I spent an hour drinking tequila at the closest bar, which was actually only a block away from my new home. I’d heard the Beastie Boys coming out of the juke box when I walked in and figured it was a cool place to hang out for a while.
The crowd at Club Katrina looked okay — pretty typical San Francisco dive bar crowd — a transvestite or two, a grizzly old guy, and a couple of working ladies. Nobody who seemed dangerous. Two rowdy yuppie-looking guys came in right behind me, obviously slumming because they were talking loudly about the show they were about to attend at the Great American Music Hall a few blocks away.
I ordered another Patron tequila from the surprisingly beautiful Asian bartender, who could have obviously found a gig at a better place. I slumped into a sticky booth and sat idly watching the ten o’clock news on the TV hanging above the bar. The lead story was about the opening of the new span of the Bay Bridge. Boring.
I grabbed the Chronicle off a nearby table and settled in to read.
Two articles in the local section nearly made me fall off my bar stool.
The first was a picture of the girl I’d seen with Christopher. The article said she was missing and her parents were frantic. My heart pounded in my ears. Holy fuck. Had my brother been killing girls? Is that why Vito was so serious about stopping him. Had Vito killed him to stop him from killing others? That made sense. But then why would Vito want me dead? Because I knew?
It hurt too much to think about. I had loved Vito. But my love was growing into hatred.
Christopher had probably killed that girl. And maybe, although it was hard to believe, Vito had killed him and tried to kill me.
Staring at the girl’s face, I felt a wave of horror.
I had failed. It was my job to protect her. I knew that night I saw her with Christopher that she was in danger. I ignored my Budo training and walked away. I had thrown her to the wolves, or the biggest, baddest wolf: my brother.
I rushed to the bathroom and had barely made it to the toilet when I vomited. I could have saved that girl. I could have taken her aside and done … something. Lied or something. Anything to get her away from my brother. And what the fuck? Did Bobby know this? I let that guy in my apartment and in my bed. What if they were in on it together? But I knew that was nonsense. Bobby must not know.
Finally, when there was no more tequila in me, I splashed my face and fixed my hair and went back to the bar to order another.
The ethereally beautiful bartender gave me a skeptical look when I ordered another drink. The newspaper was still on the bar, open to the girl’s picture.
I stared at it.
I flipped the page so I didn’t have to see her anymore. Her blood was practically on my own hands.
I read about a new organics recycling program and a new book out about the Mission. Then, a small item caught my eye. A doorman for a luxurious apartment building, named Andrew Fairfield, had been killed in a car crash. As I read, my blood raced, Fairfield had decided to go joyriding in a tenant’s red Ferrari. He’d taken the car across the Golden Gate Bridge and just reached the Marin Headlands and was navigating a tricky curve when the car went plunging off the road and hurtling down a cliff. He died on impact. Police were investigating, but said it appeared that the brake line had been cut.
Andrew Fairfield. My doorman. Red Ferrari. My car.
Whoever wanted me dead wasn’t taking any chances. They were serious about taking me out. Vito was ruthless. I knew this. But what had I done? It didn’t make sense.
I paid my bill and headed back to my new home, looking behind me at every tiny noise. Back at 345 Turk Street, the lightbulb in the lobby was fixed. The place didn’t look all that bad. Trang was waiting. He handed me the key and pointed up. “One at the top.”
I made my way up the stairs until they ended at a small hallway where there was a reinforced steel door with a peephole. My key fit.
Kato had told me the apartment had been remodeled as a safe house for some political friend of his from Sudan. I didn’t ask for more information and he didn’t volunteer any.
I pushed open the door and hit the light switch. The apartment was about 800-square-feet of wooden-floored, wide-open space. The southwest corner had a single bed under a window. Across from that, on the northwest wall, was a small galley kitchen and café table with two chairs near another window. I took my mother’s box and slid it on top of the highest cupboard in the small galley kitchen. A door opened to a small staircase leading to a door with a small sign that said “roof.”
As I took in the wide-open space I rejoiced. It would be perfect to practice my Budo because I intended to get in the best shape of my life.
I’d go cold turkey on the alcohol and weed. I’d detox. I needed all my wits about me. There was no room for vices. I would need to prepare both my mind and body for the days ahead. I needed to be sharp as hell if I was going to find out whether my godfather killed my mom and dad. And Christopher. And why he wanted me dead.
That first night in the big, empty apartment, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in the tiny hard twin bed staring at the ceiling for what seemed like hours, watching the lights flicker across my ceiling as cars drove by. Finally, I went up on the roof and paced, looking at the city around me, wishing I had a cigarette.
Finally, around dawn, I fell asleep.
Day blended into day and slowly the cravings for nicotine, booze, and weed went away. It helped that I was focusing on Budo more than ever, spending a few hours a day training. When I wasn’t training, I was reading one of the books out of a giant stack that Kato and Susie had loaned me. Books on karate, but also ones by some of the San Francisco beat writers, such as Carolyn Cassady’s book about her love affairs with Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac.
It’d only been a week and I already missed Kato and my dojo. But that is the first place my godfather would go looking if he suspected I was still in town. I knew even if my godfather tracked down Kato’s home address, none of his neighbors in the rough Mission District would talk to my godfather’s men. Even if a gun was held to their face.
On the seventh day, I started doing pushups in the mornings and ran laps on the roof at night. I was relieved that whoever designed this safe house made it so my apartment was the only one with roof access. I was antsy holed up in my place, so I spent a lot of time up there, peering over the five-foot high walls at the streets below. So far, I hadn’t seen anyone suspicious.
On the rare days when the sun graced the city, I brought an old blanket up to the roof to lie on and stripped naked, soaking up the warmth, pretending I was in the southern France penthouse where I’d sent Candy. I idly dreamed of one day growing tomatoes and basil on the roof so I could make fresh pasta sauce. Until then, I ate simply, eating a mixture of beans and brown rice or heating up some pasta and mixing it with butter and garlic salt, an old recipe my mother had showed me, saying she made it during the lean years of my childhood — before my dad’s seafood business hit gold.
It felt good to detox. I’d been overindulging in everything in my life — food, alcohol and sex — since my parents died.
Cutting all that out made me feel more like myself than I’d felt in years.
One day, I went down to ask Trang something, but he wasn’t home. My Vietnamese neighbors were quiet. The whole building smelled like their cooking, night and day, and made my mouth water. They kept to themselves. And so did I.
But on this day, as I stood near the glass front door, I saw one of my neighbors for the first time. An older woman juggled several grocery bags as she fumbled for her keys, trying to get the door open. One bag broke and oranges started rolling down the steps. I opened the door and picked up her scattered groceries, giving a quick glance around. Nobody. Not even Ethel.
Inside the building, the old Vietnamese lady gave me a missing tooth grin and said something I didn’t understand. I followed her up the stairs to the second floor, holding her broken sack and four oranges close to my chest. She unlocked her door and turned to get her groceries from me, giving me a pat on the shoulder and another grin. She said something else in Vietnamese. I started to back away.
“Uh, okay. Yeah, you’re welcome.”
She just kept smiling and nodding as I headed up the stairs.