by David Hewson
“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 their 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.”
“Sensible man.” Kelly sighed. “I didn’t see Tom Black use his weapon,” the cop said. “In fact I’d say the first shot I heard took him down, and that didn’t come from us.”
PART 6
1
He was woken by the phone. It was Maggie
wanting to know what had happened. The incident outside the Ferry Building was all over the morning news. Inferno had hit the headlines again.
It was past nine and Costa still felt exhausted. Outside the window of his bedroom the light on Greenwich Street looked different, less bright, more diffuse. The only sound in the house was the noisy throb of the boom box of the Mexican decorators who’d spent most of the previous week painting the front of the building next door.
“You could have been killed,” she said, and he flinched at the accusation in her voice.
“Tom Black asked to see me. Alone. He didn’t wish me any harm. If he’d listened to me, he’d still be alive and we might have a clearer idea of what’s been going on.”
“And that makes it all OK?”
“Sometimes. He sounded as if he needed help.”
“And now he’s dead, too.”
The memories of those last moments on the Embarcadero were starting to flood back. “I don’t understand what happened. I’m sorry. I know you liked him.”
There was a moment’s silence on the line.
“Not really. Tom was a sad man. He hung around me for a while like a lot of men do, not that he seemed terribly convinced. I think he felt he was supposed to do that kind of thing. If Josh had told him to jump off the roof, he would have. Tom didn’t have the courage to ask for what he wanted, which makes him stand out from most so-called associate producers I’ve met.”
“Tom Black was a producer?” The job was news to him.
“Associate producer. Lukatmi put in money, didn’t they? Collect enough tokens, you get free candy.” She hesitated. “Did they have to shoot him?”
He thought about Gerald Kelly’s odd question, then said, “I didn’t see what happened. Black was a man with a gun who looked ready to use it. Just like that idiot in Rome. I tried to talk him out of it. I failed.”
“This is getting to me, Nic. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here. There are a couple of events over the weekend and then I’m gone.”
“Do you know if you’ve been paid yet?”
“What the hell does that matter?” she asked, incredulous.
“Maybe it doesn’t. Have you?”
She sighed. “Only what I got at the start. Sylvie, my agent, is foaming about it. This is partly my fault. I let Simon deal with the money stuff when it all got complicated.”
“Complicated?”
“Not enough money to pay the bills at Cinecittà. People asking for favours. Don’t take your fee now. Take it later, in installments. That kind of stuff. Normally you get it before the movie starts shooting. Not partway through. I didn’t want to know. Simon was in Rome. Sylvie was in Hollywood. Like she should care. She still gets her cut. Why’s my money important?”
“It probably isn’t.”
“Did Tom say anything about what happened?”
“Nothing useful.”
“You wouldn’t tell me, would you? Even if he did.”
This conversation always came up, in every relationship he’d had. With Emily it had been easy. She’d worked in law enforcement, too. She understood.
“No. I wouldn’t.”
“OK. I’m starting to get the picture.”
“I wish I was. When will I see you?”
“Tonight, I hope. At the premiere. Will you be working?”
“If you can call it that. Babysitting a set of glass cases. We’re irrelevant here. Come Saturday, when the exhibition goes back to Rome, we don’t even get the rent paid.”
She waited, then said, very slowly, “I thought we had an understanding. Barbados. Remember?”
There was always that gap between what was said in the spur of passion and what was felt in the cold light of day. Costa didn’t doubt his emotions there for a moment. He wanted to be with Maggie Flavier.
“Barbados,” he said. “Let me talk to Leo.”
“Do that. And another thing. An actress can’t walk down the red carpet at a movie premiere on her own.” A pause. “Do I really have to ask?”
“I’m working.”
“Two minutes of your time. That’s all it takes. Then you can go back to standing around your glass cases. Two minutes.”
He didn’t know what to say. He was trying to picture it in his head, all those images of glittering affairs on the TV, shots of the Oscars, celebrities laughing and joking … The sea of paparazzi who had been trying to capture them all along, given what they wanted, on a plate.
“If you’d prefer not to …” she began.
“There’s nothing I’d rather do in the world.”
“Really?”
“Really. I will smile for the cameras and wear a flower in my lapel. I will hold your hand, if that’s not too forward. Be my director. Tell me what to do.”
There was a low, throaty giggle on the line.
“I’d rather leave that till later, if you don’t mind. The photographers will go to town. You realise that, don’t you? We’ll be a couple, official. Privacy will be confined to the bathroom from now on, and I can’t always guarantee that.”
“I can live with it if you can.”
“You say that now …”
“Yes. I do.”
“If that’s true, you’ll be the best damn man I’ve ever known,” she said huskily. “Got to go …”
He tried to imagine her in the Brocklebank building, wondering what she would wear for the premiere. Who she might be. Herself? Or someone stolen from a wall in the Legion of Honor?
Costa walked downstairs. The small house was empty. On the table was a handwritten note, scribbled in a familiar, precise hand.
I say this as much as a friend as your commanding officer. To absent yourself on a whim last night, without informing any of us of your intentions, was stupid, selfish, and unacceptable. I do not wish to see you today. Try to amuse yourself in a way which causes no one any concern or harm.
Falcone
He read the message twice, then screwed it up into a tight ball and threw the thing into the kitchen bin. Once again there was no coffee. Costa sat down with a glass of orange juice and called Sylvie Brewster, Maggie’s agent. He had to talk his way through three assistants to reach her, and then she said, “You’re asking me to discuss the financial affairs of a client? And you’re not even an American cop with a warrant or something?”
“I’m a friend. I’m concerned.”
“Now I know who you are. You’re that one. Nic.”
“This is important. It may explain why she was attacked.”
“Whoever did that thing to Maggie deserves to be eaten alive by rats. What can I tell you, love?”
“I don’t know anything about the movie business. I don’t understand how a film can go into production, go as far as having a premiere, and still the cast haven’t all been paid. Is that normal?”
“No,” Sylvie Brewster replied, and nothing more.
“Then how did it happen?”
He heard a long groan and then the sound of someone sucking on a cigarette. “OK. You will never pass this on to another soul, right?”
“Agreed.”
“I haven’t a clue. The first thing I heard about it was when the deal was already done. I went nuts, but it was too late. They’d had some financial crisis. Tonti and that evil bastard Bonetti had set it up. They said that if I tried anything, I might be running the risk of bringing the whole damn thing crashing down. Not just no money but no movie.”
“Could they make a threat like that?”
“They thought so. Dino Bonetti broke every rule in the book. Those bastards took Maggie to one side in Rome. Leaned on her. Begged her. Next thing I know, she’s signed some papers and it’s all settled.”
“Have you seen those papers?”
“Nope. And if I didn’t love Maggie, she’d be an ex-client now. To hell with my cut. This is not the way the business is supposed to work.”
“Simon Harvey organised the deal, didn’t he?”
“So I hear. Can’t get into di
recting, so maybe he fancies himself a producer now. He’d better not come near my clients again — I’ll claw his eyes out. Unless he’s got funding, in which case we’ll do lunch.” She laughed.
“Thanks for the insight.”
“I’ll tell you something else, too, Nic sweetie. I was talking to Allan Prime’s agent the other day. This is a small world. I wanted to commiserate.”
“Prime made the same deal,” Costa guessed. “Outside the usual rules. No money on the table. No money anywhere.”
Sylvie Brewster sounded impressed. “Maggie said you were a smart one. Be kind to her while it lasts, won’t you, babe?”
Then she was gone. Costa went to the waste bin and retrieved Falcone’s note. He was still reading it, half furious, half ashamed, when Teresa came back with two bags full of groceries.
She saw what he was doing and said, “Well, look on the bright side. At least you escaped getting it face-to-face. Leo was pretty mad at you. Even for him.”
“Sorry. I’ll have to find him and apologise.”
“No rush. Leo Falcone’s life consists of a series of small explosions. It always will. Particularly when he keeps getting knocked back. A woman who doesn’t fall for his well-oiled charms. We had to come all the way to California to find one.”
She didn’t say it with much relish.
“Is he upset?” Costa asked.
“About Catherine? He’s beside himself. I think the poor thing’s actually smitten. I’d like to say it serves him right for treating Raffaella Arcangelo so badly.” She screwed up her face. “But I don’t feel that way. Must be getting old. It’s difficult to work up the energy to be vindictive these days. He’ll get over it when he’s back home in Rome.” She took the note from his hands and put it back in the bin.
“Look. Leo wrote that thing out of hurt more than anything else. It’s forgotten now. You should do the same. Don’t expect me to make you coffee, either. I’m not stopping. I have identical twins to scold. And for that I do have the strength. Jesus …”
Costa didn’t say a word.
She sat down opposite him and grumbled, “Oh for God’s sake, what do you want?”
“I want to talk this through.”
