Gia Santella Crime Thriller Boxed Set: Books 1-3 (Gia Santella Crime Thrillers)

by Kristi Belcamino

  “Today.”

  “Maybe.”

  A small part of me worried that even if I wanted to quit drinking for good I wouldn’t be able to. It was how I’d dealt with my grief since my parents’ deaths. I never said it was healthy. Or effective. It was what it was.

  Other students starting pouring into the cavernous dojo for the next class. To the west, the setting sun cast a reddish glow on the city. The dojo was on the fourth floor of an old warehouse in Chinatown and had floor-to-ceiling windows in all but one direction. The wide-open space was calming, but it was the work I did there that kept me sane.

  My new apartment would have a space for me to train, but I intended to keep coming to the dojo a few times a week. I needed Kato to motivate me. He had no mercy. My excuses were a joke to him. And rightly so.

  He knew drugs and drinking made me weak. Not just physically, either. I stuffed my towel into my bag and turned to say goodbye. Kato was talking to a student, his forehead furrowed. He crooked a finger at me. I slipped over to listen.

  “Are you sure?” Kato said to the young man.

  “Haven’t seen him for at least three days. You told me to let you know.”

  The student walked away.

  I took another swig of my water and waited for Kato to speak.

  “Wyatt—the homeless man who Matt sees on the way to work every day for the past fifteen years—is gone. That makes three.”

  “There’s something going on.”

  “I agree,” he said. His eyebrows scrunched together. “I don’t like it,” he said.

  “Me, either.”

  A streak of dread ran down my back.

  It was as if I could sense evil heading my way.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DARLING’S SHOP WAS in the heart of the T.L. It catered to everyone from the absurdly rich women living on Nob Hill to the accountant slogging away in the financial district to the homeless woman begging for food on the street corner.

  Because the Tenderloin took care of its own. On the first Tuesday of each month, the salon’s stylists dedicated their time to give free services to the neighborhood’s down and out. They could afford to be generous. Darling owned the busiest hair salon in San Francisco. It stretched for nearly a block and some thirty stylists worked there.

  After showering, I headed over there to bitch about the board, get my butt kicked in cribbage, and catch up on the neighborhood gossip. I walked so I could bring my dog Django and check on construction of my new home. My old building in the Tenderloin had burned down. A crazy Italian man—who’d killed my parents and thought I was his daughter—had paid someone to torch it. He was dead now. The new building was going up in the same space, in an area known as the Panhandle because of its homeless population.

  The Panhandle was surrounded by other T.L. neighborhoods, including the Forgotten Island, the Nipple, Pill Hill, the Whoa-Man, Fecal Fountain, and Foxy Heights—where Darling’s salon was located.

  The salon was like an exotic land to me.

  Tonight, the silver chairs in the salon were filled and half a dozen women waited their turn, lounging in pink velvet armchairs in the lobby. Laughter and small talk greeted me when I walked in. The smell of hair product and heady perfumes filled the air. High-heeled Jimmy Choo’s peeked out from underneath black plastic smocks. Eyes and lips were made up to perfection. It was a typical Friday night at the salon: These women were getting their hair done and then heading out on the town, to sushi and theater and clubs with live music.

  I was born missing the hair fixing gene, but worse than that, I was born missing the desire to have cute hair at all. My long dark hair was layered and sleek only because Dante had made me a standing appointment with his friend. Phillipe showed up at my apartment early every second Monday morning when I was sleeping and couldn’t escape.

  Although Darling’s shop was lucrative, her main business took place in the back room. It was outfitted like a cozy living room in a mansion with a TV that took up one entire wall and a grouping of white leather couches. The back room was where her “other” business was conducted, the one that earned her enough money to buy her a house on Nob Hill and in the Oakland Hills. It involved the procurement of paperwork, the expensive and hard to get kind: fake IDs, passports, anything someone would want to disappear.

  Sitting at a table in the back room, we did shots of Jack Daniels and played cribbage on a wooden board that was shaped like the state of Louisiana for some reason. We were one quarter of the way into the bottle and nearing the end of our first game.

  “How’s your place coming along, baby girl?” Darling asked, expertly dealing six cards, her long, gold-painted fingernails catching the light. The cards slid across the sleek table and piled up in a neat stack before me. Her lioness mane of dark curls bobbed as she dealt, along with her ample bosom.

  “Still not fast enough for me,” I said. “Maybe two more weeks?”

  I scooped up my cards. Darling flipped the cut card and I froze. I had a twenty-four hand. Nearly the best hand you could get. I tried to plaster on my poker face. I was not lucky. I was far from lucky. And yet, there it was—a goddamn twenty-four hand. Three threes and a nine and the cut card was a three. Mother fucker.

  I glanced at Darling from under my eyelashes and caught her watching me with her golden cat eyes, lined thickly with kohl like the Egyptian goddess she was probably re-incarnated from.

  “Good. You need to get back to the hood. We miss you. Well, mainly miss seeing that mutt around.” When we’d lived in the Tenderloin before, I’d tried to swing by the salon at least once a day with Django because he was crazy about Darling. And she was bonkers about him. Django, a pit bull-lab mix, was like a best friend, lie detector, and bodyguard rolled into one. He could spot trouble from a block away. If you were bad news, you’d trigger Django’s low guttural growl and raise his hackles, even if you were a four-foot-eleven, ninety-pounder who seemed harmless. Hulking, muscled six-foot-tall men like Darling’s bouncer, George, only garnered whole body wiggles and licks from Django if they were good people.

  I was jealous of the dog’s ability to sniff out the riffraff. If our society had Django’s ability to look past physical appearances and see the real person underneath, the world would be a whole lot better place.

  “You miss that rangy mutt?” I looked over at Django. He lay with his head on his paws on a cushion in the corner. He whined and wagged his tail as if he knew we were talking about him. “What about me?”

  “You all right, I guess.” Darling burst into laughter that turned into a coughing fit. I gave her a look. She had a heart condition, was overweight, and had only stopped smoking two years ago. She was a lot older than me, but with her unlined face, she could be anywhere between thirty and seventy. I swear, black people didn’t age. Her health was a constant concern of mine. Once I tried to get her to lose weight and brought her a kale smoothie. When I put it in front of her, the look she shot me would have slayed a more sensitive person.

  She tossed it in the trash, mumbling about how she wasn’t going to eat “nasty ass grass juice,” and how she’d lose all her “suitors” if she lost even one pound. I didn’t care about any of that. All I cared about was her living a long life. When everyone you cared about died, you were finely tuned into every little possible danger sign.

  “I miss you, too, D.” I turned my attention back to my cards and tried to play it cool. With this hand, I could actually win. I only needed fifteen points. But Darling only needed thirteen. And she counted first. If I could hold her to twelve points I’d win. It would piss her off and ruin her night. I didn’t feel a twinge of guilt. I laid down a three. There was no way she could score on that. I tried to distract her.

  It is good if a warrior’s enemy underestimates him during battle. A warrior must not reveal all at once if he is to prevail in war. The ability to distract one’s enemy will help a warrior draw closer to victory and outmaneuver his enemy.

  “What’s new in the ‘hood?’”
I said.

  Darling slapped down a five. “Eight.”

  She didn’t answer. I looked up and locked eyes with her Pharaoh ones.

  “Some deep dark shit going on.”

  I froze.

  “People are scared,” she said.

  “More homeless people going missing?”

  I looked at my hand. I only had one play.

  “Not just homeless,” Darling said. “Roscoe didn’t pay rent this month. His room is empty, like he just went out the store. Left is favorite black hat. Sally lives in one of those SRO. She’s up and gone. Same deal. All her stuff left behind.”

  “How many is that now?”

  Darling leaned back, thinking. “Well, there’s DannyBoy. Mr. Ed. Roscoe. Now Sally.” She looked over. “That’s four.”

  “Kato says he knows of three.”

  She jutted her chin at my cards.

  I played my nine. “Seventeen.”

  She put down a seven. “Twenty-four.”

  “Plus, Ethel.” I said.

  “She was murdered, not missing.”

  I didn’t argue. “Anyway, you look at it, it’s a problem.”

  “Mmmm Hmmm.” Darling said, taking another slug of Jack Daniels.

  “What do the police say?”

  Darling practically spit out her drink. “PO-lice? The police said everything is just fine, little Miss Black Woman, you run on home and don’t worry your pretty little head.” She shook her head. “The PO-lice. They don’t care about homeless or poor people and they especially don’t care about black homeless or poor people.”

  I threw down a three. “Twenty-seven.”

  “Go.” She frowned I put down my other three and took my three points. Only twelve points for me to win. “Still lot of game left,” I said to console her. She glowered.

  “Are all those people you mentioned black?”

  “Yep.”

  I sighed. “Kato’s three missing are black, too.

  “There’s something evil afoot,” Darling said, nodding, looking down at her cards.

  “That’s a fact.”

  “Everyone on edge. Not just because of that, either.”

  “I know.”

  The hatred in the country was growing in fervor. It didn’t even seem like the country I grew up in. People were comfortable spewing vitriol and hatred like never before. Sides were being drawn in rallies and protests: self-proclaimed white nationalist groups against those seeking equality for all and many conflicts ended in bloodshed.

  Last week, a protest in Oakland ended with a police car set on fire and four people beaten so bad they had to be hospitalized.

  “All that stuff is heading over here,” Darling said. “Today. Or tomorrow. Soon. They say them racists have some surprise planned for us here in the city. Sasha came by earlier. Said she got a tip they were holding a rally here tonight. In the plaza. She wants to write about it for the paper. I told her over my dead body. But that girl’s stubborn like her mama, God rest her soul. I told her if she has to go, to take George with her.”

  Darling’s nineteen-year-old granddaughter, Sasha, attended U.C. Berkeley and worked for the campus newspaper. George was the salon’s doorman-slash-bouncer. I’d also heard the rumors. A hate group has made threats about running people of color out of the city and burning buildings down.

  I scowled. “What the hell is wrong with those people?”

  Darling shook her head. “No explanation for that kind of hate. It’s the devil’s work.”

  I nodded.

  She flicked down a five.

  I was out of cards so it was her turn to go again.

  With a flourish, she smiled and dropped another five. “Ten for three.”

  “Go.” I said, trying not to sound annoyed.

  She scooped up her cards and then flipped them over as she counted them. “Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, fifteen-six, fifteen-eight and six are fourteen.” She moved her peg across the finish line.

  She looked at my hand laid out: four threes and a nine—and whistled.

  “Damn, girl, that’s a good hand,” she said. “Too bad you can’t count it.”

  “Yeah, too bad,” I said, dryly. “Pretty crappy when a twenty-four hand isn’t good enough.” I stood and stretched. I’d never been lucky.

  Django growled, lifting his head, right before the knock on the door came. Darling looked at her security camera screen and then leaned over to push a small button. The door swung open. George gestured for a small woman with a tidy black bun to come in. When Django saw it was George, he lazily wagged his tail and then put his head back on his paws. They’d already gone over all the ritualistic wiggling and face licking earlier when we arrived. Even the dog knew that with George around nobody had to worry—he could relax and go back to sleep.

  George, a former linebacker with the San Francisco 49ers, was still in better shape than most of the starting lineup this year. His warm brown eyes belied his tough manner. His bald head shone in the chandelier hanging down by the door.

  Stepping into the room, the woman seemed embarrassed. “Miss Darling, I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “It’s all good, sugar. What you need?”

  “My man, he got laid off last month, you know.”

  “Mmmm hmmm,” Darling said.

  “Well, the landlord comes to us this morning and says if we don’t pay the rent by midnight, sheriff’s office is going to be here with an eviction notice.”

  “Mmmm hmmm,” Darling said, standing and heading toward a large desk. She fished a key on a necklace out of her ample bosom and unlocked a drawer. She withdrew a zipped black bag.

  “How much you need, baby girl?”

  The woman burst into tears and ran over, hugging Darling around the waist.

  “Hush now. How much?”

  “Eight hundred.”

  Darling counted out eight one-hundred-dollar bills and placed them in the woman’s palm, closing her hand over the cash.

  “Thank you. I promise we’ll pay you back. I swear.”

  “Mmmm hmmm,” Darling steered the woman toward the door where George waited. He took the woman’s arm and the door closed behind them.

  I eyed Darling as she sat back down. I stared at her until she looked up at me.

  “What you looking at?”

  “Last time I was here someone else came with some sob story and you forked over a small fortune then, too.”

  “Mmmm hmmm.” She looked away.

  She handed me the deck. “Loser’s deal.”

  This time the knock was urgent. I looked over at the bank of cameras. George was outside the door alone.

  Darling saw the look on his face and stood this time as she punched the button.

  George was out of breath. He was holding his cell phone.

  “Sasha called. They in the plaza.”

  Darling’s face drained of color.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WITHIN SECONDS, WE’D rushed out the back door of the salon and were running toward the Civic Center Plaza. George disappeared ahead of us. I stayed behind to match pace with Darling, who probably hadn’t run since grade school recess. She kept stopping, patting her ample chest and gasping for breath.

  I took her arm. “It’s okay. Don’t kill yourself. We’re almost there. George will find Sasha.”

  “Oh, Lord, please keep my grandbaby safe.” Darling’s voice was panicked. “I told her not to get involved. I told her turn around and go straight home, back to her safe little apartment in that hippie town.”

  “She’s just being a journalist,’ I said, as we paused on one corner.

  Darling dismissed my words with an irritated wave of her ringed fingers.

  “I barely sleep anymore worrying about that girl. She thinks she can save the world.”

  Finally, after race-walking with frequent pauses, we turned the corner and caught up to George, standing on the edge of a massive crowd on his tiptoes scanning the crowd for Sas
ha.

  The hazily lit plaza was a squirming mass of bodies. There were two distinct groups. On one side, about two hundred men, most wearing khaki pants and white polo shirts, holding Tiki torches. An order was given and almost simultaneously, all the torches were lit.

  Across from this group, there were another two hundred or so people, men and women, some with dreads, some with buzz cuts, holding signs that said, “You lost the war!” and “All are welcome here!”

  In between the two groups was an empty strip of concrete about ten feet wide. The two sides eyed each other warily.

  Then the chanting began. The men in polo shirts yelled, “You will not replace us.”

  The other side yelled, “Nazis go home!”

  The night was thick with anger and a strange heat. Too many bodies pressed against one another. Hatred and fear swarmed the plaza and felt almost tangible. Darling clutched my arm, her long nails digging into my flesh.

  Across from us, in front of a church, a dozen clergy members locked arms and sang “Amazing Grace.”

  In a flurry of shouting, violence erupted. In an instant people were on each other, pushing and shoving and screaming. I tugged Darling back toward me as the crowd around us surged forward.

  “There’s Sasha!” she yelled, her giant eyes wide with fright. “Sasha! Sasha!”

  George, who towered above us, arched his neck. “Where?”

  “There!” Darling pointed one well-manicured nail. “In the pink sweatshirt.”

  I craned my neck but only got a glimpse of pink before the crowd swallowed her.

  “I see her,” George said and was gone, pushing his way through the crowd like a bulldozer, shoving people on each side of him out of the way to clear a path. For a second, I started to follow him, but the crowd quickly closed behind him and Darling clutched at my arm. I was worried about her heart. I knew there was no way she was going to leave without Sasha.

  Smoke filled the air and popping sounds echoed off the surrounding buildings. It didn’t sound like gunshots, but I wasn’t sure. I also heard the chopping of a helicopter high above.

  Right in front of us, three men in polo shirts had another man on the ground, kicking him in the ribs. When one man wound up to kick him in the head, I had my hand inside my jacket on my gun. I was about to step in when a young man with a lumberjack beard yanked the attacker away. Then those two were at each other, punching and kicking and clawing. Droplets of blood scattered through the air like they’d been flung by a sprinkler.