City of Secrets (10 page)

“Go to hell, Sanders.”

She hung up, pain in her right foot making her wince. Goddamn green pumps. She pushed through the chorus line of doors and out into the Embarcadero, foghorns belching mournfully, moon falling toward the horizon.

*   *   *

The package lay open on the kitchen table. Matchbooks, a pink-and-blue hanky from the Fair. Elephant train ticket, some postcards, photographs of Pandora with Ozzie, standing in front of
Pacifica,
in front of the
Evening Star
statue, in a swan boat on the League of Nations, arms around each other. Powder compact, lipstick. A cheap rhinestone ring.

Mementos, trinkets, worthless bits, souvenirs of a life barely lived. Of a love never tested, except by death, and that's the test that every fucking body fails, because sooner or later someone else will come, someone else will stir up the old black magic, the smell of desire, the warmth in the loins, the heat. Somebody else.

Miranda swirled the Four Roses bourbon in the highball glass, watched the droplets cling to the smooth surface.

Somebody else. Death couldn't compete with life, no matter how hard it fucking tried, and it tried hard, mama, tried hard to suckle it all away, milk of loss, milk of desperation, milk of mourning. Milk of memory.

She got up from the chair, holding the glass, walked to the radio by the sofa. Turned the knob, waiting for the magic eye to open, to catch a signal from London, maybe, or Paris, resigned and waiting. From Buenos Aires and warmer climes, from rhumba parties in casinos, cigar smoke hiding the lovemaking in the corner, tango danced all the way to a bedroom with a canopy and silken red sheets.

Our love is different, dear …

Billie Holiday. A voice that knew pain, understood love, knew it was all the same thing.

Miranda drained the bourbon, twisted the volume up on the radio.

A love sent by the angels …

But of course the angels wore swords, God's soldiers, just like Lucifer, before he got demoted to private and left to form his own goddamn army. Hark, the fucking angels sing, hark, let's send some love that's true. Because our love is different. Isn't it, dear?

*   *   *

New York, 1936.

Cub Room of the Stork Club, thanks to Winchell, who slipped the word to Saint Peter that John Hayes and the girl with him were OK. And everything was grand and gay and beautiful, from the black ashtrays on the table to the white linen cloths, to the clinging backless evening gown that drew attention from everyone in the room, at least the way Miranda wore it.

Johnny didn't care. He liked showing her off, liked holding her hand, liked slipping the ring on her finger.

Lucius Beebe sat three tables down, and when the band started playing again, asked to cut in. Johnny shook his head, wouldn't let him. Beebe pretended to pout, gazing at Miranda while she laughed and Johnny clutched her tighter. Then he slipped a twenty to the orchestra leader, a thickset man who looked and sounded like Paul Whiteman, and who the hell knew, maybe it was Paul Whiteman, the champagne was flowing too fast to know.

And he cued the band, and the saxophones started first, and then the band singer, petite blonde, close to the microphone, mouthing the words, his song, her song, the song he liked to sing to her.

There's a somebody I'm longing to see …

And he held her hand in his, the one with the ring on it. Raised it to his lips, kissed it.

“I'll always watch over you, Miranda,” he whispered, hips tight against hers, hot and warm, knowing and understanding every pore of her body, her being, who she was, where she'd come from. Where she was going.

She looked into his eyes. “I'm not lost in the woods. Not as long as I have you.”

He gripped her tighter, spinning her until the lights made a bright swirl, until the laughter and the applause and the clink of the champagne flutes drowned out the beating in her chest.

Follow my lead, oh, how I need someone to watch over me …

*   *   *

They buried him near Madrid.

Too difficult to get his body out of the country, what was left of it. Too expensive. He was freelancing, the
Times
explained, we didn't make him go there. We can't bring him back.

Nobody could bring him back.

It was a hot July, and the roads were dusty. Someone gave her a leather wine flask, and she tilted it back until the red dribbled out of her mouth. She wiped it with the back of her hand and stared at the red clay, at the ramshackle coffin, at the doctor from the hospital and the nun from the church.

Johnny would've laughed. He'd gone to parochial school, where the nuns usually chased him with a stick.

The nun started to recite the Lord's Prayer.

Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos, santificado sea tu Nombre …

Splatterful of clay on the wood. The grave digger wiped his brow. The doctor looked to the north, eyes nervous.

Venga tu reino

Splat.

Hágase tu voluntad en la tierra como en el cielo

The nun threw in a paper flower she'd cut from a magazine somewhere. Two flies fought an aerial battle by the grave digger, and he rested on the handle of the shovel for a minute, hands futilely brushing them away.

Danos hoy el pan de este día y perdona nuestras deudas

Buzzing, not the flies. The doctor looked up, shielding his eyes from the glare. Made a noise, something Miranda couldn't hear, didn't understand.

Como nosotros perdonamos nuestros deudores …

He was pulling the nun by the hand, and the grave digger was already moving, already running. Their mouths were open, shouting at her, and finally the nun gave in, crossing herself, murmuring the last of the prayer running, her robes trailing the ground, filthy with dirt and blood.

Miranda couldn't hear them.

Finish the goddamn service, she was screaming, gesturing to the grave, finish the words, finish them, let him rest, make him rest, make it fucking stop …

The doctor and the grave digger dragged her to a broken wall, holding her down. She was screaming.

The bomb dropped close enough to make the earth tremble, close enough for the grave digger to catch a piece of shrapnel in his throat. Blood spurted over all of them, the doctor unable to do anything but watch. No time, no time at all.

She couldn't hear anything. Didn't think she'd hear anything again. And finally the doctor moved off of her, nudging the body of the grave digger with his foot. And he motioned for Miranda to help, and she did, she and the nun and the doctor dragging the body to the grave, Johnny's grave. They heaved it in, and the corpse splayed on top of the coffin, a trailing red smear where his neck used to be.

The doctor grabbed the shovel, which was—mirabile dictu!—still standing, thrust in the grave. He quickly spaded a shovelful of earth, flung it over the coffin and the man. And then another. And then another.

And the nun started all over again.

Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos …

*   *   *

Miranda looked in the mirror. No memory box tonight; all she had to do was look in the Magic Mirror and her prince would come and watch over her forever and ever and ever. Princess on the glass hill. Cinderella. Snow White.

She raised the glass to the image, toasting herself.

A love like ours, dear heart, the angels send …

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

And as I know, dear heart, that it won't ever end …

“Y no nos dejes caer en al tentación.”
She whispered it, and the reflection whispered back.

You'll learn my love for you is true …

“Sino que líbranos del malo.”

For our love is different, dear

“Amen.”

She dropped the glass and it shattered in the sink.

Miranda held her face in her hands.

There's a somebody I'm longing to see …

 

Part Two

Exodus

We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.

—Charles Lindbergh, “Aviation, Geography and Race,”
Reader's Digest,
1939

 

Nine

The phone woke her at nine. She groped for it, tongue thick.

“Yeah?”

Heart was beating too hard, slowed down at Rick's voice.

“Miranda? Did I wake you up?”

She struggled to sit up, rubbed her eyes. “What is it?”

“I can't talk long—called you before writing the story—you owe me—”

“Get to the fucking point!”

“They've made an arrest—for both murders.”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed. Fully awake.

“Was it Kaiser?”

Rick paused,
News
typewriters in the background drumming like Krupa. “No, not Kaiser. Someone else who likes to beat up on women.”

“Who the hell—”

“Your old friend. Ex-inspector Duggan. Arrested early this morning—no bail.”

She said good-bye to Rick, shock making the words perfunctory and pleasant. Hung up the phone. Stared at the forget-me-nots on the wallpaper, periwinkle blue.

Gonzales. Gonzales told her Duggan had been demoted.

After the Takahashi case. After her bruises healed.

She was still staring at the phone when it rang again. Her hand hesitated before picking it up.

“Darling girl, this is Meyer.”

Her lawyer wasn't typically an early caller.

“Rick just phoned me about Duggan—hard to believe they nailed one of their own.”

He poured on extra oil, the kind of soothing delivery he usually saved for the closing argument. “It is, my dear, what Mr. Earle Stanley Gardner might call a ‘frame-up.'”

She opened the drawer on her nightstand, found a pack of Chesterfields and a Yellow Cab matchbook. Miranda stuck the stick between her lips.

“Where'd you get the information, Meyer? It's good of you to phone me, but—”

“You should know by now I do precious little from the good of my heart. I'm calling you about a job.”

“A job? I asked you for leads on Pandora Blake.”

“And so you shall have them. The job is to work for me.”

The bourbon and lack of sleep were making her tired and confused. She lit the cigarette, closing her eyes for a second.

“Meyer—you're my attorney. What's this about? And don't try any of your trial-style bullshit on me.”

He laughed for a few seconds. “Exactly why I adore you, Miranda. All right. I want you to work for me because if you do, you will have a legitimate reason to investigate the murder of Pandora Blake and the other unfortunate girl, Annie Learner.”

“What are you talking about?”

His voice was low, serious now. “I'm representing Mr. Duggan. And I want you to help me prove he's innocent.”

Miranda cradled the phone in her hands, paying no attention to Meyer's muffled exclamations on the other end.

*   *   *

She finally held up the receiver. “You want to hire me to help defend Duggan. A dirty cop who nearly broke my face three months ago. Who hates my guts.”

“You asked for a chance to work on the Pandora Blake case—”

“Goddamn it, you're the one that nailed the bastard for what he did to me. You're the reason he got sent down. Why the hell are you defending him?”

Silence. Miranda ran a shaking hand over her forehead. Meyer let out a deep breath and finally spoke. “Because I believe he's innocent. And because he asked for me.”

“He asked for you?” She wrapped an arm around her side, body stiff and sore. “I don't believe this. Duggan belongs in a nuthouse. They've arrested one of their own, for God's sake—they'll have damn good evidence.”

“Precisely why he asked for me.”

“I'm not so sure. There's no shortage of capable attorneys in San Francisco.”

“My dear, you cut me to the quick. Why don't you come down to the Hall and interview him yourself? They've refused bail, but we're fighting it. We can all talk it over.”

She reached across to the nightstand ashtray and gave the cigarette a vicious twist.

“Meyer … did you tell him you were going to hire me?”

The lawyer cleared his throat. “Yes. He made no objection—”

“Did it ever occur to you that he asked for you in order to get to me?”

“I'm not sure what you mean—”

Miranda shook her head and winced from the spasm, neck and shoulder muscles knotted and tense.

“I mean he's dangerous, goddamn it. And I wouldn't be surprised if he's guilty.”

More silence. She looked down, picking at the tassels on the edge of the white cotton bedspread.

Meyer's voice came over the wire smooth and unperturbed. “I can only say I believe him to be innocent. At least of these crimes. Will you please come down for an interview? Speak to him, perhaps, before you make up your mind?”

Miranda closed her eyes. Duggan's face when he handcuffed her, when he slapped her, when he tried to break her. And then Pandora's body, kaleidoscope swirl, solidifying, red and white. Red and white.

Drip-drop. Drip-drop.

“Are the autopsy reports in? Would I have access to everything I need?”

“Yes. Their case is purely circumstantial, and the speed of the arrest itself proves—”

“Save the argument for the jury. What about the ethics of hiring me when you work for me?”

His voice relaxed. “I've taken the liberty of drawing up a contract. It stipulates that I have hired you as a temporary consultant who is to investigate the specific matter at hand, and that any legal issues resulting from the arrangement will be handled by Lattimore.”