Angels of Mercy

by Duncan, Alice

  “Oh, my God, that’s the berries!” shrieked Lulu. She embraced me, and we both did a little happy hopping around at the foot of the stairs. I noticed Rupert whip Lulu’s suitcase out from in front of us, which brought me back to my senses.

  “But,” I said, breathless, “we’d best get your stuff stored. If I knew how to drive, I’d take you for a spin, but I have to learn first.”

  “Mr. Easthope allowed me to borrow his Flivver so I could help Lulu move,” said Rupert, his eyes twinkling with glee. “Want me to drive you around a bit in your new car? I can’t be gone too long, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

  Thinking fondly of Francis Easthope, who was not merely one of the most handsome men on the face of the earth, but one of the kindest, I said, “That would be fun, Rupert. Let’s get Lulu’s stuff stowed, and you can drive us around Bunker Hill a little bit.”

  “Oh, boy, a Roadster,” Lulu said, her hands clasped at her bosom. “Your own car. Is Ernie going to teach you how to drive it?”

  How come everybody instantly thought about Ernie when it came to me learning how to drive? I didn’t ask, afraid Lulu, who was an honest girl, might tell me. “I haven’t asked him yet. Chloe said she’d hire somebody to teach me.”

  Lulu gave my shoulder a little push. “Applesauce. Let Ernie do it. He’d love to.”

  I had my doubts about that, although I didn’t voice them. “Let’s get your stuff upstairs. Then we can go for a spin.”

  So we did, and it was a whole lot of fun. The spin part, not the arranging Lulu’s stuff part. Rupert drove us all around Bunker Hill, and we got to see all the beautiful houses. Then he drove up Carroll Avenue and we saw more beautiful houses, including the one in which Mr. Milton Halsey Gossett had been killed. Then, at my request, he drove the Roadster to Mr. Easthope’s bungalow on Alvarado Street—not far, in fact, from the bungalow court in which Mr. William Desmond Taylor had lived and been murdered in four years earlier.

  “Are you sure he won’t mind?” Rupert asked timidly.

  “I’m sure he won’t,” I said with more emphasis than I felt. But my trust in the goodness of Mr. Francis Easthope proved not to be in vain.

  At our knock, he opened his own door. After blinking at his houseboy—who would normally have opened the door for people knocking thereon—and Lulu, his glance landed on me, and his face seemed to light up. I appreciated that. “Mercy! Have you kidnapped my houseboy?”

  We all laughed, Lulu and Rupert a trifle nervously. “Not at all. But Chloe gave me her Roadster.” I swept my arm in a wide gesture, and Mr. Easthope glanced out at the curb where the shiny, almost-new Roadster sat. “And Rupert agreed to take us for a spin, since I don’t know how to drive yet.”

  “I’ll be darned,” said Mr. Easthope. He sounded a shade puzzled, so I hurried on with my explanation.

  “I know it seems stupid, but I thought you might like to know that Chloe and Harvey are doing well, and that Chloe gave me her Roadster because Harvey just bought her a brand-new 1926 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost.”

  His eyes went round at that news. “My goodness! That’s some machine your sister’s going to be driving. It was nice of them to give you the Roadster.”

  “I think so, too, but Chloe won’t be driving the Rolls. Harvey’s going to make sure she and the baby are chauffeured everywhere she wants them to go.”

  Francis Easthope threw back his head and roared with laughter, and I think Lulu, Rupert and I all relaxed for the first time since we stepped on his porch. After he stopped laughing, he said, “Well, show me this fancy new machine of yours, Mercy. I can’t wait to see Chloe’s Rolls.”

  “Me, neither,” I said.

  And, although I’m fairly certain Mr. Easthope had seen Chloe’s automobile tons of times, he politely allowed me to show him all the Roadster’s magnificent properties, from its gleaming blue outer coating to the rumble seat, the running board and even the pedals on the driver’s side that I didn’t know how to use yet. Then we decided Rupert had better drive Lulu and me back home and return to work at Mr. Easthope’s place.

  Actually, that whole weekend was enjoyable. I’d already known I missed Chloe, but I hadn’t known I didn’t really like living all by myself—well, except for Buttercup, who was a darling, and the Bucks, but they were staff—until Lulu moved in. Mind you, we didn’t spend every minute of the weekend together, but it was fun to sit in the living room and chat about this and that from time to time. We read the ads in the Times for the movies playing in town and decided we’d go see Flesh and the Devil, mainly because it starred John Gilbert, whom we’d both met. Well, it also starred Greta Garbo, but we didn’t care about her. Also, I was very pleased that Lulu enjoyed Mrs. Buck’s cooking.

  Lulu spent most of Sunday puttering around her new apartment and exclaiming every now and then about how much she loved it.

  “You can’t even begin to imagine the dumps I’ve lived in since I left Oklahoma,” she said at one point. “I get a whole bathroom all to myself! Are you sure you’re charging enough rent?”

  If I charged her any more, she wouldn’t be able to afford to live there. We both knew that. However, Ernie and I had discussed this very thing when I’d first started thinking about buying Chloe’s house, and I had an answer ready for Lulu.

  “I’m charging the other girls a little more. That makes up for the little bit of a discount you’re getting. Besides, Lulu, you’re my friend, and I want you to live here!”

  With dismay, I saw her eyes fill with tears. She made a quick swipe at them and said, “You’re a real pal, Mercy. When I first met you, I wasn’t sure about you, but you’re a real pal.”

  Hmm. Interesting. “What did you think of me at first?”

  Lulu scuffed her shoe on the rug, making me silently thank Harvey for suggesting the old switcheroo with the rugs. “Aw, Mercy, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.”

  “I won’t,” I said, hoping I was right. “Heck, when Ernie first saw me, he pegged me for a rich girl from back east who aimed to play at having a job until the novelty wore off, and then I’d quit. But that’s not true now any more than it was then. I want to work. I want experience.”

  “I know that now,” said Lulu, again making a quick wipe of her eyes and smudging her mascara. As she hadn’t aimed to set foot out of the house that day, God alone knew why she’d decided to wear makeup, but I wasn’t one to quibble. Lulu was Lulu, and I liked her as she was. “But I’m afraid I had about the same opinion when you first high-stepped it into the lobby of the Figueroa Building.”

  High-stepped it, had I? I tried very hard not to resent Lulu’s words. “Well, I’m glad we’ve got that settled. We both like each other.” I grinned at Lulu, and she grinned back at me.

  The following day it was swell to have a pal to walk with me the couple of blocks to Angels Flight. I, naturally, had on one of my professional-looking business suits, a blue number I wore with a white shirtwaist. The only hint of frivolity was the little ruffle of white at the neck of the shirtwaist. With it I wore black shoes, a black hat, and carried a black handbag.

  Lulu, as usual, wore much more eye-catching garb. This morning she’d elected to don a green-and-white dress with a low waist and a big bow in back. I feared for that bow, since Lulu’d probably be sitting on it most of the day. Naturally, I said nothing about that. I was too busy ignoring her bright green hat, shoes and bag. Her fingernails were, as ever, painted a brilliant red, and her dyed blond hair had been finger-curled and waved to within an inch of its life.

  When we got to Angels Flight, it didn’t look to me as if Lulu wanted to pay the nickel fare, so I paid for both of us.

  “You can’t do that for me every day, Mercy. I won’t let you.”

  “But it’s a steep walk from Olive to Hill. This is so much easier, and besides, I love this railroad.”

  “I love it too, but I can’t afford to spend ten cents a day on transportation. Heck, ten cents can buy my lunch.”

  Shoot, I hadn�
�t thought about the tiny railroad ride from Lulu’s point of view before. This demonstrates yet one more difference between those with funds and those without funds. To me a dime a day was nothing. To Lulu, it might mean the difference between a new tube of lipstick and no new tube of lipstick. I ought to use a more dramatic indicator, but Lulu wasn’t going to starve, no matter what she spent her money on, since Lottie Buck cooked breakfast and dinner for us.

  “Tell you what,” I said after thinking the matter over for a minute, which was all the time it took for the railway car to go from Olive down to Hill, where it let us off. “We’ll split the difference. You pay another dollar per month rent, and I’ll pay your way both ways on Angels Flight every day. That way we can still go out for lunch every now and then.” I’d known that if I thought long enough, I’d be able to come up with a food angle to fit the situation.

  Lulu’s brow wrinkled. She wasn’t anywhere near stupid, but she was also not a deep thinker. She didn’t need to be. Well, heck, neither did I. But I knew I had money and she didn’t and, while it wouldn’t pinch my pocketbook an itsy-bitsy bit to pay her fare on Angels Flight every day, Lulu would end up resenting me for it if she couldn’t somehow repay me for doing so. Ernie had taught me that, and he’d been correct, even though the truth had initially come as a shock to me.

  “Will that make it fair?” she asked, clearly not fancying doing the arithmetic in her head.

  “Absolutely fair. Fair for the fare,” I said, attempting humor.

  Lulu eyed me oddly, so I guess she didn’t get the joke. “Well . . .”

  “Darn it, Lulu, I like taking Angels Flight! If you don’t take it with me, I’ll feel obliged to walk with you, and I don’t want to walk that steep block, especially in the hot weather. Please take my offer.”

  “Well, if you put it that way . . .”

  “Good,” I said, pouncing like a lioness on its prey. “You’ll be doing me a favor, and it’s settled.”

  “If you say so.”

  She didn’t sound awfully convinced, but she didn’t argue any longer, so I considered the topic closed.

  Silly me.

  Chapter Six

  Ernie held up his hand to stop me in mid-ramble. “Hold on a minute. One thing at a time. Lulu’s paying you another dollar in exchange for you paying her way, both ways, on Angels Flight every day?”

  I huffed to a stop. I’d been spewing forth all the delights of my weekend, beginning with Chloe giving me her Roadster and rattling on to Lulu’s moving in, Mrs. Buck’s delicious cooking, and my bargain with Lulu about Angels Flight when he’d stopped the conversation with that darned lifted hand. I didn’t like the way his eyebrows tilted. I took a deep breath and decided I had perhaps been going on at a rather rapid clip. I said, “Yes. It’s fair.” I left out the little play on words I’d used with Lulu, anticipating Ernie’s disgusted eye-roll if I tried it on him.

  “You know that’s not fair, Mercy. You’ll be paying, what? A dime a day for maybe twenty days? That’s two bucks, easy.”

  “Yes, yes, I know that. But Lulu will be doing me a favor, because I want to take Angels Flight, and so does she, but she can’t afford to pay ten cents a day to do it. And I definitely don’t want to walk that block from Hill to Olive in the afternoon after work when it’s a hundred and ten degrees outside, or if it ever rains here. Does it?”

  I got the eye-roll even without my play on words. Figures. “Yes. It occasionally rains here. In fact, it’ll probably begin raining any second, and you can’t change the topic that easily. Lulu agreed to this plan of yours? ”

  I chuffed out an irritated breath. “Yes, she did. Especially when I pointed out she’d be doing me a favor.”

  Ernie’s sigh sounded as if it came from his very soul. “There’s no doing anything with you, Mercy Allcutt. You know that, don’t you?”

  I sniffed. “I don’t think Lulu will be able to resent me for this. Heck, we’re splitting the difference. So we’ll both only be out another dollar per month, and we’ll both get to ride that adorable little railroad every day.”

  “Adorable little railroad,” muttered Ernie under his breath. However, I guess he decided we’d spoken enough about the Angels Flight matter, because he then said, “And you say Chloe gave you her car? Her Roadster?”

  It was about nine-thirty on that sultry Monday morning. The weather remained warm, but clouds lowered overhead, and the sky looked as if it aimed to begin spitting at us any second. Good thing I kept an umbrella in my desk drawer. In fact, I kept it in the same drawer as I kept the files, only there were so few files, there was plenty of room for the umbrella. Melancholy thought.

  “Yes. Chloe gave me her 1924 Moon Roadster, because Harvey bought her a new 1926 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. And a chauffeur to drive her wherever she wants to go. He did it because he doesn’t want Chloe and the baby to ride around in a small automobile, and he hired the chauffeur because he doesn’t want Chloe’s attention to be diverted from the road to the baby, and vice-versa.”

  Ernie whistled through his teeth. “On the level?”

  I knew that piece of slang, so I repeated it, only without the question mark or the whistle. “On the level.”

  “Wow. I saw one of those on Sunset once. A Rolls, not a Roadster. You see them everywhere.”

  “Well, now I can see one in my own driveway,” I said, irked that he was taking my status as automobile owner with such nonchalance.

  “Do you know how to drive it?”

  I huffed. “Not yet. Chloe said he’d send somebody over to teach me.”

  “Hell, I’ll teach you how to drive, Mercy. I’ve been driving all my life, just about.”

  Ernie had an old, beat-up Studebaker that had seen better days. It still ran, however, and I understood from Mr. Buck that Ernie was quite the whiz at tinkering with it in order to keep it going.

  I hesitated a shade too long.

  Ernie gave me a sideways look and said, “Come on, Mercy. It’ll be fun. I’m a good teacher, and I promise I won’t try to make whoopee with you in the backseat.”

  “Ernie!” I was honestly shocked. I knew as soon as I uttered the exclamation, however, that he’d only been teasing me, because he grinned. I could feel myself blush. Darn and blast!

  “You’re so much fun to razz. Honest, Mercy, It’ll be fun to teach you to drive, and I’d get to meet your new tenant. You know. The one I didn’t interview.”

  “So that’s it, is it? You still don’t trust me.”

  He held up another hand. Or maybe it was the same one. It doesn’t matter. “I do, too, trust you. But I’d still like to see what you’ve done with the place. Lulu sounded like she was about to bust when she told me she’d get a whole bathroom all for herself.”

  “Yes, that was a definite selling point with her,” I admitted.

  “That and the fact that you’re undercharging her.”

  Before I could blow up, he held up yet another hand. “Don’t holler at me, Mercy. We’ve been over this territory before. I have no quarrel with you giving a friend a break. Just don’t give her too many more breaks, or she’ll end up—”

  “Resenting me,” I said, interrupting him. Boy, before I moved to L.A., I’d never have interrupted anyone. If I’d ever dared interrupt my mother, I’d have perished a horrible death. “I know. That’s why I’m making her pay me another dollar a month for taking Angels Flight.”

  Ernie’s nose wrinkled. “I think we decided that doesn’t add up quite right.”

  “Don’t even try to figure it out. Lulu said it was fair, and I think it’s fair, so it’s fair.”

  “Whatever you say, Mercy.”

  I didn’t trust that meek tone in his voice, but after squinting at him for a couple of seconds, I decided he wasn’t going to lecture me anymore. Before he could think of anything else to irk me about, I said, “Have you learned any more about the Gossett case?”

  “Only that Gossett played the horses, liked the ladies, went to the speaks and bought i
llegal liquor. He wasn’t a very nice man, although he treated Calvin Buck all right. But I fear Calvin is a rather strait-laced boy. He disapproved of some of Gossett’s doings and some of the people who frequented his home.”

  I plunked myself down on Ernie’s chair. “You visited him in jail again over the weekend?”

  “Yup. Got there just as his folks were leaving. They had nice things to say about you and Lulu. Mrs. Buck thinks you’re a class act.”

  Whatever that meant. “I’m glad they aren’t fed up with their employment yet. What kinds of bad characters visited Mr. Gossett?”

  “I don’t have all the particulars at this point, but I’m working on it.” He gave me an evil eye. “Now let me read the newspaper. Later on we’ll figure out a schedule for your driving lessons.”

  If that wasn’t a dismissal, I didn’t know one when I heard one. So I honored his wish to be left alone with the Times and went back out to my office.

  Ernie’s prediction came true. The sky opened up just about lunchtime, and rain came down in sheets. I’d never seen rain in Los Angeles before, and I stood at the window behind my desk and gazed upon it in awe and wonder. Speaking of wonder, I began to wonder where I’d take lunch that day, since it didn’t appear to be walking weather out there. Even racing across the street from the Figueroa Building to the taco stand would be a soaking proposition. The notion of sitting at my desk all afternoon in soggy clothes didn’t appeal to me.

  A few minutes later, Ernie came out of his office, shrugging on his coat and with his hat on his head. “Come one, Mercy. Let’s collect Lulu and go have lunch somewhere. You can’t walk anywhere in this weather.”

  Exactly what I’d been thinking. “Thanks, Ernie. I hope Lulu hasn’t left already.”

  “If she’s got a brain in that bottle-blond head of hers, she won’t stir out of the building, even if it means not eating lunch. Think of how all that makeup of hers would drip.”

  I got my own suit jacket, handbag and hat and put them on, then grabbed my umbrella. “That’s not very nice,” I said. My giggle as I said it robbed the words of the chastisement I’d meant to impart. Then I gossiped. Just a little bit. “She put on makeup yesterday, even though she didn’t aim to leave the house all day long.”