Chasing the Dragon (5 page)

Marilyn Visconti stood at the top of the hill, on her front stoop, still in her funeral clothes. She had just finished kissing Tony Mora good-bye. He was a hungry kisser, always with a hand on her blouse. He wasn’t quick to leave—he enjoyed dallying, stretching things out—so she lingered with him for a minute or two, leaning against the red Alfa. Every once in while, though, she glanced behind her.

A few minutes before, a sedan had driven by. A rental sedan, late model, gray and nondescript. She had noticed it swing around and park on the corner. No one had gotten out. The driver was still behind the wheel, just sitting there. It was too far to tell for sure, but she had a pretty good idea who that driver might be.

Finally Mora cantilevered his Alfa out of her driveway. The house was on the steep, like everything around here, but Mora managed it expertly, jacktailing the car backward up the hill, then pitching nose down toward the view.

At the last minute, he jammed on the brakes.

“Friday,” he called to her. “We take that trip to Sonoma.”

“Yes,” she said.

Inside she poured herself a glass of wine. After awhile, when no one came to the door, she wondered if maybe she had been mistaken about the sedan. She glanced out the bedroom window. The car was still there, but there was no one inside, no one in the street.

I was wrong
, she thought.

In her bedroom, she undressed and ran a bath. She stripped off her blouse and skirt and gave herself a cursory glance in the mirror, the kind you might give a stranger on the street. Then she unhooked her bra and lay back on the bed.

It had been a long time since she’d seen Dante. When they’d first gotten together, she’d been dating his cousin Gary. It wasn’t a serious thing, her and Gary, no; part of the charm—for both of them—was the fact that the relationship was out of bounds, given the enmity between their families. The affair would have fallen apart on its own accord, no doubt. Then one day, leaving Il Fior d’Italia, the old
ristorante
, she and Gary had run into Dante.

That weekend, Dante had taken her out on his grandfather’s felucca—one of those flat-bottomed sailing boats that no one used anymore. With its single sail and a net, it looked like a cocked hat floating on the water. They’d spread their towels on the small hull and lay there under the sun, talking. Above them the white sail ruffled the sky. There’d been a magnetism between them, an electrical charge—and they rolled toward each other on the hull.

But that was a long time ago. She was thirty-three years old now, a different person. Her mother was dead, her father in an institution, and she really wasn’t sure why she was still here, in North Beach, other than the fact she worked for Hank Gumina, her father’s old partner—lecherous old Mr. Gumina—and that was where she’d met Mora, a little over a year ago, when he’d stopped by to pick up some estate work.

Her bath was ready now. She took off her panties—caught a glimpse of the stranger in the mirror again, the naked woman with the green eyes—and was readying to dip herself in, just then, when the doorbell rang.

Outside, on the steps to Marilyn’s apartment, Dante waited. He had retrieved the gray sedan, an airport rental, after the reception, and then driven here not quite sure what he planned to do. He had not expected to see Marilyn and Mora out front, flirting. He could have driven away, he supposed, but he had parked and watched instead—with a surprising detachment. After all, he told himself, he was only here because the company wanted him to be. Because it was a logical part of his cover—to pursue his old girl. After Mora had driven off, he had gotten out of the car and walked to the top of Union, looking down the stone face of Telegraph Hill toward the Golden Gate. The view beneath him was unchanged: the same blue water with the same white sails, and the same golden headlands off in the distance. Then he’d come back and rung the bell.

It took awhile, but now he heard footsteps. The door opened and Marilyn regarded him from the other side of the threshold.

“Dante,” she said.

He was still in his dark suit, but Marilyn had changed clothes since the funeral. She wore a sweater now and jeans. She looked a bit mussed, though, quickly put together.

She let him in.

Inside, she had redecorated—bright-colored stuff, in the Milanese fashion, with simple lines. Tucked here and there, however, was the old Italian bric-a-brac: the family heirlooms, the floral vases and absurd lamps. On the wall hung gilt-framed pictures of her family, parents and grandparents, and ancestors before that, going back into the nineteenth century, to the time of the docks and the canneries, when her family had first come—Swiss Italians, Italian Jews, Germans, whatever they were—and helped develop the land along the waterfront. Hers had been a prosperous family once. And though that prosperity was not yet gone, it was wearing thin.

“I wanted to thank you for stopping by the funeral,” he said. “Given everything that’s happened.”

“Your father was kind to me.”

This surprised him. The old man, as far as he knew, had never relented in his dislike of Marilyn’s father. Partly it had to do with the tangled history of the Italian provinces. Dante’s family was from the south, but the Viscontis were wealthy Luccans who’d intermarried with the Germans here in California. They had been labeled as sympathizers during the war, a rumor that had hurt their business—and helped the Mancusos.

As a result unpleasantries were exchanged some fifty years ago, during a meeting at Fugazi Hall. Exactly what those unpleasantries had been Dante did not know, but the effects had lingered.

“I wasn’t aware that you and my father ever talked.”

“A couple of times, on the street. After my mother died. He spoke to me—and he was very charming.”

“He could be like that,” Dante said. And it was true; his father had a public face, the ability to embrace, to show that nothing mattered, all was forgiven. What he thought to himself at home, sitting alone in his favorite chair, might be different altogether.

“And things have changed, you know. In the neighborhood—with all the newcomers—the old battles don’t matter so much anymore. It’s forgotten.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible,” said Dante. “I didn’t know they forgot anything.”

Marilyn laughed. “It’s true,” she said. “But you’re right. Aunt Regina would as soon strangle me as look at me. Your father and your uncle, though—they have been gracious. Maybe on account of Tony, I don’t know.”

Her voice stumbled a little, mentioning Mora. He was glad to see her awkwardness. Still, Dante had caught a glimpse at the funeral, and he understood how things had changed. Mora worked with Judge Romano’s son, and Dante’s family had always done business with Romano. They might not like it when they saw Mora with the Visconti girl, but she was just a woman, after all, and you could not help who a man went to bed with, and anyway Marilyn’s father was out of the picture, all but dead, and it was easy to be generous.

Dante had changed, Marilyn thought. He was not the same. The last time she had been alone with him, it had been some seven years ago. He’d had a quick smile then, and way of leaning across the table—a confidence. He’d been on his way up, a homicide cop with his eyes on the DA’s office, studying the bar, and he’d liked to talk. He’d had a cynical veneer, it was true (what cop didn’t?)—but his crust was thin, and underneath it all there was a certain vulnerability.

Anyway, he was different now. He was still lean, and his eyes were the same dark pools, but there was something a little harder, a little meaner. Still, underneath, the same softness. Maybe even softer now.

She could not help it. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to penetrate to that softness.

“I’m engaged,” she said.

“Mora?” Dante nodded his head in the direction in which the Alfa had driven.

“Yes.”

Dante nodded again.

If she had gotten to him, Marilyn could not tell, and Dante for his part would not let it show. No. Maybe he glanced at the view and remembered their time out on the bay, she in her white blouse and shorts. It had been one of those days, rare and beautiful, where the wind was down and it was warm and the water was like glass and you could imagine how it had been once upon a time, the men working the nets and the fish swimming in thick schools. But she could not know his thoughts, just as he could not know hers.

“How’s Alberto?” he asked.

She shrugged, giving him the shoulder. It was something Dante had always liked about her. The way she shrugged, the hollow in her cheeks, the quick flash in her eyes.

“St. Vincent’s.”

Dante knew what this meant. Marilyn’s father had gone downhill fast after his retirement. St. Vincent’s was a sanatorium for the worst cases. Old folks with jelly-in-the-head. Figs-for-brains. Senile frogs with bladders that wouldn’t hold.

“We worried so much about them,” Marilyn said suddenly. “Your father, my father. Gary . . .”

She trailed off. At the mention of his cousin’s name, he tasted something like bile in his throat.

“I wasn’t thinking about Gary.”

“We made our choices,” said Marilyn. “We could’ve done things differently.”

“You were supposed to meet me that night.”

“Don’t give me this.”

“No?”

“
You
were the one who left town.”

There were things about the whole business Dante still didn’t understand. All he knew was that everything had been set for him. He’d worked eight years in the department, and he’d studied the bar—and it was all in front of him, the good life—then he’d gone blind, self-destructed. Fallen in love with Marilyn, and pushed his objections to the Strehli case so hard that they’d blown up in his face. Everyone in the neighborhood knew Strehli. He was the only child of Dominic Strehli, one of his father’s war buddies. After the elder Strehli died, the son had hung around with the old ones by night, playing poker at the Portofino Café. Then one night Strehli was found with a bullet in his head. The SFPD arrested Vince Caselli, but the evidence was weak—and after a while Dante began to suspect something else was at play. Dante had gone to Mayor Rossi at his house on top of Russian Hill, asking him to intervene, but the mayor had said no. Even his father had asked Dante to beg off. He wouldn’t listen. Then all of a sudden he had found himself in the midst of a payoff scandal, a newspaper story claiming he’d been paid to squelch the evidence against Vince Caselli. The story was utter nonsense, but Internal Affairs had come after him anyway.

In the middle of all this, Caselli confessed, and the confession made Dante look like a fool. Ultimately the man died in a jailhouse stabbing—but by that time the story had dropped from the news, and Dante was gone.

“How long are you going to be in town?”

He shrugged. “I’ve got business here. Odds and ends.”

“Don’t you have to get home to New Orleans?”

“New Orleans is just a base for me. My business, it keeps me traveling,” he said. That part was true enough. “Before I leave, I have to meet with my uncle about the estate.”

She looked at him again, and maybe, for an instant, they were both thinking the same thing. Maybe what had almost been true once could be true now. If instead of running, he had stayed. But it was foolishness. He was not here for himself. He was here for the company. Because he had a cover to establish.

It was all a routine, another masquerade.

She turned her back on him now, and they regarded one another in the mirror. In that mirror, they looked a lot younger than they were. They could be those other people. In that mirror things could happen, maybe, that could not happen here. In the mirror, he still had the power, the wisdom.
La Saggezza
. He could glance into the looking glass and see all the secret mechanisms. He could see the truth behind the Strehli business, maybe . . . the truth behind his father’s death . . . the real reason the company had sent him here. . . .

And Marilyn . . .

He watched himself walk up behind her in the mirror, and she watched, too. He touched her hair, her cheek. There had been something sweet and wild between them once, a ferociousness about to break loose—a wildness they had never really unleashed, or tamed, or whatever it was two people were supposed to do with the emotions that ran between them. He put his arm around her waist, and she watched him in the mirror, and he felt the desire surge in his chest and saw at the same time the vulnerability in her eyes, there in that land of the mirror, not here, and then he pulled her toward him, and they kissed, and it was, for a minute, as if they had somehow walked into that land on the other side.

They had made their plans once upon a time. To take the trip up to Tahoe, to the Nevada side. Where you could be married at the drop of a hat.

“Where were you that night? How come you didn’t show up?”

In response she pulled away. Her eyes avoided his.

“Go,” Marilyn said. There was anger in her voice. And maybe something else, as well. “Get the hell out of here.”

He turned and left. Outside an old woman shunted her way up the sidewalk, struggling up the hill, her back to the view: all that blue water, and those white boats on the bay.

It was twilight in Chinatown, and Homicide Detective Frank Ying found himself hustling down Stockton on a mission of diminishing importance. Ying was on his way to an apartment at the top of the Kearny Street Stairs to interview the mother of a suspected homicide victim who—according to the latest pathology report—had not been a murder victim at all, but a suicide. The interview was a formality, a necessary one—but the kind of thing Ying found himself doing too often since he’d left Special Investigations and returned to Homicide. Gopher work, more or less, and he didn’t think it was coincidence.

Ying was forty-two. He had grown up in Chinatown, back when the neighborhood had stricter boundaries than it did now. Grant had been the border then, the line between Little Italy and Chinatown, and you did not walk across without a certain risk. That boundary had long since been overrun. City Hall might paint Italian flags on the telephone poles, and the Italian Preservation Society might hang its banners, but the Italians themselves were not so numerous. Even so, Detective Ying could not cross Grant Street without some sense he was straying into danger.