City of Dragons (28 page)

“What about Mrs. Winters?”

Ruth frowned. “Off and on. Sometimes Phyllis acted like they were really chummy, going shopping together. But most of the time she … well, she hated her, Miss Corbie. Said she’d trapped her father, and never cared for him or Phyllis, and—and a lot of hurtful things.”

Ruth leaned forward and whispered, shielding her mouth with her hand. “She even said Mrs. Winters had a boyfriend.” Then she shook her head and snorted at the disclosure. “At her age!”

Miranda made a couple of notes in her notebook, taking a last inhale on the Chesterfield before rubbing it out in the ashtray.

“You say you fought over Bobby Henderson. Tell me what happened—and when.”

Ruth giggled, then remembered herself, trying hard not to look like a virgin. “Bobby graduated last June, from S.I.—St. Ignatius. Phyllis was supposed to graduate then, too, but had to stay an extra half-year because of grades. He was in the rowing club, got a letter for it.”

“Were they boyfriend and girlfriend?”

She hesitated. “Well—kind of. They went out for sodas and stuff, and we always thought they were sweet on each other—at least Bobby was. But then when Phyllis came back from summer vacation to finish, she sort of—changed a little. She said she wasn’t sure what she was going to do after graduation, didn’t want to stay home and be near her stepmother. She was skipping a lot of class, and didn’t want to, you know, have sodas or go dancing with us, and we figured maybe it was another boyfriend, someone older. This was, oh, a couple of months before she was supposed to graduate—for good this time, in December. Phyllis turned eighteen in October, and we thought maybe she was just, you know, exercising her independence.”

Ruth leaned forward again, speaking in a stage whisper. “But she wasn’t, Miss Corbie. She was meeting someone. She’d been going with Bobby, and he found out, and they had an awful row. And all of us like Bobby, and I flat-out told Phyllis that if she didn’t treat that boy right and hang on to him I’d take him away from her. And that’s why we fought, because she laughed at me, and said some awfully mean things about him, called him a little boy, and told me I was too fat to get him and called me a four-eyes.”

The girl’s eyes sparkled with rage and pain. The paper napkin she’d been holding lay twisted on the tabletop.

Miranda’s voice was gentle. “I’m sorry, Ruth. Try very hard not to be angry at Phyllis. I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

“Then she shouldn’t have said it!” The voice came out sharp and loud, and a mother and ten-year-old daughter at the table behind them turned to stare. Ruth covered her mouth. “I—I’m sorry, Miss Corbie.”

The waitress crawled from the soda fountain, which apparently had nothing better to do than to produce the long-delayed root beer float. The interruption gave Ruth a chance to calm down and focus on something other than her outrage.

Miranda waited for the girl to take a few sips and said: “Did anyone ever see her with another boy—a man?”

Ruth lifted her head from the tall glass, looking at the ceiling and thinking hard. “You know—Bobby might have seen them together. You might ask him. Here’s his picture, and a few of Phyllis.”

She removed an envelope from her bag, and slid it across the table to Miranda, then applied herself to the root beer. Miranda studied the pictures of a smiling Phyllis next to a few other girls, and a tall, athletic boy with brown hair, wearing a letter jacket and a confident, if stupid, look on his face.

“Where is Bobby, if I want to speak to him?”

“Oh, he works in his father’s hardware store, in Alameda. Henderson Hardware.” The girl was blushing furiously, not looking up from her drink.

“Do you see him regularly?”

Ruth was trying to be nonchalant. “His store is close to where I live … I see him sometimes. But I’m dating George Adams now.”

Miranda smiled at the bravado. “Will you give him a message, ask him to call me? Here’s my card—one for you, one for Bobby. OK?”

The girl took them eagerly. “Sure thing, Miss Corbie. Do the pictures help?”

“Very much. Mind if I keep them awhile?”

“Oh, no. Please do. Did you need to know anything else?”

Miranda checked the time. 4:17. And she needed to make a call before walking in on Dianne.

“Yes … did Phyllis like to gamble, do you know? And other than Bobby, what kind of boys—men—did she like … her favorite Hollywood stars?”

A slurping sound from the straw signaled the end of the root beer float. Ruth wiped her face with another napkin, frowning.

“I don’t remember Phyllis talking about it much, except in pictures. Sometimes we’d talk about what kind of gambling we’d do, if we were rich and walked into one of those terribly chic clubs where they play cards and roulette in the back. She liked the idea of roulette, I remember … but that was a long time ago, last year sometime. I think we were watching
King of the Underworld
. She thought Humphrey Bogart was dreamy.”

Ruth wore a disgusted look on her face. “I think he’s ugly. Now, Clark Gable is what I call a real he-man. I just loved him in
Gone With the Wind
! I’ve seen it five times already … I wish I looked like Vivien Leigh!” A deep sigh of realization that she would never look like Vivien Leigh rose from her chest.

Miranda asked: “What about radio? What did she like?”

“Lots.
Gangbusters
.
Myrt and Marge
, though sometimes that was boring.
Hollywood Hotel
, while that was on, and oh,
Lux Radio Theater
. And that Orson Welles and the
Mercury
or
Campbell’s Playhouse
, whatever it is—the one who scared us all about Mars—she likes him a lot.”

Miranda made a few more notes. “Thanks, Ruth. One more question. Did Phyllis know anyone on Guerrero Street, or ever go there?

Ruth’s glasses fell sidewise a little, when she wrinkled her brow. She pushed them back into place and said: “If she did, she never told me.”

Miranda stood up, took out fifty cents, left it on the table, and scooted her chair back in, while Ruth stared at her, wide-eyed.

“Be careful, Miss Corbie. Do you—do you have a gun?”

Miranda smiled down at the girl. “Don’t worry about me, Ruth. Just be careful going home. Don’t talk to any strangers—especially men. OK? Promise me, now.”

The young girl looked solemn. “I promise, Miss Corbie. Thanks for the soda. Shall I tell Bobby to telephone you?”

“Yes—thank you, Ruth. You’ve been a big help.”

The girl’s eyes were anxious, and her face suddenly looked older. “If a gink tries to put the screws to you, give ’em the gate, OK, Miss Corbie?”

Miranda laughed, and said: “You bet I will.”

She pushed through the crowds on Powell, past the Owl, the Clinton Cafeteria, and turned right on Ellis, heading for John’s Grill. Her stomach growled when the aroma of charred steak drifted past her, and she shut the door of the small phone booth, her shoes pressed firmly against the wood of the door to hold it closed.

Miranda opened a pocket change purse, extracted a nickel. She perched on the narrow oak ledge in the corner, staring for a moment through the scratched and dirty glass at John’s afternoon crowd, envying them their steaks, their drinks, their leisure.

She shook herself. Dianne was ahead. She wanted her stomach empty, her thoughts as clear as ice.

The nickel dropped, and an operator fresh from a break answered in a chatty voice.

“Number, please?”

“Sutter 9764.”

“Hold one moment.”

Static ran through the cord and into Miranda’s ear, and she held the phone away from her until she could hear a tired male voice making a halfhearted attempt to communicate.

“Oceanic Hotel. Hello? This is the Oceanic Hote—”

“I need to leave a message for room 256. Can you take it?”

A pause filled the low static hum between them. “Yeah, lady, I can take it. What you got in mind?”

The Oceanic was one of the hotels the city tried to scratch over. The only thing shiplike about it was the size of the rooms, as big as a cot and a sink and usually rented by the hour, or even every twenty minutes. But Bente insisted on living there, so she could be near the waterfront … and near the men the waterfront had killed but didn’t know it yet.

“What I have in mind, buddy, is that you take the pencil out of your ass and write me a message to room 256. Think you can handle that?”

The voice, as gravelly as week old coffee, harrumphed in fictional offense. “Go ahead, lady, I ain’t got all day.”

“Nine P.M. Moderne. Still on.”

“Nine … OK. How the hell you spell the other thing?”

“Modern with an
e
. M-o-d-e-r-n-e. Club Moderne.”

He snorted. “You lucky I ain’t chargin’ by the word like Western Union. So you’re a Frenchie, eh? Won’t be long now ’til you’re all speakin’ German. Bunch of queens, those French. Serves the bastards right—”

The phone made a satisfyingly loud clang when she slammed it on the receiver. And wondered, again, why the hell Bente lived at the Oceanic Hotel.

She turned left at Stockton, a right on O’Farrell, the precision of her steps and the directions driving her forward, easing the knot in her stomach.

Betty was dead. Three words, around and around and around.

Some horns blared, and a jukebox from a corner bar was crooning an old Ruth Etting tune, while she stepped over spit and Baby Ruth wrappers and crumpled race pages.

My heart is sad and lonely …

Betty was dead.

Raped.

Strangled.

Gone.

Like Eddie.

Like Johnny.

Body and soul.

She leaned over, her back against a bank across the street from 41 Grant Avenue, clutching her stomach, staring at her shoes to keep it down. Bile bit the back of her throat, and she looked at the creased leather, and thought of Matsumara, thought of Bente, thought of Rick, willing herself not to vomit.

A man in a well-cut business suit touched her elbow.

“Miss? You need some help?”

She pulled herself up, met his eyes, kind, concerned. Fatherly eyes.

The kind she never knew.

“Yes—thank you. Just a bad lunch. I’m—OK.”

He brushed her elbow again, said: “Are you sure? I can call you a taxi, or—”

“No. Really, I’m all right. Thank you for checking.”

He smiled at her, touched his brim, and for a second she could see herself in a checkered-print housedress, young and naive, fixing his pipe and telling him about the glee club, while a vaguely kind woman lingered in the background, making apple pies.

Miranda stared after him, wondered what he thought of the bruise on her cheek. Took out a cigarette, lit it with shaking hands on the fourth try.

The nicotine calmed her, gave her focus.

Dianne was waiting inside the ornate building in front of her, a gray-stone 1912 that looked like another bank. A temple to money.

In a sense it was.

She’d find her there, draped artistically over a chaise lounge, recalling the good ol’ days of the Barbary Coast and the high-priced whores that controlled the men that controlled the city.

She’d be drinking tea, her finger daintily crooked, her fat face smooth from care or concern, a thick illusion of youth covering it and shielding it from time.

Dianne’s finishing school and escort service.

Time to talk.

Eighteen

T
he air was heavy and cool inside, perfumed like a Southern mansion. Miranda half-shuddered, anticipating the macabre brush of Spanish moss against her cheek.

The butler greeted her, recognition warming his eyes for a moment. Then they fell back to the floor, where Dianne liked to keep them.

“She expecting you, Miss Corbie?”

Miranda nodded, looked around the foyer. Not much had changed. Still the hunting scenes on the wall, Merrie Olde England as transferred through the Confederacy. The red velvet seemed plusher, the carpet thicker. A faint odor of expensive Cuban tobacco mixed with magnolias and good English tea. And the acrid smell of crisply folded greenbacks.

“Yeah. How’ve you been, Franklin?”

The black man shrugged imperceptibly against the tight white cloth of the uniform. “I can’t complain, Miss Corbie.”

Miranda stared at him for a minute, wondering if he ever wondered what the hell a Howard University summa cum laude was doing in 41 Grant Ave. Her fingers drifted toward the cigarettes in her purse, until she remembered Dianne’s “only for the gentlemen” rule. She clenched them together, kept them at her side.

“Show me in, please.”

He nodded, leading her down a long corridor with old paintings in tarnished frames, the women in them seemingly unaware of their plunging décolletage, the men holding riding whips, modeling tight trousers and loose cravats.

The hush of a library filled the house along with the scent of decay. Aristocracy died slowly, lingering in the enjoyment of the expiration.

Franklin opened the door to the sitting room.

Wine-colored draperies matched the chaise and the Victorian furniture and the glass in Dianne’s hand. Miranda squinted a little, adjusting her eyes to the color-tinted shadows her hostess lived in.