And yet Falcone stuck obstinately to his guns; somehow, somewhere, he insisted, this case was about nothing more than cash. Not a piece of poetry. Not an old movie. Money was at the root of everything. Maybe it was Josh Jonah and Tom Black protecting their investment. Maybe it was Roberto Tonti or Dino Bonetti trying to make sure the heavy mob who bankrolled Inferno got payback before they turned ugly. Or maybe it was the mob themselves doing just that. Those, as far as the inspector was concerned, were the only avenues worth exploring, not that they were supposed to.
Once the arguments began again, made yet more shrill by the howls of outrage from the Carabinieri and the suits in Bryant Street over Nic’s close involvement with the actress they were supposed to be protecting, no one even bothered to ask much about Maggie Flavier’s condition, which did nothing to calm Teresa Lupo’s temper. A severe anaphylactic shock was a truly terrible experience. If Nic hadn’t been there, it might have taken her life. Not that he was going to get much credit on that front. The media had fresher blood to excite its appetites.
She picked up that morning’s copy of the San Francisco Chronicle from the vehicle’s floor. They’d printed only one photo, of Nic bent over the stricken woman, stabbing the epinephrine pen into her thigh. It wasn’t the worst. Some of the less fussy rags had felt no such restraint. In spite of his broken arm — now the subject of a police investigation on the grounds of assault — the paparazzo had hung around long enough to capture a series of images of the actress being taken into the ambulance by paramedics, with Nic, face grim and eyes steely, holding her hand.
While Teresa fumed over the paper, Peroni studied a couple of the grosser tabloids. Splashed over the front pages, alongside the shots of a woman in the throes of a dreadful allergic reaction, they carried photos of Maggie Flavier. She sat close to Nic, propped against the silver form of a grey, ghostly tree, smiling, a look on her face no one could mistake. It was one step away from a kiss, and everyone who saw it would surely have wondered what came after.
“If she’d died,” Peroni pointed out, “they’d never have run these. Not for a day or two anyway. They’d call it ‘respect.’ ”
That was probably true, Teresa thought. Allan Prime had been treated like a lost genius for a short while after his murder. Then the reporters had started to find other stories. Of his financial wranglings, his debts, his association with known criminals. And the women. Young, too young sometimes. Often vulnerable. Sometimes paid off for their “troubles.” It took less than a week for the dead actor to tumble out of Hollywood heaven and into the gutter. Teresa had read enough about Maggie Flavier’s past, a very typical tale of broken love affairs, tussles with the law, and the occasional drug and booze bust, to understand that the young woman would doubtless have followed the same path had she wound up on a morgue table.
“OK,” Catherine Bianchi said. “I shouldn’t be telling you this but I will. Nic isn’t going to be charged over that guy’s broken arm. He might get yelled at. No — he will get yelled at. But that’s it. The SFPD doesn’t like that kind any more than you.”
“What do you know about him?” Falcone asked. “The photographer?”
“I can’t possibly tell you that, Leo. You shouldn’t even be asking.”
“What if he’s not just a photographer?” Peroni wondered. “What if he’s involved?”
The woman’s smart, dark face creased with fury. “We’re not idiots. Don’t presume you have some kind of monopoly over proper police procedure. We will investigate the man.” She swore under her breath. “Hell, we have investigated him. He’s a lowlife. He’s been accused of harassing five young actresses over the last two years. He’s a jerk and a creep and probably ought to get taken into some dark corner somewhere and taught a lesson he won’t forget. But he is not a murderer.”
The big man folded his arms and asked, “Where does he live?”
“You must be joking!”
“His name is Martin Vogel,” Falcone announced, taking a scrap of paper out of his pocket. “He has an apartment somewhere called SoMa. I have the address. An art district or something, I’m told. Good restaurants apparently.”
“What …” Catherine snarled. “Restaurants? What?”
“I thought we might go out for dinner somewhere.”
“Dinner? Screw dinner, Leo! Are you seriously thinking of approaching a witness who claims — with some justification — that he’s been assaulted by one of your own men? How the—”
“His name was in the paper. You have these things called phone books.”
“Visit that man and you are on your own,” she snapped. “God knows you’re pushing my limits already. Martin Vogel’s screaming that Nic attacked him. Some lawyer will be coming at us all for millions. Things are complicated enough already. I will not allow you to make them worse.”
Falcone tapped his fingers on the dashboard, thinking. Then he said, “Martin Vogel was in the right location, though, wasn’t he? Not an obvious place either.”
“He’s freelance camera scum,” she pointed out. “Jackals like Vogel will follow someone like Maggie Flavier for days, weeks, just to get one photograph. Don’t you have any idea how much he’ll get for those photos? Thousands, probably. Not bad for an evening’s work.”
“The Legion of Honor was on my list,” Teresa pointed out, ignoring the American policewoman and talking to Falcone. “The Vertigo list.”
He scowled. “Nothing happened at the Legion of Honor. It was a mile away in the woods. Stop clutching at straws, please.”
“But you said …” she protested. “About the car.”
“It was just an old car. Perhaps the company that sent it had a movie buff on the staff. Where’s the real link?”
“Carlotta Valdes!”
He had that foxy look in his eyes. One she both loved and hated, because it was both a rejection and a challenge.
He gazed out the window in the direction of the Lukatmi studios and said, “If we can understand who benefits, who feels cheated, and, ultimately, who loses … there lie the answers.”
“You’re a philistine,” Teresa announced. “And if you hope to understand the financing of modern movies, you’ll be here for years.” She waved a hand at the Lukatmi building. “I’ll bet you even they don’t understand it, and a stack of their money has already disappeared into Dino Bonetti’s pockets. I’m a pathologist. I look for traces. So should you.”
Falcone was unmoved. “You’ve no laboratory, no staff, no jurisdiction. Most of all you’ve no job. You’re nothing more than a tourist here. Don’t forget it.”
“As if I could! You remind me every hour on the hour. So tell me. How did someone know that Maggie was vulnerable like that? Could Lukatmi’s computers have told them she was allergic to almonds?”
“Any computer could have told them that,” Catherine Bianchi said. “She had some kind of attack at the Cannes film festival three years ago. All the papers covered it. That one wasn’t so severe, thankfully. But that’s why she carries that syringe all the time.” She eyed Teresa nervously. “You won’t tell anyone I gave you that lab report, will you? They’d fire me. They’d have every right.”
“Of course I won’t!”
“So? What did it tell you?”
“You have a forensic department. What did it tell them?”