by Susan Dunlap
“She’s my sister; I’m certainly not—”
“Yeah, right. Forget it. If you don’t hear from me, I’ll be in jail.” I clicked off.
I eyed the brown silk slacks I’d been planning to wear. Maybe I’d better go with something sturdier now. Black chinos, black jacket, black T-shirt, pale green scarf. Shoes that could leave Higgins in the dust.
I opened my door and found Leo in the hallway between our rooms.
“Coffee?” he said, extending a paper cup and sitting down on the top step. There was no way to refuse to join him short of leaping down three stairs. For an instant I thought he’d overheard my snapfest with John. But that wasn’t what he was waiting to discuss. “I was truthful with the inspector.”
Truthful meant responding honestly, but not blurting out everything you knew or suspected. “So, what else?”
“I gave her all I knew.”
Uh-oh. “Did you? How’d Guthrie seem when he talked about returning the item? Nervous? Relieved?” Hard as it was for me to picture, I added, “Scared?”
“Curious.”
I smiled. “I can believe that. I first met Guthrie doing a car gag adapted from Yakima Canutt’s classic one in Stagecoach, where he’s trying to stop the horses, runs out over their backs, appears to fall down between the first team and then works his way back underneath all three teams and the stagecoach, climbs up and over, and saves the day.”
“Live at full speed?”
“Oh, yeah. Stagecoach was 1939. Now there’d be parts they could blue screen and a lot of animation they could slip in. But even for animation, there has to be some template to draw from. They need to know what the real stunt should look like. And Guthrie, when they wanted a similar gag in a car chase in a Duesenberg, he made it work.”
“Surely cars are more reliable than horses.”
“Also lower to the ground. He had to figure out how to jimmy the Dues’s suspension without screwing up the handling and wrecking the car. The guy who tried before him ended the day in traction. Guthrie told me later he starts with the idea that it’s going to work; he’s just got to figure out how.”
“Hmm.”
I shot him a glance. One of the very appealing things about my teacher is that he always gives you his full attention. It’s his practice. But he sure wasn’t focused on me now. “Leo?”
“This is how Guthrie was,” he said, as if we’d been discussing “this” all along, “like Seijo coming back into her father’s house. She already knew she wasn’t going to get bawled out. The way had been prepared for her. She walked in not knowing what would happen but having been given the feeling it would be surprising in a good way.”
“Because for Seijo meeting her father was incidental on the way to seeing her other self?”
“Exactly.”
“Because,” I mused, “what Guthrie had to do was an event already concluded in his mind on the way to the important one.”
“And that was?”
“Talking to John, I assume. He wanted to see his sister, give her some warning that he was going to go to the police about what he’d done. Maybe he wanted her to get him a lawyer. Maybe he just wanted to say goodbye because he was”—my breath caught—“going to jail. Maybe he wanted to give her some family heirloom he had with him before he turned himself in. Ah . . . return it. That makes sense.”
He just shook his head.
“But here’s the thing, Leo, the state that Seijo was in as she ran past her father to the thing that she cared about—her other self—that state was lovely for her, but it must’ve infuriated her father. Even if he was stunned for the moment, pretty soon he’d have been offended about her leaving her comatose self for him to care for all that time. Plus, if there’d been talk about calling the police, no one in Seijo’s family would have been happy.”
“All you know is that he wanted to return something and seemed calm. Don’t create delusion.”
“You mean extra delusion?”
“Right. At least stay within the realm of the default state.”
I reached for my coffee and realized it was empty. “The thing is, my whole relationship with Guthrie may be a delusion.”
Leo nodded. He meant that since we all see people through our own eyes, how could it be otherwise? He was talking absolute.
I was thinking relative. “Guthrie works in illusion within illusion. In the fiction of movies and within the illusion of stunts. But it’s not just that; stuntmen have their own schticks. Mr. Tough, Mr. Ready, Mr. Don’t-Feel-Pain. So even what guys on the set see isn’t reality. If Higgins goes stomping in there, she’s not going to get anything. And she will, as cops say, contaminate the scene. Guthrie lives in a truck—”
“When you see him.”
That stopped me. “Right, when I see him.” I stood up.
“You’re leaving?”
“I may not be back till tomorrow.”
“Should I ask where you’re going?”
“Not hardly.”
12
THE HOUSE WAS two tall stories with a peaked tile roof and decorative masonry around the edging. The paint hadn’t peeled but rather faded into a paleness that forced me to look twice to imagine its original pink color. It had the look of a place let go as much as possible without arousing the neighbors.
I’d found the exact address online and had walked from the zendo, assuming I’d come up with a plan of action on the way. But au contraire. It was nearly noon. The fog was thinning, promising it would lift within the hour. People were staring up at the Greco-Roman temple, shooting pictures, strolling toward the lagoon, tramping over the spot where Guthrie died as if it was just mere grass. The whole thing undid me more than I could have imagined.
I pushed the bell but couldn’t hear it ring inside. Then I banged on the door like a bill collector. And, finally, when a woman opened it, I said the worst possible thing: “You’re Guthrie’s sister?” It was virtually an accusation.
“And who are you?”
“His friend. A close friend.” I waited for her reaction. She really was nothing like him. She was short, thin to emaciation. Everything about her just looked dried out—skin, eyes, long dark hair.
“I’m Gabriella,” she muttered.
What was I doing? I could feel my face flush. “Listen, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like that. I’m just, just—I’m so undone by all this, Guthrie dying, here, like he did.”
Her tiny body stiffened; she looked even more unnerved.
I put a hand on the doorjamb. “I was his friend! Tell me about him.”
“I told the police. I identified his body. What more do you want?” Her hand tightened on the door. She’d only opened it a third of the way and she looked like it was fifty-fifty whether she’d slam it without realizing my hand was still there.
“I want—I need—to know who he was. I mean, as close as we were, I figured there’d be years to ask the unimportant questions, like rocky road or pistachio? But then, all of a sudden, he’s dead and . . . Please!” How could he end up dead here? Edgy as she already was, I needed to start with something easier. “What was he like growing up?”
Her expression didn’t change.
Too broad a question? “What sports did he play in school?”
“Sports?”
“Football, baseball? Did he run track? Race cars, motorcycles?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. He was older; I was a kid. I don’t know what he did; he was just gone.”
“He’s your older brother?” Looking at her, I sure wouldn’t have guessed it. Over her shoulder I could see a pile of newspapers, magazines, mail interspersed with clothing. She hadn’t even left the house to take out the recycling. I eased to the side, trying to see farther into the house. Was this the single spot of clutter, or was the whole place crammed with papers ceiling to floor? Was that why Guthrie never mentioned her? “What kind of kid was he? Was he a brat? Did he—”
“He was just an older brother!” Her h
and tightened on the door. “Look, I haven’t seen him since before the earthquake.”
“The Loma Prieta? You haven’t seen Guthrie since 1989?” I could barely believe it.
“No. No calls, no letters. I would have thought he’d been killed in the earthquake—I would have been worried to death—if it hadn’t been for the Highway Patrol. Pulled him over for speeding in Marin the day after. You want to know how I know? Because he didn’t bother to pay the ticket. I was so furious. He was lucky he didn’t come back then.”
“Kids do that kind of thing.”
She shook her head. “Damon was twenty-eight. A speeding ticket’s hundreds of dollars, and he just blew it off. So, yeah, I hadn’t seen him till . . . till the morgue.”
“Till he came here the day before, you mean. He was coming to give you something. He told me that.”
She looked up suspiciously. “Give me what?”
“Return something, that’s what he said—return.”
“Return something to me? I can’t imagine that. Returning things wasn’t Damon’s strong suit.”
“Huh? No wait, don’t shut the door. I’m asking because, listen, I know him. He’s been gone and you haven’t seen him, but I have. Don’t you care what happened to him in all that time?”
She pulled back. She didn’t look curious, but instead afraid to find out what he’d done. Finally, she said, “It doesn’t matter because he never came here.”
“But I followed him here, to this corner on Saturday. He was going to meet me across the street the morning he died. I found his body.”
“Then he must have still had whatever it was you think he was going to give me, because I never saw my brother.”
“But he came here! That night, the day before his body was found. You had to—”
All of a sudden I saw things as she must have. “Omigod, I am so, so sorry. I can’t even imagine—so many years he was gone, and now to know he came back, he was right here on your doorstep and you missed him. He died without your seeing him at all! That’s so awful!” If Mike were dead and I had missed my one chance—No wonder she was so undone. Instinctively, impulsively, I reached out to her.
“Get away from me! I can’t go on with this. First he just leaves, leaves me to deal with everything. And now all this.”
I grabbed the door. “He grew up here, right?”
She looked terrified.
I didn’t care. “Let me see his room.”
“No! No, I’m not letting you in to see anything. Let go of my door.”
“Wait, I’m the only person you know who cared about him . . . Or maybe I’m not. Do you have sisters, other brothers? Are your parents still here? Other relatives? Who were his friends? Give me their names and I’ll leave you be. Or one, just one person to tell me about him. You’re his sister; you have to know someone!”
“People move.”
“But parents, sisters—”
“It was only us two.”
“Just one name! Now that I know he grew up here, I can check his yearbook and track down friends. My brother’s a cop so he’ll have resources, but that’ll all take time and—”
“Okay. Okay. Pernell Tancarro. I’ll call him. Wait here.”
I pulled my hand back just in time before she slammed the door.
Pernell Tancarro? Why was that name familiar?
A six-foot wall surrounded the grounds on both sides of the walk. I hoisted myself and peered over. The yard was a field of weeds. It looked like she hadn’t considered mowing since he’d left. As I lowered myself back down I shot a glance across the street and noted the patrol car waiting. In the back of my mind I’d planned on being invited inside, on taking tea and talking of Guthrie, holding my position till the patrol shift changed. Now I was going to have to come up with another escape route.
I moved closer to the street and hoisted myself high up on the fence on the other side of the walk. The yard on this side of the walk was a different world from the mess I’d just seen. It was a garden with potted geraniums and a camellia bush in the corner by the street. Surely there would be a gate in the back, leading somewhere. I leaned in, took my time peering toward the back. Let the cop wonder if I’d make my exit from the side or back. If he took the bait and drove around the corner, I could sprint across the street into the park and vanish—all perfectly legal. Or, if I could get Gabriella’s friend to let me go through the house or the yard somehow, better yet.
I dropped back down on the path.
A hand grabbed my shoulder.
13
“WHAT THE HELL are you doing?” A man pulled me off the fence from behind.
I turned, shoving free of his hands. I was expecting to be face to face with an enforcer, but what I found was a solid guy with dark hair gone gray around the temples and a pissed-off expression. “I’m trying to find out about Gabriella Guthrie’s brother.”
“Behind the fence?”
“Touché. Look, Guthrie was murdered across the street from her house and she’s carrying on like ‘so what?’”
“There’s plenty here besides her house—the park where he played as a kid, the temple pillars where grass, and who knows what all, was sold. There could be people on the next blocks he knew. Lots of connections beside a sister who hasn’t seen him since the earthquake.”
“If you’re Tancarro, you’re the only one she gave me. She said you’d tell me about him. How could he be here less than a day and end up dead?”
“I don’t know! Look, I’ve barely thought about anything else since I saw the police over there. I haven’t seen him in twenty years, and . . . He was gone for so long, he was nothing but a memory and then, suddenly, he’s here again, but dead. It’s unbelievable.” He stood, slowing shaking his head. “Tell me again who you are?”
“Darcy Lott. And you’re Pernell Tancarro, the poet! We read you in high school. I’ve been out of the loop a lot since, but I remember you’re a native San Franciscan, right?”
“Fourth generation.”
“And you’re still writing?”
He hesitated a moment. “My focus has changed. I enable others. On the board of the Arts Commission, the museum, the Palace of Fine Arts, of course. But about Damon, we were no more than friends of convenience, neighbor kids. There were years we’d barely nod in the street.”
“What about other friends—”
“Gone. Houses sold and resold. If I weren’t on the neighborhood committee, I’d hardly know anyone here but Gabi.”
“So, there’s no one for me to ask but you—or her. Look, I found him lying there with his nose smashed in and his head—” I had to swallow hard to keep from losing it.
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Sure. Of course I’ll tell you what I know, but just be prepared that it’s not much and definitely not recent.”
With that hand he was steering me along the path onto the sidewalk. Across the street the patrol officer started his engine—ready to hustle me down to headquarters to explain to Higgins? I moved a bit closer to my new friend, the neighborhood committeeman.
“Growing up, Gabi was smart, focused, hard-working—Little Miss Perfect. Damon was a fuckup.”
Was he talking about the same people? Gabriella was Little Miss Perfect? And Guthrie a fuckup? I would never have believed that before last Friday on the set. But now I had to wonder. “Like how? What was his most recent escapade?”
“Hmm. Well, the year before the quake, he and I, and a couple of other guys spent too much time in the bars on Union Street. We’d already carried out some pretty dark deeds.”
Dark deeds? What was this, high school? “Such as?”
“One time we broke into a neighbor’s basement and lifted his porn collection.”
Junior high! “And the guy went public?”
“Worse. We were in our late twenties—way too old for that kind of shit. He called my father. ‘This is San Francisco,’ he told him, ‘people don’t care about porn, but burglary—they care plenty.’”
“Dead. Both parents. Died a couple years before. Car went off the road on Route 1 somewhere around Big Sur. Shot over the cliff. It was awful.”
“Omigod! Poor Guthrie!” Without thinking, I reached out for him.
“How’d he take it? I mean, was that the cause of this second adolescence?
That he couldn’t focus? Or did it—”
“Poor Gabriella! She just about fell apart. But him, no,” he said, in a tone of disgust. “Suddenly, he was totally focused. He had one goal and that was to get his inheritance. Their parents left Gabi in control of everything. The porn thing was probably just to embarrass her. He just about drove her crazy—well, the truth is he did drive her crazy. He called day and night till she never answered the phone at all. He’d bang on the door, peer in the windows, everything but pop up through the toilet. By the end of a year she was so undone she put those wretched bars on the basement windows, double-paned the rest of the windows, and walled off the fireplace. Paneled over it and the bookcases in the living room—pine paneling from a rec room in some tacky suburb. Then she got those blackout curtains. I told her the house is so dark at night, people’ll think it’s empty. But she’s beyond listening.”
“Why didn’t she call the police?”
“What, and sully the Guthrie name? Not likely. Her parents expected her to take care of her brother. Naught is so potent as the dictates of the dead!” He shrugged. “She’d never have gone public, not if it hurt the family image.”
Never do anything to hurt the family. I sure knew that one. “Why didn’t you—”
“Hey, I do have my own life! Besides, I didn’t know what-all was going on back then.” He’d been walking slowly and now, at the corner, he paused. He had to live close by, but clearly he no more intended to invite me in than Gabriella had.
“I just can’t believe Guthrie was like that! You knew him years ago, and people change . . .” I was thinking aloud and Tancarro seemed fine with that. “And he did feel really guilty about something—”