City of Ghosts (A Miranda Corbie Mystery)
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Authors: Kelli Stanley
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For Tana, who makes the sun rise.
And for the memory of my parents, Van and Patricia Stanley,
whose unconditional love and support made everything possible.
Acknowledgments
City of Ghosts
was a difficult book to write and would never have been completed without the support, understanding, and help of friends and colleagues.
I was in the middle of the first draft when I lost both of my parents to cancer within a month of each other. I’m an only child with no close extended family and my parents were my best friends. Learning to live with the grief, despair, and health complications generated by their loss necessitated that I set the book aside for a while.
Fortunately, my publisher—Andy Martin at Minotaur Books—is a very understanding man. I thank him and the rest of the team at St. Martin’s—Sally Richardson, Sarah Melnyk, Hector DeJean, Talia Sherer, indefatigable production editor Elizabeth Curione, and my esteemed editor, Matt Martz—for their patience and support while I learned how to write and live all over again. A special thanks as well to Marcia Markland and Kat Brzozowkski.
My agents are incredibly supportive and a writer’s dream team; I am blessed to call them friends. Kimberley Cameron of Kimberley Cameron and Associates and film agents Mary Alice Kier and Anna Cottle at Cine/Lit encouraged me, nurtured me, and helped guide me over difficult terrain. They are not only great agents; they are truly great people.
The mystery community in general is a bit spoiled when it comes to wonderful people—we have more than our share—and I owe far too many thanks to too many friends to thank them all here. But I’d like to give a shout to a few friends who helped see me through some of the darkest days: Rebecca Cantrell, Joshua Corin, Tasha Alexander, Andrew Grant, Heather Graham, Margery and Steve Flax, Rhys Bowen, Sheldon Siegel, Tom and Marie O’Day, Cornelia Read, Jon and Ruth Jordan, Carla Buckley, Kate Stine and Brian Skupin, Jordan Foster, Julie Rivett, Hallie Ephron, Laura Benedict, Naomi Hirahara, Tim Hallinan, Bill Cameron, Judy Bobalik, Janet Rudolph, Bill and Toby Gottfried, Chantelle Osman, Lesa Holstine, Deborah Ledford, Roni Olsen, Judith Starkston, Jen Forbus, Peter Maravelis at City Lights Bookstore, Julie Lindow, and Pam Stirling, Jen Owen, and all the former crew at the much-missed M is for Mystery. And as always, a special thanks to the real Bente Gallagher for the use of her glorious name.
City of Ghosts,
like its predecessors, was a research-heavy project, and I owe thanks to the following people and places that helped me: the San Francisco Public Library History Room, the Doe Library and the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, and UC Berkeley librarians Randal Brandt and Cody Hennesy. EBay dealer Tim Baganz very generously and kindly sent me helpful letters from the era, and reader and retired SFPD officer James C. Fraser-Paige shared invaluable firearms details.
I’d also like to thank some personal friends: Pam and Stuart Vaughn, Sherry Hazelton, Shirley and Mike Foster, Gregg Foster, Jeremy and Kris Toscanini and family, and Sam Siew. A very special and ineffable thank-you to Pamela Bellah and Pamela Cassidy, who are angels on earth.
At the end of the day, of course, I thank you, the reader. You complete the book; it would not be possible without you. I hope you enjoy it, whether you’re new to the Miranda Corbie series or have been waiting eagerly for
City of Ghosts.
I think you’ll find that it marks a transition for Miranda, and my hope is that we will walk down many more streets together.
And, as always, I thank my partner, Tana Hall, for all the love, support, and care. This book—and indeed, my every breath—would not be possible without her.
Contents
Act One
Bait
God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another.
—William Shakespeare,
Hamlet,
Act II, scene 1
One
Miranda watched as the thin arm, pocked and dotted with needle points, snaked under the dirt-gummed bars of the pawnshop.
Swan dance, like a prima ballerina. Except the fingernails were chipped and filthy, the muscle wasted from too much hop. She nodded to the pawnbroker, his chubby stomach still quaking, eyes darting from her to the arm. The Chinese was as rapid as his breath.
Hand froze, jade necklace still dancing in its grip.
She prodded the proprietor with her shoe and his eyes came back to her, wide and scared. He bit his lip, tucking small feet behind the dented stool he perched on, while she threaded her way past a scarred wooden counter loaded with cameras and musical instruments, the sleeve of a moth-eaten beaver jacket thrown carelessly over a half-eaten plate of chow mein.
Hoped she’d remember how the hell to get out of Yick Lung, Chinatown pawnshop, hoped she wind up somewhere near the small, almost invisible side door used by the embarrassed customers. The Chinese didn’t like to show their faces to a pawnbroker. Too much shame.
No shame for Mr. Kwok. Just a fat bank account he could spend in Quentin if he didn’t play along.
Dark, uneven warrens, sound of her footsteps lonely, with occasional shrill laughter from an upper story and the smell of damp kitchen slop and cooking rice drifting up from below.
Right then left, up a small incline, walls crooked and peeling, right again … light coming faster, past the green door, whatever lurked behind it, and back to the shiny brass knob and wide-mouth lion guarding the home of Mr. Leon Kwok, pawnshop owner and fence.
Air. Sunlight. Chinese violin ached a rendition of “Red River Valley,” the smell of spent firecrackers blending with sandalwood and incense. Her stomach growled at the thought of a fried sesame ball, and she could use a goddamn Chesterfield.
Miranda took a deep breath. No time.
She walked quickly around the corner to Spofford Alley and the side entrance to Yick Lung. Men with dead eyes threw dice against a joss house, rubbing hands on worn pants, threadbare shirts. They looked away from the entrance and back again, drawn like moths, their fingers rattling the change in their pockets, dice to determine who would pawn what to keep throwing, keep alive the chance to win.
A black Buick hurtled down Washington, riding the brakes, radio cranked high with Glenn Miller and Ray Eberle, punctuated by the tinny horn.
Fools rush in …
Miranda leaned against the brick wall, out of sight of the door, next to a poster advertising Southern Pacific Weekend at the Fair.
Come out, come out to Treasure Island, celebrate the City’s one hundred and sixty-fourth birthday, grand old lady, dirty old dame, naughty and bawdy, still flirts like jail bait. You want the real thing, mister, try Pickles O’Dell down on Pacific. Don’t know ’bout virgins, mister, ain’t got many left in San Francisco …
She shook her head. Meant to find out why Pickles was pushing babies, not the dried-up B-girls she was known for. Too busy since May. Too busy trying to make money. Too busy trying to find her mother.
Miranda’s gloved hand crept up to the left side of her cheek. Scar still there, small, under the makeup. Little souvenir from the Musketeers, one for all and all for one. Heil Hitler.
Just a month ago. She knew all about fools rushing in, almost rushed in to a lobotomy.
Her breath was coming out quicker, shorter, and she stared at the door, shutting out memory. Couldn’t shut it down at night, couldn’t push the images out of her mind, Technicolor, nude girls and dead gangsters, brain splattered on a bathroom wall. Spain and Johnny and red-orange sunset, violin strings up and out, no
Gone with the Wind,
no Tara, no tomorrow was another fucking day.
Miranda shook herself and reached into her handbag. Drew out a Chesterfield and lit it with the Ronson Majorette, one click. Thought of the woman who hired her, cool and immaculate, husband in the Bohemian Club, eyes like dry ice.
Jade parure. Missing from her home. Houseguests? Three friends up for the weekend, for the Fair. Family? Daughter and a son. Husband? Absentee. Lover?
She remembered how the woman’s eyes flickered, the thin white parchment skin on her lids veined blue, eyelashes black and bristled.
Everything insured, of course, no scandal, nothing public, but she’d like them back, whether the daughter sold them out of spite and jealousy or the friend needed a temporary loan to pay expenses. Whether her friends weren’t her friends, and her lover wasn’t her lover. She wanted the jade back. For sentimental reasons, of course. That, and the fact that it was worth fifty thousand dollars.
The rich don’t like to part with their money, especially if it’s old and has been in the family a long time. Jeeves the Butler and the bank account. Both deserved a little loyalty. The lady was new money, studied elocution at a Los Angeles soda fountain by way of Schenectady. But her husband was as old as sin in San Francisco, and he might start asking questions.
St. Mary’s chimed her bell.
Son, observe the time and fly from evil …
Goddamn it, something was wrong.
Miranda pinched out the cigarette with her fingers. Carefully turned the tarnished brass of the doorknob.
A too-skinny man in traditional garb, loose-fitting brown silk and smock, held a knife to fat Kwok’s throat, his back to Miranda. The pawnbroker’s arm was already bleeding from one cut, dripping on the wooden floor, held out stiffly to his right. His pudgy body pressed against an antique cherrywood wardrobe, his face contorted in a silent scream.
The skinny man didn’t hear the click behind him, so Miranda stuck the .22 in his back.
“Drop the knife, Randolph. Your mother wants her jade back.”
* * *
Took her half an hour to calm down Kwok and pry Randolph off the floor. He lay in the corner, drool drying at the corner of his mouth, mouth open and mewling, looking for a pipe to smoke or a tit to suck. Scion of the rich and powerful, progeny of old money and a new shipment of heroin.
The fence wanted reparations, to his arm, his person, his shop. His reputation.
Miranda handed him three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, pale scent of Narcisse Noir still clinging to the fibers. Not much hope for his reputation, she told him, but if he wanted it repaired, she could take it up with the bulls …