City of Ghosts (A Miranda Corbie Mystery) (30 page)

“Let me see what I can do, Miss.”

He rummaged in a drawer and opened the green book again, making a humming noise as he ran his finger down the page once more.

“I’ve got a double bedroom reserved here that ain’t been picked up yet and it’s for two people. I think they’d be more comfortable in that drawing room compartment.” He picked up his pen and winked at her.

“That’ll be fifty-eight eighty, Miss, including the ferry to the Oakland Pier, which leaves here at three forty-five
P.M
. tomorrow, June 28th. The
City of San Francisco
arrives in Chicago on Sunday, June 30th at nine-thirty
A.M
. Breakfast is forty cents and up, lunch is seventy-five cents and up, and dinner’s a dollar and up. You’ve got a club-lounge car, a lounge-observation car, and of course the coffee shop and dining cars, plus radio. There’s a secretary for telegraphs and a stewardess-nurse aboard in case you run into any trouble. Guess you’re used to that, though, ain’t you girlie?”

His watery blue eyes twinkled at her as he surreptitiously pocketed the five-dollar bill.

She smiled at him and took the ticket he pushed forward. “Thanks. What’s your name, Pops?”

“Hal. Railroad Hal, they call me.”

“Well, Hal … wish me luck. ’Cause yeah … trouble’s my business.”

She gave him a wink and shoved the ticket in her purse before gathering her jacket together against the cold and walking quickly out of the waiting room.

*   *   *

She sat up in bed suddenly, catching her breath, breast heaving against the yellow silk nightgown. No phone call reporting a dead client or dead friend this morning, just bad dreams.

8:04
A.M
. Seven and a half hours.

Longest stretch she’d had in weeks.

Miranda yawned, threw her legs over the side of the bed, drank some water, made a face. Dialed the long-distance operator. Asked for the number James had given her.

“State Department.” Gruff male voice with a slight roll to the
r
’s.

“James MacLeod, please.”

The voice got sharper. “Who is this?”

“Ugly Duckling.”

“Just a minute.”

She tapped her foot, resisting the packet of Chesterfields on the nightstand. The voice came back on, still unpleasant.

“He’s not here.”

“It’s important.”

“I’m sure it is, Miss. But he’s not here, all right? Try some other time.”

“Look, whoever the hell you are, it’s crucial I get a message to MacLeod—”

Click.

She swore and hit the switch hook a few times. The operator came on.

“Can you connect me to that number again please?”

More clicks and a whir. “The number is busy, Madame. Would you like me to ring you once I connect?”

Miranda hung up the phone with force. “Goddamn stupid State Department sonofabitch…”

She made a pot of coffee. Phoned Berry-U-Drive and told them where to pick up the car. Left telegrams for Bente and Meyer, with instructions to Meyer to phone David Fisher and tell him she was out of town on government business.

She shook her head. Honest, decent cop and his goddamn neck on the line. And Jasper might stay in Chicago for one day or a fucking week … she flung open the closet door.

She’d need the right clothes.

No glamour, no hint of Marion Gouchard.

A comfortable dress and face-concealing feminine fedora for the first day of the trip. Green frock with pink flowers, puffy shoulders like Snow White. She completed the look with a high-waisted brown jacket and the same sensible, itchy shoes she wore yesterday.

Thirty minutes later Miranda was finished, packing extra underwear, stockings, a nightgown and robe, three skirts and blouses, three jackets and two dresses. She added a small case of makeup and face creams, double-checked her purse for Chesterfields, Life Savers, and bullets for the Baby Browning.

She dialed the answering service, found a message from Allen.

“Yes, Miss Corbie. ‘From Allen,’ it says. Message reads, ‘No mugs for throats, but something of interest. Call me.’”

She thanked the eager operator and rang back the Pinkerton. No answer.

Miranda sighed, stomach growling for food.

*   *   *

The waitress spilled coffee on the counter in front of Miranda, smiled wide, teeth jagged and chipped, wiping up the brown puddle with a dirty rag.

Miranda stared across the street at Waverly, remembering the Rice Bowl Party. Crinkly blue eyes and dirty tie and bullshit accent everywhere she looked …

The coffee burnt her tongue and coated her throat, black and bitter enough to drive away thoughts of Rick.

She pulled out the memo pad. Wrote
Cheney (Fair), Miguel? Mexico? Wardon (Lestang?) Steel (Chicago), Renoir, Weidemann
. In large, capital letters at the top of the page she penciled
SCOTT
.

The waitress threw the plate down with a thump, eggs steaming. Miranda dug into the sausage first, still writing.

Who is Cheney and what is his position?

Why run after Edmund’s murder?

Is Jasper complicit?

Scott: Why do they need me if they already know about Cheney and smuggled art? Sacrificial sheep?

Miranda frowned at the last sentence, put the book back in her purse. Ate the eggs and sausage methodically, automatically, filling her stomach like an empty tank of gas.

On her way out of the restaurant, she spotted No-Legs Norris on the sidewalk in front of Sam Wo, and crossed the street.

“Hey, Ned.”

“How are you, Miranda?”

“All right. Missus OK?”

“Sure. First time she’s glad her old man’s got no legs … knows I won’t be called up again.” He grinned, the leather brownness of his skin folding up like a suitcase.

“Ned—if you hear anything about the jade—”

He nodded briskly. “I know where to find you.”

She shoved a ten-dollar bill in his aluminum cup. “I’m on the road for a little while. Be back in a few days.”

“Righto. Be careful, Miranda.”

She nodded, a glance up Waverly Alley and down Washington Street, remembering Spofford Alley and the Yick Lung pawnshop. The sun was starting to break through the clouds.

“You too, Ned. Be seein’ you.”

*   *   *

Roy was on duty at the Drake-Hopkins, and she tucked a fin in his pocket and told him not to let anyone upstairs.

His Adam’s apple bobbed alarmingly. “No one, Miss Corbie. Don’t you worry.”

She smiled at him, helping him lift the valise and cosmetic case into the Luxor taxi.

They drove down Mason, driver taciturn, about fifty. Market Street trains ripped and roared, natives nimble enough not to get caught in the tracks. They passed the Monadnock, and Miranda thought with a pang of Gladys, who’d be worried.

Lotta’s Fountain gleamed in the sun, costumed in flower stalls, her footlights the neon of pool halls and sailor bars, fog her only curtain. A warm breeze carried the sound of the tambourine, miners stomping stiff, dirty boots on the rough, clay-baked ground.

At the end of Market rose the Ferry Building, tall and friendly, white against the impossibly blue sky. No Washington’s Monument this, no decorated scraper, all chrome and gleaming arches. Alive and watchful, awake at night to the mournful lows of cargo ships and crab boats, awake in the morning to the coffee factories and dockworkers, the ferry passengers and dreamers who gazed across the water, heeding the call of the calliope or the promise of gold in the east. The Ferry Building clock had stopped once and once only, while the earth destroyed the City around her, but she held on, a beacon of life, the only lighthouse that really mattered, while the fires and the tremors raged on.

The Ferry Building meant San Francisco.

The Ferry Building meant home.

Miranda was scared. No city to give her strength, no car drive away. No long trip for her since ’37, and here she was, taking a streamliner to Chicago, chasing a potential Nazi spy, chasing a dream.

Miranda looked up at the Ferry Building, hand on her hat, eyes watering in the bright light, a glancing ray catching the phoenix perched on the Tower of the Sun.

Tight city, bright city, the city that knew how, that knew her, the city that gave her birth, that nursed her and raised her, taught her how to live again.

A momentary shiver made her shoulders tremble, from the chilled winds swirling in under the Golden Gate or the errant threat of white fog gathering behind the Headlands. Miranda glanced up at the Ferry Building clock one more time, shielding her eyes, stepping hurriedly across the street.

Her City. San Francisco.

She wondered if she’d be back.

Act Four

Frame

Let every eye negotiate for itself,

And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch

Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.

—William Shakespeare,
Much Ado About Nothing,
Act II, scene 1

Twenty-seven

The streamliner rested on the Oakland mole tracks, poised to make the run to Chicago in just thirty-nine and three-quarter hours, bright yellow snake stretching over desert, plain, and salt flat, climbing hard through mountain passes and curling across redwood trestles, before the low of cattle from the Chicago meat markets competed with the whistle and she finally pulled into Union Station, tired, spent, still the fastest ride on rails.

Pride of Southern Pacific but jointly owned by Union Pacific and Chicago and North Western, the
City of San Francisco
boasted both speed and the most luxurious accommodations of any train in America. In-room radio, telephone service to the sumptuous dining cars or to any connection in the country, once they pulled into a station. Stewardess-nurse, barber shop and hair salon, shower and club car, observation deck, and most of all … privacy.

Top of the line were the drawing room bedrooms, suites with in-room telephones and more space than a Manhattan apartment. Each train car sported the name of a San Francisco district or landmark, from Market Street to Mission Dolores. Miranda noted Jasper’s—the Fisherman’s Wharf—as she walked down the platform toward her own.

No sign of the professor himself.

“Get your gen-u-ine replica of the
City of San Francisco,
folks, only twenty-five cents and makes a wonderful souvenir…”

Hawkers selling miniature trains and SP personnel with toothy smiles lined the sides of the platform, the latter pressing menus and brochures into passenger hands, eager to dispel the aura of bad luck that still clung to the streamliner after last year’s tragic derailment.

Miranda remembered the newspaper coverage last year, dwarfing even Eddy Duchin Variety Week at the Fair.

August 12, 1939, 24 people dead, 121 injured, gleaming metal train cars twisted like a game of kick the can, broken child’s toy hurled across Nevada desert. Nine-hundred-foot drag before five cars tumble in the Humboldt River, another three thrown down an embankment, brakes screeching like the men and women trapped, Southern Pacific’s special streamliner now just crumpled tinfoil, bodies sheared and crushed, blood on polished aluminum. Cries of the still-living answered by grasshoppers and coyotes, watching from the dry, hot foothills, ears pricked and noses moist.

Hearst’s papers screamed sabotage, along with the SP-led investigation, no excessive speed, no fault of the railroad, no, some group of men with tools and a grudge had tampered with the track, covered up the crime with a tumbleweed, engineer Ed Hecox promising to catch up on the schedule and push the train to ninety, not a factor, and by the way … investigation was still ongoing. SP detectives searched for convincing explanations and even more convincing scapegoats, while more union-friendly rags complained bitterly about a cover-up.

“Do the double bedrooms have phones?”

Young black man, carrying both Miranda’s suitcase and cosmetic case, striding ahead through the crowds of women in furs and men in beaver fedoras, the young couple who’d saved up for their honeymoon and the old lady out for one last family trip. He didn’t turn around to answer her.

“No, ma’am, no telephone in any room except them drawing room compartments. You can ask for one to be sent in if you need it, or line up and use the one in the observation car when we stop. You got a radio, though. What car did you say you are at?”

She studied the ticket in her hand. “Bedroom A, Twin Peaks.”

He nodded, dodging a small boy in short pants holding a baseball. “Nice room in front, real quiet. Here’s the car.”

He paused in front of the steps, waiting for a blond woman who was standing in the door and berating another porter, a sixty-year-old Negro with a slow southern drawl.

“Don’t drop it again, you stupid fool. Harvey—Harvey! Call another porter, would you? This nigger’s too old and stupid—he dropped my trunk twice on the way. I swear I don’t know what Southern Pacific is coming to, hiring these apes…”

The old man’s hands were shaking, thick, leathery skin hardened with calluses. His shoulders slumped and he stumbled backward while the woman’s heavy trunk dropped and banged on the cement, rolled but didn’t open.

“Har-vey!”

Miranda took a step forward and put a hand out to steady the older man. The younger porter carrying her baggage was flushing red beneath dark skin. Harvey, two more porters, and a white Southern Pacific official in uniform came scurrying forward, Harvey emerging from the direction of the club car and already smelling like gin.

The Southern Pacific official looked from the blonde in new May Company clothes and too many rhinestones to the potbellied Harvey to the old porter and young porter and finally back to Miranda.

Her hand was still on the porter’s back.

The official was a thin man with wire glasses and a Southern Pacific hat too large for a bony skull. He cleared his throat.

“Isaiah, did you drop this lady’s luggage?”

The older porter’s breathing was shallow and he wobbled backward, muttering something unintelligible. Miranda looked up sharply.