Dante's Numbers

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 directing, 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.”

Teresa put a finger to her cheek, gave him a questioning look. “Let me make a suggestion. You have been granted the day off. There is, it seems to me, someone in your life again. You’re in a beautiful city most people would pay good money to visit. Why not go out and enjoy yourself? See the sights. Take Maggie to lunch. Do something normal for a change.”

“I do normal things all the time,” he objected.

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

She left without another word. Costa thought about what she’d said. He’d never invited Maggie for a coffee, let alone a meal. In Rome it would have been different. No, he corrected himself, in Rome it will be different.

He was reaching for the phone when it rang.

“We need to meet,” Gerald Kelly said. “Right away.”

2

Teresa Lupo had summoned them to their usual table at the café on Chestnut. She couldn’t work out whether to feel mad or relieved. Hank and Frank sat there sipping coffee and picking at a couple of doughnuts, staring at the ceiling as if pretending that nothing had happened. Their hands were covered in scratches. Hank’s right cheek was red and inflamed from what he said was a reaction to poison oak. Frank’s eyes were watery and bloodshot. They looked a mess, and as guilty as a couple of schoolboys caught pilfering from the neighbourhood store.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she wanted to know.

“That maybe we could help,” Frank responded.

“It was his idea,” Hank jumped in.

“Don’t try that with me,” she warned. “You two work as a pair. I’m not stupid.”

“We did help, didn’t we?” Hank seemed quite offended. “In a messy kind of way.”

The death of two men had clearly upset them, in spite of Jimmy Gaines’s murderous intentions. It was impossible to escape the consequences. The shooting of Tom Black had headlined the morning TV news, and the recovery of Gaines’s body from a ravine in the Muir Woods hadn’t been far behind. Hank and Frank had spent half the night being interrogated and then, on the advice of the SFPD, found themselves somewhere private to stay in order to avoid the attentions of the news crews. “Somewhere private” had turned out to be a cheap motel in Cow Hollow, just round the corner from where they lived. Frank called it “hiding in plain sight.” Hank described the decision as pure laziness.

“If they hadn’t shot that poor boy …” Hank grumbled. “He could have told them something.”

She was not going to take this nonsense. “Someone who comes racing towards armed police holding a gun is asking for trouble. Don’t blame anyone else for that. Least of all yourselves.”

“So is that it?” Frank asked. “Is it over? It was Josh Jonah, Tom Black, and Jimmy Gaines doing all this stuff? Along with that photographer guy who got killed?”

Teresa shrugged. “Criminal investigations are based on assumptions,” she said, toying with some strange Middle Eastern pastry the café owner had thrust upon her. “They have to be. It’s how we make progress. We assume that when a series of killings occur inside the same circle like this, it’s all down to the same individual or group of people.”

“That makes sense,” Hank agreed.

“But what if the assumptions are wrong?” Teresa asked. “What if one person killed Allan Prime and another one tried to poison Maggie Flavier? They don’t look like the same person’s handiwork to me. Not for a moment.”

Frank looked uneasy. “I don’t like complicated ideas. There’s a gratifying shortage of people willing to go around knocking off their fellow human beings. What are the odds of them all turning up in one place like this, all at the same time?”

Hank nodded. “I’m inclined to agree. If this were fiction …”

“It isn’t fiction!” she hissed. “If you’d got killed last night, you’d have known that.”

The brothers stared at her, eyebrows raised in the same surprised, amused expression.

“You know what I mean. Don’t ask me what people think right now. I have no idea.”

“What did Tom Black tell your young friend?” Frank asked.

“Not a lot. Yes, there was a conspiracy to hype the movie. No, they didn’t think anyone would get hurt. That’s about it.”

Hank finished his doughnut, wiped his fingers daintily on a napkin, and said, “I still don’t know why Jimmy wanted to get us out of the way. Why he couldn’t just let us go once Tom was in police custody. He must have known it would come back to him in the end.”

“He’d have been gone the moment he was out of Muir Woods,” Frank muttered. “Murderous bastard …”

“Yeah, but why?” Hank shook his head. “Jimmy didn’t like the idea of shooting us. And he didn’t need to kill us, did he?”

Frank scratched his nose. “No,” he agreed. “He didn’t.”

Teresa watched them struggle with this idea, then suggested, “There has to be some reason. Something you knew …”

“Like what?” Frank demanded. “We were wise to the fact Jimmy knocked around with Tom Black. We knew Jimmy was gay, or at least hung around in those circles. That’s no big deal. Nothing worth killing for.”

“Frank’s right,” Hank added. “No answers there.”

“Then it must have been something you said.”

The two men grumbled to each other, then folded their arms in unison and gazed at her.

“Think about it,” she urged. “When you went to see Gaines at Lukatmi. He surely wasn’t thinking of popping you two in the Muir Woods the moment you turned up.”

“He looked pleased to see us,” Hank agreed. “Turned a touch cooler when we told him why we came. Not that that helps us any. He was keeping a big secret. Only understandable.”

“Think back,” she told them. “Was there some point in the conversation when his mood changed?”

The brothers looked blank.

“What about later?” Teresa persisted. “On the way to the woods? When you got there? What did you talk about?”

“Vertigo and how it wasn’t really shot where everyone thinks it was,” Frank answered. “Oh, and Thoreau. Tom Black loved Walden. Those secrets don’t merit killing two old colleagues.”

“He’d already made up his mind by the time we got there,” Hank said. “It was in his eyes.”

Frank nodded. “You’re right. He was odd with us even before we crossed the bridge. I can’t believe we were so stupid to just walk into that forest with him.”

She didn’t like seeing them like this. “Never look back, boys. Stupidity is God’s gift to the world, ours to do with as we please. You’re dead tired. Are you going to go back to that motel of yours? Come round to our place if you like …”

They didn’t budge. Something she said had set Hank thinking.

“This is insane,” he said finally.

“What is?” she asked.

“The moment. When Jimmy Gaines got a look in his eye. I think I got it.”

“You have?” Frank asked.

“Maybe. Remember at Lukatmi? When he wanted to take us off for coffee?”

“So?” Frank said, shaking his head.

“You made some crack about there being no insurance against stupidity. Jimmy looked at you funny the moment you used that word. He asked what you meant.” Hank leaned forward. “Remember what you said?”

Frank grimaced. “I told him he knew exactly what I meant. It was just a saying.”

“He didn’t get the joke, brother. Not at all.”

The three of them looked at each other.

“Insurance?” Teresa asked, bewildered. “Is that the best you’ve got? I’ve spent the last two weeks screaming at people about how the human race doesn’t go around murdering itself in defence of poetry. They, in return, have been yelling at me for having the temerity to suggest it might have something to do with a 1950s movie. Now you’re throwing insurance my way?”

Hank called out for more coffee and added, “Barkev? Is it OK if we use your machine out back?”

The café owner walked to the rear of the room and opened a door to a tiny and very tidy office where a smart new computer sat on a clear and well-polished desk.

“I don’t imagine either of you has ever read much Robert Louis Stevenson except for Treasure Island and Kidnapped,” Hank stated.

Teresa exchanged glances with Frank. “I think I can speak for both of us when I say no,” she responded.

Hank got up and stretched his scratched and swollen fingers, as if readying them for action.

“There was a book called The Wrong Box. He wrote it with a friend. Read it years ago. Funny story, comedic funny, that is. Cruel and heartless, too.” He peered through at the office. “Guilty people get touchy, I guess,” Hank Boynton said. “They see spooks around every corner. Get twitchy at the slightest, most innocent of things. Maybe …” He looked at them, still working this out for himself. “Just maybe, it’s all in a name.”

3

Gerald Kelly owned an ordinary black sedan and drove it sedately through the city by a route so circuitous Costa couldn’t begin to identify any of the neighbourhoods they passed. This was a conversation the SFPD captain had wanted with someone for a long time. Listening to him spend the best part of an hour outlining what he knew, it was obvious why. Without Gianluca Quattrocchi’s conspiracy theory, homicide had precious little left to work on. There was a genuine crime inside Lukatmi — a missing fortune, and offshore agreements that were impenetrable to the U.S. authorities, and probably would remain so now the two founders of the company were dead. But those entailed financial offences and fell to a different team of investigators, probably federal ones. Kelly was a homicide man through and through, and in that field he was struggling for daylight.

They travelled slowly down a long straight street. At the end the Pacific Ocean sat in a pale blue line on the horizon.

“What do you think Black was trying to tell you last night?” Kelly asked.

“That there was a conspiracy within Inferno designed to generate as much publicity as possible. As far as he was concerned, that’s all it was. He said Allan Prime wasn’t supposed to die.”

Kelly reached the intersection, pulled to the curb, and stopped. “Don’t you love the sea?” he asked. “It’s so beautiful. I could sit here for hours. Used to when I was a street cop. You’d be amazed what you get to learn that way.” He looked at Costa. “Or maybe you wouldn’t. Here’s something that came in from the overnight people. James Conway Gaines. Former fireman who wound up working security at Lukatmi, who seems to have become some kind of lover-cum-father-figure for Tom Black. He had three convictions for violence, bar brawls, the usual. Some rough gay places mainly. Also …”

Kelly’s mobile phone rang. He took it out of his jacket, answered the call, told someone he was busy and would be back within the hour.

“Jimmy Gaines was in Italy for two weeks right when all this fun began. In Rome. We found an entry in his passport and stubs for some fancy hotel that ought to be beyond the reach of someone on a security guard’s wages. Flew back the day after Allan Prime died.”

He wound down the window and breathed in the fresh sea air. “James Conway Gaines was crew, too, but for the publicity stunt, not the movie set. Just like our dead photographer friend Martin Vogel. Gaines fell over a cliff. Pretty clear it was an accident and those two friends of your pathologist got lucky. But why did Vogel get killed?”

Costa thought of the conversation in the back of Gaines’s station wagon. There were so many questions he wished he’d asked.

“Vogel was blackmailing Josh Jonah. However much he got paid to start with, it wasn’t enough. Jonah went round to see him. Maybe to kill him. Maybe to reason with him and it turned into a fight. Maybe …”

He couldn’t shake the memories.

“I still think there was someone else there that night.”

Kelly watched a gull float past on the other side of the road, almost stationary in the light marine breeze.

“I know you do. And I wish there was one scrap of evidence in that burnt-out mess to back you up. So let’s assume it was the fight idea. I don’t see those two geeks getting into the hit business. Dino Bonetti, on the other hand …”

“Everything we have on Bonetti we gave to you. Our people in Rome had plenty of information. The mob connections. The history of fraud.”

“Yeah. We had stuff of our own, too. Does it help? I don’t know. The guy’s a movie producer. Most of that business is clean. Some parts are as dirty as hell. Bonetti’s been dining with crooks here and back in Italy for two decades or more. There was a time when the Feds were thinking of refusing him entrance into the U.S. on grounds of his connections. Not that it happened. Maybe a movie wouldn’t have got made or something.”

“What about Tonti?” Costa asked.

“We all know he’s got mob links. His wife’s left him, so maybe brother-in-law Scarface isn’t too happy. But I don’t buy it. This is California, not Calabria. It’s not worth going to jail for wasting an in-law who’s a jerk. Tonti’s Italian by birth, living here, and he’s got friends with records. Doesn’t add up to much.” He waved his arm along the seafront. “There’s a dozen restaurant guys not a mile from here I could say the same thing about. We have no proof, only guesses. I’m sick of those.”

He started the car and took a right along the seafront road. Ahead was an expanse of green hillside. It looked familiar.

“Also,” Kelly added, “there’s the health thing. Roberto Tonti has advanced lung cancer. He wasn’t hopping in and out of Martin Vogel’s apartment when the shooting started. The guy’s got maybe three or four months, max. Little movie industry secret, one they’d like to keep quiet while they’re raising dough to make a sequel. Yeah, I know. Sometimes a dying man feels he’s been given the right to kill. We’d need a little more evidence than that, though. And a motive.” He shook his head. “Killing Allan Prime got these guys what they wanted. Why did they need more than that? How rich do you have to be? If it had ended with Prime, maybe Lukatmi wouldn’t have collapsed, not with all that nice publicity to keep it afloat.”

He stomped on the horn as a skateboarder crossed the empty road directly in front of them.

“Kids.” He peered at the ocean as if wishing he were on it. “Am I missing something?”

“Carlotta Valdes,” Costa stated.

They began to climb uphill. Costa had a good idea where they were headed. They drove past golfers playing through wisps of fog drifting in from the sea and drew up in front of the elegant white building at the summit. The Legion of Honor looked just as he remembered it. Images of the paintings it held, Maggie’s ghosts, flitted through his head.

Kelly turned and pointed a finger in his direction.

“I was not forgetting Carlotta Valdes. By the way, please tell your boss Falcone that I am mad as hell at him for mentioning that damned movie in the first place. So Tonti worked with Hitchcock fifty years ago. What’s the connection?”

Costa took a deep breath. “Think about it. They’re the same story. Inferno and Vertigo. A lost man looking for something he wants. An ethereal woman he believes can provide some answers.” He thought of what Simon Harvey had told Maggie. “For both of them, it ends in death. Beatrice waits for Dante in Paradise. Scottie sees the woman he’s created in the image of Madeleine Elster die in front of his eyes, and stands alone in the bell tower, staring down at her body. He’s lost everything. Including the vertigo that’s been cursing him, that got him into the case in the first place.”

Kelly seemed unmoved. “You’re starting to sound like Bryan Whitcombe.”

“Not really. If someone’s obsessed with one, it’s understandable he might be obsessed with the other. There’s a connection. It’s obvious when you think about it. What it means …” His voice trailed off. He’d spent hours trying to make sense of the link. Something was missing. “I can’t begin to guess.”

Another memory returned. “Tom Black said something. About how the movies screw you up. Screwed up Scottie. Someone called Jones …” He shook his head, trying to recall Black’s jumble of words.

“Scottie’s in Vertigo,” Kelly suggested. “Is there a guy called Jones in the movie, too?”

“There was an actor. He played the creepy coroner. He’s long dead.”

Kelly gave him the kind of look Costa had come to expect from Falcone.

“Are we shooting in the dark or what? I’ll check if the name Jones means anything inside the movie crew. You sure you heard it right?”

“Not really.”

“Let’s deal with something practical, shall we? Where’s Carlotta? Back in Rome and paid off? Dead?”

“You tell me.”

“Cherchez la femme. We don’t have one. Not anywhere.” He caught Costa’s eye. “Except for Ms. Flavier. We’re supposed to think someone’s tried to kill her twice, except neither time was quite what it appeared on the surface. Personal feelings apart, do you think it might possibly be her? I checked Quattrocchi’s files. Carlotta Valdes turned up at Allan Prime’s home first thing in the morning. Maggie Flavier was at home in her apartment until two that afternoon. Alone. No witnesses. That name could have been a joke.”

“Whoever it was made a real death mask,” Costa pointed out. “Does that sound a likely skill for an actress?”

“Maybe. Have you asked?”

“No. No more than I asked whether she poisoned herself either.”

The captain didn’t flinch. “If you wanted to put on some kind of show, isn’t that the way you’d do it? Carrying a hypodermic along with you and a tame cop to help out?” He leaned over the seat and said, in a low, half-amused voice, “You don’t mind me saying this, do you?”

“No,” Costa answered, refusing to rise to the bait.

“You don’t think it hasn’t run through the minds of your colleagues, do you? They’re not dumb.”

“The Carabinieri were wrong when they told you Maggie had no alibi for that morning. She had flowers delivered around ten. Ordered them herself. Signed for them herself. We have a copy of the receipt back in the Questura and a statement from the deliveryman. Little details like that probably never occurred to Quattrocchi. I took the deliveryman’s statement myself before we even left Rome. Maggie could not have been the woman who signed herself in as Carlotta Valdes in that apartment in the Via Giulia. It’s simply impossible.”

The man in the driver’s seat creased with laughter. “Jesus … Jesus … And I picked Gianluca Quattrocchi …”

He started the engine. They drew away, in the opposite direction down the hill. The Golden Gate Bridge emerged in the distance. The car was headed for the Marina. He’d seen this road before, in Vertigo.

“I’ve got to get back to the office. I’m enjoying myself too much here,” Kelly said. “You want to know the truth? There’s only one thing we’re sure of right now. There was a conspiracy to hype Inferno. Somehow, somewhere along the way, it turned murderous.”

Costa shrugged and said, “Any way you look at it, one of three people has got to be at the heart of this case. Roberto Tonti, Dino Bonetti, or Simon Harvey. If they’d been cab drivers or office clerks, they’d have spent a couple of days in Bryant Street being sweated until they couldn’t sleep. Instead …”

“Not going to happen, Nic. Tonti and Bonetti are Italian citizens. They insist Gianluca Quattrocchi is present if we so much as ask them the way to the bathroom.”

“And Harvey?”

“I leaned a little hard on Harvey right at the beginning. One hour later I’m getting calls from God down asking me why I’m wasting my time. There’s not a scrap of hard evidence linking them to the case and you know it.” Despite his words, Kelly still looked interested. “You think you can do better?”

“I can try.”

“How?”

“By getting in their faces. The way I’d do if they were plain ordinary human beings like everyone else. When they don’t want it. Before they can call up a lawyer.”

They had reached a bluff overlooking the bridge. Kelly pulled in.

“Now, there’s something you don’t see often,” he muttered, pointing at the ocean.

A long white, smoky finger of mist was working its way across the Bay ahead.

“I’ll take you out there someday. We call that place ‘the slot.’ It runs from the bridge to Alcatraz. Windy as hell sometimes, and you don’t have a clue what’s going on until you’re in the middle of it.” He shook his head. “Fog? Now? I’d expect it from the west. And later. But hell. Welcome to summer in San Francisco.”

He took off his jacket, removed the tan holster, and held it out, gun first, to Costa.

“Expecting things to turn out like they should is something stupid people do. If you plan to go visiting, and I hope you do, I would like you to have this.”

Costa didn’t reach for the weapon.

“Men who work with me do so armed,” Kelly insisted. “I’ve lost three officers in my career and that’s three too many.”

“It’s illegal for me to carry a weapon.”

“I’ll look the other way. I know this city and I have my rules when dealing with it. We both understand there are still people out there with blood on their hands. I’d hazard a guess they’ll shed a little more to keep us from finding out what exactly has gone on here. This is not a negotiation, Nic. You take the gun or I drive you home and you stay there.” The handgun didn’t move. “Well?”

Costa grasped the cold butt of the weapon, felt its familiar weight.

Kelly turned on the radio and kept the volume low. Strains of Santana drifted into the car.

“Oh,” he added, as if it were an afterthought. “One more thing. That crossbow that killed Allan Prime. Unusual object.” He looked at Costa. “A Barnett Revolution. It’s a hunting crossbow, made for killing deer. Very powerful. Not generally available in Italy. It was bought used through eBay. Guy paid cash and met the seller in a parking lot in South San Francisco one month before Prime died. He wore a hat and sunglasses. That’s as good a description as we could get. My guess is it got shipped to Rome along with some of the equipment they took out for that event there, not that I can prove it.”

“A month?”

“None of this happened on the spur of the moment, did it? Now here’s one more interesting thing: we recovered three shells from Tom Black’s body. Two of them were ours. One wasn’t.”

Kelly squinted at the bright horizon. “The shooter was in a parking lot across the street. I guess he must have been following you from when you came off the bridge. When he saw the roadblock, he pulled off, set up position, then popped one into Black as he walked towards us, and another through the windshield of a squad car just to make sure we returned fire. Clever guy. I’d put money he was the ghost in Vogel’s apartment, that he set up that meeting, shot them, and got panicked when you arrived.”

He looked at Costa. “That makes two occasions when he could have had you in his sights. Consider yourself damned lucky. And don’t lose that gun.”

“Anything else I should know?” Costa asked.

“Here’s the last remaining fact I have. We have the bullets and we have spent shells from the Embarcadero. They’re from a.243 Winchester. Whoever he is, he had a long-range hunting rifle.” Gerald Kelly winced. “The kind you use for shooting deer. Which is not my idea of sport, though it’s a little bit more humane than a crossbow, I guess.”

4

Hank had a pair of half-moon glasses for sitting at the computer. Frank, similarly afflicted, preferred a pair of modern square plastic frames. Both men squinted at Barkev’s Mac and made baffling complimentary remarks on its newness and speed. These things seemed important in San Francisco. The average pair of sixty-year-old Roman twins newly out of the fire department would probably have struggled to do much more than send an e-mail. The Boynton brothers sailed through a sea of information sources in front of them with a speed and ease that reminded her of Silvio Di Capua back in Rome, a thought that gave her a pang of homesickness.

Finally Hank found the page he wanted, and once they’d read it, Teresa said, “One more coincidence. It has to be. We’re talking nearly four hundred years ago.”

“Let’s see.” His fat fingers clattered across Barkev’s pristine keyboard. “Yep. It’s a coincidence. Lorenzo di Tonti. Born in Naples. Got into trouble there. Moved to Paris. Died penniless.”

“Offspring?” Frank asked.

“Two,” his brother replied, placing a large finger directly on the screen.

Teresa scanned the article next to a black-and-white portrait of a man with long, flowing black hair and elegant nobleman’s clothes.

“So Roberto Tonti can’t be related,” she declared when she skimmed to the end.

His fingers ran over the keyboard again.

“Seems not. Even the name changes. Lorenzo became de Tonti when he moved to Paris. Both sons wound up over here. One died penniless of yellow fever in Alabama. The second helped found Detroit and died in disgrace. Was calling himself de Tonty by then. They didn’t have a lot of luck, these guys, did they? Mind you, all that from an argument in Naples. Interesting lives. Makes me feel quite small.”

“So,” she repeated, “Roberto Tonti the movie director can in no way be a descendant of Lorenzo di Tonti the dubious seventeenth-century banker.”

“Right,” Hank said. “But does that matter? Use your imagination. Roberto certainly does. It’s his job. Lorenzo invented the tontine that’s named after him. Who doesn’t Google themselves these days? How many other people have surnames describing an idea that’s killed a good number of idiots over the years?”

Tontine.

She vaguely knew what the word meant. It reminded her of old stories of tortuous conspiracies and unbelievably clever detectives. All the kinds of things real-life law enforcement agencies never met in the mundane world of hard, cruel fact.

“I’ve got to be honest.” Hank looked uncomfortable. “I looked up Tonti a few days ago. Type in ‘Tonti’ and pretty soon you get to ‘tontine.’ I apologise for not mentioning any of this earlier. It seemed irrelevant. I thought the same about tontines, too. Maybe I was wrong.”

She went through another page he’d found, feeling a welcome mild rush of excitement and possibility.

Teresa dimly recalled a tontine as an agreement between a group of individuals to share some kind of bounty, usually a crooked one, leaving the illicit prize to the last surviving member of the circle. This proved fundamentally wrong in many respects. Lorenzo di Tonti, the man who shared Roberto’s name — though not, it would seem, his blood — hadn’t set out to make his fortune creating a secret profit-sharing scheme for criminals. He was an ambitious banker trying to establish a new form of investment vehicle of general benefit to those who had the wherewithal to take part in it.

Teresa read the details and tried to recall what little she knew about investing for the future. Money was never one of her strong points, which was probably why the true tontine appeared eminently sensible. Each member made a contribution to the fund. The total was then invested in legitimate enterprises. Any dividends from those holdings were shared equally among the members of the scheme, until the penultimate one died, at which point the entire sum, dividends and capital, fell to the ownership of the last in the group.

The only flaw she could see was the obvious one: there was a substantial incentive on the part of tontine members to murder one another in order to ensure they claimed the richest prize. According to the documents Hank found, this had happened, and not just in fiction either. Tontines were made illegal in most countries by the nineteenth century, and passed on as fodder for novelists.

“Fine …” she said quietly. “The connection being?”

Hank found another article, one from the Financial Times the previous year.

“I remembered this one because it made me think. Take a look.”

It was a long and very serious piece about the nature of life insurance.

“You see the author’s point?” Hank said. “If you leave out the temptation-to-murder part, what old Lorenzo actually invented was the very first pension scheme. The only difference is he didn’t let newcomers in, so that big final payout remained. In practical terms it’s not much different from what happens today.” He nodded at his brother. “We get a fire department pension. The pot for that depends on the stock market or something magical, I guess. When one of our colleagues bites the dust, that’s one less mouth to feed. We all profit from each other’s deaths. We always have. Lorenzo just said all that out loud, and put it in a way that tempted a few people to bring on some of those deaths a little earlier than might otherwise have happened.”

“So there was a tontine,” Teresa suggested. “And the people who were trying to hype Inferno were all in it.”

“That’s a possibility. Plus Josh Jonah and Tom Black, and Jimmy Gaines. Jimmy wasn’t the most sophisticated of creatures. I doubt anyone could have sold him on a tontine. But if they said it was some kind of fancy insurance, one that might give him and Tom Black a tidy return each …?”

“What did Jimmy Gaines have to put into a movie?” Frank asked.

Hank shrugged. “A little muscle, maybe, like that photographer guy. What you have is what you contribute. And what you take out is …”

There he was struggling. Frank looked sceptical.

“Imagine this is true,” he said. “Why would they do it? They’re making a movie. What these people need is money. Money pays people. You don’t pay people, you don’t get the job done.”

“They didn’t pay people,” Teresa interjected. “That’s the point. The money wasn’t there. Nic told me Maggie is still owed most of her salary. Lots of other people, too.”

“I still don’t see it …” Frank sighed.

But she did. Or at least she thought she might.

“Imagine you’re Allan Prime. They come to you. The movie’s nearly finished. You’ve been working for six months, but the big reward is still down the line, when it comes out. They say there’s no money left to pay you what’s owed. But if you’re willing to exchange your fee for something else …”

“Insurance?” Hank suggested.

Frank shook his big, tired head. “Prime would tell them to take a hike! It’s the movie business. Getting paid’s the first thing any of them would want.”

“But if you won’t get paid anyway?” she persisted. “If they say you take this deal or the whole thing collapses? And everything with it? The merchandise cut, the residuals from the TV and DVD rights, the cosy promotional tour around the world? If there’s no movie, Allan Prime loses a lot more than his fee. He loses everything that might come after.”

Frank still wasn’t happy. “I still don’t see how someone like Jimmy would get mixed up in something like that. What the hell would he know about the movie business?”

Barkev came in with some more coffee. Teresa gulped hers down quickly.

“They weren’t dealing with the movie business,” she said resolutely after Barkev left the room.

The two brothers watched her and didn’t utter a word.

“The movie people were dealing with Lukatmi. Don’t you see? We’ve been asking the wrong question all along. When Roberto Tonti needed real money, he went to the mob. They stumped up enough to keep the production alive, barely, but it still couldn’t be finished. We’re pretty sure of that. Dino Bonetti has been taking finance from criminals for years. You don’t need to be a genius to understand they’ll certainly be expecting their return. Lukatmi was different. They came in later, when Tonti saw the whole project collapsing. Everyone’s turned him down. He’s desperate. And Lukatmi turn up offering …”

What? It was clear there was precious little money behind the doors of their hangars at Fort Mason by that stage. Josh Jonah and Tom Black hadn’t bailed out Inferno. They didn’t have the cash.

Frank — practical, logical, rational Frank — got there first, naturally.

“I know what I’d do. I’d go quietly to all the people I owe money, not just the big guys like Allan Prime. I’d say, skip your salary and we’ll give you something else. Something that might be worth a whole lot more than some risky horror flick if you play along.”

She wanted to pinch herself. It was so obvious.

“This wasn’t about investing in a movie,” Teresa said. “It was about cutting your losses. About keeping Inferno alive and getting a chunk of the next big dotcom float coming round the corner. One that could make you richer than you could ever dream of, even in Hollywood. Josh Jonah and Tom Black were paper billionaires. Allan Prime couldn’t even contemplate money like that, and he was a huge movie star. So you put together a secret little scheme to hype Inferno to the heavens and make Lukatmi even more lucrative at the same time.”

Frank was scribbling down some notes. “Whatever paperwork’s involved is squirreled away in one of these funny-money places in the Caribbean,” he said. “A limited number of members with the payout based on status. Obviously it can’t be equal. Allan Prime’s going to expect a whole lot more than poor little Jimmy Gaines, that’s for sure. Martin Vogel thought his efforts merited a bigger cut and started blackmailing Josh Jonah. But it’s still a fund. A secret one. It has to be. You can’t invite in more members, or you go to jail. You get it?”

Not quite yet, she thought.

“It’s a tontine by default as much as by design,” Frank explained. “When the numbers start to fall because people are dying, where else can the money go except to the original members? Tonti could have sold the whole thing to these people without saying the word ‘tontine’ once. It was exactly what he said it was. What Jimmy got told. Insurance.”

Hank put down his coffee cup. He had a sour expression on his face. “This world sickens me. All these people screwing one another. Jonah and Black thinking they were robbing the movie crowd so’s they could keep their tin-pot company afloat. The movie people kidding themselves they’d all get rich on some dumb kids’ dotcom dream. Yuck …”

He looked at the door and yelled, “Barkev! I need a beer!”

The dark face appeared. “Hank,” the man said, “this is a café. If you want a beer, go find a bar.”

“That I shall. Someone going to join me?”

Teresa stared at him in astonishment. “We are about to get some insight into this case, finally, and you want to go to a bar?”

“You can think of a better time? What’s there left to talk about? Half these people are dead. Josh and Tom and Jimmy. That photographer. Allan Prime. Anyone else who’s involved … why would they do anything now? What for? The money’s gone. Lukatmi’s worthless. Their grubby little deal won’t get them a penny. That’s as much justice as any of us can expect.”

She caught his arm. “You’re missing the point. This is offshore. It can’t be part of Lukatmi anymore, otherwise they’d be able to find it. From what Catherine Bianchi told me, even the federal people think they’ll never trace where the company’s assets really ended up.” She needed to get this clear in her own head, too. “That part of things is not dead. It’s very much alive, out there somewhere. Just reversed. Lukatmi’s the turkey and Inferno’s the golden goose. One that’s in the names of a diminishing group of people, who, between them, now own a chunk of the biggest movie in decades.”

“Do the math,” Frank suggested. “Say there’s four of them still alive. One dies. Your share just went from …” He paused to do the sums in his head. “Twenty-five percent to thirty-three.”

“Two left and you just doubled your money,” Teresa added, pulling out her phone. “Winner takes all. It’s worth killing for now more than it ever was.”

5

The call came through as Kelly was driving him through the foot of the Presidio. Costa got dropped off on Chestnut and met Teresa and the Boynton brothers in a tiny café he’d never even noticed before. Outside the grubby windows the light was changing. Fog was reaching the city, bringing with it a filmy haze that dimmed the bright blue sky.

Teresa and the two somewhat eccentric twins spoke of what they’d discovered. Costa listened.

When they were finished, Teresa said, “We thought you ought to know.”

He took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “It’s a good theory.”

“That’s it?” Teresa asked, incensed. “That’s all you have to say?”

“You can’t base a case on some information you’ve picked up on Google.”

“Nothing else fits,” insisted one of the brothers. “Does it?”

“Just because it fits doesn’t make it true. Without some evidence, or a confession, which seems just as unlikely, we’ve nothing.”

“A confession of murder,” the other brother said. “Sure. No one’s going to own up to that easily. But … am I really the only one who sees this?”

“Yes, Hank,” Teresa said. “I believe you are.”

“You don’t need to get someone to own up to killing one of these people,” Hank said. “All you need is to get them to own up to the deal. The insurance scheme. The tontine. If he — or she — does that and gives you the names of the members, you’ve got a short list. Someone on it has to be your man.”

Teresa stared at him. “Why on earth would anyone confess to that?”

“Because they can’t all be murdering bastards. This was an accidental tontine, right?” Hank looked at Costa. “Tom Black told you that himself, didn’t he? They surely didn’t start out to kill people. Why would they? Just to get a movie made? Someone somewhere’s got to have a conscience. Even in the movie business. Either that or they’ve got to be scared. Looking around at the others wondering, ‘Was it him? Am I next?’ No sane human being’s happy in that kind of situation.”

“Know anyone who fits the bill?” Teresa asked Costa.

“I’m not sure,” he replied. “Thanks for your time.”

Then he threw some money on the table and left.

6

Costa walked out onto chestnut and looked west, towards the flat green that fronted Fort Mason. The temperature seemed to have fallen a few degrees in the brief time he’d been inside the café. Gerald Kelly was right about the weather.

In the early days after they’d arrived in San Francisco, he’d checked the whereabouts of everyone involved in Inferno. Everyone except Maggie, since that felt somehow prurient. Roberto Tonti lived just a few hundred yards away in his bleached white mansion opposite the Palace of Fine Arts. Dino Bonetti usually took a suite in the Four Seasons on Market.

And Simon Harvey had a rented apartment on Marina Boulevard, not far from the Lukatmi building.

Someone somewhere’s got to have a conscience.

So how do you prick it?

He phoned Maggie. She was trying on some clothes for the premiere in a downtown store, surrounded, she complained, by plainclothes police. The two of them made small talk, then she asked, “Why did you really call, Nic? It wasn’t to check what I was going to wear tonight, was it?”

“I need to know something. A straight answer, Maggie. It’s important and it’s not what it sounds.”

“That has an ominous ring to it.” He heard her move somewhere more private.

“Was your relationship with Simon Harvey ever more than professional? If so, is it over? And if it is, how does he feel about that?”

He could hear the sharp, disappointed intake of breath down the phone. He could imagine the pain this question caused.

“Oh, Nic. You’re not going to do this to me all the time, are you? Ask about the past? There are a lot of questions and not many answers you’re going to like.”

“It’s never going to happen again. And I wish I didn’t have to ask now. But I do. It’s important.”

“To you?”

“In the sense that it concerns your safety … yes. Someone tried to harm you.”

“Not Simon, never Simon. That’s ludicrous …”

He hesitated. He really didn’t want to know. “You’re certain of that?”

“Yes. I am. We had an affair five years ago while we were filming that pirate nonsense. It lasted a few months. Then he joined the long line of ex-lovers who couldn’t take my behaviour any longer. I hurt him, Nic. A lot. I know because he’s told me more than once. He thought … Simon thought he could save me from myself. Some men do. It still pains him. From time to time he tries to pick up the pieces. Why do you think he was there in the sanatorium that day? Why do you think he gets so awkward when you’re around?”

“I’m sorry I had to ask.”

“I’m sorry, too. Don’t ever do it again.”

The phone went dead.

7

Simon Harvey’s apartment was on the ground floor of a Spanish-style block close to the yacht moorings that adjoined the eastern face of Fort Mason. The fog was now rolling in from the Bay with a steady momentum. There were three uniformed SFPD cops outside the door. They didn’t give him any trouble once they saw Costa’s ID. Kelly must have put round the word.

Harvey didn’t answer the bell straightaway. When he did, he didn’t look like a man preparing for the movie event of his career.

“What the hell did I do to deserve this?” He kept the door half open, blocking Costa’s way.

“I thought perhaps I’d need a publicist, now you’re setting the paparazzi on me.”

Harvey’s hair was shorter, freshly cut. The vaguely hip, student-like appearance was gone. He was trying on a tuxedo over a pair of jeans and a white dress shirt.

“Does this look like a good time to you? I’m getting dressed.”

“It’s a good time for me …” Costa began.

Harvey swore and began to close the door. Costa slipped his foot in the gap and his arm up against the wood.

“What the hell is this?” Harvey yelled. “Some Roman punk can’t just come here and start harassing me.” He glared at the three uniforms by the front gate, beyond the small, immaculate lawn of the garden. “Hey. Hey. Do I get some protection here? Well? Do I?”

One of the men turned briefly and shrugged.

Costa leaned forward and said, “Just a minute of your time, sir …”

“You don’t deserve a second of my time—”

“Simon,” Costa interrupted, “I know.”

The pressure on the door relaxed a little. Harvey’s bright, intelligent eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean? You know what?”

“I know about the scam. The tontine that Roberto Tonti had you and Dino Bonetti run up. The one that got Inferno made even though you didn’t have the money. Just a treasure chest offshore, one part Lukatmi, one part Inferno. All under-the-counter, half of it worthless, half—”

“—worth what? Worth killing for? That’s crap.” Harvey scowled at him. “You really are something else. You mess with one of my stars. You almost get her killed. And now you stand on my doorstep accusing me of murder. Get the hell out of here.”

Costa launched himself forward, pushed Simon Harvey hard back through the entrance, kicked the door shut behind, and held him tight against the wall, elbow to his throat. This close he could smell some rank, harsh spirit on Harvey’s breath. It seemed rather early in the day for vodka.

“I don’t care about you,” Costa murmured. “Not for one moment. I don’t care who it was turned murderous. Or that he may still have your name on the list of people standing between him and the pot of gold waiting in Grand Cayman.”

“Get out of my home—” Harvey began. Then he shut up.

Costa had never done this before but there were lots of things he’d never done until San Francisco. He had the service revolver hard against Simon Harvey’s right temple. He was looking into the publicist’s terrified face, searching for something.

“Do you know what it feels like? To get shot? I do. It hurts. Not the way you think. It’s a big hurt. It aches and aches. Long after the blood’s gone. Long after the scars. It’s not like the movies. Life isn’t. It’s real and cold and hard. If you lose someone you love, the taste of it stays with you forever.”

“Don’t threaten me. I could make one phone call …”

Costa stood back, breathing hard. Then he holstered the weapon.

“Make the call. Didn’t you hear me? I know. I know you didn’t just cut yourself in on this deal. Somehow you got between Maggie and her agent and put some part of her fee into that grubby little scheme of yours. That’s why she’s wondering where the money is now. What’s she going to think when she finds she got robbed by some …” He waited to let the words have some power. “… old boyfriend? One who still won’t let go?”

“You’re remarkably out of your depth.”

“Maybe,” Costa admitted. “Doesn’t it bother you, though? The idea that this isn’t over?”

“Of course it’s over. The Carabinieri said so. Those creeps from Lukatmi did it. Jonah. Black.”

“The Carabinieri are wrong. What if someone gets to Maggie first? Would you even care?”

“What the hell are you talking about? Where’d you get this crap?”

“Maggie told me. About you two. And the money.”

Harvey stared at him, remembering something. “Big deal. She tell you anything else? About what it was like? What she did?”

“No …”

“You’ve got all that ahead of you, friend. Nothing I can do will warn you off it, either. Listen. I am not a thief.”

“What else do you call it?”

“I call it looking after people who can’t look after themselves. I call it keeping her alive, making sure the last movie she was ever going to get didn’t fold beneath her. That’s the truth. Maggie’s career has been on the skids for years. Inferno was her only chance to keep her name up there. If it never even made it to the screen …” There was a distant look of resignation and regret on his face. “You weren’t there. You can’t begin to understand. Some of us put in years for that movie and there it was, ready to fall apart. No fairy godmothers on the horizon. Everything was in hock. Our homes, our reputations. Everything.”

Costa waited.

“And if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll call you a liar to your face,” Harvey rasped. “In a police station. On the witness stand. Anywhere. This is America. We’ve got lawyers who could free the Devil if he got found eating babies on Main Street. Give it up. You can’t win. Not with me. Not with Maggie, either. You’re way out of your league. Cut your losses.” He nodded at the door. “Now get out.”

“Best I know my place,” Costa said, not moving.

“If that’s the way you want to see it.”

He took out the weapon again and lifted it. The barrel was inches from Harvey’s throat.

“You’re not listening to me,” Costa said. “Maggie knew nothing of all this. You made her a part of it. You put her in danger. Because of you, she nearly died.” The shadow of the weapon fell towards the window. “Whoever murdered Allan Prime is still out there. He murdered Martin Vogel and Josh Jonah. He shot Tom Black dead before the police could get to him.”

The blood drained from Harvey’s face. “What the hell are you talking about? The cops shot Tom.”

“No. He was killed by a single bullet from a distant gunman. They’ve recovered the shell. They know what kind of rifle he used. A hunting weapon. Like the crossbow that killed Allan Prime.”

“This is not possible, not possible. The Maggie thing … it had to be an accident. I couldn’t …” Harvey was shaking his head like a man on the brink.

“There are no accidents. None. Every time someone in this deal of yours dies, the rest of you get richer. I don’t care what this madman does to you. But … if it’s Maggie he finds this time …”

“Not going to happen, not going to happen.” Harvey’s eyes were closed, screwed tight shut. “It’s inconceivable …”

“If it does — it doesn’t matter where or when — I will find you. I will walk up to your dinner table in whatever fancy restaurant in New York or Cannes or L.A., anywhere …” He nudged the barrel of the gun back towards Harvey’s temple. “… and then in front of your Hollywood friends I will shoot you through the head.”

Costa lowered the weapon. He put it back in Gerald Kelly’s leather holster. Then he turned towards the door.

A hand touched his arm.

“Don’t go.”

Simon Harvey was slumped against the wall. He looked drained, lost, defeated.

Then he turned, picked up a bottle of Grey Goose from the cocktail cabinet by the window, poured himself a large glass, and said, “Sit down.”

8

“It was never supposed to turn out this way,” Harvey murmured, gripping the glass. “The whole thing was just something to get us through. Out of the mess.”

He sat on the sofa opposite Costa, staring at the mirror on the side wall, as if trying to convince himself. “Maggie wasn’t the only one with everything to lose. Roberto’s dying. There was never going to be another movie. I wasn’t sure he’d live long enough to complete this one.”

“I didn’t realise the movie business was so sentimental.”

“Don’t patronise me!” Harvey screeched. “I’ve worked with these people for years. They’re more to me than a paycheck. Even Roberto. Sure, he can be an asshole. They all can. But he’s an artist, too, one of the last. The people he worked with — Hitchcock, Rossellini, De Sica. We don’t see men like them anymore. Those days, when it was all about film, nothing but film, they’re over. When I looked at Roberto …”

His bleak eyes never left Costa’s face. “You won’t understand, Nic. I grew up with all those movies from the fifties. Roberto lived them. You could talk to him, about how Hitchcock would chase the light he wanted, how Rossellini could coax a performance from some two-bit actress who didn’t have the talent to speak her own name. Inferno was always going to be his last movie, and when he dies, that piece of history dies with him.” He gulped more vodka.

“When he dies, all we’ll have left are kids who think you can direct a movie with a computer and a mouse. Maybe Inferno’s a piece of shit. But there’s still some art in there somewhere. I see it, even if no one else does.”

Outside, the fog shrouded the Bay. Costa couldn’t even see the cops by the gate anymore.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen,” Harvey said flatly.

“But it did. Maybe it will again.”

“No. It won’t. I guarantee that. I’ll make sure of it. This has gone far enough.”

“You need to make a statement.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, waving Costa down. “And in return …?”

“I can’t negotiate on behalf of the SFPD. You need to talk to them direct.”

“Fine. But only after the premiere. Not before. Roberto’s owed his moment. Maggie, too. We all are.”

“Whose idea was it?” Costa asked.

“I said after—”

“I know. But I want to hear it. Just for me.”

“Just for you.” Harvey shook his head, bitterly amused by some internal thought. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to tell someone this?”

“I’m starting to,” Costa said honestly.

“I don’t even really know when it started. I was drunk at the time. I figured Inferno was dead. We’d been everywhere. Dino had begged every last penny he could out of his mob friends, and they were starting to get ugly, thinking the whole thing was about to turn into a train wreck. Maybe it was him, maybe Roberto. Maybe both. I don’t even know. I just woke up one morning and the money was there. We got the movie, and maybe down the line we got paid, too.”

Harvey scowled at the glass and put it on the table in front of him, half finished. “How do you say no to something like that? We all knew Roberto was sick. He told us he was rolling in his fee as collateral, knowing full well he’d never live to collect it. Lukatmi was going to go sky high. Instant profit for all of us the moment he croaked, even if the movie bombed.”

“Whose names were on the contract?”

Harvey stared at him as if it were an idiotic question. “What contract? What do you think this was? A corporation? Some listing on the New York Stock Exchange? It was just some grubby little deal to breathe life back into a dying movie. These things happen all the time—”

“Who …?”

“I didn’t know all the names. I didn’t want to. Allan put in the balance of his fee. That took a little persuading, but Dino offered to sort out a few personal issues he had somewhere. What’s a producer for? I waived what I was owed. Same with Dino. Josh and Tom put in some special form of Lukatmi stock and a little cash just to keep the wheels turning. Those of us on the movie side thought that would turn out to be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. How dumb can you get, huh? We thought we were robbing the geeks when the truth is it was the other way round. Robbing murderous geeks, too …”

He cleared his throat then, looked at Costa. “And now you’re telling me that’s not the case? That Black and Josh didn’t do it?”

“I don’t think so. Do you know anyone who hunts?”

“In the movie business? Are you kidding?”

“What about the people you used?”

“I made damned sure I stayed clear of that side of things. Fraud’s as far as I was prepared to go. Dino handled the rough stuff. He seemed comfortable with it. He had the contacts. Tom and Josh knew some guy from Lukatmi who came in as crew. All I did was get Martin Vogel on board. That creep would screw his mother for five bucks. The only other thing I handled was Maggie. I gave her a few drinks and talked her into signing her cut away into some fictitious offshore production company. She didn’t have a clue what she was doing. Money’s never been her thing. I had her name on the paper before her agent knew anything about it. Nothing anyone could do after that.”

His phone rang. Harvey took it out of his pocket, looked at the number, then turned the thing off.

“She wasn’t going to get robbed, either. I’d never let that happen to her. All of us figured we’d get what we were owed at the very least. Maybe more, if Lukatmi’s stock went through the roof. Dino handled the money and contract side of things. He could do that better than anyone. I didn’t understand a word of what he was doing. All any of us cared about was the fact this gave us a chance to make Inferno happen.”

He looked at his watch and shrugged. “I’ve got to get dressed soon. Really.”

“Who put it all together?” Costa pressed.

“We just did what we’d been doing all along. I’d been hyping Inferno from the start. Would the academic community be pissed off by it? Was the thing cursed? The media loved all that crap. The story had legs. So we decided to build on it. This idea that someone was stalking the movie and leaving clues straight out of Dante. We forged a few e-mails.” He stiffened. “Someone hired that guy to wear a Carabinieri uniform and create some kind of incident the day of the premiere in Rome. No one was supposed to get shot.”

“Allan Prime …”

“I damned near told you all this then. But that would have killed the movie stone dead. All I knew was that Tom and Josh had cooked up something to get us some publicity. They never told me what. I don’t know about the others. Afterwards …”

He fell silent.

“What?” Costa asked.

“I thought the rest of them didn’t understand it, either. Allan was supposed to disappear for a while, get that death mask nonsense made, then put on that little show in front of the camera as a stunt and get rescued by the cops. They were going to portray it as some kind of warped attack. Allan was in on the plan. They told him all about it. That’s what they said. They had no idea why he got killed. They thought maybe something went wrong …”

“He was murdered, deliberately, in cold blood, in front of millions of people. It almost kept Lukatmi alive.”

“Josh said it was never meant to happen. That’s all I can tell you.”

Harvey tapped his watch. “When the premiere’s over, come and see me and I will make a statement. I’ll want a lawyer there. This has gone far enough already. I don’t want anything else on my conscience. Besides …” He caught his own reflection in the mirror and the traces of a smile creased his face. “… it’s a hell of a story, isn’t it? Biggest I’ve ever spun. Could make a movie someday.”

Something was still missing.

“There was a woman involved,” Costa said. “She went to Prime’s apartment the morning he died. She made the mask. She left with him.”

Harvey waved away the idea with his hand. “I don’t know about any woman. Except for Maggie, and she didn’t know the first thing about what was going on. Can’t help you there.”

Costa kept his eyes on him and said, “The woman called herself Carlotta Valdes.”

Simon Harvey blanched. He said, “What?”

“Carlotta Valdes? Do you know the name?”

“Of course I do! Vertigo. It was shot right here. Roberto worked on it. He’s talked about it, often.”

“What do you think it means? That the woman used Carlotta Valdes’s name?” Costa asked.

“That some punk in this nightmare still has good taste in movies.”

9

The security cordon ran from 101 all the way down to the waterfront stretch of Marina Boulevard. Bright red barriers and yellow tape blocked off all the normal entry routes. Photographers and TV camera crew who hadn’t managed to beg media accreditation wandered the perimeter like mangy starving lions. Uniformed SFPD officers stood at the two entry checkpoints, ruthlessly checking the credentials of the lines of men in evening suits and women wearing elegant, stunningly expensive dresses. Once they were approved, the guests were then forced to walk through a portable airport-style metal detector to check for weapons, an unusual addition to such an event, Costa thought, and one that clearly engaged the attention of the photographers. All stood shivering in the chilly mist.

The queue of expensively clad bodies was steadily working through the system. Costa walked round the entire enclosed area once, then stopped by the lake that fronted the main structure of the Palace. Even this close, he could only just make out the domed roof of the structure across the water. Soon that would be gone. Inferno would be launched, appropriately enough, in a miasma of San Francisco fog. He wondered if the grey cloud might even seep into the gigantic tent erected for the private screening, and if it did whether those at the rear of the seats would have much of a view. Perhaps that wasn’t the point. This was an occasion to be seen at more than anything. The lines of sleek dark limousines drawing up by the checkpoints contained more than a few faces he had come to recognise from the TV since he’d arrived in San Francisco, politicians and media figures, actors and celebrities, a constant stream of beautiful women on the arms of men in impeccable evening dress.

He looked ruefully at his own crumpled dark blue suit, bought from the usual discount store in Vittorio Emanuele, near the bridge to the Castel Sant’Angelo. Costa tightened his tie into a half-passable knot, which was as good as it got. When no one was looking, he stepped into a nearby flower bed, stole a red rose from one of the bushes there, and placed it in his lapel. Then he took out his Roman police ID card and, after the uniform on the gate checked with Gerald Kelly, made his way into the world premiere for Roberto Tonti’s Inferno.

After a brief search he found Falcone, Peroni, and Teresa in the tent that housed the main historical exhibits from Florence. The three of them looked bored and out of sorts, yawning next to a set of glass cabinets displaying illuminated medieval manuscripts. Only a handful of visitors had wandered into the place. The rest were outside, with the stars and the free drinks. Compared to those, some old documents seemed insufficient to warrant anyone’s attention.

Falcone cleared his throat and said, though with precious little in the way of displeasure, “I was under the impression, Soverintendente, that you were off-duty today.”

“I am.” He flashed the envelope Maggie had sent to the house on Greenwich Street. “Someone sent me a ticket for the main event.”

“Lucky you,” Peroni observed.

“Thanks.”

“I meant,” the big man went on, “lucky you getting away, after all that nonsense last night. It would be nice if we knew where you were sometimes, Nic.”

Costa shrugged and apologised. “I hadn’t really expected things to turn out the way they did. Also …” He wondered how much to tell them. “… I was hoping for a little gratitude from Gerald Kelly when I brought him Tom Black. It wasn’t the fault of the SFPD that things went wrong.”

Not at all, he thought, remembering the hunting weapon, and its link to the crossbow that had killed Allan Prime.

Teresa reached up and did some more work on his tie. “If you’re on a date, and I suspect you are, Nic, you really ought to take a little more time with your appearance.”

“Been busy,” he said, fighting shy of her hands.

They caught the unintentional note of satisfaction in his voice.

“Good busy or idle busy?” Peroni asked suspiciously.

“Good.”

He left it at that.

Falcone looked at him and asked, “How good?”

There was no way to say it except simply.

“Possibly as good as we’re likely to get. When the show’s over, Simon Harvey wants to make a statement. He’ll confess to being a part of a financial conspiracy to hype Inferno by making bogus threats to those involved, with their knowledge usually. They needed the money. They needed the movie to be a success. Also …”

“No details, not now,” Falcone said, suppressing a wry grin.

Teresa smiled. “Will he name anyone else, perchance?”

“Allan Prime. Josh Jonah. Tom Black. Dino Bonetti.” He paused. “And Roberto Tonti.”

“A tontine?” she asked.

“Effectively. Harvey says that Tonti made his illness one of the lures. It was obvious he wouldn’t survive to pick up his share, so all the others believed that would give them an instant profit. In return, he was allowed to make his final movie.”

Falcone pointed a finger at him. “What did I say about details?” He glanced around. “Harvey’s told you all this already? And you say he’s willing to repeat it all?”

“After the premiere. He feels they’re all owed their moment of glory. After that, though, he’s had enough. He’s a decent man.”

Peroni huffed and puffed and grumbled. “Now he’s decent! And if he changes his mind?”

Costa pulled out the tiny MP3 player he’d bought from Walgreens on Chestnut on his way to Harvey’s apartment. It had been tucked into his jacket pocket, set to record, throughout their conversation. The histrionics with the gun had been intended, in part, to make Harvey so nervous he might not notice its presence. For twenty dollars the thing did a good job; Nic had checked through the little earphones on the walk back to the Palace of Fine Arts. He still didn’t quite recognise his own voice, particularly in those moments when he had the gun in his hands.

“If he changes his mind, then I just give this to Gerald Kelly and let nature take its course. The entire conversation is recorded, from beginning to end. I’m not sure how much of it will pass the evidence rules in America …”

They were grinning like Cheshire cats, all three of them.

“I mean that about the evidence, Leo. It would be best all round if the man confesses …”

“Let me worry about that.” The inspector hesitated, then asked, “No more names to give me?”

“Maggie Flavier was defrauded of her fee. She never knew a thing about what was going on. Harvey’s admitted that. At the very least Kelly can charge them over that.”

“At the very least,” Falcone agreed, then took the audio player from Costa’s fingers. “Thank you very much.”

Costa stood his ground. “And you intend to do what with it, sir?”

Leo Falcone stiffened, straightened his own tie, and looked outside the door at the swirling mist.

“I intend to find Captain Kelly and tell him what you’ve just told me. I want to leave this place feeling we did our job as well as could be expected in the circumstances. Not in the middle of some argument over who deserves the credit.”

“And me?” Costa asked.

Falcone frowned, as if the question were ridiculous. “You’re off-duty and you’ve got a date. Make the most of it. As for you two …” He glanced at Peroni and Teresa, then waved at the glass cabinets and their ancient manuscripts. “… watch this stuff, will you?”

10

Falcone found Gerald Kelly alone a little way from the mob of photographers and reporters jostling one another by the red carpet runway to the premiere. The tent was now a ghostly grey shape in the fog. Through the open flaps, he could just make out the brightly lit stage with mikes clustered thickly in front of the screen, like the podium for some cut-rate copy of the Oscar ceremonies. A half-familiar face from the TV was scheduled to start a warm-up for the evening. Then there would be the movie, and, some three hours later, a closing speech from Roberto Tonti.

The Roman inspector wished to see none of it. He knew his own force could take no part in what followed, even if the crucial information were to come from them in the first instance. This was Gerald Kelly’s case, one that would, if it came to court, be prosecuted through the American authorities, not those in Italy. If Falcone could return home with the missing mask of Dante Alighieri, then he would be content, though he did not expect this happy conclusion to be reached.

“Are you planning to watch the movie?” Falcone asked as the American police officer arrived.

“Not if I can help it,” Kelly said.

“I understand.” The American had a very piercing gaze. “Are you pleased with the arrangements, Captain?”

Kelly frowned. “As much as anyone could be. The glitterati don’t like going through metal detectors, but they can learn to live with it. We’re doing what we can.”

Falcone thought of how Maggie Flavier had been poisoned by someone working in a catering truck, an individual with a fake name and no ID. There were limits to how much security one could put in place for events of this nature. Without months of preparation and the vetting of everyone concerned — neither of which had been practicable — some loopholes had to remain.

He didn’t mention this because he knew Gerald Kelly understood the problem just as well as he did. Instead, he told Kelly briefly what he had learned from Costa. He passed on the audio player, then requested that he attend any interview with Simon Harvey to ask the necessary questions about the missing death mask of Dante Alighieri. After that — barring any new discoveries — the work of the Roman state police in San Francisco would be done. They could return home on the weekend with some sense of achievement, even if the public prize would doubtless fall to others.

This news did not appear to surprise the American police captain, which Falcone found odd. But Kelly thanked him politely for it, agreed to Harvey’s conditions, and asked for Falcone to meet him with the publicist at the temporary police control truck after Roberto Tonti’s closing speech. Then he said no more.

Taking the hint, Falcone left to amble idly around the crowd, determined not to return to a tent full of glass cases and mouldering pieces of paper.

Finally, not consciously realising that this was what he intended all along, he found her. Catherine Bianchi stood beneath the dome of the Palace, a radio in her hand. She wore a dark suit that was tight on her slender figure, and she might have been mistaken for a guest herself had she not spent so much of her time alone, scrutinizing the crowd with the careful attention he knew all good police officers possessed.

“Leo?” she said as he approached.

“It’s a foul evening for a movie premiere. They should have chosen a theatre.”

“It’s only a movie. A few hours of fantasy, then it’s over.” She smiled at him. She looked different somehow. More at ease. More … alluring perhaps. Falcone found this odd and a little disconcerting. He had scarcely given Catherine Bianchi a second thought all day, possibly for the first time since he had arrived in San Francisco.

“I’m through at nine,” she said. “I know a warm place for dinner. We should go to North Beach. You’ve been avoiding Italian food ever since you got here. It’s time to try something new.”

He laughed. “I don’t think I’ve done anything else but try new things since I got here, have I? And now …”

“Now you’re going. I can see it in your face.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“You’re very transparent, Leo. You all are. Peroni. Nic. Teresa. I’ll miss that. It’s unusual. You’re unusual.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps we’re just out of place.”

“When do you go?” she asked.

“Sometime this weekend, I think. I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest. Nic said something about wishing to tack some holiday on the end. It’s fine by me. I have some reports to deal with in Rome. Internal reorganisation. You know the kind of thing.”

“They’re transferring me downtown,” she told him. “Bryant Street. I’ll miss the Marina. It’s my little village.”

The distant quacking of the waterfowl on the lake echoed through the mist. There was a burst of laughter and applause from the stage, now almost invisible in the fog.

“You’ll never leave Rome, will you?” she asked.

“No more than you’d leave San Francisco.”

“Kind of makes things hard, doesn’t it? When two people are fixed in their ways like that?”

“We have what time we have. We do with it the best we can.”

A part of him had sought this woman’s affection with an ardent desire he’d not known for a long time. Now that Italy beckoned, that passion had dissipated almost as quickly as it had arisen in the first place. Yet there was a look in her eyes …

“I’m sorry if I offended you, Catherine. That was never my intention.”

“I wasn’t offended. I was flattered. But you try too hard, Leo. And also …” She looked a little guilty. “I have a rule. I don’t date cops.”

He blinked. “Ever?”

“Ever.” She was smiling at him. “At least I haven’t since I made the mistake of marrying one briefly a decade or so back.”

“Ah …”

“But we could have dinner in North Beach tonight. Since you go home so soon … We’re free as birds. After the premiere …?”

Falcone felt briefly lost for words. Then he tapped his watch and said, rather more bluntly than he wished, “I’m afraid I can’t fit you in. Business, unfortunately. It may go on for a while. We should meet for a coffee sometime. That would be good.”

The radio burst into life. She held it to her mouth and began speaking. He could see she hadn’t even touched the press-to-talk button. Their conversation had come to a close.

Falcone walked to the cordoned area, found a quiet place with a seat. He was acutely aware of something that surprised him. He would miss this city. He would regret, too, the overzealous and childish way he had chased Catherine Bianchi without ever once asking himself what she might seek in return.

Cries of surprise and a ripple of applause drifted through the mist from the nearby runway into the premiere.

Falcone walked to the edge of the crowd, close to the road, and, with the deft elbows of a Roman, worked his way politely but forcefully to the front.

The cameras and the reporters had only one thing on their mind, and that was the couple walking slowly along the red carpet.

Leo Falcone stood behind the yellow tape, and found himself beaming with a mixture of pride and emotion at what he saw. Nic Costa looked as if he belonged with the beautiful young woman on his arm, even though his cheap Roman suit seemed somewhat shabby next to her flowing silk gown, a flimsy creation for such a chilly, fog-strewn night. Not that Maggie Flavier, being the consummate actress she was, showed one iota of discomfort.

As the reporters shouted her name, she simply smiled and waved and held herself like a star for the cameras, her small hand always on Costa’s arm. The young police officer held himself with quiet, calm dignity.

As they slowly passed, Falcone, to his own amazement, found himself crying out, “Soverintendente! Soverintendente!”

The couple stopped. Nic Costa turned and stared at him with a quizzical look.

“In bocca al lupo,” Falcone shouted, with a sudden and entirely involuntary enthusiasm.

“Crepi il lupo!” Maggie Flavier cried back joyfully at him.

And then they moved on.

In the mouth of the wolf. Foreigners always found it a curious way to wish someone good luck. He was impressed that Maggie Flavier knew the correct response. Let the wolf die.

The wolf had hung around Nic Costa long enough, Falcone thought as he watched them disappear into the mist.

11

Gianluca Quattrocchi wore his finest dress uniform with a white carnation in the collar, determined to look his best at this final glittering event before his return home. He had already rehearsed in his head the report he would give to his superiors. Of the uncooperative intransigence of the American authorities, unable to relinquish their grip on the case sufficiently to allow the Carabinieri to do their job. Of the meddling of the state police, constantly obstructing and interfering with Quattrocchi’s investigation. He would single out Falcone by name, in the knowledge that to do so would get back to the higher echelons of the state police and perhaps earn the man the reprimand he deserved.

There was, for Gianluca Quattrocchi, a point at which a failed case turned from a mystery demanding solution into a disaster requiring containment. The death of Allan Prime and the sequence of events that had followed now fell entirely in the second category. It would be for the American authorities to pursue whatever slim, time-consuming half-leads and connections they could find in the financial affairs of the two dead men involved in the dotcom bubble of Lukatmi. The Carabinieri had neither the time nor the resources to become involved in such work, not least because any resulting case would surely be tried in America and benefit the Italian authorities not one whit.

This was not the outcome Quattrocchi sought. He had, for a while, genuinely believed that the Canadian professor, Bryan Whitcombe, who had pressed himself upon the Italian authorities with such adamant enthusiasm, might hold some insight into the case. That idea had waned lately, and he’d even begun to find the man somewhat creepy. Whitcombe had turned up for tonight’s premiere in a garish white suit and taken to bearding starlets with his lascivious gaze. The man had even announced to the media that he intended to write a book on the affair of “Dante’s Numbers,” as he had dubbed it. According to that morning’s papers, an outline for the work was now being hyped around American publishers by one of the book world’s more notorious agents. Law enforcement work often had unforeseen consequences. The elevation of Bryan Whitcombe to the status of unlikely media star was one he could never have predicted.

None of this did much for Quattrocchi’s mood as he sipped his free champagne. He began quietly to plan his exit from the proceedings so that he might miss the screening altogether, merely returning for the closing ceremony. Then he saw Gerald Kelly, a man for whom he felt no affection whatsoever, stomping towards him like a bulldog intent on its victim.

“We need to talk,” the American snapped. “Somewhere private.”

Quattrocchi followed to an empty area close by the lake and listened. As he did so he felt the bitter taste of envy rise in his throat.

The SFPD captain was right to tell him of this development. He was in charge of the Italian investigative team. Falcone should have come to him first with this news, and allowed Quattrocchi to pass it on to Kelly.

The American finished with the suggestion Quattrocchi join him and Falcone for the interview with Simon Harvey after the premiere.

“Of course I’ll be there,” Quattrocchi insisted. “We’re joint investigating authorities in this case. It would be highly improper to commence without me.”

Kelly glared at him. “You know, I never got around to saying this to your face until now. But this is our country, not yours. We interview who we like, when we like, and I don’t care whether that pisses you off or not.”

“And Tonti? What do you propose with him?”

“I’m feeling generous. And I don’t want this freak show getting any worse. He’s a sick old man. He’s not going anywhere. He can turn up with his lawyers at Bryant Street in the morning. No reporters. No leaks. Not a word to anyone.”

The maresciallo nodded at the pack of photographers now corralled into a specific section of the secure area by the stage outside the screening tent. “You think they’ll be happy with that?”

“I don’t care what they’ll be happy with. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

He stalked back into the crowd.

Americans amazed Quattrocchi. Their incapacity for a little common deviousness from time to necessary time was quite bewildering.

He found Roberto Tonti in the center of a group of movie company executives. The man looked more gaunt and haggard than he had two weeks before. His eyes were invisible behind sunglasses as usual. His grey hair appeared stiff and unreal. The director was finishing a cigarette as Quattrocchi arrived. Immediately he lit another and said nothing as the suits around him gossiped and argued.

Quattrocchi got next to him and said in Italian, “Tonti, it is important we talk.”

“I doubt that very much.”

The Carabinieri officer nodded at the men around them. “Do they speak Italian?”

There was a slow, shallow intake of breath, then Tonti replied, “They’re producers. Most are still struggling with English and it’s their native tongue.”

“Listen to me well. Once this premiere is over, it is the intention of the San Francisco Police Department to arrest you on suspicion of fraud and conspiracy to murder.”

Tonti took a long drag on the cigarette, looked at him, and said nothing.

“They have a witness,” Quattrocchi persisted. “A member of your … tontine. He has already told them of your arrangement. The man has agreed to make a statement, doubtless in return for some kind of immunity.”

“Who?” Tonti demanded.

“This is not an appropriate time.”

“I wish to avoid embarrassment this evening. You must understand that.”

“Of course. All the same …”

“Shut up. I am thinking.”

Gianluca Quattrocchi fell silent. There was something chilling in the authority of this man. Something decidedly odd.

“What do you have to offer me?” Tonti asked at last.

“You’re an Italian citizen. If you give yourself up to my authority, I can arrange these matters through our courts, not theirs.”

“You don’t understand Americans. They don’t like to lose.”

“Captain Kelly is feeling sentimental. He will invite you for an interview tomorrow morning. Were you to leave the country tonight after the premiere and arrive in Italy in due course … It would not be difficult. A private jet would have you in Mexico in a couple of hours. After that, what could the American authorities do?” Quattrocchi coughed into his fist, praying none of this conversation would ever go any further. “Extradition proceedings take years. You will receive much fairer treatment in your native country, surely. If you plead guilty to some minor financial transgression, we can spin things out for a long time …”

“I’ll be dead before summer turns.” Tonti spoke with a matter-of-fact certainty.

“Then die in Rome, where you belong. In bed. In your home, not some prison cell in California.”

“Without a name I shall not agree to this.”

“I cannot …”

“Without a name I shall go to the Americans this instant. I shall tell them everything, and inform them of your approach and your offer. Perhaps they can better it.”

Quattrocchi’s temper had stretched to breaking point. The premiere would begin in a matter of minutes.

“I believe they have an appointment with Simon Harvey,” he muttered. “I did not tell you this.”

“Of course, Maresciallo. This is kind of you.”

“No. Merely practical.” He tried to fathom the expression in the man’s haggard features. “So we have an arrangement?”

“How could one deny the Carabinieri?” the director replied effusively. “It would be impertinent, no?”

Gianluca Quattrocchi did not expect thanks from this individual. Nor did he anticipate or enjoy condescension.

“I shall endeavour to make your time in Rome as comfortable as possible,” he replied stiffly, aware that he was speaking to the long, thin back of Roberto Tonti as the director turned to the suits and evening gowns, the mayhem of the premiere of Inferno.

12

They watched the movie from the darkness of the VIP seats at the front. Not long after the start he felt her head slip onto his shoulder, her hair fall against his neck. Costa turned his head a degree or two and stole a glimpse at Maggie Flavier. On the screen she stood five metres high, the ethereal beauty Beatrice, Dante’s dead muse, offering hope as the poet faced the horrors and travails of Hell’s circles, just as the idea of the unworldly Madeleine Elster had appeared to bring solace to the lost and fearful Scottie. For most of the movie, the real woman behind Beatrice was fast asleep against him, mouth slightly ajar, at peace. He scarcely dared breathe for fear of waking her. However loud the commotion on the screen, she seemed oblivious to it all, slumbering by his side like a child lost in a world of her own.

He felt happy. Lucky, too. And like her, he scarcely took any notice of the overblown cinematic fiction that had brought them there. Costa’s thoughts turned, instead, to the events of the past few weeks, and the growing conviction that the roots of this genuine drama lay, somehow, in the fairy tales these people created for themselves.

The conspiracy had sprouted from the ability of men like Roberto Tonti and Dino Bonetti to invent some fantastical story out of dust. Costa still failed to understand how that trick had come to shift from a desperate marketing ploy into a murderous actuality, but the seeds were there from the outset in the way those involved danced between one world, that of everyday life, and another in which fiction posed as fact.

Maggie was an unwitting part of that fabrication. In ways he didn’t wish to understand, it had damaged her.

This dark, unsettling thought dogged him as the movie finally came to an end. Costa was about to nudge her gently awake as the lights came up. There was no need. Her head was off his shoulder even before the waves of applause began to ripple around the audience.

By the time Roberto Tonti was striding onto the stage with Simon Harvey by his side, most of the audience was on its feet. In the way of things, Costa found himself following suit. Maggie rose next to him. He leaned down and asked her when the cast would join Tonti on the platform.

She had to cup her hand to his ear to make herself heard over the din. “This is Roberto’s moment. We were all told that. He’s the director. We’re just his puppets, remember?”

It still seemed unfair, Costa thought, half listening to Harvey run through a fulsome tribute to Allan Prime, followed by a lengthy homily about Tonti’s determination to see the project completed. The years of struggle, the script revisions, the financial difficulties, the threats, the tragic events of recent weeks. Above all, said Harvey, the fight for artistic and creative control, without which the movie in its present form could never have been conceived, least of all made.

It was florid hyperbole delivered with a straight face. Within the space of the next thirty minutes, either Harvey would be making a statement to the SFPD incriminating Tonti in the conspiracy that had brought about at least four deaths, or Falcone would be handing over the audio evidence to justify his arrest and interrogation on those same charges. One way or another the riddle would be brought to some kind of resolution.

Then Harvey stepped back. Awkwardly, with a pained, sick gait, which a cynical part of Costa’s mind felt might be faintly theatrical, Tonti shuffled to the microphone. He stood there alone, listening, only half-smiling, to the wall of clapping hands, catcalls, and whistles of the crowd.

It was tedious and artificial. Costa was becoming impatient, wishing for an end to this show. As he fought to stifle a yawn, something caught his attention.

A woman was walking towards Roberto Tonti from the far side of the stage. In her hands she held a gigantic bouquet of roses, carnations, and bright, vivid orchids.

Costa blinked, trying to convince himself this was not some flashback out of a dream, or a night in front of the TV in the house on Greenwich Street.

She was of medium height and wore a severe grey jacket with matching slacks and a white shirt high up to her neck. Her build was full, almost stocky; her hair was perfect, dyed platinum blonde, unyielding, as if held by the strongest lacquer imaginable. As she turned to present the flowers to Tonti, Costa could see that the wig — it could be nothing else — was tied back into a tight, shining apostrophe above the somewhat thick form of her neck.

In spite of the weather she wore a pair of black plastic Italian sunglasses, so large they effectively obscured her features. Yet Costa knew her. She was the character from Vertigo. Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster. Or rather a fake Madeleine who posed as the doomed wife Jimmy Stewart’s Scottie came to love and hoped to save.

It also occurred to him that she matched exactly the description of the woman calling herself Carlotta Valdes who had visited Allan Prime in the Via Giulia, ostensibly to create a death mask.

He found himself fighting to get through the cordon around the stage. Maggie gasped as he clawed his way forward.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Stay where you are. Don’t go near the stage.”

He pressed forward and the large hand of a security guard shoved him hard in the chest. Costa fell backwards. He stumbled and found himself guided by Maggie back into a seat.

“Nic,” she said, exasperated, “you can’t go up there. Roberto owns that stage. No one’s going to take it from him. Those bouncers wouldn’t let God himself through unless He had a pass.”

The crowd was still on its feet, whooping and cheering.

“There’s something wrong,” he muttered, and dragged out his Rome police ID.

She gazed at the plastic card in his fingers and said, “Well, that’s going to work, isn’t it? For pity’s sake, what’s the matter?”

He struggled to his feet and wondered, for a moment, whether he was going mad. The woman was gone. Roberto Tonti stood on the stage, with Simon Harvey a few feet behind him. The ailing director held the gigantic bouquet and waved and nodded to the joyful, over-the-top roar of the crowd.

“Five minutes of this,” Maggie whispered into his ear, “and we’re out of here. I promise.”

He prayed more than anything she would be proved right.

The tall, gaunt figure on the stage mouthed something into the microphone. Costa knew what it was. A single word in Italian, an exhortation, a command.

Silenzio.

13

Once upon a time, in a land far away …” Roberto Tonti began.

He clutched the bouquet to his emaciated chest, then he removed his sunglasses and tried to squint at the audience beyond the blazing floodlights.

“You come to me for stories.” The old man’s voice sounded distant and hollow and sick. “Children begging for gifts. Did you get them?” The noise of the audience diminished slightly. Tonti waited. He took hold of the microphone and, in his hoarse, weak voice, tried his best to bellow, “Did you get them?”

The strained sound of his words, the accent half American, half Italian, carried into the night with a deafening clarity. The space inside the tent turned abruptly silent.

“Did you appreciate the cost?” he croaked. “Allan Prime. A wretched actor. A weak man. Nothing to be missed. He died. Why not? Where’s the loss?” He spat out his words. “See what I must work with? See how I make something precious out of clay? What do you want of me? What else do you expect?”

Maggie murmured in Nic’s ear, “I can’t take this anymore …”

She slipped away from him, and still he couldn’t tear his eyes from the stage.

Simon Harvey stepped towards the director. Tonti stopped him with a single magisterial glance.

A low murmur of disquiet and astonishment began to rise up from the crowd.

Tonti reached into the bouquet of flowers and withdrew something that stilled every voice in the room. A small black handgun emerged from the orchids and the bloodred roses. He cast away the bouquet, held the weapon high for the benefit of the camera rigs hovering over the stage, wandering around him like robotic eyes, fixated on a single subject.

“Watch me,” he said to the giant, peering lenses. “Focus, always, always.”

Costa scanned around the crowd. Gerald Kelly was at the edge of the platform with a group of uniformed officers, holding them back for the moment.

Tonti’s skinny, weak arms waved, as if beseeching them for something, some kind of understanding.

“Listen to me. Listen! This once I tell you the truth. Some impertinent hack once asked Fellini …” The tip of the black barrel caressed his cheek, like a thoughtful finger. “ ‘Che cosa fai?’ What do you do?”

“Enough, Roberto …” Harvey said, and took another step closer. The gun drifted his way. The publicist froze.

“Fellini answers … ‘Sono un gran bugiardo.’ I am a big liar. Pinocchio writ large. See my nose! See my nose!”

Tonti was clutching his own face, laughing, and the movement brought about a spasmodic cough that briefly gripped his frail frame.

“Fellini, Hitchcock, Rossellini … Tonti, too. This is what you demand of our calling. That we are liars, all, and the more distance we put between your dreams and the miserable mundanity of your sad little lives, the better we lie, the happier you are.”

The man’s voice was cracking with emotion, and it was impossible to say whether it was anger or grief or some deep-rooted sense of fear.

“Mea culpa. Mea culpa.”

His hands fell to his sides, and he bowed low before the audience.

“I am the director. All you have seen of late, on screen and off, is my creation. From Allan Prime dead in the Farnesina to some pretty little clotheshorse choking for life from a poisoned apple. This is my doing, my direction. Listen to me now …”

He coughed again, and it was raw and dry and rasping.

“No man gets a better final scene than this. Better than any I gave any of these two-bit hacks. See …”

He indicated the cameras, following his every moment. “See! This is the last of Roberto Tonti. Greater than any of you. Any of them.”

Kelly had nodded to his men. They were starting to make their way onto the stage. Tonti knew what was coming, surely.

“Not Dante Alighieri, though,” the old man added. “Listen to me, children. Listen to the final words of Inferno, that I never gave you on the screen, for they are beyond your comprehension.”

He drew himself up, closed his eyes, and began to recite, slowly, in a sonorous, theatrical tone.

Roberto Tonti paused and gazed at the rapt, still, silent crowd in front of him.

He was shaking with laughter, and his eyes, now open and dark and alert, glistened with moisture as they fixed on the camera lenses ravenously following his every move.

“ ‘Through a round aperture … to rebehold the stars,’ ” Roberto Tonti repeated, and swept his arm along the rows of glitterati and celebrities before him. “Such as they are.”

Simon Harvey was getting closer, hands out, pleading for the gun.

“Yet,” Tonti continued, “each and every story deserves a twist, some small epiphany at its close.”

Without warning he swung to face Harvey. The publicist froze, looked at the director, and asked, “Roberto?”

“Traitor.”

The word, the final key in the ninth circle, the last of Dante’s Numbers, came out in a flat, unemotional tone.

He began to fire, repeatedly, deliberately, into the torso of the flailing, tumbling publicist.

A woman screamed behind Costa.

When the gun clicked on empty, Roberto Tonti stopped and took one last disgusted glance at the shattered body on the stage.

Then, seizing the microphone, he gazed up at the cameras.

In a calm, disinterested voice, he ordered, “And … cut.”