The Last Embrace (11 page)

“I’m sorry kid, but you’re going to have to go back.”

“I’ll help you take pictures. You can teach me how to use that camera.”

Harry examined the lit cherry of his cigarette. “You want I should train my competition?”

“I’ll help you set up shots. Be your assistant.”

“I don’t need an assistant. And you’re not supposed to set up shots in the news business,” Harry said, even as he considered the beat-up tricycle in his trunk that he tossed into intersections whenever a car accident needed a more tragic touch. Other photogs kept battered strollers, squashed shoes, mangled lady’s purses.

Harry went to get a towel and some old clothes out of his dresser. When he came out, the kid was shoving something into his knapsack. Harry scrambled eggs, toasted bread, and made coffee while Gadge showered. He ate half the breakfast, drank his coffee, and read the paper. The water kept running. Harry tapped another cigarette out of his pack and looked for his silver lighter. He loved that lighter. It reminded him of a girl. She was a cigarette girl at the Trocadero, and a big wheel had left it on the table one night and she’d given it to him. Harry recalled Gadge shoving something into his knapsack. He knew where his lighter was.

Stomping to the bathroom, he flung the door open. Steam filled the room. Behind the curtain, the kid sang a nursery rhyme, his voice high and pure. Harry grabbed the knapsack and tiptoed out.

Poking through Gadge’s belongings, Harry found his lighter shoved inside a ratty wool sock. He also saw a red strap sticking out of a sweater. Curious, he tugged and it came free.

It was a lady’s fancy high-heeled sandal. Harry knew where he’d seen the shoe before. Or rather, its mate. Yesterday, in the canyon. It had been strapped to the ankle of the dead girl.

Just then, something hit Harry in the back.

“Put that back,” Gadge shrieked. “It’s mine. Who said you could go through my stuff?”

Harry dropped the shoe and the lighter. He grabbed the kid and held him, fists pumping, at arm’s length.

“You tricked me into taking a shower so you could steal my stuff,” Gadge cried.

“Calm down, kid. Nobody wants your crappy stuff. I went into your backpack because you stole my lighter and I wanted it back.”

“I just wanted to look at it because it’s beautiful. I would have given it back.”

“You collect beautiful things, do you? Where’d you get that shoe?”

“What’s it to you, mister?”

“It belong to someone you know?” Harry’s low voice invited confidence.

The kid shook his head. “I found it.”

“Where?”

The kid looked up anxiously. “In a street.”

Harry wondered what Gadge knew about the shoe’s owner.

“That shoe belonged to a woman who was found strangled yesterday in Hollywood. You know, under the Hollywood sign. You were in the car when I drove out there to take photos.”

The kid blanched. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“That shoe is evidence in a murder.”

“I didn’t kill anyone. Honest.”

“For Pete’s sake, I know that. You’re just a kid. But the cops will want to talk to you.”

The boy got a hunted look in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I’m a runaway, they’ll just lock me up or put me in another lousy home. You don’t know, mister. The staff treat us worse than prisoners. Some of them like to hurt kids.”

Gadge stuffed clothing back into his rucksack. “It’s been nice knowing you, but I’ve got to get moving.”

An image came to Harry of Gadge smiling into the camera and holding up the red high-heeled shoe. A photo like that could break the Scarlet Sandal murder investigation wide open. And Harry could sell versions to every paper in town. It would be his ticket to a cushy staff job anywhere he wanted. Harry placed an arm on either side of the hallway to block the kid’s escape.

Gadge looked like he was about to cry. He tossed the red leather sandal at Harry’s feet. “Take it,” he said. “That old shoe is nothing but bad luck.” He shouldered his knapsack.

“Hold on a minute,” Harry said. “Why don’t you eat breakfast, then you can show me where you found it?”

“Why? You going to take a photo and sell it to the papers? Will you give me half, on account of I’m your assistant?”

What an operator this kid was! “I’ll give you a quarter,” Harry said.

“Deal. But only if you don’t take me to the police.”

Harry knew it would be out of his hands once the pics hit the paper.

“I promise.” Harry chose his words carefully. “But if they come looking for you, that’s another story.”

“Can I tell them you’re my uncle? Say, what’s your name, anyway? You know mine.”

“I’m Harry Jack.”

“Well, hey howdy, Harry Jack. And don’t worry about the competition. I don’t want to work for any cruddy old newspaper. I’m figuring on a job with the studios.”

The nerve of this kid, Harry thought. “Those are a different kind of camera, son. Moving cameras. So how long have you had that shoe?”

The kid counted on his fingers. “About a week. Found it early in the morning, on my way down from the old estate to get breakfast after the Van de Kamps deliveryman makes his rounds.”

“What estate?”

“Above Franklin. It’s abandoned. I come down around six a.m. to swipe a bottle of milk and some cottage cheese. And I saw it there and it was pretty so I took it.”

“What street?”

“Off the Boulevard. It’s near a nightclub.”

“There are nightclubs all along the Boulevard,” Harry said, exasperated.

“Between Hollywood and Sunset. I remember that. A few blocks east of Vine.”

“That narrows it down.”

“I’ll show you.”

“Was there anything else nearby? Clothing? Jewelry?”

“If there was, I would have taken it. You can sell nice things like that.”

“What about a purse? Papers?”

The kid paused. “Nope.”

“Did you see any signs of a struggle?”

“Like bloodstains or a knife? Nope.”

At that moment, they heard men yelling and feet pounding the sidewalk below. Harry went to the window and saw a man getting beat up. Grabbing his camera, he ran out the door, his shirttails fluttering behind him.

“You wanna be a shutterbug?” Harry told Gadge. “Your first lesson starts now.”

The beating that Harry saw from his window was taking place in front of an appliance repair shop that occupied the ground floor of an apartment building across the street.

As Harry and Gadge raced downstairs, people were already gathering. Some were cheering wildly. A lone Samaritan loped off to flag down help. Into the fray ran Harry Jack, snapping away, Gadge behind him, screaming gibberish and covering his eyes.

And then Harry stopped. He removed the camera from his face. He looked stunned.

“Shorty Lagonzola, is that you?” he called.

The man had his fist back, ready to slam into the victim’s face. He turned, and his mouth gaped.

“Harry? Harry Jack?”

Just then they heard a police siren.

“Son of a bitch,” Shorty said. “The watch commander promised to have the station zipped up tight. Something’s queered it. I’d like to stay and catch up, Harry, but we’ve got to go. C’mon, boys, fun’s over.”

Shorty and his cronies jumped into the waiting car and tore off.

Harry watched the crowd mill around the police car, everyone talking at once. Someone pointed to Harry and his camera.

Shorty Lagonzola, Harry thought, gripping his camera tighter. A face he hadn’t seen in years. A face that brought back childhood memories of Boyle Heights, a place where neighborhood loyalty was bred in the bone and maintained each week with your fists.

Harry was ten and newly arrived to the Heights when he was befriended by a kid whose skinny frame and reddish hair gave him the look of a raggedy lit match. Shorty didn’t have a father and he pretty much did what he wanted. By fifth grade, he was already skipping school, hanging out at the pool hall, and mixing up juniper juice and raw alcohol in the back rooms of pharmacies with his brothers, only teenagers themselves but already deep in the rackets with local gangster Mickey Cohen.

Harry would have jumped at the chance to join them, but Shorty steered his friend clear of that world, telling him he couldn’t disappoint his law-abiding mom and pops.

Now the policeman was walking toward him. Harry’s hand went to his Leica.

“Damn it all to hell,” he said, as the copper reached him. “There’s something wrong with my camera. Sorry, Officer, I accidentally exposed the film.”

Harry trudged back to his apartment with Gadge.

“What a lousy break,” the kid said. “The papers would’ve paid good money for those pics.”

Harry wasn’t much of a drinking man, but now he poured himself two fingers of rye, sat at the table, and downed it in one gulp. His hand was still curled around the empty glass when there was a knock at the door.

“Harry?” a man’s voice rasped. Something familiar about it. The second time in seven years.

Harry opened the door and saw a figure in a coat and hat, the brim pulled low. Pulling him inside, he said, “You’re taking a big chance coming back here.”

When Shorty was settled in an armchair with his own glass, Harry asked him how the heck he’d found out where he lived and why he’d come back.

“I owe you for what you did back there,” Shorty said.

“How the hell do you know what I did?”

Shorty waved a hand like he was brushing off flies. “One of my boys saw.”

“I’ve owed you for a long time,” Harry said, unable to forget how Shorty’s older brothers had stopped local hoodlums from killing his grocer father after his pop refused to pay protection money.

“We’re even, then. What happened to your eye? Do I need to beat up somebody else?”

“Naw, I’m okay.”

Shorty glanced at Gadge. “Got a kid, I see. Nice little place. Where’s the wife?”

“No wife. Not my kid either.”

Harry saw Shorty’s look of alarm. “Don’t worry, he knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

“I don’t know, Harry, maybe you better…” Shorty made a shooing motion.

“Kid’s got his own reasons for not talking to coppers.”

Shorty nodded. “If the badge boys had gotten hold of those pics, they would have indicted the lot of us. But hell, Harry, ain’t you gonna ask me what we was doing?”

Harry shrugged. “Figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”

“I’m ready. We was beating up the pervert that owns the building and runs that repair shop. Uses his key to walk in on tenants, especially ones of the female persuasion that…” Shorty’s hands carved a voluptuous form in the air. “Mayor Bowron’s daughter lives there and that schmuck let himself in, got a good look at her in brassiere and panties. He needed to be taught a lesson.”

Harry snorted. “When did you start wearing a cape and avenging the honor of maidens?”

“Mickey sent us out after receiving a personal request from Hizzoner.”

“But you beat that man within an inch of his life,” Harry said.

“Wanted to make sure he got the point.”

Shorty grinned. He’d taken off his coat, and underneath he wore an expensive suit, the effect somewhat ruined by sleeves that hit the first knuckle of each hand. The pants had been taken up. A homburg perched on his head. Harry’s practiced eye saw a bump at Shorty’s right ankle and the straps of a shoulder holster.

“You’re looking good,” Harry said. “Life treating you well?”

“’S okay.”

“Fancy threads. Never figured you for a clotheshorse.”

“Mickey’s a generous man. Never wears a suit more than a few times before he hands it down. So you pursued that photography stuff?”

“It bit me hard. And when I got drafted, Uncle Sam put me to work taking pictures on battlefields all over Europe. How about you? Were you over there?”

Shorty squinted at the wall and looked embarrassed. “I’ve got problems with my feet. It kept me out.”

Harry remembered Shorty running away from the neighborhood beat cop just fine. But he probably had a record, which would have disqualified him. Or else money had changed hands.

“I’m trying my damndest right now to get on with one of the daily papers.”

“Maybe Mickey can help.”

Harry considered. But he needed to get there on his own merits, not as a favor to a mob boss. And he knew the invisible skeins that Mickey wove around everyone he helped.

“Shorty, you’ve helped me out more than a guy has a right to. I’ll never forget what you did for the old man. Never thanked you properly for that. Guess I was embarrassed.”

“No need. We all admired your pops for sticking to his guns. Even if it was stupid. Maybe I wished I had a dad.”

“He was a good man. I thank the Lord he didn’t live to see what Hitler done. Died in 1939 and my moms sold the store to the Takahashis. Remember them? Fumiko Takahashi, cute little thing with bangs and dimples, was in our class?”