“It’s voyeuristic,” she suggested.
He grinned. “The very word! You know, for a foreigner, you’re very good with English.”
She shrugged. “I’ve got the time. I’m off the case. Just another tourist. Words are all I have.”
Teresa put out her hand and touched the dry reeds of the Ohlone structure. “It was here, wasn’t it? Carlotta’s gravestone? Before they moved it to that little cinema in the Marina?”
“If they moved it to that little cinema in the Marina,” Frank cautioned. “You heard that guy. His uncle was a rogue. Movie crews always are. Do you know no one has any idea where the painting went? The one of Carlotta? It’d be worth a fortune now. They think it just got scrapped. Thrown out with the junk. One more prop. That was Hitch. Finish one movie, get on with the next. Never look back. Only the present matters. Do you think people like Roberto Tonti treat the job that way?”
“Not for a moment. They’ve got egos the size of a whale. They’re interested in their legacy.”
“Which is nothing more and nothing less than the movies they leave behind,” Frank insisted. “I think Hitch got it right.”
His brother intervened. “It was actually a little to the left.” Hank pointed to a rough patch where a few low flowers were struggling to flourish in the dry earth. “They couldn’t use somewhere there was a real grave, for sure.”
“You saw it?” she asked them. “When it was here?”
“We were kids,” Hank replied. “It was fun to go somewhere movie stars had been. To stand on the same spot. Like touching the hem of God. Not that we would have put it that way back then.” He nodded at the mission. “Much more fun than that place, anyway.”
“The funny thing is,” Frank went on, “they left that fake gravestone there for a while. It was a tourist attraction. The mission needed the money. You can’t blame them. Then …” He glanced back at the little chapel again. “… someone said it was disrespectful. An insult to the real dead people here.”
“As if they’re going to complain,” Hank added. “No one’s been buried here in years.”
“Does that matter?” she wondered.
Frank shuffled, uncomfortable. “When you’re dead you’re dead. Only fools and children believe in ghosts.”
She felt the same way, usually. “That’s what Scottie thought. Was he right?”
Frank nodded earnestly. “Yes. He was bang on the money, even if it did cost him. Is there anything else you need to see? Churches give me the creeps, to be honest with you. Also, if we’re in time, we can hit the happy hour at a little bar we know …”
“No. I don’t think so …” she began, and then her eye caught the tree.
What was it Catherine Bianchi said? In California, almonds flowered at the end of February. That would mean they would bear fruit during the summer.
Next to the place where the grave of the fictional Carlotta Valdes had once stood was an old, crooked almond tree, little more than the height of a man. Its leaves fluttered weakly in the early evening breeze; its feeble, arthritic branches were black with age and dead fungi. On each, visible, still a little green from their newness, stood lines of nuts in their velvet, furry shells.
She took two steps towards the tree, reached up, and tugged one from the nearest branch.
“You’re going to get us in trouble,” Hank warned.
“Perish the thought …”
Teresa crouched down and found a stone. Then she placed the nut on its surface and cracked the shell open with a rock. There was a loud bang that ricocheted around the walls of the tiny graveyard. She studied the shards of the inner fruit, white and mashed against the stone.
There was no lab in San Francisco she could use. So she picked up the largest piece and put it in her mouth.
Even before she got to her feet, she was coughing. It was painful. Someone — she couldn’t see who — was thumping her on the back. There was a new voice, a woman’s voice.
With no grace whatsoever, she spat out every last piece of the almond she could. Even so, the taste lingered.
It was the most bitter thing she’d ever known.
“What are you doing? What are you doing?” The face of a severe, dark-skinned Mexican-looking woman hove into view and began castigating her.
“It was …” She started coughing, gagging for breath.
Another woman, a nun, with a blue headdress, arrived, carrying a plastic cup with water in it. Teresa drank greedily and found herself spitting out more pieces of almond.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and found herself coughing again.
“Why did you do that?” the nun asked. “This is a cemetery. Not an orchard.”
“I was curious. The fruit was very … harsh.”
The two women were silent.
“It’s a bitter almond,” Teresa asked, “isn’t it?”
The nun crossed her arms in anger. “They say the first priests planted it. Two hundred and fifty years ago. Do we need to put up a sign saying ‘Don’t steal the almonds’?”
The Mexican woman touched the branches. “It’s dying. We feed it. We try to care for it. Nothing helps.” She shook her head. Her eyes were sad. “Perhaps it’s for the best. If people keep coming here and taking away what’s not theirs …”
Teresa felt her heart skip a beat and prayed it wasn’t a side effect of the bitter nut she’d just eaten. “Someone else ate the almonds?”
“A man,” the Mexican woman said. “And he had a bag! He took many, and wouldn’t give them back when we caught him.”
Hank and Frank were looking at her and licking their lips in anticipation.
“This man,” Teresa asked, “do you know who he is? I really need to know.”
The nun took the plastic cup and gave her a withering look. “We don’t know his name. We told the police, of course. This is a nice neighbourhood. We don’t want people coming in and stealing things. The police said we were wasting their time. There are worse crimes in this city than stealing almonds from a graveyard.”
The Mexican woman waved her fist in the air. “But we had a photograph! A photograph!”
Teresa wanted to laugh. She still felt giddy. The nasty taste wouldn’t go away. “Can I see it?”
The two women stared at her and said nothing.
“Please. It may be important.”
“The parroco has it,” the Mexican woman said. “The pastor. He is out for a little while.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
“Not here,” the nun ordered. “In the basilica, please.” She patted the trunk of the withering almond tree. “Out of the way of temptation.”
10
Martin Vogel’s apartment was past Union Square, the department stores and gift shops, the cable cars and the constant presence of street people pestering for money. It lay in a nondescript commercial building down a dark, dank lane. SoMa, Nic learned from the guidebooks, was a trendy part of the city, up and coming, aspiring to be cultural, in much the same way as Testaccio in Rome. In parts it had the same tough, rough, urban aspect, too.
He found a discreet, half-hidden set of nameplates by a set of side doors. One, number 213, which he took to mean the second floor, had the scrawled name Vogel by it.
His finger lurked over the bell push for a moment. Then Costa chose another name, a few doors along, pressed the button, and waited.