Hungry Ghosts (19 page)

“Omigod! That's horrifying.” I could remember my panic about the forest, and how quickly I went to mush, how beyond control was my reaction. “An hour in a cabin with your fear could be an eternity.”

“I couldn't get the blindfold off! I know that sounds crazy, but I was too panicked. The snakes slithered over my legs. They were on me! The people must have smeared something on me to attract them. It was”—she was really whispering now—“awful.”

“Slithering across your skin!”

“I couldn't get the earplugs out, but they ended up falling out. And that was worse, because then I could hear them. Even when they didn't touch me, I could hear them moving, coming toward me, coming from everywhere.”

“What did you do?”

She let out a shriek of a laugh. “I screamed. Of course that was useless. Then I lost it.”

I put a comforting hand on her arm and waited a moment. “How long was it till you realized where you were?”

She shrank back into the wall. “You're one of them, aren't you?”

“No, no! I just put things together. Like you did, right?”

Slowly, she nodded, but she still wasn't sure about me.

“So how are you now?”

“Now? Okay. Okay, but I'm still terrified of snakes, and of closed rooms, and them.”

“Why them?”

“They warned me never to tell anyone. Never. Never say anything.”

“That's outrageous. Who the hell are they? They threatened you? You can go to the police.”

“And tell them what, that people I only saw once, that I only knew by their first names, told me they'd put snakes in my bedroom? That I would never sleep again?”

“Couldn't you have moved?”

“No! You don't get it. They love these trials; it's sport to them to overcome this fear, then that one, and then this bigger one. It's an addiction! The more danger the better. They can't have the cops knowing about them or they could never do anything. The members, they're all over. I don't know where. There's no central group, just like cells, people who know other people, here in the city, but all over the country. They fly all over to do these dares. They're like bamboo, you think it's just in your planter, until there's a stalk under your stairs, in your neighbor's garden, coming up through the floor. I don't know how they know each other, but I know there are other groups.”

Suddenly, she was trembling so much she dropped her purse. I put my arms around her and hugged her tight until the shaking subsided.

“You did a brave thing this morning, you know that, right? You walked back in that room. You sat there with your back to the room for forty minutes. You must have been terrified the whole time.”

For the first time her lips quivered into a hint of a smile. “I was. I'm still terrified remembering it. I could ‘hear' the slithering the whole time, even though I knew it was crazy. That it was just in my head. When we stood up for an instant I ‘saw' the boarding over the windows.”

I was shivering with her now. I'd been so sure the cabbie was making up his story about the “bad vibes” and the wailing and the snakes escaping, here in the middle of the city. “That was incredibly brave. I really am impressed.”

She stepped back and stared, eyeing me for signs of sarcasm.

“No, I mean it. You will be too when you look back on this day. But I have to ask you, why? What made you speak up?”

“Tia's dead.”

“Omigod, you think they murdered her?”

She stiffened, looked like she couldn't move.

“No, listen, what I mean is, are you afraid they killed her, or—pay attention—do you logically think so? Are you coming from fear or logic?”

“I don't know. I just don't know.” She began to cry.

I started to pull her back into the hug, but she backed away.

“Okay, then who are they? Who, besides Tia?”

“I only saw two others. Guys. One was older, dark-haired, white. The other was young, long brown hair.” She gasped for breath, squeezed her eyes shut against more tears, and said, “I didn't plan to say anything today. I didn't even know there was going to be a memorial service. I just wanted to sit there because I knew Tia died there. But when I saw Renzo, something came over me. I had to, you know, speak.”

“Why Renzo?”

“The long-haired guy in the group. He was Renzo's son.”

C
HAPTER
19

M
Y 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?”