“And after that?” the same reporter asked.
Kelly snatched the microphone and barked, “After that, there’s not a living soul left in the whole of California. Gentlemen. Ladies. I leave you with our Italian friends and their pet professor. Some of us have work to do.”
He stalked out and went straight to his office three floors above. The conference was still going on. Quattrocchi and Whitcombe were fielding questions. The harpy from public affairs had press-ganged poor, meek Cy Fielding, one of Kelly’s oldest and softest detectives, onto the podium in his place. Not that anyone seemed remotely interested in what the man might say.
Kelly looked at the letter from the commissioner’s office again and swore. The phone on his desk rang.
“Yes!” he yelled into it.
It was Sheldon from the commissioner’s office, all sweetness and sympathy.
“Calm down. We would have told you beforehand, but you weren’t around.”
“That’s because I was out doing my job. Believe it or not, murderers rarely walk into the office on their own or turn up as attachments in an e-mail.”
Kelly hit the keyboard on his computer and brought up the video of the press conference. It was live on the screen in front of him in an instant, naturally. Geeks ran the SFPD. Like they ran the world. At that moment just about every police officer inside a station in San Francisco was doubtless watching this piece of vaudeville instead of walking the street looking for bad guys.
“When a big movie company wants to drop a million dollars on the table as a reward for finding the bastards who butchered one of their stars and tried to kill another, we listen,” Sheldon said calmly. “We have no choice. These people have clout. Especially Quattrocchi. You have to work with them.”
“A million-dollar reward,” Kelly spat back at the phone. He put on an accent he thought came close to Quattrocchi’s dainty English. “For information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone threatening the life or security of any cast members or associates of Roberto Tonti’s Inferno. Jesus. Hollywood’s writing the script for us now. Don’t you see that? They’re turning this into a freak show.”
“Enough—”
“No. Not enough. I won’t shut up. You’ve just taken away half my manpower. Maybe more. ’Cause now we have to field the phones listening to kooks who think their neighbour’s a star-killer.”
“Enough!”
That was loud, and Sheldon didn’t normally do loud. So, reluctantly, Kelly kept quiet.
“I say this once and once only, Gerry. You’re too damned good to throw away your career over this. And it could happen. Believe me.”
“Someone murdered Allan Prime. Maybe they tried to murder Maggie Flavier. We are not dealing with an episode of Columbo here.”
“Maybe?”
“You heard me.”
“That’s your problem. These guys have got money. They’ve got clout. They’ve got the ear of the governor, the mayor, and God almighty for all I know. Deal with it, Kelly. Otherwise, these guys will eat you alive.”
Captain Gerald Kelly slammed down the phone, then rolled his executive chair around and stared out the window.
The worst thing was, Sheldon had a point.
5
“Ponytails,” Catherine Bianchi grumbled as they walked through the wide central hall of Lukatmi Building Number One. Three galleries ranged around the sides, each housing cubicles lit by the glow from ranks and ranks of computer screens. In the centre of the hall were scattered vast soft sofas in bright primary colours, pinball and foosball machines, places to eat and drink coffee. The staff, all around twenty-five, rarely more, wore jeans and T-shirts and either lolled in the play area or dashed about looking deeply serious, often tapping away at tiny handheld computers. To Peroni, it seemed like a kindergarten for people who would never grow up. Except for the flashing sports-style scoreboard at the end of the vast interior, set against a window overlooking San Francisco Bay, with a rough grey chunk of Alcatraz, a lump of uninviting rock and slab-like buildings, intruding into the corner.
High above the office the electronic scoreboard displayed the Lukatmi stock price in a running ticker alongside a host of other tech industry giants: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo.
A skinny individual with greasy shoulder-length hair had been deputed to meet them when they arrived. He said very little and did so eating a sandwich that looked as if it were stuffed with pond weed. When he saw what had caught Peroni’s attention, he tapped the big Italian cop on the shoulder and nodded at the scoreboard.
“Watch the totals. Dinosaurs down five percent average over the year. Lukatmi …”
The numbers kept on flickering. There was a big “up” arrow next to the symbol that had the multiarmed logo by its side.
“Sixty percent and rising.”
Catherine Bianchi eyed him and said, “The dinosaurs have still got more money than you. They could buy out Lukatmi tomorrow if they wanted. Or invent something that kills you stone dead overnight. Beware old people. They don’t harbour grudges, they nurture them.”
The geek shrugged. “You know, lady, when you’re living inside the e-conomy you soon get to realise there are some things people outside, old people in particular, never ever come to comprehend.”
“Does that mean you’re up for sale or not?” Falcone asked.
“I code,” he replied, after a bite of pond weed. “Nothing else. My old man told me anything’s for sale if the price is right. But I earn more in one year than he ever got in a lifetime. So who do you think I should listen to?”
“Perry Como,” Peroni suggested. “ ‘Hot Diggity, Dog Ziggity Boom.’ ”
Their guide looked bewildered for a moment, then pointed. “Josh’s and Tom’s offices are over there. I will leave you three now before whatever time machine you own drags me back to the Ice Age, too.”
The big cop watched him leave.
“What’s the kid’s beef? Pierino Como was a fine Italian American.”
“The kid belongs to a superior race,” Catherine guessed, then held out her hand to Josh Jonah and Tom Black. Both were approaching, Black a foot or two behind his partner.
Neither looked welcoming.
“What’s this about?” Jonah wanted to know.
“Security,” she said, promptly. “Yours. Ours. The movie. The people.” She smiled. “And the stuff. You do understand the stuff is important, too, don’t you, Josh? My Italian friends have lost a very important museum exhibit already. They don’t want to lose any more.”
Peroni considered this strange couple. Skinny, moody, arrogant, with his long, carefully coiffured fair hair, Jonah seemed to be just the type who’d be running a company like Lukatmi. Student on the outside, shark on the in. Tom Black, though … he wasn’t so sure. They’d run through some profiles before arriving. The two of them had met at college, Stanford. Black was the coding genius, Jonah the business visionary. A complementary mix, left side of brain meets right side, or so the glowing profiles claimed. Untold wealth ensued. But did that mean they liked one another? Peroni saw no sign of it. These two men had just turned twenty-three and were, at that moment, worth more than a billion dollars each, with much, much more in prospect if they managed to “grow the company,” as the papers put it, or sell the business on a high. Not that it seemed to be making them happy just at the moment.
“How’s Maggie?” Tom Black asked.
“We know no more about Miss Flavier than you’ve seen on TV,” Falcone told him.
“Don’t give me that,” Jonah moaned. “That was your guy with her.”