The tiny room emptied in a flash. Catherine Bianchi opened every window, letting in some welcome fresh air. Peroni was pleased to notice that he could detect the scent of the ocean. Did the Pacific smell different from the Mediterranean? He thought so.
Catherine Bianchi looked at Falcone and said, “Gerald Kelly is a good man. He’s only swallowing that bullshit because he’s got nothing else to work with.”
“I believe you,” Falcone insisted.
“So do you intend to tell him anything? You guys go home when this is over. I’ve got to keep a career, and it just might wind up on Bryant Street once they close up this place.”
“I can’t think without coffee,” Falcone complained. “Real coffee. Not with chocolate in it. Or cinnamon. Or anything else. Just coffee.”
She looked at Peroni, and he wished she hadn’t.
“There’s a store around the corner,” she said. “They take orders. Not me.”
Then she walked out of the room.
Falcone watched her go, quite speechless. Peroni found himself a little misty-eyed with mirth.
“They do things differently here, Leo,” he said quietly. “Best remember.”
3
Teresa Lupo knew she would end up gravitating to Chestnut Street. The house on Greenwich was comfortable and pretty and … boring. One neighbourhood store on the corner. A couple of bars and restaurants a block along. That was it. She hankered for noise and people and the bustle she associated with Rome. More than anything, she craved intellectual activity. Chestnut provided the first three, and perhaps the fourth, if she was lucky, though she felt sure that, by the time this self-assigned trip was over, she’d know every last bookstore, delicatessen, restaurant, and café there as well as any back home.
At three o’clock on this chill San Francisco afternoon she found herself in a small and spotless café trying to summon the energy to walk along to the stores. Distances in this city were deceptive. From the nearby waterfront the Golden Gate Bridge itself seemed not much more than a stroll. She’d checked on the map she’d bought. The truth: it was a long, long haul, past West Bluff, Crissy Field, then Fort Point, and on to the bridge’s great arching span, thrusting out like some metal giant’s arm, reaching over the water. San Francisco was deceptive, a metropolis posing as a set of villages, or a set of villages posing as a metropolis, she wasn’t quite sure which. Perhaps if she went downtown … But the Marina and Cow Hollow were comfortable, and given that she seemed to be expected to fall into some kind of mental torpor while the men got on with being jumped-up museum guards, there was, perhaps, no better place to be.
The café owner was Armenian. His list of Italian “specialities” contained several items which Teresa not only failed to identify, but also found quite difficult to categorise. The coffee was fine, though: a strong macchiato, from a proper Italian machine, good enough for her to ask him to grind some to keep Falcone happy. Though why she did that …
A long, low, and somewhat scatological Roman curse escaped her lips.
One of two men seated at the next table shook his head and said, “Tut, tut. We are shocked.”
She hadn’t really noticed them before, and now she realised that was odd. The pair appeared to be at the latter end of middle age, average height, dressed in the same fawn slacks and matching brown shirts with military-style pockets. Each had a good head of greying brown hair receding at the front, leaving them with prominent widow’s peaks. Their broad, friendly faces were tanned and adorned with walrus moustaches that nestled beneath florid, bulbous noses that spoke of beer and a bachelor lifestyle. They had the same eyes, too: deep set, dark, yet twinkling with intelligence and, perhaps, mischief.
“I’m sorry,” she apologised. “I didn’t realise anyone here would speak Italian.”
“We don’t,” the second one said. “A curse is a curse in any language. It’s the intonation.”
“The force and the manner of speech,” the other added.
“Observation is everything,” his counterpart continued, then dashed a vicious look across the street. Teresa’s own powers in this field were clearly on the wane. Both men were staring, with some degree of malevolence, at the fire station opposite. The doors were open, revealing the largest fire engine she had ever seen, a gigantic monster of gleaming red paint and mirror-like chrome that looked eager to burst upon the world seeking some blaze to extinguish merely by the force of its looming, glittering presence.
A young fireman, handsome in heavy industrial trousers, suspenders over a white shirt rolled up at the sleeves, was sweating over the front of the machine with a bucket, a sponge, and a chamois cloth, making it sparkle even more.
“That spot’s on the fender still, I’ll wager,” the first one declared. “Dirt on the front left mudguard. Tire walls grimy as hell.”
“Not that he’ll notice,” the other chipped in. “Sloppy, slutty, careless, or perhaps uncaring. Who knows?”
Both sets of beady eyes turned on her.
“Do you agree?” they seemed to say in unison.
“It seems a very shiny fire engine to me.”
“Surface shine, nothing more,” the first announced. His voice had a firmness, both of opinion and tone, that she was coming to associate with San Francisco. She liked it. “That’s all anyone requires for the twenty-first century. People don’t notice detail anymore. What you don’t see is what you don’t get. The powers of observation wane everywhere. And as for deduction …”
“Who said deduction was dead?” she objected.
Their eyebrows rose and the other said, simply, “We did.”
It was a challenge and she never ducked one of those. Teresa Lupo looked at the two of them and was relieved that someone was, albeit in ignorance, asking her to exercise a little professional judgment.
“You’re identical twins,” she said.
They peered at her wearing the same dubious expression, then picked up their coffee mugs, each with a different hand, and took a long swig.
“Fruits of the same zygote?” the nearer commented. “That’s quite a far-reaching conjecture. A similarity of features suggests relationship, I’ll agree. Little more.”
“No,” she said firmly. “It’s more than that. You share the same facial features. The same build, hair colour, and a shortness of breath that would indicate some inherited tendency towards asthma. Also, hardly anyone but a scientist or an identical twin would know the word ‘zygote.’ Most people think babies come straight from the embryo.”
“So,” the further one said pleasantly, “you surmise we share the same DNA and fingerprints?”
“Oh no. You can cut out the trick questions. The DNA is identical at birth. Fine details such as fingerprints … individual.”
“A doctor?” the same man asked.
“Once. A criminal pathologist now.”
The other one raised his coffee mug in salute, and was followed by the second.
“Any more?” the first wondered.
“You’re mirror twins.” She pointed to the one who had just spoken. “You’re right-handed. You part your hair on that side and it curls clockwise at the crown. He …” She indicated the second, who was listening intently, fist beneath chin, a posture his brother adopted the moment he saw it. “… is the opposite in every respect.”
They applauded. The Armenian barista, who had been eavesdropping avidly, came over with free cake by way of a prize.
“One other thing,” she went on. “Don’t take the DNA thing for granted either. If one of you is thinking you can get away with something by blaming it on the other, I’ve got news. DNA changes. It’s called epigenetic modification. You start off the same, but DNA’s plastic. Different environments change it over the decades. I’d know.”