City of Secrets (31 page)

Leroy came out of the main building holding two rackets unused since Helen Wills Moody won a gold medal in Paris. The girl stuck her hand out, Miranda shook it.

“My name's Nancy. We picked this place because it's called Nance's—funny, huh?”

“I'm Miranda.”

Her boyfriend touched Nancy's arm, said, “I'll watch.”

Looked up at Miranda. Eyes flickered. “Ralph's the name.”

Miranda nodded, crushed the stub of the Chesterfield.

*   *   *

Nancy was a talker. Boyfriend was a banker in Oakland and she was at Cal, earning a master's degree in accounting. Miranda concentrated on the ball and tried not to trip on the uneven, neglected court. Played one-handed, left arm sore and stiff, but still managed to win the set 6–4.

She could feel Ralph's eyes on her. Wondered if he'd seen her somewhere, recognized her. Not a client at Dianne's, not a customer of Burnett's. She wiped her brow.

Gracie moved into her view and watched them play, meaty arms folded across her chest. From the mud bath building another woman emerged, short, smiling, dumpling shaped. She joined Gracie, watching the game. Must be Cora.

Miranda faulted on her serve, and the old lady with the niece shouted from poolside, calling Cora, who waddled over, dragging Gracie behind her. Miranda's breath came easier.

She won the second set in four straight games, Nancy getting bored and making eyes at Ralph instead of paying attention. Miranda called Leroy, told him they were finished. Waved good-bye to Nancy. Caught eyes with Gracie, gave her an imperceptible nod.

By the time she unlocked the cabin and wrapped two twenty-dollar bills inside the folded onionskin, Gracie was at the door.

Miranda opened it wordlessly, handed over the packet. Gracie unfolded the paper, shoved the money in a pocket of her dirty smock. Her eyes darted over the form. She looked up sharply.

“You Jewish?”

“Does that matter?”

The large woman sucked her teeth for a moment, staring at Miranda.

“I'll come for you about six.”

She turned her back and stomped off down the gravel path.

Miranda took a deep breath.

*   *   *

She showered and changed back to street clothes.

Ralph worried her, especially with Nancy's mouth attached.

Sat propped in bed and wrote in the Chief tablet:

Dr. Aalder

Dr. (abortion)—City? North?

How much $$?

Kaiser connection? Shot on Gayway?

Pandora's boyfriend?

She stared at the words for a while, lips pressed together, eyes troubled. Thought about the form she'd filled out, about Aalder's this morning, about the baby ring in her goddamn purse.

Picked up the pencil and scrawled in big capital letters:

EUGENICS.

Fuck.

It all pointed one way, Ann Cooper Hewitt and California law. Doctors in white, doctors and scientists trying to save the race, Aryans in America, Nazis in Germany. Science, fucking science, better living through chemistry, especially if your chemistry was white, Anglo-Saxon, and as Protestant as a clapboard church in New England.

Miranda shook her head. Ripped out the piece of paper and shoved it in her purse.

Dark waters in Calistoga, hellish with more than the smell of sulfur.

*   *   *

Weather was in the eighties, and most of Nance's patrons seemed to be soaking in the pool. Rick was waiting for her, small table in a corner, away from the window.

He handed her a list. She ran her eyes over it, stopped at Parkinson, frowning.

“Dr. Hugh Parkinson. Goddamn it, I've heard that name. He's only here part-time?”

Rick nodded, twisting a forkful of spaghetti. “Offices at 450 Sutter in the City, here two days a week. He's a dentist. Father was some political muckety-muck twenty years ago.”

“Wish I could remember…”

She shook her head as if to clear it and reached across the table, laying a hand over Rick's.

“Meet me back here at four thirty. I think I know what's going on.”

He chewed and swallowed. Said: “Mind telling me?”

She held his eyes.

“I don't know who, and I don't know how. But somebody's sterilizing Jews.”

 

Twenty-seven

Rick almost spit out the water. His cough drew eyes, and Miranda waited impatiently for the attention to subside.

“I told you. Sterilization is perfectly legal in California, whether you're Jewish or Catholic or Prot—”

“I'm not talking about elective surgery, Rick.”

She leaned forward. “Annie didn't want an abortion. Sure, maybe she thought about it after a fight with Duggan—but goddamn it, she came up here for the same reason most people do—rest, relax, get away from the city. And Pandora wasn't even pregnant.”

Miranda looked down at the white tablecloth, play of shadows from the tree outside making macabre patterns on the linen. She spoke low, as if to herself.

“Those women wanted children. Wanted to be able to have children with a man they loved. Somebody sterilized them against their will.”

Rick shoved aside the spaghetti, shook his head.

“Miranda, even involuntary sterilization is legal, if you've got the consent of certain people. I don't know the ins and outs, but—”

“Find out what they are, OK? Before five o'clock.”

He rubbed his nose. “I'll try. But look—Pandora wasn't Jewish. And if a doctor sterilized them only to murder them later, why not do it on the operating table?”

“I don't know. I don't know how it all fits, don't know all the answers. But I know what I know.” She unclenched her fists, knuckles on her thick fingers pale against reddened skin.

“I can't do anything at Nance's, just sit and wait. Aalder's involved, and if I could just remember where I've seen Parkinson…”

Her eyes grew wide.

“Jesus Christ, Rick. It's the fucking Musketeers.”

*   *   *

She paid the bill, and they headed around the tree-lined corner of Washington, within view of Dr. Aalder's. Rick was already sweating in the hot afternoon sun. She grabbed his arm, tugging him toward the shade of the largest oak.

Miranda braced herself against the tree. Rick shoved his hat back on his head, stood close enough to smell her hair.

“We're safer in the open. Let people think we're necking.”

Rick's lips brushed against the side of her head. “OK. Talk.”

“Hugh Parkinson cofounded the Musketeers with a construction company owner, Samuel something. Fraternal businessman group, isolationist, hate Jews and FDR, love Hitler and Henry Ford. Meet at a bar in Maiden Lane called Tonypandy. They're growing—recruiting more roughneck members, probably as storm troopers.”

Rick grunted. “Parkinson's a dentist, not a surgeon. And a lot of these bigmouthed bullies are just that—all talk. Christ, Miranda, you're accusing a prominent dentist of doing what even the Nazis haven't done.”

She was trembling. Opened her purse and plucked out a Chesterfield. Rick stepped back, snapped his lighter. She held his hand and lit it, meeting his eyes over the stick. Deep inhale, long stream of smoke.

“Eugenic scientists in America are inspirations to Hitler—that's on the record, according to the Fuehrer himself. Or maybe you think all those ‘sick' people they've been euthanizing are really sick.”

She leaned back, tree bark digging in her back. Voice was even, controlled with effort.

“Sure, concentration camps are more efficient, but we don't really know what the hell the Nazis are doing. What about the Jews trapped in Lodz? What about the Jews in Belgium, now that Leopold's rolled over for the Wehrmacht?”

She brought a shaking hand to her lips, quick puff. Looked past Rick to the corner of Gerard and the dilapidated cottages of Dr. Aalder's Sanitarium.

“Right here and now we know this: Somebody paid for those two women to get tubal ligations. Somebody paid, somebody operated. Maybe a doctor on that list you gave me—a doctor that knows Parkinson.”

Rick moved close to her again. Hand brushing her arm, eyes worried.

“I'm just a city beat reporter, Miranda, not Eddie Murrow or Bill Shirer. I'm holding my breath like everybody else. I'm here in a little town in Napa Valley trying to help a friend, and I'm telling you—all this talk about conspiracies and sterilized women and anti-Semitic killers sounds like some kind of goddamn plot drummed up by Warner Brothers.”

Miranda watched the smoke curl up between the leaves of the tree, watched Rick's face flush red, smell of perspiration and scent of bay rum on his skin.

“Annie and Pandora were sterilized. Against their will. Then murdered a little over a year later, by someone who hates Jews. And a cop in San Francisco was railroaded, a medical examiner withheld evidence, and the U.S. Marshal's Office got involved, along with Hoover for all I know. That's no Saturday matinee.”

He stepped forward, long body pressing against her, voice a rough whisper.

“Mary's walking down Lincoln. She just saw us.”

“Pretend like we're arguing.” Half a smile. “Won't be too hard.”

Rick suddenly bent down, kissing her hard on the lips, heat and pressure from his body smothering her. Her hands balled into fists at her sides, and she shoved him back with both hands, breathless, wiping her mouth.

“What the fuck are you—”

“Shhh. She was watching us. Just walked into a bakery across the street.” He grinned down at her, lipstick on his mouth. “Helps the cover, Miri.”

She slid away from the tree trunk. Dropped the stick on the cement, rubbing it out with the toes of her sensible and ugly black walking shoes.

“Your goddamn cover is safe enough, Sanders. I'll see you at four thirty. Ask around about Parkinson and the Musketeers. And keep your ears open about Memorial Day.”

“You really expecting trouble?”

“Allen said so. These groups aren't known for their peace rallies, unless it's peace with
der Vaterland
.”

He pulled the fedora low over his forehead. “I said I'd meet the editor of the local rag for drinks. I'll ask him about Parkinson.”

“Wipe the lipstick off your chin. You got enough money?”

“Flush enough. Just—well, goddamn it, be careful. Even if this isn't what you think it is.”

“I'd better get back. You coming?”

“Yeah.” He shook his head. “I still think it sounds nuts, Miranda. We're not in Berlin.”

Miranda shielded her eyes against the bright sun, staring down Lincoln Avenue, small-town shops and corner cafés, smell of peach trees and grass and table wine grapes, rooster crowing from a farmhouse a few blocks away.

“No, Rick. Berlin's come to us.”

She turned away from him, walking quickly down the Calistoga sidewalk.

*   *   *

Miranda kept to the stuffy, one-room cottage for the rest of the afternoon.

She was worried about Ralph and how he'd looked at her earlier, recognition flitting behind his eyes. Worried about Benedetti, too, still a target in Calistoga, always a target until memories of Martini could be scrubbed clean of brain and blood, like the dirty bathtub in the run-down house on Cordelia Street.

No goddamn evidence to speak of. What the fuck kind of detective was she, anyway, postcards and rings and matchbooks, the words of dead women, and they'd never hold up in court.

Promiscuous, the papers would say, attorneys with a snide, knowing look, wink and a leer at the jury. Whore-slut, spread her legs for a cheap cloth coat, new hat, bottle of French perfume.

Besides, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Annie Learner was a Jew. Christ killer, Communist, no morals, why all you have to do is look at Hollywood to see what they've done to us. To US, to U.S. of A., to America the beautiful, America of spacious skies and no room at the counter for your kind, black, brown, yellow, red in lowercase or upper-. Poor and white, poor and anything.

It's a goddamn holy sin to be poor, Father, make your confession, say your Hail Marys, pray to Our Lady of Perpetual Help for some fucking perpetual income and a job that doesn't lay you off and make you spend company money at the company store.

Poverty's your own goddamn fault, and if we could just keep you slovenly dirty bastards from multiplying …

She ran a wet cloth under the dripping bathroom sink.

Drip-drop. Drip-drop.

Back to the sagging mattress, cloth on her forehead.

Miranda lit a cigarette and closed her eyes, head against her pillow.

*   *   *

She met Rick at four thirty, shadows starting to stretch tall under the leafy oaks lining the sidewalk. Italian restaurant again, waiter from last night, hand slicking his hair back, eyes challenging the man she walked in with.

“You don't look so good, Miranda.”

“Health resorts don't agree with me. You find anything?”

He shoved the fedora off his forehead, still beaded with perspiration. Lit a Lucky Strike, nodded.

“Maybe. Parkinson drives up here on Mondays and Tuesdays. Drove back to the City this morning. I left a message for your pal Fisher, told him he might want to check on it.”

Rick paused, drawing down the stick. Hunched forward, propped his elbows on the table.

“Got something interesting from Dewey Scott—editor I told you about. He knows Parkinson vaguely and has heard of the Musketeers. Businessman's organization, secret initiations, Masonic stuff, you know the type. Knew Parkinson was involved, and knows Parkinson doesn't like Jews—the good dentist doesn't make a secret of it.”

Furrows around his mouth grew deep. Rick inhaled until the end of the cigarette was glowing bright red.

“Now Monday night, Scott saw Parkinson talking to a couple of other men at Johnny's. Scott was at the bar, nursing a Scotch like good newspapermen do, and they didn't notice him.”