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.

  Eighteen

  Ethel Swanson

  Later that night, Django and I sat on the stoop and I 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.

  She absentmindedly pet Django and kept saying, “You’re a good dog, my friend.”

  “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. He eyed Django, who had suddenly stood. The dog’s hair was bristling and a low dangerous rumble was coming from him.

  “It’s cool, Django,” I said.

  “My name ain’t Django.”

  “Duh. That’s my dog,” I said. “Come over. He won’t hurt you unless I say so.”

  I had no idea if it was true, but the guy got closer.

  “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? Django look like a police dog?”

  “Guess not.” He rummaged around and came up with a joint, reaching for my hundred-dollar bill, but keeping far away from Django, who had settled back down on the ground.

  “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 said. “Django stay.” He just looked at me like I was an idiot and settled his chin on his paws.

  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. Django must speak English because he was up at my heels. But before I went inside I 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. Except for my new dog, I was alone.

  Completely and utterly alone.

  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 Sausalito. 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.”

  “No, keep it,” I said distractedly, pushing the money back at her. “What do you mean he wasn’t there?” Kato had never missed a work day at the dojo for the past two years.

  “Big closed sign on the door. Note said something about ‘family emergency.’ “

  My heart slowed and a chill ran over my scalp. I reached down and grabbed Ethel’s wrist. “Are you certain? Are you sure it said ‘family emergency?’”

  She looked at me wide eyed and nodded.

  I turned and ran toward Market Street. I hadn’t even brushed my teeth yet.

  On Market, it took me ten minutes to hail a cab. Several passed me by. I knew with my ratty hair and clothes I didn’t look like a very good fare. It wasn’t until I stepped right in front of a cab that it screeched to a halt. I threw open the door and spit out Kato’s address in the Mission, flashing three twenties. “Go as fast as you can.”

  When we pulled onto Kato’s street, I saw a long black car parked in front of his house. I told the cab driver to back up and go around the block to the street behind Kato’s. The street was nearly interchangeable with Kato’s: old houses, some with chipped paint and old cars parked in the yards, but also with kid’s bicycles propped up against porches, and small, neatly tended flower beds. “Stop here.” I opened the door, handed him a twenty and told him he’d get the other two twenties when I returned as long as he waited. I walked until I was at the house that butted up against Kato’s backyard. An older woman in rollers and a flowered housecoat sat out on the front porch petting a cat and sipping a soda pop.

  “You know Kato?”

  She didn’t answer just nodded slowly.

  “Why’s the black car out front?”

  “Didn’t I see you at that Fourth of July barbecue Kato had last summer?”

  “Yes!” I said a little too excitedly. “Yes, we’re friends. What’s going on?”

  “Dunno. Susie dropped the boys off here two hours ago. Told my daughter to take them to her folk’s house in Berkeley. Susie was going to the hospital. Something happened to Kato.”

  I didn’t even say thank you, just raced back to the waiting cabbie.

  “San Francisco General.”

  Nineteen

  Light a Candle

  I was out of breath by the time I got to the family waiting room at the hospital. It was filled with people staring off into space or sitting in huddled groups hugging and crying. Kato’s wife sat alone with her head in her hands.

  “Susie?”

  When she looked up, I barely recognized her grief-ravaged face. Her skin was even paler than normal and her eyes were red from crying. She stood and hugged me. “Gia. He might not make it.” Her body shook with sobs.

  I held her for a few seconds and then led her back to her seat by the hand.

  “What happened?” I said, my stomach doing somersaults.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I got a call from one of his students.”

  When Kato’s first student showed up fifteen minutes early, he’d found Kato’s crumpled body on the floor of the dojo, she said. He had been severely beaten. A heavy steel pipe with blood on it was found nearby. The student’s early arrival, before the dojo opened to the public, had probably interrupted the attack and saved Kato’s life. Police had found witnesses who said a group of four men had been seen fleeing out the back door of the dojo within seconds of the student making the 911 call.

  Kato was in surgery. It looked like he had taken a severe blow to the head and also suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung.

  Why would someone hurt Kato? It didn’t make any sense. I caught my breath. Unless, it had something to do with me. I drew back from hugging Susie and took a closer look at the other people in the waiting room.

  Nobody I knew. None of my godfather’s thugs, just worried family members.

  “Susie?”

  She blew her nose and looked at me.

  “Did you know there is a big black car in front of your house?”

  Her eyes grew wide and she shook her head.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I think the people who are after me might have done this to Kato.” I closed my eyes. I felt sick to my stomach even saying that.

  Susie wrapped her arms around me. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I think it might be,” I said opening my eyes. I took her by the shoulders. “You can’t go home. You have to go to your parents. I think you’re safe here in the hospital, but don’t come home. Go to your parents and stay there until I call you.”

  She sniffled. “Okay, Gia. I don’t think anyone would hurt me, but if you say so.”

  “I do,” I said. “I just know this is connected to someone trying to find me. And these people—I used to think women and children were off limits—but I just don’t know anymore. I’d rather you were safe. I have to go now, but please promise me, you’ll be careful.”

  She looked at me solemnly and nodded.

  Just then the elevator door dinged. I ducked back into the doorway, grabbed my compact mirror out of my bag and stuck it into the hall at waist level. By holding it just right I could see the nurse’s desk. Two men in dark suits were talking to the nurse on duty. “Call 911 if those two men in suits even try to talk to you,” I told Susie and slipped out a side door of the waiting room toward the stairwell.

  I took the back stairs out of the hospital, wishing I had grabbed my gun before I ran out of the house this morning. Being alone on the stairs creeped me out. I’d just read last month that a patient who had disappeared was found dead in the stairwell. She’d been there for three weeks before someone found her body. But my anger overpowered my fear.

  I walked eight blocks away from the hospital before I boarded a bus back to the Tenderloin.

  Ethel wasn’t at her usual spot outside.

  Upstairs, Django greeted me with enthusiasm and I buried my face in his fur for a few seconds taking deep, gulping breaths. I hadn’t been to church since I was a kid, but I suddenly wanted to go light a candle for Kato. The thought of his dying sent such a tremor of fear through me, I could barely breathe.

  I’d go to a Catholic church I’d seen around the corner and light a candle and say a prayer for him.

  I took Django for a walk. He about lost his mind when I picked up the leash Thanh-Thanh had bought for him. Despite feeling sick to my stomach with worry over Kato, I couldn’t help but smile at the damn dog’s enthusiasm.

  I made my plans for the night. I’d walk Django, light a candle at a church, and then sneak back into the hospital to check on Kato’s condition.

  Having a plan seemed the only thing that would keep me from falling into my bed and not getting up for the next month. I felt such a heavy wave of despair hit me. It was all too much.