City of Secrets (36 page)

Shhh, Miranda, calm down. Not so loud. No bulletin from Napa County, no one's chasing you. They don't want the publicity, you're safe, my girl, safe.

Safe. Just don't go to Petaluma or Napa or Calistoga for the rest of your fucking life. Someone with a framed degree might call you crazy, might call you diseased, might say you're better off without your fucking ovaries or even your fucking life.…

Fisher's waiting for us, he's back from the Island, let's go, Miranda, let's go.

Kept slipping backward, chest still hurting from the laughter. Laughs like swallowed razor blades, and fuck, maybe she was crazy, but she'd fix it herself, all by herself, that's what she did, me, myself, and I, Miranda Corbie. Miranda Corbie, who had a mother, maybe, somewhere in the world, if only she could meet her. If only she wouldn't be ashamed.

Johnson was strutting in and out of the background, red-faced, self-important, slamming doors. Fisher was typing next to her, one key at a time.

“OK, Miss Corbie. O'Meara's gonna have some questions for you about how you found out—”

“Not gonna answer them.”

Fisher chuckled to himself, rubbed his eyes. Stretched them open, looking like one of the Ritz brothers. “It's almost dawn. You OK?”

One of the girls screeched. Wished people would stop asking her silly questions. Miranda blinked, yawned, desperate for air. Wrenched open her purse, took out two Life Savers. Didn't give a fuck about what flavor they were.

“I'm taking Miss Corbie home as soon as we're done, Inspector. You can see she's not feeling well—girl needs to see a doctor.”

Too tired for the laughter, but it welled inside her chest, wanting to explode. Explode like the bombs on Treasure Island.

Fisher cranked the knob and cleared the paper, holding it in front of him, running an eye over it. “I'll call you if we need follow-up, but as I say, it'll be O'Meara. I'm just involved because you called me.”

Meyer leaned forward, hand on her elbow. “You sure they got everything?”

He nodded. “Setup was clear. Dynamite, hidden in trash receptacles and mail slots, coordinated attack. Doubt they could've blown up the whole building with what they had, though.”

“How're you releasing the information?”

He shrugged. “That's up to the chief and the D.A. Johnson brought in the feds. Got to with fifth column cases, and this being tied to the Federal Building and coming on Memorial Day…”

In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow …

“It's the fucking Musketeers, and the fucking D.A. plays fucking golf with the fucking head of the organization. You busting the gang at Tonypandy? You bringing in Hugh Parkinson, doctor of dental science? You fighting the fucking war?”

Shhh, Miranda, shhh. She's really not herself tonight, Inspector. I'm sure she'll want to talk to you later about how this may impact our client. I understand her investigation has yielded some information that we hope will help exonerate Mr. Duggan.

Man to man. Back and forth. Both looking at her, both worried.
There's a somebody I'm longing to see …

Meyer helped lift her out of the chair. Fisher stood up. Miranda blinked, remembered.

“Dunkirk … what's happened at Dunkirk?”

Looks again. Quiet voice, the kind used for children and hysterical women.

“British are trying to pull off a miracle. All the little boats—fishermen, pleasure craft—crossing the Channel, saving the men. They're working, Miranda. They're fighting.”

The floor was dirty. Cigarette wrappers, soot, boot prints. No jackboot on England. Not yet.

She tottered, closed her eyes. Opened them again.

“Be seein' you, Fisher.”

Meyer led her out through the wooden gate and down the cavernous hall, hoarse laughter from one of Pickles's girls bouncing against the marble walls, chasing behind them.

 

Thirty-one

The phone was ringing.

Hand snaked out, groping for the alarm clock. One eye, bruised, focused over the pillow.

Fuck. Eleven already. Still Memorial Day.

Miranda groaned, crackling lights in her eyes from the sharp pain shooting through her ankle and leg.

Knees, face, arm … everything hurt.

The phone wouldn't stop, so she reached out and answered it.

“Yeah?”

“You OK?”

Rick. At work. Typing in the background, somebody cursing at the copy boy.

She sat up, wincing. “Yeah. Glad you've still got a job.”

“I dropped the car off for you. And listen … been monitoring the police reports from Napa and Sonoma. Nobody reported a shooting.”

“I didn't report an attempted murder, either. Guess Gosney and I are both remiss.”

Silence on the other end. He cleared his throat. “Miranda … I gotta turn the story into a fluff piece on Calistoga. Orders.”

She reached out and pulled open the nightstand drawer. Grabbed a pack of Chesterfields, groped for a matchbook.

“Yeah? And who ordered the orderer, Rick? Parkinson? The D.A.? City's always been corrupt, but this smells like Goebbels.”

Exasperation flaked off his voice, tired, thin, stretched too tight.

“You don't have any proof, Miranda—it's your word against theirs. Stalemate. You don't have any evidence except for the records on Pandora and Annie. Those might prove a point of interest to the jury—at least spread some doubt Duggan's way—but they don't convict Gosney of anything except abortion—if he even mentions it, which I doubt. You didn't tell me.”

She stared at the cigarette between her fingers. “It's not in Annie's file. Only the sterilization.”

“See? They covered themselves. And you can forget about digging anything else up. You think other women will step forward and straight into a prison cell? Why the hell should they? No, Miranda, listen to me. Maybe they killed those two girls, maybe they ordered it done. But you can't prove it, and you can't even prove that they're doing anything illegal. Or wrong.”

Deep gulp on the Chesterfield. Blew a stream toward the window, watched the smoke unravel and curl, small gray ghosts disappearing in the sun.

“Miranda? You still there?”

Her voice was heavy. “I'm still here, Rick. Bring the Spanish pistol back later, OK?”

He sounded puzzled, almost hurt. But then Richard Sanders, Esquire, friend of John Hayes and Miranda Corbie, reporter of secondhand scandals and lonely hearts columns, always sounded hurt. Fucking world hurt him, and where it didn't, she did.

“Yeah, Miranda. Whatever you say.”

“Thanks, Rick. Be seein' you.”

She hung up the phone. Stared into the air of the bedroom. Listened for the whine of plane engines, sound of bombs falling on San Francisco.

*   *   *

Wanted to get dressed as fast as she could, but her limbs wouldn't work, and she said fuck it and took her time, taking a long shower, steaming hot, examining the gash on her cheek. Hoped it wouldn't leave a scar. Changed the dirty bandage on her gun graze, thinking of Gosney's belly.

Not enough. Not nearly enough. Not like the pain of not being able to have children. Not like the pain of being a woman, no power, no voice, no one to hear you cry in fucking number 114. In a dirty attic room off Market Street.

She was shaking all over, inside and outside. She'd been ready to die, just like in '37, just like the house on Cordelia Street.

Miranda rubbed her face with a towel, tears coming without the sobs, goddamn salty tears biting into the cut on her left cheek. Took deep breaths, leaning on her right, ankle still misshapen, green and blue and purple.

Grabbed at the sink. Stared at the woman in the mirror.

Fissures you couldn't see. Cracks wide, raw, open, and she felt them gaping, fault lines and crevices, pulling her apart, pulling her in. Falling, falling …

She closed her eyes.

*   *   *

Coffee smelled like life again, warming her hands in a white milk-glass mug.

“You owe me a suitcase and some clothes, Meyer. I was fond of the tennis outfit.”

“Make me a list, my dear, and you shall have carte blanche … within reason.”

Her lips twitched into half a smile. “Within reason. So I gave you the files last night, right? What do you think?”

Hesitant voice. “It should help, Miranda. Any doubt on Duggan's guilt and motivations—any smoke screen we can light—”

She leaned forward on the mattress. “It's not a fucking smoke screen. Those bastards sterilized those women without consent and without just cause.”

Sigh. She could hear his fingers tapping on his desk. “I know, my dear. But there's nothing we can do about it. And do you honestly believe Gosney or Parkinson killed Pandora Blake or Annie Learner?”

Miranda raised the Chesterfield to her lips, holding the phone at her side. Bit into the tobacco, inhaled until the end glowed red. Lifted the receiver again. Reluctant.

“No, goddamn it. I don't. Doesn't make sense. Gosney was on the phone with Parkinson, pissing on himself over not making the boss pull strings again. Why go to the trouble? There are easier ways to cover up a murder, especially if you control the medical records at an insane asylum.”

“Exactly. They were safe enough, knowing the women had no real recourse. And they don't strike me as the type of men to be involved with that kind of violent, obvious crime.”

Her voice was dry. “No indeed, Meyer. Gosney was wringing his hands over the thought of botching my operation.”

“But my dear, that's just it. They were going to get rid of you in a way that posed the least amount of jeopardy to themselves and their mission. It isn't personal with these people … it's ideological.”

“And ‘kike' written in blood on a naked woman isn't?” She blew out a stream of smoke, shook her head.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. So it's back to square one again. Back to checking on Henry Kaiser and Pandora's old boyfriend. Maybe he was Jewish, since she identified herself as a Jew on that form they made her fill out.”

She stared at the cigarette between her fingers. “Pandora was marked as soon as she listed herself as ‘Jewish' and her profession as ‘model.'”

“I think you should speak to Mr. Duggan.”

She hesitated. “I will, Meyer, but … not just yet. I want a few more days.”

Silence. She rubbed the Chesterfield stub out in the glass ashtray next to the bed.

He asked it in a cautious way, almost as though he were afraid of the answer.

“What are your immediate plans, Miranda?”

She grinned, skin stretched, gash on her cheek stinging. Imagined the look on her attorney's face.

“I'm going to drop in on Dr. Hugh Parkinson.”

*   *   *

She pushed her way through the two center doors at 450 Sutter, glancing up at the ornate gold canopy. Timothy Pflueger's Mayan fever dream, completed the year the stock market crashed. She remembered walking by it a couple of years later, grizzled men with unshaven chins crouched against one of the shiny, patterned columns, empty eyes on the gold, staring. Wishing they could flake some of it off.

Parkinson evidently made money or was born with enough to make it last. Offices in a twenty-six-story Harley Street address, outclassing the old Romanesque Medico-Dental Building over on 490 Post like Hillsborough over Burlingame. The rich didn't migrate much, but they wanted their dentists to move with them.

Miranda limped toward the elevator, ankle held up by bulky wrapping, fried egg, sausage, hotcakes, and coffee from the St. Francis warming her belly. Rain over, skies fog-blind again.

She was wearing a plain black dress, the kind approved for the courtroom, a small flat hat with a veil, and the lowest heels she could find. Small clutch purse, black leather, gold trim. Empty except for her pocketbook,
Chadwick's Street Guide,
a new pack of Chesterfields, and the Ronson Majorette.

Thin elevator operator with slicked-down hair and acne pushed number eight, hugging the wall. Well-dressed businessman in a double-suited serge coat with a navy fedora got in, out again on five. Probably ulcers.

Elevator lurched in time with her stomach. She stepped out on eight, operator sneezing when the door closed.

She walked into the outer office of Dr. Hugh R. Parkinson, D.D.S., suite number 872.

Clean and white. Just what she expected. And open for Memorial Day.

*   *   *

The receptionist was a young woman with mousy brown hair and glasses who kept her desk relentlessly tidy. Even the circled dates on the desk calendar were the same goddamn size.

She peered at Miranda, found nothing to object to on the surface. Long fingernails, clearly her pride and joy, painted a very pale pink.

Twenty-three or -four. Probably still a virgin, hoping the boss would be the One.

“May I help you?”

“I'd like to see Dr. Parkinson.”

Confident voice belied her looks. “I'm sorry, Miss, but that is impossible without a prior appointment. Dr. Parkinson's calendar is constantly full.”

Miranda smiled, shifted her weight. Goddamn ankle, needles all the way up her leg.

“But I do have an appointment.”

The young woman looked confused, tapered nails brushing elegantly through the open book. “But—but Miss, there is no one listed for one thirty. We don't schedule on the half hour.”

Miranda leaned against the hard rim of the desk edge. Stared down at her.

“It's a personal appointment. Tell him Miranda Corbie is here to see him. And add my regards to Dr. Gosney.”

The receptionist's eyes grew bigger behind the thick glasses, and she stood up, modeling last year's dress, Emporium special. Ignored the sliding door that probably led to one of the examination rooms. Walked instead toward the far right, rapped her knuckles above a gold knob, and walked in.