Gia in the City of the Dead

by Kristi Belcamino

  “Cazzo!” My godfather shouted from the top of the stairs. “Split up. Find her.”

  After several people had gone running by, I heard the sound of the garage door closing and Federico mumbling something. Then I heard the jangle of keys as he went back up the stairs. I waited longer. Maybe a half hour after the building had grown quiet, I crept out from my hiding spot. My legs were cramped, but at least I hadn’t been forced to hop into one of the empty coffins lining the wall, which had been one of my first thoughts.

  I listened for about ten minutes and hearing nothing, crept up the stairs. I poked my head around the corner at the top. The place was empty. Peeking out the windows, I saw all the cars were gone, even my rental car. Shit. My godfather’s goons had probably hotwired it and taken it with them to make sure I couldn’t use it if I came out of the woods. Guess that I.D. was shot for now. And that rental car agency. The gig was up. My godfather knew I wasn’t in Costa Rica. I’d have to be more careful than ever.

  There was a garage full of cars at my parents’ house, but that would be too hot. I knew Vito would have his men staked out there for sure.

  The warrior’s philosophy dictates that where he makes a conscious decision to not be a victim, he will prevail. Where he believes in his strength to overcome and persevere against seemingly impossible odds. The warrior does not give up or give in.

  It took me about an hour to make it to Dante’s mother’s house by first heading toward the beach and then following the bike trail around to Pacific Grove. I hated to bring her into it, but I didn’t know where else to turn to.

  Standing in front of the large Tudor house I’d known as well as my own, I tried to finger comb my hair and brush off my clothes before I knocked on the door.

  “Mrs. Marino?”

  “Gia? Mama mia, child! What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  “I need your help.”

  She opened the door wider. “Come in.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING POUNDING on my door woke me. I rolled over blinking to bring the clock into focus. It was already noon. I hadn’t got back to the city and to my own bed until three in the morning.

  Mrs. Marino hadn’t asked me a single question. Only handed me the keys to her car when I told her I had no way to get back home to San Francisco.

  My first stop last night when I got back to the city had been Darling’s salon. I gave her the keys to Mrs. Marino’s car and five hundred bucks. She assured me the car would be back in Mrs. Marino’s driveway by dawn.

  When I got back to my place, I’d stayed up late mulling over the business documents I’d seen at my godfather’s place. I remembered the late notice I’d seen and made a note to try to get a hold of some more of the company’s financial documents next.

  The pounding on my door that had awoken me continued. I unearthed myself from Django’s heavy bulk on my legs. He’d been so happy to see me—like I’d owned him forever — that I let him violate the “no bed” rule. Plus, I’d never really told him he couldn’t get on the bed anyway, had I?

  I pulled my green silk robe with the big dragon on the back around my shoulders and peered through the peephole. It was the little Vietnamese lady again.

  Not bearing food this time. I cracked the door. She said something in Vietnamese and tried to see past me into the apartment.

  “Ruff. Ruff?”

  Oh. Django. I sighed and opened the door, gesturing for her to come in. She scampered in and raced over to the bed where Django was still sleeping. Some watch dog. She pressed her face to his and began scratching his ears and kissing his nose. She smiled at me and put her hand to her heart and then onto the dog. Yeah, I get it. You’re an animal lover. Cool.

  She looked around my apartment, taking in the bowls I used for dog food and water and then squinted at me and said something in Vietnamese. Of course, I didn’t understand so she stood up and then bent her legs in a crouch and scrunched her face up as if she were straining. Oh.

  “He uses the roof.”

  She shook her head no and left the apartment without a backward glance.

  I took Django up to the roof, carrying a plastic bag to pick up his business. He sniffed around at the bare concrete and the air conditioning and heating units. I yawned and stretched in the streams of sunshine filtering through the light fog cover.

  After I came back down the lady was pounding on my door again. When I cracked my door this time she came barreling in with a collar and leash and immediately snapped it on Django who began wiggling with excitement. She said something in Vietnamese.

  “Fine. Yes, you can take him for a walk.”

  The woman beamed and leaned down to kiss Django on his long nose again.

  “Hey, I’m Gia.” I gestured to my chest. I figured it was high time for introductions.

  “Thanh-Thanh,” she said.

  “Okay. Nice to meet you, Thanh-Thanh. This is Django.” I pointed at the dog.

  “Django,” she tried to say it like I did, but I’m afraid it came out more like “Dang-O.” That’s okay. It didn’t matter what she called him. The damn dog loved her. He was slobbering all over her and wiggling around like he’d never been for a walk before. Actually, who knows how long it had been since someone treated him like a real dog.

  Thanh-Thanh and Django left for a walk and I’m not sure who was the more excited of the two.

  I’d showered, done some Budo and had a smoothie for breakfast by the time my neighbor and dog returned.

  “Doo, doo.” Thanh-Thanh said.

  “Fantastic,” I said, trying not to sound sarcastic.

  It was good to know someone else in my building liked the dog because lying in bed last night without any answers, it had become clear I’d need to make a trip to the charred remains of my parents’ Geneva house.

  I had some work to do before then, though, so I headed to the county offices to do a little research on the parcels of land my godfather had bought and the lone holdout.

  At the county offices, I spent close to two hours scanning old property records. From what I could tell, this Stark woman had my godfather by the nutsack. He couldn’t make a move without her property.

  As I flipped through the records, I saw that the land had originally been called Carville because squatters had made homes out of old streetcars that had been abandoned in the dunes. The image of homeless people creating homes in abandoned streetcars triggered the memory I had been waiting for.

  A shiver ran across my scalp as I remembered. This was why the other day I had alarms going off in my head about this deal. This development used to be called The Carville Condos. I remember it now. It was a proposal my godfather had made to my father maybe eight years ago and one that my father had shot down, publicly humiliating my godfather and causing them to be estranged for an entire year. At the time, I really couldn’t see the appeal and why it was such a big deal.

  My father’s main argument was that he wouldn’t go in and displace longtime homeowners who were against selling their home. I guess both my godfather and father had talked to more than twenty residents, but two people had refused to sell. The other property owner must have given in because now the lone hold-out was Jessica Stark.

  Now that my father was out of the way, it seems within months of his death, my godfather had jumped on reviving this project, and somehow, probably using methods my father would have scorned, got the other reluctant homeowner to sell. The methods my godfather used were probably brute force. While my father had been friends with all the other Italian mobsters in Monterey, he’d always tried to walk the straight line. My godfather, God only knew. He was maybe more connected than I realized.

  The other main obstacle my father had brought up when he opposed the plan was that the area was not zoned for multi-resident housing. I did a little more digging and found that had just changed. The city had recently approved the zoning change. I wondered what that had cost Vito in under the table money.

 
; I left the county offices in a hurry. At home, I logged onto my father’s company website. I still had access from when I worked there as a teen one summer. I searched all records dealing with the proposed San Francisco plant.

  After another hour, I felt pretty sure my godfather had enough motivation to have killed my parents.

  But one woman stood in his way.

  Time to visit Jessica Stark.

  THE TINY HOME WAS SHROUDED in fog when I arrived. Two window boxes full of begonias flanked the cheery red painted door. Mounds of sand and dirt surrounded the little gem of a house. Several backhoes and tractors parked in the adjacent dirt lot loomed as black silhouettes in the orange streetlights.

  Mrs. Stark opened the door to my knock with a pistol pointing at my face. “Whoa,” I said, putting my hands up and backing away. “I’m not sure you need the gun. I just want to talk to you.”

  “Nobody comes here just to talk. If you are here about me selling my house, you might as well leave now.”

  “I am here about you selling your house, but not because I want you to do that.”

  The woman behind the gun had a short gray bob, a paisley scarf flung around her neck and dangly earrings. She squinted her eyes at me and must have decided I was telling the truth because she kicked the door open.

  “All right. You have ten minutes. I have to leave for my book club after that. We’re reading Jess Walters’ Beautiful Ruins and I need to save my breath for all the things I have to say about it.”

  I didn’t know if that meant she liked it or hated it and right then, I didn’t care.

  Inside, Ms. Stark gestured to a green velvet couch in the living room. Bookshelves filled to overflowing and strung with white Christmas lights flanked three walls. In front of them were giant tropical plants also strung with small lights. A giant hookah sat on a leather stool near the couch.

  The lady of the house was busying herself at a vintage chrome bar on wheels that sparkled with booze.

  “Bourbon, okay?”

  I’d gone cold turkey, but figured it would be inhospitable to refuse so I nodded. My mouth was watering before she even handed me the amber liquid.

  Before she sat down, Mrs. Stark offered me a ceramic bowl with leather looking strips. “Beef jerky?”

  “Sure,” I said. Why the hell not?

  She sat down and didn’t wait for me to bring up the topic.

  “I’m not selling. They can come in here and shoot me or run me over or whatever their mob tactics are, I’m staying here. That man is a bully.”

  I figured it was time to disclose who I was.

  “That bully is my godfather. My name is Gia Santella.”

  She slammed her glass down on a rickety table near her chair. “Well, hells bells. And you say you don’t want me to sell?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “Let me see what I can do. I only have a minority share in the business, but I’ll try to work something out. I don’t believe in running people out of their homes so some big corporation can make a few extra bucks. And my father, who started the company, didn’t either.”

  “Well, that’s a switch,” Mrs. Stark said.

  I stood and followed her into the kitchen with my glass and the empty ceramic bowl. One counter of the kitchen was overtaken by prescription bottles. I recognized one name. Eposin. I’d picked it up from the pharmacy once for a friend of mine before she died from cancer.

  I held it up and raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s in my bones. I don’t have long,” she waved a hand at a calendar hanging on one wall. “Which reminds me I need to mark off yesterday. I’m already living past my due date—the six months the doctor predicted for me. I’m actually on day twenty past my ‘deathday.’”

  I exhaled and shook my head.

  “That’s why I’m not budging,” Mrs. Stark said, walking me to the door. “I’ve lived here for thirty years. My husband and I bought this house right after we got married. We never had kids. I have no family left. He’s gone and this house is all I have left. I intend to die here, Miss Santella.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  LATER THAT NIGHT, I sat on the stoop and shared a bottle of gin with Ethel, the homeless lady with the paisley scarf. We passed the bottle back and forth, since my resolve to detox had derailed at Jessica Stark’s house. I needed something to stop my mind from going where I didn’t want it to go. Christopher’s plastic-looking body. Images of my parents’ bodies with bullets in their foreheads. Jessica Stark marking off the days that pass after her “deathday.”

  We sat there under the streetlight taking long pulls.

  “What’s your story, Ethel?”

  She was quiet.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to talk about it. But if you want to, I’d like to know.”

  “I wasn’t always like this,” she said, looking away, down the street. “I used to have a place to live and all that. I grew up in Berkeley. Was going to go to school and everything, I just got hooked up with the wrong guy. I was only nineteen. He was handsome and charming, worked in San Francisco as a bus driver. On our first date, he brought me a dozen red roses. He told me he’d take care of me. I was so dumb. We got married at city hall one day when we were drunk. I moved in with him into a crappy little apartment I’d thought was heaven. At first. His version of taking care of me was to get drunk and beat me black and blue every night. He told me if I left him, he’d kill me. So, one night I waited until he was asleep and I killed him. I stabbed him with a steak knife. He didn’t die right away. Then I called the police. I spent fifteen years at Susanville. When I got out, I had nowhere to go. I stayed at a little hotel for a while. Then the money ran out.”

  I pressed my lips together and nodded.

  A young thug walking funny to keep his pants from falling off eyed us from the other side of the street. “Hey!” I shouted.

  He kept walking.

  “Hey!” I tried again. “Hey you! Come here!”

  He paused looking around until he realized we were talking to him.

  “Yeah, you.”

  He crossed the street, looking around as if he expected a trap.

  “Got any ganga, my friend.” My words were slurred.

  “Why you want to know?”

  I took out a hundred-dollar bill. “Come on, man. Give us a spliff. I’ll trade you.”

  He looked around again, warily.

  “How I know you not the cops?”

  “Look at us,” I said, gesturing to me and Ethel, who cackled loudly at his words. “We look like the law?”

  “Guess not.” He rummaged around and came up with a joint, reaching for my hundred-dollar bill.

  “Is it laced?” I said, pulling the money just out of his reach.

  “No. It ain’t dusted.”

  “You sure?” I asked, giving him the stink eye.

  “Yeah, man.” I handed him the bill. He started to walk away. “Wait. Got a light?”

  He rolled his eyes and lit the joint before he turned and left, muttering something about crazy white women.

  Ethel and I stayed talking and finishing our second bottle of gin until the sky started to lighten with pink streaks.

  “Hey, Ethel.”

  “Hmmm?” she answered sleepily. It had grown cold as the dawn broke. The fog rolling in turned the air damp and heavy. I pulled my scarf tighter.

  “What do you think about running a little errand for me this morning?”

  “Mmm hmmm.”

  “I need you to deliver a message for me. It’s in Chinatown. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Mmmm kay,” she said.

  “Be back in a sec.”

  I raced upstairs and wrote a note to Kato. I asked him to meet me in the back office of Darling’s salon around midnight. I told him I’d leave the back door unlocked. I wanted to run my plan by him. Downstairs, I handed Ethel the envelope with Kato’s address written on the outside.

  “I’m
hitting the sack,” I started for the door, but felt a stab of guilt watching Ethel pull her rags tighter around her body. “Hey, Ethel, you want to crash at my place for a few hours?”

  “No. I’m fine,” she mumbled.

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.”

  “Hey, you don’t usually sleep out here do you?”

  “Nope.”

  I wondered where she normally spent her nights and felt even more guilty when I realized I’d kept her up all night drinking.

  I WOKE UP THAT AFTERNOON close to four and quickly pulled on some wadded-up jeans so I could run down the stairs and see if Ethel had delivered my message. I flung open the door and saw her sitting there on a stack of cardboard boxes half asleep.

  “Ethel?”

  She gave a loud snore. I’d let her sleep. I walked to the bar for a grilled cheese sandwich and soda and read the paper for an hour. Not much new.

  Today was Christopher’s funeral. The only person I knew who might attend was the person I suspected wanted me dead — my godfather.

  It was scary to feel this alone in the world. Briefly, I thought about calling Dante. I’d written a long, rambling letter to him and left it in his mother’s car. I didn’t give any details but told him someone wanted me dead and for him to stay out of it and trust nobody. I hoped he listened to my advice.

  Once this was all over, I was going to take a long weekend and stay with him in Calistoga. I needed to be around someone who loved me. Now that my godfather was dead to me, I only had two people in my life who were as close as family. Kato and Dante. I could see Kato, but would have to wait until I could see Dante again. Sometimes blood wasn’t thicker than water.

  WHEN I RETURNED TO my place, Ethel was sitting up on the sidewalk. I was anxious to meet with Kato.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Here,” she said trying to hand the eighty bucks back to me and the envelope. “He wasn’t there.”