“We can argue about whether this was all about Dante. Or a bunch of Sicilian money from some people who were starting to feel they’ve been taken for a ride. Or a movie an old English movie director made here—here—half a century ago. But there’s one thing even Leo can’t argue about …” Teresa watched him, waiting.
“Josh Jonah didn’t know about any of these things,” Costa said.
“He could — and probably did — fix that awful snuff movie that made Lukatmi so much money when Allan Prime died. But that’s about it,” she agreed. “Whoever started this circus is still out there. Maybe they’re going to go quiet now the SFPD want to lay the blame at the door of a dead computer billionaire. Maybe they feel the publicity they’ve got is enough. Maybe not.”
She looked at him. “So what are you going to do now? Every case is unpacked. Every item accounted for.” She nodded towards the tents. “You’re surely not needed in there and you know it.”
He’d been warned to steer clear of Maggie Flavier, by both Gerald Kelly and Falcone, who was concerned that whatever little cooperation they could still count on from the SFPD was about to disappear.
“I’m supposed to behave myself.”
“Call her, Nic. Go and see her. No one’s going to miss you. Even Leo and Peroni don’t feel the need to hang around this place. Why should you?”
He hadn’t been able to get Maggie out of his head for days. That was why he had hesitated.
Teresa reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his phone, and dangled her fingers over the buttons.
“Don’t make me do this for you,” she warned.
4
It 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.