by Susan Dunlap
“Why Renzo?”
“The long-haired guy in the group. He was Renzo’s son.”
CHAPTER 19
MY IMPRESSION was that Renzo’s Caffè was open from early morning till after dinner and that Renzo never left. But he sure wasn’t there now. Coincidence? It was too early to ask Jeffrey Hagstrom about him; his shop wouldn’t be open for hours. Leo wasn’t back either.
I needed time, and a safe space to make sense of what I’d learned about Tia Dru. Tia as part of a daredevil group, that was easy to imagine. Renzo’s son? Who knew? Maybe he lived in the city. I had my phone out to call information, but what was I going to say: Hi, Information, give me Renzo’s son? I didn’t even know Renzo’s last name. I also had to figure out what was going on with Leo’s whereabouts, the zendo knives, and why someone had tried to kill me! And Tia, it all came back to Tia. A cab rolled slowly down the street. I hailed it.
“Where to?”
“Around the block.”
“You have to do better than that, lady. Oh, it’s you. ‘Around the block.’ Of course it’d be you.”
“Just loop around a couple of blocks and up Columbus.”
“What is it with you? You think you need a passport to cross Market Street?”
“Hey, your meter’s running, drive!”
“Okay, okay. But listen, I’ve been looking for your guy but no joy!”
I was losing my mind.
“You know: the guy who looks like you.”
That cabbie! The big, round-faced guy I’d given the twenty and asked to keep a lookout for Eamon. How could he have avoided seeing Eamon? He must have spent the last two days in Oakland.
“Okay, okay. Listen, I’m still looking for your guy. I’ve been by your building back there every spare minute.”
“Really? What did you see?”
“Not him.”
“So, what else then for my twenty?”
He shot across Columbus into Chinatown, a traffic-clogged district no cabbie not aiming to pad his meter would enter. I braced my feet against the seat and tried to read him in the rearview mirror.
“Okay, so I wasn’t there every minute, but twenty bucks is nothing.”
“Fine, then, give it back.” I half expected him to toss a bill at me. But, apparently, it wasn’t that close to nothing.
“You know the street was blocked off because of the movie, right? So that was hours gone right there. Before that, around noon I made a pass by—it was going to be the first of a bunch—but Jeffrey hails me—”
“You know Jeffrey?”
“I went to his Barbary Coast lecture. Lot of cabbies do extra stuff like that. You let a fare know you can be like a guide and you can get a whole-day gig.”
If carting strangers around six hours was a good day for a not naturally friendly guy like him, he had to be living on the edge. It made me take another look in the mirror and see him a whole lot more clearly, and as one of my tribe. Movie companies were ever more squeezed for cash and the first place cuts came was on location sets. If it could be done in the studio against a blue sheet or with animation, the company saved tens of thousands in housing, food, equipment, salaries, and fees to cities. I had been very lucky to get the two gigs on Barbary, but that wasn’t going to be the norm. Soon I could be waiting tables or driving a taxi, too. “So, Jeffrey hails you and . . . ?”
“So he wants me to drive him to the Presidio, and then to Fort Point, and to Divisidero and Broadway. He says he’s testing the wind, like he wants to see where the wind goes, but that’s crazy. He had a couple of balloons, but what good is that? You let ’em go, and they go. You’re not somewhere else to catch them.”
“Maybe he was working with someone else.”
“Nah. He never called anyone. How would they know where to be? You ask me, he’s depressed. Guy’s depressed, what’s he do? Gets in his car and drives. City guy, cab’s the best he can do. The balloon thing, here’s what I think. He had balloons. Maybe he had an opening at his store and had some left over. So he grabs a few. It keeps me from asking how he is. Weirdo stuff in this city isn’t exactly a surprise, and any cabbie who’s hauled hack more than a day knows to just keep quiet and hope the nut’s got the fare.”
I nodded. I’d believed Jeffrey when he said he was Tia’s shoulder-to-cry-on. But that kind of intimacy can foster hope, even in a guy who knows better. If he nurtured hope, he had good reason to be depressed. But enough to slit her throat?
“Webb,” I said, reading his name from his hack license, “did Jeffrey ever say anything about Tia Dru?”
“The broad who got killed?”
My friend, who got killed, I wanted to say, but I wasn’t about to censor his comments. I swallowed my outrage and waited.
“Like what?”
“Like was he hot for her?”
Webb made a throaty noise I took for a laugh. “Well, yeah. Who wasn’t? But he wasn’t her type.”
I flashed on her at the reception, her disgust when Jeffrey refused to go into the tunnel. “Did you ever get the sense that he was trying to change to suit her, trying to be something more than he was?”
“If he could’ve, he would’ve, but, look, I like Jeff and all, but him with Tia Dru, that’d be like a mole with an Afghan hound.”
I felt bad about it, but I couldn’t stifle a laugh. It was the perfect description. “Here’s the odd thing, Webb. You know there’s a tunnel under the zendo?”
He nodded.
“Tia was thrilled at the idea of a tunnel when Jeffrey mentioned it. She couldn’t wait to get down there; she ran to the dark end, so fast she smacked into it. When Jeffrey said he wouldn’t go there, she was disgusted, but he still didn’t go. And yet, he pushed Eamon to buy the building because of the tunnel. Why—”
Webb shook his head. “You gotta give it to Jeff, he kept trying! He knew he was a mole, and he still kept hoping. He knew she’d leap at it. He got it for her.” He was watching my reaction in the rearview. I nodded slowly, and he mirrored it, larger and emphatic. He yanked the wheel right onto Broadway, and in a manic burst ran the light at Columbus, creating a roar of horns and hollers.
“Brilliant.”
Webb grinned as if I meant him, or maybe his driving. I let it stand.
“Hit Renzo’s again.”
Still riding his success, he yanked right and right again onto Pacific. As soon as we passed the zendo I spotted movement in Renzo’s. “Stop! Here!”
“Hey—”
I held out two twenties to forestall the familiar whine. “Come back in a quarter hour.”
“Hey, you’re not my only fare. What if—”
I was out of the cab and racing to the Caffè.
Renzo spotted me in time to brace the door. “Go away!” His long, narrow face that had seemed suavely serene now was lined with the sort of unstable emotions that could blow either way. He’d seen whom I was running out to chase.
“Renzo, I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
He didn’t move. On Columbus cars screeched away from the traffic light, sending a gust of cold, gritty air at me.
“I won’t ask you about your son. That blonde woman—I don’t even know her name—”
“Georgia.”
“Georgia told me he was involved with Tia and the dare group.”
His shoulders slumped. “‘D,’ that’s what they called it. Like they were so ‘in,’ they only needed a letter. ‘It’s a D thing,’ Marco’d say. There was no ‘T,’ no truth, just the dares, the bigger, more dangerous, more stupid the better. I bit my tongue. You’re going to say that’s not like me, but I did it that time. I knew better than to say, ‘If they told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that, Marco?’ Because I knew the answer.” He let go of the door and stepped back. “Maybe I should have. Maybe.”
I put a hand on his arm and nodded. I knew what it was like to have strangers poking the sore of grief from a son or a brother. I hated to be the one digging into the ever raw flesh. But I pressed. “I said I
wouldn’t ask—”
“Yeah, well, thanks.” He poured two cups of espresso.
I accepted one gratefully, taking a sip and willing it to sharpen my wits as I searched for a decent detour. Vaguely I wondered how many cups a day Renzo downed. “Jeffrey urged Eamon to buy the zendo building because he knew Tia’d be fascinated with the tunnel. You knew that, right?”
His hand tightened on the little cup. “I did.”
“She wanted it for D, right?”
His face went tight. For a moment I thought he was going to slam the cup down on the glass table, but he placed it on its saucer so slowly it made no sound. He squeezed his hands into fists and stared down at them as they trembled next to the cup. “I couldn’t stop it. I grabbed Eamon, gave him every argument I could come up with: property’s way overvalued here, no foot traffic, rats in the tunnel, attractive nuisance lawsuits. I said, ‘Eamon, you open that tunnel, someone’s going to get killed.’” He stopped abruptly as if he heard his prediction with the ears of a stranger.
“Jeffrey thought the tunnel would bring Tia to him, but it did the opposite,” I said, mulling aloud. “It threw her to Eamon. If she wanted—”
“There was no ‘want’ about it. Girl, you’re looking at D like a game. It wasn’t a game to these people; it was an addiction. And she was the worst. My son, he was in it for the high of running across the freeway, of swimming out into the Bay at midnight. He’d come home like he’d scored all the coke in Alameda County. But Tia, I kept in touch with her after the accident.” He squeezed his hands as if he couldn’t squeeze hard enough. “That’s how Marco met her. Here. If I had known, ever suspected—”
“But you didn’t, right?”
“No. How could I? Why would I?”
I took a sip of the espresso. There’s a distinct moment in the day when coffee turns sour on your tongue. “It wasn’t a game for Tia?”
“She had to do the dares. She had pain. She never told anyone about it, but I could see from how she walked, how careful she was where she put her foot down, how she sat. I could see it in how she braced her shoulders against the next stab of pain. She tried everything—never told people about that, either. She didn’t tell me, but I cared about her, I was rooting for her, hoping this therapy, this drug, this surgery, this healer, this exercise, something would stop the pain.”
I nodded. I understood all too well. “Being able to defeat the dares, that was what allowed her to beat back despair, right? Despite everything, she could still defeat fear—”
“For a while. I knew when she did one of them by how she was after. Not like Marco—not high, but calm, like things were in control again. The D’s, they were a drug to her.”
“It was more than that.” I knew Tia, too.
He nodded, slowly, sadly. “She lived for them, for the thrill of making the impossible hers.”
The ultimate orgasm, I thought, but did not say to Renzo as he sat looking down at his coffee. “It’s what allowed her to be her,” I concluded. He nodded. “Do you know what her dares were?”
“No. She never said, and I never let on I had any idea. But I do know this: I know what she planned to do with that tomb. The only question is whether she was going to seal someone in down there for hours or seal herself.”
The espresso tasted toxic, but I drank it anyway. I looked down at my hands on the cup and felt a huge wave of gratitude just to be able to see them in front of me.
Renzo opened his and laid them flat on the table. “I’ll tell you this, and it’d be true. If Tia had a key to that tunnel, she wouldn’t have been able to keep herself from going down. She’d climb down that ladder and pull the gates closed after her and stand in the dark for longer and longer until she died down there.”
I went cold all over. The thought of her . . . There was nothing to say and, somehow, neither of us could move.
Jeffrey’s plan was brilliant. The tunnel would draw Tia back here time after time. Premature burial was the ultimate fear. And every time she climbed out shaking, Jeffrey would be right there to comfort her. At any price, it would be money well spent, but clever Jeffrey, he hadn’t turned loose a dime of his own.
I didn’t mention that to Renzo either. We sat together in the timelessness of horror until, thankfully, a man in jeans and a leather jacket burst in demanding a triple, which he grabbed as soon as Renzo poured it, and was out the door with a speed that belied his need for caffeine.
“Renzo,” I said, standing up. “Georgia said there was an older man involved—older than your son, a guy with dark hair. Who is he?”
He was holding a cleaning rag. It fell out of his hand. “You don’t know?”
“Tell me.”
He shook his head. “You did me the favor of not prying off the scab about Marco. I can do this for you. I won’t say more.”
“What do you mean? You can’t leave it at that!”
“I can.”
“No, you cannot!”
“Look beneath the obvious.”
“Obvious as to what?”
A black-clad couple hurried in to the counter, followed by an under-dressed woman wrapping her arms around herself. I don’t give up, I postpone. I lived half a block away, I’d catch him later. “Look beneath the obvious!” Damn, I might as well be talking to Leo!
I went outside and was relieved to see the perpetually annoyed face of Webb Morratt, behind his running meter.
“Where to?”
I said the first thing that popped into my mind, “Romain Street,” the address of my dark-haired brother who’d been so seduced by Tia, my brother whom Renzo knew.
“Upper or Lower?”
I hadn’t been to this address, only knew it from Renzo. Who’d have thought there’d be an upper and lower? I pictured Gary. “Lower.”
So much for postponing.
Webb Morratt made a few locals-only turns and landed on Broadway headed west, crossed Van Ness into Pacific Heights, near where Tia had lived. He hung a left on Gough. “I had an early airport call this morning. I swung by your place after, and picked up the producer and that little stunt girl he’s hot for,” he said, as if there had been no break in our conversation.
“You mean Benton Stallworth?”
“Benton Stall-worth? Didn’t know his name before. Stallworth. Took them back up to the set.”
“Are you a screenwriter?”
“Nah. I was thinking if I could get on with one crew as a knowledgeable gofer, I might have a nice sideline going. But they’ve got Jeffrey for research. Maybe I should’ve pushed him off the bridge when I had a chance.” He pulled left onto Market Street, under the freeway, and past the Safeway.
In a couple of minutes we would be at Gary’s house. When I faced him I would need to be a lot clearer than I was now about him and Tia, and D. But something the cabbie said was jabbing at me. Benton Stallworth hot for Lori Okira? That wasn’t a news flash. She had sure been as petulant as a trophy lover. No, it wasn’t that. It was . . . “Oh, shit!”
“What’d I do? The light’s green.”
“Nothing. Not you. The woman with Benton Stallworth, did you say she’s a stunt double?”
“That’s what she said. Said it three times, like she was trying to explain to a slow learner. ‘I’m a stunt double, not an extra,’ that’s what she said. ‘I was hired to do stunts.’”
“Did she say why she wasn’t doing them, then?”
“Didn’t say. I don’t know why.”
But I did. No wonder she was so hostile to me. Now the chill on the set came clear. Second units are close-knit. Of course they resented one of their own being shoved aside for a stranger. The gags I’d done were doubling Ajiko Sakai, small, slight, and Asian. Lori Okira was Asian American. Makeup and camera angles can compensate for a lot. But even I had found it odd that I, a five-foot-six redhead, had been picked to double a slight woman not much over five feet tall. Of course, Lori had been the stunt double. Had she sabotaged my stair fall, or was it that the animosity of the
crew just made it possible for someone else to attack me?
“Where do you want out?”
“The brown house over there.” It didn’t matter, so I just pointed. I plucked another twenty from my wallet and waived the change. “Give me your cell number. I may need to get back from here.”
“At your command.”
I took the card. “Thanks, Webb.”
The wind snapped my hair as I climbed out. If Jeffrey had loosed a balloon here it would have sailed southeast across Noe Valley and the outer Mission District toward Candlestick Park. As Webb drove off I wrapped my fingers around the keys in my pocket. Gary’s keys—I’d forgotten to give them back last night.
There were two questions. How was I going to get my brother to tell me about a secret group devoted to extremely dangerous and sometimes illegal events? No sensible person would admit such knowledge, much less participation in it, certainly not an attorney. And there was the more pressing question: where did Gary live?
CHAPTER 20
THE WIND SNAPPED my hair against my face. The fog was gone, but the sky was only a dull blue and the wind was making me wish I hadn’t ditched the long coat I’d lived in back in New York. At the end of the street I crossed and started up the other side, looking for someone I could reasonably ask where my own brother lived.
I didn’t have to ask. Suddenly, in front of a gray stucco bungalow, I spotted a big, chartreuse, very tacky ceramic frog on a stake, a creature poised to leap for a ceramic fly. I smiled. Mike had given it to Gary when he started law school and it had achieved mascot status. But I didn’t quite know what to make of its display in a spot where it could be stolen, vandalized, or scorned. For form’s sake, I rang the bell, then opened the screen door, and started trying keys. How many times had Gary grinned at that kitschy frog? Like John, Gary hadn’t forgotten Mike. How could I have imagined they would? The key turned stiffly and I pushed the door open.