City of Sharks

by Kelli Stanley

  The only thing she ever loved that never left her.

  Miranda breathed in the night on Portsmouth Square. It tasted like sesame balls and chop suey, boiled rice and sweet-and-sour pork.

  A car honked, horn loud and shrill through the clear evening.

  She turned on her heel and walked back inside the Hall of Justice.

  * * *

  Meyer was still inside interrogation room #1 with Louise and Inspector Fisher and a tall detective from homicide she didn’t know. Gonzales and another homicide cop, junior grade with a blond William Powell mustache, were grilling the boyfriend in interrogation room #2.

  Fisher’s orders.

  He’d greeted the arrival of George Blankenship with no surprise. She told him she’d bring in an alibi, and Fisher—the able cop, the good cop—had prepared for one.

  She peered through the small barred window on room #1. Meyer was wiping his brow with a handkerchief, jowls quivering at every attack on his client. Her client.

  Poor Meyer. What the hell had she dragged him into? Louise had lied—lied to her, lied to him.

  The only questions were how much and why.

  The secretary sat stoically on a hard wooden chair, smoothing her wrinkled skirt, holding herself together. She nodded once or twice at Fisher, who was leaning forward across the table, his small, muscular frame tense and urgent.

  Almost reluctantly, Miranda walked down the hall to the next room, hesitating at the door before peering through the small window.

  Blankenship sitting at the table, scarred face grinning, skin sprinkled with sweat.

  And standing tall and straight in front of him, tailored jacket and manicured nails and smelling like French cigarettes … Gonzales.

  She couldn’t not look, memory still raw, the feeling of his skin, the scent of his cologne.

  Mark Gonzales, Prince fucking Charming, the man who had it all, well-bred, well-placed, politically ambitious, a Dies Committee point man in Mexico, smart enough to take advantage of his disadvantage, the Mexican in an Irish mob, with the athletic grace of a tango dancer and the face of a goddamn matinee idol.

  The man who’d asked her to marry him, despite her dubious past and somewhat doubtful future, despite the fact that he never really knew her and if he did could never approve.

  Despite, despite, despite …

  And now he was playing nice cop—a good fit—offering George a pack of Lucky Strikes while the blond cop, fresh out of uniform, scowled threats from the corner. George looked confident, even smart—and certainly not about to break. Gonzales’ eyes flickered upward and caught Miranda’s. She turned away, walking quickly down the hall.

  The phone booth by the entrance was unoccupied, no sobbing wives, no angry fathers, no lost children.

  No lonely, aging whores.

  Miranda dug a nickel out of her purse and hit the switchhook. “Operator? YUkon 0802, please.”

  The woman on the other end chirped “Certainly, ma’am,” and after a few moments of static, connected her.

  “Telephone Answering Service Company. Number, please.”

  “EXbrook 3333. Miranda Corbie. Read only a message from Allen Jennings or Pinkerton, please.”

  “Certainly, miss. Let me see. Mrs. Parker, Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, a Miss Gallagher … here we are. Message from Allen. Are you ready, miss?”

  Miranda gripped the pencil, Chesterfield pinched between two fingers, phone in her left hand.

  “Yes—go ahead.”

  “Olympia connection, Cretzer and Kyle. Sister married to Kyle. Both now on Rock. Guard fired for insubordination. Call me.”

  Miranda stared at the names written on the crumpled paper, the Schwabacher-Frey notebook creased and stained with lipstick.

  “Hello? Hello? Miss Corbie, are you there?”

  She exhaled, not realizing she’d been holding her breath.

  “Yeah. Thank you.”

  She hung up the phone, shoving the reporter’s notebook back into her purse. Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she spun around, hand instinctively reaching into her pocket.

  David Fisher smiled at her, stubble dotting his chin, eyes careworn. “Miranda … let’s talk.”

  * * *

  Tick. Tock.

  The clock hand jerked, fly splatter dotted brown on the yellow-filmed face, chromium trim dulled and reflective of nothing.

  Time always at a standstill in the marbled Hall of Justice, the perennial parade of has-beens and never-weres, the woulda, coulda, shoulda winos and the brassy, bitter broads who rented bar stools by the hour.

  The tired cops, the crooked cops, the cops who’d seen too much, and the rookies who’d seen too little, and behind stout office doors, the kind with gold seals, the fat, middle-aged men with thinning hair and tight, gold braid uniforms barking orders to hurry the hell up and get someone behind bars, preferably a Commie or a Mexican or one of the labor union boys …

  The Hall of fucking Justice.

  And here she was again.

  Miranda shifted her weight in the chair and exhaled a stream of smoke.

  Fisher ran thick fingers through salt-and-pepper curls, looking older with every question.

  “You sure you don’t have anything else to add? Nothing about the missing manuscript or whether or not your client knew the safe combination? You know as well as I do how prominent Alexander was—”

  “Not like the murder of a nobody, is it? A nude model at a Gayway peep show or a Japanese numbers runner in Chinatown—”

  His hand landed on the desk hard enough to make the paperwork jump.

  “Goddamn it, Miranda, you’re talking to me, here, not O’Meara! I’ve stuck my neck out for you before now so don’t hand me a sermon. I don’t need it.”

  The cop shoved his chair backwards and shook out an Old Gold. She noticed the tremor in his fingers.

  “Now you’ve got me swearing.”

  Miranda gave him half a smile by way of apology, twisting out her stub in the cracked glass ashtray.

  “It’s good for you. Let’s out tension.”

  Fisher struck a match and took his time lighting the cigarette.

  “I’ll tell you what’s not good for me: this case. So how about helping me out?”

  David Fisher, good cop, decent cop, the only Jew in homicide and one of the few in the department. A man who understood her, who liked her, and who didn’t want anything else from her.

  A goddamn rara avis.

  And she still had to stall him.

  “You’re holding all the cards, not me. I delivered what I promised—an alibi. We both know the killer’s not Louise or Blankenship, as much as I’d like to see him behind bars and not in front of them. No motive, no means, no opportunity.”

  Tick. Tock.

  Fisher sighed, hopscotching his chair in little moves back to the edge of his desk. He picked up the report, made his voice nonchalant.

  “Speaking of Blankenship, I’m sure you didn’t miss the Alcatraz connection. The press sure as hell hasn’t.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Alcatraz connection?”

  “Come off it, Miranda. The missing manuscript’s about Alcatraz—Blankenship worked there as a guard. The evening edition of the News is full of hysterical speculation about the book and some kind of Alcatraz hit squad silencing Alexander. Something’s obviously up. I was hoping you’d tell me what.”

  Shit.

  There was more to the Alcatraz connection than he could have guessed, and all of it was incriminating for Louise Crowley.

  Miranda held up a gloved hand to her mouth. Gave him her best wide-eyed look.

  “If I could, I would. And if I happen to learn anything I can divulge, you’ll be the first to know. Now, how long are you keeping Louise in the cooler?”

  Fisher breathed out smoke through his nostrils. Glanced up at the clock.

  “Screw it. Been a long day. I miss my wife.” He tapped the report. “This whole thing smells. The more we know, the less we know. W
e’re letting your client go tonight. A few more hours and you can call off your bulldog attorney.”

  “Not charging her?”

  “Not with your mouthpiece threatening to wake up Judge Langdon.” He yanked a thumb toward the hallway. “Word from on high. We want a solid conviction, no backdoor deals, no surprises. The papers are all over Alexander’s murder, especially with this Alcatraz twist, and your buddy Herb Caen’s leading the pack—three dots can say a hell of a lot. We’ll drive Miss Crowley home after midnight, keep everything on the QT and make sure the vultures from the press room find something else to peck at. She’ll have to stay in town, of course, and we’ll pick her up and throw away the key, alibi be damned, if she tries to run.”

  Tick. Tock.

  Fisher tapped some ash in the glass. “Blankenship’s testimony is what’s saved her. Not that we won’t be trying to figure a way around it.”

  “You won’t break the alibi, not if Alexander was murdered before 1:30. Can’t the ME give you a more exact time? You promised me information, remember.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Gentleman’s—excuse me—gentleman and lady’s agreement.” He gave her a tired grin. “Okay, so between 11:30 P.M. and 1:30 A.M. is the closest the ME can come. Your Miss Crowley didn’t have time to get to the Monadnock if she was with her boyfriend til almost one, at least not on a streetcar. Takes too long and they run on the half hour—the 1:25 was the soonest she could’ve caught. We checked all the Municipal owls, checked taxi records, too, even asked around at Topsy’s to see if she caged a ride. No luck, at least so far. And the doorman at her apartment building remembers waking up when she walked in, about 2:15, and that jibes with the timing and with what Blankenship says.”

  “What about the cyanide?”

  Fisher’s face crumpled in disgust.

  “What about it? It’s not what killed Alexander, I can tell you that. Nothing in his gut but Scotch and soda and steak and potatoes. The gin-and-cyanide cocktail he was wearing was a plant—as you suggested. The lab boys say the body was dragged to the desk—another point in your client’s favor, unless she’s a lot stronger than she looks or had help from her boyfriend—and the Greer people state unequivocally he was there the whole second shift.”

  He bent forward and crushed out the Old Gold stub. “We’ll be working on his alibi, too. Anyway, looks like Alexander was hit once, close to the safe, then dragged to the desk while he was unconscious and hit some more until he was obviously dead. We’re cross-checking the few prints we picked up, once we find the janitor and everyone else who had access to the office.”

  “So the cyanide was poured on him at the time of the murder?”

  “Poured or splashed—the lab boys noted the drops were scattered. We’re back to square one.” Fisher raised his fist to his mouth, unsuccessfully trying to stifle a yawn.

  Tick. Tock.

  “Not exactly. We know someone tried to frame Louise and we know someone’s attempted to kill her.”

  He waved his hand. “And we know Alexander was murdered but we don’t know who did it. And we know some wrong number, either the killer or someone else who decided to visit Alexander Publishing in the middle of the night, muddied the waters and maybe tried to make it look like your client was the guilty party. Someone who doesn’t know a whole hell of a lot about murder investigations but reads an awful lot of fiction. No, from where I sit, we aren’t moving forward—we’re moving backward.”

  Miranda frowned. Fisher was beaten down, worn raw after one too many fourteen-hour shifts, but he was far from stupid and his pessimism would pass with a good night’s rest. He’d soon find out about Louise Crowley’s sister—the flesh-and-blood connection to Alcatraz and the Cretzer-Kyle gang Allen phoned about. If he also discovered Blankenship and Louise had planned to steal Smith’s book, the motive and the connection would be enough for the cops to charge her, fuck the alibi, figuring Louise and her boyfriend were in it together and had murdered Alexander during the earlier part of the two-hour window. Fisher was under pressure and he’d take the chance, trusting God and his men to turn up the magic carpet Louise rode from Ocean Beach to the Monadnock last night.

  But she needed Fisher’s help—and she couldn’t afford to act like she was hiding something.

  “You’re exhausted. Go home, for God’s sake. And don’t forget the letters to Louise—have your men go over them, maybe they’ll find something I didn’t.”

  The clock ticked again and Fisher shook his head. “Yeah. I know. I just wish to hell we had a clearer motive.”

  “For the murder?”

  “For any of it. For Alexander or the threats to your client. The murder reads like it was a premeditated crime of passion, and how the hell’s that for a puzzle? I mean, look: Mrs. Alexander has all the dough in the family, besides the fact she’s fragile as hell and not exactly all there. Jerry’s strong enough to clobber someone on the head and move the body around, and he’s a punk with friends in high places—but he doesn’t stand to gain. His mother inherits everything, and his trust is still contingent on behavior, including keeping his nose clean. That much I know. The rest—bupkis.” He shook his head again, giving in to the yawn. “Maybe there’ll be better ideas in the morning. I gotta get home. Gonzales can finish up tonight.”

  Miranda nodded. “Gotta get back to the office myself. Mind letting me know when you release Louise? I’d like to be with her when you take her home.”

  “I’ll pass your request along to Inspector Gonzales.”

  Fisher stood up, sweat stains under his white shirt, blue tie askew and splattered with crusted ketchup.

  Miranda held out her hand. “I’ll keep you informed.”

  He held hers briefly and gave her a crooked, tired smile.

  “Be sure that you do.”

  She pushed through the wooden gate and out of the corral of desks and cops and drunks, past the plump woman with the two black eyes, past the college kid with glasses and blood on his trousers.

  Meyer was leaning against the wall near Louise’s examination room, wiping his brow with a lace-edged handkerchief, crisp shirt wilted, skin sallow and sagging.

  “They’re releasing Louise after midnight, Meyer. Go on home—Fisher is. Gonzales will finish up, and I’ve asked them to notify me when they let her go. Get some sleep—please.” She squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

  He blotted his forehead again. “Nonsense, my dear. This sort of thing helps keep me sharp—I’m not in my dotage yet. And I’m afraid that new homicide man will antagonize young George into saying something unwise, and I want to make sure of him. They’ll release Mr. Blankenship soon—before Miss Crowley. I’ll stay on hand until she’s ready. Will you be at the office?”

  He wouldn’t back down, even exhausted and damp and mussed and looking twenty years older than usual. Miranda made him promise to call her when they were through with Louise, apologized again for the late hour, for the difficult client, for keeping him up. Meyer protested weakly, leaning on his cane while folding the handkerchief and proceeding unsteadily down the hallway toward the second interrogation room.

  She sighed and watched him go, walking quickly past the night desk. Collins was on duty, round head shaved, blond stubble on his chin, one of the bulls who’d never think of her as anything but a whore, a contagion, a cancer on the face of decency, an affront to the City and the country, God Bless America, of thee I sing.

  Collins and his ilk. Not members of the German American Bund or the Musketeers or the KKK, they squatted behind police desks and bank counters, in doctors’ offices and classrooms, gave sermons from church pulpits and in letters to the editor, Dear Life Magazine …

  Hitler’s not so bad … got the right idea about Jews …

  The British brought this on themselves. We’ve no business joining a European war …

  FDR’s a red and a socialist, like that Harry Bridges … What we need here are a few Mussolinis and Hitlers to set things straight!

 
They’d had enough of the unwashed, the needy, those too-foreign masses longing to breathe free, enough of them here already, bringing their filth and depravity and heretical gods to an unsullied America, to a pristine golden gate, where cops like Collins protected the good citizens, the real Americans, the Aryans of San Francisco.

  Miranda adjusted her beret, feeling his eyes burn down her skirt.

  “What’s wrong, Collins? Pickles run out of under-age girls for you to feel up?”

  The blond cop flushed purple, veins dancing at his temples.

  “Get outta here. I don’t talk to whores.”

  “You don’t pay them, either.” Miranda turned to face him, eyes green. “I’ve been meaning to have a word with Pickles. Your supply’s gonna dry up.”

  The cop leaned across the desk. “You mean like your Irish whore of a mother, Corbie? Runs in the family, don’t it?”

  The intake of breath was involuntary. She stepped forward, fists clenched, while Collins froze, confusion on his face, police club in his hand.

  One Mississippi, Two Mississippi …

  Miranda caught her breath again and with effort made her voice even.

  “I’m not fourteen, Collins. And if I see you at the Settlement again, getting paid off with a girl behind the Monaco, you’ll lose more than your fucking bully stick.”

  A loud screech made the blond cop jump. He shoved the club back on his belt and tried to look officious. Two uniforms were hauling in a B-girl with lipstick smeared across her cheek and another woman dressed in a man’s suit, both protesting loudly.

  Miranda exited through the large double doors, hitting the air on Portsmouth Square, greeted by a whistle from a lounger under the streetlight across the street.