Angels of Mercy

by Duncan, Alice

Ernie sucked in about a gallon of air. His voice, when he used it again, was measured. “I didn’t mean to imply that you have no common sense, Mercy, and I know you’re not stupid. You’re . . . still a trifle innocent of the world, is all.”

  I sniffed.

  “What I propose,” he said, in the same measured tone, “is that you leave out a name, any name. Just have the Times print the telephone exchange, only make it the one here at the office. That way, nobody you don’t want hanging around will know your home telephone number, and if an undesirable person does happen to show up, it’ll be here, where there will be lots of people in lots of offices—primarily me—to hear you holler for help or kick the rotter out. Doesn’t that make good sense?”

  He didn’t sound sarcastic as he asked the last question, so I didn’t get mad at him. Rather, I said, “But wouldn’t you mind having my prospective tenants calling here at the office?”

  He shrugged. “Hell, why not? Nobody else ever calls.”

  He had a point there, unfortunately. “Well . . .”

  “It’s fine, Mercy. I’ll be happy to hear the telephone ringing. Anyhow, when it comes to interviewing tenants, this will be a good place to do it. That way, I won’t have to go out of my way and neither will you. It’ll be neutral territory. Besides which, if anyone really unsavory shows up, he or she won’t know where you live.”

  Darn it, he had another good point there. “All right,” I said, feeling humble. “Thank you, Ernie.”

  “You’ve already enlisted Lulu and the Bucks, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Lulu will be moving in over the coming weekend. And I consider both Lulu and the Bucks a very good start in what I believe will be a noble enterprise. Why should young women who have to work for a living be any different from young men who have to secure employment?” My feminist sensibilities were another thing my parents deplored. Sometimes I wondered what they’d have to deplore if I weren’t around.

  “No reason I can think of,” Ernie said with casual indifference, curse him. “Mrs. Buck is going to feed the herd of nubile young ladies?”

  Frowning, I said, “I wouldn’t put it that way. But yes. I aim to set up a sort of boarding house. Lulu’s told me there are a lot of those in Los Angeles. They give young women a safe refuge away from work and healthy meals. For the proper recompense, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Approximately three weeks earlier, Ernie had sat me down and explained to me the appropriate rent I should expect to get from my prospective tenants. I’d been going to give Lulu a big break in the rent, but he’d pointed out to me that if I did so, Lulu would have felt she owed me something and ended up resenting me. That notion hadn’t once occurred to me, but after thinking about it I realized he was correct. In other words, he’d been a big help to me then, but his attitude now niggled at me.

  “Darn you, Ernie, I’m learning! Quit disparaging me, will you? It was I, don’t forget, who saved you from a murder charge not long ago!”

  “How could I ever forget?” He rubbed his behind, which had been badly bruised in the incident mentioned.

  “Ernest Templeton, if you aren’t the most—”

  He held up a hand, stopping me in mid-rant. “You’re right. I appreciate you helping with that case.”

  “Helping?” I arched my eyebrows at him.

  “All right. I appreciate you saving my neck.”

  “That’s better.” I sniffed again. This was becoming a bad habit of mine when in Ernie’s company, and I resolved to stop doing it.

  “Even though you almost got yourself killed in the process.”

  “That wasn’t my fault!” I cried, stung.

  He shrugged, a gesture as characteristic of him as my sniff was of me. “And I’m not disparaging you. I’m only trying to get you to see that you need . . . that is to say, you might benefit from a little help from a man who’s been loose in the big, bad world for many years now. Until you moved out here to live with Chloe and Harvey, you’d never seen hide or hair of the seamier side of life. Admit it, Mercy.”

  “I admit it readily,” I said smartly. “Which is why I showed you my ad before I went to the Times to place it. However, I won’t be ridiculed.”

  “I’m not ridiculing you,” Ernie said, sounding world-weary and as if he thought I were sorely abusing him. Nuts. “I only want to assist you. Detecting is my business, after all. Has been for years and years. I’m good at it. I expect I’ll be able to spot a . . .” He paused, pursing his lips as if searching for the right word. He settled on objectionable. “I expect I’ll be able to spot an objectionable tenant a little better than you can. Because of my experience with the criminal element.”

  “Heavens! You don’t really think criminals will answer my ad, do you?” That possibility had not occurred to me, thereby, I regret to say, justifying Ernie’s doubts about my interviewing abilities. Darn it. “I mean, I certainly don’t want any of . . . those types of women renting rooms in my house.”

  “Exactly my point. So you’ll leave out your name and use the office telephone number, right?”

  I thought about it for a moment or two, wishing I could see a flaw in Ernie’s plan. I couldn’t. “Right,” I said.

  And just in time, too, because Ernie’s best friend and, according to Ernie, the only honest copper in the entire Los Angeles Police Department, shoved open the outer door at that moment, and I rose to go do my duty as Ernie’s assistant. I mean his secretary.

  “ ’Lo, Mercy,” said Phil Bigelow, removing his hat like a true gentleman, unlike some other men I could mention. Phil and I had been on a first-name basis for months by then.

  “Good morning, Phil. Ernie’s not busy, so you can walk right in.”

  Phil chuckled. “When is he ever busy?”

  “Not very often, I fear,” I said ruefully.

  “Well, maybe that’s about to change.”

  Brightening, I said, “Oh! Do you have a case for him to work on?”

  He shook his head at me. “You know I can’t talk about my work with you, Mercy.”

  “Phooey. You talk about your work all the time with Ernie. I’m his private secretary, so I should be in the know, too.”

  He gave me a big grin. “Well, I’ll let Ernie tell you about this case then, if he thinks you can help.”

  Oh, great. Phil knew good and well that Ernie never wanted me involved in any of his cases. Which was silly, considering I’d been of great assistance to him quite often since I’d come to work for him.

  Men. As Chloe sometimes says, there’s no doing anything with them.

  Since that was the case, and since it was lunchtime, I said farewell to my aggravating employer and his almost-equally aggravating best friend and took the stairs down to the lobby, where I approached Lulu’s reception desk.

  “Want to go to the Times office with me, Lulu? I’m placing an advertisement for young ladies to take rooms in my house.”

  Lulu, who looked rather like a pansy that day, in a vivid yellow dress with brown accessories, and with her lips and fingernails painted a bright, startling red, rose from her desk as if she’d been shot from a gun. “You betcha!” Then she reached into her drawer, drew out a mind-bogglingly yellow hat and pinned it to her bottle-blond curls. Lulu, you see, was aiming to be “discovered” by a motion-picture producer, who would then make her a star, and she dressed accordingly.

  I had my doubts about the way she was going about trying to be “discovered.” I mean, I should think such an agenda would require a trifle more positive action on a girl’s part than sitting behind the reception desk at the Figueroa Building on Seventh and Hill and waiting for a picture producer to stroll in, but what did I know?

  According to Ernie, nothing at all.

  Upon that lowering thought, Lulu and I left the building and headed to the Times.

  Chapter Two

  As much as it pains me to admit it, Ernie was right in that he taught me a whole lot about interviewing prospective tenants. In fac
t, I was at the point of thinking of “my” women as being angels of Mercy. I suppose that sounds egotistical, but I was honestly attempting to do some good in the world, a concept as alien to my family as that of a woman working to pay for the space she took up on this earth. As far as I was concerned, my family was about as divorced from reality as a family could be. However, that’s not the point.

  The first person to telephone the office in response to my advert in the Times said her name was Miss Caroline Terry. Her call came in a day after the Times ran my ad for the first time. Therefore, this was on the Wednesday of that same week. Miss Terry seemed relieved to know I was the person to whom the boarding house (her term, although I pretty much agreed with her) belonged.

  “Oh, I’m so glad!” cried she. “I . . . well, you know, a girl alone in the big city can’t be too careful.”

  Exactly what Ernie had told me not two days earlier. I said, “Very true.”

  “Um, I suppose you’d like to meet me before I take up residence in your home,” Caroline said, still sounding shy.

  “Yes, please. I’d like to set up an interview with you at a time convenient to both of us. I, too, am a working woman,” I said with perhaps too much pride. I had a sneaking hunch Miss Caroline Terry would be more than grateful if she discovered a rich great-aunt had left her a substantial competence upon which to live so that she didn’t have to earn her keep. Sometimes I think life is very unfair.

  “Oh, I’m so glad!” she repeated. “I was afraid I’d have to ask for time off from work, and I hate to do that. My supervisor expects us girls to be here every day, on time, and in trim order.”

  “Indeed? Where do you work?”

  “I’m a clerk in the hosiery department at the Broadway Department Store.”

  “My goodness! My sister and I take luncheon there every now and then,” I said, happy to have a point in common with Miss Terry already.

  “Oh,” said Miss Terry. “How nice.”

  She didn’t sound ecstatic to know that I was in the habit of dining at the Broadway’s lunchroom with my sister. I guess I could understand that. According to Ernie, most working women can’t afford to dine out except at taco stands and such. I hoped I hadn’t made a mistake before I’d even met Miss Terry, who sounded, over the telephone wire at least, to be a nice girl.

  “The Broadway is also very close to my place of employment, which is on the third floor of the Figueroa Building on Seventh and Hill.”

  “Yes, I know the building. It’s right there near Angels Flight.”

  My railroad. I felt my heart warming toward Miss Terry. “Um, could you come at lunchtime? Or after you get off work? Of course, I don’t know your working schedule.”

  “On Fridays, I work from one o’clock until nine in the evening,” she said.

  “So late?” I was mildly shocked, believing in my innocence that young women should be safe at home after dark.

  “The rest of the week, the Broadway closes at six p.m.,” she explained. “But on Fridays, we stay open late, so that other people who work during the day have an opportunity to do their shopping.”

  “Of course. That makes sense.” I thought for a moment. “Well, then, can you come to the Figueroa Building on Seventh and Hill at, say, ten o’clock on Friday morning?” That would give Ernie plenty of time to get to the office. Unless, of course, he was working on a case—and even after Phil’s visit and some subtle probing on my part, I didn’t know if he was or wasn’t, curse it.

  “That would be perfect,” she said, sounding happy. I guess she’d expected to be put to more bother in order to apply to live in my home.

  My sympathies were stirred. When I went to tell Ernie that he had an appointment to interview a young lady at ten o’clock on Friday morning, I didn’t tell him about my sympathies, since he’d have sneered at me. I’d known for some time by then that Ernie saved his sympathies for bigger things than ladies who had to work for a living.

  He glanced up from the Times. I noticed he’d been working the crossword puzzle. Crossword puzzles were quite the rage at the time. I enjoyed working them myself sometimes.

  “Yeah? That should be all right. God knows I don’t have anything else to do.”

  This gave me an opening, and I leaped into it. “You aren’t working on a case with Phil?”

  With a slight uplift of his left eyebrow—or perhaps it was his right—Ernie said, “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

  I decided to tell the truth. “It would certainly be more interesting than practicing my shorthand. Which, by the way, I never use anyway. Why don’t you write more letters, Ernie? That would be a more productive use of my practicing time than doing exercises out of the book.”

  “Hell, if I had any clients, I might send them a bill every once in a while, but I seldom need to write letters. If you want to practice your shorthand, you should go work for an attorney.”

  My fists went to my hips and I glared at him. “Are you trying to get rid of me, Ernest Templeton?”

  He held his hands up in a warding-off gesture. “Lord, no! Just saying, is all.”

  “Hmph. Well, I happen to like working for a private investigator, and I think both you and Phil are mean to keep secrets from me. It’s not as if I’m going to go haring off to do any investigating of a serious crime on my own.”

  His other eyebrow rose until both were nearly lost in his hairline. I noticed he needed a haircut. “Right. Like you’ve never gone off investgating on your own before.”

  Lifting my chin, I replied with dignity. “Last month, when you were accused of a crime you didn’t commit, I did my best to find the real culprit.” Then I changed my stance until I stood glowering at my boss. “Nobody else was doing anything to clear you, don’t forget!”

  “How could I ever forget? I was right there when you almost got yourself murdered.”

  I think he actually shuddered, although it must have been my imagination because my casual, take-it-easy employer didn’t do things like shudder at the notion of another person in peril.

  “That was a mistake,” I grumbled. “I had no idea the person in question would do anything like that.”

  “Well, that’s nice to know.” He was being snide again, drat the man.

  Our discussion, if you could call it that, was interrupted at that minute by the outer office door opening. I turned on my heel and left my irritating boss, only to find Mr. Emerald Buck standing in front of my desk nearly strangling the cloth hat he held in both hands. He appeared upset. I rushed up to him and held out my hands.

  “Mr. Buck! Whatever is the matter?”

  “Miss Mercy, I needs to talk to Mr. Templeton. It’s important, or I wouldn’t be botherin’ him with it.”

  Ernie, who had evidently detected the distress in Mr. Buck’s voice, rose from his desk chair and came to stand in his office door. “What’s the matter, Buck? I’m game to help if I can.”

  Interesting. Ernest Templeton had flatly refused to assist a friend of Chloe’s and mine when said friend’s mother was in trouble. Yet Mr. Buck didn’t even have to tell Ernie what his problem was in order for Ernie to offer his assistance. I don’t believe I’ll ever understand the man as long as I live—which might be a good thing.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ernie,” said Mr. Buck, who was a gentleman of the Negro persuasion.

  Here’s another unfair thing about life. I knew for a fact that Mr. and Mrs. Buck’s daughter was attending college, on a scholarship mind you, in a southern state at an all-Negro college because, according to Lulu, none of the colleges in Southern California would admit a Negro woman student, even one who clearly had the brains to win a scholarship.

  It grieved me to see Mr. Buck so upset. I’d never before known him to be in anything but a genial, happy frame of mind. Unless, of course, he adopted that happy pose because we white folks expected it of him. I’d have liked to question him about the subtleties of race relations, but I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.

  Anyhow, none
of that mattered. Ernie said, “Come on in, Buck.” He must have seen me frown at him, because he sighed gently and said, “Why don’t you join us, Mercy? You can take notes in shorthand while Mr. Buck tells us his story.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Templeton. I shall be happy to do that.” So I went to my desk and grabbed a lined green stenographer’s pad and two of the pencils I kept sharpened and standing at attention in a cunning little cup I’d bought in Chinatown. They pretty much stayed sharp all the time, too, unless I used them for practice.

  Mr. Buck stood to one side so I could enter Ernie’s office ahead of him, a considerate gesture that would have sat well upon any gentleman, black or white. I smiled at him as I went in and took a seat as far from Ernie’s desk as I could get, wanting to remain inconspicuous. That was my own idea, by the way. I didn’t want Mr. Buck to feel he needed to curtail any explanations or censor his words because he feared offending my pink and shell-like ears.

  Ernie said, “Pull up to the desk, Mercy. Don’t you want to have a hard surface to write on?”

  So much for my considerate intentions. Giving Ernie a sour look, I said, “I am accustomed to holding my pad in my hand and writing with the other hand, thank you, Mr. Templeton.”

  “What’s with this ‘Mr. Templeton’ stuff?” Ernie asked as if he really wanted to know. “Buck here knows we’re all friends.”

  We were, were we? Well, we’d just see about that. I said, “Very well, Ernie.”

  He grinned at me and waved Mr. Buck into the chair directly opposite his on the other side of his desk. “All right, give it to me straight, Buck. What’s the matter?”

  Mr. Buck swallowed a couple of times, as if he were fighting strong emotions. After getting them under control, he said softly, “It’s my son. Calvin.”

  “What about Calvin, Mr. Buck?” I found myself saying. Then I snapped a glance at Ernie, realizing I wasn’t there to conduct an interview but to take notes. I murmured, “Sorry.”

  Darn it, I really wanted more responsibility in the firm. But I’d have to earn it and so far, even though I’d saved Ernie’s life and solved a couple of big crimes, I hadn’t yet, according to Ernie. I think he was being too fussy, but I resolved to keep my mouth shut, especially since Ernie met my glance with one of his own that clearly exhibited exasperation.