Dante's Numbers

by David Hewson

  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 ghost, 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.

  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?”

  “I don't know what happened with Allan and neither did Josh. It was never supposed to end that way. It was just a deal. Don't you see?”

  The weapon was near, but not enough to snatch.

  “Give me the gun, Tom. I'll throw it out the window. Then we crawl out of here and go straight down on the ground, faces in the dirt, hands out, not moving a muscle until they tell us. That way we both stay alive.”

  “Just like the movies,” Black mumbled sarcastically.

  He was so close. One more minute with this man and he'd be there.

  “What's wrong with the movies?” Costa asked.

  The man at the wheel stared at him with eyes that were dark, bleak, and full of self-loathing.

  “They screw you up. They…” Costa could scarcely make out the words. “They screw everyone. Scottie. Me. I never thought this'd happen. Not when we went to Jones…”

  He threw back his head, closed his eyes.

  “Jones? Who…?” Costa was starting to ask.

  The bullhorn burst into life again. This time it was loud and close enough to shake the vehicle.

  “Get out of the car,” Gerald Kelly's metallic voice bellowed.

  Black leaned out of the open window, abruptly furious, waving the weapon around, screaming, “Shut up, shut up, shut up! Lemme think.”

  Costa sat back and watched him subside. They had time. Getting the weapon off this scared young man might take an hour. More maybe. But it was achievable.

  “We know about James Gaines,” Kelly shouted. “We need you to come in. You and your accomplice. Get out of the vehicle.”

  Something changed in Tom Black's demeanour. His face hardened. Costa's spirits sank.

  Black thrust his head out into the night. “What the hell have you done to Jimmy? This has nothing to do with him. Blame Josh and me. Not Jimmy.”

  “Who's Jimmy Gaines?” Costa asked.

  He didn't get a reply. Black was screaming into the street again.

  “You bring Jimmy here! I wanna talk to him. This isn't his doing. I want him free.”

  Kelly didn't come back on the bullhorn straightaway. That was odd.

  “Let's just get out of the car like they say,” Costa began. “This will be so much easier in someone's office, where it's warm and they have coffee and lawyers and people who can help you.”

  “I can't bring you Gaines,” Kelly said, and there was an edge to his voice even through the electronic medium of the bullhorn. “There was an accident. Let's not have any more.”

  Costa stiffened back into the old, uncomfortable seats of the station wagon and watched Black fumble at his phone, calling someone who didn't answer, and that made the young man more furious than ever.

  “An accident…an accident…what the hell does that mean?”

  “If we talk to them…”

  It was no use.

  “Bring me Jimmy Gaines!” Black screeched out the window.

  There was a pause. Then Gerald Kelly's piercing, metallic voice said simply, “We can't. He's dead.”

  Costa closed his eyes and wondered why words always had to give way to deeds. Why he couldn't talk people out of things. It had cost Emily her life. It had almost robbed him of his sanity. He'd done everything he could to reason with Tom Black, and might have managed if Gerald Kelly—a good, intelligent police officer, Costa didn't doubt that—hadn't intervened with the wrong words at the wrong time.

  He rolled over on the backseat and thrust himself deep down into the floor space. He could smell what was coming in the stink of sweat and fear and panic that was rolling off the man in the front.

  The driver's door opened and Black was out, screaming obscenities. Costa steeled himself for the sound. It didn't come. Not immediately. Kelly was shouting. So was Tom Black. Then…

  A single shot. One loose round begets a host.

  When it began, he forced his fists into his ears to keep out the volley of gunfire enveloping this quiet, beautiful patch of the city outside the Ferry Building.

  It was the same, always. In the grounds of the Villa Borghese as an actor posing as a Carabiniere was brought down because he didn't understand how jumpy police officers get when they see what appears to be an armed individual intent on violence. In the grubby gardens surrounding the mausoleum of the emperor Augustus, where his wife died.

  There was a short, high scream, then the shooting ended. It was replaced immediately by that angry, taut chorus of shouts that followed almost every act of violence he had witnessed. A part of him felt he could hear the life of Tom Black depart the world, a single human soul lost for eternity, for no good reason Costa could imagine. He had no such recollection of the moment of Emily's death. That instant was black and bleak and empty and would always remain so.

  Crushed facedown in the rear seat of the vehicle, hands now tight on his head, waiting, he was aware of them tearing at the doors, screaming at him, wondering themselves whether he was armed, too, and might take a life of their own.

  Strange voices assaulted him, strong hands gripped his arms. Costa felt himself dragged from the backseat and flung facedown onto the ground. He thrust out his arms as they ordered. The gravel scraped his cheeks. A couple of them aimed kicks, one brutally painful, deep into his ribs. He grunted and didn't move, not an inch. After a while the noise and the violence subsided. He heard Kelly's voice say to another man, “Let's see what we've got.”

  They used the
ir feet to turn him.

  Bloodied hands still up over his head, Costa opened his eyes to see the SFPD captain's shape obscuring the grey stone tower of the Ferry Building.

  “What in God's name are you doing here?” Kelly asked, shaking his head in amazement.

  “I was trying to bring you a witness. I did my best. Sorry.”

  To his surprise Kelly held out his hand and helped him upright. He had a strong grip. It hurt when it pushed the gravel further back into Costa's torn palm. Cops stood over the body of Tom Black, looking at it, shaking their heads. Sirens were wailing somewhere along Market Street.

  Kelly offered him a clean handkerchief. “There's blood on your face. You might want to get it off.”

  Costa wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. He felt detached from the situation, as if it were happening to someone else.

  “Did he tell you anything?” Kelly asked.

  He tried to remember. “I'd have to think about that.”

  Kelly put an arm around his shoulder and walked him towards the terminal doors. A small crowd had gathered behind the barrier erected by Kelly's men. The traffic was beginning to back up along the Embarcadero.

  “Please,” Kelly said. “Think hard.”

  “How did you know he was in the car?”

  “Your pathologist called us. Some guys she knows were playing PI and got themselves kidnapped by this Gaines character. Seems he and Black were good friends. So good, Gaines thought he'd get Black out there to cut some deal with you, and then pop off these friends of hers in the meantime.” Kelly shrugged. “Didn't work out that way. Afterwards, they called her. And she, being a sensible, helpful lady, called me.”

  The SFPD captain scratched his grizzled head. “It never really occurred to me you might have got there first.”

  “We keep trying to do you favours. It doesn't buy us any credit, does it?”

  “Not much.”

  Nic Costa closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself back in Rome. It was impossible.

  “Did you happen to witness Tom Black taking a shot at us?” Kelly asked out of nowhere.

  “I was in the back of the car with my head in my hands. I didn't see a thing.”