Miranda tapped the letter. “‘Run you over with a car until you’re a bloody pool of guts and brain’? ‘Sluts and whores should drink poison and die’? ‘You’re going to die soon—you’ve been lucky so far’? Miss Crowley—Louise—the threat in this letter is either personal or playwrighting. If you want me to get to the bottom of it—to find out who wrote it and protect you from any more ‘accidents’—I need to know the truth. About your work, about Jerry, about your boss. About boyfriends, about girlfriends. About you.”
The secretary slowly sank back into the chair, large blue eyes focused again on the window to Market Street. Her voice was even, remote. The fear had dissipated, replaced with a calm Miranda found disquieting.
“You will take the case then?”
Miranda glanced at the paper calendar on the wall. September 17th. The Cameronia sailed from New York today, another opportunity gone, her place on the ocean liner supplanted by a diplomat. One or two more chances before the ship was commissioned by the Royal Navy, one or two more chances to find Catherine Corbie.
One or two chances to save a mother she never really knew.
She turned back to the blonde, composed and sitting still in the hard-backed chair.
“Yes. But on my terms. That means you tell me why you haven’t gone to the police and why, instead, a woman on a secretary’s salary is willing to pay twenty dollars a day to a private investigator. You’ll tell me the nature of your relationships with Jerry Alexander and Niles Alexander—and Roger Roscoe, who so helpfully convinced you to slice open the chocolates. You’ll tell me what you’re afraid of and what you suspect and whom you suspect.”
The girl’s face drained to white but her voice remained steady.
“You’ll get your answers, Miss Corbie. Tomorrow. Along with the rest of the letters and my handwritten notes on the—the attempts. Tonight Mr. Alexander is throwing a party for a famous author, and he expects me to attend.”
Miranda leaned back against her desk chair, a smile at the corner of her lips. Her eyes glinted green.
“But he doesn’t expect me. Wangle an extra invite, Louise. I’m feeling literary.”
Two
Miranda pushed away the buffalo china plate and what remained of the ham and cheese sandwich from Tascone’s. She shook out a Chesterfield and lit it with the One-Touch, thinking over her client.
Louise Crowley was back at her desk by now, lunch break over, scrawling out shorthand for Alexander the Great. She’d promised to send down an invitation for tonight’s literary salon, calmer than when she walked into the office, hands and legs shaking.
Louise Crowley, small-town blonde from Olympia, Washington. Louise Crowley, young and pretty, a lingerie model, never at Candid Camera or Sally Rand’s, just a nipple through satin, an upper thigh pressed against silk. Then Dorothy Durham anoints her, and lo! she finds work with a man known for his taste in nubile young women, taste shared by a prodigal son with a kink for violence and history even more debauched than his father’s.
Miranda exhaled a stream of smoke. The girl was terrified, that much was obvious.
But she still threw up a wall Miranda couldn’t see through, was still hesitant and hiding behind opaque blue eyes.
Goddamn clients, can’t trust ’em to tell the truth. You gotta check their stories, Corbie, and you damn sure gotta get ’em to pay in cash …
Charlie Burnett, ex-boss, ex-grifter, always in his cups, a man whose private dick wisdom couldn’t save him from himself.
Miranda sighed, reaching for the top of her newspaper stack and picking up the Call-Bulletin.
Best to find out now which author she’d be meeting, what dress she’d wear, what pose she’d take, though since Hammett’s departure and Jack London’s death twenty-odd years earlier, the artistic landscape had shifted toward the well-heeled and the well-manicured, socialists out and capitalists in.
Her finger stopped at Section 4G, above the movie ads for Foreign Correspondent and Meet the People. William Saroyan’s Something About a Soldier was opening for three nights at the Little Theater on Washington. “DIFFERENT” SAROYAN COMES TO STAGE IN HOMETOWN blared the headline.
Miranda’s frown deepened as she read. Saroyan rejected the Pulitizer Prize for The Time of Your Life and was now peddling an “anti-war” satire. The new play featured an anti-fascist army of only boys and old men, with a central theme that all it took to defeat fascism was “a good man living a good life.”
Not the same man who dramatized Izzy’s, the City’s most famous speak, a San Francisco mélange of dockworkers and newshawks, Nob Hill swells and B-girls off Pacific, cioppino of the down and out and those who were never in the ring.
Not the same man who wrote “Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret…”
Not the same man.
The playwright’s new method for combating pogroms and purges, countries swallowed and citizens killed, was oh so quaint, so 1936, when the only thing at stake was American honor in the Olympics, not human lives and human culture, good men living good lives ripped and torn and shattered by a Third Reich hell-bent on ruling the world.
Unlike Dos Passos and Hemingway, Saroyan had never been to Spain, didn’t know that boys and old men already were the army, first blood, first casualties, along with freedom and liberty and democracy, empty words on a fucking New York stage to Mr. “I Don’t Want My Pulitzer Prize.” So easy to preach that murder is murder and killing is killing when a bayonet isn’t aimed at your thirteen-year-old daughter’s throat and your wife’s eyes aren’t already dead.
Miranda shook her head, stabbing out the Chesterfield.
Saroyan’s new pacifist message played perfectly into Charles Lindbergh’s speech and radio scripts. And now rumor had it that the new “America First” committee was backing Lindbergh for the presidency, aviator-hero, proponent of eugenics, the man who accepted a medal from Adolf Hitler.
Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil …
Her eyes fell to a small paragraph below the Saroyan article. Clare Boothe Luce’s Margin for Error—an anti-Nazi satire—was opening at the University of California’s Little Theater, same night as Saroyan’s.
Pacifist vs. Interventionist … which one would win out on opening night? Boothe Luce’s play was a revival, but hell—that just proved she’d been paying attention.
Miranda frowned. The question was whether either Boothe Luce or Saroyan would associate with Niles Alexander. Saroyan was a playwright, not a novelist, and if he decided to trot out a book he probably wouldn’t look for a publisher in San Francisco, hometown or not. Boothe Luce never ran short of publishing opportunities and she’d never stoop to Alexander’s level.
No, what Miranda was looking for was a name well-known enough but not at the top of the list, someone with minimal press and a good record with society matrons.
On a hunch, she picked up the society pages.
Bingo. Page nine.
ENGLISH NOVELIST TO SPEAK AT JUNIOR LEAGUE AFFAIR
The article announced that Mr. “C. S. Forester, author of Captain Horatio Hornblower, To the Indies and other best-selling novels,” would lecture at the Junior League’s open house at the Fairmont Hotel, October 8th, and that “the noted English novelist is fast becoming a regular commuter between his present home in Berkeley and Hollywood, where Warner Brothers are making a movie version of Captain Horatio Hornblower with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.”
Forester was a likely candidate, a writer Alexander would salivate over, and if he was “fast becoming a regular commuter,” chances were that he was in town early, in time for the publisher to fête him.
What was it Louise said? “‘Throwing a party for a famous author’?” She didn’t say “client” … maybe the publisher was in full-throttle woo mode, trying to lure Forester away from a larger New York–based company and using the local connection to do it.
Miranda folded the Call-Bulletin and pi
cked up the Chronicle. The headline stared at her, an ugly nightmare scrawl in black and white: LONDON’S WORST YET … NAZI VENGEANCE RAID!
Goddamn it.
She should be on the Cameronia right now, steaming to Glasgow, making her way to London and Somerset House to search for any records of Catherine Corbie, not figuring out what to wear for a literary salon.
She opened the desk drawer and pulled out a Big Chief tablet, staring at the hastily scrawled notes, list of leads and ideas, most of them fallow, most of them dead.
Edwina Breckinridge, the old lady and former actress who’d helped her find out what happened to Annie Learner … she’d meant to see if Edwina had known Catherine Corbie, alias Maggie O’Meara, during her acting days. A fiver and a bottle of rum would wake up any memory, old lady glad for company.
Then there were her mother’s brothers. The Corbie uncles were long gone, Guerrero Street tavern owned by German Lutherans, beer and bratwurst über corned beef and cabbage. No luck there yet, she’d try to track down the sale, if it was ever official, trace her mother’s brothers through a land and money trail far colder than the German pilsner.
Miranda rubbed her forehead, closing her eyes. It all took time, time she was spending on cases not her own, on her own. But hell, she was where she’d always wanted to be, no expectations, no strings, at least since Rick introduced her to Charlie Burnett and she started to see a future beyond the red walls of Dianne’s.
She looked up at her office, the dust on the Wells Fargo safe, the sun-faded Martell’s calendar, the quietness and emptiness, sun motes floating in a stray beam of light.
No wrinkled tie and crooked fedora and bullshit Irish grin sitting across from her.
No Rick.
The bastard had to join the army and miss everything, Freddy Martin opening tonight at the St. Francis, Artie Shaw packing the Rose Room, the autumn warm weather and the chill of the fog, the steaks at John’s grill, the last of the Fair.
Treasure Island was closing September 29th.
Hell, the whole world was closing, why shouldn’t it?
Her hands were shaking. She reached for the pack of Chesterfields and lit another stick.
No more Rick, no more Magic City, no more “Pageant of the Pacific,” but San Francisco carried on and so did the cops, James MacLeod and the State Department helping keep O’Meara and Brady off her back, the gold braid brigade resenting every column she was mentioned in, every crime she helped solve.
Didn’t know her place.
Slut. Harlot. Whore.
Who could’ve been Mrs. Mark Gonzales.
That’s Inspector Gonzales, doncha know, married some frail who used to be a good-time girl—for a price …
No ring on her finger, no man on her arm, not with the chains it came with, no more Miranda Corbie, no more. Sure, Gonzales was a good cop, one of the two she could trust … and there was the way he smelled, the way he moved, the way his body felt and how it made hers feel.
“Just fuck him, honey,” Bente had implored more than once. “It’s good for you.”
Bente Gallagher. Best friend and ex-Bolshevist, still a Trotskyite. A red-haired Viking of a woman for whom the answer to a lost brother in the ’34 strike was Russia, whiskey, and athletic young men …
Miranda exhaled, watching the smoke sail toward the filing cabinet.
Mark Gonzales wasn’t for her. Too rich, too slick, and too goddamn sincere, confusing lust for love and thinking he could mold Miranda Corbie, shamus, ex-escort, and San Francisco bastard, into a country club wife, 1941 model.
He’d be a step backward, a step down the rabbit hole, Alice landing in a Wonderland ruled by the Red Queen, Dianne Laroche. She’d lost herself before, lost and found again, and this time there was no Rick to pull her up.
Miranda flung herself up from the oversized chair, scattering newspapers. She moved to the window, looking down at Lotta’s Fountain.
So he wasn’t there to help her, to annoy her.
Hell, they’d all be drafted anyway.
The phone rang suddenly, jolting her, and she stared at it for a couple of loud rings before picking up the handset.
“Ducks? Good news.”
She exhaled. “Hello, James.”
“That’s it? No ‘Happy to hear from you, James’?”
Miranda sank into her chair and picked up the fountain pen, scratching out “September 17th” under the Cameronia heading in the Big Chief notebook. “I’d be happier if I were on my way to Scotland.”
The State Department man sounded sheepish. “Ducks, I’m sorry. You know that. But I’ve got a consolation prize … if the Cameronia makes it back intact—and the Admiralty holds to its latest pledge not to requisition it until December—I can get you onboard the 26th or 27th of next month. I’ve booked you a ticket on the City of San Francisco for Monday, October 21st through to Chicago, then transfer to the Twentieth Century Limited. You should arrive in New York no later than Friday, October 25th.”
The pen made circles around and around the word Cameronia.
“Miranda? Did you hear me? It’s good-bye San Francisco, hello Britain in just a few weeks, and I’ll never forgive you if you get your head blown off—”
“Are you sure this time? Absolutely sure?”
His voice was solemn. “As sure as I can be, Ducks. We’re running out of time. I want your debt paid in full.”
The pen moved on to larger circles. Scritch, scritch, scritch …
“Miranda … are you all right?”
She set down the pen. Outside someone was shouting for a cab, and Tascone’s jukebox was crooning “I’ll Never Smile Again” …
“I’m all right, James. Thanks. Will you be sending me the tickets?”
“Will-call, Ducks. Everything is booked in your name, no trouble anticipated. Unless you bring it onboard, of course.”
“That’s fine. Thank you for the advance notice.”
The State Department man sounded surprised. “Well, it’s a sea change, Miranda, leaving your home and entering a country at war. I know you’ve been preparing for it since July, but you’ve got your work cut out for you, apartment and office and all that. And I know you were disappointed about today.”
“Disappointment and I are old friends, James. Diplomats come first, I understand that. But God help you if you’re lying to me now.”
His voice strained into the upper registers. “As God is my witness, Miranda, I am ninety-nine percent—well, let’s make that ninety percent—sure you’ll be on that ship. And the ten percent is only because of U-boats. That is, if you still want to go. You’ve got it nice, up in Frisco—and deservedly so. You’ve more than earned your place, and throwing it all away on a whim—”
“My mother is not a whim.”
He retreated hastily. “I know, I know, Ducks, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just saying there are other ways to trace her than showing up at the center of a damn bull’s-eye, which is what London is right now.”
“Let me know if there are any changes, James.”
“Miranda, I…” The State Department man’s words drowned in his throat. He cleared it, voice lower, gruffer. “You can count on it.”
She lowered the phone slowly, setting it down in the cradle with a heavy click.
Knock on the door, light and hesitant. Red-haired messenger boy from the Monadnock stood awkwardly in the hall, hair gleaming against the white and gray marble backdrop.
“Note for you, Miss Corbie.”
“Just a moment.”
She retreated to her desk, fetched a quarter from her change purse and pressed it into his hand. The smile lit up his freckles.
“Thanks, Miss Corbie!”
Miranda tore open the beveled-edge envelope. Gold-leafed invitation on a hard-pressed card. “Sky Room—Hotel Empire—8:00 P.M. Mr. C. S. Forester.” So she’d guessed right and Forester was the pigeon.
Better wear her finest, since hell, it didn’t travel well.
She crushed out t
he cigarette in the Tower of the Sun ashtray.
Her last case in San Francisco, the city that birthed her and bore her again, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. No more ferryboats, no Pacific, no Dungeness Crab. No American stubbornness and distrust of manners, no pledge of allegiance, no can-do and cut-through, no great gray metal spanning an island and two counties, no red-orange marvel, Wonder of the World, rising from a gateway to paradise.
Fog, sure, but not the kind with green in it, the eucalyptus and Monterey pine and dull throb of fog horns, lighthouse blinking slowly from north of the City. No sourdough bread, no Sam Wo, no No-Legs Norris and Blind Willie singing “Mademoiselle from Armentiers” on a cold night on Grant Avenue, cable cars climbing steep hills straight into the sky.
No city, her city, the city that defined her, that gave her strength to come back once, to come back twice, to return from the dead again and again, the City and Miranda twinned and linked, fissured and broken, but always rising, striving, surviving as one.
Would she still be Miranda Corbie, crossing a foreign ocean on a trek back to Europe, no Johnny this time, no cleft chin and hard-fought muscles, no newsman’s drawl and stale cigarettes and late-night poker, no one to watch over her?
She closed her eyes, letting the tears drop down her cheeks, letting them flow.
Three
A sign stood on an easel by the elevators, black-inked in an elegant hand: “The Sky Room is closed for a private event.”
Miranda glanced around the tastefully lit lobby, Gothic arches, small stained-glass windows and etchings of English cathedrals framed in gold on the wall, dim laughter leaking out from the coffee shop.
The Sky Room was the crown jewel of the Hotel Empire, the former Temple Methodist Episcopal Church and William Taylor Hotel, another eccentric experiment in dry-living and earnest postulation, this one done in by the fact that no visitor to San Francisco wanted to trade in dancing and gin for hot chocolate and the Bible.
Hell, sin was San Francisco’s biggest selling point, giving sinners what they were looking for and the rest of the country reason to live by clucking over it. Reverend Sherman’s superchurch and sin-free hotel were doomed from the start.
City of Sharks Page 2
