by Susan Dunlap
Janice: ‘I got off at Cole and Carl like the map said, but I can’t tell where I am. I can’t even see the park from here. The last time I was in the Haight it sure didn’t look like this. It’s like the place got a whole new wardrobe. Excuse me! Excuse me, can you point me toward the park?’
Janice: ‘Where did you say Mike’s car was? Oh, never mind, there …’
Gracie: ‘Hi. Listen, have you heard from Janice? She was supposed to be here. We’re going to that Burmese place at Fourth and Clement, the one with that great salad. Yeah, I know Janice isn’t time-reliable, but I had to make a reservation and if we lose it, we’ll be eating at midnight. Call me.’
Gary: ‘Darce, Gracie just called me. She’s worried about Janice. I said I’d drive over and have a look. Where did you park my car? Call me.’
Gary: ‘Seriously, call me. I can’t find the car anywhere. Jeez, I just hope it hasn’t been boosted, stripped, headed for the border. Jeez. Are you using it? It’s OK if you are. Just let me know.’
John: ‘What the hell’s going on? Where are you? Did you take Gary’s Aston Martin? Do you know what that car’s worth? You scrape it and you could get your face lifted for less than the rehab. Call me, I’ll catch a ride and drive it back.’
John: ‘And where the hell is Mike? Why can’t he pick up his own car? And what … Sheesh, this family!’
Heather: ‘Darcy? You said to call you if we saw anything unusual. And, well, your car blew up. I mean, right across the street.’ It sounded like she was swallowing. I could hear clanging and sirens in the background and voices. ‘The police came and an ambulance. They took the driver out on a stretcher. The driver … I hate to say this, but do you think it was supposed to be you? Be careful.’
There were three more messages. My hand was shaking over the phone. I wanted to stay in this moment, in the safety of not knowing what I’d know in a minute. What I ninety percent knew now and couldn’t bear to believe.
Mom: ‘Darcy, honey, there’s been an explosion in the Haight. White car. Woman taken to the hospital. I’ve got to go. I … I just didn’t want you to hear this on the radio. Call me when you can.’
Leo: ‘Darcy, your sister Janice is in San Francisco General. She’s got burns on her legs and arms. They don’t know how bad it is. She was in the white Honda; there was an explosion. Your family’s all at the hospital. I’m heading there. Renzo’s driving me.
‘Darcy, where are you? Call me and let me know you’re all right before your family starts to wonder about you.’
Before, he meant, they were huddled in the waiting room, frantic for word on Janice, each of them working their sources, each of them being told it was too soon to know anything. Then their attention would turn to me. There’d be speculation on my whereabouts, why I hadn’t notified anyone I was leaving the city. And, though Leo wouldn’t know this yet, there’d be Gary wondering about his car.
I asked Janice to get the car.
She wouldn’t have been there, but for me.
Wouldn’t be in SF General, in the trauma unit, but for me.
Wouldn’t be – No! – maybe dying.
Because of me.
Because of Mike.
And me.
I just sat, suddenly aware of the icy air around me, the wind battering the windows. The dark dark.
I checked the last message.
John: ‘Just picked up your call.’ No recriminations, tone so deadened I wouldn’t have recognized his voice. He hadn’t even bothered to tell me to call him. That scared me more than all the other messages.
I clicked on Leo’s number and hit reply.
Nothing.
Damn. Leo would have given me facts without fuss. He’d tell me not to get caught in emotion. To acknowledge the guilt, the drenching fears without naming them, to not traipse along those mushy threads of thought. To just do the next thing.
I did the next thing. I called back Mom.
Nothing.
Shit! Was I out of range? How could that be? Maria had coverage up here. Why didn’t I? If I’d shelled out for a better plan … No. She had a need for it; I hadn’t expected to.
Now, for the first time, I looked at the time of those messages. Three hours ago. I was still on the coast road then. In and out of range, probably.
Three hours ago. Janice had been in the hospital for three hours. I could get an update from patient services. I could—
Out of range.
Three hours. She could be dying while I sat up here.
I turned on the engine.
Do the next thing.
I checked the mirrors.
Do the next thing.
I reached for the brake, but I knew as I did it that it was not the next thing. It was just a thing. The next thing was …? I could feel the dokusan room, Garson-roshi and me sitting cross-legged on zafus, the candle burning on the altar beside him, whiffs of incense floating in the air. Him saying, ‘What is the next thing? You know.’
Time was passing, I was desperate to be on the road. I …
I …
I was not essential to Janice now. In the flock of siblings, I might not even make the cut into her room. And she’d have Mom. My being with her was essential only to me.
I took a breath, sat in the silence, listening through the silence to the sounds in it, the wind, not steady but erratic like a volley of tennis balls hit by dozens of racquets. Trees snapping branches into each other. Leaves brushing, crackling.
I listened for what I didn’t hear – Maria and Santino pushing through the brush, hurrying back to my car.
Then I did the next thing.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I’d been worried when Maria got out, that she’d scrape the paint. Scrape the paint! Janice might be dying.
Lights out, I eased the car on the narrow road. The shoulder was the width of the car. I backed up against the brush, eased out, backed again, and on to the shoulder facing north. Santino had to be parked back along this road.
Where were they? Maria had been gone a long time. I had no real sense how long. Long enough for the world to change for the worse.
Had she just left me? Hooked up with Santino, walked down some path to his vehicle and driven off? Why not?
Or not even called Santino. Called someone. Some number. Talked to air. Walked down a path to somewhere? Called a friend and was on her way home?
Could she—
And what about Marcus? Why had he gotten out of the warm, safe car where I’d left him? To check on me? More likely to spy on Maria and me. To spy for Santino? Even more likely to take a leak. Was he trotting grouchily south along the side of that long finger of road? I could picture him, his too long brown hair blowing around like field grass, him swiping it uselessly out of his eyes and wrapping his red and black striped scarf tighter around his neck. He’d have tried calling Maria, and stomped on, cursing the lack of cell phone coverage.
I peered into the darkness, prepared to see his stubby figure trudging around the fingernail of the road and down toward me, panting. And all the while blaming me.
I rounded the nail and headed up the side of the finger, trying to figure how far it was to the place I’d left him. The road was so close to the edge there was barely room to pull over, much less make a turn. So I noticed the spot, slowed, squinting to see Marcus.
Which is how come I saw the truck at all.
The lights were off. I almost missed it pulling out a hundred yards away. Just a flash of taillights, engine not loud enough to drown out the wind. Driven with the bravado of one who knew the land, the roads, who had all the advantages.
Not likely! Stunt driver in an Aston Martin; no way that truck could lose me.
Gunshots aside.
I slowed till a curve separated us and cut my lights. Ahead the taillights flashed again. The truck was slowing, not as if it was about to turn, but enough to allow the driver to maneuver the familiar road in the dark. Even so he kept hitting the brakes. I kept following the taillights.<
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When the road rounded the next promontory and the land was briefly between us, I switched on my high beams, wide-viewed my gaze to take in the terrain, and to plant that picture over the blackness when I switched off the lights. I’d learned the trick early on doing a balance gag blind. See the ground and you’re fine. Close your eyes and you wobble. If you’re very good you hold position a minute, ninety seconds, before you flail like a ’copter with engine fail and crash. But keep the picture of the ground in your mind when your eyes are closed and you can last four or five minutes, which is plenty long enough for any director.
The road was leveling off; my wheels would catch a curve in a few feet. No shoulder. Curve sharp right. I inhaled as if to pull the terrain in through my pores, then switched off the lights.
The world was dead black. I couldn’t see the speedometer but I had to be doing double the sensible speed. Everything in my body screamed, Brake! At least slow down.
I felt the pull of the curve, stepped on the gas and rode it to the right. The picture in my mind didn’t go as far as around the corner. I squinted against the dark for the darker line that would be the trees and scrub, and let the engine slow. Ahead, taillights flashed. I shot a beam to them, like a surveyor, and hit the gas. The road sank fast. Like driving into a sock. If I hit the turn too late, I’d slam into the inner cliff wall. And bounce back and roll over the far edge down the rocky cliff into the sea. I wouldn’t have to worry about the car floating; I’d be dead by then.
I slowed.
The taillights came on ahead, so much higher they were like airplane lights. They stayed on. Good sign. The driver had been taking no chances on me following them, but now felt safe enough to use headlights.
I kept the gas steady – no telltale engine roar – and counted on the snapping of the trees to cover that sound. I was gaining, coming close enough to make out the bed in the back. A pickup. Not new. It was almost abreast a right-hand curve. I took a chance – drivers don’t look behind when they’re maneuvering a curve – hit the gas, and came within fifty feet of the bumper as he made the turn.
The truck was old, the seat a bench. No passenger. Driver only.
Who? Maria? Santino?
The truck veered into the high right-hand curve. The inside wall – dirt, sand, brush – curtained it. It could turn off any moment. I had to make a move.
I turned on the high beams. The sudden bright blinded me.
I didn’t see the sheriff’s car until it swung the curve and barely missed me as it sped down past me on the ocean side of the road. In the rearview I could see its flashers, suddenly on.
I slowed. A lot.
More flashers were coming at me. It rounded a curve, flashers going like Christmas. I doused the lights and pulled far right, right wheels off the pavement.
Boxy truck. Was it medics? Behind me now the sirens cut the wind.
Ahead was just the memory of lights. No new flashers.
No pickup truck.
I waited.
Fat lot of good.
The sheriff could be hightailing it to a citizen having a heart attack. To a woman who’d run out of gas. A boy who’d hit a tree. To a hot poker game in town. To any call he could get on his phone with greater range.
The pickup was gone. I spotted the skinniest of turnouts, cut sharp and followed the flashers.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The sheriff’s lights were still flashing, their cars pointed west toward the cliff. I pulled up by the struggling little star pine, where I’d sat with Grouch Marcus an hour ago, waiting for Maria to arrive. Now medics ran parallel to the road, ready to roll fast. Civilian vehicles bookended them. Impressive how fast the locals had caught the call. I slid up in front, ready to shoot onto the hardtop and head south.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked a young, blond guy, dressed like L.L.Bean meets 1970.
‘Floater.’
‘Someone’s dead down there, over the cliff?’ I said.
‘Yeah. Like I said, floater.’
‘Man? Woman?’
‘No word. They haven’t hooked the body out.’
I started toward the cliff. He caught my arm. ‘Roped off.’
‘There’s no crime-scene tape.’
‘That’s me.’
‘Human crime-scene tape?’ Maybe he was a civilian volunteer. Whatever. I wasn’t likely to get past. Not in a direct line. I pulled my inadequate cotton vest tighter around me and said, ‘So what do you guys think happened?’
‘Coulda been anything. Idiot walking in the dark. Tourist decides to make a call. Drops his phone, leans over to grab it. Kersplatt.’
I shivered. It was all too likely an explanation. Except that Maria or Santino would know better. Even Mike … ‘Any signs of a struggle?’
‘Edge of the cliff, there’s always a struggle. No one just trots over.’
Point taken.
I wished I could call John, ask him to pull strings, find some buddy who had a friend who knew a deputy up here.
Truth was, if I had been able to call John I wouldn’t have finished a sentence before he was haranguing me about ‘scenes of suspicion.’ Jesus, Darcy, don’t you remember anything? In a scene of suspicion when they start looking for perpetrators, the first one they grab is the stranger. Walk away. Get back in the car. Jesus, Darcy, are you driving Gary’s big-time lawyer car? Could you tempt these guys more? Get out of there. Just move. Jesus, Darcy!
Wise words, if not spoken as Father Murphy would have liked.
A pickup slammed to a stop in front of the Aston. There was still time for me to ease out of here. Two boys and a girl jumped out. ‘Hey, Jed, whadaya got?’
‘Floater,’ the blond, Jed, said.
‘Diver?’
‘Nah. In cloth.’
‘Isn’t it late for divers?’ I asked.
The four of them laughed. ‘Never too late to die in your wet suit,’ Jed said. ‘But this body isn’t in rubber. This floater didn’t get his hose caught thirty feet down and float up to the surface an hour later. This one fell.’
‘Or jumped?’
‘You’re not from here, are you?’ one of the truck boys asked.
I could hear John in my head. Jeez, Darcy, that’s right, throw off your cloak of safety. ‘I don’t know this spot,’ I said, hoping that would blur my status.
‘Cliff here juts out like ten feet down. You jump, you get yourself hooked.’
‘Hey, you know what “off the hook” is from?’ the girl put in. ‘From the old Mafia, like in the movies when they hung a stoolie on a meat hook. Off the hook, get it?’
They hooted. Even Jed, wavering between his official role and his adolescence.
‘So,’ I said, ‘does that mean he or—’ god forbid – ‘she was pushed?’
‘Guess so. Wow, that’s so creepy.’
‘Man? Woman? What do you think?’
‘Man, sure?’
‘A broad could take out another broad,’ one of the boys declared.
Could Maria shove Santino over the edge? If he didn’t see it coming? But of course these kids couldn’t know. And, really, neither did I. Had Marcus described Santino at all? No. I was dead sure of that. He probably assumed everyone who knew about Santino could recognize him. And if you couldn’t, then you had no business trying to get a picture of him. Old enough to have been smuggled ashore two decades ago, that was all Marcus had said. A man who could have been living here, intent on assimilating for twenty years; a man smart enough to be the supervisor of hitmen in a drug ring and know when to walk away; a man who had shot four people – four that we knew of – in San Francisco and had never been arrested. He must be a master of fitting in. He could have shoved Maria over the cliff and slipped into the crowd. Among his friends in the crowd. His long-term friends. The ones who’d moved up here in the last decade probably thought of him as Charlie, the old guy who raises sheepdogs or watches birds.
Was he big enough, strong enough to push Maria over the cliff? Or Mike? Mike who I
did not know was anywhere near here!
‘You want a brew?’ one of the boys was asking.
When hiding out in a crowd, scope out the pecking order. Don’t separate a couple; connect with the single. That from Mike. I scoped, sidled up next to the speaker, a tall, thin guy with dark shoulder-length hair as curly as my own.
Don’t be pushy; let him bring you in.
‘Yeah. You got any food?’
‘Nah. Should I make a run?’ He looked at Jed, who said, ‘You got time.’
I stepped back and waited to see if anyone was eager to go with him. No takers. The single! I copped a ride.
‘Darcy,’ I said.
‘Ephraim. Hi Dotty.’
At the Gas ‘n’ Gobble, I used the Hen’s, bought the biggest cling-wrapped sandwich on the counter, a Coke and a bottle of water. I could have downed the entire po’ boy on the ride back but I made myself wait. Eating is good cover. That from Mike. Don’t talk; listen, then agree. Nothing like agreement to make yourself fit in.
We pulled up at the scene, so close to the interior cliff wall I had to squeeze under the wheel to get out. The only thing that had changed was the temperature. Probably wasn’t ten degrees colder but it felt like it. I’d left the city in the afternoon wearing a T-shirt and a vest. This was wool country.
They’ll help you to fit in.
‘Cold,’ I muttered.
‘I got a blanket in the bed. You don’t mind dog hair.’
‘Hardly. I’ve got a dog of my own.’ I swallowed hard. Duffy! Only his innate pickiness and Mom’s devotion to spoiling him with her beef stew had saved him from the poison.
Ephraim’s dog was white. One who could have used a bath. I wrapped the blanket around me and was grateful. Doubly so when Ephraim’s friends assured him nothing had happened.
‘Floater,’ Jed said.
‘Huh?’ I prodded, biting off a corner of sandwich. It was all bread, but that was just fine.
‘Drowner, they pull out all stops to get him out, do CPR or whatever. Keep him alive. Floater’s already dead. No rush—’