Dante's Numbers (25 page)

I
T WAS ALMOST THREE IN THE AFTERNOON BY the time Jimmy Gaines parked his station wagon in the Muir Woods visitor centre and pointed them up the hiking route signposted as Ocean View Trail.

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

“Couple of times.”

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

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

The two men turned and looked at him.

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

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

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

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

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

“Not really.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They got animals here?” Frank asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black glanced at Jimmy Gaines, seeking guidance.

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

T
HE BROCKLEBANK BUILDING WAS OLD AND elegant and hauntingly familiar. Costa parked outside the grand entrance and talked his way past the uniformed concierge at the door. There was money on Nob Hill. History, too. The connection came to him as he stood in the elevator, waiting for it to rise to the third floor, where Maggie's apartment was situated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You don't know how she found it?”

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

“And when you're travelling?”

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

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

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

“Vertigo.
Hitchcock.”

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

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

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

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

“Did you agree?”

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

“Do they take a cut?”

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

“How much?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Not for the moment.”

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

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

“I'd think you'd be fine.”

“What I meant was…”

Another edgy shot of vodka disappeared. She was coughing hard, her hand to her mouth. Her eyes were wide open again with astonishment. His mind began to race, recalling her terrible collapse in the park.

Maggie fell back on the sofa behind them. He was beside her instantly.

“Damned drink,” she swore, still struggling to speak. “Went down the wrong way. Must break that vodka habit. Tomorrow. Definitely. Wait, I forgot something, Nic. Dino Bonetti! That movie!
Vertigo!”

“What?”

“The first time he came here. He told me to watch it. He recognised the location.” She looked at him. “Now you're saying the same thing. What's going on here?”

Costa told her a little of Teresa's ideas, and how the woman who had first approached Allan Prime had introduced herself as a character in the movie.

She sat on the sofa, bare, slender legs tucked beneath her. “Well, I guess it's time I followed everyone's advice. Will you watch it with me?” She closed her eyes and looked exhausted. “I've been on my own so much since all this craziness began.”

“Where's the movie?” he asked.

She picked up the phone, called someone, and ordered a DVD. “It'll be an hour or so. Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“I can order some food, too.”

He got up. Costa knew he needed activity, something that would take his mind off Dante Alighieri and Alfred Hitchcock, Dino Bonetti and the shattered corpse of Josh Jonah, prone on the floor of a run-down SoMa apartment block.

Maggie followed him and watched as he rifled through the kitchen drawers and cabinets.

“You have food,” he said. “That's a start.”

“Old
food. One of the rental people must have left it.”

He found a small envelope of dried porcini, a packet of arborio rice, a couple of shallots in the vegetable rack along with a chunk of Parmesan wrapped in foil. Five minutes later he had the makings of a risotto. It felt good to cook again. It felt even better to have Maggie Flavier leaning on the threshold of the door, looking at him as if she'd never seen anything like this in her life.

“Any wine recommendations?” she asked, nodding at the floor-length chilled cabinet filled with bottles that looked a lot more expensive than anything he usually drank.

“I'll leave that to you.”

She opened the glass door, peered inside, and pulled out a bottle. “I bought this in Rome. Is it any good?”

He looked at the 2004 Terredora Greco di Tufo and said, “It'll do. Can I leave you to set the table?”

“Men!” she exclaimed, and went to the kitchen drawers, where she removed a tablecloth and place settings.

“After that…” he shouted through the open door, “…we need some cheese grated.”

It wasn't the best risotto Costa had ever made. But he didn't want someone else's food. Not with her.

They ate and talked. Towards the end she looked at him and asked, “Did you used to cook? For Emily?”

He had to force himself to remember. There was now a distance between the present and the past. Perhaps it was San Francisco. Perhaps it was Maggie Flavier. Or both. But he could now see the winter's nightmare with some perspective, could stand back from it and feel apart from the pain and despair it had brought.

“Sometimes. Sometimes she did. Emily wasn't a vegetarian. If I was working nights, I'd come home occasionally and I could smell steak in the kitchen.” He looked at her. “Or bacon and eggs.”

“Were you upset?”

“Of course not. It was her home, too.” He could picture the two of them together, inside the house near the Appian Way. “It used to smell good, if I'm honest. If I ate meat…” He shrugged. “But I don't. And I didn't like the smoking much. She went outside for that.”

Maggie held up her hands. “I won't smoke inside either. Promise.”

“It's your home,” he said.

“No, it's not. It's just somewhere I live from time to time. Did you think about it? Being together? Did you ever…question whether it was right?”

“Not once. Not for a second,” he said immediately. “We had arguments. We saw things different ways. None of that mattered. I can't explain. It happened.” A flash of recollection, of a cold, hard winter's day by the mausoleum of Augustus, ran through his head. “Then it was over.”

She reached out and touched the back of his hand.

“I could feel something. Your sadness. Outside that little children's cinema. Before we went inside. Before I even knew who you were. It was like something tangible.”

“Not good for a police officer.”

“I wouldn't worry about it. I'm freaky Maggie Flavier. I see things other people don't. Lucky them.”

He got up and started to take the plates.

“No,” she insisted. “You cooked. I load the dishwasher. Sit. Make yourself comfortable.”

She went back into the kitchen. He walked to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror, wondering what he saw, what he felt.

When he returned, she was tipping the video deliveryman at the door. After that she put the disc in some machine by the fireplace and turned the TV on. They sat next to each other, opposite the gigantic screen. She picked up a couple of remotes. The curtains on the apartment closed themselves slowly; the light fell.

The black-and-white credits ran: the logo of the Paramount peak, the awkward, jarring music he had come to associate with the movie. Then a brutal close-up of a woman, zooming into her eye with a cruel, unforgiving honesty, monochrome turning to bloodred, a swirling vortex spinning out from the black, unseeing pupil.

He felt cold. He felt lost and he'd no idea why.