City of Secrets (40 page)

“Inspector—why did you call?”

Low, sad chuckle. “Your instinct's pretty good, Miss Corbie. We, uh … we're a little worried about a missing persons case, just phoned in. Another connection to Treasure Island—and Pandora Blake.”

Her stomach knotted, hearing the name before it traveled through the wire, seeing his mouth opening, syllable by syllable, smelling the cheap, exotic perfume dabbed behind her ear.

The gaudy jewelry. The phony sarong.

“Lucinda Gerber. Another performer at Artists and Models. Maybe she took a powder, but we found your card in her apartment.…”

*   *   *

She phoned Meyer by rote, catching him in the office, updating him about Lucinda, about Flamm. Left out the part about Mickey. Dangerous enough for her, no need to drag in anybody else. She could type it up later, leave a document, last will and testament.

Meyer tried to hide the relief in his voice at Lucinda's disappearance. If it could be connected to the murders, Duggan was as good as released. Goddamn lawyers, all the same, even the good ones.

She hung up the phone. Popped two Pep-O-Mints in her mouth.

Roommate said she hadn't been around for two straight days, and Lucinda wasn't the type to cut and run. Rent was due, so the other girls whined to the police, looking for Lucinda and the lost third of the rent money.

Goddamn it. Lucinda and her sarong, red nails, languid eyes. Gimmick by Max Factor and whatever product Dorothy Lamour was selling these days.

Miranda leaned out the window, trying to find air to breathe, to get out of the corner, out of the fucking mousetrap. Faces and names, swirling patterns. All of it held together by will, her will, and it was starting to crack, to stumble, to fall and never get up. She passed a shaking hand over her eyes. Wiped the sweat from her forehead. Tried again.

Lucinda had known something, and Blind Willie heard part of it. Something that got her killed, and if Miranda hadn't been running around, blind, stupid, heading to Calistoga, sniffing out bomb threats, and socializing with fucking gangsters, maybe she'd be here. Maybe she'd be alive.

She stared through the window across Market Street, fingers clenched on the scarred white window frame.

Peck Judah Travel Service. Florsheim Shoes. Hyman's Leasing. Names that weren't Washington and Jefferson and Franklin. Immigrants to an immigrant country, polyglot nation, especially San Francisco, gold mines and golden opportunities, visit the West in '49, sister, 1849 or 1939, didn't matter, there was land here and gold and riches to be made.

And with the immigrants came violence. Every wave resisted, beaten back by those already here. Beaten, hated, killed.

Miranda rubbed her neck. C. R. Willett, chiropractor, offices across the street. Maybe he could help her. Crack her spine for inspiration, find the fucking killer.

She limped to her desk and sank in the chair, leg shaking, ankle sharp like knives. No hurry, not now, not to get to Treasure Island, not to meet Lucinda. A chance, maybe, she wasn't dead, but every tick of the clock, less and less and less.

A church bell, St. Patrick's on Fifth.
Dong. Dong.

Always goddamn church bells.

She poured the rest of the bourbon, drank it in one shot. Waited for the cold to go away. Got up again, limped to the safe. Took out her mother's postcard.

Miranda read the words. Over and over. Grateful to the woman, to Catherine Corbie, memory in a place of darkness. Song, crooning, gentle hands, gentle touch, ripped away, never felt again.

Stolen.

Tears on a thin cotton sheet, tears and pain, and later fear, her father's friends, the hands, the mouths, strange urgency of motion, and she'd run and she'd run and she'd run. Looking for her mother, looking for escape.

Looking for life.

Grateful, oh yes, because she could have never been born, not in the moral world of Dr. Gosney, never grown beyond a momentary bodily impulse, fear and the will to survive. 1906 and God's revenge, and the first and last time her father showed interest in anything beyond Shakespeare and the fucking gin bottle.

She could have been given away, never to remember a mother at all, never to know, to understand. To want. To need.

To love.

Grateful even for the pain.

She sat at the desk, hunched over the card, salt stinging her skin, making it cold. Fingers traced the contours of her face. She shivered.

Miranda Corbie.

Cracked and damaged.

Fissured lines, and she could feel them under her skin.

But she wasn't broken.

Not yet.

*   *   *

She brushed through the paperwork on her desk, reading notes from postcards and matchbooks. Thought of Pandora's card from Nance's, symbol of a time when she could have children and after which she could not. Thought of Lima, Ohio, and words read over and over, held with sweaty hands, edges rough, while Pandora lay in a bed at Aalder's, wishing she'd never been born. Pandora, flesh show model, midwest girl with Hollywood in her eyes. Beloved of an Aquadonis, going places, on his way up.

Pandora, who knew she could never have children.

Miranda closed her eyes. Hearing a whispered song, a blind man's story. A tragedy in five acts, and she could smell the bougainvillea, hear the waves creaming on the Santa Monica shore. Scent of fear, whispered intake of breath, panic, protest, puzzled eyes, aware now, but no comprehension, no understanding, not even enough for horror. The oh-so-easy intimacy of steel through skin, murmured promises, and above all else … applause.

She opened her eyes, tears running down her cheeks.

Miranda placed her mother's postcard in front of her on the desk, straightening the edges. Picked up her purse, slid into her coat.

Locked the door behind her.

*   *   *

Applause rippled through the spectators, most of them wearing coats while they sat on the hard wooden benches, ogling the women in bathing suits, trying to spot a hardened nipple, a telltale bulge in the men's briefs.

She sat in the front row, clapping dutifully. The Aquacade, Billy Rose's grandiose spectacle of flesh and fantasy, water just an excuse to show off skin.

She spotted Ozzie heading backstage for the dressing rooms. Limped outside, carried by the crowd, seven o'clock show packed, murmurs of appreciation for the swimmers, for Hollywood's Tarzan, for Esther Williams, the swimming star who'd replaced Eleanor Holm.

Miranda smoked a cigarette by the Court of Reflections. Looked into the water, studied her own.

The performers were starting to come out of the stage door along the side of the giant building, where Ozzie led her before. He walked out smiling, towel around his neck, dark hair still tousled.

“You wanted to see me, Miss Corbie? Is there any news?”

She linked her arm through his, no objection. Led him past the reflecting pool, her ankle dragging. Turned left toward the Tower of the Sun, dazzling bright, beginning and end.

Phoenix reborn.

Her voice was gentle. “Yes, Ozzie. I'm—I'm sorry.”

He stopped, looked down at her. Puzzled.

“What's happened?”

She gazed at the tower, rich and yellow in the setting sun.

Fool's gold. Magic. Magic and lights and fame and fortune, come west, come west, and you might be on the radio, be discovered by Hollywood, find what you're looking for.

What you've wanted all your life.

Applause.

She faced him. “It's about Lucinda.”

He grabbed her arm, fingers tightening around her elbow. “Is she OK? What's wrong with her?”

Miranda searched his face, eyes sad and certain.

And said: “Where is she, Ozzie?”

 

Thirty-four

He tried to run, but Gillespie stepped out from behind a statue, and another cop was ready with the cuffs. Bewilderment, anger. Tears.

Mad eyes, wet and blue like the water he loved.

The water that was going to make him a star.

They thought she was dead when they found her, unresponsive. Almost too late. He couldn't decide what to do with her, hadn't made up his mind on how to dispose of the body. Another girl from Treasure Island, another Jew, and Duggan would be free, and they'd be looking somewhere else. At someone else.

She was tied up naked, no food or water for two days, gagged. Bruises all over, empty, taken. Used. Cuts on her neck, down her legs, across her breasts, where he'd tested the knife, tried the color against her skin. Not the right shade of red, not quite red enough, so he waited, setting the scene, planning what to do.

Taking his bows at the Aquacade.

Miranda stood by the corner of the Hotel Shawmut, leaning against the soiled brick, watching a Baby Ruth wrapper dance down the street, the gutter still choked with garbage.

They brought Lucinda out on a stretcher. Took her away in an ambulance, another girl for the sanitarium, for the alienists to ask questions. Tell me, Miss Gerber—how did it feel? Lick of the lips, wet the pencil, get their fucking kicks. Sick fucking bastards, sick fucking world.

Miranda would follow up, make sure it wasn't Napa, even if she had to pay for the hospital herself. Come see her, visit her and Phyllis Winters, Martini's cast-a-way, the girl she'd saved for Dante's Sanitarium. They sit in their chairs with a lap rug amid the jasmine blossoms, white-coated doctors shaking their heads, orderlies looking them up and down, saying what a goddamn pity.

But Lucinda would live. And she'd come out the other side.

Cracked, not broken.

Ozzie was crying softly, hands in manacles behind his back. Gillespie and Fisher and a swarm of other cops, reporters waiting for the story. Another murder on Treasure Island? Sells papers, boys, can't have too many rapes and murders, give the public what it wants.…

She moved through the blue-coated bulls, parting the crowd, walked up to Ozzie, who in between tears would talk only about Johnny Weissmuller and Hollywood and how he was going to be famous.

Not in the way he imagined.

He seemed to see her for a moment, lucid and canny, eyes still like a hurt little boy's.

Angry. Ignored. Forgotten.

She understood those eyes.

Fisher was at her side, and the moment was broken.

“What I can't figure out is why he wrote ‘kike'—was it just to throw us off scent?”

She looked into Ozzie's eyes, his soul, nodding at the pain. Old acquaintance.

“Yes and no, Inspector. Part of him wanted to survive, understood the crime and the risk and tried to minimize it. But the other part wanted recognition. He wasn't trying to fool anyone. He was signing his name.”

*   *   *

Once upon a time there was a bright young man who worked for his uncle, the chiropractor. And he was athletic and smart and good-looking, and everybody said he should be a movie star.

Everybody but the popular ones, the blondes and the debutantes. The boys in letter sweaters, whispering behind his back.

Hebe, they'd call him. Kike. Commie, Red, Christ killer …

And the boy tried not to listen to the words of derision, the tone of contempt, of anger, of malice. But even out of Oklahoma, he'd hear it when he tried to rent an apartment.

Hebe.

Tried to find a job.

Christian only—
Jew
.

Tried to date a girl.

Kike.

But the boy persisted, believing in his destiny. And he came to California, land of golden dreams, land of Hollywood and movie stars and a chance to be famous on a magic island. And he met a girl who could have made him happy, and did, for a brief time, a few short weeks. His costar, his leading lady. His Ginger Rogers.

She shared some of his dreams, fame and fortune, a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. And she wasn't like the others, she liked his name, his heritage, even embracing it as her own.

But he was ambitious. And after she told him she loved him, after they'd wet the sheets in his little bed, damp with the sweat of their bodies—like movie stars, like the love scenes that they always cut out, she said, and laughed—she told him she wanted to quit the show, quit the Island. She wanted to settle down, to be his wife.

Just his wife.

And he saw her then, saw what she really was, the stained apron and the callused hands, fat, frowsy, loud, always yelling. Always wanting.

Ain't got no money for your goddamn magazines, boy, who the hell do you think you are, Clark Gable? Her face a mask, wrinkled, old, her body soft and green.

She'd take it all away from him, the fancy cars and the bungalow, the custom suits. No smell of desert poppies, no neon lights, no golden sand, no celluloid clicking in the camera, click.
Click, click.

No adulation. No acceptance.

So he killed her. Waiting behind the screen when she came in, key in his pocket. Souvenir of their magic time in his hand, the age before when she wasn't a monster. And he'd stabbed her like he remembered from his uncle's chart, right where she couldn't do anything.

He killed her, slayed the monster.

And to make sure the blondes and baseball players out in Oklahoma would know, he signed her with an autograph, signed his performance, his art. His heroic deed. Signed with the name they'd called him, what everybody whispered when he walked in, the people pretending to be his friend, pretending to like him, pretending to care.

Kike.

He was smart, too, because he signed it twice, this time on a temple where Pandora's old boyfriend worked. Signed it, called the police, boasting. And he thought it was over, but right away, he had to sign once more, this time a friend of hers, another monster, someone else who was going to take it all away. She phoned, and he heard the threat in her voice, smelled the flesh again, green and rotting. So he told her what he told Lucinda. What he told Miranda.

That Pandora loved him, loved him so much she wanted babies. His babies. Their very own.