by Susan Dunlap
“Did you call me? I didn’t get any message. Did you leave a message?”
He inhaled slowly and spoke very slowly. “Yes, I left a message.”
I pulled out my phone.
“I called the zendo.”
“The zendo! Oh, Leo, I haven’t been there except for morning zazen. I slept at Mom’s. I had a four A.M. call this morning. I just made it to the morning sitting. I never thought to check your phone there.”
He laughed. He could have been watching Revenge of the Pink Panther, chuckling at the miscalculations of Inspector Clouseau. Whatever he had been holding back was gone. “It hasn’t been bad here. Being an abbot gives a prisoner a certain cachet. I’m leading a zazen group tomorrow. By the time I’m out we may have a few new members.”
“I’ll call Gary. He’ll get them to lower your bail.”
“No.”
“He won’t mind.”
“No! I’m okay here. I’m doing some good. Bail’s an unnecessary expense. What you need to be doing is whatever helps find Tia’s killer.” He had a way of squeezing his eyes for an instant so that you wondered if he really had been about to give you a conspiratorial smile, but then caught himself just in time. “You do have a surprising knack for investigating.”
I nodded. “I’d better, Leo, because this is bad.”
He looked at me as if to say: things are as they are, merely that. Don’t make more of them.
“Tia was stabbed in your room, with the zendo knife, the one for trimming the candles.”
“We don’t lock up the altar supplies. They’re right in the hall closet. Anyone who opened the door would see the open box. It means nothing.”
“To you, it means zip. To the police it’s your knife. Police look for means, motive, and main chance. You had the main chance because it’s your room she was killed in.”
“And motive?” he said, with infuriating equanimity.
“They’re hot on the trail of it. They’re not going to need much. This is very serious. There’ve been a lot of scandals involving the SFPD; they could use some good press. Solving a high-profile murder in three days would burnish their image big-time. Leo, they can’t find Jeffrey, but they’ve got you; they’re looking to get enough evidence to take to the D.A. They’re looking for motive. Detective Korematsu hinted that you knew Tia before yesterday.”
“Oh yes. That’s why she came up to my room.”
We could have been in parallel universes—him calmly announcing he had invited a woman to his room where she was stabbed to death. Me trying to make some sense of this man I knew so well and not at all. Six months ago I hadn’t been aware of his existence. Three months ago I was stranded at a monastery trying to protect him from a murderer, while he, just as calmly, focused not on fears but on facts. He had an uncanny ability to see through to the core of an issue, while ignoring the fruit and the skin. It was a skill that engendered deep love and overwhelming frustration. I took a breath and tried to control the latter. “Tell me what happened.”
“If I know Tia, she figured she’d come up, see how I was living now, and surprise me.”
“You’re surmising, right? But, Leo, what did happen?”
“Right. Things as they are.” One of those Zen truths Leo kept coming back to in lectures. Things are what they are, no more than that; the rest is just unreal thoughts. “I saw Tia at the reception, but there was no chance to talk, not with all the flurry about the tunnel. There was just a moment for her to squeeze my arm and say, ‘Later.’ I rather thought that later meant later that night, but then when she left with Eamon, I remembered how quickly things change for Tia.” He squeezed his eyes in that almost-smile.
“Were you and she—”
“An ‘item’?” Now he did smile. “Once, almost. A nice almost.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a long story, but we’ve got time.”
“No, we don’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, there is no time. Every hour that passes they’re building a case against you.”
He exhaled slowly and I watched his shoulders sink, his chest relax, his hazel eyes sink inward. But when he focused on me, his brow furrowed with concern. “You know, Darcy, there are things in my past. One of them is alcohol. I met Tia at a retreat. I can’t even remember who or what was in charge, but the program was a week long. The place was isolated, though nothing like Redwood Canyon Monastery. It was in the Sierras, a couple of miles from a tiny town.”
“You were there to dry out?”
“No, I’d had to do that before. This program was to help you focus on your life, you know the kind of thing. The participants weren’t all alcoholics, or all anything. We didn’t know what brought the others there. We must have had meetings, but I don’t remember. What I remember is Tia.”
“Why was she there?”
“Like I told you, no one had to say. And Tia never did talk about her past. If I’d let her she would have focused on me entirely, when we were together. But that was the last thing I wanted. I was playing the same game. Once we realized that, the game shifted to gaming the system.” He grinned. “Of course it was childish. It was a waste of whoever’s money and time, and ours. But, what can I say? We—particularly Tia—were pleasant, cooperative, and the people in charge ended the week viewing us as successes. But Tia was a master at breaking rules, thinking fast and not getting caught, charming her way out if she did get caught, and ending up with whatever it was she wanted—which in our case was vodka. I still don’t know the details of how she managed that. The nearby town was only a post office and gas station. But we watched the sun set with a bottle every night—Belvedere, Stolichnaya, Chopin, Grey Goose.”
“But you weren’t lovers?” It was an impertinent question to ask one’s teacher, but I couldn’t stop myself. And Korematsu would certainly be asking.
“She was too fragile; I knew better. Maybe it was the vodka—of course, it was the vodka—but we eased off not talking about ourselves. Tia didn’t say much; mostly she spoke of dealing with the limitations from her mashed-up pelvis, handling the pain and the fear of pain, and her spurts of desperation. I don’t know what I said, but by the end of the week she had me believing that I was worth talking to, that I’d helped her deal with the pain. I left there feeling that maybe I could still become a Zen priest. I hadn’t even realized that that was my question.”
She left him the way she’d left every boyfriend. “Did you see her again?”
“No. First, I needed to dry out again, and that took a lot longer than I’d deluded myself into assuming. Afterwards, I was in the city some. I could have called, but the moment was over. It wouldn’t have translated into coffee or a movie. The first time I saw her since the retreat was at the reception.”
“But Korematsu knew you knew her.”
“I told him.”
What else had he told him! I knew the answer all too well; he had answered every one of Korematsu’s questions with the truth. Korematsu would respect him, all the way to the gallows. It was foolhardy to be so open, I could tell him that, but he would smile and remind me about the precept of Right Speech. I would remind him about death, and he’d say, Death is another part of life. Inadequate fear of death has its drawbacks.
“So, Leo, then what happened when Tia was killed? I called you from my cell phone when I was running back from her flat, after lunch, after I’d looked all over her neighborhood for her and given up. That was late in the afternoon. When I got to our block of Pacific, the police had barricaded it for the movie. I ran into Robin, the second unit director; he was all excited about seeing the tunnel and so I showed it to him. By the time I got out of the tunnel it was too late to race into zazen—”
“Shouldn’t race into the zendo.”
“What?” I felt like a running dog yanked back by his collar.
“You shouldn’t race into the zendo. You are like the bell. You don’t ring the bell when people are still settling in for zazen, wiggling on their cushions, adjus
ting jackets. Then the bell would be just one more distraction. Instead you wait until everyone is still, then you ring the bell. The bell rings into silence. It brings the people into silence within themselves. When the bell rings that way, it is clear that the ring, the ringer, the hearers are one.”
“Yes.”
“Same with you. Do your wiggling around outside. Walk to your cushion in silence.” He paused till I looked at him and nodded, then he grinned. “But you were asking me . . . ?”
Our talk here shifted from the aura of intimacy of a dokusan room, where a candle burned and incense cut the air, back to the police interview room where our every word probably was not being taped to use against Leo—probably. I was half here, half desperately trying to figure out what to do next. Leo sat here in the endless moment while I jolted ahead in time—his time—which was short. “Where were you? I went upstairs to wait for you, but you weren’t at zazen at all. Tia was dead. Why weren’t you at zazen? What happened after I called you? I need to know.”
“I got a phone call.”
“From?”
He hesitated, and just as I was about to make the case again for dokusan not being legally privileged discourse and the urgency of our situation, he said, “There were sirens in the background. Panting, a lot of other noise. All I could make out was ‘Jeffrey’ and ‘Golden Gate.’” I ran—ran—to the corner. Luckily there was a cab there.”
“Luckily, indeed.”
“The night before, I saw Tia dismiss Jeffrey and leave with Eamon. It surprised—shocked—me. I hadn’t been undone by her. But only because I had my practice and I wasn’t battered around by every thought. I missed her, I ached, but I felt those aches, I saw my thoughts as thoughts. I made a point not to let myself be dragged into a great drama. But Darcy, that was after years of zazen, an entire year in Japan. Jeffrey isn’t me. He doesn’t have anything to fall back on. Not yet. Maybe if his Barbary Coast history lectures take off he will. But now all he has is the hole Tia left.”
“The hole between the past and the future?”
Leo shrugged. “Hope is the enemy of now. When hope is so strong, reality doesn’t matter. You can see why I dropped everything and caught the first cab out there.”
“What did you find?”
“Nothing. It took me over an hour to be sure. I walked across the bridge to Marin, checked out the parking area, asked people looking across the water at the city, then I walked back and checked the approach to the bridge. It was dark by then. If there were any sirens they were long gone. Then I had to catch a cab back, which meant I had to walk back to the Presidio, find a phone, and call, because cabs don’t circle around out there.”
“And the cabbie who drove you out was gone?”
“He had fares to get. I couldn’t afford to have him wait. By the time I got back to the zendo, it was almost ten. No one was there but the police. They were waiting for me.”
“How could they arrest you? You had an alibi!”
“So I told them, but I was asking people about Jeffrey; I wasn’t asking for their names. It was dark and cold out there. No one was focusing on me. Someone might remember me, but I have no way of finding them.”
“But the cab,” I said desperately. “Taxi drivers keep records of fares.”
“That’s the most damning thing of all. There is no record.”
“Leo, do you remember what the cab driver looked like?”
The big bald guy he described might not have been Webb Morratt. Crows might not fly. I told him Webb Morratt’s tale of driving Jeffrey around town to let loose balloons, and how Webb broke into Gary’s house and drove me from Jeffrey’s old house to his new flat. “The first morning I was in town, on a set on Broadway, as soon as I finished—and you remember how early that was, barely dawn—I caught a cab, a cab that was waiting at that hour by the set, and took it to the zendo. The driver was Webb Morratt. The guy’s in the middle of everything. But the question is, who the hell is he?”
Leo just shook his head, not that his lack of answer mattered because at that moment the guard opened the door, and our time was up.
“Just one more minute. Really, one,” I begged.
He pointed to his watch and shut the door.
“Leo, did Tia ever mention dares? A group that seeks out the most frightening dares?”
He leaned back, as if to let a memory flow gently into his mind.
Outside, the guard’s watch was ticking.
“No.”
“No? What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“She didn’t mention it. She specifically avoided mentioning. She asked me three or four times, at the retreat, if I could keep a secret. She meant if I would keep a secret, and I said no. I wouldn’t make that commitment in ignorance. She gave me broad hints. She wanted to tell me more. Maybe I should have agreed, but refusing gave me power and I was still into liking that. And with Tia, I knew if I didn’t keep some authority, something in reserve, it would be easy to be swept away. Even Jeffrey knows that.”
“Did she mention anyone else involved in the dares?”
He leaned back a bit more, shifting the chair to the point of instability. If he tipped over, the guard would be in here in a flash and that’d be it for this interview! “No one specifically. But the impression I got was there were people all over the country, a loose network. It was almost like a religion, or a cult. They didn’t share money, but they were expected to finance their own ‘events,’ as she called them. Money was an issue for her.”
“If she had a very desirable site, like the tunnel, then she could sort of rent it out, right? Or swap it for other dares? It would increase her status in the group.”
“I don’t know enough to say.”
But I did.
CHAPTER 25
THE HALL OF JUSTICE is not in a safe neighborhood. Jails so rarely are. Dusk had come and gone. The wind had picked up. I was still in a sweater and loose pants, garments two seasons short of adequate for this winter night. My sleeves and pants flapped in the wind, creating an extra-cold backlash. Cars, trucks, and enough SUVs to add a degree to global warming whipped by. Not one cab! I dialed Webb Morratt. The suspiciously omnipresent Morratt didn’t answer.
A horn blared.
Had I misjudged Webb?
No. A bright red Mini Cooper screeched across four lanes of traffic to the curb. “Give you a lift?” Korematsu asked.
“Do you think brains gave out in my family after the sixth kid?”
“I’m off duty.”
“Good for you.”
“Get in. This isn’t a good neighborhood to be standing around in.”
“It’s not a good neighborhood to get in a car with a dangerous man.”
He pushed open the passenger door. “Listen, we’re on the same side here. I want to help you.”
“Fine. Release Leo.”
“I’d like to. Give me a reason.”
“You’ve interviewed him. Surely you don’t believe he’s a murderer.”
He started to speak but caught himself and his silence inflated all my fears about Leo. Leo had the means. Opportunity walked into his room. All that the cops needed was a motive—a melodrama of renewed romantic anguish and long-suppressed revenge would be plenty.
Still, Korematsu’d been waiting for me, which meant he might be open to other possibilities. I swung into the car. “Take me to Jeffrey Hagstrom’s shop.”
“We’ve had a uniform on the shop since morning, you know.” He pulled out and cut across two lanes.
“Of course, you’ve searched it.”
He didn’t answer. Which meant yes.
“No suspicious vials or little bottles?”
He didn’t answer that either, not that I’d have expected it. Mostly I was thinking aloud and he was happy to listen in. The answer was no. If he’d found any hint of the toxin Jeffrey had procured for Tia, he wouldn’t be tooling around listening to me.
He veered back into the middle lane of Bryant and I exhaled slowly. Ev
en in light traffic there were a million dangers lurking. I’d done the setup for a car gag on a street like this, choreographed trucks backing into lanes, motorcyclists whipping between cars, cyclits jaywalking their bikes, old ladies collapsing in crosswalks, kids running out between cars, and projectiles of all descriptions shooting off every flat spot. If I had to be in this car with Korematsu, I just wished I could say: let me drive.
“You still want to go to Pacific Ave?”
“Let me think. Jeffrey wasn’t in his new place or his old one, so where else would he be?”
He focused on the road. I was the anxious one here, desperate to find some lead that would clear Leo. All Korematsu had to do was wait. The angrier I got, the better his chances. Seeing that didn’t calm me down, not hardly.
“What do you know about Webb Morratt—cabbie—shaved head? He’s spent more time with Jeffrey than most, drove him around for hours a few days ago. He was waiting for Leo right before Tia was killed. I’ve had first dates who are less attentive. Run a make on him. See who’s bankrolling him. Find him, he’s our best lead to Jeffrey.”
He slowed, hung a left on the Embarcadero.
“Do you have a better lead? Why are you waiting?”
He looked straight ahead, pressed his teeth together between parted lips. Finally, he said, “Morratt’s strange all right, but Darcy, he’s got nothing to do with Tia Dru. He’s just on your case. Not that that’s not a problem. You could ask your brother—”
“Why would I do that?” I stiffened and assessed his face for a quickly controlled twitch of glee or some more subtle eye shift. I wasn’t going to like his reply.
He clicked his teeth slowly, lowers against uppers. “Morratt’s in John’s stable.”
“What does that mean? He’s a snitch?”
“He doesn’t have connections worth ratting on. He’s just a guy out for a buck. John uses him, for off-the-book things.”
“Like?” I snapped.
“Hey, I’m sorry. He’s your brother.”
“He is my brother. Just what are you accusing him of?”