Gia in the City of the Dead Page 7

It was the little old lady from the second floor with a plate of steaming egg rolls. When I opened the door, she thrust the food at me, patting my arm and smiling. Before I could say a word, she had turned and skittered down the stairs. I wolfed all eight of the egg rolls down within minutes. I couldn’t remember when anything had tasted so good.

  After I’d been living in the T.L. for nearly three weeks, I woke up one morning and realized that I’d nearly run out of the massive amounts of food that had been stocked in the cupboards.

  I pulled my hair back in a baseball cap, dressed in baggy clothes and sneakers and headed out. It was my lazy man’s disguise. Like I said, nobody in his or her right mind would ever think the Italian Princess would go slumming in the Tenderloin. Not the girl who’d drop thousands of dollars at Saks Fifth Avenue during the day and spend her nights guzzling top-shelf booze at the finest bars in town.

  Despite this, I felt right at home with the kind of people who lived in the T.L. The funny part is that only the tourists think the Tenderloin is the most dangerous part of the city. Any San Francisco cop will tell you it’s Hunter’s Point. I heard that in the 90s, city bus drivers had police escorts when they ventured into that neighborhood. I don’t know if it’s true or not. If you had any street smarts whatsoever, the T.L. wasn’t all that bad.

  On this day, strolling through the Tenderloin square with a canvas tote bag full of food, groups of winos huddled, eyeing me as they took long pulls off bottles peeking out of paper bags. The homeless men blended into one gray-brown mass of dingy, ill-fitting clothes. But one guy stood out. He was a skinny crankster with pockmarked pale skin and crazed eyes wearing an oversized Army jacket. He was trying to get an emaciated dog to stop eating out of a fast food bag.

  “I tole you to knock that shit off,” he said and grabbed the dog’s muzzle and shook it. The dog whimpered in pain. When the man let go, the dog tried to run away, the whites of its eyes looking back frightened at the man. The man jerked violently on the rope tied to the dog’s collar, dragging the dog on its side back to him.

  I kept walking.

  The warrior does not walk around life looking for battle or an excuse to demonstrate strength or superiority. The warrior knows that there is a fine line between being a warrior and being a bully.

  Then the man kicked the dog in the side, making the animal howl in pain.

  The warrior stands up for those who are weak, for the innocent, for the vulnerable.

  I stopped a few feet away. Without turning around, I closed my eyes and said, “Leave the dog alone.”

  “What did you say, bitch?”

  I turned around and met the man’s eyes. “Leave the dog alone.”

  “What? Like this?” He aimed his boot at the dog’s head. Before the kick connected, I had the man on the ground, my forearm against his neck, pushing down until he was sputtering for breath. I stared at him and he glared back. There was not a glimmer of humanity in those eyes.

  Before I got up, I unwrapped the rope from around his arm and gathered the dog up against my chest. It must have weighed forty pounds, but I stood above the man, holding the dog, my tote bag, and watching as he clutched at his throat, gasping for air.

  “You don’t deserve this dog. You barely deserve to be alive.”

  BACK IN MY APARTMENT, I wadded up a blanket on the floor near my bed and gently laid the dog on it. It was some type of mutt that looked like it was part lab and maybe pit bull. I got out my first aid kit and dabbed some antiseptic ointment on some of the more obvious cuts. The dog shivered and licked at its wounds, the whites of its eyes looking up at me gratefully.

  I opened up a can of chili and poured it in a bowl. The dog greedily gulped it up and looked at me for more. By ransacking my new groceries, I managed to add some tuna fish to the bounty. The dog also gulped that down. Later, I’d tackle giving it a bath.

  The dog was awfully cute, but a small feeling of regret crept into me. I didn’t want the responsibility of taking care of something else. I’d proven how irresponsible I was even keeping a plant alive at my old place. That’s one reason I’d never had a dog or other pet before. I didn’t want some other living thing to be dependent on me. I had a hard-enough time taking care of myself and I definitely didn’t like having anything around that needed something from me. And pets had needs. And schedules. They needed to eat and poop and be exercised. I didn’t like having to be home at a certain time to feed or walk a pet. But now I guess I’d have to get used to it.

  I made vegetable stir fry with my stash of fresh food and flipped through the paper. There it was. An obituary for Christopher. Three weeks after his death. I suppose my godfather had arranged it, which surprised me.

  The obit said very little, mainly talking about my parents, but it did say Christopher’s funeral was scheduled for later this week. It would be too dangerous to attend. My godfather would have all his henchmen on the lookout for me, I was sure. Maybe that’s why he’d submitted the obit — maybe as a trap to lure me to Monterey. Well, it wasn’t going to work.

  But something in me wanted to say my own goodbye to my brother. Maybe for my mother’s sake. I’d figure out a way to do so. I’d do it for her.

  TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTOPHER’S funeral, I made my plans, getting the dog set up for my absence.

  I’d decided to name him Django after he thumped his tail approvingly when I repeatedly played a Django Reinhardt song on my phone one night. I kept the door to the roof propped open and trained him to head up there to do his business. But I knew he needed to be walked. I’d start doing that as soon as I got back from Monterey.

  I piled a large dish with food and set about eight giant bowls full of water in case he knocked a few over and left the lid to the toilet open just in case that didn’t work. I’d only be in Monterey for the day. I knew he’d be fine. He was like me—a survivor.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE MAN AT THE RENTAL car agency didn’t blink when I paid cash and handed over an I.D. saying my name was Nancy Johnson. He walked me through the inspection of the low-profile four-door sedan quickly because I told him I was running late. I’d dressed like a businesswoman in slacks and a white blouse with sensible shoes I’d bought at Marshall’s on the way there, changing in the store’s bathroom. My hair was in a bun and I had big Elvis Costello-style black glasses and little pearl studs in my ears.

  I yacked about this laser eye surgery convention I was attending in Monterey that weekend and how excited I was. I knew it was overkill. But my plan was to operate as if I were a fugitive from the law. Anything less could mean my godfather and his wide web of cronies would be on to me. I knew my godfather well enough to suspect he was devoting all his manpower to finding me. Hopefully they were all looking in Costa Rica.

  I parked the rental car a few blocks away and walked toward the water. It was the perfect time to find my godfather starting his regular Saturday morning bocce ball game near Fisherman’s Wharf. He didn’t play anymore, just sat in his wheelchair and exchanged friendly insults with his friends.

  This morning, the crowds in the Custom House Plaza square near the bocce courts were fierce, shoulder-to-shoulder. When I was growing up, I remember hearing that the population on the Monterey Peninsula doubled on weekends from all the tourists. In my family, that meant we stuck to our Pebble Beach compound on the weekends, saving our outings for midweek. But today I welcomed the crowds as I blended into them. Even better, today the artichoke festival was going on in the square adjacent to the bocce courts.

  Live bands, bouncy houses for kids, food booths. I stopped to buy a churro, looking over at the courts. There was my godfather, smoking a cigar and joshing with his old Italian buddies. His nurse was sitting nearby. The game hadn’t started yet. Once it had, I knew my godfather wouldn’t be back to his home for at least two hours. After the game, the old timers always went to have lunch and drinks at nearby Jack’s restaurant in the Portola Hotel.

  That was the real relaxation period. The men would drink wine a
nd eat oysters or pasta with scallops. The game itself was actually business disguised as pleasure. Multi-million-dollar business deals were made on that court. The Sicilians in Monterey had a code of honor that didn’t require a handshake. Men knew better than to break any deal brokered on the bocce ball courts. Not if they wanted their families to stay safe.

  It made me wonder if my parents’ death was a hit, a contract murder, that my godfather had arranged. Not that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind before. The only reason I didn’t jump on that theory right away is that usually mob hits are obvious — the gangsters I knew left calling cards, like cutting someone’s tongue out who had talked too much. Part of the power of the mob was the fear they could instill in the toughest man, so a hit without a calling card would be considered a waste of time.

  I ordered an Americano from a coffee stand and planted myself at a café table between some buildings with a great view of the bocce courts. A wave of sadness washed over me as I watched my godfather laughing with his friends. I pushed the sorrow down into a dark hidden place inside. I had no time to love someone who didn’t love me. There was no room for any more sadness in my heart. My grief, my sorrow, was reserved exclusively for my parents who loved me until the day they died.

  I watched and waited for about fifteen minutes and then figured it was safe to leave.

  I PARKED ON THE NEXT street over from my godfather’s Carmel house and climbed the fence into the backyard. When I was little, I’d often stayed overnight in the back bedroom. Then, when I was a teenager, I would stay at my godfather’s when my parents were out of the country. One night, I’d jerry-rigged the window so I could sneak out and meet a bunch of friends heading to a bonfire in Big Sur. That became my routine when I was a teen staying with Vito. I figured he never knew about it and therefore, had never fixed the window. I was right.

  I removed the nail from the jamb and slid the window open. I got a grease spot on my slacks clambering inside and smacked my elbow hard when I landed on the floor. The bedroom was still decorated in the pink and greens my godfather had arranged for me when I was little. His office was only a few feet away.

  In his office, the giant wooden desk took up the entire center of the room. It was made from an old door, a remnant of the days before he had money. My godfather once told me it helped him remember where he came from. But the rest of the room was sumptuous with Tiffany lamps, plush leather furniture and walls lined with bookshelves full of first editions.

  His desktop computer was impregnable. I half-heartedly tried a few random passwords. It wasn’t the first time in my life I wished I was a hacker. After a few minutes, I gave up on the computer and started rifling through the papers on top of his big desk. Boring. All business stuff for my father’s seafood business.

  There was one bill that seemed unusual. It was a late notice saying that payment had never been made to a supplier. The bill was for one hundred thousand. Something that wouldn’t make a dent in the corporation’s bank account. Was the company in financial trouble or was Vito’s memory slipping?

  I kept flipping through the papers. A thick folder was labeled BAY VIEW DEVELOPMENT. It contained information about some business deal up in San Francisco. So far, my father’s seafood business dealings had stuck to the Monterey Peninsula. I skimmed it. From what I could piece together, my godfather was trying to develop a chunk of land in the Sunset district. Or rather, the seafood corporation, with its real estate arm, which Vito now had taken over, was proposing the development.

  The Sunset District was bordered on the north by Golden Gate Park. Ocean Beach makes up its western border. From what I could glean, the company wanted to develop high-end, mixed-use condominiums in this location.

  It sounded like the ground floor would be upscale shops, such as Tiffany & Co., Louis Vuitton, and Armani. The six floors above would hold luxury, 2,500-square-foot condominiums with sweeping views of the ocean.

  As I read on, it looked like the project had a major roadblock.

  A woman owned a house smack dab in the middle of the proposed development and was refusing to sell. My father’s company had bought up all the surrounding houses and already demolished them, leaving this woman and her house an island in the middle of a pile of dirt.

  The development wouldn’t happen if the property owner, a woman named Jessica Stark, refused to sell her home and land. It looked like someone had jumped the gun and bought everything before they had a deal with the most important property owner.

  She obviously had a good reason to hold out, I thought as I flipped through the notes because Vito had offered her a million dollars for her tiny, 1950s home and she had refused.

  I knew if my father were alive, he would have let it go. He would rather lose a million dollars than ruin someone’s life. I flipped through papers looking at the dates. The first mention of the deal was when my father was alive. But somewhere along the way, the project had stalled. Probably when Stark refused to sell.

  However, it looked like recently, new city permits were pulled and the project was going full bore again.

  Something about this deal felt really wrong. For starters, my father would roll over in his grave that his company was trying to force Ms. Stark out of her home. He always said people and families came first.

  But there was something else that rubbed me wrong. I stared at the paperwork trying to figure it out. Something just below the surface, a niggling thought, a memory I couldn’t quite grasp, told me this was a bad deal, but I didn’t know why. I’d sleep on it. I’d put my brain to work at night remembering just why this deal set off alarms in my head.

  I put the papers back in order. I’d let my subconscious work on it.

  My Budo training had taught me the value of this.

  Honing combat skills is the path to perfecting the self and maintaining the ancestral spirit and mind of the warrior. Once trained, the mind of a warrior has the ability to recall everything through deep meditation that the physical body once experienced and viewed.

  Next, I flipped through the file folders in his drawers. Nothing stuck out at me as suspicious. After about forty minutes, I slipped out the back and left.

  By the time I got to the funeral home our family had used for fifty years, dusk was falling and the Monterey Peninsula’s sky was glowing pink and orange. I pulled into the parking lost just as the owner, Federico Montero, was locking the door of the building. He paused when he saw me and then took off his hat.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Santella, for your loss.”

  “Thanks Mr. Montero. I know you’re leaving, but is there any chance I can see him?”

  He unlocked the door without a word and gestured for me to enter. He locked the door behind us and led me through the darkened rooms to a stairway to the basement. “I just finished up. I’m moving him upstairs in the morning for the viewing tomorrow night.”

  He didn’t question why I wanted to see my brother before the viewing, just flicked on the harsh fluorescent lights and turned to go back up the stairs so I could be alone.

  There was only one body downstairs, on a gurney in the corner. The funeral director’s assortment of tools, including a variety of makeup bottles, was neatly put away on a shelf. Christopher looked like a big doll. As I came closer, it was hard to believe that empty shell had ever contained life. Anything that had made this flesh animated had long gone.

  My brother looked like a pretty boy mannequin — hair dyed back to his natural glossy black, no stubble on the chiseled jaw and chin. Long, lush black eyelashes resting on high cheekbones. He was dressed in a black suit. Armani. The only jewelry was my mother’s rosary clasped between his waxen hands. I hadn’t known he had the rosary. I’d always wondered what had happened to it. It was something we often saw in my mother’s delicate hands when she was worried about something — if my father was away on business or driving home in a thunder storm or when my grandmother was hospitalized from a stroke.

  “You are going to be buried in Monterey.”


  Backing off a little, I waited, as if he were going to sit up and answer me.

  I stared at him for a good ten minutes. I had nothing else to say. Instead, I searched my memory for snippets of the Christopher my mother had loved. I pushed back the lecherous looks he gave me in Santa Cruz the last time I saw him and tried to focus on the little boy who was so proud when my mother praised him for saying his alphabet or singing in the school play, or later, bringing home straight A’s from boarding school.

  The only time I’d ever seen a tender side of Christopher was when he was with my mother. I remembered one day being absolutely sick with jealousy watching Christopher play a complicated Bach piece on the piano with my mother beaming at him, so entranced she didn’t even notice me in the room.

  The look in her eyes as she watched Christopher was one I’d never seen before. She’d never looked at me that way. I had rushed into the room excited to show her a picture I had painted. But when I saw her face, my picture of a flower in a pot—which had seemed amazingly beautiful while I was making it—now looked like the babyish scribblings of a toddler. I held it behind my back and tried not to cry.

  “Giada!” My mother’s eyes took me in and she gave a long sigh. “Go change, dear. You have paint all over your best dress.” I left the room, wadding the painting up in my tiny fists and then ripping it into smaller and smaller pieces.

  I could never compete with Christopher. And now that he was out of the picture it didn’t matter because my mother was long gone.

  It was only when I heard footsteps upstairs that I was aroused from my daydreams. Then, I heard my name shouted.

  Vito.

  The funeral director had called my godfather. I glanced around. The funeral home was situated on a hill. A garage door was located at the other end of the room so the morgue could easily drop off the bodies. The garage door squealed open, showing part of a driveway and then a large expanse of woods. Footsteps pounded down the stairs. I was hiding in the alcove underneath them. The steps stopped. “She’s gone.”