by Susan Dunlap
Finally, she turned left.
I wasn’t about to lose her now! I ran into the four-lane roadway, arms waving to stop two cars eastbound and a westbound cab. And when I swung around the corner she’d taken she was, once again, nowhere in sight.
And I was in an alley, in one of those areas in the city where neighborhoods lose their distinction, back into each other without order or control. Where a turn of the corner is a turn of fortune, a shift from safe to suspicious. Here heavy, windowless storage buildings that had been consistently shoved to the outer edges of Chinatown, stained with a century of dirt and exhaust stood next to narrow and closed shops with Chinese lettering, a one-story wooden warehouse: LamaPaca, another, windowless, signless, emitting the aroma of coffee and citrus. Dumpsters sidled by garbage cans. Weeds died in the cracks of the pavement. There were dozens of places to hide.
But Aurelia hadn’t planned on fading out of sight when she dressed this morning in her black-and-white print tights and red running shoes. I spotted her halfway down the alley, taking a few steps, eyeing the blank backs of buildings, inhaling as if to draw in this new data and moving on. She couldn’t be looking for numbers. There weren’t any. The roadway slanted into a crack at the center. Big chunks of pavement had long ago been jostled nearly free, sharp edges thrust up at odd angles. It was a road only safe for a four-wheel drive or those who knew when to swerve.
Aurelia stopped behind a three-story stucco structure. The top two stories hung out over what might have been a carport. No vehicles were there. The building was set back relative to its neighbors so that the windowless walls on either side created a courtyard of sorts, the kind that might be an exercise yard in prison. It had no decoration on any of the three walls, save the windows and a flat-against-the-wall ladder that must have passed as a fire escape on the building in the middle.
‘This it?’ I said, coming up behind her.
She started, but looked relieved. ‘Yeah.’
‘Where is he? Leo?’
‘All I got was a building with an escape ladder and faded red and white paint.’
‘Can’t be two.’ Painters had tried to cover the red facade with white, starting from bottom to top, and given up midway. ‘Which floor is Leo on?’ I glanced side to side at the block of a building. ‘How do we get in? From the front?’
‘No, that’s a different building.’
‘What’s this place? Storage unit?’
‘Could be.’
I nodded. With the real estate prices in the city, living in a storage unit had shifted from ‘a step above the gutter’ to ‘reasonable short-term option.’
A single metal sheet of a door led from the empty car park into the building. The only windows were on the top two floors. ‘Who else is in there?’
In the distance a siren rose and sank, but here the only sound was blown paper scratching the pavement. And our own voices.
‘What about the tenant, the owner? Whoever told you about this place?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Aurelia! Who were you talking to?’
She turned; her face went stiff. ‘You heard that?’
‘Right. So?’
‘It’s a long story. Later.’
‘Later, synonym for never.’
‘No, really, later. There’s no time! If Leo’s really in there, we’ve can’t just leave him there. We’ve got to do … something. Now!’
‘Police?’
She shrank back.
‘Never mind. They wouldn’t have believed there was a problem when he disappeared. They’re sure not going to believe me now, when I tell them he may possibly be in a house owned by somebody I don’t know.’
‘But we can’t just walk away. If he’s in there alone, if he’s injured …’ She sniffed back tears, swallowed and, for the first time, looked straight at me, pleading. ‘He saved me! You don’t know what it’s like to lose everything. In prison you own nothing. Not even your body. Right or wrong; it makes no difference. You have nothing. I had nothing. My family was ashamed; any friends I thought I had vanished. No one came to see me. No one even asked to get on the list except Westcoff, and all he cared about was trying to implicate Leo. Only my mother wrote to me, and she was so righteous and furious and disappointed and God knows what that I would have been better off throwing out her letters without opening them. The only person who cared was Leo.’ She swallowed again. ‘Leo! I told him the first thing I’d do when I got out was come buy him dinner. Sometimes we talked about that – the dinner. I’d tell him where I’d take him: the Saint Francis, the Cliff House. I didn’t know how little money you hit the street with.’ Again she swallowed. ‘Now … I haven’t even gotten to see him at all!’ As if in reaction, the siren wailed louder, nearer.
I’d had doubts about her and still had them, but this I believed. I glanced up at the building – flat surface, right against the protruding buildings on either side, two stories above us, two sliding windows on each, fire ladder in the middle. ‘OK, let’s do it.’
The door was a metal deal with two locks, both rusted. A door meant to stay shut, to keep out, not let in. Where a knock would be a warning. Even the EMTs or the cops, whoever was riding that siren, would have a hard time ramming through. And they weren’t headed here.
I said, ‘I want to check upstairs before I bang on the door and announce our presence. Give me a boost up to the fire escape.’
Fire escape was a compliment. How many decades had the rickety thing been hanging on for dear life? The bottom rung was ten or eleven feet up. ‘Stand here. No, back a step. Just in front of the rung. Bend down, make a step with your hands and stand up. I’m going to step up on your shoulder and leap for it. Duck so I don’t kick you. Can you do it?’
‘For Leo? Sure.’
She bent down, clasped her hands.
I did not put my foot there. Instead I grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘Tell … me … who’s … in there! I’m not crashing through a window, making enough noise to alert everyone in the building and me not knowing what to find when you can just tell me! So who?’
‘No one but Leo! I called a cell. He was on his way back. From downtown. He’s going to be here any minute. I’ll watch. I’ll keep him here. He knows I’m coming. He won’t suspect you’re here. But you’ve got to move now!’
‘Who, dammit! Westcoff?’
‘Yeah.’
Maybe.
‘He’ll be here any minute!’
Leo or knowing; I had to choose.
She bent. I stepped into her hands, onto her shoulder and pushed off hard to leap for the rung. The rusty edge dug into my palms. I thrust a hand up to the next rung, and again. My skin burned. Toes against the building, I grabbed the next rung. The whole ladder shook. If I fell, I’d crack my skull.
Blocking out pain, I climbed hand over hand.
Flush against the wall there was barely space to wrap my fingers around the rungs. The metal rattled like wind chimes. Rubber toes pressing against the wall with each step, I counted on movement to save me. I flung myself over the edge of the roof just as the car passed.
Had the driver seen me? Was he even looking this way?
The car kept going. Not a police car. Not paramedics. Just a car.
I didn’t want to look at what I was lying in.
There had to be an entry from the roof. There was. I pushed up. Momentarily my hands stuck to the tar and gravel. It pulled on my shoes as I hurried across to the door and yanked.
Nothing.
The door did not move a whit.
I braced and pulled, but even as I did it I suspected that the door hadn’t opened in a decade and definitely was not going to come ajar now.
The far side of the building was ten feet away, a wide air shaft. I peered over the edge into a black, dank hole.
How did people even get into this building? Was that one metal door the only entry? What ever happened to building regulations in this city!
More to the point, the only way I
was going to find out if Leo was here was down that rusting excuse for a ladder, hanging off the side, peering into windows that were three feet away.
If he was still here. If I hadn’t alerted his captor or captors. If they hadn’t dragged him off somewhere else.
Or worse.
I crawled over, grabbed the rusted metal and braced to lower a foot over the edge.
Two cars rumbled down the alley ever more slowly as if the drivers were looking for something, or someone.
I waited on the flat tar roof. When they were both out of sight I lowered a foot over the edge onto the second rung. Grasping the rusty rungs had been treacherous climbing up, but going down was worse. Nothing was steady here, no rung reliable. My only option was to keep moving and hope the whole ladder didn’t come loose from the stucco.
The windows were two-pane aluminum numbers, the kind that slide sideways. Cheap and flimsy. All to the good. I was level with the top edge on the upper of the two floors. Through the window to my right I could make out cardboard boxes piled haphazardly as if stuffed into a garage. The window on the left was so dirty it was hard to make out anything inside.
Because, I realized, there was nothing there. Just emptiness.
The rusty metal dug into my hands. My left foot had gone numb. I could barely feel it as I jammed the rubber shoe on the next rung.
An engine – car? truck? – was turning into the alley. There was nowhere to hide, to even hope for camouflage. I had to move! I near-rappelled, bouncing feet not on rungs but on the stucco, moving hand below hand on the sides of the ladder till I came even with the lower windows.
‘Go!’ Aurelia yelled.
‘What?’
‘I have to go … caught here … parole.’ She didn’t wait for me to respond. Shoes slapped the pavement.
The engine was nearer. I could drop, but I’d never get back up. And Leo …
‘Aurelia?’
But she was gone. Gone so fast and far that I didn’t even hear the slap of her shoes on the pavement.
When the going gets tough the tough get going … and fast.
Still, to be scooped back into prison … Could I blame her? Leo wouldn’t.
The engine was louder.
I looked to my right through the window.
Then I saw it.
On the top of the sofa back, against the window.
Leo’s kotsu.
His wooden teaching stick that had been at his side in the dokusan room. The stick his assailant had grabbed and beat him with.
It didn’t mean Leo was here. Not even that he had been here. The last time I’d seen the kotsu it had been in his assailant’s hand. Maybe it was just Hoodie inside.
No choice.
I grasped the edge of the ladder with both hands, pushed off and swung hard.
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Leo!’
‘Super Woman!’
Glass was everywhere. The window had shattered, but I’d covered my face with my arms as I went through and now I grinned wide. ‘You look good, really good.’
I surveyed the room. A clutch of filled-up cardboard cartons was passing as a bed, blankets, strewn newspapers, clutter, dust – everything streaked with dirt. And the smell of urine. But Leo looked OK. ‘Are you—’
‘Ready to leave. Hungry. Sore from kicking myself.’
‘Things as they are,’ I said, quoting one of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism. We face things as they are.
He shot me the same look I’d aimed at Westcoff when he threw my practice in my face. Then he shrugged and said, ‘Humble pie is a grisly meal. I just hope …’
‘Hope later. We need to get out of here.’
He tried to get up and collapsed back onto the bed, his face pale, moist.
‘When we get home I’ll call a doctor.’ I slipped an arm around his back and angled him up. ‘Not Nezer, someone who’s licensed in this state. If Gracie’s back from her weird trip to Vegas …’
Not licensed in this state. I remembered now how I knew that. I stopped dead, realizing what it meant.
Which is how I heard the footsteps coming up the stairs.
The place was one room, for storage. No bathroom, no closet, not even a kitchen alcove. Nowhere to hide.
I lowered Leo to the floor behind a pile of boxes, grabbed a drop cloth, threw it on the bed and covered it with a dark towel. No one would think it was Leo, not for more than a moment.
A moment would be what I’d have.
The footsteps changed. He was on the landing now.
I looked around for a weapon. No bats, no metal rods, nothing but Leo’s kotsu and I’d be damned if I’d use that.
Metal on metal. Key jammed into the lock.
I tiptoed across the room, braced myself against the wall beyond the door so he wouldn’t hit me when he swung it open.
The door stuck momentarily. He shoved.
I braced my hands against the wall and kicked with every bit of fury I felt.
He groaned.
But my aim was off. Too high. I’d just knocked the wind out of him and he had enough strength to stagger back into the hall and pull the door shut.
I reached for the door to yank it open. Leo groaned softly. I wavered, then did the reasonable thing – flipped the security lock, pulled out my phone and called 911. Let the police go after Nezer Deutsch.
TWENTY-NINE
By the time I got back to the production room I figured I could have written the script myself.
New Stunt Coordinator Explains Sudden Absence to Second Unit Director.
Me: Sorry I was gone. I’ve been involved in a kidnapping.
Beretski, not shifting his gaze from his notepad: Really?
Me: It was a police operation.
Beretski: Uh huh?
Me: I had no choice.
Him: Whatever.
How wrong I was. Beretski didn’t bother to raise his voice. He sounded disappointed, exhausted and mutedly furious. ‘That gag’s got to be ready to roll at five a.m. no questions, no hold-ups. You don’t have it ready, we don’t shoot. If we don’t shoot this gag, we don’t have a movie. We couldn’t wait if you had a note from God.’
‘I—’
He leaned toward me, his head looming over mine. His breath smelled of junk food gone sour. ‘I haven’t slept in days. I thought I could count on you, that you could make this work. Before you took over coordinating I was overloaded but moving forward. You gave me an out. You know what I did? I slept! I lost eight hours in bed! Because I thought, I believed, you were taking over. Wrong! Now it’s all back on me! I’ve got double the pressure. My head’s throbbing so hard there should be brain splattered all over the room. I don’t … I don’t— Hell, I don’t have time to waste on you.’
I didn’t mention the digital adjustment I’d pushed, the thing that made it possible to get this gag done on schedule. I was history. I just scooped up my jacket and pack, walked out into the fog and left the shambles of my career behind.
I hadn’t done it consciously but I’d made my choice: career or Leo.
‘What other choice was there? Really?’ I’d called for pizza from Leo’s favorite North Beach establishment. We were in his room, he sitting cross-legged on his futon as he always did, me on a cushion on the floor, the open box of zucchini, black olive and double mushroom between us. The aroma of garlicy tomato sauce pervaded.
Leo looked better than he had in days. His color was normal, his eyes focused and the corners of his over-wide mouth looked ready to twitch into a grin. He extricated a piece and slid the box an inch toward me.
He took a bite from the wide end of the wedge, swallowed and said, ‘Your sister Gracie called.’
‘From Vegas?’
‘The airport there.’ Leo knew Gracie, my totally committed epidemiologist sister, the woman who believed the fate of our city hung solely on her vigilance against the armies of viruses, bacteria and germs crawling onto our beaches, flowing over our bridges, riding mass transit. Her assistant
had told me Gracie had told her she was at a conference.
‘Did she say what she was doing in Vegas?’
‘Rafting down the Colorado River.’
‘Gracie? She’s never even taken the Ferry across the bay. To her water is what you use to clean your hands. How come she didn’t tell us?’
‘Maybe she didn’t want to hear about water to wash away germs.’
‘So she’s home?’
‘Not quite. She called from the airport in Las Vegas.’
‘To tell me about rafting?’
‘Not exactly. She said one of the women in the raft was looking feverish and she shifted to get a better look and—’
‘Fell overboard?’
‘’Fraid so. But that’s not why she called. She hadn’t packed her wallet where the guide told her.’
‘Her wallet floated on down the Colorado River? It’s probably clogging a spigot in Phoenix by now.’
‘I bought her a ticket home.’
I laughed. That sounded like Gracie.
Career in shambles or not, it felt good to laugh. It felt great to be sitting on the floor in Leo’s room, eating pizza, talking. ‘There’s nothing as wonderful as getting your life back.’
‘This moment, all that exists.’
I nodded.
He hadn’t said, ‘If only I’d …’ ‘If only I hadn’t done …’ I was grateful.
I took another bite of pizza and chewed slowly, forming the question into words, realizing I was afraid to hear his answer. ‘Do you remember that moment, the attack?’
‘Some. Black hood; him rushing in. Grabbing my kotsu. That stunned me. And then him hitting me with it. Surreal.’
‘Did you recognize him?’
‘Physically? No. Maybe I did and the blows knocked it out of my head. But that’s not quite what you’re asking, is it?’ He put his half-eaten slice back in the pizza box, shifted his legs into a more balanced position and turned to face me directly. ‘I felt like it could be Nezer Deutsch. So maybe I did see a bit of his face and that got knocked out of my memory. But afterwards I couldn’t be sure if I had seen anything at all or just had him on my mind because I’d heard from Aurelia, and I knew how much he felt she owed him. I’d been worried about her – that he might show up here trying to find her.’