City of Dragons (40 page)

The Old Taylor bottle stood empty and the Raleigh packs lay crumpled on the desk. Miranda smoked the last stick, letting it linger, finally stamping it out in the ashtray, rubbing the burned gray dust around and around the circular indentation.

No Memory Box, no sirree, don’t need one when you’ve got a bottle of bourbon and your old man stops in to grift a hundred bucks.

Christmas, 1918. Only Christmas she remembered with him. Snow in New York, the flurries swirling through the honking traffic and the rumbling trains, Miranda’s eyes big and wondering, staring at the men in the funny pants, the men missing a leg or an arm, back from the Great War, the War to End All Wars.

Marching. Yelling. People always yelling, fighting, never smiling, wrapped against the cold but breathing it out, never warm, never inviting. Old Mrs. Hatchett. Miranda thought the sour old woman would cut her head off if she disobeyed.

Pinafore dirty, shoes scuffed. Poor relation, they whispered, and she didn’t know what it meant, but she knew she didn’t want it to mean her.

His hair shining, voice mellifluous, preparing for the speech on Hopkins, Gerard Manley. He was always correcting Miranda, that peevish tone, that turned-down grimace, when she carefully said “Gerald” instead of Gerard.

Christmas Eve. Rum punch, and he didn’t correct her anymore. No tree to speak of, something small and wretched and more brown than green, something found by Hatchett and brought in with triumph, an ode to parsimony and a testament to thrift.

Miranda loved it anyway. Traced the dried and crackled branches with her fingertip, felt the life still in it. She sat by it on Christmas Eve, the only company in the house she liked, other than the cats in the alley behind the boardinghouse, and those she couldn’t smuggle in.

She saved them bones from the chicken leg for Christmas Day, ate her baked potato sitting under the tree. Her father didn’t notice. Speech over, time to celebrate. Another rum punch or hot toddy. Hatchett dipping into sherry, dropping a curtsy, nodding to sleep.

Under the tree was her space. She fell asleep, not dreaming of sugarplums, not dreaming at all.

She woke up on the floor, not in the attic room they usually confined her to. Opened her eyes to Christmas morning. Ten years had taught her not to hope too much.

There was a torn box, hastily wrapped with brown cardboard peeking through. She recognized it as a pair of used ice skates she’d seen in a pawn-shop window, and for a moment her heart was full, under the bent and brittle tree, as she carefully opened the box while her father lay stretched on the chaise lounge, snoring, a bottle near his hand.

Mrs. Hatchett from the kitchen, sherry still on her breath, making the disapproving noises she always made. No, you can’t go out. No, you can’t skate until your father wakes up. If you’re not quiet …

The threat stilled her, and she waited under the tree, staring at her father, willing him to wake up. Breakfast was cold toast and sausage, and lunch was tepid tomato soup and crackers. Still he slept, and the light was fading, and when they took the train back to San Francisco there wouldn’t be any snow to skate in.

The sighs and plaintive longing bothered Hatchett. Miranda sat and traced the scars on the bark, over and over. The old woman looked out the window at the growing dusk, and grasped at the tree, lifting it up, and taking it to the door. The crackle of the small dry branches sounded like screams.

Christmas, she said, was over.

Hatchett hurled it outside and down the front steps, the wood breaking and snapping like brittle bones. Miranda heard it crying, screaming, and didn’t know she was screaming, too, until Hatchett slapped her.

The noise woke her father, and he rubbed his eyes, and Hatchett apologized, explaining how naughty Miranda had been, what a fuss she’d made out of a dead Christmas tree. The old woman shoved her toward her father, to give him a curtsy and a kiss for the ice skates.

Miranda refused. All she wanted was the tree.

Her father looked at her, looked at Hatchett, looked at the empty bottle. And did what he always did. He quoted poetry.

Miranda, are you grieving …

He laughed, merry mood, funny child, such a strange funny girl, quite entertaining in her eccentricity, if unsteady in her manner. She’d probably grow up to disgrace him, the old woman offered, and he nodded, agreeing that it was very likely, given what her mother had been.

He jumped up, suddenly, full of energy and determination. Come, Miranda, let us skate. There are lights in Central Park.

The skates meant nothing to her without the tree. But she couldn’t explain it, not to him.

Over Goldengroves unleaving …

Hatchett forced the ice skates on her feet. They were too small, meant for an eight-year-old petite blonde, not the tall auburn girl with freckles and large hands. She tried to stand on them and stumbled, her father clapping and laughing.

On the way out the door she looked for it. Some boys had picked it up and added it to a fort two brownstones down. She was glad to see it again. It was dead now, and at peace.

He took her to Central Park, buying another bottle along the way, just a little for New Year’s, we must celebrate, he said to himself, never her.

He shoved her out on the ice, the darkness lifting with the moon and the lights of New York City, and watched her fall, telling her what she needed to do, telling her to start over again. Boys and girls, men and women, danced and glided past her, happy on the evening of Christmas Day, laughter and bells following them.

She learned to skate that evening. And never skated again.

On the way home, after the bottle had been opened for an early New Year, Miranda felt the trunks of the trees she passed, rubbed her hands over their roughness, feeling their souls. And she cried again, thinking of her own, her very own Christmas tree.

Her father laughed, shaking his head.

It is Miranda you mourn for.

The bells were tolling four o’clock. Teatime at Dianne’s, at all the finer establishments of the city.

She raised her head, looked at the empty bottle. Fragile dreams, funhouse glass, shattered, splintered. Over. Opened a desk drawer, searching for a cigarette. Hands shaking. No stick. No luck. No Miranda.

Something inside of her lashed back. Something deep, untouched, sacred. Not her father’s daughter. Not awash in the saline pools of self-pity, so plentiful in the swamps of academia. Not overly fond of her own voice, lecturing, lecturing, lecturing.

Miranda felt her face, tracing her cheekbone carefully. Swelling down. She was cold, on the clammy side. But she had a license in her wallet and a dead friend to avenge and a live girl to find, and oh yeah—Eddie Takahashi. He started it.

Her stomach growled with hunger, but she couldn’t face a crowd just yet, not tonight, not Valentine’s Day. Too many fucking holidays—Rice Bowl Parties, and Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day—blending into one, and San Francisco, gaudy old biddy that she was, loved to celebrate. New Orleans didn’t have the corner on the musical funeral—hell, every day was somebody’s funeral, and listen to the bells and the cars and the sound of the foghorns. That’s a jazz symphony for you.

She stood up, tossed the bottle in the black metal trash can that usually held cigarette wrappers and ashtray contents. Walked to the window, threw it open to the sounds of chaos below.

It hit her with the force of the wind and the fog, left over from yesterday’s rain. It always rained in San Francisco. Fog was just rain without determination.

Miranda closed her eyes and breathed in, feeling her head clear, that writhing knot of life and stubbornness growing stronger with every breath.

Allen would be there soon, Allen with information, the privileged kind that belonged to police and Pinkertons. She thought about Gonzales, shoved it aside along with the memory of his lips. No time for cops. And that’s what they all were, cops, Gonzales and Phil and Rick, too many goddamn cops.

No. She’d figure it out, find the girl, save Betty’s name. Who gave a fuck if it didn’t belong to anyone else? It was her name, and it was a good name, and Miranda would make sure that’s how the record read. Even if no one was around to read the fucking record.

A loud blaring honk made her jump. Taxi blocked by a White Front. Gotta get home, gotta hurry, flowers will melt and the chocolate will wilt. Hectic, harried, rushing to whoever and whatever they called a lover, throwing themselves into traffic only to be spewed out again, spent, part of the mating ritual, honey, you don’t know what I went through to buy you this red rose …

She shut the window, drifted back to the desk. Flipped on the radio. Took a solid minute for the vacuum tubes to warm up. Miranda tapped her foot, and then remembered the dress.

She pulled the bag out from under the desk, laid the gown out on top. Evening style, low-cut. Small size, petite. The right size for Betty. She wondered if the maid at the Pickwick would recognize it.

And it was still dirty, smelled of sweat. Whatever Herbert or Robert had done with it, they hadn’t cleaned it.

A clarinet squeal from the radio made her turn around, heart pounding. Goddamn Artie Shaw. Shouldn’t he be out somewhere banging Lana Turner, child bride? She turned off the radio, not needing it anymore.

Miranda walked slowly around the desk, looking at the dress from every angle. Someone had sent her the receipt. Someone wanted her to have this. She fingered the thickly embroidered material, felt the heft of the skirt and the bodice.

She began from the bottom. Slowly fingering the cloth, inch by inch, methodical and slow. She reached the waistline, turned it inside out, checking the lining for any rips or tears. A seam had been sewn in a different colored thread—but it was an old repair, nothing new, nothing there.

Narrow waist. Not much room. Started up the bodice. Reached the slightly expanded breast cups. Felt something besides fabric.

She quickly turned the dress inside out from the top, flattening the bodice on the desk with both hands. Traveled back to the lining, slightly thicker for better support. And yes, something was there, something small, in the right breast cup.

Miranda opened the desk drawer, grabbed a pair of scissors, looked again. The lining had been recently stitched in a small location, under where the breast would be positioned.

Cursing the clumsiness of the large blades, she carefully cut the threads. A three-inch line opened and restitched … same color thread, just a little brighter than the others.

She set the scissors down, took a deep breath. Wished she had smaller hands. Inserted two fingers into the gap, made contact with something dry and crinkled. Grasped it with her fingers, pulled it smoothly through the opening.

A small brown envelope, folded tight.

She unfolded it, spread it out on top of the dress.

It was addressed to her.

Twenty-Six

S
he sank into the leather chair, holding the thin paper of the envelope in her hands. It shook with the trembling of her fingers.

Someone had written her name in a hurry, scrawling it with no time for the ink to dry. Some of it had soaked into the folds of the envelope. Written, addressed, folded, and hidden. Hidden twice, as the dress was picked up at Cordelia Street and taken to the dry cleaners by Clara, waiting there, while another envelope came to Miranda with the receipt.

She opened the drawer and found the envelope from earlier, studying the writing on each. Both rushed. Same writing.

She needed a cigarette, needed something to still the shaking in her hands. No time now. The letter opener felt heavy, the silver-plated handle awkward to hold. She managed to insert the blade, and tore patiently, a little at a time, wanting to destroy as little of it as possible.

Inside was a thin piece of paper and a storage receipt for the Greyhound lockers.

Greyhound Stage Lines. Formerly the Pickwick Stage Lines. Right next door to the Pickwick Hotel.

She unfolded the letter. Pickwick Hotel stationery.

Found Winters dead. Got there at time Wong set, 4:00
A.M..
Wong working with Winters, get Sammy out. Frame for me I think. Stayed for hour, panic, talked to Eddie. Stored papers at lockers. Eddie wants sister out, Sammy likes her. Eddie took Winters’s money, I worry, Sammy and Coppa will know. If they find out about Wong and me God help us both. Going back to house. More if I can.

There was blue ink for the next section.

Eddie killed. Wong wants money, evidence, keep Martini away. But Martini knows something or why kill Winters. Coppa waiting. Coppa left Winters money as bait, find the pigeon. Feel like I killed Eddie. My fault, should not have gave him money. Wong and Charlie argue. Sammy runs Charlie now. Wong worried. Nowhere to go, we give ourselves away. Not sure what to do? The women cry all the time I can’t

The ink skittered off the page, interrupted. One more paragraph. Sprawled words, some dripping with ink, some barely scratched.

Miranda—help me. Saw you tonight. Will call tomorrow. Winters try to get out, buy information from Wong. Coppa killed Winters, Eddie took money, Eddie’s dead. Sewing this in dress with ticket. Don’t trust no one no more.