“Well,” she said, “hello.”
“Ashley Hansen?”
“That’s me. Who’re you?”
When I told her my name her smile brightened, as if I’d said something amusing or clever. Or maybe she just liked the sound of it.
“I knew right away you were Italian,” she said. “Are you a friend of Jack’s?”
“Jack?”
“Jack Bisconte.” The smile dulled a little. “You are, aren’t you?”
“No,” I said, “I’m a friend of Pietro Lombardi.”
“Who?”
“Your roommate’s grandfather. I’d like to talk to Gianna, if she’s home.”
Ashley Hansen’s smile was gone now; her whole demeanor had changed, become less self-assured. She nibbled at a corner of her lower lip, ran a hand through her hair, fiddled with one of her bracelets. Finally she said, “Gianna isn’t here.”
“When will she be back?”
“She didn’t say.”
“You know where I can find her?”
“No. What do you want to talk to her about?”
“The complaint George Ferry filed against her.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “That’s all been taken care of.”
“I know. I just talked to Ferry.”
“He’s a creepy little prick, isn’t he?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“Gianna didn’t take his money. He was just trying to hassle her, that’s all.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Well, why do you think?”
I shrugged. “Suppose you tell me.”
“He wanted her to do things.”
“You mean go to bed with him?”
“Things,” she said. “Kinky crap, real kinky.”
“And she wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”
“No way, Jose. What a creep.”
“So he made up the story about the stolen money to get back at her, is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“What made him change his mind, drop the charges?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
“Who knows?” She laughed. “Maybe he got religion.”
“Or a couple of smacks in the face.”
“Huh?”
“Somebody worked him over yesterday,” I said. “Bruised his cheek and cut his mouth. You have any idea who?”
“Not me, mister. How come you’re so interested, anyway?”
“I told you, I’m a friend of Gianna’s grandfather.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Gianna have a boyfriend, does she?”
“...Why do you want to know that?”
“Jack Bisconte, maybe? Or is he yours?”
“He’s just somebody I know.” She nibbled at her lip again, did some more fiddling with her bracelets. “Look, I’ve got to go. You want me to tell Gianna you were here?”
“Yes.” I handed her one of my business cards. “Give her this and ask her to call me.”
She looked at the card; blinked at it and then blinked at me.
“You... you’re a detective?”
“That’s right.”
“My God,” she said, and backed off, and shut the door in my face.
I stood there for a few seconds, remembering her eyes — the sudden fear in her eyes when she’d realized she had been talking to a detective.
What the hell?
4
North Beach used to be the place you went when you wanted pasta fino, espresso and biscotti, conversation about la dolce vita and Il patria d’Italia. Not anymore. There are still plenty of Italians in North Beach, and you can still get the good food and some of the good conversation; but their turf continues to shrink a little more each year, and despite the best efforts of the entrepreneurial new immigrants, the vitality and most of the Old World atmosphere are just memories.
The Chinese are partly responsible, not that you can blame them for buying available North Beach real estate when Chinatown, to the west, began to burst its boundaries. Another culprit is the Bohemian element that took over upper Grant Avenue in the fifties, paving the way for the hippies and the introduction of hard drugs in the sixties, which in turn paved the way for the jolly current mix of motorcycle toughs, aging hippies, coke and crack dealers, and the pimps and small-time crooks who work the flesh palaces along lower Broadway. Those “Silicone Alley” nightclubs, made famous by Carol Doda in the late sixties, also share responsibility: they added a smutty leer to the gaiety of North Beach, turned the heart of it into a ghetto.
Parts of the neighborhood, particularly those up around Coit Tower where Gianna Fornessi lived, are still prime city real estate; and the area around Washington Square Park, il giardino to the original immigrants, is where the city’s literati now congregates. Here and there, too, you can still get a sense of what it was like in the old days. But most of the landmarks are gone — Enrico’s, Vanessi’s, The Bocce Ball where you could hear mustachioed waiters in gondolier costumes singing arias from operas by Verdi and Puccini — and so is most of the flavor. North Beach is oddly tasteless now, like a week-old mostaccioli made without good spices or garlic. And that is another thing that is all but gone: twenty-five years ago you could not get within a thousand yards of North Beach without picking up the fine, rich fragrance of garlic. Nowadays you’re much more likely to smell fried egg roll and the sour stench of somebody’s garbage.
Parking in the Beach is the worst in the city; on weekends you can drive around its hilly streets for hours without finding a legal parking space. So today, in the perverse way of things, I found a spot waiting for me when I came down Stockton.
In a public telephone booth near Washington Square Park I discovered a second minor miracle: a directory that had yet to be either stolen or mutilated. The only Bisconte listed was Bisconte Florist Shop, with an address on upper Grant a few blocks away. I took myself off in that direction, through the usual good-weather Sunday crowds of locals and gawking sightseers and drifting homeless.
Upper Grant, like the rest of the area, has changed drastically over the past few decades. Once a rock-ribbed Little Italy, it has become an ethnic mixed bag: Italian markets, trattorias, pizza parlors, bakeries cheek by jowl with Chinese sewing-machine sweat shops, food and herb vendors, and fortune-cookie companies. But most of the faces on the streets are Asian and most of the apartments in the vicinity are occupied by Chinese.
The Bisconte Florist Shop was a hole-in-the-wall near Filbert, sandwiched between an Italian saloon and the Sip Hing Herb Company. It was open for business, not surprisingly on a Sunday in this neighborhood: tourists buy flowers too, given the opportunity.
The front part of the shop was cramped and jungly with cut flowers, ferns, plants in pots and hanging baskets. A small glass-fronted cooler contained a variety of roses and orchids. There was nobody in sight, but a bell had gone off when I entered and a male voice from beyond a rear doorway called, “Be right with you.” I shut the door, went up near the counter. Some people like florist shops; I don’t. All of them have the same damp, cloyingly sweet smell that reminds me of funeral parlors; of my mother in her casket at the Figlia Brothers Mortuary in Daly City nearly forty years ago. That day, with all its smells, all its painful images, is as clear to me now as if it were yesterday.
I had been waiting about a minute when the voice’s owner came out of the back room. Late thirties, dark, on the beefy side; wearing a professional smile and a floral patterned apron that should have been ludicrous on a man of his size and coloring but wasn’t. We had a good look at each other before he said, “Sorry to keep you waiting — I was putting up an arrangement. What can I do for you?”