Dante's Numbers nc-7

by David Hewson

  The gun rose and pointed at his head.

  “There you go again,” Gaines moaned. “Mouth on overdrive. I suppose you think I might as well tell you now it doesn’t matter. All this movie shit. Those bastards from Hollywood who ate those two kids up and spat them out. They were doing OK when they just stuck to being computer geeks. Somebody would’ve come along and bought the company when the money ran out. They didn’t need to move in those damned circles …”

  The weapon wavered.

  “It’s got nothing to do with us,” Frank agreed mildly. “Our Italian lady said she could help Tom. That’s all. So we thought maybe …”

  Gaines let out a despairing wheeze. “I don’t want to die in jail. I don’t deserve that. I was just looking for a little security when I retired. That and a little companionship.”

  “We won’t tell them,” Frank insisted.

  “We don’t even know what’s going on, do we?” Hank asked meekly. “We just thought we were doing your friend a favour, Jimmy. Hasn’t he gone to see our nice Italian lady?”

  “Never mind where he’s gone. None of your business.”

  “I couldn’t agree more there, Jimmy,” Frank said. “But she’s going to think it’s a little odd if Hank and I don’t turn up for our regular coffee tomorrow morning. She’s like us. Inquisitive.”

  Gaines moved and a shaft of moonlight caught his face. It was taut, anxious, locked in something close to a snarl.

  “As if I don’t know you two. Always the smart-asses. You wouldn’t tell someone what you were doing before you went out and did it. Not if you figured you’d get some brownie points at the end when you turned round and said, ‘Look at us. Look at the Boynton brothers. Look what clever bastards we are.’ ” He bent and leered in Frank’s face. “You didn’t tell her where you were going, did you? Or any of this stuff. Admit it. You were always lousy liars, both of you. Don’t try that on me. I’ve known you too long.”

  “We didn’t tell her,” Frank agreed. “All the same … two and two.”

  “Screw two and two. If Tom can get a few days free once he’s spoken to the police, that’s all we need. We’ll be gone. They say Laos is nice.” He grimaced. “If that jerk Jonah hadn’t locked up the money so tight, we’d be gone by now anyway.” He laughed, not pleasantly. “I owe you that, boys. You provided us with a way out. It’s a pity …”

  The gun arced through the air, from Frank to Hank and back again. To give Jimmy his due, he didn’t look keen on any of this. “Tell you what. Let me do you one last favour. You choose who gets to go first.”

  “Him,” Hank said promptly, nodding at his brother. “He got to come into this world seven minutes before me. Only right I get to even things up a little. After … we could talk.”

  “What?” Frank bellowed with heartfelt outrage. “What? Because I’m seven minutes older?”

  Hank screwed round trying to look at him. “It’s only fair. Given the circumstances and everything.”

  Frank shuffled up against him, remembering not to disturb the loose ropes. “He’d have just killed me! And you want to talk to him?”

  “Who else am I supposed to exchange my final words with?” Hank objected. “The frigging chipmunks?”

  “Generally speaking, chipmunks are only active by day,” Gaines pointed out. “Too many predators at night. Also—”

  “Shut up, Jimmy!” the Boynton brothers yelled in concert.

  Gaines shuffled in his big forest boots. “Maybe it wasn’t fair of me to offer you a choice,” he said a little mournfully. “I mean, it’s not like I’m proud of this, you know. It’s just … needed.” The gun swung towards Frank, and Jimmy Gaines said, “Oh hell …”

  It was the loudest noise Frank had ever heard. Like a sonic boom that rang throughout the forest. Unseen creatures skittered across on the ground around them, crashing through the leaves.

  Hank had caught Jimmy Gaines’s shin hard with his foot as the weapon was coming round. More through luck than anything else, the gun was rising upwards, above them both, when the explosion came.

  The recoil on the old handgun seemed tremendous, and the upward forty-five-degree angle pushed it all back into Gaines’s shoulder. The force bucked him away from them, onto the slight slope towards the redwood that had, until recently, been wreathed in his cigarette smoke. One stumbling step behind took over from another. Soon Gaines was running backwards downhill, arms flailing and cartwheeling through the air, old gun flying high into the moonlight, trying to stay upright, screaming and swearing until finally he toppled over.

  The two brothers got up and watched, helpless. Momentum could be a terrible thing. He’d fallen past the lip of some projecting plateau in the forest floor and flipped over the edge like a tree trunk rolling downhill. In the gashes of light visible through the sequoia branches, they could see Jimmy Gaines’s body tumbling round and round on the moss and grass and rocks as the incline grew steeper and steeper, and the trees got more slender and scarce.

  They stood together in silence. Then there was a long, solitary cry and Jimmy Gaines’s shape disappeared from sight altogether.

  “Damn,” Hank muttered, and pulled out his little flashlight. The battery was low. The light was the colour of the wan moon above. Frank got his instead and ordered him to turn it off. They might need it later.

  They held hands like children to make sure they didn’t lose their footings, stepping gingerly down the slope towards the place where Jimmy Gaines had vanished.

  After a little while Frank put out an arm to keep his brother back. The incline was turning too sheer. There was no point and they both knew it. Jimmy Gaines lay somewhere below, a long way, close to the tinkling waters of the creek that they could now hear very clearly. Frank doubted even a skilled mountain rescue party could reach him quickly.

  He pointed his little light back up the hill. They waited for a minute or two. Then there was the faint sound of some kind of vehicle and the flash of far-off headlights.

  “You walk carefully, little brother,” Frank Boynton warned, still holding on to his arm. “This has been a very eventful day.”

  A loud and repetitive electronic beep burst out of the lush undergrowth beneath the beam of his flashlight, one so unexpected it made Frank jump with a short spike of fear.

  “My phone,” Hank said. “See? I told you there was a point to having different rings.”

  Frank picked it up, looked at the caller ID. Then he said, “Pronto.”

  9

  There were no other vehicles in the parking lot by the bridge. Costa got out and walked to the edge of the bluff overlooking the Pacific. Fifty years before, somewhere below, a fictional Scottie had seen Madeleine Elster fall into the ocean and had dived in to save her, sealing his and her fate. The movie he’d watched with Maggie wouldn’t leave his head. Or what had happened after.

  In the distance to the right there were lights in the Marina and Fort Mason, where the Lukatmi corporation was now a dismembered corpse. Further along, a vivid electric slur of illumination marked the tourist bars and restaurants of Fisherman’s Wharf. A few boats, some large, bobbed on the water. It was the noise that surprised him, rising into the starry sky, the gruff, smoke-stained roar of a constant throng of vehicles on the highway behind. Their fumes choked the sea breeze rising over the headland; their presence almost blotted out the beauty of the ocean.

  The Mediterranean couldn’t compete with this scale. Maggie had been right that night she bit into the poisoned apple. In San Francisco the world felt bigger, so large one might travel it forever without setting foot on the same piece of earth twice. This idea appealed to her. Costa found it disconcerting. There was, and always would be, a conflict between two people like them, between his insistence on staring at a small, familiar place, seeking to know it — and by implication himself — better. And Maggie always fleeing, always looking to lose herself entirely in something vast and shapeless, to pull on any passing identity she could find before the next film, the next gh
ost, entered her life.

  He climbed the steps of the viewing platform. Alcatraz stood like a beached fortress across the dappled water of the Bay. It was now two minutes past eleven. Tom Black was late. Perhaps he’d never show. Maggie was right about that, too. He should have called the SFPD.

  All the same, he wished this were his case, not theirs, and, most of all, not the Carabinieri’s. So many opportunities had been lost through Gianluca Quattrocchi’s insistence that the core of the investigation lay within the cryptic poetry of Dante. The maresciallo had taken a wrong turning from the start. How did The Divine Comedy begin?

  “ ‘For the straightforward pathway had been lost,’ ” Costa said quietly to himself.

  Criminal cases, like lives, could so easily follow a false route, a deceptive fork in the road that seemed so attractive when it first emerged. Everything was an illusion.

  His phone rang.

  “Costa.”

  “You’re alone.”

  The voice was young, concerned, and American, mangled by the bellowing rumble of traffic behind it. He couldn’t be far away.

  “Is that a question?”

  “Not really.”

  Tom Black sounded uncertain of himself, aware of that fact, desperate to hide it.

  “Listen. There’s an unlocked bike at the back of the parking lot. Take it, then go to the pedestrian gate on the bridge. Buzz the security people. They’ll let anyone through with a bike. Ride across until I meet you. Don’t try to walk. They don’t allow pedestrians at night. You won’t even get past the gate.”

  “We could just meet here.”

  “I need to see you first. I need to make sure you’re alone.”

  The line went dead.

  Costa walked around the parking lot until he found the bike. He had the same unsettling feeling he’d had in Martin Vogel’s apartment: that he wasn’t alone. Maybe it was Tom Black watching him. But then …

  He tried to shoo these thoughts from his head. The bike was an old road racer model, with lots of gears and even more rust. He wheeled it around the footpath and reached the gate. There was a button there, and a security camera. He hit the buzzer, a voice squawked something impenetrable from a hidden speaker, and then the barrier swung open on electric hinges.

  Wondering how long it had been since he climbed on a bike, Costa got on the saddle and rode slowly onto the bridge, alongside the northbound traffic in the adjoining lane a few yards to his left. The noise grew so loud he could scarcely think straight. In the middle of the great span he paused. It was an extraordinary view. The entire southern side of the city was visible, and the communities on the far side of the Bay. The bridge was well lit. He could see all the way along the pedestrian footway to another closed gate at the Marin end.

  He waited a good minute for the phone to ring.

  “I’m in an old Ford wagon doing twenty in the southbound lane going back to the city. If I like what I see, I’ll slow up to a stop when I’m in the middle. Jump the barrier, cross the road, and get in the back. You with me?”

  In the distance on the far side, he could just make out a vehicle being driven with the kind of caution one expected of the elderly. It was hugging the inside lane and getting passed by everything on the bridge.

  “Where are we going?”

  “For a drive and a talk. Yes or no?”

  When the car got closer, Costa abandoned the bike, stepped over the low iron barrier, waited for a gap in the traffic, and crossed to the other side.

  It was an old, battered station wagon and it slowed even further as the driver saw him. The thing was scarcely at walking pace by the time it got close. Costa began to run to match its speed. He found the handle, threw open the back door, and leapt in.

  10

  The vehicle stank of tobacco and age. It wasn’t the kind of transport he would previously have associated with Tom Black.

  Physically, he was a big, powerful man. Costa looked at the man’s shaken, lost face in the mirror as they pulled away. He seemed different now Josh Jonah was gone. Uncertain of himself. Desperate. Black had to struggle with his shaking hands to take out the card to get them through the toll gates on the southern end of the bridge.

  “What do you want?” Costa asked, then listened and found himself in fantasy land.

  Tom Black had a list, one so ludicrous it was impossible to know how to begin the task of bringing him down to reality. He wanted immunity from prosecution. He wanted access to his frozen funds. A lawyer before being asked any questions by the police. A phone call to his mother in Colorado. Finally …

  The figure in the front seat turned round and looked at Costa hopefully, with an ingenuous schoolkid’s hope in his eyes.

  “I have a ticket for the premiere tomorrow. I want to be there.”

  Costa shook his head and laughed, aware of the scared young eyes watching him.

  “You find this funny?” Black demanded shrilly.

  “How else am I supposed to feel? You’re wanted for murder and more financial crimes than I can put a name to. Now you want me to make sure you have tickets for the cinema?”

  “Lukatmi …”

  “Lukatmi didn’t pay for that movie, Tom! That’s the point. Why don’t you just drop me off and I’ll find a cab home. This is a waste of time.”

  They followed 101 off the bridge, cutting into the city past the Palace of Fine Arts, where the lights were still on in the exhibition tents, then on to Lombard, where the highway turned into a broad city street. Then Black turned down towards the waterfront, past the bars of Fisherman’s Wharf. It was just lazy driving, the kind you did when you wanted to think or convince yourself you could stay out of harm’s way forever.

  “That ticket’s mine, man. I want to be there. It was part of the deal. I’m owed.”

  They passed a parked police car on North Point Street. Costa watched the way its lights came on afterwards. Discreetly he turned his head to glance through the rear window and saw it move into the road.

  “Who does this vehicle belong to, Tom?”

  “I’m not bringing anyone else into this. Don’t even think of going there.”

  “Is it stolen?”

  Black turned round and looked at him like he was crazy. Then, to Costa’s dismay, he lifted his right hand and showed him something. It was a handgun. A black semiautomatic.

  “This is stolen. That’s all you need to know.”

  “You don’t look like a gun person to me. You don’t look like someone who could fix all this on your own, either. Who gave it to you? Is he following us?”

  “Shut … up!”

  Costa sat back. They were on the Embarcadero now. He liked this road. It led to the Ferry Building, a piece of architecture that had caught his eye the moment he first saw it. The tall clock tower reminded him of Europe.

  “So what do you say?” Black persisted.

  “Pull over, give me the gun, promise to tell the nice people in the San Francisco Police Department everything you know, and it’s possible I can keep you alive. Maybe even out of jail. I need to know who wants to kill you.”

  The semiautomatic came up again.

  Costa put up his hands and said, “Fine. We’re done here.”

  They passed Lombard Street and another patrol car pulled out into the road. They were holding off, Costa thought. Waiting for orders.

  “Pull the car over, Tom. I’m getting out.”

  “I want …” He looked ready to crack.

  The Ferry Building was approaching. There was no traffic coming in the opposite direction. Costa knew what that had to mean. Soon they could see it. A line of police vehicles straddled the road, blue and red lights flashing.

  “You told them, you bastard!” Black yelled, and the weapon was up again, jerking wildly in his free hand.

  “I didn’t tell them anything. Do you think they would have waited till now?”

  “Then …?”

  “What about the guy who gave you the gun? The one who set this up? Put
that bike out for me? Did he follow us, too?”

  “Got to know who to trust …” Black whimpered. “Got to know.”

  Up the street uniformed men stood by the patrol cars. Costa snatched a look at the beautiful, illuminated clock tower and realised where he’d seen something like it before, where the architect must have got the idea. It was the Giralda in Seville, the Moorish tower attached to a Catholic cathedral that had consumed the mosque that went before. All generations pillaged what they inherited. Roberto Tonti had robbed from Dante. A murderer had somehow found inspiration in a film that was half a century old.

  “Give me the gun and I will deal with this,” Costa ordered.

  They were edging closer to the roadblock. Costa could hear Gerald Kelly’s voice booming through a bullhorn, all the commands Costa would expect of a situation like this.

  Stop the car. Get out. Lie down.

  “I’m dead,” Tom Black mumbled at the wheel.

  “If you step out of that door with a gun in your hand, you will be.”

  The vehicle rolled to a halt twenty yards from the police line. Costa couldn’t begin to guess the number of weapons that were trained on them by the dark figures crouched next to the line of vehicles blocking the street beneath the tower of the Ferry Building.

  “If you’re in jail for a couple of years, what’s it matter? You’ll still be alive. Still got a future in front of you. Maybe there’s a lawyer who can get you off. Money talks. You’ll find some.”

  Black turned round and stared at him. “That’s what Josh thought. He just wanted to pay off that blackmailing bastard Vogel once and for all.”

  “See? That’s a start. Keep talking and you’d be amazed how popular you can get.”

  “You don’t understand the first thing about what’s going on here, do you?”

  “True. So tell me.”

  He looked out the window, lost, forlorn. “Once you sign up with these people, you never get free. It’s a contract, right? A contract. Break it and you die.”

  “Is that what happened with Allan Prime?”