City of Sharks

by Kelli Stanley

  “Yes? Can I help you?”

  A large crash sounded from the area Peters had gone to patrol, followed by a shrill woman’s voice scream-crying and what sounded like Peters trying to soothe her.

  “There, there, Miss Ann. You don’t have to eat the soup if you don’t want to. Guard”—her voice became peremptory—“fetch a towel at once.”

  The woman behind the desk didn’t blink, but was getting impatient. “Are you here to see someone, ma’am?”

  Miranda opened her mouth to speak and froze. Behind and to the left of the enormous desk and its single-headed Cerberus, a guard was trudging forward from what was evidently the dining room, a scowl stretched across brutish features.

  George fucking Blankenship.

  Thirteen

  She recovered before Cerberus could bark.

  “Yes, please. I’m here to see Sylvia Alexander. She was admitted just a few hours ago.”

  The desk guard knotted her thick eyebrows like a rope, not-so-surreptitiously giving Miranda the once-over.

  “Mrs. Alexander’s a frequent guest. I don’t remember seeing you before.”

  Miranda’s smile was unpleasantly pleasant.

  “I don’t remember you, either. You may tell Mrs. Alexander that Miranda, Bunny’s friend, would like to talk to her.”

  “Miranda—?”

  “She knows who I am.”

  Cerberus shrugged, pressed a buzzer. “You can sit down and wait a few minutes. Someone will take you to her, if she’s seeing anyone and the doctor allows it.”

  Miranda ignored the hint to go away and confine herself to the row of old-fashioned chairs propped against the dark yellow wallpaper. She jerked her head toward the dining-room area and asked casually: “Is that a late lunch or early dinner?”

  The receptionist looked up coldly. “Some of our patients have trouble eating at regular hours.”

  “So all the troublemakers eat together, huh?”

  Cerberus sat upright, indignation almost lifting her from the chair.

  “Now, see here Miss Miranda or whatever your name is. This is a sanitarium, not a nightclub. Every decision we make—every decision—is for the health and well-being of our clients. Do I make myself understood?”

  Miranda stepped back, waving her hands in the air. “Perfectly, perfectly. No offense intended. Are you the head nurse, then? I thought maybe Matron Peters—”

  Mollified, the woman preened a little. “Matron Peters is head of admissions. I am Matron Kasabian, deputy head of operations. My receptionist is off duty today—emergency trip to the dentist.”

  “Oh, how terrible. I know how painful that can be. I’m surprised an institution as well run as Greer doesn’t have a dentist on-site—”

  “We do.” Kasabian was curt again. “But employees do not use his services. Now, if you’ll just sit down, miss, someone will be with you.”

  Miranda conceded the ground, and retreated to a chair missing most of the springs in its seat. Fought the urge to light a cigarette.

  She craned her neck, peering down the corridor behind the receptionist. It came to an abrupt dead end in front of a faded print of George Washington crossing the Delaware, the dining room apparently connecting through a side entrance.

  Sounds of disturbance and the noxious smells had ceased.

  Footsteps approached the gatekeeper’s desk. Man in the same guard uniform as George.

  He was young and heavyset, fat rather than muscular, with dull blue eyes and thin red hair. Freckles dotted his face and hands.

  “You buzzed, Matron Kasabian?”

  “Yes, Carl. This lady”—she gestured with her head toward Miranda—“wants to visit Mrs. Alexander—Mrs. Sylvia Alexander. She’s within the regulation hours, but you’ll have to check with Dr. Morrisey.”

  “He just left, Matron.”

  Cerberus sighed deeply, a sign of how much trouble Miranda had already caused. “Very well. Talk to Nurse Emerson and get permission from her and the patient. And do it quickly, Carl.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He waddled off in a hurry, taking a staircase at the rear of the large lobby, heavy treads echoing through the room.

  “I forget, Matron—when are the visiting hours over?”

  Cerberus looked up and glared at Miranda, then pivoted her head like an owl to check the grandfather clock behind her.

  “Three o’clock. You have forty minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  Miranda waited out the next twelve minutes studying the layout of the place. Rooms—or cells—ran upstairs, apparently. The dining room was downstairs and in the front, facing 36th Avenue, probably with the kitchen adjacent. Check-in, complete with Matron Cerberus, in the lobby.

  Still the shell of a hotel, albeit one where you paid for electroshocks and needles, alienists analyzing your brain for telltale signs that your stay should be made permanent along with their fees, checks made payable to Greer Sanitarium, Inc., please, and don’t forget the incorporated.

  Greer and its ilk catered to wealthy clients with dangerous habits, women like Sylvia Alexander, filling emptiness with booze and drugs, filling empty minds with something like purpose. Filling time, filling time, until time or money or life ran out.

  And then there were the men and women who used sanitariums like the county dump, dispose of their problems and in due course make a little profit. The sanitariums aided and abetted them, problems locked away for good, forever “taken care of,” abandoned along the sands of Ocean Beach like empty bags of salty popcorn and the ticket stubs to the Fun House, relatives laughing with Laffing Sal all the way to the bank, power of attorney in one hand, declaration of incompetency in another.

  Ha fucking ha.

  Sure, there were some decent places, homes that tried to act a little like one, sanitariums that tried to live up to their name. She’d taken Lucinda Gerber to Dante’s a few months back, the best quick recovery joint in San Francisco, even if what you were recovering from was kidnapping and attempted murder …

  Footsteps again. Carl was finally back.

  He nodded at Cerberus. “Nurse Emerson said it was OK, and the lady—Mrs. Alexander—didn’t say no.”

  Kasabian looked up at him, squinting, waited a few seconds. “Very well, Carl. Go ahead and take the lady upstairs.”

  Miranda felt beetle-brown eyes on her back as she walked toward the staircase with the lumbering guard. Her shoulder blades twitched.

  * * *

  They reached the third floor, Carl breathing heavily. Miranda leaned against the rail, voice dripping with hesitant femininity.

  “I’m sorry. I’m a little tired of all these steps. Do you mind if we wait for a few minutes before going on?”

  She followed up by placing a hand on his forearm. The guard flushed even redder, timing words in between breaths. “Of—of course, miss. We’re almost there.”

  “Sylvia’s on this floor, then?”

  “Yeah, it’s her usual room.”

  Miranda looked around at the sparsely furnished hallway, burgundy carpet new, a few scattered replicas of Old Masters and landscapes lining the blond paneled walls.

  “I’m sure Sylvia is comfortable here.”

  Carl nodded. “This is the top floor and the best floor. She’s got a view.”

  Miranda laid her hand on his arm again. “You must be very brave to work here. It takes a strong man to help the sick. I find that very admirable.”

  The guard started to lose his breath again, and not from exercise. He grinned like an idiot.

  “Thank you, miss. Some of us have special training. I worked down at Agnews for a time, but found this to be much quieter.”

  Agnews Insane Asylum, forty miles to the south. Wasn’t Napa State, but wasn’t the fucking Waldorf, either.

  “Greer is lucky to have you, Carl. Do any of the other guards have special training? Is it required? I’m so interested in what you do!”

  The guard became expansive. “Well, Bob worked at Napa for a while. Spencer
worked at Agnews with me. You don’t need that kind of job history, but it helps. Alls you really need is some kind of experience in security. Like George—he never worked in a hospital or nothing, but he used to be a guard at Alcatraz! He tells us stories all the time, about what it’s like and all the criminals and things.”

  Miranda beamed a smile at him. “How fascinating. Does he work with you?”

  “George? Only the first part of the day. I start early, get off at five. He does a split shift. One o’clock to five, then one o’clock til five in the morning. I don’t know how he gets through it, but he says he makes a little extra money that way, and says it’s pretty quiet. What he really wants is to get back to Alcatraz. Now who’d want that? I told him he’s crazy—crazy enough to be a patient and have to guard himself!”

  Carl finished with a loud guffaw. Miranda smiled, said nothing. The guard choked off, eyes suddenly aware and sober.

  “I’d—I’d better get you to Mrs. Alexander, miss. You don’t have much time with her.”

  “Thank you, Carl. I do so appreciate it.”

  He stomped down the hallway until it ended in a Dutch landscape, fished out a pair of keys, and bent down to unlock the door to room #300. Tipped his hat when he straightened up, spoke hesitantly.

  “Here you go, miss. Don’t be scared by the lock. That’s only in place for Mrs. Alexander ’cause she’s on a—on a suicide watch. But Nurse Emerson, she thinks it might help the lady to see somebody. Nurse was up here just a minute ago, checking on her.” He looked at his watch. “You got about fifteen minutes. Somebody’ll be back to fetch you.”

  Miranda smiled. “Thanks, Carl. You’re a good guy.”

  His blue eyes shone down at her. “Thanks, miss.”

  The big man waddled back down the corridor, sneaking one glance behind him and embarrassed to find Miranda still watching. He hurried along, and she waited until his heavy footsteps sounded less like cannon fire.

  She turned toward the thick door, bronzed numbered marker new but scratched.

  Took a breath, and walked in.

  * * *

  The two windows were thick safety glass, unbarred. Sylvia stood in front of them, searching for the fog, watching it roll in and cover the dunes and cars and buildings and amusements. Her thin body was taut, awaiting interruption or instruction or purpose, rigid and brittle.

  She didn’t turn around.

  Miranda lit a Chesterfield, studying the other woman. Smoke curled from the cigarette in an arabesque, drifting to the window, and still Sylvia did not face her.

  “It hurts like hell when they take you off the juice. Make sure you eat something—you’re thin as it is. Not that what they serve here is edible, but make ’em bring you something decent. Hell, they can run someone up to Topsy’s for fried chicken and biscuits. That would help.”

  Sylvia’s hand jerked a little, but she made no other motion.

  “Not that the juice is the foremost of your problems right now. They’ve got you on suicide watch, so they stand over you when you eat, don’t let you near knives and they’ll tie you back down on the bed when I’m gone. But maybe you don’t mind. Maybe you’re a woman who enjoys suffering. Maybe you think you deserve it.”

  A spasm jerked the other woman’s body, her breath visible and hard. She slowly turned to face Miranda, pupils dilated, dark eyes haunted by specters only she could see.

  “Do I—do I know you?”

  Miranda took a step closer. “Indirectly. I’m a private detective. And I’m trying to figure out who killed your husband.”

  A drawn-out shudder, and the older woman teetered, losing her balance. Miranda held out a hand to steady her, and guided her toward the small bed positioned against the wall.

  “I do know you, though, Mrs. Alexander. I know you’re an addict. I know you loved and hated your husband, probably in equal measure. And I know you’re not as sick as everyone wants you to believe, not a rubber blanket and electroshock candidate for Agnews or Napa State, at least not yet. If they tell you so, don’t believe them.”

  Sylvia opened her mouth but no sound came out. She tried again.

  “You … are a friend of Niles’? Yes?”

  Miranda searched the woman’s dark eyes, looking for the spark she’d seen before, swallowed up now, gone.

  Maybe try a different kind of shock.

  “No, not a friend to your husband, Mrs. Alexander. But I’d like to think I’m a friend to you, so here’s the truth. Your late husband was a cheating sonofabitch. You knew it, you’ve always known it, and you tried to punish him—first, by holding back money, second by social embarrassment, third, by cheating on him, and finally, last card played, by killing yourself. Except you couldn’t do it fast, had to be slow, a slow, poisonous death with plenty of penitential mortification for that bastard Niles. And it didn’t really matter who you took down along the way, because you were going down, too, the wife he wouldn’t—couldn’t—leave, the angel of his business, the bankroll to his career. The one woman he couldn’t live without.”

  Sylvia Alexander stiffened like a greyhound at the track. Then, just as suddenly, the rigidity left her body, and she melted on the mattress, tears flowing down her cheeks without sound or sob.

  Miranda pinched out the Chesterfield, carefully putting the stick in her coat pocket, and sat beside the older woman. Straps peeked through the thin blue bedskirt made to prettify the mattress.

  “So you got addicted. You’re not the first. What started out as a way to punish Niles became your own infinitely worse punishment, your own living hell. And now—now he’s dead and you blame yourself and think you have nothing left to live for. I understand that. I know a little of what that feels like. But you’re wrong.”

  Sylvia’s eyebrows contorted, fighting the morphine they were giving to wean her, numbing body and mind but never all the pain.

  “Wr-wrong? He was my husband … I … I love Niles. Always.”

  “I know you do. But if you keep poisoning yourself with heroin—if you keep checking into places like this or even worse, drying out for a few months at a time before you hit the needle again—you’ll end up as crazy as they say you are. Listen, Sylvia, you were justified in punishing the bastard, but you should have done it clean and quick and in the open, not with your own body and soul as the blood price. You’ve got choices, choices on what to do with your life and money that most people can only fantasize about. You want to repent? To atone? To remember your husband? Then do something. Get off the goddamn juice.”

  The older woman shuddered as though a cold wind was blowing. She wrapped her arms around her thin body, rocking back and forth, words high and monotone, like a catechism.

  “Niles never—he didn’t mean to hurt me, and he had—had Bunny and so I took Roger, and we were all, all so gay … and then Jerry, Jerry hated his father, he wanted to punish him, too … it’s all my fault…”

  She choked and coughed as the bed shook, tears tracking high cheekbones, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, white skin paper thin.

  Miranda sat and watched, voice dry. “The only people your son has punished are innocent girls. And I use that word deliberately, because even if they were selling something, it wasn’t what he wanted to buy. But we can talk about that later. Look—I know you didn’t kill your husband. I’m working for Louise Crowley—she hired me—and she didn’t kill Niles, either. You probably thought Louise was sleeping with your husband, like he’d done with countless secretaries. But Louise isn’t the type.”

  The older woman twisted up her neck to peer at Miranda, flecked spittle and tears still dotting her lips and chin.

  “N-no? But—but I thought … she was a blonde…”

  “From Olympia, Washington. She’s got lousy taste in men but she kept her professional relationships strictly professional. So please—listen to me, Sylvia. You’re a hell of a lot more than just a woman with a husband, dead or alive, cheating or not, or the mother of a son, acting out his parents’ sadi
stic quirks. You’re your own person—a human being with position, power, and money—and you can choose to make your life, however long it is, into something more than just a wasted testament to a bad marriage. You can stop trying to kill yourself slowly and maybe, just maybe, learn how to live like a goddamn human being.”

  Sylvia was slowly working her mouth again.

  “Your name is Miranda? What—what should I do?”

  “Grieve all you want. But try to get off the juice and get out of here as soon as you do. The real fight will begin when you’re back home. And for God’s sake, forgive yourself—you’re at least as worthy of it as your husband. I’ll visit you in a day or two to talk about Louise … and some letters she’s received.”

  Sylvia continued to rock, hands wrapped around herself and tears drying, but a look of vague alarm fleeted across the older woman’s face.

  Miranda rose. Her hand was on the doorknob when a voice, thick and scratchy, croaked from the bed.

  “Th-thank—thank you.”

  Miranda inclined her head without turning around and left the room, pulling the door shut behind her.

  Fourteen

  Miranda leaned against the door. One long fucking day, and just after three o’clock.

  She looked up. Footsteps were mounting the stairs.

  She plastered a smile on her face, ready to butter Carl. Instead, a scowling face, complete with scars, turned the corner onto the landing, reshaping itself into a grin of appreciation.

  Not Carl.

  George Blankenship.

  He walked quickly and on his toes, surprisingly light for his build. The smile grew with every step.

  He came to a halt about three feet from her, looking her up and down. “We-ell … Carl told me I wouldn’t be sorry, and now I see why. I ain’t seen you here before.”

  Miranda pushed herself off the wall, spoke with a drawl. No need to turn on the lights with George fucking Blankenship, apparently always at attention and never considering “no” an answer.