City of Ghosts (A Miranda Corbie Mystery) (14 page)

She glanced at her wristwatch: 12:10. Half an hour to get back to the Monadnock and calls to make.

“OK. Make it two-thirty. I owe you something. Maybe some background on the Hart case. And I’ve got another favor to ask.”

“Mind telling me why you’re interested in Weidemann?”

Half a smile curved Miranda’s lips upward. “See you later, Rick.”

Twelve

Miranda remembered the Lee Wiley recording she’d bought in ’34, height of the Depression. Played it over and over again on a ten-year-old gramophone.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child …

She puffed the Chesterfield, slow inhale, watching the train approach the Bay Bridge.

Maybe not anymore.

She opened her purse.
Chadwick’s Street Guide
had finally run out of margins, so she’d bought a small reporter’s notebook at Schwabacher-Frey on Market. Picked up some monogrammed stationery, too, in case she really had someone to write to.

Miranda flipped open the small cardboard-bound book and stared down at what she’d scrawled in Jasper’s office.

Entartete Kunst.
Degenerate art. She should have remembered.

The Nazis’ infamous exhibit of banned, defaced, and defiled modern masterworks was still touring somewhere in Germany or Austria or the Greater Reich, as most of Europe would soon be renamed. Along with burning books by John Dos Passos and Thomas Mann and Ernest Hemingway, Hitler was systematically exterminating modern film, modern music, modern artists.

Never mind that much of the art was already thirty or forty years old and acknowledged as genius, from Kandinsky’s Compositions to Dalí’s surrealist nightmares. Never mind that Nazi-approved art, its “tasteful” nudes and heroic landscapes, was full of
Kitsch
and
Kriegsspiel,
extolled only by bootlickers, bigots, and the earnest ladies who handed out flyers for the National Christian Patriots.

Never mind that Adolf Hitler was a failed art student. His revenge on Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts was global.

No modern artist of note was spared, not the impressionists, not Picasso, not even Emil Nolde, whose party membership couldn’t save him.

Many of those still living fled, some to Amsterdam or Paris, forgetting how easily lines are erased, Maginot or otherwise. Ernst Kirchner, poet of Berlin street scenes, committed suicide in ’38. Miranda remembered reading about it in the paper, surrounded by the warm, suffocating scent of magnolia blossoms and peppermint tea, while she waited for a customer at Dianne’s.

She shook herself. Read the words again.

Degenerate art.

Jasper liked “degenerate” art, whether or not his friend Fritz Weidemann knew the difference between Klee and a comic book. He kept a copy of the program in his office. Maybe he saw the actual exhibit … the secretary said he’d gone to Europe in ’37.

The leaves of brown came tumbling down …

Goddamn it. Not on an F car, not now, not nineteen-fucking-thirty-seven. She gulped the stick again, then stabbed it in the ashtray on the seat arm.

1937. Year she should have died.

Fuck, most of her did.

Miranda passed a trembling hand over her forehead.

If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride and hug it in mine arms …

But now it’s three years later, and surprise, little girl, surprise, surprise. You’ve got a mother. Sure, she’s never contacted you in thirty years, sure, she wasn’t there for you when you fought off your father’s bridge partner and hid by Lake Merced for three days, or when you graduated from high school and a Stanford track star taught you what a diaphragm was. She wasn’t there when you tried to feed Mexican kids in Santa Clara, heads too large for shrunken stomachs, or when you won a black bottom contest and got sick for a week on homemade gin. Not there when you saved your money and took a train to New York. Not there when you met John Hayes.

She held herself tight around the waist with an arm. Memory, dim and nagging, footlights and music and a dress sparkling like a starry night …

Catherine Corbie had killed a man, or thought she did, and maybe that was enough to keep her away. Enough of a reason to leave her child.

Miranda looked through the dusty window, brown-green eyes focused on the Ferry Building, spire tall and alone, slowly abandoned by the boats and ships that had nourished her for decades.

Maybe … maybe if you take away the reason, her mother could come back.

*   *   *

Miranda picked out ten rolls of Life Savers, five Butter Rum and the rest Pep-O-Mint, Gladys busy with another customer but shooting Miranda meaningful looks. She shoved a few
Examiner
s forward.

Miranda picked up a paper. Mrs. Hart was front-page news, right under the World War. At least money could buy you that.

She flung the pages back. There it was—page five. Photo of her from February. “According to some sources, Mrs. Hart had just left the offices of Miranda Corbie, the notorious female private investigator who earlier this year…”

“Miri—did you see? You’re ‘notorious’—I bet that brings in the customers. Say, sugar … you’re looking awfully white. You want some candy or something? Here, have a Baby Ruth.”

Gladys unwrapped a candy bar and thrust it at Miranda, blue eyes warm with concern, blond curls bouncing in an upswept hairdo.

Miranda took a bite, chewy caramel and chocolate delicious.

“Thanks, Gladdy. I’d better get lunch. I’ll be down when I can—we’ll catch up later. Thanks for saving the newspapers.”

Her friend’s practiced fingers played the register. Gladys looked up, said: “Any Chesterfields?”

“Two packs.”

The blonde smiled, shook her head. “You’re really cutting down, Miri. And still not gaining weight! Just don’t starve yourself, sugar. Besides, that Inspector Gonzales likes you just the way you are.”

She gave a broad wink to Miranda along with the package and change, then turned to help a young man in a gray pin-striped suit with freshly combed hair and a wilted boutonniere.

“What’ll it be, mister? Lucky Strike or Camels?”

Miranda walked away, remembering how Gladys had saved her life in February. The counter girl would jump and squeal if she knew Gonzales had proposed.

Goddamn Gonzales, poster boy for the nice guy, the good cop, the tall, dark, and handsome type, the rich boy from Mexico who thought a quick pulse and a French kiss meant fucking matrimony …

The juke at Tascone’s was creaking out “This Is No Dream” when she walked up to the register, red counter stools crowded with various degrees of businessmen, newsmen from the Hearst Building and bored phone operators slumped and quiet at a large table.

This must be love the way I feel …

“Miss Corbie? You want something to go?”

“Yeah. Hamburger medium rare, sliced tomatoes, French fries, and an iced tea. How’s Sam?”

Jerry gave her a big grin, freckles on his nose spreading to his cheeks. “Can’t complain, Miss Corbie. He brought in a winner at Bay Meadows the other day, bought us all expensive cee-gars.”

“Good for him. Listen, I’m in a hurry—can you bring up the food? Number four twenty-one?”

“Sure thing, Miss Corbie. I know where your office is.” He stuttered a little getting it out. “You were in the newspaper today.”

“Don’t believe everything you read, kid.”

Miranda strode quickly to the elevators. Goddamn it.

Examiner
coverage on Mrs. Hart would make being “Jean Rogers” or “Marion Gouchard” or anyone else that much harder. She’d need a wig, maybe some special makeup, in addition to a costume.

She reached her door, gold and black letters, slightly faded.

Automatically reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of Chesterfields and the Ronson Majorette. Lit the stick, first spark.

Inhaled gratefully. Life Savers didn’t come in tobacco flavor.

Miranda walked to the window and fought open the sash. Shouts of newspaper sellers, men with five o’clock shadow and flat blue caps with patched knees on their dungarees, boys with dirt on their cheeks and fingers. Flower vendors pushing dahlias, buy one for your girl, mister, you won’t be sorry, she’ll make it worth your money …

June sunlight, pale rays, bounced off brownstone on the de Young Building across the street, resting on Lotta’s Fountain, gathering strength to assault the coming fog. Church bells tolled on Mission, percussion for the trains, squeal of breaks and clash of the metal, symphony of
rumble clang
,
rumble clang, dong, dong dong …

Foghorns began to bellow beyond the orange bridge on the northwestern side and mixed with the sellers’ calls and the chant of the bells, the workaday machinery of hardened metal and harder men, while songs tinkled from the pool hall on Kearny, and Tascone’s juke, fed a steady diet of nickels, played “Maybe,” Dolores O’Neill mourning forgotten love.

She closed her eyes, letting the music carry her, memory flashing like the faded sunshine, receding, drifting, hold them, hold them tight, all she had, all she was, pain only bearable because it was the record, the record of her life. Maybe her mother wasn’t her mother, maybe she was risking her life for a con, a grift, and it hurt, God it hurt, no Johnny, no Johnny, no Johnny.

The wind bit her face and she opened her eyes again.

Maybe you’ll sit and sigh, wishing that I were near …

Her left hand balled into a fist, and her knees were trembling. Walking into Nazi Germany, he said, no protection, no rescue. Spies and jail time, worse than death, she’d chew her goddamn leg off before being shackled.

She leaned out the window, looking down Market toward the Ferry Building, shining like Sodom, as holy as the Promised Land.

Still there. Her city.

Mother and father and lover, always changing, always constant.

Never untrue.

San Francisco, built and rebuilt, wicked and always willing, forever old, forever young, smelling of sex and sin and newly minted money, guardian, lover, mentor, the cobbled streets and dim lights and salt-stained tears and wave-lapped piers, the smell of fresh-baked sourdough and
jook
from Sam Wo’s, grappa in front of the Italian saints, quiet Victorians nodding on quiet streets, ice shaking in cocktails at the Top of the Mark.

Lying city, dying city, Lazarus and the phoenix. Wide open and proud of it, a city built on stolen sand and abandoned ships, reclaimed by the ones that stayed and built for the ones that left. A city made by dreamers who died paupers and paupers who lived like kings, dream keeping them alive in the only way that mattered.

City of Dreams, broken or not, it didn’t matter.

No need for a City of Angels when there’s gold in the mountains and cars that climb hills and bridges that span seas.

Miranda watched the smoke from her Chesterfield float across the
DO NOT WALK
sign and curl around a lamppost, caressing the dark metal before gently falling apart, falling to earth.

She closed her eyes and said a prayer to San Francisco.

*   *   *

Miranda frowned at the copies of
The
Examiner
on her desk.

Five messages since yesterday. Three potential clients—two divorce cases and more missing jewelry—a salesman selling mimeograph machines and a solicitation for the Mills College alumni fund. Nothing like a little publicity, good, bad, or indifferent.

She dragged the phone book toward her, flipping to car rental agencies. She’d need something new, something expensive and chic. Something that suggested Marion Gouchard made more money out of the consulate than she did in it.

Her finger ran down the list until she found the place she’d used for the trip to Calistoga … Berry-U-Drive, TUxedo 2323.

Five rings, and the same growl on the other end of the phone, fat cigar clenched between teeth.

“Berry-U-Drive, we deliver, latest models our specialty.”

“I’d like your newest model coupe—Packard, preferably—something with speed and smart looks.”

She heard him swallow, move the cigar around to the other side of his mouth. “Little lady, all Berry-U-Drive cars got smart looks. I’ve got a Plymouth four door on special, ready to go anywhere, mountain cabin, river in the Redwoods—”

Miranda glanced at her watch. “I want a Packard, two-door coupe, eight cylinder, bright color, all the trimmings, and I need it by three o’clock today in San Francisco.”

Silence. She was about to hit the receiver when he came back on, voice slow and devoid of conviviality. “Lady … I think you’ve rented from us before.”

Her lips twitched in half a grin. “And I paid you in advance—and in cash. What’ve you got?”

His cigar ground between his teeth, and the sigh came out like a whistle. “Got a 1940 Packard One-Twenty convertible coupe, eight cylinder, hydraulic brakes all the way around, three-speed Synchromesh with independent front suspension, heater and dee-frost, radio, and them fancy leather seats. The top’s power operated and the car’s cherry red. I can let you have it for seventy-five dollars down, nine cents a mile, ten dollars a day, insurance included. You want it or not?”

“I’ll take it. Three o’clock sharp, Monadnock Building, 681 Market Street, number four twenty-one. Cash in advance for three days. Name’s Miranda Corbie.”

“It’s your money, lady. Show your license to the driver. And say … ain’t I seen your name in the papers?”

“Only the funny ones, mister.”

Miranda hung up, hand still on the receiver. Even if no one at the Nazi consulate read
The
Examiner,
she’d need a wig. The costume she could supply herself … an old dress from her college days, short enough to distract. Besides, dressing in Weimar Republic clothes would make her feel a little better about walking into the Third Reich.

She opened the yellow pages again, found the number.

“Goldstein and Company, costumes for all occasions, may I help you?”

Young girl, fresh out of school. Probably thrilled to be working in the “theatrical world.”

“I’d like to rent a flapper wig—you know, from the 1920s, something like Clara Bow’s hair in
Wings.
”