This he found deeply vexing. After checking the arrangements once more, he spent a pleasant few minutes peering at a rare Venetian incunabulum of the Comedy.
“Incunabulum,” Miller grunted. “Sounds like witchcraft.”
“You’re thinking of ‘incubus,’ ” Costa replied. “Incunabula are just very early printed books. Before 1501.”
“So why don’t they call them ‘very early printed books’?” the young cop shot back.
“For the same reason people call this the Palace of Fine Arts, even though it’s a pointless folly made out of plaster and chicken wire. It makes life more interesting.”
“You clearly don’t have to deal with the kind of shit we do if you’ve got nothing better to do than learn stuff like that.”
“I didn’t know until now,” Costa replied, indicating the exhibit case. “I just read the label. The same goes for the chicken wire. It’s all there if you take the time to look.”
“Yeah, well …”
“No worry,” Costa said pleasantly. “Sometimes it takes a stranger to show you something that’s sitting right beneath your nose. It happens to us all. If you ever visit Italy, come and see me. You can return the favour.”
It had happened in Rome, with Emily, experiencing the city through different eyes. Perspective was good, as a cop — and as a human being.
He walked outside to see Simon Harvey, Dino Bonetti, and Roberto Tonti engaged in a huddled conversation beneath the dome of the rotunda. Costa went over, watched as they became silent, noting his approach.
“Something you need, Officer?” Harvey asked.
“Introductions. I’ve seen these two gentlemen in Rome and now here. We’ve never met.” He extended his hand. Tonti simply stared at it. “Soverintendente Costa,” he added. “If there is ever anything …”
“Such as?” Tonti asked.
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
Close up, the director looked even more grey and sick. He sighed. “What matters lies with Quattrocchi and Kelly. These security guards who are eating into what’s left of our promotion budget take care of the day-to-day work. Everything else is irrelevant. Including the state police of Rome.”
“Yet you have the SFPD outside your own house, sir,” Costa remarked, nodding at the three-storey white mansion, with gold crests and handsome bowed windows, across the street from the palace. “Not a private company.”
“I am an exception,” Tonti replied, his expression hidden behind the dark sunglasses. “They regard me as a local celebrity, to be protected. Besides, who would want to end the life of an old man when nature is doing that for them?”
“I’m sorry to hear of your illness,” Costa said.
“Why? You don’t know me.”
“To have spent so long without directing anything. It must be …”
The glasses came off and Costa fell silent. Two grey, watery eyes, physically weak yet full of some unspent intellectual power, stared at him.
“Must be what?”
“Frustrating.”
“You know nothing about this industry, young man. It’s the invisible people like me who make it work. Over the past twenty years I’ve written, produced, developed TV series …”
“Is that why you came here? TV?”
“I came here for freedom,” the old director snapped. “For money. For life. Compared to this, Rome is a village. Cinecittà is a peasant’s pigsty compared to Hollywood. I would have made Inferno there if it weren’t for …” Tonti stopped. His gaunt cheeks were bloodless. His breath seemed laboured.
“For what?” Costa asked.
Bonetti laughed and nudged the director with his elbow. “If it weren’t for the money, Roberto. Hollywood didn’t want to give it to you. Italy did. And your generous friends at Lukatmi. Tell the policeman the truth. More importantly, tell it to yourself.”
“Dante was Italian. It could be made nowhere else.” Tonti rubbed his eyes, then returned the sunglasses to his face. “I could have made it here if I’d wanted.”
“Of course you could!’ Bonetti declared. “Inferno is the kind of project Hollywood adores. The pinnacle of commercial art …”
“Popular. Popular art,” Tonti screeched. “How many times do I have to say this?”
“Popular,” the producer corrected himself. “Like me.”
“Still, a hundred and fifty million dollars,” Costa wondered. “So much money to reclaim before any of your backers makes a penny profit. Even with all this … unwanted publicity. That’s a mountain to climb. Isn’t it?”
Tonti waved him away with a feeble, bloodless hand. “My movie is made. Those who matter have been paid. The rest is meaningless.”
“Money is best left to those of us who understand it,” Bonetti muttered, scowling. “Why are you wasting our time, Soverintendente? Do you have nothing better to do? No idea where to find this mask of yours?”
“I—”
“Perhaps one of your own stole it. Have you thought of that? Who had better opportunity? You’re as rotten as the rest of us. Don’t pretend otherwise. At least with us they get entertainment. And from you?”
“Very little, sir. But at least we never promise any.” He looked Bonetti straight in the eye. “Adele Neri told me you invited some of her late husband’s friends to dine in Allan Prime’s apartment.”
“What friends?” Bonetti snarled. “What are you talking about?”
“Emilio Neri was a capo in Rome until he was murdered. I’m talking about criminal friends. Perhaps from the Mafia or the Camorra. Or the Russians or the Serbs. We live in international times. If you knew Neri’s friends, then some might assume …”
Harvey was coughing into his fist. Roberto Tonti, in his dark suit, behind his black sunglasses, was stiff and silent, like an arthritic crow waiting for something to happen.
“I am a congenial man in a congenial business,” Bonetti said bluntly. “When you wish to raise money for a creative enterprise, you meet all kinds. Our little business is merely the world writ large. You should get out more, Costa. It might make you less of a pain in the ass.”
Costa leaned forward and touched the director’s thin, weak arm, and said, “Should you need any help … I know that breed of people better than you.”
The man shrank back, murmuring a succession of bitter Roman curses, then finished — Costa was not quite sure he heard this — with the low, mumbled words, in Italian, “I doubt that.”
It was enough. Costa walked to the mobile van set up by the caterers, thinking that even a poor cup of coffee that had been stewing in an urn for hours might help take away the taste of that encounter. Bonetti dealt with crooks. At least some of the money — perhaps a large part — that paid for the production of Inferno surely came from criminal sources. Roberto Tonti appeared not to care less whether they got their investment back, although he seemed to be aware that this nonchalance carried with it some risk. All useful intelligence … if they had been working on a murder case.
Costa got a coffee, closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and took a swig. It was as disgusting as he expected.
When he turned, she was there, smiling, bright-eyed in a white sweater and blue jeans, looking younger than ever.