This news did not appear to surprise the American police captain, which Falcone found odd. But Kelly thanked him politely for it, agreed to Harvey’s conditions, and asked for Falcone to meet him with the publicist at the temporary police control truck after Roberto Tonti’s closing speech. Then he said no more.
Taking the hint, Falcone left to amble idly around the crowd, determined not to return to a tent full of glass cases and mouldering pieces of paper.
Finally, not consciously realising that this was what he intended all along, he found her. Catherine Bianchi stood beneath the dome of the Palace, a radio in her hand. She wore a dark suit that was tight on her slender figure, and she might have been mistaken for a guest herself had she not spent so much of her time alone, scrutinizing the crowd with the careful attention he knew all good police officers possessed.
“Leo?” she said as he approached.
“It’s a foul evening for a movie premiere. They should have chosen a theatre.”
“It’s only a movie. A few hours of fantasy, then it’s over.” She smiled at him. She looked different somehow. More at ease. More … alluring perhaps. Falcone found this odd and a little disconcerting. He had scarcely given Catherine Bianchi a second thought all day, possibly for the first time since he had arrived in San Francisco.
“I’m through at nine,” she said. “I know a warm place for dinner. We should go to North Beach. You’ve been avoiding Italian food ever since you got here. It’s time to try something new.”
He laughed. “I don’t think I’ve done anything else but try new things since I got here, have I? And now …”
“Now you’re going. I can see it in your face.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“You’re very transparent, Leo. You all are. Peroni. Nic. Teresa. I’ll miss that. It’s unusual. You’re unusual.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps we’re just out of place.”
“When do you go?” she asked.
“Sometime this weekend, I think. I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest. Nic said something about wishing to tack some holiday on the end. It’s fine by me. I have some reports to deal with in Rome. Internal reorganisation. You know the kind of thing.”
“They’re transferring me downtown,” she told him. “Bryant Street. I’ll miss the Marina. It’s my little village.”
The distant quacking of the waterfowl on the lake echoed through the mist. There was a burst of laughter and applause from the stage, now almost invisible in the fog.
“You’ll never leave Rome, will you?” she asked.
“No more than you’d leave San Francisco.”
“Kind of makes things hard, doesn’t it? When two people are fixed in their ways like that?”
“We have what time we have. We do with it the best we can.”
A part of him had sought this woman’s affection with an ardent desire he’d not known for a long time. Now that Italy beckoned, that passion had dissipated almost as quickly as it had arisen in the first place. Yet there was a look in her eyes …
“I’m sorry if I offended you, Catherine. That was never my intention.”
“I wasn’t offended. I was flattered. But you try too hard, Leo. And also …” She looked a little guilty. “I have a rule. I don’t date cops.”
He blinked. “Ever?”
“Ever.” She was smiling at him. “At least I haven’t since I made the mistake of marrying one briefly a decade or so back.”
“Ah …”
“But we could have dinner in North Beach tonight. Since you go home so soon … We’re free as birds. After the premiere …?”
Falcone felt briefly lost for words. Then he tapped his watch and said, rather more bluntly than he wished, “I’m afraid I can’t fit you in. Business, unfortunately. It may go on for a while. We should meet for a coffee sometime. That would be good.”
The radio burst into life. She held it to her mouth and began speaking. He could see she hadn’t even touched the press-to-talk button. Their conversation had come to a close.
Falcone walked to the cordoned area, found a quiet place with a seat. He was acutely aware of something that surprised him. He would miss this city. He would regret, too, the overzealous and childish way he had chased Catherine Bianchi without ever once asking himself what she might seek in return.
Cries of surprise and a ripple of applause drifted through the mist from the nearby runway into the premiere.
Falcone walked to the edge of the crowd, close to the road, and, with the deft elbows of a Roman, worked his way politely but forcefully to the front.
The cameras and the reporters had only one thing on their mind, and that was the couple walking slowly along the red carpet.
Leo Falcone stood behind the yellow tape, and found himself beaming with a mixture of pride and emotion at what he saw. Nic Costa looked as if he belonged with the beautiful young woman on his arm, even though his cheap Roman suit seemed somewhat shabby next to her flowing silk gown, a flimsy creation for such a chilly, fog-strewn night. Not that Maggie Flavier, being the consummate actress she was, showed one iota of discomfort.
As the reporters shouted her name, she simply smiled and waved and held herself like a star for the cameras, her small hand always on Costa’s arm. The young police officer held himself with quiet, calm dignity.
As they slowly passed, Falcone, to his own amazement, found himself crying out, “Soverintendente! Soverintendente!”
The couple stopped. Nic Costa turned and stared at him with a quizzical look.
“In bocca al lupo,” Falcone shouted, with a sudden and entirely involuntary enthusiasm.
“Crepi il lupo!” Maggie Flavier cried back joyfully at him.
And then they moved on.
In the mouth of the wolf. Foreigners always found it a curious way to wish someone good luck. He was impressed that Maggie Flavier knew the correct response. Let the wolf die.
The wolf had hung around Nic Costa long enough, Falcone thought as he watched them disappear into the mist.
11
Gianluca Quattrocchi wore his finest dress uniform with a white carnation in the collar, determined to look his best at this final glittering event before his return home. He had already rehearsed in his head the report he would give to his superiors. Of the uncooperative intransigence of the American authorities, unable to relinquish their grip on the case sufficiently to allow the Carabinieri to do their job. Of the meddling of the state police, constantly obstructing and interfering with Quattrocchi’s investigation. He would single out Falcone by name, in the knowledge that to do so would get back to the higher echelons of the state police and perhaps earn the man the reprimand he deserved.
There was, for Gianluca Quattrocchi, a point at which a failed case turned from a mystery demanding solution into a disaster requiring containment. The death of Allan Prime and the sequence of events that had followed now fell entirely in the second category. It would be for the American authorities to pursue whatever slim, time-consuming half-leads and connections they could find in the financial affairs of the two dead men involved in the dotcom bubble of Lukatmi. The Carabinieri had neither the time nor the resources to become involved in such work, not least because any resulting case would surely be tried in America and benefit the Italian authorities not one whit.