City of Dragons (32 page)

Sometimes the journey was longer … through smoke-filled jazz clubs on the east end of Fillmore, or Irish bars with long, low wooden counters, scarred with the sobs of tearful wives and calloused hands, spit hawked and left on the sidewalk outside the door mutely venomous. “Catholic bastards,” it said.

Sometimes it was over quickly, a sidewalk job, a back-alley quickie, the hand on the thigh, groping upward, blind and seeking comfort, a warm place to hide, a nipple to suck.

Sometimes she felt sorry for them.

And then she’d remember their wives, the tired age lines, the sagging stomachs from too many children, the thick waist and bent posture from making do when making do was necessary, hiding underneath a coiffure by Marcel, or a City of Paris dress. And the hands and the mouth never reached their destinations, what passed for manhood a pathetic, shriveled organ, plumped by illusion, fed by fantasy, returned to its natural state … shrunken, old, decayed.

She usually worked the rooms on Valentine’s Day. Worked the clubs and the dance halls, called in by the women that were tired of waiting, tired of the cold, tired of being tired.

Tonight she was seeking something else, her face swollen and misshapen, her suit rumpled, her body dull. The holster under her left arm weighed too much, but the weight propped her up, kept her going.

And she wasn’t alone.

They made the rounds. Bal Tabarin, Golconda, even La Fiesta, where Don Aldino and His Gauchos offered a tango about as sensuous as an assembly line.

A flash of the picture, a quick stare at Miranda, averted eyes, blank, bland, empty.

No girl, no dice.

She swallowed the repertoire of Goodman and Miller and Dorsey along with watered-down booze and curious, eager looks from men who were excited by the bruises on her face.

No, ain’t seen your friend, girlie, but I’ll be your friend if you want me to. I go for a fighter. And I won’t treat you so bad like your old man, neither … I like your face. Like the whole package. How ’bout letting me unwrap it some?

Rick handed out half dollars and dollar bills, his hat pushed back on his head, sweat on his brow, not used to the heat, the friction. One of Helen Winters’s twenties gone, evaporated like the ice cubes in a highball glass. Look for Phyllis Winters, ask about Phyllis Winters. Can’t ask about Emily, not at the same clubs.

White and yellow don’t mix, unless it’s in a cocktail or a Rice Bowl Party, Mister, you won’t find Orientals here, taste runs in that direction, try Chinatown. Get yourself a real China doll, Mister, ain’t I funny? Should be on the radio …

No girl, buddy. No, I’d recognize her … I go for blondes. You try Chez Paris? What about Vanessi’s?

And then it was midnight, and the bells chimed out from every chromium door in the city, twined with the reproach of stone church towers and the workaday clangs of cable cars, still running into the night.

The city sparkled, her neon winking, shining like a bride on her wedding day. It was night, and the double-lit street lamps danced a fox trot in the fog, and south of Market the overnight to L.A. pulled from the station, rumbling through the rich and fertile land just south of San Francisco, orchards stretched and sleeping, the only light the lantern of a farmer, worried about his crop.

Whistles blew, and longshoremen strode across the piers, unloading cargo from a ship pulled in, crew tired, while the smoke poured from the factories on the shore, paper and glass and steel and aluminum, machine parts made by men bent in a perennial hunch, working through the night, coffee and a cigarette their only companions.

Horns on Nob Hill blared while chauffeurs maneuvered long sleek autos from the Top of the Mark, the new spot for socialites to view the city, their city, the lights and the noise and the hum and the life of it all beautiful, throbbing, more sensual than the perfunctory grope of a banker’s son, drunk on gin, eyes on the waiter, hands on his date.

On the way to the apartment, a kiss, a strip, a shove and a grunt, hands soft, nails white, it’ll all be over with in a minute, honey, you don’t know what you do to me.

It’s what you don’t do to me that’s the problem.

Middle-aged housewives in print nightgowns, wool covers pulled over pendulous breasts, stir in their sleep, nudging their husbands, scooting beneath them on mended flannel sheets, hoping the kids aren’t reading a comic book under the covers, listening through the thin walls.

The ferries lay docked on the water, harbor lights left over from Christmas, while young Italian fishermen hold hands with the girl from down the block, eyes shining as dark as her hair.

And still the city shimmered … Treasure Island unlit, a promise in the night, a black pearl next to a pirate’s chest of yellow, pink and green. Out on the Bay, a foghorn moans in ecstasy, the sound floating upward, blending with the sighs from open bedroom windows.

Midnight, Valentine’s Day, 1940.

Rain was hitting the windows in sheets, while Miranda poked at the hamburger steak and baked potato in front of her. The Nite Hawk was out of the way of everything, tucked on a corner of Market and Sixteenth streets, where holidays didn’t matter and neither did your clothes.

A drunk sat in the corner, staring out the window, cradling the sugar shaker in his hands like a baby.

Rick said: “I’m getting sick and goddamn tired of telling you to eat. You need energy. Why the hell you thought you’d find it here, I don’t know.”

His nose was red with irritation and effort and exhaustion, and he reached into his overcoat pocket for his flask and handed it to her.

“Here. Have a drink.”

She couldn’t explain; he would dismiss the instinct that drove her forward. So she chewed the tough meat, and ate one of the pickles, and thought about Phyllis Winters and a green sedan.

“Rick, where did you say that hit-and-run was? An alley, wasn’t it?”

He leaned back, exhaling smoke into the air. “Clarion Alley. Not too far from here, as a matter of fact. Why, Miranda? You heard what Gonzales said. Two different cars.”

She leaned forward. “Yeah … but you didn’t hear what Bobby Henderson said. He thought Phyllis’ boyfriend has a Dodge. What if it’s the same one?”

He shook his head, defeated and tired. “Then where the hell does the sedan come in, Miranda? Remember—the one that tried to run you over? If you need a reminder, take a look in the goddamn mirror.”

She was already pulling out the
Chadwicks
street map, her finger tracing an intersection. “We didn’t turn up any more leads on Phyllis downtown. And the only one we’ve got is Guerrero Street. And Guerrero Street intersects Seventeenth here—just a block from Clarion Alley.”

He yawned, his arm rising to cover his mouth, but too slow, too exhausted. “It’s after midnight, for Chrissakes. I’ve gotta work tomorrow morning. Let’s go back home. And you need a doctor. You promised—”

“I promised I’d find Phyllis Winters and Emily Takahashi. And I don’t have much time. Emily is safe for the time being, I think … but Phyllis is expendable. Her father’s dead. She’s young, addicted to coke and high times. I can’t afford to sleep.”

He yawned again, this time managing to cover himself, his mouth hanging frozen for a moment in an open rictus.

Miranda said: “Go home. Really, Rick. You’ve saved me enough for twenty-four hours. You’ve met your knight-in-shining-armor quota.”

He knew she was telling him what he wanted to hear, caught at the gentle sarcasm in her voice, but also heard the gratitude. Warm, affectionate even. He stared at her, at the red-brown hair falling to her shoulders, the long neck and curve of her jawline. The eyes, frank, deep brown, always in check, always in hiding.

He wanted to ask her when she would ever be herself again, ever let herself be close to someone. To a man. To him.

He took another shot of rye instead, stood up from the Formica table, and shoved the chair in. The short-order cook scratched his beard from the kitchen, watching, and poured more pancake batter on the grill.

“Goddamn right, I have. Go to the doctor, Miranda. I can’t be your fucking nursemaid—”

“—no one asked you to, Sanders—”

“—and if you won’t take care of yourself, how the hell do you expect anyone else to?”

“I don’t.”

They stared at each other, the cigarette smoke forming a halo of gray around Miranda. Rick pushed his fedora back again, and said, more softly: “This is where we always leave it.”

She said: “Go home. Get some rest. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He shook his head, the corners of his mouth pulled down. Said, blurting it out: “That pistol of John’s still work?”

She looked at him steadily out of the one good eye. “Yes.”

He nodded, took off his hat, held it in his hand, hesitated awkwardly, then came back around to her chair, where she still sat. Bent down to her good side, gave her a peck on the cheek.

“Good night, Miranda. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

The cigarette smoke from the Chesterfield swirled around him, and she watched as he walked out the door into the rainy night, the screen door slamming shut behind him.

Where they always left it.

On the floor, in the air between them. Friends and not friends. Lovers and not lovers.

She stabbed the meat with her fork, breaking it into small chunks, watching it crumble. In the corner, the drunk rocked his sugar shaker, watching the window, the lights of the Market Street railway cars raking past the Nite Hawk.

The cook was standing at his back door, staring out into the night. The haze from his cigarette blended with the smoke from the grill.

She wouldn’t see Rick for a while, he wouldn’t call, wouldn’t return her messages. Then one day, he’d phone, how’s everything, Miranda, you got a story? I heard you’re in it again.

And they’d dance, and they’d dance, and they’d dance.

Rick Sanders and his motherfucking Irish lilt. Sounded nothing like Johnny, looked nothing like Johnny, but was part of Johnny’s world, part of her world, remembered her perfume in New York, and helped her when she needed help, all the time wanting more, wanting what she couldn’t give.

It hurt her, twisted her guts, made her ache inside.

Close and not close enough. Friends and not friends. Lovers and not lovers.

She rubbed the cigarette out in the tin ashtray, threw a quarter on the table.

And Miranda walked out into the black, her coat wrapped to keep out the rain drops, pistol heavy in the holster.

She walked down Noe a block to Seventeenth Street. Past rows of Victorian houses and rooming houses, their wooden frames staring with disapproval at the woman walking, her heels click-clacking in the darkness.

Like their queen, they were not amused.

The neighborhood survived the Quake and Fire, and so it judged the new world harshly, watching it deteriorate, as the rooms got cheaper and the company less elegant. Immigrants, San Francisco’s unwanted, mostly, who couldn’t afford anything else, and needed something close to the railways, close to Bethlehem Steel and Hunter’s Point.

Corner markets, a few pharmacies scattered the darkness of Seventeenth Street, as Miranda walked the five and a half blocks to Valencia and Clarion Alley. A Polish church here, a German church there. A Jewish kosher market. Catholics and Jews, shunted from the restricted sections, right skin, wrong religion.

It was an uneasy relationship, suspicion running on both sides, little unity in sharing a target on your back. And saintly Father Coughlin let the radio world know how much Catholics owed Hitler, in helping exterminate the Communist/Jewish/Nonwhite/Liberal/Franklin Roosevelt New Dealers of the World.

There were some younger rabbis who had championed the ’34 strike. Friends of Bente, who didn’t turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the Old Country, fast becoming the New Country, one nation, indivisible, with a concentration camp for all.

Miranda admired them, worked with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in New York, when wealthy Jews were among the few people who tried to save the Spanish Catholics from fascism. Giving aid and succor to people who might—and probably did—hate them. Still didn’t make them “Christian” enough.

The cigarette nearly burned her fingers, and Miranda dropped it, cursing.

So much for God.

She looked up and down the street, the rain turning to drizzle, street lamps mirrored in the asphalt. She scanned for cars or footsteps or men. And kept walking.

Clarion Alley was a dark, dingy little byway, barely big enough for a car. A couple of trash cans lined the side, leaning drunkenly against a brick building, their mouths caved in like toothless old men.

A man whose name she couldn’t remember had been killed here. A gust of wind blew from the south, lifting a torn piece of newspaper from something rotten and vegetal by the trash can. He’d been a gas company worker. That much she could recall.

Wong said Guerrero Street. Clarion Alley was tucked behind Seventeenth, between Mission and Valencia. Guerrero was a little over a block away, and it was the middle of the night, a Tuesday, early morning Valentine’s Day in San Francisco, so to Miranda it made sense that she should focus on Guerrero between Seventeenth and Eighteenth. If anything made sense at all.

Either the hit-runs were connected, or they weren’t.

If they were, the old man was killed because he discovered something.

Maybe something to do with gas service.

She frowned, digging out another cigarette, and loosened the gun in the holster under her arm.

She could wait until morning, call up the gas company. Get his name from the paper.

But she was here. No time like the present, even when the present was one o’clock in the morning, and the streets were as wet as a stepdaughter’s tears.

Miranda headed back toward Guerrero Street, looking for rooming houses or empty, sad flats. Temporary storage was always the name of the game … move around, don’t let the cops get too close, not unless you’re a well-heeled accountant to the criminal stars, or a lady with a long-running escort service.

Yellow light from a twenty-four-hour market carved a pie slice out of the black sidewalk on Guerrero and Dorland Street. Miranda headed in that direction, backing against the stairway of a tired-looking Queen Anne when she heard the whine of a car engine behind her.