The Secret Life of Anna Blanc (27 page)

Anna knew he didn't mean it. He'd had a tantrum when he'd painted her portrait for her debut. His lip jutted out and he pouted with his eyes. They were large, blue, and long lashed, under tame dark eyebrows. They sparked a revelation and she blinked. She lowered herself down onto a velvet pouf. “If I described a man to you, could you paint him?”

He raised his groomed eyebrows. “Does Mademoiselle have a lover? That would explain your tragic face.”

He seemed sympathetic to the idea, so she nodded. “I don't want to forget him. He's my…love…” She looked down at the artificial birds. “Budgie. Oh, my heart!” She melted into to a cascade of artificial tears.

Anna had hit her mark. He moved to her side and placed a large paint-stained hand on her heaving shoulder. “Oh Mademoiselle, to paint you smiling would be an affront to love.”

She looked up with a long face and hound dog eyes. “Will you paint him, then? I'd be happy.”

The artist's face pouted in sympathy, but he had not consented. She wept harder, but his face remained tense and tentative. Then she remembered what the Widow Crisp had taught her about how bread was buttered. “We could do my portrait another day, when my eyes aren't puffy, and you could get two commissions.”

It was a bold-faced lie. She had no money to pay him. But by the time he found that out, it would be too late. His face relaxed and he caressed her cheek. “Of course I will paint him, if you will smile.”

When Anna arrived at the station on Monday, she had a portrait of the Boyle Heights Rape Fiend tucked under her arm, wrapped in brown paper, the paint still wet. She thought it a fair likeness. His large blue eyes and thick black lashes alone were strong identifiers. Add to that his dandyish clothes and white-blond hair. Her heart thumped with excitement. She knew she was onto something. Now it remained to convince the rest of the force, who by and large thought she was an idiot.

Joe was standing at the counter with Mr. Melvin when Anna entered. The men spun quarters on the countertop in some sort of game. Mr. Melvin was concentrating, and Joe was laughing. As she brushed past them, she felt Joe's eyes heavy on her back. When she turned to face him, he was engrossed in the game, not looking at all. She had only wished he'd been looking.

She set the painting down and picked at the knot holding the twine. Her fingernail bent backwards. “Cock!” Shaking one hand, she removed the brown paper and crumpled it into a ball.

The men began to swim over like sharks when there was blood in the water—Wolf, Snow, and a handful of patrolmen. They were far more interested in Anna now that she had been labeled a tart. Normally, this would be undesirable for a girl. At the moment, it was working in her favor.

Hummingbirds fluttered in her stomach. She stood and smoothed her skirts. Wolf smiled. “What do you know? Matron Holmes is decorating.”

Anna lifted her chin ever so slightly. “It's a portrait of the Boyle
Heights Rape Fiend, as I remember him. I had it commissioned. I described the villain and the artist painted him. It's quite a good likeness.”

A smirk spread among the men. She leaned the portrait up against the wall and stood back so they could see it. Wolf put his hand on Anna's shoulder. “Well, that will make a lovely gift. I'm sure he'll appreciate it.” The men tittered.

Joe drifted up to see the painting. He ignored Anna but considered the portrait with interest. Wolf stepped beside him and crossed his arms. Anna's heart bounced to her throat. She watched Joe stroke his dimpled chin. He was smart. Surely he could see the brilliance of this. Or maybe he would support her for her own sake. She didn't know why she thought he might. He never had before. She felt a pang in her heart and tossed her head, remembering how he had insulted her in the stables, how he was holding her secrets over her head, putting the squeeze on her.

Snow scratched his flaky scalp. “Is that what he looks like, Joe?”

“I don't know. I only saw the back of him as I was falling on my…” Joe glanced at Anna and censored his language, “…posterior.”

The men laughed again.

Anna tried to catch Joe's eye, but he looked away. She stood as straight as a soldier. “Based on his knowledge of women's fashion, I believe he's a milliner, cobbler, or dress maker. You can use this painting to canvass the shops. Show it both to customers and shop keepers. One of them will have seen him. He's handsome and very well dressed. Someone a woman would notice.”

“Someone you might like to interview in the stables?” Wolf asked.

The men sniggered and a patrolman made a loud, “Hah!”

She held her head high and hoped no one noticed that her hand trembled. “You can laugh, but you're not making any progress on the case. I'll canvass the shops myself. I feel I must to do something!”

“Well, Matron Holmes,” Wolf said. “You're busy with the coroner's lecture tonight, but you could go on the sting with me tomorrow night.” He winked at her.

Anna pressed her lips together. “Fine. I'd like a chaperone.” The men howled, all except Mr. Melvin and Joe, who was blinking at Wolf, his mouth slightly open.

Joe strode over to Captain Wells. “Let me do it. Wolf shouldn't do it.”

“But Officer Singer, you don't seem able to hang onto your gun,” Captain Wells said.

At that moment, Matron Clemens strode through the door. Her eyes swept the officers, who were clustered around Anna like flies on a carcass. She scattered them with one frigid glance.

When Anna arrived home, she told Mrs. Morales she didn't feel well. She went straight to her room, locked the door, and changed back into her matron's clothes. A uniform would lend her credibility. She snatched up a hat and veil and climbed out the window. If Joe Singer was not speaking to her, he surely wouldn't escort her to the coroner's lecture tonight. Without his company, it would be a long and treacherous journey. She didn't have time for dinner or anything else.

Anna began walking at five-thirty, taking Grande Avenue south. Some of the neighborhoods were poor, some inhabited by people who didn't speak English. There, the houses looked owner-built, small and precarious, surrounded by corn and tomato plants. Goats chewed on weeds in dirt yards, and there were chickens, rabbit hutches, scum ponds, and garbage smells. Nice girls were not supposed to wander about unaccompanied at night, and men shamelessly stared at her as she walked along. At least these neighborhoods didn't have rape fiends. Still, she wished Officer Singer was holding her arm and that he wasn't mad at her.

Anna shared the road with a group of grubby children trudging home from the Corum Paper Box factory. They were skinny and seemed too tired to be naughty. Anna had read in the paper that the factory work was dangerous, and that the children employed there worked six days a week for only two dollars. Even a plain mother could earn twice
that working one evening in the cribs. While Anna didn't know what sinful acts Eve was doing with vile men, she knew why she was doing it.

Anna turned right on Pico, headed south again on Figueroa, and walked another forty-five minutes through a checkerboard of neighborhoods—middle class, working class, black, white. On each block, eyes followed her—the woman stranger walking alone.

To her relief, she arrived at USC safely and right on the hour. A stone held the door open, and she quickly found the operating theater. It was impressive, perfectly circular, with tall oak doors and a high domed ceiling that made her feel small. It smelled faintly like an overflowing cesspool. Two hundred men in suits populated the steep rows of seats surrounding the stage—medical students with notebooks and older men who must have been doctors. There were no women and, by the way the students stared at her, she didn't think ladies were welcome. Anna scanned the theater for her personal physician to make sure she wouldn't be recognized, but she didn't see anyone she knew. Most medical men weren't rich enough to run in her circle and, apparently, the men of Central Station didn't take pride in their work. Still, she left her veil on.

In the center of the stage, a halo of globed lights shone down upon a naked body stretched across a steel gurney with a square cloth draped over its secret man parts. The thing was bloated, bruised in places, and greenish in color, but for the scarlet lividity along the buttocks, back, and the backside of the legs. Anna's heart thumped with excitement. The coroner was poking at it with a thin, metal stick, demonstrating something to a student. She descended the steps so she could better see and decided she would wait to confront the coroner until after the lecture so she could learn something more about dead people.

She approached a bench in the second row and gingerly edged past several men to reach an empty seat directly in front of the corpse. The men stood to accommodate her. The seat was hard and warm from someone else's bottom. The air smelled like men, starched shirts, and death. Next to her sat a person about her age. He had bad skin and sported a jacket with worn cuffs. He buried his nose in an anatomy book—a medical student.

According to Theo, medical students each had a dead body of their very own. They named them and got to pull them apart and pickle their pieces and hang their skeletons on hooks in their offices. Anna felt jealous.

The coroner began his lecture, “This body was found in a house after neighbors noticed a smell. The man was last seen alive six days ago. Was it a natural death or foul play?” He flitted around the corpse's leg with his pointer as he spoke. “The petechiae of the early stages of decomposition is often mistaken for marks left by contusion…”

Anna wrinkled her brow. She was adrift in sea of medical men who had more books, more schooling, and more experience than she did. If a coroner—not even a student but an expert in dead bodies—could mistake decomposition for the marks of violence, what hope did she have of distinguishing between a murder and suicide? No wonder everyone ignored her, including Joe Singer.

Anna did have superior intelligence, proficiency in Latin, and the Holy Saints were on her side. She paid minute attention and found that, informed by her previous readings, she understood a good bit of the talk. And even if she wasn't a coroner, she knew that sixpence didn't grow in shoes, and that diphthongs aren't spelled phonetically.

At the end of the lecture, the coroner invited questions. Anna fiddled with her pen and remained silent, vacillating. She peered around the room, and no one raised their hand. The coroner tapped his pointer on the slab, making a clicking sound that echoed in the theater. Papers started to rustle as the students began to pack up their satchels. If Anna were to confront the coroner, she would have to do it now, before her educated witnesses got up and went home. Anna leapt to her feet and raised her hand. The coroner squinted at her and pointed with his silver stick. “Yes, young man.”

Evidently, he was nearsighted. The crowd tittered. Anna cleared her throat, squared her shoulders, and lowered her voice to increase her credibility. It cracked like the voice of a teenage boy. “Recently, I examined a corpse. The pupils were dilated and the face smelled sweet. Would you suspect chloroform?”

“A distinct possibility, son. Tell me more.” More tittering.

“The legs were a light purple in front, darkest near the toes, growing lighter as one moved up the body. The backside of the body was a dark purple. This coloration suggests dual lividity, that the body had been moved?”

“Good!” The coroner smiled encouragingly. “Go on.”

“The body had been found hanging in a tree. I deduced that the person had been drugged with chloroform, murdered, and then hanged to hide the crime.”

The doctor's eyes had narrowed, his eyebrows coming together in an angry knot. Anna forged on. “You, Doctor, deemed the death a suicide. I wondered if you could explain how a dead girl could hang herself. I'm sure you remember the case.”

The rustling stopped and the room stilled. All two hundred men craned their necks to fix their eyes on Anna. She squirmed, boxed in by male thighs, backs, and knees. The coroner strode to the side of the stage, squinting at Anna. He burst the silence with a hearty cackle. “Oh, it's you Assistant Matron Holmes! I recognize your squeaky voice. To question my conclusions in this forum is unladylike. As I have heard that you are…” He cleared his throat. “
Not
a lady, it's unsurprising. The real question is why the LAPD has not yet fired a woman who commits immoral acts in the police stables. And since those acts are committed during your regular work hours, you are technically being paid for them. It's no wonder you are particularly concerned about the fates of prostitutes.”

The auditorium was stunned into silence.

Under the veil, Anna's face flushed the color of her bartered ruby necklace, but inside, she was blank and white. Never mind her abject, public humiliation. She was getting used to that. But if the coroner knew about her tryst with Joe Singer, and he told Captain Wells, she would be fired. Shaking with dread, she lowered herself back onto the bench, sitting on the hand of the student next to her. Anna shot to her feet. He leered.

The coroner pointed to the hall. “Don't sit down, Matron Holmes. The door is that way.”

Whispering began as Anna quickly squeezed past the row of medical students and doctors, too flustered to beg their pardon. The coroner took up his lecture. “The question raised by the woman is actually a helpful illustration of how the petechiae of the early stages of decomposition can be mistaken for other phenomena, such as dual lividity, by ignorant individuals acting beyond their capacity. In this case, the sweet smell on the prostitute's face came from perfume…”