City of Ghosts (A Miranda Corbie Mystery) (2 page)

She finally left with a miniature red granite dragon the suddenly eager-to-please Kwok pressed into her hands, toothy smile, bits of bok choy still clinging to his teeth. Jade necklace—and the matching bracelet and earrings Randolph had already pawned—were in her jacket pocket. Her fingers gripped Randolph’s arm. He wiped his mouth and grinned vacuously, eyes empty.

She walked him past the herbalist and the grocery shops, down Washington Street and Waverly and the Twin Dragons nightclub, “Make-Believe Island” floating from a radio, Mary Ann Mercer and the Mitchell Ayres Orchestra sounding faraway and blue.

Wonderful island … where broken dreams come true …

Miranda walked faster down the hill toward Kearny and the Hall of Justice, pushing and pulling the tall, thin man beside her.

Make-believe island, Treasure Island, where broken dreams lay dead and bloodied, an ice pick through the breast …

Randolph yelped, stopping in front of the Chinese Telephone Exchange. “You’re hurting me!”

She needed a cigarette or even a Life Saver but knew better than to let go of his arm.

“March, Randolph. Mommy’s waiting.”

He made a strangled noise in his throat and she almost felt sorry for him. He dragged his feet, Chinese sandals scuffing the dirty cement.

“How much are you getting?”

“Not enough.”

“I-I’ve got my own allowance, I can—”

Miranda threw up the arm that held her purse, flagging a Yellow Taxi dropping a middle-aged woman off at Puccinelli’s Bail Bonds on Washington.

“You can’t take a piss by yourself, Randolph, and your allowance is all gone. Do yourself a favor. Ask your father to spring for a doctor, and get off the juice.” The taxi pulled up, dark-skinned man about fifty with black and gray stubble and a smile that was missing some teeth.

Miranda opened the door, shoved Randolph inside. Leaned in through the open window, her voice low. He was curling again, shaking in the corner.

“Hit up the old man. And stay away from the hop … and your mother.”

She opened her purse and gave the driver a five-dollar bill and an address in the Burlingame hills. Watched him speed up Washington Street while she shook out a Chesterfield.

*   *   *

Lunch at the Palace’s Rose Room felt like a shower. She splurged on
Poulet au Vin
with a Tomato Surprise salad, sipped an iced tea, and tried to ignore the up-and-down stares of a businessman at the bar, chin mapped with five o’clock shadow, smile full of false teeth. A traveler left a
Los Angeles Times
on the chair next to her, partial to his hometown paper despite the
Examiner
building across the street.

HITLER ENDS WAR IN FRANCE
, it broadcast. Count on Hollywoodland to write a war headline that sounded like a fucking happy ending. Below the thick black letters,
BOMBERS RAID ENGLAND.

She swirled the iced tea with a green glass stick, stared into the brown liquid. Vague images of a dark-haired woman, voice low and melodic, singing, warm hands, large hands.

Her hands.

The figures were melting, ice cubes drifting apart. A deep voice cleared its throat.

Miranda looked up. Businessman from the bar. He pulled out a chair and sat, tongue flicking at his thick, wet lips.

“I couldn’t help but notice you were alone … hope you don’t mind.”

She sat back in the chair, eyes on the watery blue ones of the middle-aged Lothario. His blue suit was pinstriped and double-breasted, gapped in the chest and hugged his hips like a grass skirt. Display handkerchief, dirty white.

Flash of false teeth again.

She said evenly: “As a matter of fact, I do mind.”

He chuckled, as if she’d made a joke. “Haven’t always been so, er, particular, have you?”

Miranda’s eyes narrowed and flashed green inside the brown. She leaned forward, her hands curled into fists on the table.

“What do you want?”

He reached into the inside of his jacket and took out a chromium-plated cigarette case. Lit a Camel, smirked at her.

“You’re a looker, all right. They said you looked like that actress, what’s-her-name, Rita Hayworth. The black and whites in the paper don’t do you justice.” He pushed some smoke out the side of his mouth, then pulled out his billfold, imitation alligator, and shoved it toward her with a hairy finger.

“How much, baby? I know you’re supposed to be a peeper now, but I figure you might turn one or two on the side.”

Miranda froze for a moment. Then she adjusted the black velvet beret on her head, while the businessman leaned back, grinning at the movement of her breasts underneath the white blouse and snug velvet jacket. Her left hand fell into the pocket, and she touched the jade, cold and implacable.

She forced a smile and put on her gloves like a striptease. Stood up. He grinned more broadly, repocketing his wallet, pushing his chair in. The young blond waiter was walking over to the table to ask about dessert, and she caught his eye, shaking her head. He stopped in the middle of the floor, puzzled.

Miranda kept the smile glued on, shifted her weight, and sauntered over slowly. Stood in front of the leering man with the blue suit and shadow on his chin. She looked up at him, waiting until his grin was big enough to show off the whole set of his false teeth.

A flash of thigh, while her knee came up. He bent over, his mouth an O, eyebrows in his hairline. She threw all 124 pounds behind a right to his jaw.

The set of false teeth flew out in a spray of spittle, skidded across the floor and landed in front of a shocked dowager in sequined gray.

He toppled and fell backward, landing on his ass. The blond waiter sprinted for the maître d’. A couple of male customers were standing, sleeves tugged on by their dates.

Sit back down, Roger. Don’t you dare interfere. Shouldn’t let her kind in here. Harlot. Slut.

Whore.

Miranda knelt by her adversary’s face, his cheeks and jaw still bright red with shock and pain.

“Who did you talk to? Who, goddamn it?”

The shrunken mouth caved in on itself, breath coming in gasps, and he shook his head.

“Bianne Mwaroche.”

Dianne and her venom, southern spider, sitting in the middle of a web. Twitch it and they’ll come running back, you never escape, you’ll never be through, Miranda, unless you’re dead and buried like Betty Chow …

The maître d’s hand was on her shoulder. “Is there a problem, Miss?”

“Not anymore.”

She stood up, rubbing her gloved right hand. They didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to know why, just wanted her out and gone. No thorns in the goddamn Rose Room.

Miranda reached for her purse and threw a dollar on the table. Turned briefly to the short, bald maître d’, his eyes pleading like a spaniel’s. She stared down at the businessman. He was still on the ground, hand in front of his shrunken mouth.

“Remember me to Dianne.”

She walked out of the Palace Hotel, left hand fingering the jade in her pocket.

*   *   *

The Old Taylor swirled in the Castagnola glass, pain in her swollen knuckles subsiding. Miranda pushed aside the receipts and papers, cracked the office window.

Artie Shaw’s “Traffic Jam” blew wild from Tascone’s jukebox, and two pigeons were mating on Lotta’s Fountain.

Happy 164th Birthday, San Francisco, celebrate your heritage, your phoenix wings, your life. Throw a party on a treasure island, toast the steel monsters that spanned your Golden Gate. Masque of the red-orange death for the ferryboats, but hell … let’s dance.

She sank into the overstuffed leather chair, hands trembling. Not whole, not yet, too soon after too many cracks, too soon after the Musketeers and Pandora Blake and Ozzie Mandelbaum. Too soon after the postcard from Westminster Abbey, from a mother she thought was long dead.

Bombs were dropping on England, last target for the steel-toed jackboots, last island for the Blitzkrieg. And somewhere in London, amid the bomb shelters and cool, ancient churches, somewhere between the chip shops and pubs and Piccadilly Circus … was her mother. Somewhere.

And she had to find her, help her, save her. Get her out, get her away, before the Nazis killed the only family she had.

Her father didn’t count.

She threw back another gulp of the bourbon, finished filling in the report. She knew better than to give up the jade before she was paid, and the out-of-pocket expenses—including the three hundred dollars to Kwok—bit hard.

She took the job to make money. No choices, not now, she needed a ticket to Liverpool or Ireland, preferably on a ship that the U-boats wouldn’t sink.

The office door rattled and Miranda looked up, eyes wide.

Not Allen, the Pinkerton was off on a case today, the Monadnock quiet, most of the city at the Fair.

Jade was in the safe. She opened the right-hand drawer. The .22 gleamed dully at her.

Her voice came out clear. “Come in.”

The handle turned and Miranda held her breath. A tall man in his late thirties, dressed in a light wool blazer of conservative cut, his tie maroon, his dark brown hair oiled and immaculate, crisp brown fedora from Dobbs Brothers in one hand, a large brown envelope in the other.

He smiled at her. Walked toward her desk.

“Hello Miranda. It’s been a while.”

James MacLeod. From the State Department.

Two

MacLeod flicked his eyes over the Castagnola glass and the half-empty bottle of Old Taylor, still sitting on the top of the desk. Threw himself in one of the chairs, easy grin.

As if it hadn’t been a year since the Incubator Babies case. As if he’d stayed in touch and written her letters and just flown out to San Francisco for a goddamn fourth at bridge.

She shook a Chesterfield out of a crumpled packet. He jumped up, holding a monogrammed lighter flickering bright against the “J. M.” etched in silver plate. She held his hand and lit the cigarette. Wished her fingers weren’t trembling.

“I thought you’d have laid off those by now. Confidentially, they’ll kill you.”

She pressed her back against the leather, massive weight of the chair giving her strength.

“You didn’t cross the country to discuss my personal habits, James. Don’t you have enough to do in Washington? Or are you just here to check on the ‘experiment’?”

The government man reached into his jacket pocket with a smile and pulled out a matching silver cigarette case.

“As a matter of fact, I just started up again. Susan—my wife, you may remember—calls it ‘war nerves.’” He stuck a Kool between his lips, smell of menthol blending with the tobacco. “Menthol helps me keep the number down. You should try it.”

Miranda took a deep drag, blew a smoke ring over his head.

“I prefer to meet the enemy head-on.”

He chuckled, tossing the thick brown envelope and the Dobbs fedora on the chair next to him, eyes darting over the file cabinet, the dusty radio, the safe.

“One reason why I made sure you got your license. You, the so-called experiment—and a successful one, too. Your last two cases made some noise. It reached all the way to the capital.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Did it wake anyone up?”

He blew smoke through his nose and laughed. Stretched his arm across the back of the small chair, wool jacket revealing the black butt of a .45 in a shoulder holster. Eyes on her face, her hands, her hair.

James MacLeod, the man who believed her when no one else would. The man who listened to her, trusted her.

The man she owed her license to.

Collection time.

“You’re a swell girl, Miranda. You don’t look a day older. I’m sure Susan would love to know how you keep your glamour girl looks.”

“What are you here for, James? It’s not that I’m not grateful to you for pushing my license through last year—but the State Department doesn’t walk into my office every day. When it does, it wants something.”

“If I weren’t married, I’d want you. But you already know that.”

Same fucking story, every fucking time. It didn’t matter that she’d worked for a year, made a name, a career.

Maybe even a goddamn life.

Half a stick left. She twisted it out in the ashtray.

“I said I’m grateful, but you don’t own me. Nobody does.”

He ran a hand through his hair, separating the curls, dulling the shine of the oil and pomade.

“We knew that wasn’t an option a year ago, Miranda, no need to get defensive. I’ve come to collect other dividends. We’ve got a problem. We want it to go away.”

Her eyes fell to the thick brown envelope next to him. “I’m not your best bet for an exterminator.”

“No. But what you do is get to the heart of things. It’s a particular gift, and not every good detective has it. Look at what you’ve done already: crime syndicate crippled, international smuggling ring smashed—that made a stink with the Jap ambassador, believe me—bombing thwarted, another group of fifth columnists uncovered … speaking of which, the Christian Front boys got off, whole case dismissed.”

“I read about it this morning, buried in the back of the
Chronicle.
Buried in Hoover’s back, too, I imagine.”

“You’ve done more than a whole squad of Hoover’s agents. Don’t think he’s not pissed about it.”

Blue eyes crinkling at the corners, like Rick’s when he wanted a story. Miranda thought about the license in her purse, carefully creased and folded, more precious than the jade in her safe.

Only thing she had. Only thing she owned. Only thing she was.

And now … she had to pay for it.

“You’re not here to offer me a role on
Gang Busters.
We like each other. I owe you something. That’s all.”

He stood up from the chair and ambled to the window.

“Do you know what it is I do?”

“No. You never told me. And I never tried to find out.”

“I was a field agent. Right now I’m responsible for certain Intelligence matters relating to the Nazis.”

“I didn’t figure you for a diplomatic job.” Her fingers were trembling again. She yanked open the top drawer, found half a roll of Life Savers Pep-O-Mint.

“Want some?”