Hungry Ghosts (2 page)

“You coulda walked!”

Mike was getting away! “Get going, dammit!”

He pulled a right and launched the cab downhill on Battery, like a sequence out of
Bullitt
. “San Francisco!”

I'm pretty sure I heard him mutter the old local saw about the nuts rolling west, but I ignored it, too busy yanking sweats and sandals out of my bag, jamming legs into pants as we screeched furiously around corners. “Next block, stop!”

He hit the gas, flying west on Pacific, coming violently to a pause at the corner before jolting across Sansome.

I pulled on my sweatshirt. “Middle of the block, the building with the curved roof.”

“The old Baytown bordello?” His grin told me he'd watched me dressing in the rearview. Big surprise. What did I expect when I'd hopped in wearing the world's shortest kimono? “Wait for me.” I thrust a twenty at him, leapt out, and raced across the sidewalk into a courtyard, eyeing the brick building for stairs to the roof. None. Had to be inside.

The wooden door was huge, like the entrance to a medieval fortress. Without hope, I yanked. It popped open. I ran inside, into an alcove. The room ahead was big, empty, shiny-floored. Stairs led up from the alcove. In two bounds I took the six steps to the landing, pushed off, raced on up to a small hallway with doors on three sides. Leo's boots were outside one.

It wasn't Leo I was after. I pulled open other doors—kitchen, bathroom, empty room with a window at the far end, the street side. I shoved the window full open and swung out onto the ledge. Above me was the sharp curve of the roof. I leapt, caught the corner, hauled myself up far enough to see that the space was empty, as I'd known all along it would be.

Mike wasn't there.

I'd deluded myself, just as I had dozens of times in a dozen cities when I'd spotted lanky guys with dark red curly hair, who pushed off with each step the way he did, red-headed men who wrapped an arm across a woman's back and gave her shoulder that special little pat, only to turn around and once again disappoint me with the face of a stranger.

What did you expect? I asked myself, as I stared at the empty roof. Still, I was crushed. I was also stupid, and hanging over the edge of a roof two stories above the sidewalk. The cabdriver was yelling at me.

The roof behind the façade was plain tar and gravel. Stubbornly, I hoisted myself over the edge and up onto the highest point where I could see other roofs. But there was no red-haired man loping away. Clinging to the last frayed thread of hope, I eyed Pacific Avenue east and west. Nobody in sight. No one but the irate cabbie, that is. Not even a moving vehicle or a lit shop sign. Just one dark window after another.

The man who could have been Mike was gone. He'd had plenty of time to climb down and walk away or drive off before I got here. If he'd been on the roof at all. Spotting him had been so far-fetched, even I couldn't really believe it. If Mike were beside me now, he'd be laughing at his kid sister. “Always were into happy endings, weren't you, Darce? No wonder you want to be a stunt coordinator—control the great illusion.” He'd be nudging me, laughing louder, assuring me everything was possible.

The fire escape of the neighboring building was in the back, an easy swing from this roof. So now there was not even a question of how anyone could have gotten up here. I clunked down the metal stairs, stuck with the less-than-comforting knowledge that I would repeat this chase some other year in some other town. I rounded the rear corner of the building into a brick courtyard. The cabbie was still screaming.

I ran toward him. “Did you see a man leave the building?”

“I been watching for
you!
Your twenty, lady, it's gone, and the meter's ticking. I should have left you hanging out the window.”

“No one came out of the building?”

“Not that I saw, but like I say, you were grabbing all my attention throwing yourself out the window. I thought I was going to have to scrape you off the sidewalk.” He took the bill I was holding out, a second twenty, and said, more calmly, “You're not the first.”

“To jump here?”

“It's a real bad vibe place. Jumpers, you hear about them. One was a
whore who hit head first, but that was over a hundred years ago. The building was saloon downstairs, cribs above.”

I laughed. It was all too familiar. Growing up in the city, I'd heard plenty about the days when law stopped well east of California, and the Barbary Coast was notorious for separating men from their money. “Are you in this area a lot?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Have you seen a guy who looks like me? But older, mid-forties. About six foot.”

He stared at me, paused. “That color red hair, that dark?”

I nodded.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”
Maybe?
My breath caught.
Maybe, really?
“Either you've seen him or not.”

He waited a beat, still watching me. “I'll let you know.” He dipped his big bald head and swung into the cab. “Bad vibes.”

I grabbed his shoulder. “You know who I'm talking about!”

“I didn't say that.” He smacked the door shut. “I'll be back, don't worry.”

He'd all but copped to it. What was he hiding? It was all I could do not to try to shake it out of him. But I'd lost leads, or strangers I mistook for leads, before by losing control. I took a breath and went with what would keep him here. “
Bad vibes?
What does
that
mean?”

His hand was on the ignition key, but he stopped before turning it, and for the first time really seemed to be thinking. “You part of this Zen group?”

“Yes.” I released his shoulder.

“You do exorcism?”

“No, that's Catholics.”

“Too bad.”

“Why?”

“It's not just old-time stuff. A fellow had a heart attack right in the middle of the day. Jeweler. Customers in the shop. Splat. Dead.”

“People die.”
This
was his big bad vibe?

“Then the next tenant's partner sold everything—business, house, car—out from under him. First sign that gave him a clue was when the rent check bounced. After that it all went south.”

“Double crosses.” I shrugged. And him seeing a guy who could be Mike, that would turn out to be as much nothing.

“So then,” he went on, ignoring me, “the place sat empty till now, windows boarded up, and you could hear weird noises inside, and there were
snakes
coming out of it.”

“Oh, please! Save it for the tourists! I don't have time for this!”

I'd barely finished when he hit the ignition and sped off toward Columbus Avenue. My twenty, of course, was still in his hand. I stood in the empty street, fuming at him, at me, and, suddenly, freezing.

Dawn was easing into the cold fog of this February day. There was a cement bench across the courtyard. I sat, trying to block out my memories by imagining snakes pouring out of the big double doors, but it was useless. All I could think of was my brother, Mike, who had walked out of the house one day at the age of twenty, when I was sixteen, and had never come back. He's abandoned me to a life with his ghost. I couldn't—wouldn't—imagine him dead, unable to conceive of anything that would justify a decision to slam the door on his entire family, on me, his confidante. I read every story about amnesia victims, lapped up the hope. I had called red-haired strangers, flown across country on an hour's notice to find one who'd been released after fifteen years in a federal lockup, I'd hired a detective, and, after a few years, another. The only endings were dead
ends. Above all I had avoided returning home to San Francisco, where memories of Mike might come around any corner but he never would.

But it was Leo, Garson-
roshi
, my Zen teacher, who rounded the gate from the street. He stood in the dim light, smiling. “Where have you been, Darcy? When you jumped off that turret—”

“You came to the shoot?” The shoot seemed ages ago. “You told me you couldn't bear to watch.”

“I can't. But I did, anyway. The guy beside me—he was lugging some equipment—almost slapped a hand over my mouth when you jumped. Good move, too. I groaned so loud you'll hear it on the soundtrack.”

“I wasn't in any danger. I know what I'm doing.”

“But I don't.” He had a habit of almost winking that conveyed a meaning, often a joke beneath the obvious, one that was shared with his listener. I wondered if he had any sense of what an intimate gesture it was, and how much more was suggested by it than he intended. He was a gentle man who could spark fury in others. No one seeing him for the first time would have called him handsome. His features were too large for his face, his ears a bit pointed, which, with his shaved head, gave him a slightly extraterrestrial air. His thin form under his jacket hid the musculature honed during six years of country monastery life. That toughness was obvious only in his gnarled hands. The effect of it all was that no one hesitated to approach him about their problems; they just didn't quite believe he'd have an answer.

I couldn't help thinking he seemed so out of place in the city, like an actor who'd walked onto the wrong set. I'd known him only a few months, been with him only two weeks at a monastery retreat in the country. Part of that time he'd been too sick to talk, and the rest, well, at the most normal of times—which that wasn't—Zen retreats don't encourage conversation. Leo had seemed suited to life in the country. But he'd lived in the city here
before. Did he have friends here? A lover, even? Zen priests are not celibate. He could have accepted a day job. Priests have worked as secretaries, teachers, therapists, musicians, or cabdrivers. The precepts instruct us to adhere to “right livelihood”—work that does not harm others—but livelihood, nevertheless. It struck me how little I knew about Leo Garson.

I wanted to ask why he'd changed his mind about watching my stunt. He had been so clear on finding no pleasure in simulated danger when I invited him that I could imagine the gaffer clapping a hand over his open mouth. And yet he had dragged himself out of bed before dawn to stand in the cold in unwelcome fear.

But before I had the chance, he got in a question of his own, “So, what do
you
think of our fine digs?” It wasn't merely a pleasantry; he seemed to seriously want to know.

I considered my response. “Like you said in your letter, ‘Too good to be true! . . . Our neighbors are big-time lawyers, architects, and gallery owners who pay a bundle for their spaces. We're on the edge of the Financial District, in one of the few brick buildings that survived the earthquake, a place with a sexy history, and a courtyard! Prime property! It'd rent for thousands a month. And the landlord is letting us have it for free. Things like that don't happen in real life. Why give it to us?'”

“Curious, isn't it,” he said. “Wait till you see the inside.” He turned toward the great red madrone double doors. A dagger of sunlight cut through the fog and vanished. It struck the brass knobs on the door, making them shine like fire. As if even the heavens were saying this place was too good to be true. The sun was as narrow as a spotlight, echoing the one that had shown me Mike on the roof.

“Roshi,” I said, “I saw this building from my start point when I was getting ready for my gag. There was a man with curly red hair. Walking on the roof!”

Leo nodded.

“You know?” I said, amazed.

“Yes.”

“Who is he?”

“Eamon Lafferty.”

Eamon? Lafferty? Had Mike ever used those names? He'd once sent me drafts of stories for a creative writing class he'd taken his sophomore year. Had he used that name for one of his characters? Had he ever known someone with a name even remotely like that? Was there any resonance, in any way? Eamon. I'd have remembered Mike using a name like that. “Eamon Lafferty? Who's he?”

“He's our landlord.”

C
HAPTER
3

“L
EO
,
ARE YOU SAYING
this Eamon Lafferty owns our building? He's the one leasing us this space for free?”

“The same.” Even in his traditional black Japanese jacket and loose black pants, he looked like an amused elf masquerading as a Zen priest. His hazel eyes were wide apart, intense, his mouth crooking into a grin. Zen practice is about being alive in the moment, after all, and downright delighted with this moment is how Leo appeared.

But not me. Maybe it was my years in the movie business that made me automatically suspicious, or, more likely, one could say the business and I had been a good fit in that department. In my mind,
too good to be true
wasn't a windfall but a warning. I glanced around the oh-so-desirable courtyard, with its huge pots sporting mature Japanese maples, at the freshly scrubbed brick walls, and those very impressive doors. “Eamon Lafferty has spent money—a
lot
of it from the looks of things—to redecorate this place from whatever was here. A cabdriver just told me about its reputation for eerie sounds, and snakes! He called it a ‘bad vibes building.'”