He waited a good minute for the phone to ring.
“I’m in an old Ford wagon doing twenty in the southbound lane going back to the city. If I like what I see, I’ll slow up to a stop when I’m in the middle. Jump the barrier, cross the road, and get in the back. You with me?”
In the distance on the far side, he could just make out a vehicle being driven with the kind of caution one expected of the elderly. It was hugging the inside lane and getting passed by everything on the bridge.
“Where are we going?”
“For a drive and a talk. Yes or no?”
When the car got closer, Costa abandoned the bike, stepped over the low iron barrier, waited for a gap in the traffic, and crossed to the other side.
It was an old, battered station wagon and it slowed even further as the driver saw him. The thing was scarcely at walking pace by the time it got close. Costa began to run to match its speed. He found the handle, threw open the back door, and leapt in.
10
The vehicle stank of tobacco and age. It wasn’t the kind of transport he would previously have associated with Tom Black.
Physically, he was a big, powerful man. Costa looked at the man’s shaken, lost face in the mirror as they pulled away. He seemed different now Josh Jonah was gone. Uncertain of himself. Desperate. Black had to struggle with his shaking hands to take out the card to get them through the toll gates on the southern end of the bridge.
“What do you want?” Costa asked, then listened and found himself in fantasy land.
Tom Black had a list, one so ludicrous it was impossible to know how to begin the task of bringing him down to reality. He wanted immunity from prosecution. He wanted access to his frozen funds. A lawyer before being asked any questions by the police. A phone call to his mother in Colorado. Finally …
The figure in the front seat turned round and looked at Costa hopefully, with an ingenuous schoolkid’s hope in his eyes.
“I have a ticket for the premiere tomorrow. I want to be there.”
Costa shook his head and laughed, aware of the scared young eyes watching him.
“You find this funny?” Black demanded shrilly.
“How else am I supposed to feel? You’re wanted for murder and more financial crimes than I can put a name to. Now you want me to make sure you have tickets for the cinema?”
“Lukatmi …”
“Lukatmi didn’t pay for that movie, Tom! That’s the point. Why don’t you just drop me off and I’ll find a cab home. This is a waste of time.”
They followed 101 off the bridge, cutting into the city past the Palace of Fine Arts, where the lights were still on in the exhibition tents, then on to Lombard, where the highway turned into a broad city street. Then Black turned down towards the waterfront, past the bars of Fisherman’s Wharf. It was just lazy driving, the kind you did when you wanted to think or convince yourself you could stay out of harm’s way forever.
“That ticket’s mine, man. I want to be there. It was part of the deal. I’m owed.”
They passed a parked police car on North Point Street. Costa watched the way its lights came on afterwards. Discreetly he turned his head to glance through the rear window and saw it move into the road.
“Who does this vehicle belong to, Tom?”
“I’m not bringing anyone else into this. Don’t even think of going there.”
“Is it stolen?”
Black turned round and looked at him like he was crazy. Then, to Costa’s dismay, he lifted his right hand and showed him something. It was a handgun. A black semiautomatic.
“This is stolen. That’s all you need to know.”
“You don’t look like a gun person to me. You don’t look like someone who could fix all this on your own, either. Who gave it to you? Is he following us?”
“Shut … up!”
Costa sat back. They were on the Embarcadero now. He liked this road. It led to the Ferry Building, a piece of architecture that had caught his eye the moment he first saw it. The tall clock tower reminded him of Europe.
“So what do you say?” Black persisted.
“Pull over, give me the gun, promise to tell the nice people in the San Francisco Police Department everything you know, and it’s possible I can keep you alive. Maybe even out of jail. I need to know who wants to kill you.”
The semiautomatic came up again.
Costa put up his hands and said, “Fine. We’re done here.”
They passed Lombard Street and another patrol car pulled out into the road. They were holding off, Costa thought. Waiting for orders.
“Pull the car over, Tom. I’m getting out.”
“I want …” He looked ready to crack.
The Ferry Building was approaching. There was no traffic coming in the opposite direction. Costa knew what that had to mean. Soon they could see it. A line of police vehicles straddled the road, blue and red lights flashing.
“You told them, you bastard!” Black yelled, and the weapon was up again, jerking wildly in his free hand.
“I didn’t tell them anything. Do you think they would have waited till now?”
“Then …?”
“What about the guy who gave you the gun? The one who set this up? Put that bike out for me? Did he follow us, too?”
“Got to know who to trust …” Black whimpered. “Got to know.”
Up the street uniformed men stood by the patrol cars. Costa snatched a look at the beautiful, illuminated clock tower and realised where he’d seen something like it before, where the architect must have got the idea. It was the Giralda in Seville, the Moorish tower attached to a Catholic cathedral that had consumed the mosque that went before. All generations pillaged what they inherited. Roberto Tonti had robbed from Dante. A murderer had somehow found inspiration in a film that was half a century old.
“Give me the gun and I will deal with this,” Costa ordered.
They were edging closer to the roadblock. Costa could hear Gerald Kelly’s voice booming through a bullhorn, all the commands Costa would expect of a situation like this.
Stop the car. Get out. Lie down.
“I’m dead,” Tom Black mumbled at the wheel.
“If you step out of that door with a gun in your hand, you will be.”
The vehicle rolled to a halt twenty yards from the police line. Costa couldn’t begin to guess the number of weapons that were trained on them by the dark figures crouched next to the line of vehicles blocking the street beneath the tower of the Ferry Building.
“If you’re in jail for a couple of years, what’s it matter? You’ll still be alive. Still got a future in front of you. Maybe there’s a lawyer who can get you off. Money talks. You’ll find some.”
Black turned round and stared at him. “That’s what Josh thought. He just wanted to pay off that blackmailing bastard Vogel once and for all.”
“See? That’s a start. Keep talking and you’d be amazed how popular you can get.”
“You don’t understand the first thing about what’s going on here, do you?”
“True. So tell me.”
He looked out the window, lost, forlorn. “Once you sign up with these people, you never get free. It’s a contract, right? A contract. Break it and you die.”
“Is that what happened with Allan Prime?”
“I don’t know what happened with Allan and neither did Josh. It was never supposed to end that way. It was just a deal. Don’t you see?”
The weapon was near, but not enough to snatch.
“Give me the gun, Tom. I’ll throw it out the window. Then we crawl out of here and go straight down on the ground, faces in the dirt, hands out, not moving a muscle until they tell us. That way we both stay alive.”