Gia in the City of the Dead

by Kristi Belcamino

  “No, keep it,” I said distractedly, pushing the money back at her. “What do you mean he wasn’t there?” Kato had never missed a work day at the dojo for the past two years.

  “Big closed sign on the door. Note said something about ‘family emergency.’ “

  My heart slowed and a chill ran over my scalp. I reached down and grabbed Ethel’s wrist. “Are you certain? Are you sure it said ‘family emergency?’”

  She looked at me wide eyed and nodded.

  I turned and ran toward Market Street. I hadn’t even brushed my teeth yet.

  The warrior knows that looking beyond oneself to care for others is the ultimate goal of living Budo for life. That self-improvement is important, but improving one’s self is crucial to help others on their own journeys.

  On Market, it took me ten minutes to hail a cab. Several passed me by. I knew with my ratty hair and clothes I didn’t look like a very good fare. It wasn’t until I stepped right in front of a cab that it screeched to a halt. I threw open the door and spit out Kato’s address in the Mission, flashing three twenties. “Go as fast as you can.”

  When we pulled onto Kato’s street, I saw a long black car parked in front of his house. I told the cab driver to back up and go around the block to the street behind Kato’s. The street was nearly interchangeable with Kato’s: old houses, some with chipped paint and old cars parked in the yards, but also with kid’s bicycles propped up against porches, and small, neatly tended flower beds. “Stop here.” I opened the door, handed him a twenty and told him he’d get the other two twenties when I returned as long as he waited. I walked until I was at the house that butted up against Kato’s backyard. An older woman in rollers and a flowered housecoat sat out on the front porch petting a cat and sipping a soda pop.

  “You know Kato?”

  She didn’t answer just nodded slowly.

  “Why’s the black car out front?”

  “Didn’t I see you at that Fourth of July barbecue Kato had last summer?”

  “Yes!” I said a little too excitedly. “Yes, we’re friends. What’s going on?”

  “Dunno. Susie dropped the boys off here two hours ago. Told my daughter to take them to her folk’s house in Berkeley. Susie was going to the hospital. Something happened to Kato.”

  I didn’t even say thank you, just raced back to the waiting cabbie.

  “San Francisco General.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I WAS OUT OF BREATH by the time I got to the family waiting room at the hospital. It was filled with people staring off into space or sitting in huddled groups hugging and crying. Kato’s wife sat alone with her head in her hands.

  “Susie?”

  When she looked up, I barely recognized her grief-ravaged face. Her skin was even paler than normal and her eyes were red from crying. She stood and hugged me. “Gia. He might not make it.” Her body shook with sobs.

  I held her for a few seconds and then led her back to her seat by the hand.

  “What happened?” I said, my stomach doing somersaults.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I got a call from one of his students.”

  When Kato’s first student showed up fifteen minutes early, he’d found Kato’s crumpled body on the floor of the dojo, she said. He had been severely beaten. A heavy steel pipe with blood on it was found nearby. The student’s early arrival, before the dojo opened to the public, had probably interrupted the attack and saved Kato’s life. Police had found witnesses who said a group of four men had been seen fleeing out the back door of the dojo within seconds of the student making the 911 call.

  Kato was in surgery. It looked like he had taken a severe blow to the head and also suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung.

  Why would someone hurt Kato? It didn’t make any sense. I caught my breath. Unless, it had something to do with me. I drew back from hugging Susie and took a closer look at the other people in the waiting room.

  Nobody I knew. None of my godfather’s thugs, just worried family members.

  “Susie?”

  She blew her nose and looked at me.

  “Did you know there is a big black car in front of your house?”

  Her eyes grew wide and she shook her head.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I think the people who are after me might have done this to Kato.” I closed my eyes. I felt sick to my stomach even saying that.

  Susie wrapped her arms around me. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I think it might be,” I said opening my eyes. I took her by the shoulders. “You can’t go home. You have to go to your parents. I think you’re safe here in the hospital, but don’t come home. Go to your parents and stay there until I call you.”

  She sniffled. “Okay, Gia. I don’t think anyone would hurt me, but if you say so.”

  “I do,” I said. “I just know this is connected to someone trying to find me. And these people—I used to think women and children were off limits—but I just don’t know anymore. I’d rather you were safe. I have to go now, but please promise me, you’ll be careful.”

  She looked at me solemnly and nodded.

  Just then the elevator door dinged. I ducked back into the doorway, grabbed my compact mirror out of my bag and stuck it into the hall at waist level. By holding it just right I could see the nurse’s desk. Two men in dark suits were talking to the nurse on duty. “Call 911 if those two men in suits even try to talk to you,” I told Susie and slipped out a side door of the waiting room toward the stairwell.

  I took the back stairs out of the hospital, wishing I had grabbed my gun before I ran out of the house this morning. Being alone on the stairs creeped me out. I’d just read last month that a patient who had disappeared was found dead in the stairwell. She’d been there for three weeks before someone found her body. But my anger overpowered my fear.

  I walked eight blocks away from the hospital before I boarded a bus back to the Tenderloin.

  ETHEL WASN’T AT HER usual spot outside.

  Upstairs, Django greeted me with enthusiasm and I buried my face in his fur for a few seconds taking deep, gulping breaths. I hadn’t been to church since I was a kid, but I suddenly wanted to go light a candle for Kato. The thought of his dying sent such a tremor of fear through me, I could barely breathe.

  I’d go to a Catholic church I’d seen around the corner and light a candle and say a prayer for him.

  I took Django for a walk. He about lost his mind when I picked up the leash Thanh-Thanh had bought for him. Despite feeling sick to my stomach with worry over Kato, I couldn’t help but smile at the damn dog’s enthusiasm.

  I made my plans for the night. I’d walk Django, light a candle at a church, and then sneak back into the hospital to check on Kato’s condition.

  Having a plan seemed the only thing that would keep me from falling into my bed and not getting up for the next month. I felt such a heavy wave of despair hit me. It was all too much.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I’D PASSED SAINT BONIFACE a few times in my wanderings around the Tenderloin. It looked like it belonged on a beach in Mexico with its soaring yellow towers and pink accents and dozens of looming stained glass windows. It was an object of wonder and beauty in one of the worst San Francisco neighborhoods.

  I gingerly pulled on the door. I hadn’t been to church since my parents’ funeral. A tiny part of me worried I’d burst into flames when I walked in, but instead I was stopped dead, frozen by one of the most stunning altars I’d ever seen. The entire church was full of swooping arches, inlaid gilt and gold and beautiful pictures of saints and the virgin Mary and Jesus. From the floor up everything was either gold or a myriad of brilliant gem tones. The floor was plush red carpet. So many murals and gold and stained-glass windows.

  It wasn’t until I had taken a few steps inside that I realized something was off.

  A soft rumbling filled the church. It took me a moment to realize what it was.

  Dozens of people snoring.

  T
hat’s when the smell hit me. Along with the usual incense of the Catholic church, which I remembered from my youth there was also a faint unpleasant stench of unwashed bodies and perspiration.

  The drone of snoring was accompanied by shuffling and coughs and the occasional snort. But I could see no one.

  Slight movement in one of the pews caught my eye. As I grew closer, I saw.

  Each pew held a body curled up for the night.

  Most were wrapped in dingy gray or brown blankets, but there was also an occasional flowered or checked blanket. I did the math in my head, counting the rows of pews. There must have been more than one hundred homeless people sleeping in this church.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  It was so unexpected and so right.

  Above all the sleeping bodies, thirty feet in the air, a bevy of painted saints in brilliant colors looked down from the ceiling upon these people seeking shelter in a house of God.

  I heard a throat clear at my shoulder and wasn’t surprised when I turned and saw that instead of a priest, a man in monk’s robes was at my side.

  “Welcome, sister. Are you here for confession?”

  “Uh, no,” I said, feeling guilty since I hadn’t stepped foot in a church since my parent’s funeral. “I’m here to pray and light a candle for a very ill friend. He might not make it. He was beat up and I think it was my fault.” I choked the words out. There. That was a close to a confession as I was getting on this night.

  “Please, his name. I will add him to my prayers.”

  “Thank you, brother. His name is Kato.” He didn’t blink when I said the name, only led me to an alcove with a statue of the Virgin Mary. When I crouched down on the kneeler, my jacket opened and my gun gleamed in the candlelight. The monk’s eyes rested on the shiny metal for a moment before he raised his eyes to me.

  “Good luck with whatever you are seeking, sister. Stay safe.”

  I thanked him and he turned and left. I stuffed twenty bucks into the box used to collect money for candle lighting. I lit a candle and said a prayer. I was rusty. I hadn’t prayed for a long time, but I still believed that if there was a God, he could not turn his back on somebody as good and righteous as Kato.

  After my prayer, I stood and as if in a daze once again took in all the homeless people seeking shelter in this ethereally beautiful church. I stuffed a hundred-dollar bill in the offering box and then got out another and wadded that up until it fit in the narrow opening. It wasn’t much, but I’d be back.

  As I left, I saw a head wrapped in a familiar paisley scarf. Ethel.

  I GOT OFF THE BUS A few blocks away from San Francisco General and walked to the emergency entrance. It was late. The middle of the night. I knew any visiting hours had ended hours ago. I walked in the back door like I knew where I was going and what I was doing and headed for the back stairwell again.

  On the sixth floor, I cracked the door and looked into the hallway in front of me. Empty. I slowly closed the door behind me. The area was hushed and quiet. I peeked in as I snuck past the family waiting area. At the nurse’s station, one woman with short gray hair was talking quietly on the phone. She held up one finger asking me to wait. I smiled gratefully. I’d expected her to immediately kick me out. I shrunk back and leaned against a wall, trying to look like I wasn’t paying attention to much. Finally, she hung up.

  “Visiting hours are over,” she said and raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry, I know. I just was wondering if you could check a patient’s condition for me?” A note of begging had crept into my voice and I didn’t care. Please, help me.

  “Are you a family member?”

  I knew I could lie, but I decided just to tell her the truth.

  “No. I have no family. He’s as close as I have.” I didn’t mean to play on her sympathy but my voice did choke on a sob as I said it.

  She gave me a long look. “Patient name?”

  “Kato Mazuka.”

  She tapped on her keyboard. “He’s in stable condition in the ICU. Just moved there from recovery.”

  “Um, I’m sorry to not know this, but when you say stable, does that mean, like fair condition or critical or what?”

  She looked over her glasses at me. “It lists him as critical, but I think he’s regained consciousness. Although I’m not really supposed to tell you that.”

  “Thanks.” I gave a sigh of relief. He was awake.

  “Also, he’s in room 412. But I didn’t tell you that, either.” She winked and I smiled gratefully and headed for the stairs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I PUNCHED THE WALL periodically as I raced down the hospital stairs until my knuckles were bleeding.

  I was right. My godfather’s goons had beaten Kato nearly to death because he refused to tell them where I was. He had only been conscious for a few minutes when I first entered, waiting for the nurse to look down at her chart before I snuck into his room. It hurt just to look at his bandaged and swollen face and all the tubes hooking him to an assortment of machines.

  He basically saw me, mumbled, “I didn’t tell them where you were, Gia-san,” and fell back unconscious or asleep. I didn’t know which.

  The fury inside me sent me flying out his door, ready to scream or explode, I wasn’t sure which. How dare someone beat up my best friend in an effort to find me. My godfather must have lost his mind.

  I spent the night pacing the rooftop of my building, wrapped in a blanket from my bed, searching the misty skies of San Francisco trying to figure out where I should turn next. It looked like a visit to Geneva was in order. I wanted to talk to the widow of the forensic pathologist who falsified my parents’ autopsy results, the woman who had written me the letter. Maybe she would have some clue who paid off her husband. I wanted a little more proof before I confronted my godfather. I couldn’t live with killing him unless I knew for sure he was behind all the death and tragedy in my life. A part of me still loved him desperately. The soft part of the me. The part that wanted to curl up and die instead of fight. I pushed that part of me deep down inside.

  The warrior may be shattered in mind, body, and spirit and yet will not give up. The warrior knows that one’s strength lies in many areas, spiritual as well as physical and the melding of the two creates true power.

  The next morning, Ethel was back in her regular spot.

  I slung my backpack onto my shoulder. I had a concealed money belt under my jeans that contained cash, my fake passport, driver’s license, and photocopies of the Italian property deeds. I’d given Thanh-Thanh an extra key and mimed that I was getting on an airplane and would be gone for a few days. She figured out through my sign language, pointing to Django’s leash and food bowl and holding up my fingers, that I needed her to walk and feed Django while I was gone. She thudded her chest and nodded so fiercely, I figured she got the point. At least I hoped so. My plane left in two hours. I crouched down by Ethel.

  “Sorry, Gia. I tried to deliver your message,” she said.

  “I know. You did good. It’s not your fault,” I said. Her eyes were bloodshot and her speech a bit slurred even though it was only ten in the morning. She must have used some of my money for that bottle of vodka I saw peeking out of her backpack. I leaned closer. “Ethel, look at me, this is important.” Her eyes rolled over to mine. “When you went to the dojo. Did anyone see you come back here? Did anyone follow you?”

  “No, no, Gia. I did just what you told me. I took two buses, that one to North Beach and then another one to get back here. I made sure nobody got off at my stop and no cars were following the bus. I watched. I done just like you told me.”

  “Good job,” I said, standing. “I’m going to be gone for a few days. You want to stay in my place?”

  “I got a place to stay. I’m good.”

  “You sure? My place will just be sitting there empty.”

  “No, no I’m fine.” I wondered if she was going to tell me she slept at Saint Boniface or whether she lik
ed keeping that secret. I didn’t want to intrude on her privacy so I didn’t mention seeing her there the night before. For a fleeting moment, I wondered what would happen if I paid for her to go to rehab. Was there any hope? Could I help her? I remembered something Dante told me once “You can’t save someone from themselves.”

  But I wondered if I needed to try.

  “Ethel?” I paused and waited.

  “Yes?” She looked up and gave me a sweet smile.

  “You ever think about kicking?”

  Her eyebrows creased together.

  “You know,” I said. “Maybe go somewhere where they can help you stop drinking and stuff?” I looked away. I waited a few seconds and looked back at her. She was staring right at me.

  “Nah. Gia. I want to drink. I want to do what I want to do and what I want to do is drink.”

  “I like booze too, Ethel.” I said. “Maybe if you stopped drinking, maybe you could be my roommate and we could find you a job at my friend’s salon or something. She’s awfully nice. We could ...”

  I was trying to figure out a way to tell her that her life could be better. But how could I say that without insulting everything she was right now?

  “Gia,” she waited for me to look her in the eye. “I may be homeless, but I’m free.”

  I thought about that for a second. There was nothing I could say. I pressed my lips together tightly and nodded.

  “Okay. You let me know if you change your mind. I know some people.”

  She looked away but I saw her acknowledge what I said with a slight nod.

  I gave her one last look before I walked toward Market Street so I could hail a cab to the airport.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  MY PLANE TOUCHED DOWN in Geneva at dawn. I’d slept through most of the flight after helping myself to several mini bottles of red wine. I woke to the flight attendant’s announcing our imminent arrival and lunged for my giant bottle of water. My tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth and my pulse was pounding a Congo line behind my eyes. Drinking on an overseas flight was one of the worst ideas I’d had in a long time.