City of Ghosts (A Miranda Corbie Mystery) (17 page)

“Wait.”

She walked to the safe and struggled with the sticky combination, while Allen turned his back obligingly. Slid out five one-hundred-dollar bills from the stack James had given her. Her hand fell to the lower shelf, touching the Baby Browning and the gold cigarette case. She grabbed them both and shut the door.

“You can turn around now.” Miranda threw the Browning, the bills, three rolls of Life Savers, and a new pack of Chesterfields in her purse, grabbed her coat off the rack in the corner, and shoved her hat back on.

“I’m trying to trace someone. A woman, late forties or early fifties. Irish or Scots-Irish, lived in San Francisco. Black hair, dark eyes, pretty enough to be on stage when she was young.”

The detective looked at her thoughtfully. “She kidnapped or something?”

“No … she disappeared, was apparently smuggled back to Ireland.”

Miranda turned her face to Allen’s.

“She may have been wanted for murder, and apparently killed a man. All this happened around thirty years ago.”

He whistled as they stepped out of the office and Miranda shut and locked the door. A middle-aged couple walked down the hall toward them, and they said nothing until the couple’s footsteps could be heard rounding the corner.

Miranda lowered the hat’s veil across her face, voice low.

“Any help, any leads, would mean a great deal to me, Allen.”

The Pinkerton op stuck out his lower lip and nodded. “I’ll take a look-see, sweetheart, but I’ll need a name for your mystery woman.”

Miranda’s eyes searched his for a moment.

She whispered, “Catherine Corbie. My mother.”

She turned her back to the Pinkerton, walking quickly down the long corridor to the stairs and her waiting car.

Fifteen

Long, low wooden tables, books, ladders, and crowded shelves, only sound an occasional cough or whisper and the low hum and rumble of nearby Market Street trains.

Cool, quiet brownness of the Mechanics’ Institute Library, soothing, private, an oasis in downtown San Francisco—and across the street from the Monadnock.

Miranda tapped her fingers on the desk, frowning.

The secretary at the Berkeley art department mentioned that Jasper traveled to Europe the previous summer, and the State Department report narrowed it down to Germany and Switzerland in late June. Crossing the Atlantic took time, planning, and money, and Jasper had spent only four days in Germany and three in Switzerland.

Secrets or art? Or was art—particularly
entartete Kunst
—the secret itself?

She dislodged the May 1939 issue of the
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs
from between
Art News
and
Art in America,
turning quickly to the section on “Forthcoming Sales.”

Christie’s, Chippendales, “A portion of Mr. William Randolph Hearst’s collection,” Sotheby’s with German and Bohemian glass …

Her finger stopped, nail tracing the raised print.

Galerie Fischer, Lucerne. “Paintings and Sculptures by Modern Masters” from German museums. Purged by the Nazis from their own cultural heritage, enemy to the state religion of Fatherland, Fuehrer, and fear.

Names on sale included Klee and Kokoschka, Franz Marc, and Emil Nolde. Non-German art, too, was offered at the sacrificial block, bought by German museums when the country led the world forward, Weimar Germany, spirit of modernism, spirit of freedom … Picasso’s
The Soler Family,
a self-portrait by Van Gogh, works by Gauguin and Matisse.

Burlington
alerted its connoisseurs that bargains were to be had: “Revolutions have often in the past led to the dispersal of art collections, and thus aroused interest in particular schools of art in new quarters.”

Bid now, Mr. Hearst, who gives a damn if the money buys more coffins for France and England? Germany doesn’t want modern art anymore, debased currency, just like the Mark in 1923. Buy it up, buy it up, buy it up …

“There is little doubt that in the present case new admirers will be found for these rejected works in an atmosphere free from political prejudice.”

Political prejudice.

Such a well-bred euphemism for purges and murder and cultural patricide. And how noble of
Burlington,
how brave and optimistic, to envision the circling vultures as saviors and titular connoisseurs of fine art. Van Gogh might be staring again, hollowed-eyed and mad, from a recess on a panel wall at San Clemente or the Hamptons or a nineteenth-century castle in Boston. Maybe even an American museum in Cincinnati … or the office of a Berkeley chemistry professor.

Miranda reached for a cigarette and frowned, her fist closing around the purse.

Far from the only source … you know what Jews are …

Maybe the Galerie Fischer is where Jasper last saw Wardon or Weardon, the sandy-haired sycophant from the Picasso exhibit. If she could find a list of the dealers at the Fischer Gallery …

A large male hand, nails ragged, slapped the page in front of her.

She looked up into blue eyes crinkling at the corners, lopsided grin spreading across his face.

“Sorry I’m late. Gladys told me you were holed up across the street.”

“Where the hell were you, Sanders? Hot news story?”

He shook his head. “Turkey just declared its neutrality—a Norwegian and a Greek ship were sunk by U-boats—and Russia wants to swallow part of Romania. Same old war.”

He threw himself into the chair across from her, legs outstretched, face falling into serious lines.

“What’s wrong, Randy—worried about me?” His tone was light, the upturned tick of an Irish lilt caressing the syllables. She met his eyes stubbornly.

“Can the Irish, Sanders. You’re about as Irish as Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. Maybe I was worried. Maybe I don’t have enough goddamn time to be worried. And don’t call me Randy.”

“I’m half Irish.”

“And all bullshit.”

“Shhh.” He grabbed her hand and looked around in mock fear at the only other occupant of the reading room, a middle-aged woman in black sitting four tables away and reading a
Saturday Evening Post.
“You want us to get kicked out of here?”

His grip was warm and reassuring, skin unexpectedly comforting against her own. Miranda pulled her hand away and shut the magazine and her notebook.

“I’m leaving anyway. You coming along?”

“Where are we going?”

“Goldstein and Company.”

“Costume for the Nazi ball?”

She nodded, whispered “Keep your voice down,” and stood up, shoving her chair back under the table. Rick stood up and stretched, yawning.

“OK, Mata Hari. Lead on.”

She threw him a baleful look, and together they headed for the central staircase and exit to Post Street.

Rick whistled when he saw the car, hand gliding over the red curves. “Christ, you’re coming up in the world. Why the fancy wheels?”

She slid in on the driver’s side and slammed the door shut.

“Get in. We can talk on the way.”

He climbed into the Packard, mouth turned upside down, blue eyes on her hat, her dress, her legs.

“You make it awfully hard on a man to be chivalrous, Miranda. Mama Sanders didn’t raise her boys to be neglectful of the niceties.”

She shoved the car into gear and eased out into traffic behind a Yellow Cab, accelerating before a sharp, quick right on Montgomery. The cab stayed in front, silhouetted couple in back kissing in a long embrace.

“You never told me why you were late.”

Rick’s eyes flicked over the dashboard, and he ran a long finger over the Cordoba brown leather on the seat. Tried to make his voice nonchalant.

“We’ll need someplace to talk other than this beauty. I was late for two reasons. One, the new typist in the steno pool downstairs…”

Miranda hit the gas pedal as she made the right turn on Market, still behind the cab. A contractor’s truck, five- or six-year-old Ford, crossed lanes to pull up behind her, riding the bumper. She glanced into the rearview mirror.

“You’ve always had a weakness for dishwater blondes. The second reason?”

Rick shifted sideways to face her. He hesitantly reached out a finger to trace her cheek, and she flinched.

“What the hell—is there a bug on me or something?”

Someone on O’Farrell was sitting on a horn, matched by a siren down Grant. Miranda inched the Packard forward, waiting for the light to turn green, avoiding his eyes.

Rick sighed, turned back to the windshield. Voice somber. “It’ll keep till later.”

She glanced at the tall man in the battered brown fedora sitting beside her, broad shoulders slumped.

“We can talk after Goldstein’s. And Rick … thank you.”

She took a gloved hand off the steering wheel for a moment and found his left, squeezing it. Rick opened his eyes, sat up taller in the seat.

*   *   *

She parked on Taylor across from the Golden Gate Theatre, red Packard drawing looks from the line of men and women waiting for the new “Crazy Show” stage show, playing with the programmer
Pop Always Pays
and a short film called
United States Navy, 1940.

Crazy show. Just like a Nazi costume party …

They crossed the street in silence, Rick’s arm brushing hers.

Miranda stopped on the corner to dig out a Chesterfield, hand shaking, and lit it with a Ronson before Rick could strike a match in the Bay wind, sheets from the morning
Chronicle
wadded and blowing up the sidewalk, pretzel crumbs, cigarette butts and a Necco Wafer wrapper skidding toward the Market Street curb.

She took a deep inhale, then looked up at him. He shook his head, lips pursed, and took off his hat, wind mussing his hair like Gene Krupa’s.

“Just once, Miranda … let me light the goddamn cigarette.”

She stared at his comically sad face and gave him half a smile.

“C’mon, Lochinvar. Let’s go in.”

They got lost in the medieval section, Rick waving a wooden sword and pretending to duel with Basil Rathbone until Miranda stalked off toward an antebellum display straight out of
Jezebel
or
Gone with the Wind,
turned around in confusion and made a left into
David Copperfield.
She puffed furiously on the rest of the Chesterfield and pinched the remainder with her fingers, tucking it back in her purse, surrounded by Oliver Twist in the poorhouse and Victorian widow’s weeds on a long rack of black. Rick held up the arm of a starched formal suit, complete with side whiskers and a walrus mustache.

“Costumes for all occasions is an understatement.”

“Goddamn it, I need a wig, not the fucking
March of Time…”

She was headed for the French Revolution when a thin, flustered floorwalker scurried up from nowhere.

“Would you help me, please? I’m looking for a flapper wig. A young woman named Peg is holding one for me.”

He bowed, long hands folded Uriah Heep–style, stuttering against his high-collar dress shirt.

“Very sorry, Madame, and r-right this way. I’m sure she has found exactly what you’re looking for.”

Rick sprinted away from the guillotine on display to catch up with Miranda, nodded at the clerk.

“You should hand out maps to this place. It’s like Madame Tussaud’s without the wax.”

The floorwalker glanced at him and turned right, gesturing complacently toward a diorama of the
Mayflower
and mannequins dressed as John Alden and Priscilla Mullins.

“Yes, we are a rather large firm. The largest in the San Francisco Bay area, in fact. I’ll let my superiors know—a map is an excellent suggestion. One doesn’t want to get lost, does one?”

He followed the question with a honking laugh. Rick grinned at Miranda, who was checking her watch again, mouth a thin line of impatience.

The floorwalker finally halted in a more open area, amid recognizable bustles and parasols from Miranda’s childhood, and a large hanging photograph of Market Street after the Quake and Fire.

“Ah, here we are. Recent history. Can’t really be called history at all, I suppose, but we do have customers who want to relive their youth, black bottom and so forth. Peg? Peg!”

The floorwalker frowned, fingers clutching his lapel. A young blonde emerged from a rack of Gibson girl dresses and bloomers.

“Yes, Mr. Phipps? Oh, it’s—I beg your pardon, Miss Corbie, I have your wig right here.”

She crossed to a small counter next to a cluster of short dresses and straight-hemmed gowns that hung, all sequins and satin, yellows and reds shimmering like an Erté, Pola Negri and Gloria Swanson and Mae Marsh, the Roaring Twenties, in with a bang and out with a whimper. Only fifteen years ago …

Phipps raised his eyebrows and peered at Miranda through thick lenses.

“Corbie? That name sounds familiar … have you rented from us before?”

She turned the full force of a smile on him. “I’m afraid not, Mr. Phipps, but I surely expect to do business with you again.”

Phipps took a step backward, stuttering again. Rick stepped in front of his line of sight, while Miranda walked up to where Peg waited at the cash register.

Rick’s lip twitched. He said: “Good-bye, Mr. Phipps.”

The floorwalker bowed again, patchy gray and brown eyebrows knitted together as if trying to remember something.

*   *   *

Peg was seventeen, attended Sacred Heart, and was aglow with the chance to meet a real-life celebrity. Miranda and Rick were treated to a nonstop monologue of where she lived, what her parents did (father was a bookkeeper, mother involved in 4-H), and how her friends Edna and Nancy were never going to believe it.

The shopgirl had chosen two wigs: one was red and reminiscent of Clara Bow, short and teased upward in a halo effect. The other was black and stark, inspired by Louise Brooks in
Pandora’s Box
and every other picture she made. Miranda felt the hair on both and chose the latter, adding a small black domino mask, two small tins of Pan-Cake makeup, and lip rouge.

“Thank you for your help, Peg. I’d like to buy the wig, not rent it, just ring me up and I’ll pay cash.”