by Susan Dunlap
Famous last words.
For now there was the wall, the cant of the bricks, sixteen-degree grade of the cutbacks, the speed of the dolly as it rounded the curve. We would film one curve at a time. The true speed wouldn’t change; the appearance of faster and faster would hinge on post-production changes and the acting that made it believable. I’d be doing the gag but it would be the actress’s face showing the reactions. Still, precision was essential. An arm not far enough out on the curve would blow the whole effect. A bounce at a spot that could not have been saved at top speed … A brick in the road angled up that would catch a wheel on the dolly … If we got the first two gags in the can tomorrow and the final one Monday … If we had everything perfect … the equipment, the weather, the actress, me …
I eyed the bricks, the switchbacks, the narrow sidewalks, the railings and spikes. I considered, and made notes.
When I finally looked up night had vanished, dawn had floated by and the laboratory feel of the dark street was replaced by the flurry of the grips rolling the banks of lights back into trucks, the lunch wagon closing and half-hushed frantic voices battling for space.
But mine was the one Dainen Beretski acknowledged. ‘So?’
I sighed. ‘No way.’
‘What?’
‘There is no way to do three complicated gags in a week when we’ve only got this space for two hours a day.’
He nodded, as if what he’d really wanted from me was confirmation, or a miracle.
I offered the latter. ‘But, this might work. Send a wheeled board down, slowly, with cameras shooting all four directions. Do three slow shoots – one for each gag, maybe two for the last. Stunt double or actress if you want. Shot of the dolly, the wheels rattling around on the bricks like grocery cart wheels when they’re stuck. And then we can get a mobile slant set up and fill it in in the studio.’
‘I don’t think …’
Beside us, lights were brightening, shades were being pulled. Above us, on Leavenworth, truck engines were rumbling into action.
I held my breath.
Dainen considered. ‘I don’t know … I don’t want to be the one to let down Geoffrey …’
Geoffrey Bates, the producer.
‘Geoffrey moved heaven and earth to get Lars.’
Lars Larsson, the location manager.
‘Lars had to promise the city his first born. Promised the neighbors his balls.’
‘He must’ve needed them to negotiate this.’
‘You don’t know the half of it. Darcy, are you sure …’
‘Absolutely.’
‘I’ll put it to Geoffrey. I’ll call you after.’
‘OK,’ I said, cloaking my red-hot excitement in the gray cape of professionalism and heading down the hill.
It wasn’t till I’d run two more blocks, sufficiently far enough away from the set, that I let out a whoop. This gag stunt sequence was going to get noticed, maybe even awards – with Dainen Beretski in charge, probably awards. If there was a better solution than mine, Dainen would have found it. He was going to present my solution to the producer. I was going to get credit on the roll!
I wanted to call … Everyone! ‘Biggest thing since I moved back to San Francisco!’ ‘Dainen Beretski!’ I wanted to shout to my friends in the business.
But it was not yet eight in the morning. Plus, I didn’t dare hex things by cheering too soon.
But Leo would be awake. He’d be happy.
And my agent! Beyond ecstatic. I stopped, texted, then ran on, not tiring but gaining energy, as if from the friction of the joy flowing through me.
I didn’t see the flashing red lights till I crossed Broadway.
FOURTEEN
I ran full out toward the zendo. Cars were all but stopped on Columbus Avenue. Both northbound lanes were blocked and traffic had been shifted left into a southbound lane. One lane each way. Flashers blinked off cars like blood splatter. A siren rose to a screech then fell silent. Like they do every night, one after another. Leo and I give them no more notice than a street light flickering. They don’t concern us. Until they do.
Leo! He was fine when I left. Renzo was there. John. What could have happened?
An ambulance shrieked around the corner onto Pacific Avenue. On the corner the door to Renzo’s Caffe was stuck open. Tables empty, chairs flung back and abandoned. One was overturned. The aroma of coffee flowed through the doorway, flashing normality that didn’t exist. I ran on toward the zendo.
By the courtyard entrance a cluster of people looked linty red in the ambulance lights. Two SFPD guys were attaching crime scene tape, blocking off the sidewalk to the east.
One – young, Asian, male – moved in front of me. ‘Sorry, ma’am. You can’t—’
‘What’s going on here?’ I yelled over the roar of the idling ambulance.
‘We’re setting up a cordon. You can’t—’
‘Hey. I live here. In the zendo. With the abbot. In there …’ I pointed to the courtyard.
‘ID?’
I pulled out my wallet, bypassed the Screen Actors’ Guild card I’d taken to the set and flipped to my driver’s license. ‘The abbot, Leo Garson – is this about him?’ My heart was beating so hard my ribs were shaking. In the eternity before the cop spoke, dread filled me – no subject, no words, just smoky cold fear.
‘Can’t say, ma’am.’
Two paramedics walked quickly back to the ambulance. One pulled open the rear door. Roman Westcoff left the cluster and slid in behind them to peer into the ambulance and back-scurried as they pulled out the stretcher.
Westcoff? Here again?
Two patrol cars idled in the street, the three engines slightly out of sync, buzzing and grumbling in an alternating beat, the sound bouncing off the glass in the boutiques and offices across the street and back against the metal vehicles. I felt like I was in a kettle drum. Night-cold air battled with the hot gust from the ambulance.
‘What happened?’ I demanded of Westcoff as the paramedics raced the wheeled stretcher through the gateway. Tully Lennox, standing across from me, looked close to tears, his normally pale face dead white.
‘What? Dammit, Roman!’
‘Ro! Assault,’ he said, his eyes on the action behind the courtyard wall.
I leaned over the wall, aware that the cop would come at me and he did, but not in time to keep me from seeing the paramedics bending over a body cloaked in something dark. The courtyard was still dark, the building blocking the sun. Shards of red from the patrol car flashers spit between onlookers and plants and speckled the action.
Why would Leo have come down here? Did he insist on going to zazen? Could he have managed that, even with help?
‘Is it Leo?’
‘Dunno.’
I grabbed his arm and turned him. ‘What do you know? Besides your preferred nickname, Ro?’
He shook free and shot a glance back at the scene as if to freeze it for later consideration. ‘Nine-one-one call seven minutes ago. Woman attacked.’
‘Woman? Not Leo.’ A gush of relief swept through me. Then shame. And more relief. ‘Which woman?’
‘No name. Not Aurelia Abernathy. I was looking for her and this woman’s nothing like her.’ He focused on me with sudden interest. ‘You know these people. Who’s not here?’
I scanned the group of morning people, regulars huddled together in their communal silence, as if refusing to move the event into words would forestall its reality. If Renzo had been here, he’d tell me.
Tully Lennox had moved apart from the others, his arms tight against his ribs, his dark jacket pulled taut around his beanpole body. His expression – horror, disbelief, grief – said it all. ‘Lila?’ I asked, softly.
His response was between a nod and a shiver.
‘What happened? I know you care about her. I saw you meet her here last night. What is this?’
‘I … don’t know. I came to see her … here, at zazen. We’d … a couple times … had coffee … not gone toge
ther … been at the cafe, both of us, after zazen. Renzo saw us walk in – he knows it wasn’t a date.’
I don’t care if you two dated. ‘You thought you could run into her this morning?’ I prompted.
‘Here.’ He wasn’t looking at me; his gaze had never left her, on the pavement in the courtyard, lying still between the paramedics. ‘She was here, at zazen.’
‘This morning?’ Half an hour ago?
‘Yes. Like she does. I left first today, like I do. Walked down to Renzo’s and … She was screaming. All of a sudden, she was screaming! I ran back here and a man was smashing her. He had her like this—’ He grabbed my shoulders. He was shaking me, hard.
I broke free, shocked at how much stronger he was than I’d have guessed.
‘Sorry. I’m sorry, Darcy. But that’s what he was doing to her. She’s so small – she’s like a little bird, and he was smashing her head into the stones, the wall.’ He gasped for breath. ‘He was breaking her.’
Awkwardly, I put an arm around him and he seemed glad of it. Behind him the morning zazen regulars stepped back, the friends he’d known in silence giving him privacy.
‘When I got to her, her face was cut; her eye, it was swelling. Her hands – God, her hands, it was like they’d been shredded. I just held her. She was moaning. I can still hear her.’
‘Did you call nine-one-one?’
‘I didn’t want to let go of her. I hated to. I had to … to get the phone.’
‘That was the right thing to do.’
He nodded, disbelieving. ‘Then I held her, told her it’d be all right, they were coming, they’d take care of her. She said something – something in her language, I don’t know what. I pretended I did because I couldn’t bear to make her explain.’
‘Her language? Where is she from?’
‘Maybe Thailand. Or a place near there. Or near Malaysia.’
So, somewhere in Southeast Asia.
Behind me, she moaned. I snapped around in time to see the paramedics shifting her onto the stretcher. Her head was braced like they do with the possibly broken necks of football players. And stunt doubles. People moved back to create a lane, and as the stretcher passed Tully reached out to touch her. The smell of antiseptics, of medical fluids, threw up a wall around her, as if she was already in the ER and we were locked out in the waiting room.
For an instant the hospital waiting room, not knowing if Leo would make it, was the reality. The gut-level fear.
Leo? Was he watching this from upstairs? From my window over the courtyard? Renzo supporting him so he didn’t fall? I tried to see the window but it was too dark.
Sirens yelped. Coming nearer. More police cars – code three?
Tully started after the paramedics.
A cop – Snell! – stepped in front. ‘We need some information.’ And Tully stopped, nodding vaguely.
Undone as Tully was, the last thing he needed was a face-to-face with Snell. ‘Tully,’ I said, ‘who did this to Lila?’
‘That man! The one who follows her here. Looks like a hit man, an enforcer – short, big chest. You’ve seen him. From her work. Lila’s terrified.’
‘You know that? He’s from her work? Employed there? Or a customer?’
‘Yes.’
Whatever that meant.
Behind Tully, Snell was taking it all in but saying nothing. He looked almost as shaky as Tully. On the sidewalks a second, looser clutch of watchers eyed the ambulance. The morning zazen people who’d sat with him in the zendo but maybe never spoken to him as they all rushed off after the last bell toward offices or studios, stayed put.
‘Tully, what did Lila say about him, her assailant?’
‘Her English, you know, it’s not much. I don’t know how she manages her work. Guess that’s not heavy on words.’
I nodded. Pole dancing and extras. Yes or no. Pay or not. ‘But him?’
‘I tried twice. She shrunk up. Turned away. Like she was afraid I asked. Like he might be watching her. Like he … what he did. Like he might beat the crap out of her!’ His face flushed and his hand balled into fists, the kind that squeeze in on themselves.
I turned to Snell. ‘I’ve seen him here. She always looked scared. Other people must have seen him. He looks like a bouncer, like pure muscle. She is, I think – I can’t be sure – a pole dancer on Broadway.’
Tully nodded. ‘I wanted to help her. I tried to tell her. I … couldn’t.’
‘We’ll go to the hospital. I’ll be with you there. Do you need to call your job?’
Suddenly there was an eruption of sirens. Two patrol cars slung round the corner. Another ambulance raced in behind.
They screeched to a halt in front of the zendo.
Before I could ask anything the paramedics were out of the van and racing toward us. ‘Where?’ one asked Snell. Snell shook his head.
‘There’s already been an ambulance here. It just left,’ I said.
‘They called us. Victim in the courtyard.’
Another—
I hurried into the courtyard. The far wall, the back of a building on Broadway, was two stories high. Nothing in front but two stone benches. Empty benches. I spun toward the low stone wall on this side, the street side, the place the homeless guy had slept last night. Nothing but two big ceramic planters.
Nothing till I looked down to the far corner. There, against the wall, like something thrown out of the way, lay the victim.
‘Omigod! Renzo!’
FIFTEEN
People said things. The clutch of morning zazen sitters who had drunk Renzo’s coffee other days, nibbled on the pastries he showed up with at the end of the sittings, now looked dazed. Nobody quite knew how they could have let Renzo lay unconscious yards away and not noticed.
Jeffrey Dedham: ‘I was so caught up in the girl here.’ The girl. Lila Suranaman was so incidental she didn’t even have a name to a guy who’d probably been here every morning she had. Had that been her choice? Or her shyness, her terror?
‘I was keeping an eye peeled for the police. They got here in eight minutes – I checked, but it seemed like eight years.’ Hudson Poulsson looked even less focused than when he drove Leo home from San Francisco General.
‘I was so worried.’ Aurelia said just that. On the set she’d been clothed to attract eyes, not withstand cold. Now, an hour later, she was shaking. I couldn’t guess how much was from shock and concern for a woman she’d never spoken to. Or if it was the aftermath of storming off the set. Frankly, I was shocked that she was here.
‘I was looking for you or – oh, shit! – for Renzo.’ Tully Lennox had to swallow hard before he could tell me that Renzo had come running from the cafe with him when they heard Lila screaming. He – Tully – had rushed to her, he said. Renzo had tackled her attacker. Renzo, the benevolent ruler of this little kingdom surrounding his cafe, had flung himself at the ‘devil,’ as someone had called the man.
I wasn’t asking questions; I was standing behind the paramedics, too close, they kept telling me. I moved back for a moment. A thrust of fog-damp air caught me and for an instant cleared the chemical stench. I inched forward, desperate for a lane to see Renzo’s eyelid flicker, to reach in and touch him, assure him I was here.
When the paramedics rolled his unmoving body out past the stone wall, wheels clattering across the sidewalk, and into their van, we all, the morning zazen people, Roman Westcoff and even Officer Snell, watched, dazed. The courtyard resounded emptiness. I looked toward the zendo doors where Renzo had left me espressos the mornings before zazen, where we’d talked in hushed tones about Leo after his attack, where Renzo had made a point of greeting strangers on Saturday mornings. The whole place now seemed hollow and cold.
In the moments I stood there, the paramedics siren’d off, a crime-scene van pulled up, a plainclothes officer – detective, no doubt – and a woman and man in uniform hurried up to Snell. Suddenly the silence had turned inside out and everything was noise – radios spitting words, engines hu
mming one over another, horns beeping and tires screeching on Columbus as traffic narrowed into two lanes. Fog was thinning, turning the scene a slightly less dreary gray and showing more clearly the grim lines on faces. With the detective firing questions, Snell seemed as stunned as the rest of us, as if he was sweeping words toward a scooper hoping to spot an answer. It was, I realized, Roman Westcoff who had been throwing out questions before. Now with a detective on site the reporter had eased back into the group of us. He was slipping his notebook into his jacket. The detective passed him without a glance.
‘Are you the assistant abbot here?’ the detective was asking me.
‘Assistant to the abbot,’ I corrected.
‘To the abbot. And the abbot is—’
Leo! I pushed past the detective and ran for the zendo, up the stairs, and pulled open Leo’s door.
Leo was standing, arms propped on the high ledge of his bedroom window overlooking the courtyard. The window was small, and with its height and the ledge that kept him a few inches back from the glass, he couldn’t see the part of the courtyard near the building. Most times if he wanted to check on a noise or watch for an arrival he used the window in my room. This morning, he looked as if he had exhausted all his strength just to pull himself to standing. He looked like a peg holding up the gray sweatshirt and pants he slept in. He was staring, or maybe his eyes were just facing the window. He started to speak, cleared his throat, and said in a raspy voice, ‘Tell me what happened.’
I did. ‘But by the time I got here the attack was over.’
‘The attacker?’
‘Gone.’
‘Who?’
I told him.
‘Are they sure?’
‘No one saw the attack, so that’s the best guess. I doubt even Renzo could add more. Tully Lennox saw Renzo tackling him. But Tully was so caught up in Lila, he’s not going to be a great witness. He’s gone to the hospital with her. Do you want me to call—’