Dante's Numbers nc-7

by David Hewson

  When the credits rolled, she got up anxiously and took her glass into the kitchen. She hadn’t touched it for the entire duration of the movie. Maggie returned with a fresh cocktail, full of ice and lime and booze, in her left hand, and a glass of wine for him in her right.

  “I need a drink after that,” she announced, and sat down, putting just a little distance between them. “Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what I need.” He didn’t reach for the wine.

  Maggie gulped at the vodka, let her head drift back onto the sofa, breathing deeply, as if to calm herself.

  “What does it mean?” she asked, her green eyes suddenly alive with interest.

  That question had never left him from the moment the spectral figure of Madeleine Elster walked across the screen, through a world that seemed so like the one they now inhabited.

  “Perhaps it’s what Teresa said all along. Someone, somewhere is using the movie as a template for what they’re doing. A riddle, a reminder, a taunt … The way the Carabinieri think that Dante is being used. Maybe they’re both right.”

  There was a half smile on her face, and an expectant look. Costa knew he hadn’t said enough.

  “There’s nothing here that could possibly interest the SFPD. I’m a cop like them. We don’t think along these lines. We don’t watch movies for inspiration. Or read books of poetry. We do something real, something concrete and direct. It’s all we know. If a case gets inside your head, that’s usually when it all starts to go wrong.”

  There was another problem, though he didn’t want to say it. There had to be more. Some link, some individual inside Inferno who was the catalyst. Whether what had happened was a simulacrum of The Divine Comedy or Vertigo—or both — some event, some conversation, perhaps recent, perhaps long forgotten, must have given life to the dark, convoluted story that began in the park of the Villa Borghese.

  She moved closer. “Like it went wrong for Scottie? They said he was a good cop. Then along comes a woman who isn’t what she seems …”

  “You could put it that way.”

  “Nic.” Her green eyes shone with bright intelligence. “I was really asking about the movie. What does that mean?”

  “Next to a murder investigation? Nothing.”

  She sighed, disappointed. “What I wanted was for you to tell me about Scottie. About Madeleine. The woman he thought he loved, the woman who didn’t really exist. Then that sad little thing who did exist, who pretended she was Madeleine just because that was what Scottie wanted. That could make him happy, so that he would love her in return.”

  “I don’t know what it’s about,” Costa confessed. “It’s supposed to be enigmatic. Art’s not there to give you answers, not always. Sometimes it’s enough simply to ask a question.”

  “What question?”

  He thought about Scottie and the way he looked at the woman he believed to be Madeleine Elster. How he’d undressed her while she was unconscious after rescuing her at Fort Point. How he waited expectantly by his own bed until she woke, naked, beneath his sheets.

  “I don’t know,” he said again. “Scottie can’t extricate himself from his desire for Madeleine, even though a part of him knows it’s not real. The way he’s always following her, watching, thinking. Hoping. It’s the pursuit of some hopeless fantasy. Like …”

  He felt cold. He felt stupid. He felt more awake — more alive — than at any time since Emily had died.

  “It’s like Dante’s Inferno,” he said, and could feel the revelation rising inside him. “Scottie and Madeleine Elster. Dante and Beatrice. It’s the same story, the same pilgrimage, looking for something important, the most important thing there can be. The big answer. A reason for living.”

  Costa shook his head and laughed. “Why couldn’t I see this before? Vertigo is Inferno. It’s just a different way of looking at the same question. Scottie … Dante … they’re both just Everyman looking for something that makes him whole. Some reason to live.”

  “ ‘I don’t like it … knowing I have to die,’ ” Maggie Flavier said, quoting from the movie in the same quiet, lost voice, one so accurate she might have been the woman they’d just watched on the screen.

  “Do you know what Simon told me once?” she asked in a whisper. “When I asked him what Inferno was really about? Not Tonti’s movie. The poem.”

  “What?”

  “He said it was about knowing you never got to see the truth, to get a glimpse of God, until you’re dead. That everything up to that point is just some kind of preparation, a bunch of beginnings. You live in order to die. One gives meaning to the other. Black and white. Yin and yang. Being and not being.” She snatched at the glass. “But none of it’s up to us, is it?” she asked, and there was a quiet note of bitterness in her voice. “That’s for God, and if we play that role, we lose everything. Scottie tried to make the woman he wanted out of nobody. He tried to play God. In the end, that killed her. A man’s just a man. A woman can only be what she is.”

  “What did you say? When he told you that?”

  “I damn near slapped his face and told him not to be so stupid. I don’t believe in anything except here and now. Don’t ask me to trade that for some kind of hidden grace I only get when I’m dead. Don’t ever do that.”

  The blonde hair extensions he’d seen at the Palace of Fine Arts were there on a low coffee table. She picked them up and held them to her head. There was a movement in her eye, an expression she had somehow picked up from that photo in his wallet, something else he couldn’t define because, unlike her, he’d never consciously noticed …

  Instantly the associations rose for him, ones that were both warm and worrying.

  She wasn’t Emily. She could pretend to be, though. If he wanted.

  “I’m just like the woman in the movie, aren’t I? I can be anything you like. That’s what I do.”

  He felt uneasy; he wondered whether it was time to leave, whether that was even possible.

  “Is that what you’d like, Nic? Would it make things easier?”

  “I want you to be you.”

  She threw the false hair onto the table, brusquely, as if she hated the things. “That’s very noble. What if I don’t know who I am?”

  “Then it’s time to find out.”

  “Doing what? Commercials? Too cheap. Theatre? I’m not good enough. Get them to revive L’Amour L.A. so I can stare into the camera one more time and say, ‘But ’oo can blame Françoise?’ ”

  Her eyes were glassy. This was a conversation she both needed and feared. “Or become one more suburban housewife who used to be something. Getting pointed at in supermarkets while I buy the diapers. Getting pitied. I don’t think so.”

  “Doing whatever you want.”

  She took a deep breath, looked him in the eye, and said, “The only thing I want right now is you. I’ve wanted that ever since the moment I saw you in the park, Nic, looking lost and so sad, not knowing who the hell I was and still wanting to help me, protect me, in spite of all that pain you had inside. That’s never happened before. Something so selfless. Not anything like it. And I’ve seen them all, Nic. The filthy rich, the astonishingly beautiful.” She pushed away the glass on the table. “I’ve been drunk on this shallow little existence since I was thirteen years old. It was only when I got to know you I realised I might as well have been dead all that time. Or a creature from someone’s imagination. Like that woman who pretended to be Madeleine Elster.”

  It had to be said. He couldn’t avoid it. “I’m just a Roman police officer. I do what I do in the place that I know. That won’t change. Not ever. That’s me.”

  “I know,” she replied, still staring at him. “But that’s not what scares you. I scare you. What you think I am. Some being from a different planet. Out of your reach.”

  He felt the need for a drink and reached for the glass of Greco di Tufo. It tasted warm and a little too complex. There were cheaper wines he preferred. Cheaper places than this luxurious apartment in
a city where he didn’t belong. He’d lost track of time. He’d no idea where any of his team were, or whether they’d simply given up on him.

  “I was never much interested in anything that couldn’t last,” he said, and found he couldn’t look at her when he spoke those words.

  “Because of what I am?” she asked. “Some perfect untouchable movie star? Listen to the truth.” She lifted her hands to her face. “This is an accident and maybe not a lucky one. I’m the most flawed, most damaged human being you’re likely to find. I’ve been off the rails more times than you could imagine. I’ve woken up in the wrong place, the wrong bed, so often I don’t even have to blot out the memories anymore, there are so many they do that for themselves. I’m weak and pathetic and stupid. Someone can even poison me with an apple. Remember? Without you I might be dead.”

  “I remember.”

  She got on her knees on the sofa next to him and hitched up her skirt. “Does this look like perfection to you?” she demanded.

  The mark of the hypodermic pen was still livid on her thigh, darkening purple at its centre, yellow at the rim.

  “If I was naked on a set, with a million men pointing lights and cameras at my body, they could cover that with makeup. It doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

  She took his head in her hands. Her eyes were wide and guileless, her fingers felt like fire on his skin. “I bruise, I bleed. I weep. I ache … I need. Just like you.”

  His fingers reached and touched the mark on her leg. Her skin felt soft and warm, like Emily’s, like anyone’s.

  She leaned forward, took his head more firmly, pulled it towards her.

  Her breath was hot and damp in his ear. “You can kiss it better if you want, Nic.”

  His hand spread over her leg without a single, deliberate thought.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  Costa bent down and brushed his lips gently against the mark, then let his tongue touch the warm flesh. She tasted of something sweet: soap and perfume. His fingers ran around her torso and felt the taut, nervous strength there.

  Then he got off the sofa, picked her up in his arms, and carried her into the bedroom. Her frantic kisses covered his neck, his face; her hands worked at his shoulders. Gently he placed her slender frame on the soft white cotton coverlet. She looked at him, pleading in silence, unmoving, arms raised.

  He removed her shirt with a slow, deliberate patience. She was naked beneath. Her hands tore anxiously at his clothes. In the shadows of her bedroom they found each other, not seeing anything else, not caring.

  There hadn’t been many women in his life, and all of them had mattered. But not like this. Maggie Flavier sought something in him he’d never been asked for before, in ways that were utterly new to him.

  He lost count of the times they struggled with each other in the half darkness on a bed so gigantic he couldn’t hear it creak, however physical their efforts. There would never be a time, he thought, when he could forget these moments, the sight of her sighing beneath him. The gentle curves of her legs with their moist dark triangle at the apex, the dark corona of the areola of her breast as she arched above him, straining with a gentle insistence, seeking to prolong the sweetness between them.

  Eventually Costa rolled to one side, closed his eyes, threw back his head against the deep pillow, and laughed.

  She was on her elbow at his side when he looked again, poking at him with a long fingernail. “So it’s funny, is it?”

  “No. It’s ridiculous.”

  “I like the ridiculous. I feel at home there. So will you, one day.” She rolled over and looked at the bedside clock. “It’s nearly ten. What do we do now?” She ran a finger down his navel to his thigh. “Chess?”

  “I haven’t played chess in years …” he began to say.

  The phone rang from somewhere.

  His jacket was strewn on the floor with all his other clothes. He struggled to find it.

  “Oh God,” she groaned. “You really are a cop, aren’t you? I suppose I should be glad this didn’t happen ten minutes ago.”

  “Or ten minutes before. Or ten minutes before that.”

  Costa picked up the phone, sat down on the bed, and said, without thinking, “Pronto.”

  “What?” asked a young, uncertain voice on the other end. “Who is this?”

  “I’m sorry. My name is Nic Costa. I’m Italian. I wasn’t …” He glanced at Maggie, who sat upright with her arms folded, watching him with an expression of mock anger. At least he thought it was mock. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “Please start, Mr. Costa. I need your help.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Tom Black and someone wants to kill me. Be at the viewing platform above Fort Point. Eleven, on the dot. Be alone and for God’s sake tell no one or I’m as good as dead.”

  The call ended abruptly. Costa hit redial. The number was withheld.

  “Who was it?” Maggie asked.

  “He said he was Tom Black. Wants to meet me. The viewing platform above Fort Point.”

  He’d glimpsed the old brick fortress when they’d been sightseeing. The building was half hidden beneath the city footings of the Golden Gate Bridge, like some ancient toy castle discarded by a lost race of giants. It was there that Scottie had fished the supposedly suicidal Madeleine Elster out of San Francisco Bay. The spot seemed so remote and shut off by the great red iron structure above, he’d no idea how it could be reached.

  “How do I get there?”

  “You don’t,” she said very severely. “You tell the police and let them do it. This isn’t Rome. This isn’t your investigation.”

  “I know that. Tom Black’s no idiot. He won’t give himself up if he sees the police there. He’s scared and he wants to talk. With me for some reason.”

  “Nic …”

  “If he disappears this time, we may never see him again.”

  She swore and gave him an evil look. Then she said, “Get on 101 as if you want to go over the bridge. Just before you do, there’s a turnoff to the right with a parking lot.”

  “How public is it?”

  “You’re right next to the Golden Gate Bridge. There’ll be traffic.” She hunched her arms around herself. Naked, she seemed smaller somehow, and vulnerable. “But not much if you turn off the road, I guess.”

  She took his hand. “Nic — don’t go. Stay here with me. We can drink wine and play chess. Leave this to someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “Anyone. I don’t care.”

  He couldn’t read the expression on her face.

  The hot, human scent of sex hung around them, along with that sense of both embarrassment and elation he’d come to recognise when life took a turn like this. Something had changed in a subtle and mysterious way. The barriers were tumbling down, like leaves caught in an autumn storm. A part of him, he knew, wanted to run.

  Costa gripped her fingers, then kissed her damp forehead.

  “Stay here, Maggie. I’ll call,” he promised.

  8

  Jimmy Gaines smoked three cigarettes by the redwood tree, none of them quickly. As darkness fell, a waxy yellow half-moon began to emerge above the forest, and the dense wilderness became drowned in a cacophony of new sounds: birds and animals, insects and distant wild calls Frank Boynton couldn’t begin to name. He and his brother watched everything like hawks. More than anything, they sought to measure every breath of the man by the tree. Or perhaps, he reflected, they were simply counting away their own.

  Without Gaines noticing, the two had talked together in low tones, about the lay of the land and the limited possibilities ahead of them. Somewhere at their backs they could hear motor vehicles passing through Muir Woods. Not many. This was a deserted part of the forest, and their number had diminished as day turned to night. But there was a road somewhere back there up the slope. Both men were sure of that.

  In the opposite direction, downhill, beyond the sequoia trees looming opposite their capt
or, was, Hank said, a steep, sheer drop, one he’d seen as they arrived. Frank had never noticed. He’d been too worried by that stage to take much notice of anything except Jimmy Gaines. Now, though, thanks to his brother’s acuity, he could tell the drop was there by the way the just-visible foliage faded to nothing in the mid-distance, and from the faint sound of running water somewhere distant and below. There was a creek maybe. It was difficult to tell. Even more difficult as dusk gave way to the pale sheen of the moon, which made the area beneath the high, dense tree cover seem even blacker than before.

  Neither man felt at home in the forest. All they had between them were two small flashlights and some vague idea of where the road might be. That would have to be enough. If they could escape Jimmy Gaines and his old black gun, they would head uphill, back towards the Lost Trail, then try to find headlights that might lead them back to the city and civilisation.

  If …

  Jimmy Gaines threw his last cigarette into the black void ahead of him, where it vanished like a firefly on speed. Then he came tearing towards them, swearing and stomping his big boots on the damp, mossy ground.

  “Why can’t you keep your noses out of things that don’t concern you?” the old fireman demanded.

  The gun was in his right hand. Hank had cut both their sets of ropes and left them there so Gaines wouldn’t see what had happened. Frank wondered whether that mattered so much. A gun was a gun.

  “We’re sorry, Jimmy,” Frank said. “We didn’t know.”

  “But you still came looking!”

  “Blame me.” Frank nodded at his brother. “Not him. He’s not very bright. Besides, it was always me who got to you. You don’t need to bring Hank into this.”

  “Hank, Frank, Tweedledee, Tweedledum …” The gun was getting higher and starting to look more purposeful. “You’re both the same. What business of yours is it, anyway, what Tom and me get up to? He’s a good guy. It was Josh who got him into all this shit. Josh and them.”

  “What shit?” Hank asked.