Hungry Ghosts

by Susan Dunlap

  The guy would have to be a saint not to relish John Lott’s sister with a corpse in the next room and blood all over her shoes.

  Again I looked him in the eye, and said, “Detective, I am a police detective’s sister. My brother joined the force when I was four years old. You, of all people, know how opinionated he is about police behavior, and about the stupid things civilians do in the face of the police. Can you imagine if I were to kill someone, I’d leave bloody footprints and then call you?”

  For the first time, he smiled. He said, “We’ll talk about that at the station.”

  I waited till I caught his eye. “I don’t think so.”

  CHAPTER 12

  I HATED to have to summon one of my big brothers, but, dammit, Korematsu was not going to haul me to the Central or whichever station he worked out of and leave me twiddling in an interrogation booth. Possession is nine-tenths of the law and I was damned if I was going to be possessed. I pulled out my phone and called Gary. He said exactly what I could have scripted for him: Why didn’t you call me immediately! Korematsu!! Don’t say another word, not to him, not to me!!! Korematsu! Shit! Not a word, even about why that bastard is there!!!

  I sat silently. Korematsu stood silently, with the expression of one who’s swallowed a hot coal of fury. I wanted to say: Tia is dead in the next room, and the big issue here is your petty feud with my brother! Or: Why would I kill Tia! I was happy to see her; she was going to make my return to San Francisco fun. I figured today’s lunch would be the first of many, that we’d talk about old times, but more that she was my friend.

  How could I have imagined she’d walk off the way Mike had or, worse, that she might ever end up dead? The parallel chilled me. She was so entwined with Mike in my mind. But she wasn’t dead because of Mike. She had her own life, had had it for years, and something in that sprang up to slice her throat. I shivered and suddenly I couldn’t stop shivering. The horror of it washed over me like her blood all over Leo’s floor. Sweat, icy now, coated my skin. My clothes were meant to cool the body, not warm it. I was remembering Tia in her long skirt swinging her body into her living room chair with a bravado that covered her pain, or almost.

  Korematsu shifted. Without moving my head I could see him through my eyelashes, his forehead wrinkled, his brows peaked over his dark eyes. He looked toward the closet, seemed to reconsider, glanced toward a shawl hanging out of my not-yet-unpacked suitcase, hesitated. I sat unmoving, waiting, in this still moment of suspended investigation, this oddly intimate moment.

  My phone rang. I just about tossed it across the room. Gary said: “Tell Korematsu to let me through his damned cordon! No wait, let me tell him. Hand him the phone.”

  I did, and waited while Gary handed his phone to the cop outside.

  Korematsu stared down at me. “Your brother! What are you, a twelve-year-old?” He handed back the phone, his fingers brushing mine.

  “No, I’m not.” I held his gaze, and my response shifted to a near-tease. The moment, the very inappropriate moment lingered, and promised. I was almost glad when the heavy door banged open downstairs and Gary’s feet pounded up the stairs, and the question of who would look away first vanished.

  “You okay, Darcy? Has he threatened you? Intimidated, touched you in any way?”

  Korematsu only looked at him coldly and stepped out into the hall, calling for a subordinate to bring a notebook. He held it out to Gary. “Ask your client to list her activities today, by the minute, with names and addresses of corroborators.” Then he was gone, leaving a uniform to watch us.

  My brother stood holding the pad, looking as stunned as I had. He bore no relation to Mr. Take No Prisoners on the phone. He was staring beyond the uniform into Leo’s room at Tia’s body. “Oh, Gary, I’m so sorry. Did you know Ti—?”

  “Rabbits!”

  I stopped instantly, heeding our old ritual of warning our siblings of approaching parents or John. Gary looked like he’d taken a medicine ball in the gut. His eyes wrinkled up; for a moment I thought he was going to cry. Of course he didn’t want the cops to know he’d known Tia. And I was horrified that I’d damned near fallen into Korematsu’s trap, forgetting there was a uniform outside. It was such an old cop trick.

  I followed my brother’s gaze back to Tia’s body. Eight hours ago she’d made me lunch; now she was lying in the next room with her throat slashed. It was like parallel universes, as if I had stepped through a crack into the wrong one.

  I was glad to have this clerical task to focus on. I thought it would be done in ten minutes, but it took much longer, even recording the easy stuff:

  Sat zazen with Leo Garson and one stranger: 6:45–7:20. Who was that man who looked like he’d chosen the zendo as a place to keep warm until the Caffè opened up?

  Gym 8:00 to 10:30. Not long enough to keep in stunt shape.

  Walked to Tia’s: 11:30–noon.

  Each memory settled in the lap of my mind, wanting to be examined. And then there was the time at her flat before I realized Tia was gone, and the time after, both of which I needed to account for in ways other than the truth. At some point Gary stood in the hall and watched the activity in Leo’s room. At some later point I realized he was really just staring at Tia’s body, staring in a way one does not at an acquaintance but at a friend or lover. When I reached Called Leo Garson while running around the Broadway Tunnel ~ 5:00 P.M., Gary dropped down beside me on my futon. His face was pasty. I hardly recognized him like this.

  “Darce, how can she be—”

  “Rabbits!”

  “—dead like this. I just can’t—”

  “Rabbits, dammit! Rabbits!”

  “—believe—”

  “Shut up! Just shut up, dammit!” I slapped him as hard as I could.

  “Hey, what’s going on in here?” the uniform demanded.

  “Call Korematsu. We’re leaving.” I stood up. Gary never was very limber, even as a teenager, and now he braced both hands against the wall to leverage himself up. Korematsu was in the doorway in what seemed like seconds. I handed him the pad. “It’s the best I can do. I’m through here.”

  I thought he would threaten interrogation, arrest, but he glanced from me to Gary and said, “I could keep you a lot longer. Just promise me you won’t leave town.” He paused, then added, “Swear on the Buddha.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m serious. This is a Buddhist temple. Swear on the Buddha.”

  The man really was serious. I didn’t know whether to be insulted or teased. But it was the time for neither. “Okay,” I said. “I promise to stay inside the city limits, Detective. I could swear on the Buddha, but this is a Zen Buddhist temple. The Buddha is not a god; the statue downstairs is a lovely piece of art but not a holy relic, and the historical Buddha himself was merely a man who realized how to live. Buddha nature is essentially awareness of life, nothing mystical. If I was going to leave town I would swear on the Buddha, hail a cab to the airport, and not think twice about it. But I won’t because—”

  “It would look bad for your brother, the other one,” Korematsu said so automatically I shot a glance at Gary to see what Korematsu was referencing. But either Gary was still dazed or he had enough sense to rabbits himself.

  I brushed past Gary, grabbing his hand to steer him to the stairs without making his condition any more noticeable. After Korematsu’s comment, I was sure word of Gary’s disintegration would be fast-tracked to John and all John’s enemies. “It’s like living in a village,” I grumbled as we hit the street. “An icy, socked-in village.”

  San Francisco fog is ridiculous. It’s like stage smoke gone wild. I glanced at my watch but could barely read the face. 8:15 P.M. Only just dinnertime, and streetlights were gray blobs, the storefronts across Pacific nonexistent. Fog hung off lampposts like Christmas tree snow. There had to have been heavy wind earlier to move this blanket in, but now the air was dead still and cold, like we were wearing wet wool coats with wet scarves.

  “Where’d you
park?”

  “Across the street.”

  “There’s no car there.”

  Gary came to life. He charged across the empty street, his black hair flying out behind him. “God dammit, that asshole Korematsu had me towed!”

  I caught up to him on the curb. “Because you’re John’s brother?”

  “Why else!”

  “Red zone, fire hydrant?”

  “You don’t get towed from a crime scene for parking infractions.”

  I shook my head. “This isn’t a village; it’s a preschool. Gary, are you still driving the same car, the big black barrister bucket?”

  “Yeah.” I remembered now that Grace, who had coined the description, had said he was not amused.

  “Where were you when you got my call?”

  “Uh, Tadish’s.”

  “Uh-huh.” Tadish’s Grill, a long-term San Francisco standard for fish and good drinks, was a few blocks to the south, in downtown.

  “So you valet parked.”

  “Oh, right,” he said in the sheepish tone that had allowed him to keep secretaries and paralegals and, for longer than he might have, three wives. The tone had never worked on John, and Gary’s success with Mom and Dad and Katy and Janice drove John crazy. In John’s eyes, Gary was an infuriating joke our parents had perpetrated on him.

  “Okay, you’re buying me dinner. Plus a stiff drink before.”

  “I never thought otherwise,” he said, which meant that he hadn’t thought about it at all.

  But when we got there, Gary surprised me. He said to the maître d’, “Can I still claim my reservation? It was for seven. I had an emergency.”

  The maître d’ nodded, showing that he, too, knew Gary. He led us through the waiting crowd to a wood-paneled booth.

  “I thought they never took reservations,” I hissed.

  Gary just smiled. But it was a weak smile that reflected his shock. He rapped the bell on the table and when a waiter arrived, he ordered us martinis.

  “Gary,” I said after the drinks came and we’d both had the kind of swallow that rockets down, assuring you things are not as bad as they seem, “you’ve seen dead bodies before, right?”

  “Yeah. But not people I know.” He now took a long, too easy swallow of gin, and I wondered how much lucid time I had with him. “Yeah, I’ve come across a couple of bodies, but then they’re the problem, you know, and I have to figure out my client’s response. But this . . . Tia . . .”

  “Tell me about Tia.”

  “You know her.”

  “Not the way you do,” I said, not knowing what that way was.

  “Tia.” His eyes half shut as he caressed her name.

  “What was she like to date?”

  He held the glass in both hands and looked into it as if it were a pool of memories. “Like winning the lottery, at least in the beginning. Every moment was exciting. She knew everyone, but she had this way—and I saw it from the other side later—of waving to people that acknowledged them enough to maintain working relations, while she squeezed my arm or whispered something out of the side of her mouth to me. It was a skill. I tried it but,” he shrugged, “not me.”

  I wanted to cover Gary’s hand with mine. Instead, I looked into my glass, sipped my drink, and didn’t insert myself into his memory. “Winning the lottery . . .” I prompted.

  “You know how I am about my work. Workaholic! All my wives complained. They were right, but that’s the way it is in the law when you’re going up against the best. Okay, I know it’s maddening to be the one who ends up eating alone, canceling stuff with people, waiting for hours after your guy swore the third time he’d be right there.”

  “But Tia . . . ?”

  “Tia . . .” He took another long swallow and the warmth of the gin spread across his face.

  I took a sip of my drink. Two couples—a white-haired man in a long camel coat, a sturdy blonde woman dislodging a cashmere scarf, and two younger men, one of whom was probably their son and the other his partner—settled in the next booth.

  “Tia,” he caressed her name again. “We planned nothing ahead. I just called on the fly. That’s the way she wanted it. Like when the other side got a continuance and suddenly I had two free days. I called at five. By eight we were on our way to Hawaii. In the morning we woke up with the waves off our lanai. It was like we were the last two people in paradise. We never saw a soul. But meals arrived; everything we needed was there. And Tia was a temptress in b—” Crimson spread over Gary’s face.

  “Forgot I’m your little sister, right?”

  He swallowed the rest of his drink and rang the bell for the waiter. “Should’ve rabbits that last sentence.”

  I laughed.

  “But it wasn’t just long weekends, and wasn’t just the sex. If I had two hours for dinner, she knew somewhere new and perfect. Going into the office late meant a morning like . . .” he smiled and I didn’t ask. “Even a phone call; it was never the expected. She was game for anything; nothing frightened her. Or if it did, that just made her do it. A double dare. Plus, she always left me smiling.”

  “And what did you do for her?”

  “Grace asked me that, and not as nicely, either. I paid, I was a respectable escort, and I appreciated every single thing.”

  The waiter arrived with a fresh martini, though Gary hadn’t put in the order. He eyed the untouched menus. “We have Oregon clams.”

  Gary smiled. “Sautéed, then. Trust me, Darce. Allard only deals in the best.”

  I nodded and the waiter headed off. In his wake a wave of noise—laughter, talk, ice jangling, forks hitting china—washed over us, as if to remind us of our good fortune at having this booth. “So, Gary, I have to ask you, why did it end?”

  He put down his glass, leaving his hand on it, finger circling on the sweating surface. “I don’t know. Truth is, I didn’t take it in for a while. I mean, it was over in her mind weeks, maybe months, before I added up the number of times I’d called and she didn’t have time for dinner or even a weekend, or I just got no answer.”

  “Were you devastated, furious, humiliated?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. See, I was too busy. I had just gone solo and I was breaking in a new secretary and discovering I needed three paralegals instead of the one I thought I was getting by with before. I hadn’t realized how much support I got from the firm. But on my own everything was a crisis and took more time and I needed to focus a lot more—”

  “Just as Tia planned, right?”

  “Huh?”

  “She gave you the push to go solo, and then when you did, you were too busy to notice she wasn’t there. You were happy with your new business. You couldn’t be too upset about her after she’d made you do what you really wanted. And you didn’t have time to wallow, right?”

  “Yeah. But it’s not like I never thought about her. I just didn’t have time . . . well, like you said.”

  As if to save Gary further explanation the clams arrived, big luscious disks piled beside thick French fries. I forked one while the waiter was still setting down Gary’s plate, dipped it in the tartar sauce, bit into it, and nodded serious approval. The waiter came as close to a smile as the white-aproned curmudgeons here permitted themselves. “Gary,” I said after the second clam, “what did Tia tell you about Mike?”

  He chewed more slowly, as if masticating my question. He put down his fork. “This may have been Tia’s biggest gift as a friend: she never asked ‘the question.’ You’ve kept away from here so you don’t have to deal with it, but every time any of us in the family makes a new friend, we just wait for ‘the question.’ We can pretty much judge what kind of friend they’ll be by how long they hold off. Sometimes it’s ‘Have you ever heard anything more from Mike?’ or ‘What do you think really happened to him?’ Then there are the guys after a few drinks who lean in close and whisper, ‘You know he’s dead, right?’ or the ones who ask whether it was Dad who abused him or us o
r Mom who didn’t care enough or—”

  “Jeez, Gary, stop!” Mom, who had been so grief-stricken after Mike’s disappearance she either couldn’t mention his name or couldn’t stop talking about him—how could anyone dare to question her love? I wiped my napkin hard across my face to keep from bursting into tears. “I haven’t come back here because I couldn’t,” I said slowly. “I couldn’t face being reminded of Mike every time I turned a corner. Every time I saw a guy like—”

  “Eamon.”

  “You know Eamon?”

  “Of course. How could he be in San Francisco without any of us spotting him?”

  I almost laughed. “Of course. I was just so shocked when I saw him. He must have thought I was nuts.”

  “Nah, he’s used to family reactions. At first we were put off by him not keeping away, but he’s become like a pet. Even though it’s a jolt every time I see him, he’s sanding the sharp edges. Even Mom’s accepted him; she treats him like a nephew.”

  “Tia left the reception with him last night.”

  “Hmm.” Gary forked his last clam and dipped it in sauce. He was thinking of Tia, and so was I. “Gary, when you questioned Tia after John did, early on, did she tell you anything?”

  “Only that she had seen Mike at a party where there was liquor and grass, the kind of things that seem sophisticated to a sixteen-year-old.”

  “John said she was a liar.”

  “To him, yeah. You know, John can bring that out in people.”

  “But you don’t think—”

  “If she is, she’s very good.”

  I didn’t correct his use of the present tense. “So what did she say about Mike? In all the time you were with her, you had to have discussed him.”