City of Secrets (21 page)

“No. I'm here to ask you some questions about Annie Learner.”

The old lady looked her up and down again. Eyes rested on the handbag.

“Whaddya got?”

Miranda sidled inside the dim foyer, letting the door shut automatically behind her with a soft click. Interior smelled like mothballs, camphor, and chicken soup.

She looked down at the shrunken face, cheekbones still dotted with rouge from when women wore bustles. Miranda grinned.

“Depends on what you got. Let's start with five and work our way up.”

The old lady nodded, false teeth loose enough to make a clacking sound. Turned to her doorway.

“Come in. Name's Edwina Breckinridge.”

“Mine's Miranda Corbie.”

The old woman craned her neck, looked back at Miranda. “I know.”

Miranda raised her eyebrows and followed the shrunken form of the old lady into a dark, cramped apartment, overcrowded with burgundy velvet, dilapidated Victorian furniture, and scandalous paintings of a woman in a skimpy stage costume.

Gnarled finger pointed up proudly. “That was me. Turned quite a few heads in my time.”

A sensual smile still promised the kind of pleasure that lured randy young dandies to backstage doors and sent their wives to lectures on the decline of morality. Curling, flame-colored hair fell over a bloodred costume that showed off her thighs.

“You were an actress?”

The old lady walked to a walnut desk bigger than she was and fished out some keys.

“One of the best. Played all the circuits, had me beaux aplenty. Money, too. Threw it away on that sonofabitch Breckinridge, may his soul rot in hell.”

Miranda was still looking up at the portrait. “Why'd you marry him?”

Mrs. Breckinridge sighed and clutched her robe, glanced up at the painting.

“Ain't got time for tall tales. You wanna see her apartment or not?”

Miranda nodded, following the old woman down the dingy hall to the back of the building. Mrs. Breckinridge turned the key in the lock, faced Miranda. Wrinkled palm up and out.

“Cops told me not to let anyone in, a' course, but I know who you are. Lady detective. Saw your picture in the paper. You can call me Edwina. Where's the five bucks?”

Miranda transferred the purse to her left arm, holding it gingerly while she opened it with her right. Took out her wallet, opened it one-handed, and pulled out a five-dollar bill.

The old lady snatched it from her fingers. “Whaddya do to your arm?”

“You mind if I smoke?”

Edwina shook her head. “You got somethin' worth smokin', I'll join you.”

Miranda replaced the wallet and plucked out the deck of Chesterfields. Offered them to the old lady, who took three.

Miranda grinned, stuck one in her mouth, and lit it with the Ronson. Passed it to Edwina, who shoved two sticks in her robe pocket and lit another, smacking her lips as if she were eating the tobacco.

“Not bad. Not as good as the cee-gars I used to get from France, but not bad. What's wrong with your arm?”

Miranda looked down at her over the cigarette tip. “I got shot at last night.”

“D'ya find the bastard?”

“Not yet.”

The old lady grunted. “Hope you do. All right, in you go. You find anything in there worth more than five bucks, you know where I live. Thanks for the smokes.”

Miranda asked. “So why'd you marry him?”

Edwina curled her neck back around, peering up at her. “'Cause he could fuck like nobody's business.”

She watched the old lady's bent back and small, crooked legs scurry down the gray corridor, finally disappearing into her own room.

*   *   *

Annie Learner's possessions were meager and already pillaged by the cops. Her address book—along with anything else obviously linked to the case—would be down at the Hall. Miranda was left with the detritus, everyday junk the bulls overlooked, ordinary bits of an ordinary life that ended in an unordinary way.

Small, dingy, dark. Corner room, would've been quiet enough for the liaisons Annie supposedly had, nights when the perfume counter closed, maybe hoping to score a rich husband or at least a boyfriend who could take her to the movies and treat her more like a lady.

Girls who worked perfume cultivated an air, a radio voice, necessary to sell women on the idea of allure through scent and to persuade men that buying it for their wives would make them smell and look like the woman who sold it. Miranda hadn't seen a photo of her, not yet, but she knew Annie was pretty and could sweet-talk her way to a commission.

Came with the job.

She stubbed the cigarette out on the door handle, dropped the remaining half in the Chesterfield package.

Walked to the tiny closet, riffling through the clothes. Mostly Emporium, mostly on sale, one or two pieces from the White House or City of Paris, last year's models. No Sears, no Montgomery Ward. Looked up at the hat boxes on the closet shelf.

Grabbed a hanging umbrella to knock one of the boxes down, tumble of cardboard on the wooden floor. Jarring sound in the still, small apartment.

Newest hat box held last year's style, medieval side affair with a feather.

Impractical, and definitely a luxury for Annie Learner.

The bedroom was more like a closet itself, barely large enough for a single bed, small dresser, and vanity. She squeezed between the footboard and the vanity stool and sat down, looking in the mirror.

Annie must've been a few inches shorter than Miranda, about five three. Perfumes strewn on the blond wood were mostly high-end samples, makeup Elizabeth Arden with a few less expensive brands mixed in.

Cheap red lacquer jewelry box sat crookedly behind the bottles of fragrance. Miranda opened it. “Always” began to play on a tinny little music wheel, rotating ballerina dancing jerkily to the music.

I'll be loving you, always …

Tink.
Last note. Ballerina frozen, midpirouette.

Costume pieces, inexpensive rhinestone, and a very small silver ring, minuscule diamond. Miranda squinted at the inside, couldn't find a mark. Tried to put it on her smallest finger.

Wouldn't fit.

She held it in her palms, fingers closing on it, and dropped it in the inside flap of her purse.

She stood up, grimacing, arm jostled from the smallness of the space. Stepped into the living room, toward the oak desk that stood in the farthest corner from the door, under a ventilation shaft thick with dust.

Portable brown Bakelite radio sat on the edge, dial turned to KFRC, last year's phone book propped beside the phone. Miranda riffled through the pages, looking for Pandora Blake.

No listing.

Tried the Hotel Potter, bent closer to the paper in the dim light. Faint penciled checkmark next to the number and scribbles in the margin of the page, nothing legible. She flipped back through to the Ds.

Gerald Duggan's name was circled in black ink.

Unblotted, ink bleeding through several pages, edges blurred and furry. More scribbling in the margins. A few words: “tonight, 8 pm, the Fox.”

Miranda felt her face muscles pull tight, and she closed the book, thin pages making a whooshing sound as they fanned shut.

Next to the telephone was a small heap of papers. Postcards, stationery, photos, and souvenirs, careless pile made by careless cops.

On the top was a postcard from Nance's Sanitarium.

*   *   *

Message scrawled in pencil on the back. No stamp, no postmark, never mailed.

Don't want you to worry. You're always so sorry after you get mad. Just need a few days off to think about everything. I'll write soon.

Love always, your Annie

P.S. Don't lose your license again, you might need to come get me.

Date was hard to read. Looked like “April 8, 1939.”

Miranda held the card in her hand, pain in her arm forgotten. Remembered the same card in Pandora Blake's pile of memories, unmarked and unsent but still kept, gift or souvenir.

Pandora missed six or more weeks of work at Artists and Models last year. Sometime in April, Lucinda said. She remembered the brunette's snappish evasion on the subject of Calistoga, just last night.

She needed to talk to Lucinda.

Miranda carefully placed the card inside her
Chadwick's Street Guide
.

Picked through the pile, unearthing a couple of small snapshots, one in front of the main entrance to the Emporium, another laughing and gesturing toward a bottle of Soir de Paris on her perfume counter.

Smiling girl, dark-haired. Pretty.

Another postcard, corner bent. This one advertising “The Hollywood Show ‘Stage 9,'” running one full hour, two to ten
P.M.
daily, only forty cents for the secrets of a Hollywood soundstage. Neil Hamilton and Marian Marsh beaming fame and happiness against a red star background.

Miranda flipped the card over. Careful, curly writing, this time in blue ink. Dated Monday, May 15.

I wanted to let you know that I'm back to work. I don't think I could have come back without your help. We are more than sisters.

I know we agreed never to tell anyone and to try to forget, and I want to do that more than anything now. No one will know about what happened, not even my mother. But if you ever need to talk, Annie, you know where to find me.

No signature.

Miranda combed through the pile, looking for more postcards, heartbeat pounding in her ears.

Nothing.

Map of the Emporium, an Owl Drug Store menu. Matchbook from the Riviera restaurant. Small box of Hanukkah candles, half-empty. Go-a-Graf brochure on events for New Year's, a '39 guidebook to the Fair. Municipal Railway ticket. Ghirardelli chocolate wrapper from Treasure Island. Coupon for a dime off a new Max Factor lip crème.

Souvenirs of average, everyday existence, individual shreds of receipts and coupons adding up to one life, her life, Annie Learner's. Kind of paper junk that gets thrown out every three or six months when it's no longer useful and the memories attached no longer vivid enough to take up the room.

Small square envelope, thick and still sealed, caught her eye. She plucked it out from under the stern face of
Pacifica,
glaring from the cover of the Fair guidebook. Small typed letters at the bottom read
GOLDEN GATE INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION.

She recognized it as one of the mail envelopes for oversize souvenir matches, the kind that read
A PAGEANT OF THE PACIFIC
and were painted with an orange-and-purple scene of San Francisco.

Penciled writing scrawled across the envelope, different, rougher hand than the postcards.

Happy Dreams, Annie. P.S. Found my license, too.

She held it between her gloved fingers, film scenes unrolling, spiral of images, spinning, speeding, goddamn kaleidoscope, it's the wheel of fortune, ladies and gentlemen, where she stops nobody knows, and thirty-six, thirty-six is the winner.

Of swan boats and straw-covered Roma wine bottles, fights and late nights and squeaking bedsprings, sweaty backs and damp sheets, sweet and pungent. Smell of diesel from Market Street, liquor sign flashing red against the clothes on the floor.

Of a swelling stomach and worries about money, fear and the stench of stigma, mud baths in Napa Valley, time to think, time to plan.

Of trust and a fuck and an ice pick at the neck. Of a finger dipped in blood, last act of humiliation.

Raped with words.

Miranda lifted a trembling hand to wipe the sweat from her forehead.

Goddamn room was too stuffy.

She picked up one of the photos and the matches, placed them next to the two postcards inside the
Chadwick's
. Shut the door quietly behind her.

*   *   *

Edwina opened her door as though she'd been waiting by it.

“So? Got any more for me?”

Miranda squeezed past her into the cramped room. “An extra ten, if you answer some questions.”

The old lady gestured toward the old-fashioned horsehair sofa. Miranda perched on the end. Musty, heavy curtains and dark wood and burgundy, knickknacks and scrapbooks. Felt like she was drowning.

Edwina picked up two cut-glass tumblers, still cloudy with evaporated liquor. Walked, uneven and crablike, into the small kitchen, door swinging behind her. Brief sound of running water. Came back with something clear inside each.

“All I got is gin. You want some?”

Miranda nodded, didn't look too closely at the glass. The old lady sat down, swallowed by an enormous red velvet chair, circa 1900.

“Ask your questions, girlie. My program's comin' on in a few minutes.”

“You follow the case in the papers?”

Edwina sipped the gin, grunted. “'Course I did. They was wrong, the goddamn flatfoots.”

Miranda crouched forward, left arm stiff against her stomach. “What makes you say that?”

The blue eyes were shrewd and calculating. “I'm old, girlie. But that don't mean I'm stupid. I know this city, I know my tenants. Just like I knew my cues back before San Francisco decided to get religion. Goddamn quake scared the bastards somethin' bad, you know how hard it was to get a good job afterward? Sure, Pacific Street was OK, but unless you was George M. Cohan you couldn't get a goddamn booking, not for any decent money.… Where was I?”

“You said the cops were wrong.”

“Yeah. Well, let me tell you somethin'. Annie Learner wasn't no tramp like they made her out to be. She liked a good time, who don't? I didn't give a damn if she was a Jew—back in my day, we didn't care what you were, Jew, Mohammedan, or a Hindu princess, so long as you knew your lines and when to raise your skirt for the can-can.”

She swallowed a large gulp of the gin, shaking her head. “Kid worked hard. Sure, last few months she's been seein' a lot of men. Who can blame her? She weren't gettin' any younger. Figured she'd find her Breckinridge, God help th' poor little thing.”