A Thousand Tombs (2 page)

By the time they pulled into the driveway of Mack’s house in Piedmont Pines, Luca had wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his thin shirt. His lids were red and his face was blotchy. He’d been sitting ramrod straight, staring out the windshield at nothing, for over half an hour. He was almost catatonic.

They’d crossed the bridge into East Bay, and were now in a part of the Bay Area sophisticates shunned. Mack had told Gen the story about how he and his brother had acquired the property: Jimmy came up with the idea while Mack was still at Annapolis, he’d saved up the down payment, and as soon as Mack was earning money, they bought the ruin of a house.

Mack had sent part of his paycheck every month to help with the mortgage, and every chance he got he flew out to help work on the place. Once he’d completed his five years mandatory service to the U.S. Navy, he left the service, filled out an application to become a San Francisco beat cop, got the job, and aced the Academy.

That was the year Crissy Field was turned into part of the National Park system. The Presidio ended its status as an active military installation, and Jimmy pulled a tour in Afghanistan. By then, he was ready to muster out and return to the city and a pilot’s job in the private sector.

Mack was moving in while Jimmy was packing to go overseas. Neither of them had considered the possibility that he might not make it back, but that’s what happened. Mack told Gen that after his brother died, he’d felt comatose for longer than he would have thought possible. He hadn’t known what to do with a life without Jimmy in it.

So he stuck to their plan.

The stable, family-oriented neighborhood was the opposite of the city, where unrelenting progress toward upscale was the norm. Mack liked it there. The community was tight. The residents cared about each other, and they wanted their slice of the pie to stay exactly the way it was.

And for the most part, it had.

The trio piled out of the truck and went inside. A big, yawning, nondescript brown mutt rose from a bed on the living room floor and trotted out to greet them.

Mack had found Stella when he was a uniform and she was a half-grown stray, running the streets. She looked like she was a mix of retriever and shepherd; back then, she was scrawny and scabbed and desperately needed help, and so did Mack. He’d hauled the dog into his black-and-white and brought her home and nursed her back to health, and Stella adored him for it.

Gen wondered if he would try to do the same with Luca. If that was his strategy, she hoped the kid didn’t break his heart.

“Hey Stella,” Mack said. “Brought you a friend.”

Luca dropped to his knees and offered a hand. “Hello girl,” he cooed. His voice was gentle, tinged with happiness and longing. Stella snuffled his fingers, then, after careful consideration, she wagged her long, feathered tail.

He stroked the dog’s broad head slowly. When Stella sat on her haunches beside him, Luca scooted over and threw an arm around her and hugged her tight, then buried his face in the thick fur on her neck and whispered.

Gen and Mack stared at one another again, this time with a shared look of compassion. Mack was probably feeling what she was feeling, which was appalled at the kid’s current state and grateful for their own good fortune.

He held out his hand, and she laced her fingers with his.

Gen had been surprised the first time she’d come to the house. They’d been dating since mid-August, and after a few weeks of candlelit suppers out and a proper courting, he’d invited her here for dinner. He was a bachelor, so she’d braced herself for an old leather couch and a big screen, and not much else. But once again, Mackenzie Hackett was a surprise.

His place was masculine, no doubt about it. But the floors were distressed hickory planks, the area rugs were thick, and the furniture was eclectic and comfortable, not the shabby cast-offs many single men were content to own. She knew before she came that he was interested in art, so the framed oils were expected.

The biggest surprise was the handful of metal sculptures sprinkled among the décor: a woman, rendered in rusty chunks, stark and beautiful and evocative. A copse of standing trees, so delicate that the leaves appeared to shiver when she passed. The third was in the kitchen, a pan rack hung from the ceiling, formed of intricate intertwined hands.

“Put your things in here.” Mack spoke to the boy as he opened the door to the guest room. “Bathroom’s that door, there. If you want to take a shower later, there’s clean towels in the cabinet. Help yourself. For now, stow your stuff. Come on back when you’re ready and we’ll talk.”

Then she and Mack went into the kitchen. He pulled a bottle of Corona from the fridge and held it up.

“No thanks,” she said. “I should take off soon, and I already had wine for dinner. You know how the authorities feel about drinking and driving.”

He smiled, but there was a distinct air of disappointment in it. “I’m sorry, Genny.” He put the beer back in the fridge and turned to face her.

“Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t have wanted it to work out any other way.”

His eyebrows went up.

“I mean about the kid, Mack, not our sleepover.” Tonight was to have been
the
night. No way that was going to happen now.

They’d taken it slow, spent a lot of time just developing a friendship. With an appropriate amount of necking thrown in, of course. The pace was her decision and a direct result of her last relationship debacle. Ryan Connelly had called it quits when
she
thought he was thinking about rings. She didn’t want that to happen again, so she’d told Mack from the get-go that she wasn’t going to jump into his bed right away.

Mack’s response? He’d told her it was her body, and her decision. That made it harder to wait, of course, and she wondered if he’d been aware of that. But wait she had, and at this point they were both beyond ready to move it all forward, so she’d packed some things to stay over.

She’d been looking forward to this. She slung her arms around his waist and tucked her fingers into the back pockets of his jeans.

“Don’t leave.” Mack sighed and nuzzled her hair. “Damn, I wasn’t thinking. I could tell he was in trouble, so I just reached out and grabbed him. I’m sorry, Genny.”

“I’ve made you wait this long. A few more days won’t make any difference. We have plenty of time.”

They moved apart at the sound of footsteps in the hall. Gen took a seat at the table that served as an island in the middle of the room, just as Luca came in with Stella padding along behind. She pulled out the chair beside her, then drew the bag with the coin from her pocket and plunked it down.

Luca sat, still silent.

Mack ruffled the dog’s fur and gave her a Milk Bone, then rummaged in the fridge and overheads and joined them with a tub of chocolate chip ice cream, a liter of 7-Up, and two thick bar glasses. He dropped ice cream into one, then added soda and a spoon and pushed it across to Luca.

“What’s this?”

“You’ve never had a 7-Up float?” Mack winced. “Man, you haven’t lived. Try it.” He winked at Gen. He knew she’d pass on dessert if he asked her, so he didn’t. Instead, he grabbed a juice glass and made her the baby version.

“Okay,” Mack said. “Showtime. What’s your last name, Luca?”

“Torello.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Cut the crap.”

“Okay, seventeen.”

“In about a year, maybe.”

“No, really. I’m seventeen, I swear.”

“Hunh. Luca Torello is a nice Italian name. You got family in North Beach?”

“Somewhere. My mother lost touch, but I came here to track them down. I was staying with somebody while I looked, but that’s history.”

“As of when?”

“Yesterday.”

“Why?”

“I needed a change of address.”

“Explain.”

“I’ve been playing my guitar on the streets around North Beach for about a month. You know, for tips. A week ago I set up near some shops on Grant. Right away this old guy starts coming by. Every day, and always late in the afternoon, about four o’clock.

“He’d listen for a while, then he’d drop a ten bill in my case and keep going. So I made that my regular spot. One day I gave him a five-minute head start and followed him. He lives in a house not too far from that big Catholic Church near the park.”

“I know the one,” Mack said. “Why’d you want to see where he lived, were you planning something?”

The kid’s chin came up and his eyes blazed. “No.”

“Then why?”

“I was curious. I mean, I’m good, but ten bucks a day? That’s a lot of dough. I wondered if he had something else in mind, if you get my drift.”

“And you trailed him home because you were willing to put out.”

“Hell no.” Luca’s hands fisted and he dropped them in his lap. “No way.”

“They why were you interested?”

“Because I like to know the lay of the land.”

Mack studied Luca’s face. “All right, we’ll leave it for now. Keep going.”

“Yesterday the old man dropped that bag when he was pulling the bill out of his pocket. My jacket was on the ground, and it fell on the sleeve. I heard it, but he didn’t seem to notice, so I covered it with my foot. He walked away.

“I flipped the jacket over it and kept playing, waiting for him to figure out his pocket was lighter and come back to look. It got late. He never showed. So I packed it in and scooped up the bag and stashed it in my case. I grabbed a burger and headed for home. When I opened the bag, I found the money.”

Mack pushed aside his glass and reached for the square of velvet, then dumped out its contents. The coin spun on its side for a second, then tipped over and lay still. He picked it up and examined it. “It looks old, all right. I wonder how old?”

“Maybe Greek,” Gen replied. “Seems impossible, though, if it’s that ancient, that anyone would misplace it so carelessly.”

“It’s Roman,” Luca said.

“How do you know?” Gen looked more closely at the writing. “Do you know Latin?”

“No.” He frowned. “Today I took it into a pawn shop. I’d been playing a few doors down from this place all week. They liked that I was there, I guess. Maybe I was good for business.

“Anyway, I asked how much it was worth. The guys who work there were real interested and told me it’s an old Roman coin and probably looted. They both got intense and asked where’d I get it. I was bummed. I didn’t expect that. Took me by surprise, so I told ‘em the old man who walked by every day dropped it in my case as a tip.”

“Then what did they do?” Gen asked.

“The owner says I need to tell him everything I know about it, or he has to call the cops. He’s going to report me, he says.”

“So he accused you of stealing,” Mack said.

“That’s right. I freaked out. I didn’t know what to do. I just figured I better take it back where it belonged, and fast. So I grabbed it up and took off.”

“That was today?”

“Yeah, this morning. A guy who works in the pawn shop chased me a few blocks, but I lost him. But like I said, I’d been around for a while, and I worried they might know where I was hanging out. So I went and got my stuff and split.”

“Where were you going to stay tonight?”

“A place I know. I didn’t go play in my regular spot today, obviously.”

“So who was chasing you tonight?”

“Man, I have no idea. I went over to the old dude’s house to return the coin. I didn’t want anything to do with it, didn’t want anyone else to know I had it.”

“Better late than never,” Mack said. “What happened at the house?”

“I wasn’t sure how I was going to return it, you know? I thought maybe I’d leave the bag on the back porch or something. It was dark, so I walked around to the side and eased in behind the bushes and looked in a window.

“These gorillas were there with the old man. They were having a loud conversation in Italian. And Mack, one of them went agro, yelled at the old guy. I blew it, tripped and fell into the bushes. One of them came over to the window and saw me, and he yells something about
ragazzo
.

“I know enough Italian to know that means boy. So I took off running, and damn if two of the dudes didn’t come after me. You know the rest. They were gaining on me when I ran into you.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Gen said. “Why would a bunch of Italians break off an argument and chase a kid?”

“Could be they were arguing about some unrelated thing, saw the boy, thought he was a prowler out to get the old man,” Mack said.

Gen peered at him like he’d gone crazy. “Is that Detective Mackenzie Hackett talking? You’re the one always driving home the ‘there are no coincidences’ thing.”

“Okay, you’re right,” Mack replied. “It’s more likely they either knew the kid had the coin because the pawn shop people told them, or the old man told them the kid still had the coin. The question is, why would they be rousting him about this coin in the first place?”

“Either because they knew it was worth a lot of money and they were there to take it, or it was theirs in the first place and they wanted it back,” Gen replied.