Dante's Numbers

by David Hewson

  “That is not true!” she screamed.

  He sat there, smiling, unmoved. “No. It's not true. So what really got you where you are, Maggie? Do you remember?”

  She'd heard that question a million times, from a million different showbiz hacks.

  “A little luck,” she said automatically. “A little bit of talent.”

  Mickey Fitzwilliam gazed at her, then shook his head. “You've got to remember better than that, Maggie.”

  He reached down beneath the foot of the bed and his hands came back up with a knife in them. The blade was long and clean and shiny.

  “It's what the fuck-you-kill-you conundrum hangs on.”

  IT WAS SATURDAY MORNING, SHOPPERS' HELL. The traffic started bad and got worse. He was still ten minutes from the theatre when it finally ground to a halt. Up ahead, through the snarl of cars, he heard the wail of a siren and his heart fell. Then a couple of very shiny red fire engines battled their way into the angry mass of stalled machines blocking the breadth of Chestnut. Costa pulled the Dodge over to the side of the road and climbed out.

  People were coming out of stores and offices to stand in the street to gawk. There was a cop there, in uniform, looking bored.

  Costa caught his attention.

  “Can you tell me what's going on?”

  “Fire down at Fort Mason. Stupid contractors lousing up or something. Or maybe the insurance. That place always was bad news.”

  A fire. Not an emergency call to the little theatre further down the road on Chestnut. Maybe he had still had time.

  “Is the street going to be blocked for long?”

  The cop grimaced. “Sadly, my psychic powers just fail me there, sir. You can't dump your vehicle like that, by the way. You'll have to wait for this train wreck to clear just like everyone else.”

  He'd put on Gerald Kelly's leather shoulder holster. The black handgun sat snug against his chest. If this cop had been any good, he'd have seen it already.

  “Thank you, Officer,” Costa said meekly, and went back to sit behind the wheel of the Dodge.

  When the stocky blue uniform crossed the road, wending his way through the choked cars and buses, he climbed out again, looked down the street, past the idle bystanders clustered on the sidewalk. In the distance, crowds of shoppers milled on the sidewalk outside the stores, wandering into the road, darting in between stalled cars the way Romans did in the Corso on a Saturday afternoon.

  He took one look at them, saw the cop was returning, looking angrily at Catherine Bianchi's abandoned Dodge, and then began to move, falling into a steady pace as he wound through the growing throng of bodies, on into the Marina.

  SHE DID REMEMBER. IT WAS ALL THERE. JUST hidden, waiting to be let out into the light of day like an old poltergeist freed from the basement.

  It must have been September. She could still feel the heat. Seventh-grade boys and girls, out on a trip to Crissy Field, doing the things schoolkids did. Working a little. Playing a little. Teasing…

  Maggie Flavier could still picture herself on that bright distant morning, thin as a rake but tall for her age and with a look about her that turned men's heads. She tried not to notice. She felt alone and a little unhappy in San Francisco. This was her mother's idea, not hers. To flee Paris and an estranged father, to try to find some new life halfway across the world in a city where they knew no one, and had, as far as the young Maggie could see, no clear idea of what the future might bring.

  She'd danced at the stage school in France, and men looked then. Her mother had watched and taken note.

  They were so kind in the church school on Pine Street. They smiled a lot and listened to her. They didn't mind she hated trigonometry and algebra and preferred to dress up and play on the stage instead, always inventing something, stories, characters, voices, situations, imaginary people she created to fill the void inside.

  These small and seemingly useless talents mattered, her mother told her. Because of the auditions. She spoke the word as if it possessed some magical power. As if it could save them. The young Maggie had no idea how. All she understood was that she possessed a burning, unquenchable need to be noticed, to be applauded. By her peers. By her mother, more than anything.

  The notes had been coming for weeks, always unsigned, always written in a crude childish hand on cheap school notebook paper. They were, young Maggie thought, beautiful in a simple, babyish way. Flowery language. Sometimes bad French. Sometimes, she thought, better Italian, which she recognised from lessons in Paris. They were never coarse or dirty, like some she'd received, and some the other girls sent from time to time. All they spoke of, carefully, indirectly, was love. As if there were an emotion somewhere waiting for her to discover it, like a hidden Easter egg, a secret buried in the ground. Something ethereal, something holy, distinct from the hard, cold physical reality of the life she knew. She didn't really understand the words or the poetry, some of it so old she found the verses unreadable. So she threw them away mostly, until the last.

  Had this unseen admirer written, simply, Margot Flavier, je t'aime, je t'aime, je t'aime, then, perhaps, she would have tried to understand. But nothing was that clear and sometimes the language was so florid, so odd, she thought it was a joke. Some times it scared her a little. She was young, she was exiled in a foreign land, with a strange and unhappy mother who wished to push her into a career about which she felt unsure, not that her doubts mattered for one moment.

  Naturally, she told the girls. Barbara Ronson. Louise Gostelow. Susan Shanks. The trio who ran the class.

  Naturally, when the final note arrived, they had an idea.

  That last message came the day after she'd gone to the first successful audition of her life, taking time off school for the short flight to L.A. with her mother, spending hours reading the scripts, trying to make her fast-improving English bad again for a group of men and women who seemed to demand that. Afterwards, when they waited at LAX for the flight home, her mother had made a call on a public phone. When she returned, her face glowed with a happiness Maggie had never seen there before. Maggie had the part. Françoise in L'Amour L.A. A life mapped out in a single day, not that she knew that then, not that she felt anything much at all, except pleasure that this had produced joy in her mother.

  Maggie had been surprised. She thought she'd fluffed her lines and failed the audition.

  The next morning, she came into school and found the note tucked into the seam of her locker. It read, Tomorrow at Crissy Field I will reveal my love.

  Barbara and Louise and Susan had gawped at the scrawled, nervous handwriting, giggling, and then concocted the plan.

  Out on the hot, dusty sand dunes of the Marina the following day, they'd played it out. While the rest of them walked with Miss Piper, making notes about the grass and the lizards and the birds, Maggie had detached herself, looking distracted, knowing full well what would happen.

  Finally the teacher headed for the public washrooms, ordering them to wait. Maggie walked to one of the small huts owned by the park service and stood in its shadow, out of the burning sun. It took only a minute. Then he was there, staring at her, his plain face getting redder and redder, voice tripping over itself, his eyes, which were not unattractive, skittering over the pale, drifting sand, avoiding hers.

  “Maggie…”

  At that moment she didn't even remember his name. He was just that boy. The one with the stutter and the cheap clothes, the one whose father was something big and famous, not that anyone was allowed to know his name.

  “Oui?” she'd asked.

  He bowed his head, held out his hands and tried to speak.

  All that came out was “I lu… lu… lu… lu…”

  It happened so swiftly she didn't have a chance to intervene, even if she'd possessed the courage. The three girls burst out from their hiding place and formed a ring round him, hands locked, eyes wild with glee, chanting, mocking.

  Strapped to an old, hard bed in some place she thought was a shuttered mo
vie theatre in the Marina, the adult Maggie Flavier could still hear that heartless song, see them dancing round him, a jeering circle of coarse, hard cruelty, eyes wild, voices cackling, taunting, chanting rhythmically…

  I lu…lu…lu…lu…

  I lu…lu…lu…lu…

  I lu…lu…lu…lu…

  She could see the way he'd stared at her, see how his bewildered eyes filled with tears.

  Then the boy ducked beneath their arms and she'd watched, heart beating wildly in her chest, as he tore away down the beach towards Fort Mason, shrieking with shame and fury until his cries mingled with those of the gulls that hung in the sea air as if pinned to the too-blue sky.

  She didn't speak much to Barbara and Louise and Susan afterwards. She blamed herself for showing them the letter in the first place. She wished, more than anything, to apologise to the boy. But it was impossible. Mickey Fitzwilliam never came to school again. He had no friends, and the teachers, when she asked, refused to tell her where he lived. For a while he was a burden on her conscience. Then other things intervened. Trips to L.A. to the TV studios. Work. A career. Her mother's growing frailty.

  From that point to now…

  She tried to imagine the distance, the journey, and couldn't. Not for herself. Certainly not for Mickey Fitzwilliam.

  ILU … LU … LU … LOVED YOU,” HE STUTTERED, clutching the old school badge.

  “We were thirteen. We were just children.”

  “I loved you!” he roared.

  She couldn't think of anything to say.

  “Did you never ask yourself why it was that day? Why then?”

  “I was a child. I didn't ask myself anything.”

  “He was the p-p-producer. Roberto. My dad.” The head was shaking again but there was only one voice left now, a young, frail one that sounded hurt and damaged. “He gave us money. He came by from time to time. Didn't want to see me. He just wanted my mom. That's all.”

  “I don't understand…”

  “He wanted to give me something. To ease his conscience. So I told him about you. About how you danced and acted and sang. About how beautiful you were. How your mom wanted to get you into show business. Everyone knew that. I got him to give you the audition. I begged him to give you that part. That was me.”

  “Thank you,” she said simply.

  “You were good, even then. Everyone wanted to look at you. They couldn't stop.”

  She whispered, “ ‘But ‘oo can blame Françoise?'”

  “Don't play those games with me,” he snarled. “I saw you. On the TV. Going around town. You never even noticed me. I watched you.” He stared hungrily at her. “I watched you change. All those nice parts in the beginning. The good girl. Sweet dreams and apple pie. Then…That first time you… t-t-took off your clothes.”

  “Mickey…”

  “Do you know what that did to me? Do you even care?”

  She shook her head and said, “I did not know you then. I do not know you now. If I had…”

  “While you were banging half of Hollywood, I was there. Didn't touch another human being. Not once. Waiting.”

  “Mickey, please…”

  “I stood outside the TV studio all night long sometimes. I knew what was going on inside. None of those bastards loved you. Not your actors and your rich guys and your pimps. Not some stupid Italian cop…”

  “Stop this now!”

  “I watched you every day of your life. On the screen. In the papers. On the Net. I was right there next to you in a store, an elevator, at the movies. You never noticed, did you? Never had a clue what you owed me. Why the hell do you think Roberto cast you for Inferno in the first place, huh? Some washed-up has-been dodging in and out of rehab so fast even the papers had given up on you? Why'd he pick you of all people?”

  “Because I can do my job,” she insisted, mainly to herself.

  “So can a million other pretty women, all of them younger than you. I asked him. I begged him. One more favour for the bastard son. Keep him quiet. Ease an awkward little situation. Got to say that about my old man. He still has a Catholic sense of guilt somewhere, even when he's murdering people. You know when he came along and wanted someone else removed from that sweet scam of his, to keep up the coverage in the papers?”

  She didn't want to listen to this. She didn't want to think about it.

  “I screwed it up on purpose. I sent out Martin to get that almond stuff knowing you had that hypodermic handy.”

  “I could have died.”

  “If I'd wanted it, you would have. Don't you see?”

  It was the last thing she needed but the tears were beginning to prick in her eyes. “In God's name…what is it you expect me to do?”

  “Fuck-you-kill-you…” he whispered. “Lu-lu-love you. I waited so long for this. Twenty years. I didn't want you to hate me. I made you, Maggie. I rescued you. I still can. There's just the three of us left now. Me, you, and my old man—and he won't be around much longer. Millions and millions and millions of dollars. It could last a whole lifetime. For the two of us.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, exasperated. “I don't understand…”

  “The scam, dummy. The one that jerk Harvey wrote you into when you were too bombed to notice. Once my old man's dead, there's a place in the Caribbean we can fly, walk in a bank, pick up the whole bundle, everything that was meant to go to him, to Harvey, Martin, those Lukatmi losers…It's all ours, Maggie. No more work. No more worry. You don't need to go down on some jerk in a director's chair. I don't have to slave away in construction until my old man calls and tells me to go do his dirty work. Everything will end perfectly. Don't you see?”

  He didn't stutter when he felt confident. He didn't even look terribly threatening.

  “Talk to me some more,” she said. “Come closer.”

  Mickey Fitzwilliam laughed nervously, then patted down the sheets at the foot of the bed. He sat down, very stiff, very nervous.

  “See, Roberto said this whole thing was really all for me in the end. The money. The tontine. All I needed was to cut the numbers a little.”

  He snickered like a child and looked, briefly, proud of himself. “Well, a lot actually. Josh and Martin… that was pure improv. They came by my place bleating about how it was all going wrong…how scared they were. Pissed me off. Next day I just sent Josh a stack of letters demanding money and made it look like they came from Martin. Easiest thing in the world. Morons. They thought I was there to, like, mediate. You believe that? Then that idiot Tom Black calls me when he's on the run.”

  Another voice, high-pitched. Terrified.

  “ ‘Scottie, Scottie, ya got to help me. Like you promised…'”

  A dark, malevolent gleam flashed in his eyes.

  “I hate dumb people. Told my old man afterwards. Know what the great Roberto Tonti said? That I got lucky. That I oughta shut up. He'd take care of it. See me right. Call that luck? Does anyone get that lucky?”

  “I'd call it fate.”

  He smiled. “Me too. This was meant to be, Maggie.”

  He scanned the room as if he was looking at something he despised.

  “Roberto gave me this theatre. My inheritance. Bullshit. He couldn't make any money out of this dump. All these things… they were supposed to be his way of saying sorry. I'm not stupid. It was always about him. That scam was…his pièce de résistance. His big moment. Going out in a big blaze of glory. Look at me, Ma! Top of the world! All those years behind the camera. All those years watching actors get the applause. It ate him alive…”

  “I saw that.”

  “You did?”

  “It was obvious. Tell me more.”

  He inched a little closer and looked at her left leg, bare, half askew on the bed.

  “I never touched a woman before. Not till today. When you were sleeping.”

  Maggie Flavier gave him a stern look. “That's not nice. Touching a woman when she doesn't know.”

  “I'm sorry. I just…” H
e shook his head. “I couldn't stop looking at that movie after my dad gave it to me back when I was a kid. Vertigo. It was the first piece of work he did in America, you know. I watched it right away, to please him. Said it was his movie, too, in a way. Then I saw you and you lived in the same place. It was like…”

  He ran his tongue over his lips as if they were dry. “I'd watch it every day. Twice, three times sometimes. Got it in French and Italian, too. I could sit here and tell you every second, read you every line.”

  He gazed at her, frankly, greedily. “After a little while it was you I saw, not some dumb old actress no one's ever heard of. You in that car. In that dress.” He blushed again, looked younger. “In bed, in that apartment. My apartment. Bought it with my own money. Robbed a bank in Reno. Self-made man. Wasn't taking everything from Roberto. I got my dignity.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “That movie…it kind of got inside me.”

  “They do sometimes.”

  He edged closer still and, as she watched, gingerly put his hand on her knee, looking all the time, anxious for her approval. His fingers closed on her skin, squeezing, as if she were some kind of lab specimen.

  “Not hard,” she told him. “That's not nice.” She held up her arms, with the rope dangling from the wrists. “This isn't nice.”

  She leaned forward as if to kiss him. The rope was just short enough to stop her. She moved back into place with a sigh.

  “A woman can't make love tied to a bed. Not a good woman. That's what hookers do. Dirty women. I don't want to be a dirty woman. I won't do that. Not for anyone.”

  “I-I-I d-don't want that, Maggie. I never wanted that. All that fuck-you-kill-you stuff. Jesus…All I wanted was to be with you. Like we should have been from the beginning. Now we've got the money, we can…”

  His words drifted into the nothingness of acute embarrassment.

  “We can what, Mickey? Tell me. Please.”

  “We can be like normal people. A couple. We can live where we want. Paris, maybe. On a desert island. Or a farm in the country with a-a-animals…” He squeezed his eyes shut and blushed. “Kids maybe. All in good time. We don't have to do it right now. I don't expect that. I just… sometimes. Sheesh. Sometimes I'm not me.“