City of Dragons (39 page)

The traffic was getting thicker, and she almost lost him, thinking he’d hopped a streetcar. She maintained half a block distance; he stopped once, turned around, shading his eyes. Then lit a cigarette. She kept walking, looking in the occasional store windows, fussing with her bag when she walked in front of a bar. The streets were getting a bit rougher, despite the new lift to the baggy eyes of the Coast. Martini turned on Columbus, probably headed the same place as the six-foot bodyguards he carried around as lucky rabbit’s feet.

He disappeared into the crowds under the arch, tourists getting their pictures taken with the Brownie, someone yelling to make sure the words “International Settlement” got in the photo. Miranda thought she saw him saunter into one of the clubs.

Looked like the Covered Wagon, a shady little cocktail lounge. Where the West was still wild, and wagons were the only things that stayed covered.

She turned right on Kearny and caught a yellow cab.

The driver spit out the window, and sped past the crab shacks of Fisherman’s Wharf and Fisherman’s Grotto Number Nine and DiMaggio’s Restaurant, headed toward the Aquatic Park Casino. Passed the giant PG&E petroleum reserves by the waterfront. Miranda craned her neck, staring up at the huge tank, replaying memories of her old boss, bastard that he was, and the even worse bastards that killed him.

She told the cabbie to take a trip back over Nob Hill, down past Mason, and over to Market, a roundabout way to get to her office, which would let her know if she had a shadow.

He was a taciturn man with a three-day-old beard, eyes indifferent to passengers, not indifferent to extra money. Slammed on his brakes when a truck loaded with herring slowly pulled out of one of the fisheries.

Miranda held a mirror up to check the cars behind them. No one had stayed with them more than a block.

They careened past the glittering, boatlike casino, opened last year or the year before to high hopes and little money. No one gambled in the Depression. The stakes were too high, and the odds too low.

The upper crust considered Aquatic Park not upper or crusty enough to earn their green backs. They played in well-heeled dives that looked like the Warner Brothers’s idea of a gambling den, places like the Moderne, with the patina of bootleggers still shiny at the edges.

He hung a left on Van Ness, got caught in traffic, passed a couple of other taxis, people visiting the car dealers, ogling the new models, college kids seeing how many could squeeze in the new rumble seats.

Still no car behind them.

A glass truck tried to change lanes and trapped them, so he switched on the radio and a few seconds later the sonorous tones of H. V. Kaltenborn discussing the world filled the car. The driver made a noise of disgust and turned the dial until he found someone singing opera, then laid on his horn, finally working his way around the glass truck.

He swung around until he could head north on California, crawling up the hills toward the mansions, Grace Cathedral, the Fairmont, and the Top of the Mark, Old San Francisco, Railroad San Francisco. The smell of gold still perfumed the atmosphere of Nob Hill, not quite a hundred years later.

He hung a right at Jones, then a left at Sutter, and a left again at Bush, again stalling behind a streetcar, his fingers tapping his steering wheel as if he had somewhere to go.

Miranda watched him, smoking her Raleigh in silence, and every few seconds, checked the pocket mirror.

He finally headed down Mason, past the apartment, and at her bidding slowed down to a trot. She leaned back against the seat, her hat pulled low over her eyes, looking for parked cars or dark windows, or men who looked like they had too little to do, their eyes sharp, their fingers twitching on imaginary triggers.

Still nothing.

She shrugged, told him to get her to the Monadnock. He stepped on the gas.

The phone started ringing when the key was in the lock. She cursed, dropping the dress, shoved the door open, picked up the bag and ran.

She lifted the receiver, shoved the bag under the desk, and faced toward the still open door.

“Miranda Corbie, Investigations.”

The voice at the other end was young and hesitant.

“Miss Corbie?”

An image of a girl, immaculately dressed, bringing in her mother’s shoes.

“Is this Rose? Rose Shiara?”

Miranda sat in the leather chair, opening her purse and taking out the .22.

“Of course I remember you. And thank you for calling. Did Mr. Matsumara explain that I’m trying to help Emily?”

Miranda pulled out Helen Winters’s Chief tablet from the desk drawer, and dipped the fountain pen in the well, poising it above the paper.

“Uh-huh. Yes, that’s right. It’s very important, Rose. So if you know anything—”

Disappointment shadowed Miranda’s face, and she set the pen down. “Yes. I see. I was hoping she’d told you. No, no, it’s not your fault. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay.”

Deep sigh. She picked up the pen again.

“All right. Anything at all, any personal fact you can tell me? Uh-huh … tea ceremony. Yes, Mrs. Takahashi mentioned that to me. Okay. Relatives in Burlingame … uh-huh … own a grocery market? Importers? Were they close? All right. No, that could be important. Any more personal things, favorite movie star, that kind of—oh, she did? Gardening, huh? And fish. No, that’s interesting. You never know what can help, honestly. You’ve been wonderful. If you hear anything at all … Yes, please do. And Mr. Matsumara probably told you that you can’t let—yes. Well, it could be dangerous. So please, Rose—be careful. If you see anything odd, someone tries to follow you, you’ll call—yes. Call the police. Then call me. Okay. Thank you again. I’ll let you know. ’Bye.”

Miranda sat and frowned at the notebook, at the words “garden” and “fish” and “tea,” while holding the .22 in her hand, the door still open. She sighed, stood up, and stretched, and walked from behind the desk toward the door to close it.

Footsteps tapped and skidded, uneven and off-balance, close by her office. Before she could look out into the hallway, a gray-haired man in a wool jacket, covered in pipe ash and the stench of a three-day-old bender, wavered into her office, hitting and banging the door against the wall stopper.

Her father.

Twenty-Five

S
ome of the red lines tattooing his nose and cheeks were new. She was surprised at how old he looked. How long—a year ago?

His hair was still parted on the extreme left, carefully combed, oiled and full of bits of dry, flaky scalp he didn’t see when he looked in the mirror. She wondered for a moment what he did see.

He weaved toward the desk chair, bowing to her, and nearly toppling over, collapsing in the seat until he could assume a more professorial posture.

Miranda stared at him from the door, then slowly closed it and walked back to her desk. She was still holding the pistol.

“What the hell do you want?”

He gazed at her mournfully, shaking his head with disapproval. “Ah, Miranda. Your father comes down from th’ hill to see you, to make sure y’r all right, and you disappoint him. Not the first time. I taught you better than that.”

She sank heavily in the leather seat. “You didn’t teach me a goddamn thing. What do you want?”

The head-shaking intensified until he was close to falling over. Then he drew himself up like a Roman senator about to make a speech.

“I taught you English, young lady, the King’s tongue, and the language of Shakespeare. Made sure”—he waggled his finger—“made sure you had ’n education. An’ you choose to be vulgar, like those people you work for.”

His voice took on an exaggerated pitch, while he thrust his hand out and gestured at her.
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth—”

“For fuck’s sake, drop the John Barrymore act. You only remember me when you’re drunk and desperate and want money. Is that what you’re here for?”

He dropped his hand slowly into his lap. She noticed his pants were dirty, and covered with ash and chalk dust. His eyes were large and brown. Her eyes.

“You will kindly r’frain from using the language of those whom I would call
hoi polloi
, if the very usage of Greek did not ennoble them far more than they deserve. Can I not see my own daughter—whom I named after that glorious, bright creat’re in
The Tempest
, and who has become my own Regan—can I not see her without stepping in her wasted life, her verbal trash?”

He was starting to work himself up, saw the look on Miranda’s face, noticed the gun in her hand, and burbled back down into less angry dramatics. He brushed off his suit, smoothed his hair.

She said, wearily: “You need money. I suppose you saw me in the paper.”

He made an effort to sober up. “I was reading my Hopkins, preparing for a class. I noted that you were involved with finding a missing girl. I was worried.”

Miranda leaned back in the chair. The laugh hurt her lungs.

“Worried? Who the fuck—excuse me, Cotton Mather, who are you trying to put one over? This is me you’re talking to. Your so-called child you haven’t seen or contacted since the Fair opened last year. And precious few times before that. The daughter you never wanted, a sensation you made perfectly clear to me, over and over again, in dactylic hexameter or fourteen-line sonnets, whenever you bothered to climb down from the Ivory Tower.”

She lowered the gun but didn’t let it go, pulling a cigarette out of her purse and lighting it one-handed with the Ronson lighter. Inhaled until the pain went away.

“You never wanted me. You didn’t like me as a child, and don’t like me now, except in some sort of Grand Guignol fashion where you can martyr yourself to your art and your writing and your teaching, and pretend to be King Lear. Oh, and there’s the money. That’s a new twist, I suppose, since my notoriety has caused you both discomfort from the fossilized old bastards at Berkeley … and comfort in the form of, shall we say, liquid assets? So let’s get down to business, Pops. How much do you want to go away?”

His face was blue with shock and repressed anger. Not drunk enough to hear the truth. Not yet.

“How … dare you. You at least have an eloquence you owe me. You could’ve gone to Berkeley or Stanford, married, and been a decent woman. You—and you alone—have chosen to live like this, wasting whatever gifts God gave you, unfit for decent company. Is it any wonder I don’t see you? Tenure doesn’t protect a man forever, not if his daughter’s no better than a who—”

“Watch your mouth, old man. You managed to kill off my mother. I’ve often wondered if I should return the favor for her.”

Miranda was halfway out of her chair, breathing hard, her eyes swimming. Very carefully, she laid down the .22 still in her hand. Calmed herself, checked her breathing. She opened the desk drawer, took out the half-empty bottle of Old Taylor, and handed it to him contemptuously.

“Here’s your mother’s milk, Pops. Suck down some of this, and I’ll get you what you came for.”

His hand shook when he reached for it, his eyes full of loathing and greed. He’d be on the stuff for a week, until he got sick. One of these days he’d die of it.

Miranda walked to the safe, while he quickly unstoppered the bottle and swallowed about four gulps of the bourbon. She fished out a hundred-dollar bill. The annual tax.

She thrust it at him and removed the bottle from his other hand, where it hung limply, his head drooping, his shoulders slouched. She put it back on the desk.

“I thought perhaps—perhaps there had been a reward … My salary has—”

“No explanations necessary, Pops. Go buy your brandy, read your Shakespeare. It’s my filial duty to make sure you’re in the clover. As you’ve explained before. Maybe it’ll help you shuffle off your mortal coil.”

He looked up at her, the eyes brown and large. “Miranda. A good Latin name.”

“So you’ve told me.”

He stood up, unsteady, grasped her arm. She flinched, then relaxed. Walked him to the door.

He stooped, the haze of the bourbon settling on him for a while, his face placid and dreaming.

“I’m teaching modern poetry. Hopkins reminded me of you.”

They were at the doorway. Miranda cocked an eyebrow. “In what way? He’s not vulgar.”

He braced himself on the door frame, and for a moment, his voice was that of the teacher, sonorous, charismatic, Henry Irving in front of the chalkboard, reciting verse like he lived it.

“The poem you liked a long time ago. Remember?”

She shook her head.

“We substituted your name. One Christmas, perhaps the only Christmas … ‘
Miranda,
are you grieving/Over Goldengroves unleaving?/Leaves, like the things of man, you/With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?/Ah! as the heart grows older/It will come to such sights colder/By and by, nor spare a sigh/Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie …’ ”

Her hand dropped from his arm. He turned to face her, eyes shining.

“
It is the blight man was born for. It is Miranda you mourn for
.”

He bowed, kissed her hand, and wavered back into the hallway, the hundred dollars in his pocket. Miranda watched him go, the cigarette burning its way toward her fingers, not feeling the tears on her cheeks.