I whistled and Thanh-Thanh’s face lit up in a smile. How could she smile? She was homeless. Probably everything she owned was destroyed. But she raced over with short, waddling steps and embraced me, talking rapidly in Vietnamese. By her gestures, I figured out that Thanh-Thanh had taken Django for a walk so they’d been gone when the fire started. Thank God.
Django wasn’t interested in me scratching his belly. His ears were up and his eyes on the building. Small whining sounds came rumbling from his throat.
After a few minutes, a small crowd began to gather a fireman with a clipboard. Thanh-Thanh and I walked over. The fire man gave us the details.
Nobody died in the fire.
Trang had kept the building up to code and had smoke alarms installed in every apartment and in the hallway on every floor. Thank God. Then the fire captain said that it was arson. Somebody had set fire to the top floor apartment — mine.
They were investigating, but it was clear the fire was not accidental.
I was relieved nobody was injured or killed, but sickened that all these people had lost their homes. It was my fault. It was catastrophic for them. Unlike me, they’d lost all their material goods in the world. I’d always had something to fall back on. In a bank account.
I watched small groups huddling and crying. Red Cross workers showed up to pass out cards and tell all my neighbors — about a dozen lived in the six apartments — where they could sleep. These people had lost everything they owned. The fire captain said later, once the building was secured, firefighters would either let residents in to recover belongings or bring out any remaining possessions themselves for residents to sift through.
One thing was clear: Whoever was trying to kill me knew I was still in San Francisco.
I could easily buy more clothes and belongings. I had my gun. I could replace everything. Except one thing: The box that had belonged to my mother.
Those love letters my parents had exchanged seemed like my last link to them on this earth. And now they were gone. I had no home. No money. No nothing.
It seemed like it could get no worse.
A police car came to a screech with a dark sedan on its tail. Good. I hoped they had a lead on the arsonist. Because obviously, that was who was trying to kill me. Took them long enough to get here, though. Like the arsonist would be standing around.
“Little bit late to be in a hurry,” I said, looking up at the smoldering remains of my building. It was still standing, but probably everything inside had been destroyed. I’m sure the building would have to be gutted.
I didn’t notice the commotion that started in the crowd until some shiny black shoes were on the pavement in front of me and Django.
“Gia Santella?”
I looked up, warily.
“Monterey P.D. You’re going to have to come with us. You’re under arrest for the murder of Vittorio Guidi.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I ACTUALLY LAUGHED. Until they jerked my arms behind my back and patted me down.
My gun.
“Weapon!”
“Don’t move.”
“Get down on the ground!”
The next thing I knew I was flat on the pavement with my cheek pressed up against a dirty cigarette butt. That was going to leave a mark.
“Get on the ground!” the cop said again.
I didn’t think it was worth telling him I already was on the ground. If I got any closer, I’d be underground. My view was of feet. Lots of black shoes surrounding me. The ground reeked of piss and vomit and god knows what else. I gagged a little.
After a patting down that felt like a pummeling. I was yanked up by the cuffs, which dug painfully into my wrists and practically pushed to the unmarked car.
Thanh-Thanh met my eyes as I passed. I gave her a meaningful look up toward what remained of my apartment. She nodded. If anything had survived, which I doubted, she’d find it.
They threw me into the back of the squad car without reading me my Miranda rights. I sat there and wondered if I was really under arrest or they were just bullying me into a trip to Monterey for questioning.
I pressed my face against the cool glass of the window, taking in the night as we made the drive to Monterey. There was no way they had anything on me, so I doubted I could be under arrest. Could cops lie about something like that to get someone to give a confession? I wasn’t sure. Then again, who knew how far the reach of my enemies spanned.
I knew, or at least believed, they could never pin Vito’s death on me. They were chasing ghosts and soon they’d have to let me go. There was no way they could have anything on me. I mean, yeah, I was there that night, but that’s it.
Then a chill ran across my scalp. I’d cut myself when I’d held the knife to his throat that night. My blood was at the murder scene.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I’D THOUGHT UNDRESSING in the high school locker room every day in front of all the WASPy girls who called me names would be the most humiliating era of my life, but the body cavity search before they put me in a jail cell was right up there.
The orange jumpsuit they gave me was too small and rode uncomfortably up my crotch and stretched obscenely across my chest. I tried to tell the lady I wasn’t a small, but a medium, and she pretended like she was deaf, turning her back on me until the guard prodded me from behind.
The fingerprints and mug shots weren’t as bad as I thought. I couldn’t decide whether to look tough or smirk. Sitting in a small holding cell waiting for someone to come get me to take me to my jail cell, I knew that even considering how to pose for a mug shot was deranged. I wasn’t taking any of this very seriously. Maybe something was very wrong with me. Was I in shock? All I knew was that I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that I was under arrest.
But that drop of blood. Remembering it made my stomach flip flop. They’d need more than that. I’d just tell them exactly what happened. I started laughing hysterically. Exactly what happened? That I’d gone there with the intent of killing Vito but was scared off by the real killer? I definitely was losing it.
Before they took me to my cell, they gave me my one call.
Sal, Vito’s attorney, sounded sleepy when he picked up. It was eleven at night.
“It’s Gia. I’m in county. They say I killed Vito. But I didn’t.”
He gave a long sigh. “I’m in Bodega Bay. I’ll be down first thing in the morning.”
My small jail cell had a metal bed, a thin mattress, no pillow, and a toilet without a lid. No toilet paper. I banged on the bars to get someone, but my rattling went unanswered. The woman in the cell beside me mumbled something that sounded like “shut the fuck up” and “I’m gonna cut your tit off in the shower tomorrow morning.” One or the other. Or both. Rather than answer, I curled up on the bed, which probably would give me bed bugs, crabs, and scabies in one fell swoop, and tried to sleep.
IN THE MORNING, THE guard brought me to a small visitor room. I looked around for cameras or recording devices before I even met Sal’s eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Sal said, noting my glance around the room. “This is all privileged. No wires here.”
He was dressed in a three-piece suit perfectly tailored to his tiny frame. His black hair was slicked back like an Italian film star. His shoes gleamed in the overhead light and his buffed nails did, too. I’d never had nails that looked that good in my life.
I hugged him. His body was stiff and awkward as if he couldn’t wait for the hug to end. I immediately drew back and pulled up a chair.
“They’re going to charge you with murder one. Any reason they might think you did it?” His tone was casual, but firm.
“Yeah. Because I actually went there to kill him, left a huge drop of my blood on his pajamas and then ran away before the killer got to him.” It all came out in a rush. When I was done, I bit my lip and tried not to cry. Saying it out loud made it all real. I was fucked. I’d spend the rest of my life in prison.
“Back up a little, Gi
a. Last time I saw you, Vito had just given you your Ferrari and you were proclaiming your love for him to the heavens, asking if he would be your new father since your own dear dad was dead.”
“Yeah. Well, things changed.”
I spent the rest of the time filling Sal in on what had happened, starting with the letter from the forensic pathologist’s wife. Sal, a lifelong Catholic, paused from his note taking to make the sign of the cross whenever I mentioned any of the dead’s names.
When I was done, I stared at the scummy, jail-issue slippers I was wearing. When Sal didn’t say anything, I looked up. Hi face remained expressionless. The silence seemed roaring. Finally, he cleared his throat.
“Gia, how long have you known me?”
I shrugged.
“Let me put this another way. Gia, how old are you?”
“Twenty-three?” I said it like a question.
“So, we’ve known each other for twenty-three years. I was at your baptism and pretty much every big event in your life.” He paused and looked me in the eye. “Is there any reason why you didn’t come to me with all this?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “I didn’t know who I could trust.” My voice was small and quiet and a bit ashamed.
He clamped his lips tightly together and nodded his head. “Okay. I get that. But now you have to trust me.”
I nodded.
He told me he’d try to get me out on bail during my arraignment tomorrow and for me to hang in there.
Right before the guard took me away, Sal gave me a serious look.
“Spend the next twenty-four hours wisely. I want you to let all those pieces of information you’ve gathered, whether they are in your conscious or subconscious — put your brain to work and try to figure out who is behind all of this. I think you know who it is somewhere in your brain. It’s just a matter of revealing that information to yourself.”
I was deep in thought about Sal’s words as the guard led me back to my cell. So much so that I don’t think I even heard the catcalls and rude statements on any conscious level. I had a feeling Sal was right. While he’d always been a little mystical about dreams and other superstitious things I scoffed at, I believed he was onto something. They say that we only use a small percentage of our brain’s capacity, right? I also believed that sometimes the answer to our questions was already floating around somewhere in our heads.
True warriors have access to universal knowledge. Everything that is known, will be known, or has been known, is the warriors for the taking if only he knows how to open himself up to that plane of existence.
I spent the rest of the day in my cell in a near meditative state, turning over every piece of information I knew that could be connected to the murders, over and over again.
The next day I spent three hours in a jammed holding cell at the courthouse. I’d woken up at peace, but with no clear answer as to who the killer was. The first step was getting out of this hell hole.
While I waited, I cast sideways glances at the two other inmates in my holding cell. We were all waiting for a guard to come get us and take us into the nearby courtroom. The two black women had amazing hair. One had a sleek red bob. The other had a close-cropped cut that framed her heart-shaped face perfectly.
Me? My Italian hair could not be tamed. I was pretty sure I looked homeless and would not make a good impression on the judge who was going to consider granting my bail. I surreptitiously put some spit on my fingers and tried to smooth it down, but the woman with the shorn head sneered and said, “That’s nasty. Now your hair smell like your nasty breath and still don’t look good.”
“Thanks.” I rolled my eyes, but shrunk further into my little corner of the bench.
The women talked about some dude named Jamal and how they were going to “kick his scrawny little ass” for letting them get arrested and how the Salinas jails were so much nicer than the San Jose ones.
“I ain’t hooking in Gilroy no more,” said the short-haired one with the heart-shaped face and small pink lips. “That place is a garlic reeking cesspool. I smell like garlic for like two days afterward.”
It was the woman who said my breath was nasty.
Finally, a guard took her away.
The other girl gave me a sideways glance.
“Don’t worry, mama, we all got bad breath in the can. You get used to it.”
I looked at her for the first time and gave a small smile. I self-consciously smoothed my hair again.
“Champagne, she just a freak about hygiene, you know. Every time she locked up, she spends all her money on mints and gum and toothpaste and deodorant,” the woman smiled and shrugged. “We all got our things, you know.”
“Amen,” I said, shaking my head. If being a hygiene freak was Champagne’s only character defect, she was doing pretty good.
I got in front of the judge, gave Sal a glance, and in a flash, it was over. I wasn’t sure what happened. When the gavel slammed down, I realized I was free. For now. But I had to stay in town.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
SAL DROVE ME TO MY parents’ house in his Aston Martin. I felt guilty sitting on his pristine leather seats in my filthy clothes. I didn’t want to talk because I remembered Champagne’s comment and didn’t want him to smell my breath in the small interior. At first, he didn’t say anything either and I thought about resting my head back and taking a quick nap.
Before I could fall asleep, Sal threw an envelope in my lap. I peeked inside. Hundred dollar bills. A fat stack of them.
“Ten grand.”
He explained that now that he knew where I was, he could start fronting me money from my parents’ trust until my godfather’s estate was settled. But there was more.
“Want to know the good news or bad news first?”
“Good,” I said with a sigh, looking out over the hills for a glimpse of the Monterey Bay.
“The good news is you are going to be one of the richest young ladies in northern California. Along with your inheritance from your parent’s, you have everything Vito owned. He left everything to you. I’m still looking into it, but that appears to be a substantial amount of money. The bad news is this gives you more than enough motive in a jury’s eyes to have killed Vito.”
“Fuck.”
“By the way,” Sal said. “Did you know your saintly mother never said a swear word in her entire life?”
“Yes, Sal. She also never played pool or drank beer. She was freaking Princess Diana before Diana was a princess.”
Sal chuckled and made the sign of the cross.
“Maybe you inherited some of that, I don’t know. What I do know is that we got lucky today.” He kept his eyes on the curving road in front of him. I kept my eyes on the giant sand dunes to our right. “Judge Aronsen and I — well, let’s just say we know each other. You’re damn lucky he was assigned your case. I talked to him in chambers beforehand and he told me if you skipped bail, he could cut off my balls. Now, I like my balls. I would be very upset if they had to go. You’ll stay at your parents’ house until the trial. Capisco? So, I can keep my balls. Keep the doors locked. Don’t answer them for nobody. I got two guys coming over tonight and they’ll be your security detail. They’ll keep you out of trouble and make sure trouble don’t come visit you.”
“I get it, Sal. I’m not going anywhere.”
He gave me the side-eye.
I returned his look with a huge smile.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
OF COURSE, I LIED.
I was going back up to the city as fast as I could and before Sal’s goons came over to keep me prisoner.
When Sal’s Aston Martin slipped back down my parents’ driveway, I quickly showered, brushed my teeth and grabbed some slacks and a sweater from my mother’s closet. The panel had been returned and all my mother’s clothing had been hung back up by the maid. I didn’t stick around to get sentimental. I rummaged in a drawer in the kitchen and found a giant ring of keys to the four cars in the garage — A conv
ertible Mercedes, a Range Rover, a Lincoln town car, and a Karmann Ghia my mother liked to drive. I chose the Range Rover. It had tinted and bullet proof glass. I needed to be in a vehicle that said I wasn’t fucking around.
I’d taped a note for the goons on my bedroom door telling them I had taken a sleeping pill. I locked the bedroom door from within and climbed out the window. It might fool them until morning. If I was lucky. And I usually wasn’t.
I PULLED INTO MY TENDERLOIN neighborhood at a little after five. The street was deserted. And my building looked like a squat. Windows and doors were boarded and police tape stretched across the entryway.
I racked my brains trying to figure out where could I find Thanh-Thanh. I had no idea. I parked in front of Café Katrina and headed inside.
I ordered a tequila. That eerily beautiful Asian bartender filled my glass without question every time I downed it. God, I loved this neighborhood.
I wanted to go on the wagon. And I’d made it for a while when I first moved into the Tenderloin. But now I had no reason to stay sober. I’d lost everyone in my family. I had no idea why. Someone wanted me dead, too. And I was probably going to spend the rest of my life in prison for a murder I didn’t commit. Fuck everything. I didn’t know how to dig myself out of any of it. But I did know lots about getting shitfaced.
I pushed my empty glass toward the bartender again and gave her my most winning, if drunken, smile. She gave me a stony look, but refilled the glass.
I’d never heard the bartender speak one single word. She never smiled, either. She’d just nod in response to everything anyone said. She always seemed extremely bored, too. Didn’t she know she could get a job anywhere? After my fifth glass of tequila, I decided it was high time I told her this.
Gia Santella Crime Thriller Boxed Set: Books 1-3 (Gia Santella Crime Thrillers) Page 14
