by David Hewson
The Italians squirmed uncomfortably on their seats.
“The loose ends aren't all tied up, Catherine, and you know that as well as the rest of us,” Teresa said before anyone else could. “All that's happened is that Tonti's stuck up his hand and said, ‘Send it all my way.' Which is very convenient in the circumstances. But…”
“But what?”
She was too late. The dam had burst. Peroni got in next, aware, perhaps, that there was likely to be a queue.
“I was under the impression we weren't going to talk about this. But since we are, let me say just one thing. Tom Black was shot from a considerable distance by someone using a hunting rifle. Either Roberto Tonti is quite a marksman or he got very lucky. Have you seen his eyes? How he shakes? I don't believe he could do that. Not for one moment.”
He was getting into his stride. “Also…how did he know Tom Black was in that car with Nic in the first place?”
“He says Black called him beforehand asking for help,” she snapped.
“But why?” Peroni asked. “If Tom Black knew Tonti was behind the whole thing…Oh, I give up.”
Falcone smiled pleasantly in the passenger seat and said nothing.
“Carlotta Valdes,” Costa added abruptly. “Who was she? Where is she now?”
Catherine Bianchi turned around, looking cross. “He won't tell us, Nic. The guy's just confessed everything and that's that. Are we supposed to lose sleep over it? Whoever that woman was, she didn't do much. Maybe roped in Allan Prime and brought Tonti a gun on-stage at the Palace of Fine Arts. One more fake ID among many. Trust me. Kelly's people have checked. They could spend a lifetime chasing someone who was nothing more than some two-bit courier. And they even will, for a little while. But not for long. Do you blame them? Don't you have priorities in Rome, too?”
“It's the name,” Costa emphasised, not quite knowing what he meant, struggling to place a memory. “Why that name?”
“Because of Hitchcock,” Teresa insisted. “As I've been trying to tell you all along. Tonti worked with him. It was all here…”
The vehicle came to an abrupt halt by a busy junction. Catherine Bianchi slammed her hands angrily on the steering wheel.
“You people make me want to scream. Why, in God's name, do you have to make everything so complicated?”
Falcone finally took his gaze off the ocean horizon. “We didn't. We never had the chance. The fact that film was made here—”
“This is San Francisco! Movie central!” she yelled. “Haven't you noticed? Watch.”
She jerked out into the street, cut left onto another road, then bore right again.
“Dirty Harry,” she chanted. “Bullitt. Mrs. Doubtfire, The Joy Luck Club…”
“Eastwood and McQueen—” Teresa cut in.
“Shut up! Harold and Maude, Freebie and the Bean, Pal Joey… Am I making my point here? It's not all dark and bloody. Remember The Love Bug?”
The Italians stiffened and glanced at each other.
“The Love Bug?” Teresa asked eventually. “You mean the kids' movie?” She winced. “The Disney one?”
“The Disney one.”
“Like Bambi,” Costa murmured, still trying to place the recollection that was haunting him, one that was buried somehow in that dark night that had ended in bloodshed outside the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero.
He was amazed to see that the road they had entered bore the name Lombard, just like the broad highway that became Route 101 as it swept towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Here, however, it was narrow and residential. Then they crossed a broad cross street and Lombard became a one-lane road that turned into a crazed series of steep switchbacks winding downhill past grand Victorian mansions and newer apartment blocks.
“Tourist time,” Catherine announced as she wheeled the big Dodge easily around the tight hairpins, the vehicle grumbling over the brick road. “America's crookedest street. Architecturally speaking, of course. Most of the people around here are upstanding citizens, with plenty of cash, too.”
The street straightened and became smooth asphalt once more. She pulled in by the junction at Leavenworth and looked back over her shoulder at the winding lane behind.
“Recognise anything?” she asked. “That little Beetle Herbie came down here. Lots of movies came down here. After L.A., this city is the biggest movie stage in the world. So what's the big deal if someone steals the name of a movie character now and again?”
Costa wasn't looking back. His eyes were fixed straight ahead, seeing something he recognised. There was a city map in the seat back; Costa took it out, scanned the index, found what he wanted, ran his finger across the ganglion of streets that crisscrossed the crowded, confined peninsula of San Francisco, a complex patchwork of neighbourhoods, each running into the next, overlapping, obscuring the obvious.
“Drive on, please,” he said. “Ahead. Indulge me.”
The view ahead changed shape, becoming more like the one he expected. Costa asked her to stop at the next junction. Opposite was a plain two-storey house with scaffolding along the side obscuring the long windows of what must have been some kind of living room. The curtains were closed. A builder was working on the exterior, setting up a cement mixing machine.
Tom Black's words kept coming back to him.
They screw you up… they screw everyone. Scottie. Me …I never thought this'd happen. Not when we went to Jones…
There was a scene in the movie…Jimmy Stewart's character stared out from his living room window towards the Bay Bridge, admiring this very view fifty years before from the building across the road. This was Scottie's old home on Lombard, the very building Hitchcock had used. The front, with its long living room window, was on a street called Jones. Someone who didn't know might think that was its real address.
Tom Black hadn't been talking about a man, Costa realised, cursing his own stupidity. He'd been remembering a place. Somewhere he'd met a movie-obsessed individual who'd stolen his name from Vertigo.
He climbed out of the car and walked across the road. The builder was a big man, his hands smeared with plaster, his face wary, full of suspicion.
“I was wondering if Scottie was in,” Costa asked as if it were the most natural question in the world. “I heard the lucky bastard got some nice old car from somewhere. He promised to show it to me when I was in the neighbourhood.”
The man looked him up and down carefully. “Only his friends call him that. Never seen you before.”
“Been a while.”
“Mr. Ferguson went out this morning. I don't expect him back while I'm here, and I'm here all day.”
“The car?”
“Remind me…?”
“Green. Jaguar. Nineteen fifties? Scottie said it was a beauty.”
That broke the ice.
“Oh, it's a beauty, all right. I guess that's why it hardly ever gets out of the garage. Bad luck, though—it's not here today.”
“Where…?”
“I don't know.” He took off his hard hat and scratched his head. “Maybe it's at that theatre of his. Don't know…”
“The theatre?” Costa asked.
“That weird little dump on Chestnut, down the Marina. The one with the tower. How the hell Scottie manages to make a cent out of that…”
Costa picked up a steel-headed mallet from the side of the concrete mixer.
“Now,” the builder said, “let's not do anything hasty…”
The door looked so old he felt sure Jimmy Stewart had touched it. People made things well back then. It needed three swings to smash through the hardwood slab.
THE PACKAGE ARRIVED AT TEN, ALONG WITH the man from the movie festival offering to give her a ride to the event. Maggie Flavier glanced at the box in his hands and asked, “Costume?”
He was in his early thirties, sturdy and very clean-shaven, with soft, pale skin that belied his heavy, calloused hands, worn jeans, and white T-shirt. A pair of thickset black plastic sunglasses sat on his face.
/> “The festival people said…” he began.
“They didn't mention anything about a costume to me.”
She didn't know what they'd said. She couldn't remember. This engagement had been on her schedule for weeks. Her agent had arranged it while she was filming in Rome.
He took off the glasses. Bright blue eyes. Too blue. She wondered if they were coloured contacts. Hangers-on at the fringes of the business sometimes had affectations, too.
“If it's a problem…forget it. They went to a lot of trouble to get this dress. They said it was important. But if they screwed up…” He shrugged.
“What am I supposed to be doing?”
“My name's John,” he said, smiling pleasantly, and holding out his hand. “John Ferguson.”
She shook it. He had the strong grip of a workman.
“What am I doing today, Mr. Ferguson?”
“Marina Festival of Fifties Noir. Sponsored by the local organic supermarket, a bank branch, and an arts foundation. Opened by Miss Maggie Flavier. Fifteen minutes in public, a couple of smiles, and you're done.” He peered at her. “You do know the Marina Odeon, don't you?”
“Sorry. Movies are work, not leisure. Also, I never quite hit the Marina scene. It's a ways from here.”
“Ah…”
“Noir?” she asked.
“We open with Touch of Evil and close with The Asphalt Jungle. Talk about doing things backwards, but I just fetch and carry. Programming's someone else's job.”
He put down the large cardboard dress box and extracted a slip of paper from his jeans pocket.
“According to my schedule you cut the ribbon for the opening at one-thirty, then we show the Welles film at two. You don't need to stay after that, if you don't want to. We have one reporter and one TV crew. No one else will be allowed inside. We got the message from your agent about not wanting too much press there.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “And if we get there quick, no one's going to be outside either. The festival people would like to get a few words from you first for some DVD they're putting together. Just a few questions…”
He nodded at the box. “It's all for charity, you know. Gorgeous dress. I got the limo around the corner.”
“Why do I have to wear the dress?”
“Came from some society lady in Russian Hill. Of the period, or so they say.” He sighed and shrugged again. “I'm just the messenger here. I'm sorry. After all this awful stuff I read about in the papers, I understand if you don't feel up to it. If you want to cancel, just say so. I can tell them… It's no problem.”
“No, no…” Maggie hated letting her fans down. It seemed so selfish, given the money and acclaim she got in return for what, in truth, was a small amount of talent and a lot of luck.
She opened the box, took out the garment, and found herself wondering for a moment whether to believe what she had in her hands. The dress was a long, voluminous silk evening gown, low cut, the kind of thing glamorous women wore in old movies. It was a dark, incandescent green. The same green as the one in Vertigo. It was so beautiful she could scarcely take her eyes off it.
“What is this?”
“They said it's a copy of one Janet Leigh wears in Touch of Evil.”
That was a film she did remember. The sight of Orson Welles's fat, sweating face looming out of the Mexican darkness was hard to forget.
“I thought that was made in black-and-white.”
“Well, I guess the movie was. Not the clothes. What do I know? Don't shoot the messenger, remember?”
She hesitated. The death of Simon Harvey and the dark succession of events that preceded it had exhausted her. She felt tired and uncertain about the trip to Barbados. Uncertain, too, about what might come afterwards…
She remembered Scottie's nightmare from the movie, of falling into a deep, shapeless abyss. Vertigo. It wasn't just fear of heights. Vertigo was fear of the unknown, too.
“We need to go, Miss Flavier,” the man insisted, gently. “If you want to. The limo can't wait forever.”
One last appearance, and then some space. Some time to think about who she really was, what she really wanted…
“Do you want me to put it on now?” she asked, looking at the dress in her hands.
“Nah. There's a dressing room at the theatre.”
He carried the box carefully in his arms, following her all the way down to the parking lot.
“We're just around the corner,” he said, beckoning her to the back of her apartment block.
They turned a corner and she saw the car.
The green Jaguar gleamed in the half shade, sleek and old and full of memories. She remembered the smell of the leather and the drive with Nic up into the heights beyond the Legion of Honor.
“What the hell is going on here?” she started to say, swinging around to look at the driver.
The sunglasses were back on. He'd dropped the big cardboard box. He was grinning at her. There was no one near, not a window overlooking this place.
He was getting something out of his pocket.
“It's the final act,” the man who called himself John Ferguson said. Suddenly he was on her, strong arms around her neck, a hand pushing some cloth that stank of damp, corrosive chemical into her face.
She tried to struggle. Then she tried to breathe. Her arms flailed wildly, to no purpose. She could hear him laughing.
As she started to fall, she could just make out the sun, bright and wild in a pure blue Californian sky. The world started to turn dark. For one short moment the sun glittered high above her. Then the cloth came down once more. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't feel. He held the thing over her mouth, choking her until she submitted and fell into the dark.
ONCE INSIDE THE HOUSE, COSTA WASTED FIFteen seconds fumbling for a light switch, then he threw open the curtains on the long flat panes that covered the corner of the room abutting Lombard and Jones, revealing a view that, through ancient venetian blinds, took him back to Maggie Flavier's apartment, watching Vertigo for the second time in a matter of days, both of them feeling the past tapping on their shoulders like some hungry ghost.
This wasn't just the same building. It was the very room they'd seen in the movie, with its beautiful hillside vista out to Coit Tower and the ocean. The furniture had been carefully selected from the same era: a pale fabric sofa, long, low chairs of 1950s design. Even a small TV set with manual rotating dials and switches and a bulging, pop-eyed screen. An old-movie channel was playing on it: something black-and-white, the sound turned down as if the room needed to be inhabited by the cinema even when no one was present. It was a sanctuary, a kind of temple, and it was instantly obvious what was being worshipped here.
The walls were plastered with movie posters from floor to ceiling. All from the fifties to seventies. American, English, Italian…
Teresa went round them methodically, finger on the old paper, checking the names.
“Roberto Tonti worked on every one of these,” she murmured. “Whoever this man is, he knows his stuff. Tonti doesn't even get a credit on the Vertigo poster, but it's up there along with all the Italian horror flicks he directed. We have a fan here. The fan.”
“Rome.” Falcone was busily rooting through documents on the antique desk next to the TV. “He went there one week before Prime died and returned home the day after. Just like Martin Vogel and Jimmy Gaines. Look—plane tickets in the name of Michael Fitzwilliam, the bill for a hotel near Termini, cards for restaurants and bars. A receipt for a pair of sunglasses from Salvatore Ferragamo in the Via Condotti.” His grey eyebrows furrowed in bafflement. “Ferragamo don't make men's sunglasses, surely…”
“So we've found one more member of the tontine?” Catherine Bianchi asked.
“It would appear so. Ferragamo…”
“You're right. They don't make men's sunglasses.” Peroni emerged from a spacious walk-in closet with something held almost tenderly across both outstretched arms. It was a set of woman's clothing fresh back from the
cleaners, pressed and spotless inside plastic wrapping. A grey jacket with matching slacks. The same clothes they'd seen worn by the woman who handed a bouquet of flowers, with a gun inside, to Roberto Tonti on the stage by the Palace of Fine Arts. The same clothes apparently worn by the mysterious Carlotta Valdes when she appeared at the apartment of Allan Prime in the Via Giulia.
“He keeps his ladies' things in the same cupboard as his men's stuff. There's makeup and a mirror. This is a bachelor apartment with a difference. Also, there's this…”
He held up a photo of a man in hunting gear, his booted foot propped on a dead deer.
“When he's not wearing lipstick, he likes to go shooting. There's a locked firearms cabinet next door that could house a couple of rifles.”
“OK,” Catherine Bianchi said. “Now I am calling Kelly.”
From the bottom drawer of the desk, Falcone retrieved what appeared to be a plastic garbage bag wrapped with duct tape. He picked up a pair of scissors and cut the fastenings. From within he pulled out something swathed in white tissue paper.
As they watched, he unwrapped the death mask of Dante Alighieri.
The mask seemed very old and fragile, brilliantly lit by the bright Californian sunlight, a place Dante could never have guessed existed. Costa looked at the closed eyes, the face in peace after so much pain, the long, bent nose, the thin-lipped, intelligent mouth, and knew in an instant that it was genuine.
“This is our case, too,” Falcone said with obvious satisfaction. “Call Kelly. Tell him we need an immediate check to find out this individual's real identity, and a discreet distribution of his description.”
He gave her the kind of look he gave policewomen in Rome, one she hadn't seen before.
“I do not want to see this in the media. Not even on a police station wall. If this man can change identities so easily and convincingly, he'll be gone the moment he hears.”
“Yes, sir…” she said caustically. “Anything else?”
Falcone ignored her. Teresa Lupo had returned from the kitchen.