“Just like the movies,” Black mumbled sarcastically.
He was so close. One more minute with this man and he’d be there.
“What’s wrong with the movies?” Costa asked.
The man at the wheel stared at him with eyes that were dark, bleak, and full of self-loathing.
“They screw you up. They …” Costa could scarcely make out the words. “They screw everyone. Scottie. Me. I never thought this’d happen. Not when we went to Jones …”
He threw back his head, closed his eyes.
“Jones? Who …?” Costa was starting to ask.
The bullhorn burst into life again. This time it was loud and close enough to shake the vehicle.
“Get out of the car,” Gerald Kelly’s metallic voice bellowed.
Black leaned out of the open window, abruptly furious, waving the weapon around, screaming, “Shut up, shut up, shut up! Lemme think.”
Costa sat back and watched him subside. They had time. Getting the weapon off this scared young man might take an hour. More maybe. But it was achievable.
“We know about James Gaines,” Kelly shouted. “We need you to come in. You and your accomplice. Get out of the vehicle.”
Something changed in Tom Black’s demeanour. His face hardened. Costa’s spirits sank.
Black thrust his head out into the night. “What the hell have you done to Jimmy? This has nothing to do with him. Blame Josh and me. Not Jimmy.”
“Who’s Jimmy Gaines?” Costa asked.
He didn’t get a reply. Black was screaming into the street again.
“You bring Jimmy here! I wanna talk to him. This isn’t his doing. I want him free.”
Kelly didn’t come back on the bullhorn straightaway. That was odd.
“Let’s just get out of the car like they say,” Costa began. “This will be so much easier in someone’s office, where it’s warm and they have coffee and lawyers and people who can help you.”
“I can’t bring you Gaines,” Kelly said, and there was an edge to his voice even through the electronic medium of the bullhorn. “There was an accident. Let’s not have any more.”
Costa stiffened back into the old, uncomfortable seats of the station wagon and watched Black fumble at his phone, calling someone who didn’t answer, and that made the young man more furious than ever.
“An accident … an accident … what the hell does that mean?”
“If we talk to them …”
It was no use.
“Bring me Jimmy Gaines!” Black screeched out the window.
There was a pause. Then Gerald Kelly’s piercing, metallic voice said simply, “We can’t. He’s dead.”
Costa closed his eyes and wondered why words always had to give way to deeds. Why he couldn’t talk people out of things. It had cost Emily her life. It had almost robbed him of his sanity. He’d done everything he could to reason with Tom Black, and might have managed if Gerald Kelly — a good, intelligent police officer, Costa didn’t doubt that — hadn’t intervened with the wrong words at the wrong time.
He rolled over on the backseat and thrust himself deep down into the floor space. He could smell what was coming in the stink of sweat and fear and panic that was rolling off the man in the front.
The driver’s door opened and Black was out, screaming obscenities. Costa steeled himself for the sound. It didn’t come. Not immediately. Kelly was shouting. So was Tom Black. Then …
A single shot. One loose round begets a host.
When it began, he forced his fists into his ears to keep out the volley of gunfire enveloping this quiet, beautiful patch of the city outside the Ferry Building.
It was the same, always. In the grounds of the Villa Borghese as an actor posing as a Carabiniere was brought down because he didn’t understand how jumpy police officers get when they see what appears to be an armed individual intent on violence. In the grubby gardens surrounding the mausoleum of the emperor Augustus, where his wife died.
There was a short, high scream, then the shooting ended. It was replaced immediately by that angry, taut chorus of shouts that followed almost every act of violence he had witnessed. A part of him felt he could hear the life of Tom Black depart the world, a single human soul lost for eternity, for no good reason Costa could imagine. He had no such recollection of the moment of Emily’s death. That instant was black and bleak and empty and would always remain so.
Crushed facedown in the rear seat of the vehicle, hands now tight on his head, waiting, he was aware of them tearing at the doors, screaming at him, wondering themselves whether he was armed, too, and might take a life of their own.
Strange voices assaulted him, strong hands gripped his arms. Costa felt himself dragged from the backseat and flung facedown onto the ground. He thrust out his arms as they ordered. The gravel scraped his cheeks. A couple of them aimed kicks, one brutally painful, deep into his ribs. He grunted and didn’t move, not an inch. After a while the noise and the violence subsided. He heard Kelly’s voice say to another man, “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
They used their feet to turn him.
Bloodied hands still up over his head, Costa opened his eyes to see the SFPD captain’s shape obscuring the grey stone tower of the Ferry Building.
“What in God’s name are you doing here?” Kelly asked, shaking his head in amazement.
“I was trying to bring you a witness. I did my best. Sorry.”
To his surprise Kelly held out his hand and helped him upright. He had a strong grip. It hurt when it pushed the gravel further back into Costa’s torn palm. Cops stood over the body of Tom Black, looking at it, shaking their heads. Sirens were wailing somewhere along Market Street.
Kelly offered him a clean handkerchief. “There’s blood on your face. You might want to get it off.”
Costa wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. He felt detached from the situation, as if it were happening to someone else.
“Did he tell you anything?” Kelly asked.
He tried to remember. “I’d have to think about that.”
Kelly put an arm around his shoulder and walked him towards the terminal doors. A small crowd had gathered behind the barrier erected by Kelly’s men. The traffic was beginning to back up along the Embarcadero.
“Please,” Kelly said. “Think hard.”
“How did you know he was in the car?”
“Your pathologist called us. Some guys she knows were playing PI and got themselves kidnapped by this Gaines character. Seems he and Black were good friends. So good, Gaines thought he’d get Black out there to cut some deal with you, and then pop off these friends of hers in the meantime.” Kelly shrugged. “Didn’t work out that way. Afterwards, they called her. And she, being a sensible, helpful lady, called me.”
The SFPD captain scratched his grizzled head. “It never really occurred to me you might have got there first.”
“We keep trying to do you favours. It doesn’t buy us any credit, does it?”
“Not much.”
Nic Costa closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself back in Rome. It was impossible.
“Did you happen to witness Tom Black taking a shot at us?” Kelly asked out of nowhere.
“I was in the back of the car with my head in my hands. I didn’t see a thing.”
“Sensible man.” Kelly sighed. “I didn’t see Tom Black use his weapon,” the cop said. “In fact I’d say the first shot I heard took him down, and that didn’t come from us.”
PART 6
1
He was woken by the phone. It was Maggie wanting to know what had happened. The incident outside the Ferry Building was all over the morning news. Inferno had hit the headlines again.