Scenarios nd-29

by Bill Pronzini

  Another pause. "Is it really necessary?"

  "I think it is, yes,"

  An even longer pause. But then he didn't argue, didn't say anything else just buzzed me in.

  His apartment was on the left, beyond a carpeted, dark-wood staircase. He opened the door as I approached it. Mid-forties, short, rotund, with a nose like a blob of putty and a Friar Tuck fringe of reddish hair. And a bruise on his left cheekbone, a cut along the right corner of his mouth. The marks weren't fresh, but then they weren't very old either. Twenty-four hours, maybe less.

  He didn't ask to see a police ID; if he had I would have told him immediately that I was a private detective, because nothing can lose you a California investigator's license faster than impersonating a police officer. On the other hand, you can't be held accountable for somebody's false assumption. Ferry gave me a nervous once-over, holding his head tilted downward as if that would keep me from seeing his bruise and cut, then stood aside to let me come in.

  The front room was neat, furnished in a self-consciously masculine fashion: dark woods, leather, expensive sporting prints. It reeked of leather, dust, and his lime-scented cologne.

  As soon as he shut the door Ferry went straight to a liquor cabinet and poured himself three fingers of Jack Daniels, no water or mix, no ice. Just holding the drink seemed to give him courage. He said, "So. What is it you want to know?"

  "Why you dropped your complaint against Gianna Fornessi."

  "I explained to Inspector Cullen…"

  "Explain to me, if you don't mind."

  He had some of the sour mash. "Well, it was all a mistake just a silly mistake. She didn't take the money after all."

  "You know who did take it, then?"

  "Nobody took it. I… misplaced it."

  "Misplaced it. Uh-huh."

  "I thought it was in my desk," Ferry said. "That's where I usually keep the cash I bring home. But I'd put it in my safe deposit box along with some other papers, without realizing it. It was in an envelope, you see, and the envelope got mixed up with the other papers."

  "Two thousand dollars is a lot of cash to keep at home. You make a habit of that sort of thing?"

  "In my business…" The rest of the sentence seemed to hang up in his throat; he oiled the route with the rest of his drink. "In my business I need to keep a certain amount of cash on hand, both here and at the office. The amount I keep here isn't usually as large as two thousand dollars, but I-"

  "What business are you in, Mr. Ferry?"

  "I run a temp employment agency for domestics."

  "Temp?"

  "Short for temporary," he said. "I supply domestics for part-time work in offices and private homes. A lot of them are poor, don't have checking accounts, so they prefer to be paid in cash. Most come to the office, but a few-"

  "Why did you think Gianna Fornessi had stolen the two thousand dollars?"

  "What?"

  "Why Gianna Fornessi? Why not somebody else?"

  "She's the only one who was here. Before I thought the money was missing, I mean. I had no other visitors for two days and there wasn't any evidence of a break-in."

  "You and she are good friends, then?"

  "Well… no, not really. She's a lot younger.

  "Then why was she here?"

  "The rent," Ferry said. "She was paying her rent for the month. I'm the building manager, I collect for the owner. Before I could write out a receipt I had a call, I was on the phone for quite a while and she… I didn't pay any attention to her and I thought she must have… you see why I thought she'd taken the money?"

  I was silent.

  He looked at me, looked at his empty glass, licked his lips, and went to commune with Jack Daniels again.

  While he was pouring I asked him, "What happened to your face, Mr. Ferry?"

  His hand twitched enough to clink bottle against glass. He had himself another taste before he turned back to me. "Clumsy," he said, "I'm clumsy as hell. I fell down the stairs, the front stairs, yesterday morning." He tried a laugh that didn't come off. "Fog makes the steps slippery. I just wasn't watching where I was going."

  "Looks to me like somebody hit you."

  "Hit me? No, I told you… I fell down the stairs."

  "You're sure about that?"

  "Of course I'm sure. Why would I lie about it?"

  That was a good question. Why would he lie about that, and about all the rest of it too? There was about as much truth in what he'd told me as there is value in a chunk of fool's gold.

  3

  The young woman who opened the door of apartment #4 was not Gianna Fornessi. She was blonde, with the kind of fresh-faced Nordic features you see on models for Norwegian ski wear. Tall and slender in a pair of green silk lounging pajamas; arms decorated with hammered gold bracelets, ears with dangly gold triangles. Judging from the expression in her pale eyes, there wasn't much going on behind them. But then, with her physical attributes, not many men would care if her entire brain had been surgically removed.

  "Well," she said, "hello."

  "Ashley Hansen?"

  "That's me. Who're you?"

  When I told her my name her smile brightened, as if I'd said something amusing or clever. Or maybe she just liked the sound of it.

  "I knew right away you were Italian," she said. "Are you a friend of Jack's?"

  "Jack?"

  "Jack Bisconte." The smile dulled a little. "You are, aren't you?"

  "No," I said, "I'm a friend of Pietro Lombardi."

  "Who?"

  "Your roommate's grandfather. I'd like to talk to Gianna, if she's home."

  Ashley Hansen's smile was gone now; her whole demeanor had changed, become less self-assured. She nibbled at a corner of her lower lip, ran a hand through her hair, fiddled with one of her bracelets. Finally she said, "Gianna isn't here."

  "When will she be back?"

  "She didn't say."

  "You know where I can find her?"

  "No. What do you want to talk to her about?"

  "The complaint George Ferry filed against her."

  "Oh, that," she said. "That's all been taken care of."

  "I know. I just talked to Ferry."

  "He's a creepy little prick, isn't he?"

  "That's one way of putting it."

  "Gianna didn't take his money. He was just trying to hassle her, that's all."

  "Why would he do that?"

  "Well, why do you think?"

  I shrugged. "Suppose you tell me."

  "He wanted her to do things."

  "You mean go to bed with him?"

  "Things," she said. "Kinky crap, real kinky."

  "And she wouldn't have anything to do with him."

  "No way, Jose. What a creep."

  "So he made up the story about the stolen money to get back at her, is that it?"

  "That's it."

  "What made him change his mind, drop the charges?"

  "He didn't tell you?"

  "No."

  "Who knows?" She laughed. "Maybe he got religion."

  "Or a couple of smacks in the face."

  "Huh?"

  "Somebody worked him over yesterday," I said. "Bruised his cheek and cut his mouth. You have any idea who?"

  "Not me, mister. How come you're so interested, anyway?"

  "I told you, I'm a friend of Gianna's grandfather."

  "Yeah, well."

  "Gianna have a boyfriend, does she?"

  "… Why do you want to know that?"

  "Jack Bisconte, maybe? Or is he yours?"

  "He's just somebody I know." She nibbled at her lip again, did some more fiddling with her bracelets. "Look, I've got to go. You want me to tell Gianna you were here?"

  "Yes." I handed her one of my business cards. "Give her this and ask her to call me."

  She looked at the card; blinked at it and then blinked at me.

  "You… you're a detective?"

  "That's right."

  "My God," she said, and backed off, and shut t
he door in my face.

  I stood there for a few seconds, remembering her eyes-the sudden fear in her eyes when she'd realized she had been talking to a detective.

  What the hell?

  4

  North Beach used to be the place you went when you wanted pasta fino, espresso and biscotti, conversation about la dolce vita and Il patria d'Italia. Not anymore. There are still plenty of Italians in North Beach, and you can still get the good food and some of the good conversation; but their turf continues to shrink a little more each year, and despite the best efforts of the entrepreneurial new immigrants, the vitality and most of the Old World atmosphere are just memories.

  The Chinese are partly responsible, not that you can blame them for buying available North Beach real estate when Chinatown, to the west, began to burst its boundaries. Another culprit is the Bohemian element that took over upper Grant Avenue in the fifties, paving the way for the hippies and the introduction of hard drugs in the sixties, which in turn paved the way for the jolly current mix of motorcycle toughs, aging hippies, coke and crack dealers, and the pimps and small-time crooks who work the flesh palaces along lower Broadway. Those "Silicone Alley" nightclubs, made famous by Carol Doda in the late sixties, also share responsibility: they added a smutty leer to the gaiety of North Beach, turned the heart of it into a ghetto.

  Parts of the neighborhood, particularly those up around Coit Tower where Gianna Fornessi lived, are still prime city real estate; and the area around Washington Square Park, il giardino to the original immigrants, is where the city's literati now congregates. Here and there, too, you can still get a sense of what it was like in the old days. But most of the landmarks are gone-Enrico's, Vanessi's, The Bocce Ball where you could hear mustachioed waiters in gondolier costumes singing arias from operas by Verdi and Puccini-and so is most of the flavor. North Beach is oddly tasteless now, like a week-old mostaccioli made without good spices or garlic. And that is another thing that is all but gone: twenty-five years ago you could not get within a thousand yards of North Beach without picking up the fine, rich fragrance of garlic. Nowadays you're much more likely to smell fried egg roll and the sour stench of somebody's garbage.

  Parking in the Beach is the worst in the city; on weekends you can drive around its hilly streets for hours without finding a legal parking space. So today, in the perverse way of things, I found a spot waiting for me when I came down Stockton.

  In a public telephone booth near Washington Square Park I discovered a second minor miracle: a directory that had yet to be either stolen or mutilated. The only Bisconte listed was Bisconte Florist Shop, with an address on upper Grant a few blocks away. I took myself off in that direction, through the usual good-weather Sunday crowds of locals and gawking sightseers and drifting homeless.

  Upper Grant, like the rest of the area, has changed drastically over the past few decades. Once a rock-ribbed Little Italy, it has become an ethnic mixed bag: Italian markets, trattorias, pizza parlors, bakeries cheek by jowl with Chinese sewing-machine sweat shops, food and herb vendors, and fortune-cookie companies. But most of the faces on the streets are Asian and most of the apartments in the vicinity are occupied by Chinese.

  The Bisconte Florist Shop was a hole-in-the-wall near Filbert, sandwiched between an Italian saloon and the Sip Hing Herb Company. It was open for business, not surprisingly on a Sunday in this neighborhood: tourists buy flowers too, given the opportunity.

  The front part of the shop was cramped and jungly with cut flowers, ferns, plants in pots and hanging baskets. A small glass-fronted cooler contained a variety of roses and orchids. There was nobody in sight, but a bell had gone off when I entered and a male voice from beyond a rear doorway called, "Be right with you." I shut the door, went up near the counter. Some people like florist shops; I don't. All of them have the same damp, cloyingly sweet smell that reminds me of funeral parlors; of my mother in her casket at the Figlia Brothers Mortuary in Daly City nearly forty years ago. That day, with all its smells, all its painful images, is as clear to me now as if it were yesterday.

  I had been waiting about a minute when the voice's owner came out of the back room. Late thirties, dark, on the beefy side; wearing a professional smile and a floral patterned apron that should have been ludicrous on a man of his size and coloring but wasn't. We had a good look at each other before he said, "Sorry to keep you waiting-I was putting up an arrangement. What can I do for you?"

  "Mr. Bisconte? Jack Bisconte?"

  "That's me. Something for the wife maybe?"

  "I'm not here for flowers. I'd like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind."

  The smile didn't waver. "Oh? What about?"

  "Gianna Fornessi."

  "Who?"

  "You don't know her?"

  "Name's not familiar, no."

  "She lives up on Chestnut with Ashley Hansen."

  "Ashley Hansen… I don't know that name either."

  "She knows you. Young, blonde, looks Norwegian."

  "Well, I know a lot of young blondes," Bisconte said. He winked at me. "I'm a bachelor and I get around pretty good, you know?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Lot of bars and clubs in North Beach, lot of women to pick and choose from." He shrugged. "So how come you're asking about these two?"

  "Not both of them. Just Gianna Fornessi."

  "That so? You a friend of hers?"

  "Of her grandfather's. She's had a little trouble."

  "What kind of trouble?"

  "Manager of her building accused her of stealing some money. But somebody convinced him to drop the charges."

  "That so?" Bisconte said again, but not as if he cared.

  "Leaned on him to do it. Scared the hell out of him."

  "You don't think it was me, do you? I told you, I don't know anybody named Gianna Fornessi."

  "So you did."

  "What's the big deal anyway?" he said. "I mean, if the guy dropped the charges, then this Gianna is off the hook, right?"

  "Right."

  "Then why all the questions?"

  "Curiosity," I said. "Mine and her grandfather's."

  Another shrug. "I'd like to help you, pal, but like I said, I don't know the lady. Sorry."

  "Sure."

  "Come back any time you need flowers," Bisconte said. He gave me a little salute, waited for me to turn and then did the same himself. He was hidden away again in the back room when I let myself out.

  Today was my day for liars. Liars and puzzles.

  He hadn't asked me who I was or what I did for a living; that was because he already knew. And the way he knew, I thought, was that Ashley Hansen had gotten on the horn after I left and told him about me. He knew Gianna Fornessi pretty well too, and exactly where the two women lived.

  He was the man in the tan trench coat I'd seen earlier, the one who wouldn't hold the door for me at 725 °Chestnut.

  5

  I treated myself to a plate of linguine and fresh clams at a ristorante off Washington Square and then drove back over to Aquatic Park. Now, in mid-afternoon, with fog seeping in through the Gate and the temperature dropping sharply, the number of bocce players and kibitzers had thinned by half. Pietro Lombardi was one of those remaining; Dominick Marra was another. Bocce may be dying easy in the city but not in men like them. They cling to it and to the other old ways as tenaciously as they cling to life itself.

  I told Pietro-and Dominick, who wasn't about to let us talk in private-what I'd learned so far. He was relieved that Ferry had dropped his complaint, but just as curious as I was about the Jack Bisconte connection.

  "Do you know Bisconte?" I asked him.

  "No. I see his shop but I never go inside."

  "Know anything about him?"

  " Niente."

  "How about you, Dominick?"

  He shook his head. "He's too old for Gianna, hah? Almost forty, you say-that's too old for girl twenty-three."

  "If that's their relationship," I said.

  "Men almost forty
they go after young woman, they only got one reason. Fatto 'na bella chiavata. You remember, eh, Pietro?"

  " Pazzo! You think I forget 'na bella chiavata? "

  I asked Pietro, "You know anything about Gianna's roommate?"

  "Only once I meet her," he said. "Pretty, but not so pretty like my Gianna, la bellezza delle bellezze. I don't like her too much."

  "Why not?"

  "She don't have respect like she should."

  "What does she do for a living, do you know?"

  "No. She don't say and Gianna don't tell me."

  "How long have they been sharing the apartment?"

  "Eight, nine months."

  "Did they know each other long before they moved in together?"

  He shrugged. "Gianna and me, we don't talk much like when she's little girl," he said sadly. "Young people now, they got no time for la familia." Another shrug, a sigh. " Ognuno pensa per se," he said. Everybody thinks only of himself.

  Dominick gripped his shoulder. Then he said to me, "You find out what's happen with Bisconte and Ferry and those girls. Then you see they don't bother them no more. Hah?"

  "If I can, Dominick. If I can."

  The fog was coming in thickly now and the other players were making noises about ending the day's tournament. Dominick got into an argument with one of them; he wanted to play another game or two. He was outvoted, but he was still pleading his case when I left. Their Sunday was almost over. So was mine.

  I went home to my flat in Pacific Heights. And Kerry came over later on and we had dinner and listened to some jazz. I thought maybe Gianna Fornessi might call but she didn't. No one called. Good thing, too. I would not have been pleased to hear the phone ring after eight o'clock; I was busy then.

  Men in their late fifties are just as interested in 'na bella chiavata. Women in their early forties, too.

  6

  At the office in the morning I called TRW for credit checks on Jack Bisconte, George Ferry, Gianna Fornessi, and Ashley Hansen. I also asked my partner, Eberhardt, who has been off the cops just a few years and who still has plenty of cronies sprinkled throughout the SFPD, to find out what Inspector Cullen and the Robbery Detail had on Ferry's theft complaint, and to have the four names run through R amp;I for any local arrest record.