“There is no deal. This has nothing to do with me.”
“As if you have a choice! It’s too late for that. You’re part of the story. Screw with my client’s ability to fulfill her potential and”—Harvey bunched a fist and shook it in Costa’s face—“you will answer to me. Capisce, Soverintendente?”
“An intelligent man spends a year in Rome,” Costa observed without emotion, “and still your accent sounds like that of a bad actor in a cheap gangster movie.”
“Don’t push me …”
“Will you both shut up! Will you …?”
She had her hands to her ears. Her face spoke of pain and fatigue. Costa felt something elemental tug at his heart, an emotion he hadn’t known since Emily was alive. Guilt mingled with a deep, intense sense of misgiving about what might lie ahead.
“I was beginning to feel better until you two started screaming at each other,” she moaned, real tears in her eyes. “What the hell gave you the right to walk in here and start bawling each other out like a couple of teenagers?”
“Nothing,” Costa answered, and placed the bouquet of roses on the bed. It suddenly seemed insignificant next to the gigantic displays of orchids and garish, gigantic blooms he couldn’t begin to name ranged against the wall.
“Is this what you want?” he asked softly. “Another year with Roberto Tonti? Another year of being someone else?”
She turned to Harvey, squeezed his hand, and said, “Leave this to me, Simon.”
The American left without a word, just a single threatening glance in Costa’s direction.
Maggie beckoned to Nic to take the empty seat. She held his hand, looked into his face. He wanted to ask himself who it was that he saw before him. Her? Or someone else, someone stolen from a painting?
Costa felt oddly, reluctantly detached. As if someone were watching, directing this scene, one that was happening in some place that was apart from all that he regarded as reality.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking so pale, so frail and fallible and human, eyes moist with fatigue and emotion.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about, Maggie. Just rest. Take your time. Think things through.”
She laughed through her tears. “Time. I don’t have any, Nic. I never have any. There are a million actresses out there screaming to take my place, most of them younger, smarter, better than me. Dino Bonetti wants to make this sequel. There’s a lot of money at stake. I have to sign now, to commit. Otherwise …” She wiped her face with the sleeve of her dressing gown. “Let’s face it. Nobody knows who the hell Beatrice is anyway. All she does is stand there looking transcendental, promising Dante they’ll be together one day, if only he lives a good life. Any actress in a blonde wig could play her. I’m thirty-one years old. If it wasn’t for all this publicity, they wouldn’t even be offering me the part. I’ll be thirty-four, thirty-five before the movie even appears. In this profession that’s ancient. I can’t say no.”
Her eyes stared into his. “Also …” She hesitated. “I’d be in Rome, too. For the filming. I thought … you might like that idea.”
“I’d like that very much,” he answered honestly.
She reached down and took the modest bouquet of roses, smelled them, and said, “These are the nicest flowers anyone’s ever given me.”
“The ones in Rome …” he said, and that instant a picture entered his head, of the two of them walking through the Campo dei Fiori, hand in hand, past the flower stalls, with not a single photographer in sight.
“Tell me about it, Nic,” she urged. “About you. About where you live. Your family. About who you are.”
He held her hand in a room that seemed like a suite in a hotel he could never hope to afford, staring down towards the city and the distant blue Pacific Ocean, and he told her. Nic Costa talked, as much to himself as to her. Of a quiet, difficult child taking lone bicycle rides on the Appian Way, of grapes and wine, of the countryside and the ruins, the tombs and the churches, the simple, modest rural life that his family had enjoyed as he grew up, watching their close-knit love for each other fall apart through sickness and age, however much he tried to hold back time, however hard he fought to paper over the cracks.
Some things were inevitable, even for the young.
He’d no idea how long he spoke, only that she never said a word. When he was finished, his own eyes were stinging from tears. He felt as if some immense inner burden had lifted from him, one so heavy, familiar, and persistent he had long ago ceased to notice its presence.
She was sound asleep against the pillows, her mouth open, snoring softly.
Costa picked up the roses from the coverlet and placed them next to the bed. Then he let himself out of the room.
The staff were no strangers to celebrity. They guided him back to the side entrance, where he strode out into the bright, cold July sun.
A sea of bodies surrounded him immediately. Reporters jabbed mikes in his face. Photographers with cameras roared his name.
They followed him down the street. Across the road stood Simon Harvey. As Costa passed, Harvey tipped an imaginary hat and smiled sarcastically. This was his work, Costa realized. A publicist’s way of saying, “Do as I say or pay the price.”
Costa said nothing, simply smiled for the cameras and tried to look as pleasant and as baffled as he could.
When he reached the car, he drove down the hill into Haight-Ashbury, found the nearest empty café, and ordered a coffee. It was nearly four in the afternoon. He’d achieved nothing all day.
His phone rang.
“How is she?” Falcone asked.
“Recovering.”
“Good. You should find that photographer you hit and apologise.”
“I am so very much in the mood for that right now.”
“Excellent. I’ll give you the address.”
7
Teresa Lupo recognised the place the moment HankenFrank’s ancient Buick pulled up outside. Mission Dolores had changed very little in the fifty years since Hitchcock chose the church for a short but significant role in his movie. Not that the twins seemed much interested in that idea. All the way from Cow Hollow they talked of Dante and his numbers. Nothing else.
“So this guy of yours …” Frank went on. “Quattrocchi … the snooty one we saw on the TV …”
“He’s Carabinieri,” she declared from the rear seat. “Not one of ours.”
Hank, who was at the wheel with his brother next to him, eased the old car into a parking spot, then leaned back to look at her. “A cop’s a cop.”
“What about the FBI?”
“They’re not cops,” Hank pointed out.
“Neither are the Carabinieri!”
“Yeah, well, they look that way to the SFPD and that’s what matters.”
“Hank,” she said, taking his hand over the seat back and looking into his large, watery blue eyes. “Try and understand. You’re not reading a book now. This is not Sherlock Holmes versus Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. Real life isn’t fiction. It’s all much more complicated and ragged at the edges. There are rarely neat symmetrical resolutions. People like me, the police, the Carabinieri … we just blunder around in the dark, hopefully with a little skill, creativity, and luck, praying there’s light somewhere around the corner. But don’t quote me on that. Ever. It’s supposed to be a secret.”
Frank let out a warm, throaty chuckle. “Worst one you people have. We read newspapers, too, you know. If it wasn’t for the scientists …”
“Science isn’t everything. Trust me. I know. Did you ever read of someone getting murdered over poetry?”
“This is America. You need a reason to get killed?”