by Susan Dunlap
He knew which window was mine? That creeped me out more than anything he’d said. ‘Then what did she do?’
‘Left. It was the middle of the night.’
‘Where’d she go?’
It was a throwaway question but he hesitated too long before his throwaway don’t know.
‘But you do know where she is, right? You didn’t find out then. You found out later.’
He shifted from foot to foot in worn hiking boots that looked two sizes too big. ‘Not really.’
‘Hey, we’ve got a deal here. No chiseling. Where does she live?’
‘I don’t know which house.’
‘What do you know?’
‘OK. She was at that halfway house out in the Richmond, you know?’
I nodded, though I didn’t. ‘And?’
‘She didn’t want to stay there. Said it was full of ex-cons. Like that shoulda been a surprise. But, she said, she was done with that life. Said she was never going back inside. Even the people she liked she didn’t want to see again, ever. That life was over. She’d kept herself in shape – sure looked like it from the way she lit into that guy coming after you. You know, like a year in lock-up let loose there – and she was hot to be in the movies. Do stunts, like you do. She wanted to “take chances, bust ass, fly.” That’s a quote from her. She intended to get a spot in a house where people like her – movie people – stayed. Next time I saw her, she shot me a wink. I figured she’d done it.’
‘Which place?’
‘I told you all I know.’
‘OK.’
‘So we’re even. You’re not going to rat me out? I can keep my gig?’
‘Right. But you do understand that you’re reporting to me now. Got it?’
His expression said, in sequence: What! Oh, shit! John’ll have my ass. Lott’s sister here, she’s as crazy as Lott. Crap! I’m between a rock and a hard place. Pavement collapsing under my feet. What choice …? Tell her what she wants to hear. That’s it!
‘Got it.’
TWENTY-SIX
‘How is he?’ I’d gotten hold of Renzo’s niece.
Her uncle, she’d reported, had been released from the hospital – bones healing – and was staying with her. ‘Can’t keep him out of the kitchen. He oughta be sitting in a chair watching TV. He won’t. Either he’s going to do himself an injury or we’re going to burst from all the pastry.’
‘Tell him I asked after him.’
‘He’s been wanting to talk to you, but with all the calls for him – relatives, friends, doncha know, the phone never cools. If he wasn’t off at the doctor you’d be leaving a message.’
‘Why did he want to talk to me?’
‘To find out what’s going on. It’s driving him crazy that there was a fight, one that he was in, and he doesn’t know what happened. I mean, he wants the skinny on every single thing that went down. You know Uncle Renzo.’
I laughed. ‘I’ll tell him every detail when he reopens the cafe. We’ll send in the participants and the observers and even the cops, one by one, and he can milk them dry. Tell him.’
‘Believe it. Whoops, gotta go! Kids!’
I clicked off. Then I called my agent to find out if he knew where in the Mission district stunt doubles stayed. But he had no intention of talking housing.
‘Where are you? Beretski’s been on the horn to me three times since midnight. One of them at four a.m. The last, an hour ago. Guy’s flipping his rug about you.’
‘What does he want?’
‘You! There! In the production room. Sweating.’
‘What’d you tell him?’
‘Are you crazy? At four in the morning? It went to voicemail. He’s hair-on-fire, but listen, Darcy, you make this gag work and you’re golden. Blow it and he’ll spew mud over you so deep archeologists won’t find you for a thousand years.’
‘OK. OK. I’m on my way. Literally. I’m walking. Hear the traffic? But tell me, what do you know about a hotel, rooming house, rooms for rent, whatever place an aspiring stunt double might live, in the Mission?’
‘I’ll get back to you. Really. Gotta go. Really. It’s Beretski – on the other line. I gotta fall all over myself with him for you.’
The phone clicked off in the middle of Montgomery Street. I walked the half block to Broadway. The street looked like sin gone stale. The clubs were closed, marquee lights off, flashing boobs and neon nipples gone dark. Fog grayed it all and held in the night chill.
Moving east, downhill, I picked up my pace, counting on the rhythm of my feet to provide a medium for decision. The only lead, tenuous as it was, to Leo, was Aurelia. I needed to—
My phone buzzed. My very fine agent!
‘Two. Twenty-third and Valencia. Nineteenth and Guerrero. You want the numbers?’
‘Yes.’
He read them out, repeated them, and I wrote on my inner arm. ‘I got Beretski calmed,’ he added. ‘If you show up in the next ten minutes, he still will be.’
‘I will. Thanks. You’re the best.’
‘I know.’ And he was gone.
There was just time to get hold of Aurelia – not throw out questions on the phone where I couldn’t judge her reactions, but lure her over here for coffee, maybe within the hour. I was counting on her to have a direct and solid lead; I shouldn’t, but I was. Because there wasn’t anything else.
I called the place on Twenty-third. A man answered. He’d never heard of Aurelia Abernathy. At the second place, on Nineteenth, a woman picked up. She didn’t recognize the name, hadn’t seen anyone of her description, hadn’t taken on a new tenant in a month.
‘Are you sure?’ I said in desperation.
The woman just clicked off.
A boa of fog wrapped around my neck. It seemed appropriate. If I hadn’t promised to be at work in – now – five minutes, I’d have trudged. Trudged through the mire of all ends being dead.
Instead, I ran, faster and faster downhill, swung around the last corner and, panting, pushed open the door into the production room.
Right in the middle of the production room was Aurelia Abernathy. In an army-green sleeveless T-shirt, black-and-white print tights and red shoes. In case Dainen Beretski missed her. Not likely, though; she was at his shoulder. Staring wide-eyed up at him, taking in his every word. From the looks of him those words were ‘I’m busy!’
To him she was one more crazy-making detail in a day crammed with them.
To me she was a fluttering veil to screen off my late arrival. ‘Hey, Dainen,’ I said. ‘Want me to tell Aurelia about the changes in the gag?’
He was looking at his phone, at a picture of the sun on a weather app. ‘Sun! Dammit! We’re going to have to— Darcy, yeah, sure, take her.’
Yesterday I would have marveled at Aurelia letting that brush-off roll off her back. Now she offered me the same eager smile she’d beamed at Beretski as we squeezed past a disassembled block of lights and a pair of harried-looking guys holding pipe and tapping. Buzzes of intense talk mixed with excitement and panic, and a woman rasped out a demand for more light; deep-throated groans and hurricane-worthy sighs followed.
‘Hey, Margo.’ I nodded to the continuity woman. Without looking up from her notes, she moved her head. ‘Fog.’ She kneaded the word as if expecting to pull it into a more promising shape.
‘Huh?’ Aurelia muttered.
‘It’s going to be sunny the next couple days,’ I said, keeping her moving toward the far corner. ‘The scenes they’ve shot have been in fog. Now, even if we can get permission to be at the location before five a.m., Dainen and Margo don’t know if there’ll be enough cloud cover. If not, they have to decide if the shots can be saved in post-production. Or are they trash? More to the point, how can we shoot the gag here in sunlight and still have it work?’ I pointed to a photo shot up Lombard yesterday, angled to capture the street and the sky. Gray sky had turned it black and white. Fog-veiled windows were opaque. Aurelia bent forward, squinting.
I said, ‘
How often did Leo visit you in prison?’
I was expecting shock. But I’d underestimated her, or what she’d learned in the lock-up. She didn’t move. She let a breath pass and said, without inflection, ‘Every month.’
‘Wednesdays?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long?’
‘The whole time. Eighteen months.’ She held her shoulders tight – they were more developed than I’d realized – but her cap of curls quivered from the effort.
‘Why?’
She snapped up to face me. ‘What’s your point, Darcy?’
I glanced around the room to remind her of my position here. ‘Answer the question.’
‘Ask him.’
‘You tell me.’
The moment froze – she, I, the air between us – then, as if that instant disappeared and a new one replaced it, as if firewood had been replaced by ash without any interim of burning, she said, ‘Kindness. He did it from kindness.’ There was a touch of regret in her voice.
‘Not meditation?’
‘Nah. I tried that. I’m not the sitting still kind.’ She sighed and leaned back, her butt on the table edge. ‘If you’re asking if we were lovers? Ever? No. Do I love him? Of course. Does he love me? Love’s not the right word.’
I nodded. For good or bad Leo cared about anyone who gave him the chance. Even those who didn’t.
At the end of the Saturday lectures we chant the Four Vows. The First Vow is ‘Beings are numberless; I vow to save them.’ Many people take that as a play on words, but for Leo it’s life. His focus is the dharma in, as far as I can tell, all things. All beings. ‘And yet, he’s not visiting anyone else in prison.’
‘He felt bad.’
Leo had been kept at the periphery of the Zen establishment. Before I knew him there’d been some scandal, misdeed, a breaking of vows serious enough to taint him for years. Yamana-roshi, my old teacher in New York, had mentioned the existence of the taint but not the substance. Leo had never given voice to it at all. And, curious as I was, I never asked. But now I prodded, ‘Because?’
‘Look, I don’t see—’
What I really needed to find out was where Leo was. Was I taking the chance of pushing her hard enough to send her running to satisfy my curiosity? I could have moved between her and the door. Instead, I said, ‘Try standing like this, shifting your balance from foot to foot. No, don’t balance on both feet – shift the weight so it’s on one foot and the other is touching the floor but loose.’
She moved slowly back and forth as if getting the movement – definitely taking my point about balance. The balance needed in this gag. My role in hiring for this gag.
‘Like I said the other day’ – she was shifting easily now – ‘I met Leo in Japan. He was in a monastery. I had a few days to kill. He assumed I was interested in the dharma. I let him think that. I was young. Long straight hair, blond back then, the whole “look.” I was used to guys coming on to me. Leo never made a move and that was a kind of relief.’
‘Because?’
‘I was waiting for a contact – drugs. The common story. I was wowed by the fast life, the easy money. I thought a little packet would be an easy carry back home. I had the look; I assumed I could handle customs men. I’d already gotten a pass in a couple countries when I hadn’t been carrying anything. I was … a fool.’
My hand started toward her shoulder to support, to comfort. I stopped. ‘That doesn’t explain about Leo.’
‘He’d told me those were his last days in Japan. He was heading home to take over a monastery in California. I asked if I could write. He gave me the address.’
‘Did you write?’
‘No. I got arrested. I jumped bail and ran. I figured Leo’s monastery in the woods would be the perfect place to hide. I hitched a ride up there. Walked down the road to the place. The road’s endless.’
I nodded. I’d driven down that road. ‘Walking! Must have taken hours.’
‘Yeah, I was next to dead when I dragged in. I told Leo I was desperate. I’d do whatever he wanted. I just needed to lay low for a while.’
I’d seen Leo take big chances on people, put common wisdom aside because he believed they could be helped. I’d watched him listen and listen to tales that would have numbed me unconscious because he believed they covered a thread of wanting to ‘see.’ ‘So he let you stay?’
‘No, he did not! I begged, I cried, the whole array. He felt bad for me; I know that. But he said he could not have police issues there, that that would destroy the monastery.’
‘He turned you in?’ I asked, stunned.
‘No. He took me to the bus stop.’
‘And?’
‘I called an old boyfriend and stayed with him. The “look” and all, you know. He, the boyfriend, assumed, well, you know, he assumed what he wanted to believe … that giving him my body meant giving myself, you know? And then the cops found me and arrested me. I ended up in prison. He didn’t, but it ruined his career. And you can believe he didn’t write to me in prison!’
I leaned back against the wall. The rumble and buzz around the room suddenly seemed very loud. Margo was jabbing a finger at something on her table. A black-garbed, make-up-free assistant nodded like a bobble doll.
‘AA, when did you get out?
‘Eight days, three hours and’ – she glanced at her watch – ‘thirteen minutes ago. I didn’t expect Leo to put me up. He’d already told me there was nowhere for guests. I said I had a lead to a halfway place. When I got there it was disgusting.’
‘Couldn’t you stay with a friend?’
‘I didn’t know anyone but the guy who didn’t visit. He’d have been glad to have me, but he’d’ve figured I owed him night and day, you know? I might as well have stayed in my cell.
‘I was desperate to see Leo, this time, actually for some guidance. I said that, but who knows whether he believed me – the boyfriend, I mean. I was so dying to see Leo I showed up in the middle of the night and only a last-minute strike of decency kept me from pounding on the door. I just wanted to be able to hug him without guards leering. Without “Time’s up, Abernathy.” So now you know it all. Satisfied?’
Stunned. Sorry. And yet, I realized, not a whit closer to finding Leo. I told her that.
‘Still? He’s still gone? The cops haven’t found him?’
‘No. Grown man; room with no sign of struggle. Not going to be top priority. So, I’m asking you if you have any idea where he might be.’
She stood, looking as stunned as I had been. ‘Where he is? No. I barely know where I am in this city. Let me think about it. Maybe he said something. Yeah, let me go find some coffee and scour my brain.’
I could have reminded her there was coffee right here.
Instead I waited a couple minutes and followed her.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Aurelia took the long strides of the free. She’d definitely kept herself in shape in prison and now she was moving fast.
But she was no match for me, not with my weekly dance workout, the super stretch session, gymnastics, lift-and-sculpt, rope-and-wall climb and the occasional classes I take just in case I’m neglecting some movement or muscle group in some area of my body I’ve forgotten. Scarce as stunt gigs are I don’t plan to miss out because I can’t do a pinky lift or a back flip. Or, as required in a commercial that didn’t pan out, beat out a NFL running back. So I wasn’t even winded following Aurelia.
Where was she going? Not for coffee, that was certain. The production room was near the Embarcadero with its renovated piers, parks, cafes and take-out joints. I’d assumed she’d head there.
Instead, she hurried uphill back into the city.
Keeping up? No problem. Tailing without being spotted? A whole ’nother issue. She headed west on Broadway. Buildings rose from the edge of the sidewalk with few recessed doorways to whip into, and the street was morning-after empty. The wind off the Pacific snapped leaves and sent bits of paper flying. My hair swirled in my eyes. I f
ingered inside my pockets for a rubber band but when I surveyed the plunder in my hand I found only a penny, a dime and a tissue.
And Aurelia was gone! Vanished.
Did she really know where Leo was? Did that mean she’d kidnapped, or lured him out of the zendo? Based on this great bond of theirs after a couple of days’ meeting in Japan years ago? Or did that bond exist only in her mind? But there were prison visits. They could have been based on love, or as she said, kindness. What did I really know about her?
I stared at the spot where she’d been. Next to an alley. One of the many alleys in this area.
I knew this one. A dead end. I moved closer. Then I saw the doorway right beyond it, and through the store windows Aurelia. She was facing the door, back to the street, looking at her phone. Punching in a number. I edged closer. If she turned she’d be in my face.
But her attention was on the phone. ‘No!’ she snapped. ‘It’s got to be today, it’s got to be now!’
I held my breath and leaned closer.
‘Wherever you want. Look, I’m doing this as a favor to you. A big fucking favor.’
I could hear the grumble of a voice answering but there was no chance of making out words.
‘Look, I’m meeting you, coming to you; that’s what you’ve been after. You get to ask me your questions. You win!’
A meeting to answer questions?
‘Not that late,’ she was saying. ‘I’ve got prep to deal with. I’m doing a big stunt tomorrow.’
Really?
‘No! Never mind! Go wherever you want. But I’m going to be there in ten minutes.’
She clicked off so fast I had to jump for the alley. She shot across the street, skirting a motorcyclist. The driver flipped her the bird. If she noticed, she didn’t react but double-timed it on up the street. I trailed her on my side, watching for a chance to cross and not have squealing brakes proclaim my presence. She dashed across feeder streets, oblivious to shortcut drivers. The light turned against her at Columbus but she didn’t break stride. Horns blasted; fingers flew; one guy opened his window and yelled. I gave up worrying about her spotting me and focused on keeping her in sight while managing to survive.