City of Secrets (2 page)

Major Charles Kendrick, one of Dill's vice presidents, old man with a droopy white mustache and too much room in the seat of his pants. Francis Sandusky, director of concessions, Threlkeld's crumbs still clinging to his potbelly. Randell Larson, stiff in his young attorney starched Arrow shirt and unobjectionable navy tie.

The fucking Firing Squad.

Sally smiled at Miranda, grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

O'Meara struck a newspaper pose behind his desk, gray black hair shiny with Wildroot Cream-Oil, star on his chest as polished as the black leather shoes. He cleared his throat, spoke to the Certificate of Merit on the wall.

“I'm sorry to bring you here under these circumstances. As you know, there's been a death on Opening Day. A young woman—”

“Was murdered, Captain. Or don't we use that word during Fiesta Days?”

Larsen shook his head, soft white hands folded in his lap. O'Meara's blue eyes narrowed, crawling over her.

She wouldn't make it easy on the bastards.

“Miss Corbie, you've rendered service to the Exposition company on several occasions.”

“She's the best protection my girls got on the Gayway. I'm not here much—you know me, I've got a finger in a lot of pies—but everyone at Sally Rand Enterprises can tell you Miranda Corbie is a valuable em-ploy-ee.” She enunciated carefully before blowing smoke out the corner of her mouth. “And a damn good broad. So what's the beef? I've got a show to set up and a plane to catch.”

“Just a few questions, Miss Rand. Miss Corbie doesn't work solely for you, does she?”

“Ask me the goddamn questions, O'Meara. I know who I work for.” Miranda leaned over his desk. “I work for myself. Worked for Leland Cutler, too, before he was cut loose. You might remember him. He was president of this circus before the moneymen replaced him with Dill.”

O'Meara pulled open the mahogany desk tray, shut it. Trying to time it just right.

“As I said, Miss Corbie—you've been helpful. But the nature of this incident—”

“Who's the lawyer—you or Larson? Pandora Blake was stabbed and murdered. Somebody wrote ‘kike' on her dead body, in her own blood. That sound like an ‘incident' to you?”

The captain exhaled, color in his cheekbones. Larson shifted in the background, making a noise in his chest. Sandusky looked up from the floor, stomach quivering.

“Christ, you're not exactly known for discretion. That Jap case a few months ago—you were asked not to investigate—”

“I was
told
not to investigate. A killing nobody gave a fuck about, except to hush it up.” Voice derisive, eyes sure and hard. “I'll say it again. Pandora was murdered. Her body defaced. Because somebody doesn't like Jews.”

Sandusky took a step backward. Gasp from Larson. Forbidden words. Fuck was fuck, but Jews were something more than profanity.

The major made a snorting sound, voice quavering. “She defiled herself. Appearing in a show like that.”

Sally's voice slurred with the slight lisp she usually controlled. “Now wait a goddamn minute, sport. If you want to dress up in a powdered wig, maybe I'd better leave the room. My girls—all the girls—make money for this outfit. They're about the only ones who do.” She dropped her cigarette to the floor and crushed it out.

The major retreated to San Juan Hill. Miranda set O'Meara's horse-head lighter back on the desk with a thump, quick inhale, second-to-last cigarette.

“You know damn well I'm a private detective, O'Meara. From now through September I work the Nude Ranch for Sally.”

Never dodge, never run, no blindfold. Johnny taught her that.

“I'm sorry, but—not anymore, Miss Corbie.”

Sally's chair scraped the tile floor. “I hire who I want to hire. Who the hell are you to can my employee in front of me? Jesus, what are you people—Gestapo?”

Grim smile from O'Meara, no teeth in it. Hair back to gleaming, hands steady. Audition for
Mr. District Attorney,
champion of the fucking people. Just make sure you're the right people, honey. No Jews or nudes allowed.

“Management considers Miss Corbie a security risk. We understand your position, Miss Rand, but keep in mind that private security personnel need approval by the Fair management. That's why we asked you to be present.”

“And here I thought it was my figure.” Sally shook her head, disgust making her face look its age. “Well, honey … that's that. I can always use you at the Music Box. Hell, I could train you in the act—you got everything it takes.”

Miranda dropped ash on the floor, eyes locking on Grogan and his smirk.

“Thanks, Sally. I've still got my license.”

O'Meara nodded at Larson. The lawyer scurried forward with a typewritten document. O'Meara let it drop, the paper making a smooth, expensive sound against the dark brown wood.

“You will if you sign this. It says you promise to not give out any information about the homicide. Or contact the press. And that you won't initiate an investigation on your own or sign a contract with anyone who seeks to employ you in regards to it.”

Sally made a guttural noise, left hand on her ample hip. “An hour ago I was carrying a midget and leading a parade of freaks down the Gayway. If you ask me, the only freaks in this whole goddamn fair are right here, right now, trying to find some balls to scratch and coming up empty.” She motioned with her head to the door. “C'mon, honey. Let's drift.”

“In a minute.”

Sally rearranged her fur, flounced out. Miller's “Bugle Call Rag” and screams from the Roll-O-Plane filtered through the dusty window glass. Miranda rubbed out the stub on a corner of O'Meara's desk. Picked up the document, checked the signatures. Folded it, wedged it behind the
Chadwick's Street Guide
in her purse.

Sweat was beading up in O'Meara's hairline. Larson opened his mouth to say something, shut it again. Sandusky and the major faded against the wall, mute chorus, packed jury.

She placed her hands on O'Meara's desk, leaning forward. Felt his gaze draw downward, helpless. Spoke in soft tones, silky, like talking to an out-of-town Shriner at the Club Moderne.

“I know how many people depend on Treasure Island for their wages, Captain. Better than you do. But that's not what this is about.”

She stepped back, staring down each man in turn. “You bastards want to look the other way, pretend it never happened.” Her fingers closed into fists. They shook, and she held them at her side.

“Heil Hitler.”

She was almost out the door when Grogan raised his voice.

“You gonna sign it, Corbie? Keep out of it?”

She threw it over her shoulder.

“There's a war on, Grogan. No more fucking peace in our time.”

They were still standing in silence when the outside door to the station house slammed shut.

*   *   *

She stayed on the island for the rest of the day, saying her good-byes. Electricians and stagehands and loud talk about a strike to get her back on the Gayway. Barkers with crumpled faces, voices hoarse, pat on the shoulder and free admission to anything she wanted to see. She talked to Sally's bunch, but the girls were mostly new, didn't know Pandora, didn't know Miranda, didn't know about how she started with the Fair or about Leland Cutler or Phil or the Incubator Babies case, except from hearsay.

She caught Sonny from the coroner's office at the dock, gave him a fin to let her ride back in the morgue boat. The sun was setting behind the skyscrapers as Miranda stood in the stern, smoking a new pack of Chesterfields.

Dead girl on the Bay, bier coming home. Blond and beautiful.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver.
Goddamn poetry, her fucking father the fucking professor and the fucking
Lady of Shalott
.
He said, “She has a lovely face…”

Cigarette went out with a gust from the Bay Bridge, car lights crawling like ants on the top deck, Key System train shining, fast, modern, on the deck below. Took her Ronson Majorette three times to light the stick again.

Lovely face. Enough for big dreams. No family, not that anyone knew. Kept to herself, that one, always dreaming. Brushing her hair in the mirror.
“Tirra lirra,” by the river
. Then the mirror cracked, no Jews allowed in Shalott. Restricted community, don't you know. Only Episcopalian knights allowed, and if you aren't one of those, lady, you don't sit at our table.

Sonny turned on a radio, Glenn Miller and Ray Eberle wishing on a star, goddamn Jiminy Cricket, and a little boy made of wood.

Geppetto's Italy, not Mussolini's.

The boat pulled up to Pier 5. The
Delta Queen
lay clean and quiet by Pier 1/1/2, overnight to Sacramento in style, but style was too old-fashioned for 1940. On September 29 the Fair would close for good, and so would the
Delta King
and
Queen,
faster world of train tracks and asphalt passing them by.

Red neon glowed on the Embarcadero, come to the Exposition, ferries every five minutes. Bored morgue attendants stood on the pier in white coats and threw a rope to Sonny. Two uniforms waited in a car. Last look back at Treasure Island.

The Gayway danced and drank and sparkled, salt spray exploding in green and blue. White Star Tuna sign the only star to guide by.

When you wish upon a star

She stepped off the boat, stood by when they took the body out.

Your dream comes true …

 

Two

Strauss, Sutro, Haas, Fleishhacker. Golden city and orange bridge built by Jews, mostly German, who took their place on hills, Nob and otherwise, and gave and gave and gave. Zoos, museums, schools. Jewish philanthropy and Chinese labor, founding fathers of San Francisco.

The early Jews tried to belong, heritage stretched as far as their pocketbooks: Christmas trees in windows, seders after the Easter parade. And they made her a city, more than a town, a grande dame sparkling with phony gemstones, showgirl flashing petticoats at the Palace Hotel.

Old San Francisco was gawdy and bawdy, but she had class enough to know it, posing for painters on the peninsula, strutting with ships through the Golden Gate. By 1915, she'd risen from the fire as the Athens of the Pacific, Paris of the West, her claim to cultural superiority owed to people she'd kick out of the Bohemian Club a few years later.

Because the waves washed up on shore. Flotsam and jetsam.

Eastern Europeans, bad Jews, dirty Jews, Jews who didn't live in Cloud City, staring through the windows of Queen Anne mansions at the fog and the businesses they built over decades.

And then the private clubs and apartment houses found reason to object. No Jews, no Reds, because really, they're all the same. You can tell them, you can smell them, and they give the good ones a bad name.

Forget Hitler. We've got our own Jewish problem.

*   *   *

The phone jarred Miranda awake. Still wasn't used to the sound, and only four people knew the number. Her hand reached for the heavy black receiver.

“Hello?… Hello? Who is it?”

No answer.

She swore, squinted at the clock. Quarter to nine.

Miranda stretched, floor cold against her feet, and padded across the shiny waxed surface to the window, yellow silk of the nightgown caressing her skin. Reached for a pack of Chesterfields on the end table, lighting up with a Moderne matchbook. Leaned against the sill.

The City was open for business, the Fair back in town, and it was all colored lights and Hum-A-Tunes and progress in America! Cavalcade of a Nation, and Let's See the West in '40, Mary. You say there's a retreat goin' on in France? Not from the Follies Ber-gaire. Who gives a damn about the frogs and krauts, anyway, been fightin' each other for years. You want salted peanuts with that hot dog, lady?

She'd miss the girls, miss the rough-voiced barkers, miss the souvenir shops and Threlkeld's scones and Ghirardelli chocolate and quick-sketch artists and the college kids pushing old people around in chairs for fifty cents. She'd even miss the corn-fed couples out from Omaha, stars in their eyes, gasping at the colors on the Gayway at night, girl leaning into him, hair mussed, mouth waiting to be kissed.

Too young, too inexperienced, too much from Omaha.

Miranda rubbed the cigarette out in the Crillo's ashtray on the table. Maybe Pandora had been a small-town girl dreaming of the big city. Dreaming of something better than a dusty town and the boy next door, promise of her face and body a ticket to the Golden West.

Miranda looked out the window again, sun in her eyes.

All she could see was Spanish soil, Spanish sun, wine and tanned young men.

Johnny.

Before 1937.

When she was from Omaha, too.

*   *   *

San Francisco sunshine fresh, loud city, proud city, sparkled Sunday best, the kind they sold you on the radio and promised it could happen to you, too, if you bought the right deodorant.

Miranda walked down Mason and cut over to Powell on Sutter, past the Sir Francis and the St. Francis, bragging about how many honeymooners were in their beds that evening. Muscles in her calves were tight, and she stretched her stride, thin wool of her forest green skirt brushing her legs, pushing past tourists and factory workers and families back from church, headed for Treasure Island.

Cable cars panted, slow climb uphill, last gasp and a bell at the top, salesman from East Los Angeles hanging off the side while his wife holds the camera, kids chasing tracks down Powell Street.

She threaded through the crowds at the turnaround, past Martell's Liquor, past the tourists lining up at a magazine stand to buy the perennial bestseller
Where to Sin in San Francisco,
by one Richard Guggenheim, sinner.

Three doors down on the left, mister, three doors down on the left.