spent hours trying to make sense of the link. Something was missing. “I can't begin to guess.”
Another memory returned. “Tom Black said something. About how the movies screw you up. Screwed up Scottie. Someone called Jones…” He shook his head, trying to recall Black's jumble of words.
“Scottie
's in Vertigo,” Kelly suggested. “Is there a guy called Jones in the movie, too?”
“There was an actor. He played the creepy coroner. He's long dead.”
Kelly gave him the kind of look Costa had come to expect from Falcone.
“Are we shooting in the dark or what? I'll check if the name Jones means anything inside the movie crew. You sure you heard it right?”
“Not really.”
“Let's deal with something practical, shall we? Where's Carlotta? Back in Rome and paid off? Dead?”
“You tell me.”
“Cherchez la femme. We don't have one. Not anywhere.” He caught Costa's eye. “Except for Ms. Flavier. We're supposed to think someone's tried to kill her twice, except neither time was quite what it appeared on the surface. Personal feelings apart, do you think it might possibly be her? I checked Quattrocchi's files. Carlotta Valdes turned up at Allan Prime's home first thing in the morning. Maggie Flavier was at home in her apartment until two that afternoon. Alone. No witnesses. That name could have been a joke.”
“Whoever it was made a real death mask,” Costa pointed out. “Does that sound a likely skill for an actress?”
“Maybe. Have you asked?”
“No. No more than I asked whether she poisoned herself either.”
The captain didn't flinch. “If you wanted to put on some kind of show, isn't that the way you'd do it? Carrying a hypodermic along with you and a tame cop to help out?” He leaned over the seat and said, in a low, half-amused voice, “You don't mind me saying this, do you?”
“No,” Costa answered, refusing to rise to the bait.
“You don't think it hasn't run through the minds of your colleagues, do you? They're not dumb.”
“The Carabinieri were wrong when they told you Maggie had no alibi for that morning. She had flowers delivered around ten. Ordered them herself. Signed for them herself. We have a copy of the receipt back in the Questura and a statement from the de-liveryman. Little details like that probably never occurred to Quattrocchi. I took the deliveryman's statement myself before we even left Rome. Maggie could not have been the woman who signed herself in as Carlotta Valdes in that apartment in the Via Giulia. It's simply impossible.”
The man in the driver's seat creased with laughter. “Jesus… Jesus… And I picked Gianluca Quattrocchi…”
He started the engine. They drew away, in the opposite direction down the hill. The Golden Gate Bridge emerged in the distance. The car was headed for the Marina. He'd seen this road before, in Vertigo.
“I've got to get back to the office. I'm enjoying myself too much here,” Kelly said. “You want to know the truth? There's only one thing we're sure of right now. There was a conspiracy to hype Inferno. Somehow, somewhere along the way, it turned murderous.”
Costa shrugged and said, “Any way you look at it, one of three people has got to be at the heart of this case. Roberto Tonti, Dino Bonetti, or Simon Harvey. If they'd been cab drivers or office clerks, they'd have spent a couple of days in Bryant Street being sweated until they couldn't sleep. Instead…”
“Not going to happen, Nic. Tonti and Bonetti are Italian citizens. They insist Gianluca Quattrocchi is present if we so much as ask them the way to the bathroom.”
“And Harvey?”
“I leaned a little hard on Harvey right at the beginning. One hour later I'm getting calls from God down asking me why I'm wasting my time. There's not a scrap of hard evidence linking them to the case and you know it.” Despite his words, Kelly still looked interested. “You think you can do better?”
“I can try.”
“How?”
“By getting in their faces. The way I'd do if they were plain ordinary human beings like everyone else. When they don't want it. Before they can call up a lawyer.”
They had reached a bluff overlooking the bridge. Kelly pulled in.
“Now there's something you don't see often,” he muttered, pointing at the ocean.
A long white, smoky finger of mist was working its way across the Bay ahead.
“I'll take you out there someday. We call that place ‘the slot.' It runs from the bridge to Alcatraz. Windy as hell sometimes, and you don't have a clue what's going on until you're in the middle of it.” He shook his head. “Fog? Now? I'd expect it from the west. And later. But hell. Welcome to summer in San Francisco.”
He took off his jacket, removed the tan holster, and held it out, gun first, to Costa.
“Expecting things to turn out like they should is something stupid people do. If you plan to go visiting, and I hope you do, I would like you to have this.”
Costa didn't reach for the weapon.
“Men who work with me do so armed,” Kelly insisted. “I've lost three officers in my career and that's three too many.”
“It's illegal for me to carry a weapon.”
“I'll look the other way. I know this city and I have my rules when dealing with it. We both understand there are still people out there with blood on their hands. I'd hazard a guess they'll shed a little more to keep us from finding out what exactly has gone on here. This is not a negotiation, Nic. You take the gun or I drive you home and you stay there.” The handgun didn't move. “Well?”
Costa grasped the cold butt of the weapon, felt its familiar weight.
Kelly turned on the radio and kept the volume low. Strains of Santana drifted into the car.
“Oh,” he added, as if it were an afterthought. “One more thing. That crossbow that killed Allan Prime. Unusual object.” He looked at Costa. “A Barnett Revolution. It's a hunting crossbow, made for killing deer. Very powerful. Not generally available in Italy. It was bought used through eBay. Guy paid cash and met the seller in a parking lot in South San Francisco one month before Prime died. He wore a hat and sunglasses. That's as good a description as we could get. My guess is it got shipped to Rome along with some of the equipment they took out for that event there, not that I can prove it.”
“A month?”
“None of this happened on the spur of the moment, did it? Now here's one more interesting thing: we recovered three shells from Tom Black's body. Two of them were ours. One wasn't.”
Kelly squinted at the bright horizon. “The shooter was in a parking lot across the street. I guess he must have been following you from when you came off the bridge. When he saw the roadblock, he pulled off, set up position, then popped one into Black as he walked towards us, and another through the windshield of a squad car just to make sure we returned fire. Clever guy. I'd put money he was the ghost in Vogel's apartment, that he set up that meeting, shot them, and got panicked when you arrived.”
He looked at Costa. “That makes two occasions when he could have had you in his sights. Consider yourself damned lucky. And don't lose that gun.”
“Anything else I should know?” Costa asked.
“Here's the last remaining fact I have. We have the bullets and we have spent shells from the Embarcadero. They're from a .243 Winchester. Whoever he is, he had a long-range hunting rifle.” Gerald Kelly winced. “The kind you use for shooting deer. Which is not my idea of sport, though it's a little bit more humane than a crossbow, I guess.”
HANK HAD A PAIR OF HALF-MOON GLASSES for sitting at the computer. Frank, similarly afflicted, preferred a pair of modern square plastic frames. Both men squinted at Barkev's Mac and made baffling complimentary remarks on its newness and speed. These things seemed important in San Francisco. The average pair of sixty-year-old Roman twins newly out of the fire department would probably have struggled to do much more than send an e-mail. The Boynton brothers sailed through a sea of information sources in front of them with a speed and ease that reminded her of Silvio Di Capua back in Rome, a thought that gave her a pang of homesickness.
Finally Hank found the page he wanted, and once they'd read it, Teresa said, “One more coincidence. It has to be. We're talking nearly four hundred years ago.”
“Let's see.” His fat fingers clattered across Barkev's pris
tine key board. “Yep. It's a coincidence. Lorenzo di Tonti. Born in Naples. Got into trouble there. Moved to Paris. Died penniless.”
“Offspring?” Frank asked.
“Two,” his brother replied, placing a large finger directly on the screen.
Teresa scanned the article next to a black-and-white portrait of a man with long, flowing black hair and elegant nobleman's clothes.
“So Roberto Tonti can't be related,” she declared when she skimmed to the end.
His fingers ran over the keyboard again.
“Seems not. Even the name changes. Lorenzo became de Tonti when he moved to Paris. Both sons wound up over here. One died penniless of yellow fever in Alabama. The second helped found Detroit and died in disgrace. Was calling himself de Tonty by then. They didn't have a lot of luck, these guys, did they? Mind you, all that from an argument in Naples. Interesting lives. Makes me feel quite small.”
“So,” she repeated, “Roberto Tonti the movie director can in no way be a descendant of Lorenzo di Tonti the dubious seventeenth-century banker.”
“Right,” Hank said. “But does that matter? Use your imagination. Roberto certainly does. It's his job. Lorenzo invented the tontine that's named after him. Who doesn't Google themselves these days? How many other people have surnames describing an idea that's killed a good number of idiots over the years?”
Tontine.
She vaguely knew what the word meant. It reminded her of old stories of tortuous conspiracies and unbelievably clever detectives. All the kinds of things real-life law enforcement agencies never met in the mundane world of hard, cruel fact.
“I've got to be honest.” Hank looked uncomfortable. “I looked up Tonti a few days ago. Type in ‘Tonti' and pretty soon you get to ‘tontine.' I apologise for not mentioning any of this earlier. It seemed irrelevant. I thought the same about tontines, too. Maybe I was wrong.”
She went through another page he'd found, feeling a welcome mild rush of excitement and possibility.
Teresa dimly recalled a tontine as an agreement between a group of individuals to share some kind of bounty, usually a crooked one, leaving the illicit prize to the last surviving member of the circle. This proved fundamentally wrong in many respects. Lorenzo di Tonti, the man who shared Roberto's name—though not, it would seem, his blood—hadn't set out to make his fortune creating a secret profit-sharing scheme for criminals. He was an ambitious banker trying to establish a new form of investment vehicle of general benefit to those who had the wherewithal to take part in it.