Hungry Ghosts (20 page)

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?

C
HAPTER
20

T
HE 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.

It's odd to see your brother's house for the first time. Gary had either lived at home or at school, or I'd been away from San Francisco. His occupying an entire house surprised me, even a small square one like this. The place was a Victorian, but a very modest one with a central hallway separating a twelve-foot-square living room and slightly larger kitchen from
bedroom, bath, and a sliver for an office. From the front door I could have done two cartwheels and been out the back. The living room was spare: red sofa and two black leather chairs around a craftsman table, a place where friends could eat and drink and not worry. The bedroom was almost filled with an overlarge double bed under a tumble of sheets and blankets that suggested Gary was having great nights or terrible ones. I was so tempted to crawl in, just for an hour. If he came home he'd never know I was there.

But I had to find out if Gary was the one Renzo couldn't bring himself to reveal. Logically Gary'd keep nothing at all connected to D. But when you've conquered the ultimate fear, maybe more than once, wouldn't you want a memento? Climbers atop Everest know every moment's delay increases the odds of their death, and still they stop to take snapshots. Surely, Gary would have a piece of freeway median, a strand of Golden Gate Bridge cable, something. He would have it, but not in sight. Not in the living room, but tucked away in his office where a guest wouldn't go.

I opened the office door and almost gave up. A large desk faced the window, and deep shelves came out from the opposite wall so that there was just room for him to roll the chair back and put his feet up. Or there would have been room had the floor, desk, and every shelf not been covered with stacks of papers, books, folders. Had Mom ever seen this? She would have been so gratified; it was exactly what she had predicted.

I cleared a file off the chair and sat, trying to put myself in Gary's place and think where he would keep a memento. It could be any size, any shape, a screw, a note, anything. I mulled the question.

I was asleep! I shook myself awake and made myself stand up as I rooted through the files in the right-hand desk drawer and then the left. With such limited space, it made sense that it wouldn't be there in a place of current importance. The shelves held plastic milk crates crammed with files. The ones on the floor and lower shelf were labeled with name and number.
The middle shelf—shoulder high for the sitter—was awash with papers. I started at one side and leafed through, hunting for anything not on letter-head or legal pleading paper. After twenty minutes, I conceded defeat.

Above were the heavy cardboard bankers' boxes favored by lawyers for storage. Gary had labeled them in magic marker. On the eye-level shelf were taxes, bills, and boxes with names I didn't recognize. On the top shelf, above my head in this high-ceilinged Victorian, was Dru . . . Dru . . . The whole shelf contained records of Tia!

The lawyer who got Tia that very fine settlement was Gary! The boxes were dated—three years of them. Three years was a long time for a lawyer to have a case he didn't get paid for until the settlement, a case he'd have to front money for court fees, experts, perhaps doctors. Did he do it because he was half in love with Tia from the start? He'd been an associate with a big firm back then, one that didn't handle accidents. So he'd have done this case entirely on his own, which meant on his own time after his seventy-hour week.

Like almost everyone in the stunt world, I had worked many part-time jobs, some of them temping in law offices. A plaintiff who leaps cable cars does not have a good case. Eight boxes. Gary hadn't sloughed off; he must have tried every angle known to law. He would have been battling batteries of insurance lawyers with deep pockets and slews of assistants. They would have buried him with interrogatories, demands for production of documents and things, requests for physical exams, requests for mental exams, and motions up the wazoo. How had he pulled it off?