City of Dragons (7 page)

He stared at her earnestly. “Duggan was telling the truth. We’ve been assigned the Takahashi case, and we were told to call in vice if we have to. Brady is prepared to throw everything he can at you—or anyone else who doesn’t let it lie. He can’t afford another Atherton Report.”

Miranda blew a stream of smoke toward the window. “Seems to me cleaning up the police department—such as it is—has given him enough to do in the last three years. My lawyer would have me out in thirty minutes and the case would be dismissed.”

“I know. But it would do you damage. Even if you didn’t lose your license, the publicity—”

She leaned forward. “Listen, Inspector. I used to work for an escort service. Everyone knows that. The Board knows it, the chief knows it, Brady knows it, even your pal Duggan knows it. I was never nailed there, and I won’t be nailed here. And it so happens that I do have a few friends, a couple of them in higher places than the Hall of Justice, and I’m reasonably sure that as long as I keep my nose clean I’ll be hanging on to my license. As for the publicity—why do you think I get the clients I do?”

She learned back in the chair again, shaking her head. “I won’t be scared. I don’t work that way. Just makes me stubborn.”

The appreciation on his face had nothing physical in it. Miranda looked away and smoked and wondered if he drove a green Olds. Gonzales walked back to the chair facing her, sat down and cleared his throat.

“I wouldn’t count on any state or federal contacts in this case. Rice Bowl Parties are being held in Chinatowns all across America. Ours is the largest. Over three hundred thousand people showed up for it last year, and we raised more money than all the other parties combined.”

Miranda stubbed out the cigarette, grinding it slowly into the Tower of the Sun. “I saw your Humanity League badge next to your buzzer, Inspector. I’ve bought a few myself. And I blink the water out of my eyes when I watch the newsreels, or tsk-tsk when I open a
Life
magazine and see the pictures, and then I get out a hanky and blow my nose and send another fifty cents to the Red Cross. But no matter how many sweet little children are starving to death on the streets of Shanghai—or in the concentration camps of Germany—or even in the central valley, right here in California—no matter how unjust and cruel and evil that makes the world, and I’d say it makes it pretty goddamn bad—Eddie Takahashi was murdered yesterday. Who the fuck mourns for him?”

Her hands were clenched and red, on top of her desk. Goddamn it. She hadn’t meant to lose her temper.

Gonzales reached in his coat and pulled out a billfold. It looked like Moroccan leather, and she wondered again how he got his money.

“Here’s my card. Call me if you turn over something.”

She frowned. “I thought the SFPD wasn’t interested.”

“Maybe not in prosecuting. At least not for murder. But there are other crimes.”

She reached across and took it from his fingers, staring at it. “I assume this offer doesn’t include your partner?”

“It includes no one but me, Miss Corbie.”

She looked at him. “Fair enough. And I have a question for you. The herbalist on Sacramento near where Eddie was shot—the young one—Mike Chen. You talk to him?”

Gonzales fished for his notepad again and flipped a few pages.

“Only briefly. He has a record—served a couple of years for peddling reefers. He’s been clean since.”

“Maybe he just hasn’t been caught.”

Gonzales raised his eyebrows, and she smiled.

“It’s been a long day, Inspector.”

He stood up graciously, holding out his hand. She took it. His palm was warm and dry.

“Thank you, Miss Corbie. I suspect we’ll be seeing you.”

“Thank you, Inspector. And tell Phil he’s lucky to have you.”

Gonzales’s cheeks blushed a light shade of red as he put on his fedora.

“I’d tell him the same thing about you, if that wouldn’t be presumptuous.”

Miranda turned toward the window. A trombone slide squealed from somewhere on Market, but was drowned out by a streetcar clang and the irritated horn of a car before she could figure out the song.

“It would be. Very much so.”

He nodded. “Then forgive me, please.”

She called him back when he turned to go. “Inspector—”

He looked at her with a question on his face, his hand on the doorknob.

“If you need cigs or a paper, buy them from the girl down in the lobby. She thinks you’re a dreamboat.”

He laughed at that, easily, and walked out the door, his coat billowing slightly behind him.

Five

M
iranda waited two minutes before locking the office door. She walked to the window and opened it, breathing in Market Street, breathing out cops. No green Olds parked in front, just a throng headed up Kearny for the Rice Bowl Party.

Crowds poured around Lotta’s Fountain, brushing fingers on the ornate metal work, one or two giving the bronze an affectionate pat. In a rare gush of sentiment, Miranda’s father once told her she’d taken her first drink of water from it. Then he proceeded to quote Shakespeare and take another shot of brandy. Not his first.

She shut the window hard, displacing a morgue of dead flies. Sank into the chair behind the desk and pulled the bloody bandage out of her bra. The marijuana cigarettes were still intact, and she poked at them with a pencil, smelling them, then sealed them in an envelope. The bandage she set aside, along with the package from Mike Chen.

She was reaching for the phone when the receiver jangled, and she jumped, letting it ring three or four times. Grabbed the receiver and held it to her ear in a single motion of decision.

“Answer your damn phone, Miranda. What’re you doing, playing hide-and-seek?”

Rick and his goddamn lilt. Battered felt hat pushed off his forehead, blue eyes apparently guileless while hunting for the next front-page exposé. She liked Rick, liked him a lot, and tried not to blame him because he wasn’t Johnny. It was just that goddamn lilt she hated.

She held the phone with her shoulder and fished out another Chesterfield.

“I was playing hopscotch with a couple of cops. What do you want, Rick?”

Low whistle on the other end, while she reached for the desk lighter and snapped a spark.

“Hopscotch, huh? Sure it wasn’t hangman? Or should I say hanglady?”

The sympathetic approach usually worked for him. Sympathy honed writing Lonely Hearts columns for some rag in New York City. She repeated, after taking a puff on the Chesterfield: “What do you want, Rick?”

“You know what I want. The
News
is the only newspaper with balls in this city, the only one that hasn’t ground up and fed its liver to Old Man Hearst. This Takahashi story is dynamite—and I want to light it off.”

“So?” Miranda blew a smoke ring.

“Don’t bullshit me. I know you. You don’t like getting the shove-off. The cops and their bosses, and the bosses of those bosses, have all told you to mind your own business and keep your legs crossed like a lady. Well, I’m betting you’re not taking no for an answer. You got something and I want it.”

She stubbed the cigarette, half-finished, on the tarnished Tower of the Sun ashtray. “Tell me again why I give a damn whether you need something.”

His voice got deeper. “Look, Miranda, those Fair cases we worked on—not to mention what I did for you over Burnett’s murder—when did I ever—”

“You got paid, Sanders. And you got a raise, if I remember correctly. Spare me the Irish singsong, and answer my question.”

Through the phone she could hear the chaos and bustle of the newsroom, men shouting, the
rat-tat-tat-tat
of typewriter keys like machine guns.

“I hope you’d do it out of friendship. We’ve—shared some moments, Miranda. Maybe I figured wrong. Maybe I forgot that no one ever gets close enough to really know Miranda Corbie.”

Somewhere a church bell rang the hour.
Dong.
Another bell. Rick was still on the line. Still waiting.

“All right. But—come through, Sanders. I’ll need your help, too.”

“Glad to give it. Listen, why don’t we just start over? Let’s go out tonight. I’ve got reservations at the Twin Dragon—we’d be on the spot for the Rice Bowl Party.”

Dong.
Three o’clock already. She didn’t want to go out with Rick, didn’t want to watch his eyes light up when she walked to the table, or pretend that her ankle was sore so she wouldn’t have to dance, didn’t want to talk about Spain or New York or Johnny or life beyond a fucking church bell.

She took a breath, fingernails tracing the indentations and scars of her desk top.

“I’ll go, Sanders, but just for a drink and to tell you what I know. And what I need. Fair enough?”

“Of course. What else would I suggest? This is business, Miss Corbie, strictly business. I’ll pick you up at five-thirty. You still at the Drake Hopkins?”

“Yeah. 640 Mason.”

“See you tonight.”

“’Bye.”

The cradle clanged when she dropped the phone. She waited until the line was clear, spent it looking through the Kardex on her desk. Picked out a card, dialed a number. The bandage and the small brown package of herbs were staring at her.

“Medico-Dental Building, please. Healy Labs … H-e-a-l-y. Uh-huh. Thank you.”

She reached for another cigarette and caught herself, opened a side drawer.

“Healy Laboratory? This is Joan MacIntosh. I’m looking for Edith Placer. P-l-a-c-e-r. That’s right. She’s—let me see—she works there on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday evenings. Oh, I’m a friend of her mother’s … down from Portland—that’s right. She told me to look her up, but I don’t have her current home address, just this one. Would you? Thank you so much—no, not yet. I saw the Fair last year, though … quite spectacular, I thought. I don’t see how New York’s could be any better—oh, thank you! That would be lovely. Yes, I have a pencil.”

Her fingers found an ancient package of Wrigley’s gum in the back of the drawer. She frowned at it, tossed it into the wastebasket under the desk, and wrote on the bent, gray card.

“Edith Placer, Garfield 9645, Braeburn Apartments, 861 Sutter—oh, I think I can find it. Yes, yes, I will. Thank you so much! ’Bye.”

She was surprised not to have the address. Edith was a friend—as much as anyone. Miranda hesitated with her hand over the receiver, then picked it up and dialed the number. No answer, Madame. Please hang up the phone, Madame. She lowered it back into the cradle. Sat, unblinking, unfocused. The phone rang again.

She waited until the noise became insistent.

“Is this the Miranda Corbie Detective Agency? Miss Miranda Corbie?”

It was a voice usually smoother, more modulated. The harshness that crackled beyond the edges was a recent development.

“This is she. How can I help you?”

The woman paused. Miranda could hear thoughts being gathered and a story being put together on the other end.

“My—my husband. He was murdered.”

Miranda sat back. “Madame, that’s for the police depart—”

“They’re doing nothing. Nothing! They said it was a heart attack, that he’d been in the hotel with—with a woman. Lester would never—”

“Ma’am, the police know—”

“They know nothing, they do nothing!” The woman wanted someone to hear her, to listen to her. There were a lot of women like that, not all of them with dead husbands.

“All right, start from the beginning. Your husband was in a hotel—”

“The Pickwick. In San Francisco. We live in Alameda. He works as an engineer for a shipping company. He didn’t come home Thursday night, and I called the police. Then—then Friday morning they called me and said the maid at the Pickwick had—had found …”

“They said it was a heart attack?”

“Yes.”

Miranda was silent until she heard the woman’s breathing come back under control.

“Why are you so sure it was murder?”

“I—I just am. Lester would never—”

“You’d be surprised how frequently ‘never’ happens. I’m sorry for your loss, but I can’t help you.”

“I’m not without funds, Miss Corbie.”

Miranda reached for the cigarettes again and this time gave in.

“It’s not that.” Deep drag, savored the Chesterfield. “Though it helps. I need to know why you’re so certain. I need you to be honest with me, even if you’re not with the cops. There’s no point, otherwise.”

The woman wrestled with herself some more while Miranda blew a smoke ring.

“It’s a family matter, Miss Corbie. Not something I want to discuss without meeting you in person. I’ll be in San Francisco tomorrow to see our attorney—settle Lester’s … Lester’s affairs. Can you meet me around one, at the Owl Drug Store lunch counter on Powell and Market? I’ll pay your fee or whatever it is for the day. Is that all right?”

Miranda leaned back against the heft of the chair. She didn’t have much room left over for anything other than Eddie Takahashi. But the lady was a paying customer. Her favorite kind.

“That’s fine. What’s your name?”

“Helen Winters. I know what you look like—I’ve seen your picture in the paper. I’ll find you.”

“Mrs. Winters—there are a number of private investigators in San Francisco. Why did you choose me?”