City of Dragons (22 page)

“All right.”

Without looking at her, Rick turned down the covers on the bed. Then helped her over to the side, lifting her legs, and tucking her in under the sheet and blankets. Finally, he pulled out a bottle of aspirin in his pocket, opened it, gave her three. And laid the ice pack on her cheek.

“You want to tell me who did this to you?”

“Italians from Gillio’s—Olympic Hotel. Green sedan. They broke in this morning, left a calling card. ‘Nice legs.’ Tried to run me down tonight.”

“Takahashi case?”

“Yeah. I’m on another—out all night looking for this girl, Phyllis Winters. Old man died at the Pickwick, stepmother thinks—knows—it’s murder. Girl’s been missing, she’s a snowbird. Cops hushed it up at first, but now they’ve got an autopsy—”

“Shhh. I know about it. I’ll tell you tomorrow. Today. Later. You need to sleep, Miranda. You gonna be OK?”

She let his eyes, brown and Irish, warm her for once. No defenses left. “Yeah. But—would you mind—would you mind staying here for the rest of the night?”

He shrugged, as if it were a question she asked him all the time. “Sure. May as well. You got an extra pillow for the couch?”

“Top of the closet.”

He rummaged around, pulling down an old brown wool blanket and a small pillow with an embroidered pillowcase. He looked at it.

“I didn’t know you embroidered.”

“I don’t.”

He shrugged again, and tucked the pillow and blanket under his arm. Then he reached over, patting her shoulder, his lips grazing her head.

“Good night, Miranda. Try not to dream.”

He clicked off the bedside lamp. She fell asleep almost immediately.

A bright yellow light and a loud thud startled her awake. Her legs were shaking, programmed to run.

Rick forgot to draw the curtains last night—this morning. She heard his voice, grumpy and thick with sleep.

“Just a minute!”

Someone was knocking on the door, urgency behind it.

Miranda flung back the covers, sharp pains in her back, neck and shoulders making her slow down. Her fingers traced the outline of her cheekbone. Swelling down a little. Thank God.

Rolling over and sitting up required strategy. She twisted herself upright like a contortionist, trying to find the least painful position. The melted ice pack still rested on her pillow, and she moved it to the nightstand, swallowed another three aspirin, and was standing by the time Rick tapped on the door.

“Miranda? You awake?”

“What’s going on?”

He came in, his face bleary. “Throw on a robe. You got company.”

“Who is it?”

He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Phil.”

She limped to her closet, pulled down something flannel, buttoned it in the middle, started to walk out the door.

“You’ll break your goddamn ankle if you don’t slow down.”

Rick kept about a foot behind her. Phil was already in the foyer, hat in his hands, brown suit rumpled, smelling like stale cigarettes. Sweat dotted the deep gullies in his forehead, his gray hair damp with it.

“What the hell? Somebody do this to you, Miranda?”

His voice came out a surprised croak, his face caved in with worry and shame and what was always there when she was.

Miranda said: “I fell down some stairs in Chinatown. Rick helped me get back home.”

Phil stood and sweated, the hat brim twisting around and around through his large, flat fingers, his body tense with embarrassment. His stomach, wrapped in an Arrow shirt, hung over his belt. Miranda shifted her weight, her voice more tired than angry, looking at him, trying to keep the pity out of her eyes.

“Why are you here, Phil? To tell me again to back off the Takahashi case? Or are you here to arrest me so Duggan won’t?”

His coarse skin deepened to crimson. The hat kept turning. Around and around. A middle-aged man on his way to old age, still toting the desires of youth. Calling them sins just made them heavier.

“No. We can take that up another time.”

Rick looked from one to the other. “I can go in the other room.”

The detective blew out a long breath. “It doesn’t matter. May as well come along, it’ll be news soon enough.” The hat brim continued to twirl, then came to an abrupt stop, and he jammed the brown fedora on his head.

“I’m sorry you’re hurt, Miranda. I’m not here because of Takahashi. I got a crime scene you’ll need to see, got an identification to make. We found your card. You gotta answer some questions.”

“Identification—who—?”

His voice was low, and he stared at the floor. “Chinese girl. Used to work for Dianne’s, goes by Betty Chow. Somebody found her in one of the empty graves in Laurel Hill. She’s been strangled.”

Part Three

New Year

Fourteen

T
he ground still stank of the dead.

Thousands of pioneers, city founders. Andrew Hallidie, the man who invented the cable car, the only mechanized transport that could tackle the hills. It allowed the rich to look down on everyone else and gave their servants transportation. Without servants, it was too difficult to tell them apart.

Brown, rich, crumbly, sandy earth. Made richer by the blue blood and red blood that poured in it; by the ’49ers who never struck anything except hard rock, whose only yield was sweat and scars and forgotten memory, dreams wiped out by a dried-up creek and the hot Sonoma sun.

The wind still blew on Lone Mountain, wind from the sea to the southwest, where Sutro built his castle, his dreams embodied, and yours, too, for a dime at Playland-at-the-Beach. The dead were going, going, gone to Lawndale, as the most populous part of Colma was called, the city founded as a necropolis, a company town if there ever was one. If you worked in Colma, you worked at the company trade. If you died in Colma, they just rolled you over.

No dead allowed in San Francisco. We don’t serve your kind. Have your wake, cry at the memorial service. But spend eternity to the south, even if you built the city to the north.

Cities grow, friend. The dead stay buried.

Worst of all, they don’t spend money.

Fog wrapped the remaining headstones on Laurel Hill, obscuring the sun. Miranda buttoned the top of her coat, stood in between Rick and Phil, staring at the fresh-turned earth. So recently a home to someone long buried, more recently a trash pit for the cemetery workers. A grave for Betty Chow.

Cigarette wrappers and greasy paper, bits of salami still clinging to it like rotten flesh, littered the bottom and sides, churned into the soil.

Miranda stood, and looked, and smoked. Betty wasn’t there anymore. Betty wasn’t anywhere anymore.

Phil barked a couple of orders to the uniform cops protecting the crime scene. The photographers and lab men had left with the corpse, leaving them bored and cold and wanting off the hill, back to one of the more hospitable corners of San Francisco.

Then Phil faced Miranda, his face craggy and tired. “Couple of cemetery workers found her early this morning, ’bout five o’clock. Came out here to smoke and take a piss. The coroner’s boys don’t think she was killed here … just left as some kind of joke.”

Miranda carefully put out her cigarette, half-smoked, and replaced it in the pack in her purse. Her voice was steady. “She fight back?”

The detective shrugged. “They’ll check her fingernails.”

A gust of wind blew a battered milk cap along the dirt path, and Miranda watched it roll until it collapsed beside a smooth, dark rock in its way.

“Hands, scarf—what?”

Again, Phil shrugged. “Report’s not in yet, but not hands. No finger marks.”

Rick took a step to Miranda, interrupted before she could ask another question. “What about the time of death?”

“Midnight, maybe sooner. Don’t know if—well, if she was raped. Lab should be done soon, maybe by the time we’re back at the Hall.”

Miranda nodded, walked forward on unsteady ankles, throwing off Rick’s hand at her elbow. Paper napkins from Threlkeld’s Scones. Broken bottle of scotch. Lucky Strikes.

And last night, when she was searching through Chinatown, retracing Betty’s footsteps, hearing her desperation, her anxiety, her fear, Betty was already dead. Tossed away. Lost candy wrappers, lost souls, all equal under the eyes of the Lord’s once-sacred-now-profane garbage pit. Thank you, Jesus. A-fucking-men.

Miranda could see the small, twisted body, arms and legs cold and akimbo. The delicate cheekbones, the slim hips. The bulging, glassy eyes, where, if she was lucky, the flies hadn’t gathered because they were closed, a second before oblivion. The purple tongue. The clammy blue skin. Red marks on her throat.

Death made everyone the same colors.

She spoke under her breath, words the others couldn’t hear, words she didn’t understand. She wouldn’t recall them, couldn’t recall them, but she’d spoken them before, in front of bodies of shriveled old women, their stomachs ripped open by bayonets, and men with half their faces blown away. They were always there when she needed to say them. Too many times.

Words.

Miranda turned back toward Phil and Rick, who stepped closer to her, afraid she would topple over. Not her time for the trash pit. Not just yet.

“I’ll ID her at the Hall. Let’s go.”

Phil led the way down the hill, Rick’s arm hovering behind her back. Somewhere in the fog, a seagull cried, searching for something. Miranda looked up, trying to find it, but all she could see was white.

The marble halls echoed with heavy footsteps. Cops. Prisoners. Judges, the heaviest of all, even if they weren’t carrying an extra five hundred in their pockets from one of the supervisors.

Miranda said good-bye to Betty on Laurel Hill. She recognized the body on the slab, signed the form identifying it as Betty Chow, age thirty. Family unknown, profession unknown.

She sat and smoked in Phil’s office, door open, the tapping of the typewriters and constant phone calls down the hall helping to drown out the voice in her head. Rick left after the identification, his face green, heading for work. Now it was question time with Phil, the man with all the answers except the obvious one.

“So you last saw her on Sunday night?”

“As I said.”

“Is that when you gave her your card?”

“Yes.”

“Did she try to call you?”

“Yes.”

She blew smoke over her left shoulder, eyeing the clock. Nearly ten-thirty.

Phil typed more slowly than usual, reluctant to look at her. “Did you know she was a prostitute?”

Miranda shrugged, then said: “She worked for Dianne.”

“Is that the only way she knew you?”

“Yes.”

“Any idea why she called?”

“No.”

He dragged his face up to hers, the eyes shrewd.

“Takahashi business?”

Miranda shrugged again. “I don’t know. She didn’t leave a message.”

His fingers methodically plunked the typewriter keys. Then he swiveled the chair slightly to face her, his fingers still drumming, this time on the desk.

“There’s a connection, Miranda. Don’t tell me you didn’t know she was working with Filipino Charlie.”

“You can believe me or not believe me. But that’s the first I’ve heard of it. Until Sunday night, I probably hadn’t seen Betty for a year. I thought she was still working for Dianne. In fact, I called Dianne to find out when she quit—or if she got canned for something. Maybe you remember, Phil—Dianne’s choosy.”

Blood rushed to his face again. “All right, Miranda. You can go. But stick around for the inquest. And we may have more questions.”

She stamped out the cigarette in his ashtray. “Report in yet?”

He stared at her for a second, then opened a manila folder on his desk. “Preliminaries came in while you were in the basement. Looks like she was strangled with a scarf of some kind. They’ll check the fibers, but don’t expect quick results.”

Miranda stood up. “I don’t expect much, Phil. Makes it easier on everybody.” Her voice came out harsher than she wanted. “Was she raped?”

Phil opened it again, said slowly: “Looks like she had intercourse shortly before she was killed. Can’t tell if it was consensual.”