Hungry Ghosts Page 11

  “My sister, Katy, planted stories?”

  “To keep him in the news. All the stories had his picture. Didn’t you ever see them?”

  I shook my head. He couldn’t have seen that, but he didn’t ask again, and I felt a rush of gratitude when he went on. “When I ended up coming out here, one of the first things I did was check the library just in case I had missed something en route, an article about him being found. I was really hoping—” He swallowed. He was looking ahead now, not so much concentrating on the road as not looking at me. “Darcy, I’m so sorry he’s not back. I keep wishing, not like you do, I don’t mean to say that, but just . . .”

  No wonder the family had welcomed him into the fold. No one else cared this much anymore. I wanted to keep talking about Mike, to know about every news article, bask in every mention of him as long as I could. There was so much I didn’t know. So much I didn’t know about any of them—Mike, my siblings, Eamon himself.

  “Eamon, ten, fifteen years ago you were a lab grunt, right? Now you own a building in the Barbary Coast. How’d that happen?”

  “Not own, lease.” He looked toward me and grinned. “Still a big step. And your family’s made everything easier. But I am good at bringing people together, seeing connections. You know, I’m actually grateful for that tedious time in the lab. It made me keep an eye out for a connection, like seeing who could be better off somewhere else.”

  “So, you’re a head hunter?”

  “More like a head spotter—spotting heads that go together.”

  Was it just modesty? Or was there more to moving these lucrative heads around? I remembered Jeffrey’s observation about him letting the building inspectors think he was related to John. But that was such a small deception. “Still, you lease this pricey building and then you give it to the zendo—and you’re not even a Buddhist.” I tapped his shoulder and waited till he looked over. “So, how come?”

  He stretched his fingers and took his time placing them back on the wheel, as if using the time to come to a decision. “Don’t go repeating this. Agreed?”

  “Okay.”

  “I did it as a favor to John.”

  “My brother John?”

  “The same.”

  “Why? The world would come to an end before John Lott would ever sit himself on a zafu.”

  Eamon threw his head back and howled. “Too true! It definitely wasn’t that he cared about meditation. The thing was, he heard Leo was leaving the monastery in the woods. Leo had to go somewhere. He knew you were his assistant. And your mother wanted you back here.”

  My mouth hung open. “It’s all for me? I’m the reason for the entire zendo? There was no need for a zendo? It’s just there so I would come back to San Francisco?”

  “Not no need,” he said quickly. “People are coming already, aren’t they?”

  I nodded. My thoughts swirled. I hoped Leo didn’t know the Lott family was behind his being here. Mom wanted me back that much? And John . . . I could barely take it in. And Eamon’s incredibly generosity. “That’s a huge favor you did for John. I’ve heard it called a bad luck property. Someone was telling me about it being boarded over, about ghosts and snakes—”

  “Portland! That’s it! I knew there was something Tia said about Mike! It was in the back of my mind; I just couldn’t get it. If we hadn’t been talking about coming home, I would never have made the connection. Tia said she had seen me getting on a plane in Portland. But the thing is, Darcy, I’ve never been in Portland.”

  My whole body went light. “Really? Did she think she really saw Mike?”

  “She did at the time. He was getting on a plane, so there was nothing she could do about it.”

  “A plane to where?”

  “She didn’t say?”

  “Didn’t you ask?” I demanded.

  “I should have. I’m sorry. The conversation went in a different direction.”

  Damn! “Did she say when that was? What year, even?”

  “No.” His voice was ragged; he dragged out the word as if he was raking through his memory for any scrap of a clue. My stomach was leaping, my skin quivering. It was all I could do to keep from grabbing his arm and shaking him. “I can’t tell you why, but I have the feeling it wasn’t recent, because . . . wait . . . because she didn’t say she couldn’t get to him because of her leg; she just sounded like he’d been unreachable. But that’s just assumption on my part. I’m sorry. I wish I’d jumped on this, but at the time . . . and I’m really sorry, but the thing is she didn’t say she was thinking it was Mike, she was couching it like she’d seen me but she couldn’t be sure because I was getting on a plane. I’m sorry, but here’s the truth: I just thought she was flirting.”

  I felt like a thousand pounds was crashing down into the seat. So damned close! I took a breath and forced myself to take what there was. It wasn’t Eamon’s fault, really it wasn’t. “It’s okay,” I forced out. “That means he’s alive! I’ve always known it! But this, this is proof! This changes everything. Omigod!” He braked. We were at the set—already. I hadn’t even realized we were in North Beach. I looked out at the roadblock, then at my watch: 4:35 A.M. I was already late. “Damn! Where will you be later?”

  “Around the zendo. But I told you every bit I know.”

  “You might remember more.”

  “I won’t. I’m sorry. But I don’t want to get your hopes up. That’s all—”

  “Finally!” Robin Sparto was rapping on the car window.

  I held up a hand to him and turned back to Eamon. “Thanks for everything. Really.” I shrugged at Eamon and got out.

  Sparto had moved away from the car and it was a moment before I realized he’d seen Eamon and backed off. But now it was just him and me, and he was yelling. “Come on! Did you think this was a 10 A.M. call? It’s fucking twenty to five! We’ve only got the site till six. And then there’s the light. This is a night shot, dammit!”

  “So, where’s the staircase?”

  “I thought you lived here. Don’t you know your own city? It’s over there.”

  I hurried over to the circle of light. The staircase was still lit only by streetlamps, but even so I could make out the steps. They were cement, the railings metal with supports every six feet—just far enough to get up enough speed to smack them hard—and the staircase had no landings. It was three stories unbroken.

  This was the stair fall from Hell.

  CHAPTER 15

  “WHERE DO I get padding, Robin?” The set was empty but for the second unit and the general support guys. The cameras were staked at the top and, presumably, bottom of the staircase and one had been suspended beside it, on a runner line, to follow the action. The street, lined with flats and small apartment buildings, had been blocked off and the company’s vans and wagons were double-parked behind us. Their lights were off and they stood as dark rectangles in front of the larger dark rectangular dwellings. The permit the company had gotten would require as little light and as much silence as possible at this hour, before residents were awake. The location set looked deserted.

  “Costume wagon’s over there,” Robin said, pointing downhill and behind us to a van the size of a weekender for an intimate couple. “Just get the wig and the outfit. It’s a skin shot. No place for pads.”

  “No padding! All that saves stair falls is padding.”

  “What saves them is skill. If you’re not good enough . . .”

  I didn’t have time to waste arguing. In the costume wagon I slipped on silk drawstring pants, made to be worn lower on the hips than any nineteenth-century Chinese courtesan ever dreamed of, a camisole with all inessential cloth in tatters, and the black wig. No shoes. Even with long camera shots, there was no way to pass my sturdy stands off as tiny aphrodisiacs. There was no makeup because the camera would never be on my face. It would catch the rolls, the arms and legs flailing, the slams into the steps and the pole railings, the head over heels, the exposed skin. And if they were lucky, the blood.


  It was 4:50 A.M. I strode to the top of the stairs. “Flashlight?” I asked the bulky blond lighting tech who was adjusting the bank of night lights.

  “Don’t have!”

  “A lighting tech without a flashlight? On a night shoot?”

  The guy shrugged.

  What kind of operation was this? I had had some question about the catcher bag placement in my last gag, but that could have been just a mistake. Now, when the crew didn’t have the basic equipment . . . I was on the verge of demanding, “What if that fine bank of lights started to wobble? How would you check the stand?” But I didn’t have time to waste on him. I barely had time to scope the stairs and do a practice run. I needed a torch. But there was no time to comb the set.

  After last night in the dark tunnel, I’d grabbed the smallest of the family stash of flashlights. I hadn’t expected to need it so soon. It was meant to illumine a door lock or show a woman the makeup in one quadrant of her face. I flashed it on the steps. Unadulterated cement steps: no padding on the edges, no thin foam cover, not even a sprinkling of leaves and mulch to prevent the cement from scraping skin. Robin should have made sure the edge of every step was padded. I illumined the pipe railing uprights. The crew should have been here an hour ago spreading a strong temporary glue on the uprights’ “north side”—the side invisible to the camera—to hold a strip of padding the same color as the pole, just thick enough to cushion the blow when I rolled into it. There was nothing: no padding, no glue.

  “Robin!” I yelled as I stalked toward him. “What the hell is going on here? There’s no padding anywhere. As long a shot as you’re going to have to take on this, you could have padded the hillside.”

  “This is not the spa; it’s stunt work.”

  “It’s incompetence! Either get some padding on the uprights—”

  “Hey, if you’re not tough enough—”

  “You’ll what? Call the crowd of applicants you had waiting if I didn’t call you back at eleven o’clock last night?”

  “You want to have any rep in this business—”

  I lowered my voice. “I already have a rep in this business, and it’s for doing things right. We don’t have much time. Get me glue and pad strips, and I’ll do the setup myself.”

  His hands were weaving back and forth, lost in their emptiness. “Fine! You set the whole thing up, but plan to do the gag in one take, because the sun’s not going to wait for you to cushion every edge.” He stalked off, followed by an assistant.

  Why was this crew so hostile? They hadn’t been this way two days ago. Not friendly then, but not hostile. Robin, himself, had been normal last night, happy for my help in viewing the tunnel. Now he was off the deep end. The lighting techs had abandoned their posts, leaving the staircase in shadows. On a normal set, before the shoot began there would be scurrying, whispering because of the neighbors, but lots of talk. This one was dead quiet. A normal second unit crew is close-knit; we know our success, our jobs, and at times our lives depend on each other; we’re looking to help. This crew was anything but.

  Common sense told me to drop the supply box and walk away. But stunt work values the tough. You triple-check every knot and hinge, but you never let on you’re afraid, never ever even hint there’s a standard stunt you won’t do. That goes double for a woman.

  The night wind whipped up the hill, channeled between the buildings. It slapped the strands of the long black wig against my face. I shivered in the skimpy costume. I could still walk away.

  But dammit, I was not about to give Robin the satisfaction. I turned and nearly stumbled over a clear storage box of supplies: glue, pad strips, scissors, torch, tape, magnifying glass. Hoisting the box, I strode to the top of the staircase. There wouldn’t be time to pad every step and post. I had to map my route for the fall pronto. I could hear Leo repeating the kernel of Zen instruction: Don’t assume. See things as they are, not through your own eyes. I pushed aside my questions and focused on the route. The uprights were about six feet apart on the left side of the staircase. I would hit every other one, do a “react,” a roll, change directions, and aim for the next upright. Hard as the uprights were, rough and sharp as the edges of the stairs were, they were the only momentum brakes. Stair falls are like driving downhill when your brakes fail; you slow yourself by scraping or bouncing off the things that will injure you the least, but if you want to live, you have to check your momentum. Ideally, stair falls are done in segments, and as close to slo-mo as reasonable. The film can be speeded up later. Ideally.

  I didn’t fool myself about this gag. I flashed my light down the steps, painted glue, cut a padding strip, and pasted and moved on. The light on the staircase grew dimmer as I descended away from the streetlights. Two of the path lamps were out and thick foliage half-covered two others. I flashed my torch on the steps, then the uprights, and back to the steps, watching as I moved for cuts or brakes, knives of rough cement in the edges of the steps, protruding branches, debris.

  “Five minutes!”

  There was a landing about four feet long at the bottom, then a drop to the street. If I hit the last upright before it with the fleshy part of my hip, that would spread the force of impact in both directions, toward my head and feet, rather than bouncing it back. From there I would stagger across the landing and back, and have time to set up a clean drop to the sidewalk. My shot would end and the next thing the viewer would see would be the actress sprawled on the sidewalk.

  “Three minutes!”

  I walked slowly upward, eyeing each step one last time. At the top, a woman started pulling on my wig, and another shifted something about one sleeve. The script supervisor waved them away and motioned me to the start point. She showed me a photo of beautiful Ajiko Sakai at yesterday’s close on this sequence. I took the same stance. As the script supervisor fine-tuned it, I ran my sequence in my mind, eyeing the first upright, feeling my shoulders pull forward just before I hit it so I could be into the rollaway before the impact.

  “Lights!” Robin called.

  The banks came to life behind me. The brightness would glimmer off my clothing and pick up the shine of the wig.

  “Camera! Action!”

  I burst forward, taking two short strides to the edge of the staircase, leaning into the fall. I bent my legs, letting the shins flutter as my feet came up. At the first pull of gravity I rolled, and came down on hands and feet facing the steps. I rolled right, hit the upright hard, but the padding helped, rolled left, flailing arms and legs as I passed over the middle of the stairs, pulled in as I hit the other side, and let the momentum carry me a foot over the wall onto the soft underbrush. Keeping my head tucked, face protected, I somersaulted through the leaves and branches, landing so softly on my back I would have come to a stop had I not pushed off to roll across the steps again into the next upright. Grabbing it, I swung myself up, feet on the edge of a step to give the appearance of almost regaining balance, only to have my feet slip. I angled forward so my body slid down the steps, spreading the impact and allowing me to use the hand on the upright and the other one, hidden under my body, for control. When my feet were fully on another step and my body upright back to the camera, I’d fall backwards, arms flung wildly. I kept my knees bent till the last moment, pushed off toward the railing, caught it with my right hand, and guided my body into the next upright.

  The padding was gone! My shoulder banged hard into the metal, sending shots of pain through my head. I couldn’t see straight. I couldn’t stop. I flung myself across the steps to the shrubbery. One more move and I’d be on the landing with an instant to regain control before the final drop. My head was throbbing. I pushed off, upright again, side to the camera as if staggering sideways down. My feet hit the landing and slid.

  The landing was wet! I sailed across and off the edge into the drop.

  Using every ounce of abdominal muscle, I yanked my chest forward as my feet flew backwards into space. My arms and head hit the cement. I grabbed for traction. My hands slid; my hea
d was beyond the edge, into air. I bent my knees. My fingertips slid over the edge. I dropped into space.

  I hit the sidewalk at an angle and staggered back. No one caught me. My head was spinning, throbbing. I thought I was going to throw up. My arms were bleeding, my knees were raw, and I knew I would be black and blue on all sides. I couldn’t think straight. How? Who? The padding had been removed from the upright. And somehow the landing that had been dry five minutes earlier was covered in water.

  Most suspicious was the absence of people around me. When a gag goes well, the second unit is elated. Everyone applauds because everyone had a part in it. But here, no one applauded; no one was watching the drop in case I needed to be steadied once I was off camera. No one was there at all except the paramedics. Even the camera crew was keeping its distance. The only person moving toward me was—

  Omigod! Detective Korematsu! What was he doing here? How did he know I would be here? Maybe he wasn’t after me. Maybe he was just walking to work or— Get a grip, girl! Whatever he was doing here, he was the last person I intended to deal with now.

  To my left, under a canopy of live oak branches, were steps that led to the staircase. I raced up as fast as I could make my aching legs move. Each step activated a new area of pain—stomach, thigh, knee, ankle, foot. The leaves and branches swam. Once on the staircase proper, there was no overhanging greenery to conceal me. My abdominal muscles shrieked—I had torn them, I knew, and each step tore them more. I needed to stop, to bend over, to wrap my burning middle in ice. I focused on each step, just making it through the next step, one after another after another, not looking up, definitely not looking behind me. If Korematsu called out to me, I didn’t hear him over the shouts of my own pain.

  After an eternity, the stars in front of my face vanished. I was at the top of the staircase. I sighed but didn’t stop till I was in Robin Sparto’s face. “The padding was ripped off! The padding I just glued on! I could have been killed! What the hell is going on here?”