City of Secrets (22 page)

The gin tasted like Prohibition hootch, and it was making Miranda's eyes water. She set the glass on an ebony end table. Time to play a hunch.

“Edwina—was Annie gone last April for a week or so?”

The old lady snorted. “Week? More like five or six. Sent her boyfriend over with the rent on time, though. Surprised she kept her job, but them Emporium people are OK. Goddamn understanding, if you ask me.”

Miranda tried to keep her voice deliberate, unexcited. “She had a regular boyfriend back then?”

Edwina sputtered gin on the pink robe. “I thought you was a detective, lady. 'Course she had a boyfriend. The poor bastard they got locked up in San Quentin. Gerry Duggan.”

 

Nineteen

Miranda's hands were trembling. She reached into the purse and shook out the half-smoked stick from earlier. The old lady watched, adding, “That ain't a bad idea,” and held out her palm for more. Miranda gave her the rest of the pack. Edwina slid them into her robe pocket.

“How long did they see each other?”

The old lady pulled out one of the cigarettes, lit it with a matchbook from the Bonita Meat Market on Fillmore. Tossed the used match and the matchbook back on the side table.

“They was serious. Figured they'd get married, though I told Annie not to get involved with cops. Went together maybe four, five months, off and on. Arguin', fightin', then makin' up again. You know how it is. That Duggan fella's got a bad temper. Slapped Annie around some. I advised her to throw the bastard out, but she weren't gonna listen to an old lady like me.”

“Why don't you think he killed her?”

Edwina coughed in the middle of an inhale, waving Miranda back and glaring at her.

“Siddown, dearie. I just ain't used to these cheap smokes.”

Coughs racked the old lady's thin frame while her stiff fingers and overlarge knuckles clutched at her robe like talons.

“Duggan's a mean bastard, no good and rotten, but he ain't a killer.” She stopped, trying to catch her breath. “When Annie came back from Calistoga, she dropped him like a hot potato. I figure she got some sense—'bout time, too.”

Edwina shook her head, clearing her throat with one last guttural rasp. “No, he ain't the one. Threw him over last year, and if he was gonna do somethin' about it, he woulda then.”

The old lady swirled her glass and tossed the rest of the gin to the back of her throat. Belched softly.

“Came around with his hat in his hands a coupla weeks ago, lookin' for her. I told him where he could go.” She frowned. “Maybe I weren't so smart.”

Miranda spoke quickly. “Duggan came by here?”

“Beat me all to hell. Figured they was over and done with. I knew they were finished on her end.” She raised her face, patchwork pink and white, pointed chin softening a little. “Bastard looked about as sad as an organ grinder's monkey, poor goddamn slob—long, hairy arms an' all.”

Information was coming fast and thick, overwhelming her. Duggan as brutal, dirty cop she recognized. Duggan as lover would take more than a glass of ten-year-old gin to make sense.

“Edwina … could you tell me what happened on Sunday?”

The old woman took a cautious puff on the Chesterfield. Gray ash dropped off on the Oriental carpet, nearly monochrome with stains and age.

“Mrs. Jenkins from number nine comes round, crowin' at me about Annie again, she ain't heard Annie go to work, Annie's got too many fellas, Annie's this and Annie's that. Goddamn busybody.” Flashed a glance at Miranda. “Nosin' in Annie's business is the best time she's had since her husband died.”

The old lady stared at the stick burning between her fingers. “Found her lyin' there on the bed. Called the cops. Took me down to the Hall with 'em to identify her.”

Tiny bed, cramped room, smell of
Soir de Paris
. Pretty girl, dark hair, red splotches spreading, staining the torn-off dress from the Emporium sale.

Drip-drop. Drip-drop.

The landlady coughed again, deep rattle. Pinched out the cigarette, dropped it on the table next to the matchbooks.

Miranda asked: “Why'd she stop seeing Duggan?”

Edwina shrugged. “Annie wouldn't tell me. Got some ideas, though. This trip she made—he didn't know she was up at Nance's. He let that out when he came to pay her rent. She told him she was goin' to see her mother in Walla Walla.”

Miranda looked up sharply. “Why? What's wrong with Nance's?”

The wrinkled old woman raised a partially bald eyebrow. “Nance's? Resort for highfalutin slobs that wanna wallow like pigs in mud. Not the place for the kind of people Annie was.”

Edwina rubbed her nose, veins standing out like a road map. Leaned forward, narrow shoulders hunched, blue eyes sharp on Miranda.

“She was there for weeks. So where the hell did she get the money, huh? And why go at all? Figure that one out, girlie. Figure that one out.”

Edwina tilted the glass so that any remaining drops of gin would trickle down her throat. Miranda stubbed out her cigarette in a shell-shaped ceramic ashtray, faded gold sticker reading
MADE IN SAN DIEGO.
Laid her business card on the couch. Counted out a ten and five singles.

The old lady's eyes shone with pleasure. “You ain't much of a detective, honey, but you're a real lady. Thanks.”

Wry smile. “I'm working for Duggan's lawyer.”

“Yeah? Well, I hope you get him off. Like I said, the poor bastard was crawling around here a few weeks back.”

“You think she went up there to meet someone else?”

Edwina looked up at Miranda, voice pointed. “My program's comin' on, dearie.”

Miranda stood up. “Thanks. I'll let myself out.” The old lady nodded, her mind on NBC Red. Turned the knob on the Philco.

“Did you tell all this to the police?”

Edwina was staring at the radio as if the tubes would warm quicker that way.

“Hell, no. I just answered what they asked me—if Duggan were sniffin' around and if he knew Annie. And I ain't heard a word from 'em since, 'cept to keep the place locked up. Which I do, exceptin' for lady detectives, a' course.” She threw a grin up at Miranda, her eyes falling back to the radio with a shake of the head. “I guess her mother's comin' down to fetch her things.”

The creamy tones of a soap seller started to ooze through the speakers. Edwina bent forward, back hunched and round like the seashell ashtray on the ebony table. Miranda closed the door behind her softly.

*   *   *

Noon sirens were hitting a high note. Edwina's gin was still burning in her stomach.

Miranda walked to Market and Gough, couple of streetcars rumbling by the McRoskey Mattress building across the street. She yawned, staring at the beds in the window. Yellow neon gleamed dully across and down Market, beckoning her to Page.

The Bohemian Garden boasted twenty-four-hour service and beer on draft—the “kind you like.” Bright, colorful paintings of happy-go-lucky Czech maidens dancing against a snow-covered backdrop decorated an exterior wall.

She walked under the green awning into a long, low restaurant, dark counter crowded with beefy men in work clothes drinking flat lager out of glass mugs. Some of them looked up when she walked in; some of the eyes lingered. One of them clambered off the stool with effort and waddled over with intent.

“You want somethin', Miss?”

She held his eyes up. “Yeah. Lunch.”

He grunted, waddled to the counter, and shouted to the double doors at the far end, “Millie—customer!” then crawled back on his stool, work done for the afternoon. A tall, gaunt peroxide blonde with two messy braids hurried out from the kitchen, tomato sauce on her chin. She saw Miranda, grabbed a menu. Gestured for her to follow.

The odor of stale beer chased them to a small table with a faded, flowered tablecloth. The waitress slapped the menu down, looked up without much hope. “We got a special today.”

“Other than beer?” Miranda looked around the empty dining room.

Millie shoved a braid behind her shoulder. “Roast pork, potatoes and sauerkraut, beer or coffee, apple pie for dessert. Thirty-five cents.”

“Make it a special. Coffee, please—strong.”

The blonde nodded, relieved that Miranda wasn't going to demand anything she couldn't give her.

One of the men in dungarees and a hard hat got up from his stool and dropped a nickel in the jukebox. Andrews Sisters warbled out from the speakers.
Roll out the bar-rel, we'll have a bar-rel of fun …

“Beer Barrel Polka.” Only thing Bohemian in the joint.

*   *   *

Miranda picked at the pork, more boiled than roasted. The food explained why they depended on the beer. The beer couldn't explain anything.

Coffee was black enough to matter and helped melt Edwina's gin. She could use a couple of shots of bourbon right now, but she and her arm would have to wait for the office bottle.

Miranda shoved aside the blue-striped lunch plate and plunged a fork in the apple pie. Doughy in the middle, but the filling was sweet and tasted good with the coffee. She stared ahead into the dark greenness of the restaurant, at the faded Czechoslovakian flag still flying above the door.

Opened the second and last pack of Chesterfields in her purse and shook out a stick, lighting it with a pack of green-and-white matches on the table.

She thought of Nance's Sanitarium and the pencil check next to the Hotel Potter, the postcard, unsigned, from the Hollywood Show in Annie's desk.

I don't think I could have come back without your help. We are more than sisters.

Thought of two women, both missing from work for a few weeks. Same time, maybe same place. One, a blond dreamer from Lima, Ohio, eyes on
Modern Screen
and the Beverly Hills Hotel, working in a peep show on Treasure Island. The other, a young woman from Walla Walla, Washington, another dreamer in her way, this time of marriage and settling down and Hanukkah candles in her desk.

Miranda blew a stream of smoke, watching it curl and drift toward the open door. Rubbed out the cigarette, dug out fifty cents for Millie.

Hotel Potter was on the way back to the office, at Ninth and Mission.

Where Pandora used to live.

*   *   *

Run-down neighborhood. Cheap hotels and apartment houses squatting around the corner from the Civic Center, symbol of San Francisco resilience.

The Hotel Potter was a three-story brick building, no uglier than its neighbors. Couple of little boys were sitting on the stoop of a single-story wood house, paint peeling, smell of cabbage curling out the window and turning her stomach. They stared at her, no curiosity.

She dropped the Chesterfield on the sidewalk. Walked under the faded awning into a dark closet of a lobby, making her way to the hotel desk. Thin, middle-aged bald man in a sleeveless T-shirt sat on a stool behind a scarred wooden counter, reading
The Saturday Evening Post
. Air was still and overly warm. He looked up when she entered.

“Help you with something, Miss?”

Eyes were rheumy and moist and dropped down in little bags on his face. A Fatima burned between his lips.

Guess she didn't look like a customer. First compliment she'd gotten all day.

Miranda opened her wallet and pulled out two singles, slowly enough for him to notice, though her only competition was a wall calendar with a girl on her tiptoes who apparently didn't realize she was wearing a see-through bathing suit.

“I'd like to ask you about a former tenant. Blond girl, pretty. Name was Pandora Blake.”

The baggy eyes narrowed, forming deeper pockets on the bottom rim. “You a cop?”

She shook her head. Lifted up the two dollars. Rubbed them together.

His mouth turned upside down, eyes flicking back and forth between Miranda, the money, and a door on the left. Probably the manager. He was worried about a split.

She said smoothly: “If you can tell me what I need to know, I don't see why I'd need to talk to anyone else.”

His shoulders relaxed a little. One more glance at number three before gesturing with his head toward a side office, on the right behind the counter.

Miranda followed, protecting her arm when she squeezed through the wooden gate.

The office was an extension of the exterior, drab, dingy, dirty. A small safe stood in the corner, couple of mismatched chairs tilting unevenly in front of a wooden desk.

She looked up at the ceiling, high enough to provide some air and maybe even thoughts of escape. Hope might have lingered for a time at the Hotel Potter, lost in a corner, buoyed by innocence and backstage bouquets. But eventually it would die from what they used to call a wasting disease, consumed by the dead air and the dead flies, the dead eyes of the man behind the counter, and the smell of cabbage from the house next door.

He scratched a pimple on the side of his neck, keeping an eye out on number three. Said nervously: “Whaddya wanna know?”

Miranda laid a dollar on the desk. “How long did Pandora live here?”

He eyed the money, made no move. “'Bout a year. Apartment 5C. It's rented out again, so's I can't show it to you, so don't ask.”

“She not show up for a while? Say, last April?”

The skinny man coughed, chest heaving. “Goddamn Fatimas—always do it to me.” Caught his breath, stared at Miranda. “Funny you know about that. What'd you say your name was?”

“I didn't. But it's Miranda Corbie. I'm a private investigator.”

He cracked a smile, back of his cheek sinking in on the right side where he was missing some teeth.

“You? A dame? Yeah … I think I've hearda you, at that.” He glanced down at the dollar, voice more confident. “You can do better than two bucks.”

Miranda flicked the second dollar on the table. “You're lucky to be getting this. I could look up the information for myself.” Glanced toward apartment three. “Maybe the hotel manager would appreciate the money.”