Dante's Numbers nc-7

by David Hewson

  “The company was Italian,” Costa insisted. “I saw the notepaper. I saw the name on the posters. Roberto Tonti Productions.”

  “Tonti put up half a million dollars to assemble a script, a cast, and a budget. That’s all. The real money came from ordinary investors, the mob, Lukatmi, God knows where else. We’ll never find out. Not unless the offshore-banking business suddenly decides to open itself up to public scrutiny.”

  Costa struggled to make sense of this. “Someone must have paid the bills at Cinecittà. They couldn’t have worked for six, nine months or so without settling at least some of what was owed.”

  She grinned. “Catherine says the SFPD have checked through the Carabinieri in Rome. The urgent bills were settled by all those little co-production companies. One from Liechtenstein would handle catering, say. One from Cayman would pick up special effects. I’d place a bet on that being how the mob money got there. They like these places. None of it came from Lukatmi direct, and the Lukatmi accounts show just that five million I told you about going into the production to pay two months’ studio fees at Cinecittà. Nothing more.” She paused. “And for that, they got exclusive world electronic distribution rights and stacks of publicity. Something that ought to have been worth, well, not fifty million dollars, but maybe twenty-five.”

  Teresa had a habit of springing information on people this way, Costa thought.

  “Why’s Catherine confiding all this to you and not Leo?” he asked.

  “Because Leo, being Leo, is utterly fixated on this idea that the real story lies in that rotten money from the men in black suits. He’s not the world’s greatest listener, in case you never noticed. I am. Also I think Catherine likes stringing him along. He’s getting nowhere with her and it’s driving him crazy.”

  “Ah.”

  Costa had gathered this from watching the two of them together. He’d never seen Falcone fail to get something he wanted in the end. It was an interesting sight, and an experience the old man himself clearly found deeply frustrating.

  “Enough of Leo,” Teresa went on. “Here’s something else … Josh Jonah hated old movies.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “He told everyone! In a million media interviews. Anything that wasn’t invented in this bright new century of ours simply didn’t matter to him. There are three long articles a couple of friends tracked down for me. In them he gets asked to name his favourite movies of all time. They’re all the same stupid, violent, computer-generated crap that passes for entertainment these days. Not a human emotion in any of them. No Citizen Kane. No Eisenstein. Nothing Italian. I doubt he’d even heard of Hitchcock.”

  The director’s name conjured up the cartoon image of the man, in profile, lips protruding, and that funny old theme tune he’d heard so often on the late-night reruns put out by the more arcane Italian channels.

  “If he’d never heard of Hitchcock, who invented Carlotta Valdes?” Costa asked.

  “Who sent Maggie Flavier a green ’57 Jaguar?” Teresa shot back. “And told Martin Vogel to pick bitter almonds from a tree next to that fictional grave at Mission Dolores?”

  She turned around and pointed to the huge white mansion across the road that was the home of Roberto Tonti. “He knows all about Hitchcock. So does Bonetti. His first movie in Italy was a cheap Hitchcock knockoff. Simon Harvey knows, too. Maybe there’s a movie fan among those mobsters Bonetti tapped for cash.”

  “The Carabinieri say it’s over.”

  “We can argue about whether this was all about Dante. Or a bunch of Sicilian money from some people who were starting to feel they’ve been taken for a ride. Or a movie an old English movie director made here—here—half a century ago. But there’s one thing even Leo can’t argue about …” Teresa watched him, waiting.

  “Josh Jonah didn’t know about any of these things,” Costa said.

  “He could — and probably did — fix that awful snuff movie that made Lukatmi so much money when Allan Prime died. But that’s about it,” she agreed. “Whoever started this circus is still out there. Maybe they’re going to go quiet now the SFPD want to lay the blame at the door of a dead computer billionaire. Maybe they feel the publicity they’ve got is enough. Maybe not.”

  She looked at him. “So what are you going to do now? Every case is unpacked. Every item accounted for.” She nodded towards the tents. “You’re surely not needed in there and you know it.”

  He’d been warned to steer clear of Maggie Flavier, by both Gerald Kelly and Falcone, who was concerned that whatever little cooperation they could still count on from the SFPD was about to disappear.

  “I’m supposed to behave myself.”

  “Call her, Nic. Go and see her. No one’s going to miss you. Even Leo and Peroni don’t feel the need to hang around this place. Why should you?”

  He hadn’t been able to get Maggie out of his head for days. That was why he had hesitated.

  Teresa reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his phone, and dangled her fingers over the buttons.

  “Don’t make me do this for you,” she warned.

  4

  It was almost three in the afternoon by the time Jimmy Gaines parked his station wagon in the Muir Woods visitor centre and pointed them up the hiking route signposted as Ocean View Trail.

  “You ever watched Vertigo, Jimmy?” Hank said as he tied on his old fireman’s boots.

  “Couple of times.”

  “Some of it was shot here. They give her a famous line. ‘I don’t like it … knowing I have to die.’ ”

  “One more folk myth,” Frank cut in. “Hitch shot that somewhere else.”

  The two men turned and looked at him.

  “You sure of that?” Jimmy Gaines asked. “All them big sequoias. I’d assumed …”

  “It’s the movies,” Frank insisted. “I’ve been reading up on things. The buffs call that part ‘the Muir Woods sequence.’ But it wasn’t even filmed here. It was shot at Big Basin, eighty miles south. Hitch liked the light better, apparently.” He watched Gaines pulling on a backpack with three water bottles strapped to the outside. “Did Tom Black like Vertigo, too?”

  Gaines heaved more gear out of the car. “Not that I know. He never talked about movies much. Just books. Thoreau, Walden. All that stuff Tom used to spout to the press about how we could build a different world, one in tune with nature, with no real government and some kind of weird pacifism when it came to dealing with authority … it all came from Thoreau. That old nut wasn’t just a tree hugger, you know. He was an anarchist, too.”

  He stared into the forest of gigantic redwoods ahead of them. “I never much liked to talk to Tom about that. He was so young and naive, there wasn’t much point. Josh Jonah was the opposite, except when he wanted to appear that way to keep Tom happy. Josh liked movies where people died. We had a brief conversation once about The Matrix. When I told him I couldn’t figure which way was up, he looked at me like I was brain-dead. We didn’t talk movies or much else ever again.” He stopped and scratched his grey mop of hair. “Why are we talking about Hitchcock?”

  “It’s just some crazy theory our Italian friend has. You know what Europeans are like.”

  “Not really.”

  They steered clear of poison oak and listened in silence as Jimmy Gaines talked as they walked, mostly to himself, about the forest around, the redwoods and tan oak, the madrone and Douglas fir.

  Frank Boynton caught his brother’s eye after half an hour and knew they were both thinking the same thing. Or rather two things. This didn’t seem the kind of place a fugitive would hide. The Muir Woods were popular. At weekends and on holidays, it could be difficult to find a space in any of the parking lots dotted around the park.

  And Jimmy Gaines looked like a man who knew where he was going.

  After a while he diverted them onto a side path deep in the thickest part of the wood. Frank glanced at the sign at the fork: they were on the Lost Trail.

  It seemed well n
amed. They began to descend through deep, solitary tracts of fir that merged into deeper, thicker forest. The sun was so scarce the temperature felt as if the season had changed. For some reason, that line of Kim Novak’s refused to leave Frank Boynton’s head.

  After what seemed like an hour of punishment, Jimmy Gaines led them off the barely visible path and directly into the deep forest. Here there was no discernible track at all. They stumbled down a steep mossy bank, further and further into the dense thickets where the massive redwoods stood over them like ancient giants. Gaines’s eyes flickered constantly between the dim path ahead and a small GPS unit in his hand.

  “They got animals here?” Frank asked.

  “Chipmunk and deer mainly,” Gaines said without turning round. “Snakes. Lots of snakes. Don’t believe the stories you hear about mountain lions. They’re close but not that close. Too smart to come near humans mostly. We got ticks that carry Lyme disease. Rat shit with hantavirus. Some of them mosquitoes might have West Nile Virus, too.” He stopped and watched them standing there, uncertain where to put their feet. “It’s dangerous in the wild woods. I figured you knew that.”

  Gaines removed his backpack, pulled out the water bottles, and handed two over. The Boynton brothers gulped greedily.

  “Doesn’t feel like we’re wandering around aimlessly,” Frank said. “If I’m being honest.”

  Gaines shook his head. “You boys always were too clever for your own good, weren’t you? Too greedy, too. You just had to know what was going on.” He swigged at his own water bottle and eyed the redwoods around them. “I remember one time when there was a fire in some little baker’s on Union. You two weren’t even on duty. Didn’t stop you coming around and watching, telling us what we were doing wrong while you stood there looking all know-it-all from the sidelines.”

  He opened up the backpack and took out a large handgun, old, with a revolving chamber. A Colt maybe, Frank thought. He was never great at weapons.

  The Boynton brothers’ former colleague from the San Francisco Fire Department pointed the barrel in their direction and said, “Tom and I are a little more than friends, if you really want to know. I never had a son. Never had a wife either. Just like you two.” He leaned forward and grinned, a little bashfully. “Didn’t you ever wonder?”

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “But we didn’t think it was any of our business. Still isn’t. What’s with the gun, Jimmy? We’ve known each other thirty years. You don’t need that.”

  There was a noise from behind them. Frank Boynton didn’t turn to look. He refused to take his eyes off Jimmy Gaines and the weapon in his hands.

  A dishevelled figure stumbled down through the high ferns of the bank by their side. The newcomer looked like some street bum who’d been homeless for a long time, not a fugitive ex-billionaire who’d only a few days before kept the company of movie stars.

  “Hello, son,” Frank said, extending his hand. “My brother and I are here to help.”

  The young man turned and stared at Jimmy Gaines, fear and desperation in his eyes. And deference, too. Maybe Jimmy bossed him around in the open air the way Josh Jonah had inside Lukatmi’s grim brick fortress by the water.

  “You got food?” was all Tom Black asked.

  Gaines threw him the backpack. “I showed you how to find things to eat in the woods,” he said, sounding cross. “I can’t be here for you all the time, Tom. That would just make them suspicious.”

  “Can’t stay here forever, either,” Hank cut in. “Sooner or later you’ve got to come out.”

  The young man ripped into a pack of trail mix, poured some into his throat, and looked at them unpleasantly, as if they weren’t quite real.

  “What if we could make it sooner?” Frank added. “What if we could make it safe?”

  Black glanced at Jimmy Gaines, seeking guidance.

  “Take their phones and throw them in the forest,” Gaines ordered. With his left hand he retrieved some rope out of the backpack. “Then tie them up good and tight.”

  5

  The Brocklebank building was old and elegant and hauntingly familiar. Costa parked outside the grand entrance and talked his way past the uniformed concierge at the door. There was money on Nob Hill. History, too. The connection came to him as he stood in the elevator, waiting for it to rise to the third floor, where Maggie’s apartment was situated.

  In the movie, Madeleine Elster had lived in this same block. The detective Scottie had watched her leave the forecourt in a green Jaguar, identical to the one some unknown stranger had briefly loaned Maggie Flavier.

  He went through a cursory ID check when he reached the floor — the movie company’s security men were all flash suits and earpieces and very little in the way of brains — and then she let him in.

  Maggie looked as if she’d come straight from the shower. She was wearing a bright emerald silk robe and nothing else. Her blonde hair was newly dried and seemed to have recovered its gleaming sheen. It was still short, without the extensions that had caused his heart to skip a beat at the Palace of Fine Arts. She looked incredibly well, as if she’d never suffered a day’s illness in her life.

  “I wish you’d come when I asked,” she said. “No need to explain. Help yourself to a drink, will you?” She pointed at the kitchen. “I’ve got a vodka. I need to get dressed.”

  He watched her walk into the bedroom and close the door. Then he found some Pellegrino in the refrigerator, returned with it, and stood in front of a marble fireplace and the largest TV screen he’d ever seen. The place wasn’t as big as he’d expected. A part of him said movie stars needed to live somewhere special, somewhere different. From what he could see, there was just the one living room, a kitchen, the bedroom on the inner side of the building, away from the noise of the street, and a shining stone-and-steel bathroom next to it.

  When she returned, she was wearing a short pleated skirt, the kind he associated with teenage cheerleaders at sports matches, and a polo shirt with the number seven on the front. No makeup, no pretence, no borrowed character from an old museum canvas. She looked little more than twenty.

  “How long have you lived here?” he asked.

  “Forever. My mother found it not long after we came from Paris. We rented back then. Not that she could afford it. There were … standards to be maintained. If you read the bios, they’ll tell you she spent our last thousand dollars trying to find me a break. That’s not quite true. Not quite.”

  “So that’s … what? Ten, fifteen years ago?”

  “Seventeen years in October. I remember how warm and sunny it was when we arrived. I thought San Francisco would always be like that. You should come in the autumn. It’s beautiful. Different. What you’d expect of the summer.”

  “You don’t know how she found it?”

  She shook her head and ran her fingers through the ragged blonde locks. “No. Why should I? It was a good choice. When she was gone and I had the money, I bought the apartment. It’s just a one-bedroom bachelor-girl pad. I’m not here more than two or three months of the year anyway.”

  “And when you’re travelling?”

  “Then the agency rents it. I hate the idea of an empty home. A place should be lived in. Why are you asking all this?”

  “I’ve seen it before. This apartment block. It was in a movie.”

  “It was?” she asked, wide-eyed, curious.

  “Vertigo. Hitchcock.”

  Maggie closed her eyes and fought to concentrate. Then she opened them, picked up her glass from the table, and gulped at it.

  “No. I don’t think I’ve seen it. Hitchcock isn’t really that fashionable these days, to be honest with you.”

  “The woman in it lived here. She died. In the end.”

  Maggie raised her drink in a kind of toast. “Women in movies often do. You should congratulate me, by the way. Dino Bonetti came by earlier. He offered me the part of Beatrice in the sequel.”

  “Did you agree?”

  “What, on a social vis
it? I don’t think so. All that stuff goes through Simon and then my agent.”

  “Do they take a cut?”

  She laughed, exasperated. “This is show business, Nic. Everybody takes a cut of everything. I feed thousands …”

  “How much?”

  She hesitated. “You’re very curious. I don’t know. I don’t really want to. They put together some deal, I sign it when I’m told. Money goes in the bank.” Her eyes darkened. “At least it’s supposed to. Apparently, I’m missing something from Inferno. My accountant was whining about something or other. It’s no big deal. I’m …” She threw a hand around the room. “… rich, aren’t I? After the first couple of million, you stop counting. Any problems, I guess I can still do a hair ad. I’m not proud.” She hesitated. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “There’s money missing in the production company accounts. A lot of money. And you haven’t been paid?”

  “Not everything. It’s not the first time. Sometimes it takes months. They wait for the exchange rates to get better or something. That’s why I didn’t want to waste any time talking to Dino when he started pressing me to sign a new contract. Why should I? They can’t screw me out of what they owe me for Inferno. It looks like it’s going to be the biggest-grossing movie I’ve ever made. I’ll get what I’m owed.” She glanced at the window. “I want to live to enjoy it, too. Are we all still supposed to be on someone’s hit list?”

  He tried to sound convincing. And convinced. “I don’t think so. Still, it makes sense to be careful.”

  “No rides through the Presidio? No visits to strange art galleries?”

  “Not for the moment.”

  She stood a little closer. Her perfume was subtle and mesmerising. Close up, she didn’t look so young, and he liked that.

  “I have to do the premiere tomorrow. Then launch some old movie festival in the city over the weekend. After that …” The glass bobbed up and down, a touch nervously. “I have a villa for three weeks in Barbados. No one but me. Private estate. Nearest house half a mile away. Is that safe enough for you?”