by David Hewson
“Perry Como,” Peroni suggested. “ ‘Hot Diggity, Dog Ziggity Boom.’ ”
Their guide looked bewildered for a moment, then pointed. “Josh’s and Tom’s offices are over there. I will leave you three now before whatever time machine you own drags me back to the Ice Age, too.”
The big cop watched him leave.
“What’s the kid’s beef? Pierino Como was a fine Italian American.”
“The kid belongs to a superior race,” Catherine guessed, then held out her hand to Josh Jonah and Tom Black. Both were approaching, Black a foot or two behind his partner.
Neither looked welcoming.
“What’s this about?” Jonah wanted to know.
“Security,” she said, promptly. “Yours. Ours. The movie. The people.” She smiled. “And the stuff. You do understand the stuff is important, too, don’t you, Josh? My Italian friends have lost a very important museum exhibit already. They don’t want to lose any more.”
Peroni considered this strange couple. Skinny, moody, arrogant, with his long, carefully coiffured fair hair, Jonah seemed to be just the type who’d be running a company like Lukatmi. Student on the outside, shark on the in. Tom Black, though … he wasn’t so sure. They’d run through some profiles before arriving. The two of them had met at college, Stanford. Black was the coding genius, Jonah the business visionary. A complementary mix, left side of brain meets right side, or so the glowing profiles claimed. Untold wealth ensued. But did that mean they liked one another? Peroni saw no sign of it. These two men had just turned twenty-three and were, at that moment, worth more than a billion dollars each, with much, much more in prospect if they managed to “grow the company,” as the papers put it, or sell the business on a high. Not that it seemed to be making them happy just at the moment.
“How’s Maggie?” Tom Black asked.
“We know no more about Miss Flavier than you’ve seen on TV,” Falcone told him.
“Don’t give me that,” Jonah moaned. “That was your guy with her.”
“When they …” Black added, before stopping awkwardly.
“If you don’t know about Maggie,” Jonah went on, “what the hell are you here for?”
He barked at a passing female employee to fetch him a coffee. Lukatmi didn’t look much like a new-age politically correct do-no-evil-to-anyone corporation to Peroni. He’d seen bosses in Italy treat women staff that way — and get their heads chewed off in return.
“Sorry,” Tom Black told them. “This is a bad time for us. Allan’s murder … The movie. How it got out onto the web … We’re working to make sure it can’t hit us again.”
“How did it happen in the first place?” Peroni asked.
Jonah stepped in to field the question. “In ways you people never could understand. Ask the SFPD tech team. It was no failure on our part. Not even on our network. Some dumb third-party supplier. Bryant Street and the Carabinieri have their names. We’ll wind up suing the shit out of them. Or taking their business.” His hand made a dismissive sweep through the cold office air. “That crap could have happened to anyone. Microsoft. Google. We were not to blame, and if anyone says so, they can talk to our lawyers.”
He took the coffee off the woman who brought it and didn’t even acknowledge her presence.
“Lukatmi is a busy corporation,” Jonah insisted. “All that old junk at the exhibition … that’s got nothing to do with us. We’re investors in Inferno. We have a fiduciary interest in its success. That does not extend to any crap you brought with you from Italy.” He glanced at his watch, theatrically. “Now if you don’t mind … I’ll have someone show you out.”
“What do the investors think?” Catherine Bianchi asked.
Josh Jonah’s face froze. “Our investors are looking at a return on their money of between sixty and a thousand percent, depending on when they came in,” he replied sharply. “How would you feel in that situation?”
“Nervous. That’s paper money. The only way you can get your hands on it is to sell now. If you do that, you lose on any upside that comes after. You guys are getting big. Maybe you’re the next Google …”
“Google …” Black sighed. “That comparison is getting so tired.”
“Why?” Catherine Bianchi demanded. “Because they’re not in the red?”
The two young men stayed silent.
“You’re buying yourselves Ferraris on dream dust,” she went on. “I talked to an analyst buddy. He told me you’re four, six quarters away from reporting anything close to a real profit. And even that’s just speculation.”
“Analysts …” Jonah mumbled, and scratched his head.
Black cleared his throat, like someone starting a lecture. “You can’t apply old-world economics to what we do. You can’t gauge our value on a spreadsheet. Those days are past. Those people are past.”
She wasn’t budging. “Even in the new world, you have shareholders, Tom. They’ll still want to recoup their investment at some point, and after the last crash, they know they can’t do that out of thin air.”
Peroni realised he was starting to like Catherine Bianchi a lot. She hadn’t mentioned a word of this before they went in.
“That’s your real fiduciary duty,” she persisted. “To the people who own your stock. That’s your legal duty. Unless you think the law’s just so …” She waved her hands, did a woozy hippie look. “… like twentieth century, man.”
“Your analyst buddy tell you anything else?” Jonah asked.
She walked up and stood very close to him. “He said there’s a bunch of shareholders looking at a class action right now. Seems they didn’t know about you investing their money in a movie. They claim it was unapproved and illegal to cut a deal like that from the funds you were raising to develop Lukatmi. When that lawsuit lands on your desk, your stock could go forty, sixty … maybe two hundred percent south. If that happens, anyone could stroll through the door and pick you up for a song. You’re walking a tightrope and I think you’re hoping Inferno will keep you upright. Maybe it will. Maybe not.”
Josh Jonah pointed to the exit. “You can walk there or I can get someone to walk you.”
With that he turned on his heel, and Tom Black, stuttering apologies, did the same. They watched the two men return to their gigantic executive fish tank overlooking the Bay.
The geek who’d been eating the pond weed sandwich showed them to the door without saying a single word. The day was a little warmer when they got outside.
“So that’s why you made captain,” Peroni declared, and shook Catherine’s hand.
Falcone was beaming like a teenager in love. “It’s nearly two. Time for a late lunch,” he announced. “Somewhere good. Fish, I think. Perhaps even a glass of wine. Then I have to call Nic.”
“That would be nice, Leo. But I have a police station to run.”
“Dinner then.”
She looked at him. Then she said, “You can be very importunate sometimes.”
Peroni watched in awe as the merest shadow of a blush rose on Falcone’s cheeks.
“It was just an idea. I’m on my own. You …”
“I have a million friends, some of whom think they’re more than that.” She wrinkled her nose. “OK — you’re on for dinner. But you behave. No wandering around SoMa. No getting near Martin Vogel. That’s the deal. Gerald Kelly is a good guy. He might do you a favour one day. If you don’t jerk his chain again. Agreed?”
“That’s the deal,” the inspector replied with a little too much enthusiasm, then glanced back at the Lukatmi building, with its vast multiarmed logo over the hall. “They’re desperate, aren’t they?”
“They’re a couple of naive kids drowning in so much money they can’t count it. They don’t know what’s around the corner. Of course they’re desperate. It doesn’t mean …”
She reached into her handbag and took out a band. Then she fastened back her hair. Catherine Bianchi looked more serious, more businesslike, that way. It was her office look, the signal t
hat she was preparing to go back into the Greenwich Street Police Station and get on with the job.
“My dad worked in a repair shop. He taught me that mechanics matter. A lot sometimes. Arranging for Allan Prime to be abducted. Getting all that equipment into that little gallery where he died. Sure, these two geeks could point a camera in his face and put it on the web. But the physical part … finding that penniless actor and getting him to threaten Maggie in the park. Coming at her again here with a poisoned apple. I don’t see it, somehow.”
“Jonah could do it,” Peroni suggested.
“He’d like to think so. But then, he’d like to think he could run the world. I’d hate to be around if he got the chance to try. Now you go guard your old ‘junk.’ And stay out of trouble.”
“This analyst?” Falcone asked tentatively. “He’s a … friend? Nothing more?”
Catherine threw her head back and laughed. “He’s an imaginary friend. I made it all up just to see what happened. Companies like Lukatmi come and go. If they don’t have someone preparing a class somewhere, they’re probably out of business anyway.”
“Oh,” Falcone said softly, then put a finger to his cheek and fell silent.
“Can I drop you somewhere?” Catherine asked. “Such as the Palace of Fine Arts and that exhibition you’re supposed to be guarding?”
“We can walk,” Falcone answered. “We need the fresh air. But thank you.”
6
The Park Hill sanatorium was located in an old mansion on Buena Vista Avenue, opposite a quiet green space overlooking the city. Costa drove lazily through Haight-Ashbury to get there, then parked two blocks away on a steep hillside street. The staff entrance was around the corner. From the ground-floor hall, he could see that the front of the building was besieged by reporters and cameramen, the road choked with live TV broadcast vans. Baffled residents of this wealthy, calm suburb walked past shaking their heads, many with immaculately trimmed pedigreed dogs attached to long leads. This wasn’t the kind of scene owners or animals were used to witnessing. They probably preferred it on TV, beamed from somewhere else, distant, visible but out of reach. Costa felt grateful that Catherine Bianchi had called ahead to make arrangements for him to enter by a different door. Otherwise, he knew, he’d have been forced to run the gamut of the media mob.
Maggie had been transferred to Park Hill Sanatorium after several hours in the ER of a private hospital in the centre of the city. The corridors resembled those of a fine hotel, not any medical institution he’d entered. Vases of fresh flowers stood in every corner and alcove, piped music sang discreetly in the corridors. Smiling white-clad staff wandered around nonchalantly. He found it impossible to imagine anything more distant than this place from the chaos and crush of a Roman public hospital. The rich and famous lived differently. Somehow that thought had not occurred to him during the brief time he had known her. Beauty and fame apart, Maggie seemed … ordinary was the word that first occurred to him as he walked to her room, carrying a twenty-dollar bouquet of roses.
Yet he couldn’t get out of his head the image of her standing in front of the paintings in the Legion of Honor, choosing which one — which woman from the past, from someone else’s imagination — she would select for her next role. Maggie Flavier enjoyed being possessed in this way because for a few months or, in the case of Inferno, more, she no longer had to deal with the difficult task of defining her own identity. In the skin of others, she was free to escape the drudgery of everyday existence, the old, unanswerable questions: who am I, and why am I here?
The questions Costa asked himself every day. The ones that made him feel alive. He couldn’t begin to understand why she avoided them with such relentless deliberation. All he felt sure of was that she was aware of this act of self-deception, acutely, for every minute of the performance.
She was beneath the sheets of a large double bed, propped up on pillows next to a wall filled with flowers. The room was large and flooded with light; the window behind her opened onto a gorgeous vista of the skyline of downtown San Francisco and the ocean beyond. Simon Harvey sat on a chair by her side, holding her hand, staring into her tired green eyes with an expression that managed to combine both sympathy and some sense of ownership. Her hair was still blonde, though it now seemed dull and shapeless.
“Nic,” Maggie said, smiling warmly at his appearance.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You didn’t,” Maggie said quietly. “Simon’s an old friend. We did a movie together in the Caribbean. When was it …”
“Five years ago,” Harvey answered, releasing her hand, still not looking in Costa’s direction. The publicist seemed different in America — more at home, more powerful. In Rome he’d appeared a tangential, almost servile figure, running round the set at Cinecittà doing the bidding of anyone who called, Tonti or Bonetti or even Allan Prime. Here, in Maggie’s room, he didn’t look like the kind of man to take orders. “Piece of derivative pirate crap posing as art-house. It bombed. At least we got paid. Not everyone did.”
Harvey stood. He seemed bigger somehow in the bright, hard California light streaming through the long windows.
“I don’t know whether I should shake you by the hand or punch you in the mouth. If it wasn’t for you, Maggie might not be alive. And she might not have gotten into this situation to begin with. What do you think?”
“I wouldn’t advise the second. It would be impolite, and I can’t imagine anyone in the publicity business would want that.”
“You’re a smart-ass, Costa. Maybe you can get away with that in Rome. You won’t get away with it here. Remember that when you need me.”
“Simon,” Maggie protested, “will you stop being so rude? I told you a million times — it was my idea to play hooky from all that tedium at the exhibition. If you want to blame someone, blame me.”
“I do. And him. The pair of you.” He extended his hand to Costa. “But Maggie’s alive and I’m grateful for that. And now the two of you are all over the papers. So I have a professional interest, too.”
His grip was firm and powerful.
“Not in me you don’t,” Costa said.
“Please,” Maggie implored him. “Sit down, Nic. Hear Simon out.” She looked at him and Costa couldn’t interpret what was in her eyes. Dependence? Fear? “He’s my publicist, too. Not just the movie’s. My advisor. I need you to listen to him.”
Costa sat down on the end of the bed and said, “But first I need you to tell me how you are. That’s why I came here.”
The actress leaned back against the pillows. Her face fell into the shadow cast by the long drapes.
“I’m exhausted, my head hurts, I’m full of dope and glucose. I’ve had worse hangovers.” A scowl creased her half-hidden face. “It was an allergy, that’s all. All I needed was a shot — and thanks to you, that happened — and I’ll be fine. They say I can leave here soon. The premiere’s next Thursday. I’ll be fine for that.”
“Why the rush?”
“What kind of business do you think this is?” Harvey demanded. “Get up at ten, work for an hour, then go home and party? Celebrity never stops. Not for weekends. Not for sickness. Not for anything.”
“I understand that.”
Maggie shook her head. “No, you don’t. No one can. Not until it happens.”
“You don’t even escape it when you’re dead,” Harvey said. “Josh Jonah’s people are looking at outtake footage of Allan Prime right now, seeing what they can CGI for the sequel. That’s going to be an interesting one for the money men. Who gets the fee?”
“What?” Costa was unable to comprehend what he was saying.
“There’s going to be a second Inferno,” Maggie told him. “They’ll work up Allan’s outtakes on computers.”
“God knows what the story line’s going to be,” Harvey barked with mirthless laughter. “How many circles can Hell have? Mind you, Roberto didn’t bother so much with that for the original. Why worry now? After what�
�s happened, all the publicity, the interest … Inferno’s no longer just a movie. It’s becoming an obsession. And that could mean a franchise. A brand. Like Sony or McDonald’s or Leonardo da Vinci. They could get eight years, maybe even a decade out of this. With or without Tonti. Or any of us. When something’s this big, no one’s indispensable.”
The publicist took Maggie’s hand again. “And she — my friend and my client — is going to be a part of that brand. I’m going to make sure of that. A precious and important part. If we handle this story about the two of you right, it works in everyone’s favour. Maggie’s. Yours. The movie’s—”
“I am not your client,” Costa interrupted, suddenly angry. “I am not in your business.”
“You are now,” Harvey retorted. “Don’t you get it? The moment those pictures of you two appeared in the papers, you lost everything you ever had. Your privacy. Your identity. Your soul. It’s all out there …” He pointed to the window. “You’ve just become the livelihood of people you wouldn’t wish on a dog. They feed their kids off you, they take their wives and their mistresses out to dinner on what you make for them. Break that deal …”
“There is no deal. This has nothing to do with me.”
“As if you have a choice! It’s too late for that. You’re part of the story. Screw with my client’s ability to fulfill her potential and”—Harvey bunched a fist and shook it in Costa’s face—“you will answer to me. Capisce, Soverintendente?”
“An intelligent man spends a year in Rome,” Costa observed without emotion, “and still your accent sounds like that of a bad actor in a cheap gangster movie.”
“Don’t push me …”
“Will you both shut up! Will you …?”
She had her hands to her ears. Her face spoke of pain and fatigue. Costa felt something elemental tug at his heart, an emotion he hadn’t known since Emily was alive. Guilt mingled with a deep, intense sense of misgiving about what might lie ahead.
“I was beginning to feel better until you two started screaming at each other,” she moaned, real tears in her eyes. “What the hell gave you the right to walk in here and start bawling each other out like a couple of teenagers?”