Death Was the Other Woman (11 page)

MUSTARD SOUNDED PREOCCUPIED
when I got him on the phone. Not like his usual jovial self at all. He didn't even joke with me when I told him I needed to arrange a car for Dex's San Francisco trip. He just made the arrangements and told me he'd have it brought around. He was going to be busy, he told me, and there'd be no one in his office for the rest of the day.

As I hung up, I realized Id forgotten to ask about Brucie. I was going to call Mustard back, then decided it could wait. I'd see her myself when I got home.

There was something about Brucie that didn't feel right to me. Not about the woman herself—she seemed sweet and lovely—but about her situation. I had the feeling that Mustard and Brucie hadn't been entirely forthcoming about the details of why she needed a place to stay.

I thought back to Mustard's first call about her. Mustard had said he had a friend who was in a jam. But the nature of the jam had never come up, nor had anything beyond her recent widowhood. There was a story there; I was sure of it. I just didn't know if I'd ever hear the details.

Rain was threatening when I hit Spring Street. It was gray, and a wind was kicking up the branches of the big trees that lined the street and the bits of detritus on the roadway. It felt like the world was holding its breath; like this was the beginning of something that would only get bigger.

I hurried toward Angels Flight before the sky opened up. The hat I'd popped onto my head when I'd dressed in the morning had nothing to do with keeping off rain. The big bouquet of flowers I carried wouldn't suffer from getting wet, but it probably wouldn't help them after a hard day of getting dragged around either.

At the station house, I coughed up the five cents for the ride up. What with my trip out to the hospital on top of staying up so late the night before, I was pooped. Plus, I reasoned, Dex had scored another job today; no matter that we both thought it slightly pointless, I'd be getting paid for sure.

Marjorie was in the foyer polishing the dark wood of the hall table as I came through the door. I love the smell of the polish—have loved it since girlhood. There are moments in my upbringing I can't think about without pain, but the smell of Marjorie's beeswax furniture polish brought back everything that had been right about my childhood. When I thought about it, most of the good memories were tied in to Marjorie and the house; very few of them centered on my father, who'd spent those years preoccupied with making money and mourning his dead wife, my mother.

Viewed in a certain way, you could make my father's life a warning sign for your own: be careful what you worry about; life is brief, and fate has a short temper and no sense of humor at all. Boiled down, my father's life had been without purpose, perhaps without use. All those years building something that had failed in the end. All those years mourning someone who mourning could not bring back.

If I were very honest, I would identify the resentment built into those feelings, because during all those years, there I'd been. Starving not for silks or steaks, but for a loving hand on my head, a reassuring word. Until his death, I'd never lacked for the things that money could buy, but in other departments, I was forced to go without.

“Why, those are lovely flowers, Miss Katherine.” Marjorie looked up from her polishing as I entered. “Who gave them to you, if I may ask?”

“That'd be something,” I said, taking a whiff of the big bouquet and imagining the beau who would give them to me. “But no, they're for Brucie. Is she in her room?”

“You said she was in hospital, miss.” Marjorie looked honestly confused.

“She was. Last night. But I went up there today, and they told me she'd been released. I just figured she'd come back here.”

Marjorie shook her head.

“I guess ... I guess I'll just put these in her room then. OK if I grab a vase?”

Brucie's room was unchanged from the day before. The bed unslept in, her trunk and boxes in disarray after our preparations for going to the Zebra Room. That all seemed much longer ago than it actually was.

I left the flowers in a vase on the bureau and, as an afterthought, added a note. “Let me know when you get in,” I scratched, “even if it's really late.”

I was oddly disappointed at not seeing Brucie. The little bit of contact we'd had made me realize how much I missed having women of my own age in my life. Women to share laughter and secrets. I hadn't had that at all since I'd left school so abruptly two years before.

This thought made me realize something else: seeing my old friends was within my reach. And I had a sudden yearning to see them. Dex was going to San Francisco in the morning. He didn't know it yet, but when he left he'd have a passenger.

I GOT TO THE OFFICE
an hour earlier than usual, a small valise in one hand. It was the sort of case I would have used to spend the weekend at the house of a friend when I was at school. I hadn't used the case for a while.

I'd gotten in early because I wanted to be sure to catch Dex before he left. I just managed it. He looked as though he'd only stopped in at the office to pick up the car and get everything he needed for his trip. When I came in the door, his hat was on his head, and he was doing something with his jacket. It was hard to tell if he was coming or going, but I was betting on the latter.

“Where are you off to?” he asked, a light lift to his eyebrows.

I nodded, extending the valise slightly. “I'm coming with you.”

“Coming with me?” he repeated. “Look Kitty, I don't need a driver or a babysitter.”

“I know, Dex, but I'm not babysitting this time. And I won't be any trouble at all. But I have oodles of friends in the city, and I haven't seen them for a long time.” Dex seemed to hem a bit. And then he hawed, so I pressed on. “It's not like you'll need me in the office while you're gone. And when we get there, you can just drop me off and then pick me up when you're ready to come back to Los Angeles. ...”

I might have continued in this vein, but Dex held up a warding hand. “All right already,” he said. “I get the message. Sure, you can come. Why not? And you're right; it's not like there'll be anything to do at the office. Anyway it's a long drive. A bit of company couldn't hurt anything.”

And so we drove. The rain that had threatened the day before had come and gone unseen in the night, and the air felt clean, the usual city dust subdued for the moment by the big street cleaner in the sky. Mustard had secured an almost-new Packard for Dex's trip, and the big car seemed anxious to cover miles, to get us quickly to our destination.

When I attended school in San Francisco, a trip like this by car wouldn't have been possible. You could have done it, but the trip would have taken a long time, winding your way through the variously finished roads that made up California's El Camino Real. It would have been barely thinkable to do the whole drive in less than a couple of days, and all of my trips to and from school had been done either by train or steamship. Now the new highway ran up the coast all the way from the Mexican border almost to Canada. We weren't going that far, so we didn't need all of it, but the parts we
did
need were impressive. If I hadn't already known this was the grandest highway in the country, signs along the way let me know. I believed them too. I'd never seen anything like it.

I started the trip with the best of intentions to keep Dex company, but the Packard just purred up the highway, the whitewalls humming over the pavement, while Lorenz Hart crooned gently about ten-cent dances on the radio. All of these things worked against me, and before very long, I was snoozing away on my side of the deeply upholstered front seat. I didn't wake up until that peaceful rhythm came to an abrupt halt.

“Where are we?” I asked Dex groggily, noting the ocean in front of the angled parking spot and not a lot else in sight.

“The last sign said Bradley,” Dex said, “but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot here. C'mon, kiddo. Let's see if we can find some lunch.”

I looked around again, and sure enough, a diner sat neatly across the road from the ocean. Incongruous when we entered: orange vinyl banquettes, a jukebox, black-and-white linoleum floor, and a view that would stop a millionaire's heart. It was easy to imagine you could see clear to Japan.

We grabbed a booth with a view of the ocean, though truly most of them had one. We weren't sitting there long before a waitress approached us with tired-looking menus that had each seen more than their share of grease. She was wearing a faded yellow uniform with a skirt just short enough to show us legs so heavily veined that it was easy to imagine that there were no shoes that would provide relief from endless days spent on her pins.

“Travlin' through?” she asked, her eyes never leaving Dex's.

“Does anyone ever say no?” he replied.

She nibbled the end of her pencil as though thinking. “Not so much,” she said finally. “At least, not if I don't know their face.” She didn't add that she'd like to get to know Dex's face better. She didn't need to. I'd seen him have that effect on women before.

“You have menus there for us darlin'?” he asked amicably. She passed them over, and he asked for coffee, looking at me while he did so.

“Sure. Coffee sounds perfect,” I said, and the waitress looked at me as though slightly surprised, as though she were noticing me for the first time.

When the coffee came it was good and black. I tried not to notice the slight chip on the rim of my cup. It wasn't the kind of place where noticing would make any difference.

Dex ordered a Denver omelet, and I opted for a slice of cherry pie. After sitting in the car for hours on end, I wasn't feeling very hungry.

When our food came, Dex hit his omelet solidly, while I picked at my pie. It's not that it wasn't good. It was just fine, in fact. But the events of the last few days were catching up with me, and my brain was tired of thinking about it all. But while Dex cleaned his plate with the last of his toast, I brought it up anyway.

“Brucie never came home,” I said, moving a bit of pie from the extreme left of my plate to the extreme right, then using the tines of my fork to squeeze a big chunk of cherry left in the middle.

Dex looked up from his plate tidying. “Whadjamean?”

“You know she paid for a room at my house, right?” Dex nodded. “And Mustard had dropped off all her stuff. But yesterday I went to the hospital to see her, and like I told you, no Brucie. So I figured I'd see her when I got home, but no Brucie there either. And I checked her room before I left this morning—she hadn't been back.”

Dex looked concerned while I spoke, but when I'd finished, he said, “Why are you telling me this?”

Why? It was a good and reasonable question. One I didn't have an answer for. “Well, for one, she's injured. But it's more than that. She's something to Mustard. I can see that. You noticed it at the club too, when they were dancing. But Mustard hasn't said what.”

“Well, he wouldn't, would he?”

I nodded agreement. He would not. For one thing, Brucie had been a widow for less than a month. For another . . . well, he was Mustard. That seemed reason enough on its own.

“And ... I don't know. I just... I just have a funny feeling about the whole thing. Like there's something the two of them aren't telling me. About Brucie's past, I mean.”

Dex looked thoughtful while the waitress refilled our cups with coffee. He didn't speak until after she was gone.

“She was Ned Jergens's wife, right?”

I nodded. “I thought it looked like you recognized her name when Mustard introduced you. Who was Ned Jergens?”

“He was Chummy McGee's right-hand man.”

“I keep hearing that,” I said. “But it still doesn't mean anything to me.”

Dex kinda stretched, as though he were weighing his words before he spoke. “Do you know who Chummy McGee is?” he asked. I shook my head, and Dex continued. “Well, Chummy pretty much has the L.A. waterfront sewn up.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Well, the gambling ships off Santa Monica, for starters. You know the ones? Chummy's outfit is responsible for those.”

“You mean he owns them?”

“More like he owns the action on them—the gambling action. At least he owns a piece of it. The piece that counts. Then the booze that gets brought in by sea—”

“I guess that would be most of the booze in L.A.”

Dex nodded. “Chummy again. The club in Santa Monica— you know the one—on Front Street on the Boardwalk?”

“Sure I do. Club Casa Del Mar?”

“Yeah, that's it. Chummy's turf entirely. A lot of gambling, and whispers of white slaving too.”

I could feel my eyes get wide. “Really? I thought it was a private club.”

“Well, there's that. But there's more there too. But it's whispers, you know. No one really talks about stuff like that. Not out loud anyway.”

“This Chummy sounds like a pretty powerful guy. I guess that means his right-hand man would have been pretty important too.”

Dex winked at me. “Now you're getting the picture.”

“So I guess what you're
really
telling me is that Brucie Jergens's husband probably didn't die of natural causes.”

“I always said you were a quick study, kiddo. But yeah, I'd guess he didn't die of a heart attack.”

I stopped and thought for a minute. Something was beginning to make sense. What had she said?
I'm Ned Jergens's widow. Money's nothin' to me.
It wouldn't be, either. From that Dex was saying, it was a fairly safe bet that Ned had died while on the job. If Chummy McGee was half the mobster Dex was describing, he'd make sure Ned's widow was taken care of.

On the other hand, Mustard had indicated that Brucie was in some sort of trouble. What could that have meant? And then it occurred to me. “She needed a place to hide out,” I said aloud. “That's what Mustard meant. He was trying to hide her from something. From
someone.
That's why he wanted her at my place; he figured she'd be safe there.”

“I dunno, Kitty. That sounds a bit farfetched to me. I mean, if he was trying to stash her, why would he take her to the Zebra Room the other night?”

“I'm not sure,” I admitted. Dex had a point. “Maybe he figured she'd be safe in plain sight?”

“Or maybe he was so bamboozled by her, he let what he wanted get in the way of what he knew was right. Though that doesn't sound like Mustard.”

I agreed. It did not.

“But what about Mustard?” I asked. “How does he fit into all this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, how does he even know Brucie? Or Chummy for that matter?”

“You'd have to ask him that,” Dex replied.

“But still,” I insisted, “they must have some sort of connection, right? Does Mustard work for Chummy?”

“You get that out of your head, Kitty,” Dex said, with more force than I felt my comment had demanded. “Mustard is
not
a gangster, so don't even think that. And certainly ...” He shot a look over his shoulder as though checking to see who was there. There was no one. It was after the lunch rush, if there even was such a thing in this place. The only other patron was an old man in a threadbare suit eating a piece of apple pie a la mode with obvious enjoyment. Dex dropped his voice and started again. “Certainly never, ever say it.”

I ran my finger absently around the lip of my empty coffee cup, contemplating my boss. This was a side of him I hadn't seen before. I didn't think I liked it. Even if he was quite often morose, he was usually confident. The two balanced each other out—Dex's personal yin and yang. This was different. I wondered if it was possible that with the receding of his own darkness, he was also losing the edge that was the only advantage he'd had in a tough game.

The other possibility was that I was overreacting. That Dex's alarm had come from a genuine concern for his old friend. Or maybe even that there was more to Mustard and his underworld ties than I'd ever suspected. Maybe it was a bit of both.

“I didn't say he was a gangster, Dex.” He indicated I should lower my voice, and despite the nearly empty restaurant, I did. “I was just thinking, what is it Mustard does, exactly? And how does he always have these connections to everything?”

Dex seemed to think a while before answering. “Like I said before, Kitty, those are questions you'll have to ask Mustard yourself. And not just ‘cause I don't want to answer you, but ‘cause I think the man himself could best explain it. Let me tell you one thing though: no matter what you may think or even what you may sometimes hear, Mustard is not a gangster. Whatever he does, he does on his own.”

“Sometimes with you,” I pointed out.

“Sometimes with me,” Dex nodded. “But that's different. He helps me out sometimes, but it's nothing to him. Mustard and me ...” He hesitated. I thought he was searching for words. “We share some things, Kitty. We've been through a lot together.”

I nodded. “You've told me a bit.”

“Have I?” And then smiling, he said, “I guess I have. You know I don't remember any of what I told you, don't you?”

I thought about mentioning what he'd told me about his wife, Zoe, and asking what had happened to her and to their son. But when I looked into Dex's clear eyes and noted again the new lightness about him, I decided that this was not the time. “I guess I do know that,” I said instead, not entirely certain I was telling the truth.

“So if I've told you some of this in the past and you don't want to hear it again, you'll hafta stop me. But like I said, we've been through some stuff together, Mustard and me. Stuff that tests a man. I know that in a tight spot Mustard will cover my back. I reckon he has reason to know the same thing about me. The other things? I'm not sure they're as important. But the part where I know I can count on him, no matter what. . . well, it means a lot.”

Dex was being oblique enough that I figured he'd never get around to answering what I'd asked. What he
was
telling me was maybe more significant: that sometimes knowing the inside of a man was as important as—maybe more important than—knowing the outside. Important enough that it even made the other stuff not matter so much.

At least that's what I thought he was telling me. I'd have to think about it for a while, and as things turned out, I had several hours of sitting in a car in front of me without a lot scheduled
besides
thinking.