by Susan Dunlap
As soon as I opened the door into the white-on-white little cafe with its three empty round tables, I could tell he had news. Bad news. Even the smell of sweet, warm pastry couldn’t soften that. Now I realized why he hadn’t been in the courtyard. He’d been on the phone.
I’d have been shocked if he hadn’t heard about Leo’s attack. He had a female relative – niece, cousin? – who worked at SF General. A nurse, I thought. He probably had her horse’s-mouthing from Leo’s doctors, nurses and the guard at the door.
An espresso and a morning bun were waiting at the table nearest the counter. I sat and picked up the bun.
Before I could speak, Renzo said, ‘Leo’s gone.’
I gasped. The pastry fell to the table, rolled to the edge and over onto the floor. ‘Leo’s dead?’
‘No, no! He’s just not in the hospital any more.’
‘How could he be gone? What about the guard?’
‘No guard.’
‘Snell assured me there would be a guard on his door.’
‘He ordered one. Shift ended. No replacement.’
‘And Leo? Did they move him? Transfer him? Lose him?’ SF General had lost a patient for weeks a year or so ago. If Leo got separated from his chart or ID bracelet … If he was comatose, or just out of it, he could be anywhere. Getting no treatment. Or worse, getting someone else’s meds.
‘What about his attacker?’
Renzo shook his head. He loved Leo; he hated not knowing. It was the worst combination for him.
I stared at my cup. I had to do something, pronto. My mind went to green screen. All roads led to detour. Go to the hospital? And do what? Troll floor after floor, sticking my head into each room? Startle the sick? Peek under the sheets of the not-quite-visible? Try to vanish when I smacked into a doctor making rounds? And when I finished, should I start over again because they could have moved him in that time? I sipped. Even espresso didn’t help. It just let me see more clearly that I didn’t know what to do.
Renzo offered a fresh morning bun.
I nodded and nibbled. ‘Your niece or cousin—’
‘Cousin’s daughter-in-law. Loretta, the doctor.’
‘What did she suggest? Suppose it was her patient who disappeared?’ I almost said: Did you ask her that?
But of course he had. For Renzo, leaving a question unasked was akin to leaving dough unbaked. ‘She’d have reviewed the chart, called in the nursing sup., phoned the nurses at home, the ones who’d gone off shift. And then’ – his shoulders straightened just a bit, and his chest puffed like a tiny bird taking its first proud breath – ‘she’d do the same with the LVN’s, the assistants and the cleaning staff.’
Really? Or did she just know how to deal with Renzo? ‘Can she do that for Leo?’
It was a moment before he said, in a small voice, ‘No.’
‘Of course not. I shouldn’t have asked.’ I’d felt overwhelmed before. Loretta had merely confirmed my fears. Needle in a haystack. Grain on a beach. Even if I called everyone I knew …
But I couldn’t just do nothing. I had to find him. ‘I’m going to have to suck it up,’ I said, ‘and call everyone I can trust.’
‘How’re you going to make that evaluation? How’re you going to finger the one who could go bad? The villain who stabbed Leo walked into the building, right? No one said, “Man, you are one suspicious-looking dude.”’
I nodded. Sipped.
‘The borderlines who come to sit zazen; the ones you can’t vouch for, not when we’re talking life or death – how’re you going to keep them from finding out they fell off the bad side of that fence of yours?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, letting that single word substitute for the answer, which I did not have. ‘I’ll go with blood, I guess. My brothers and Gracie.’
Renzo grinned. ‘Detective John Lott, Attorney Gary Lott, Doctor Grace Lott, all with years of experience giving orders. Expecting to snap-to cooperation. Tell me, Darcy, do you figure you’d be in charge of this operation?’
I had. A minute earlier. ‘I can’t just wait and see. Leo could be lying in a corner in the hospital behind the laundry wagon. Or in an empty room with the guy with a billy club. I can’t— Did you ask Loretta about his prognosis?’
Renzo gave his ‘of course’ move. It must have been automatic by now. ‘That’s the good news. The concussion’s serious, but there’s no sign of brain damage.’
Brain damage! That horrifying thought hadn’t even entered my mind!
‘So, you see it’s not as bad as maybe you thought. They’d’ve been discharging him in a day or two anyway.’
That from Loretta’s interpolation from the words on his chart, written how long ago? Right after the surgery? When he was in recovery? How long before he disappeared? How accurate?
Renzo said something but I couldn’t hear him over the clatter of a car clanking around the corner from Columbus Avenue. If it had been a scrap metal truck it couldn’t have managed a greater rattle. ‘What the—’
Our street, Pacific Avenue, is one way. The other way.
‘Tourist,’ Renzo muttered, without scorn. Renzo adored tourists, loved serving them real San Francisco coffee in a real San Francisco cafe. He just about preened when they asked him questions about his city.
The rattle was slowing like a tambourine in a tired hand. And then it gave a final shake and stopped.
In front of the zendo.
SEVEN
The car, an old white BMW, one of the ones with big windows all around, had rattled to a halt by the curb next to the courtyard. I could smell its exhaust inside the cafe. The driver, a burly guy in a faded blue zip jacket and jeans that had seen cleaner days – I could tell that from this distance – pushed himself out from behind the wheel and pulled open the rear driver’s-side door.
For a moment he stood leaning in toward the back seat, as if unsure what to do. He had the look of a guy who was unsure a lot.
I leaned closer to the cafe window just as a foot stuck out toward him from the back seat. Had it been moving fast, it would have hit his knee and sent him flying across the sidewalk. Or worse. But it just hung there, like rubber.
A bare foot.
Extending out of a black robe.
I shot out the cafe door and down the street, slid in front of the driver and stared into the car. ‘Omigod! Leo!’
Leo lay crumpled against the far window. He looked just like he had on the dokusan room floor – fragile, shaky and gray, his bare feet poking out of his black robe. He looked like he was about to go sweaty all over the black leather seat. His face was ashen, punctuated by big blotches of red-purple. He looked like death not bothering to warm over.
I reached for his hand, just to touch him. It was clammy. ‘Let me help you stretch out. We’ll get an ambulance—’
‘No,’ he rasped. How long had it been since he’d even had water?
‘I’ll ride back to the hospital with you. I won’t let you out of my sight.’
‘No.’
‘You have to—’
‘No!’
‘But—’
He struggled to draw in a breath. ‘Inside.’ His voice was barely audible but there was no arguing with him.
Renzo opened the other door and I maneuvered Leo out. I probably could have carried him myself if I’d had to. Stronger-than-she-looks is a baseline necessity in my line of work. But Renzo and I clasped hands and made a seat of sorts, then pushed close enough for Leo to lean against our shoulders. He was hanging onto our arms like they were the chains of a swing, our clasped hands a seat he might go sailing off at any moment. But his grasp was so weak it barely compressed my skin.
It wasn’t till we had edged awkwardly up the stairs and lowered him onto the futon in his room that it struck me he had never even protested or tried to stand up.
While Renzo helped him out of his clothes, I stepped into the hall where the driver stood, looking every bit as nonplussed as he had on the sidewalk. His back was against the bathroom
door. Small as this hallway was, it had to be against one of the doors – mine, Leo’s, bathroom or closet – that or teetering at the top of the stairs. He was fingering the pull tab on his jacket zipper. The slider was only connected to one side and it shot up and down fast and uselessly. He had that smell Mom called ‘Eau de Haight.’ Dust and sweat, marinated, all undiluted by laundering, found in the unattached male. His ensemble was spiced with the scent of car oil, as if he’d been under the hood and wiped his hands on, of course, his jeans.
‘Are you a cab driver?’ His vehicle had no sign, but there are a number of steps between private vehicle and officially registered and medallion-paid taxis in San Francisco.
‘No.’
‘Then how did you—’
‘He called me.’
‘From the hospital?’
‘I guess.’
Was I going too fast here? ‘Where did you pick him up?’
‘On a bench by the hospital.’
‘He was sitting upright on a bench? He was in that good a shape half an hour ago?’
‘Must’ve taken all his strength. I got him in the car. He just, like, melted. Like he was an old man. I’ll tell you I was worried. I told him, “You need to turn around and go right in there. The hospital, I mean.” We were right there and all. But he kept saying no. He said to bring him here.’
Inadequately suppressed groans and whispered ‘Sorry’s’ came in spurts from behind Leo’s closed doors. I so wanted to help, but of course I couldn’t. The room was already crowded with the two of them in there.
The not-cab driver seemed just to be waiting.
‘Thanks. Really.’ I glanced into my room across the hall, looking for my wallet. ‘Let me pay you.’
‘No! No, I’m glad to— If there’s anything …’
‘Sure.’
Surprisingly, he extracted a business card.
Hudson Poulsson
Man of all Trades
No phone number. ‘How is it you know Leo?’
‘Garson-roshi? He did me a big favor once. I … I gotta go before the meter maid … you know?’
This from a guy who parked the wrong way on a one-way street. If traffic cops started writing tickets for his vehicular sins, it would be cheaper for Hudson Poulsson to give them his car. ‘Thanks, Hudson. Keep in touch, OK? Write down your number.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, and turned toward the stairs.
But he didn’t start down them. He stood. Indecision really was his natural state.
As he was hanging around, I said, ‘Hudson, what was it Leo did for you?’ Either he’d answer or leave. With luck, both.
‘He, uh, wrote to me when I couldn’t get out.’
Out of the house? Of bed? In a monastery far in the mountains or deep in the desert? Or a lock-up, criminal or mental? Wherever he’d been he’d sure shown up pronto when Leo needed him. ‘Thanks,’ I said again, ‘it’s not a small thing to have a friend you can count on.’
But I did wonder why had Leo thought of him? Why of all his friends, students and all the cabs and for-hire cars was Hudson Poulsson the one Leo called? It wasn’t like Leo had a wallet with him. Was Poulsson the one whose phone number he knew by heart?
‘If I can do anything, just ask,’ Poulsson said. And then he clattered down the stairs, the human reflection of his vehicle, leaving me facing the tsunami of problems requiring decisions, none of which I’d have sufficient knowledge to handle. First was getting a doctor in here.
I called my sister, Gracie. She’d lay out to Leo, in six syllable words, just how dire his situation was, how much he needed to stay in bed, and follow the directions of the practicing MD she, the epidemiologist, would find for him.
Her phone went to voicemail. I dialed again … and got voicemail again. ‘This is Doctor Grace Lott. I will be unavailable until Monday. If this is an emergency, call nine-one-one. If you need immediate access to data, and it absolutely can’t wait till Monday, call my assistant, Carmela Capistrano at …’ Paper rustling sounds scraped the line. It was so like Gracie not to have the number handy.
But it was on my phone. I called Carmela. ‘How can I reach Gracie?’ I asked after ritual greetings.
‘Leave her a message. She’s at a conference. In Vegas.’
‘I just tried. Got her voicemail. It sent me to you.’
‘OK, OK.’ She gave a harrumphy sigh. I’d heard that a lot from Carmela. If you had an epidemiological crisis, Gracie was the best – smart, tireless, totally focused. Which meant she was totally unfocused on everything else. Which also meant Carmela sighed a lot. ‘I’ll tell her when she checks in.’
‘When will that be?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
‘What’s the subject of the conference?’
‘MERS, I think. But I could be wrong. She was deciding between a couple of different ones.’
Really? Topics so equally appealing Gracie couldn’t make up her mind till the last minute? But I didn’t have time to worry about that now. ‘Her hotel?’
‘Well, it depends on her choice.’
‘Carmela! Never mind. Just, please, ask her to call me. It’s serious.’
‘Can I tell her what it’s about?’
‘Just say it’s important. Really important.’
Now what? I’d been counting on Gracie to whip over, eyeball Leo and pronounce a verdict. She was my only medical resource and happy to be so. I couldn’t—
The door opened. Renzo emerged, his normally competent, mayor-of-the-block persona replaced by frazzle. His jacket was askew – even his wavy gray hair poked up as if he’d been pulling his fingers through it. I was afraid to ask about Leo.
‘See for yourself,’ he said.
EIGHT
There is no living room or even common space upstairs above the zendo. Leo’s room was where we talked. He’d sit on his futon and I’d lean against the far wall bemoaning the Giants’ summer slump, eating pizza from the box that filled the space between us, talking about what friends talk about. California threatening to end its tax break to the movie industry? I’d grumbled about it there. Dearth of stunt gigs, my favorite second unit director moving to Toronto, new animation making inroads into the shrinking stunt world? Most recently I’d tried for equanimity when a movie company with a hot-shot second unit director set up on the top of Lombard and didn’t call me for stunts on the famous ‘crookedest street.’ We’d talk about— Me! We’d talk about my career, my family, me!
We did not, I suddenly realized, ever discuss Leo’s family, his life before he became the abbot of a monastery in the woods hours north of the city or his lovers. Marriages? I’d had a brief one. Him? No. Zen, he’d said, was too demanding a mistress. We live and die in every moment. He wasn’t interested in resurrecting.
He would have a pot of tea already steeped on a tray beside his futon, his small cup partially filled and another waiting for me, a sign of his willingness to answer my questions. My dharma questions.
Rarely, but sometimes, the teapot would be empty and he’d ask me to go through the process of rinsing it out, heating the water, warming the pot, emptying that water and pouring the boiled water onto the leaves, the ritual being not merely for the drink, but the attention it demanded. More than once, by the time I’d made the tea, the answer to my dilemma had steeped through the waltz of the ritual.
Tea had been such a constant in here, the room held its earthy, pungent scent.
Renzo had left, but the door to Leo’s room was still shut. I knocked and when I heard Leo’s voice, pushed open the door. What hit me right off was the smell of sick. Remnants of nausea, of sweat, blotches of dried blood. Leo lay with his eyes swollen almost closed, purple bruises like goggles around them. His ear was bloated, the skin on that vertical channel ripped. It looked like someone had dumped scalding water on his shaved scalp. His hands, on the outside of the covers, quivered.
In my memory of the attack he’d only been struck once. Not again and again like this. ‘Oh, Leo!’
He tried for a smile. Normally his features seemed too big for his head, but now they fit right in, his bulb of a nose like a pale bud underneath the blossoming bouquet of his face. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going back to the hospital.’
‘Big surprise.’
Now he did manage a shadow of a smile.
‘Nevertheless, Leo, you can’t just lie here and hope. We Zen types don’t deal in miracles.’
‘Still, not going.’
Still, big surprise. ‘I left a message for Gracie, but she’s off in Vegas and who knows when she’ll check in? Do you have a doctor?’
I was so sure he’d say ‘No’ that I was deciding whether to get Renzo looking for one, or Mom, when he stopped me mid-thought. ‘Call Nezer Deutsch. His number’s in my book.’
‘Nezer?’
‘Ebenezer … He’s a twin. His brother’s called Ben.’
‘Hard luck.’
‘Life as it is.’ One of the Zen aphorisms. We look at life as it is, rather than deluding ourselves with dreams of better nicknames, or complaints about the twin who got there first.
His eyes fluttered shut. I wanted to leave him to sleep, but I said, ‘Leo, someone tried to kill you. That person was carried into the hospital minutes after you arrived. He was in the hospital when you were. Did he come after you there?’
His throat tightened as if he was willing the muscles to support sound. ‘No.’
‘When he burst past me to attack you, in the dokusan room, you saw him, right? Do you know him?’
‘I remember … someone … big hurry. Bent over … and … No more.’
Concussion! Of course he didn’t remember. Contre-coups. Still, I said, ‘You must have looked up.’