The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles by Ken Kuhlken (speld decodable readers TXT) 📖

he probably saved your life. Who were those monkeys, anyway?”

“Beats me,” Tom mumbled.

“No bushwah,” she said. “Don’t make me nag it out of you.”

“Give me a chance to think.”

Pablo sped through Beverly Hills on Wilshire, Tom knew because he glimpsed the mosque-like dome of the new cinema. Florence's fellow, had Tom been an objective observer, would’ve passed any gentleman test. He obeyed Tom’s command to forget hospitals and doctors and just take him home. He spoke softly, called Tom “Sir.” He helped Tom up the path, around the cholla, into the cottage, and all the way to his bed, following Florence’s directions. Then he wished Tom and his sister well, and without so much as inviting her to step outside for a smooch, said goodbye and made a swift exit.

“Who is that guy?” Tom asked.

“An oil man. He’s got plenty of shares in few gushers out by Long Beach.”

“Don’t they all.”

“Sure, only Pablo’s got the automobile to prove it.”

She peeled off Tom’s bloody shirt and trousers, then ran for a bowl of soapy water. She soaked and patted his wounds and used her sharp nails to pluck grains of sand from them. Though he ordered her to quit fussing, she ran to the Villegas’ cottage, returned with a bottle of Mercurochrome, blotched him with it, and shushed him whenever he bothered to complain.

Once she desisted and tucked him in, Tom said, “I don’t like your Pablo knowing where we live.”

“Crying out loud, Tommy,” she said, “look on the sunny side. Don’t you think it was worth getting whipped to take a ride in a Rolls Silver Ghost?”

“I didn’t get whipped.”

“You look whipped to me.”

“Whipped is when you lose a fight. I just got started.”

“Got started?”

“Round one,” he mumbled while massaging his jaw.

“If I go borrow a Bible, are you willing to swear you don’t know why they came and jumped you?”

“Go get it,” he said.

“You got some shady business on the side? Say pedaling Mary Jane to the nightclub crowd? Or how about the murder you’re helping Leo on? You bumped off some deserving creep? That it?”

“Thanks for babying me, kiddo,” Tom said.

She sat on the bed, used the washcloth to daub an ooze of blood from his brow. Then she picked up his hand and kissed the palm. “Tommy?”

“Yeah?”

“One of those guys that went running off. I think I saw him last night, taking in the Sister Aimee show.”

 

Sixteen

NEXT morning on the streetcar, Tom eased the pains by telling himself he’d gotten at least this bruised and aching from the 1924 USC vs. Stanford game. But the walk from the Wilshire stop to Leo’s convinced him football was a comparatively gentle sport. The walk sapped his last trickle of power. Instead of staggering to the door, he lowered himself onto the steps. He reached for a fallen pine cone, tossed it over his shoulder at the door, then slumped and waited.

Leo came out while straightening his trousers. Shirtless except for his union suit, he joined Tom on the steps.

Tom glanced over. “Who looks worse, you or me?”

“You.”

“Your eyes are worse. At least I got some sleep.”

“How’s a guy supposed to sleep when he’s worried about a pal who’s in way over his head?”

“I presume you mean me.”

“Who did it?”

“Did what?”

“Took you down to the beach and stomped on you.”

“I intend to find out. How about I start with you telling me who got word to you?”

“A cop who rats on his sources isn’t worth much.”

“Yeah, sure. And this source didn’t say who the tough guys are, or who they belong to?”

“Coffee?”

“If you lace it with something besides sugar.”

Tom rubbed various parts, avoided others, wondered how deep the deepest of his bruises went, and if some miracle had kept bones from breaking. He imagined numerous bones had cracked and would splinter with his next exertion.

Leo returned and handed him a tall mug. He sipped, then gulped, and sighed with the heat coursing through him. “It’s not gin.”

“Canadian whiskey,” Leo said.

“A bribe, or something you boys confiscated?”

Leo ignored the crack. “Ready to give up?”

“I don’t give up.”

“You ever read about the gold rush?”

Tom glared. “What?”

“Desperado, Joaquin Murieta. Heard of him?”

“So what if I have?”

“The guy that took him down, hacked off his head, pickled it, sold it for a side show. A bounty hunter named Harry Love. Heard of him?”

“Has this saga got a moral?”

“A detective I know says he’s Harry’s great grandson. Tall fellow, squints, wears a homburg, drives a Nash.”

“Whew,” Tom said, and clutched the step beside him while some dizziness passed. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Name’s Fenton Love.”

“Chief Davis put him onto me?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“What I can tell you, Fenton’s mean.” Leo grimaced then scowled, as if a he’d gotten hit in a sore spot. He turned away, plodded to the kitchen, and returned with a refilled mug. “Suppose they get to Florence?”

A charge of fury surged up from Tom’s belly and radiated all through him. He pushed to his feet, paced up the walkway to the sidewalk and back, then stopped and leaned over Leo.

“Pass the word, to Fenton Love and who all else needs to hear, anybody does my sister wrong, they’re going to need to kill me. So they might as well skip over Florence and get on with it.”

While Leo watched Tom, he fished a pack of Lucky Strikes and matches out of his pocket, tapped a cigarette out of the pack, and lit up. “Wouldn’t stop Fenton.”

“So,” Tom said, trying not to snarl, “looks to me like you’re going to have to choose one team or the other.”

“And do what?”

“Talk,” Tom snapped. “You know plenty. You sent Vi home to mama. Something’s eating you, making you sit up all night. I say it’s the lynching.”

“Then let me set you straight,” Leo said. “I don’t know a damned thing about any lynching or any cover up, but I’ve got ideas. That’s all. And I didn’t send Vi anywhere. She left to make a point. You want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“She doesn’t like me drinking.”

“And why the drinking?”

“Because I’m a cop. Cops do things nobody ought to have to. Now, I came as clean as I’m going to. You tell me, what is it about this Frank Gaines that makes him worth dying over?”

In Tom’s condition, thinking didn’t come easy, though finishing his coffee helped. “Suppose some Jew hater knocked you off. I should leave it to the law?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it, when they’ve got the weapons and jails and all?”

“Sure, and they drop the ball, or hand off to the opposing team, then what? See, when a kid’s got no father, and some fellow steps in and treats him like he counts, the kid owes that fellow a debt of gratitude deeper than he’d owe his own father.”

“The kid owes nothing,” Leo said. “If the fellow did it to get paid back, he’s a bum.”

“Even so, he did it. And he didn’t owe the kid a damned thing.”

“Tom, suppose you follow this murder into hell and come out alive and you know beyond a doubt which creep or mob of them lynched Frank Gaines. You aim to kill him? Or them?”

Tom said, “What would you do?”

The way Leo crushed his half-smoked Lucky on the step, he could’ve been declaring war. “If I could answer a question like that, maybe I wouldn’t be drinking.”

“Huh? I don’t make the connection.”

“So forget it,” Leo said as he turned toward the bedrooms.

 

Seventeen

LEO drove Tom to Alamo Meat, where he used the office telephone and promised some of today's customers to deliver tomorrow. Or, if they didn’t open Sundays, then before eight a.m. on Monday. The arrangements freed time he meant to use hunting down the broadside publisher.

To avoid butchers’ questions about his looks, he exited through the Alamo facade in front and rounded the building to his truck. All morning, he drove, lugged meat, and endured the repeated indignity of lying about the welts, scabbing cuts, and bruises, most of which Florence had painted with Mercurochrome.

Back at Alamo Meat, he rounded the building, avoided the butchers, and escaped unseen by anyone except Ruby the bookkeeper. She only gasped.

Crossing Eleventh, while he dodged a truck from the Imperial Valley, one from the San Joaquin missed by inches sending him to oblivion, perdition, or paradise.

He took the red line down Central to Jefferson, all the way summoning the willpower, football trained, to replace the smidgen of strength he had possessed before he had spent it on the meat route. But his first step off the streetcar proved the summons had failed. His knee buckled and landed him in the gutter. He climbed to the sidewalk and limped past a tobacco shop, a second-hand store, and a vendor of oranges and shoelaces to the address on the note Oz had given him.

Sugar Hill Barber Shop was a three-chair establishment that still featured the mahogany bar and swivel stools from its days as a saloon. Before Tom crossed the threshold, a grinning barber cheered, “Sweet Lord, you going let me get my hands on that wavy yellow hair?”

“Depends,” Tom said.

The barber’s grin vanished. “Oh it do?”

“Depends if you’re going to send a word to Socrates.”

The barber’s supple face went cold and hawkish as if Tom had come to sell him scissors that never dulled, or a miracle tonic.

Tom said, “I want to give him a story.”

After a minute of studying as though he could read minds, the barber turned to the bar and called, “Get on out here, rascal.” A boy crept from behind the bar, his hands full of marbles. “Scooter,” the barber said, “you go fetch Socrates.”

“Where he at?”

“Just you find him. The man going give you a nickel.”

The boy crammed marbles into his pockets and approached Tom, palm up. Tom gave him a dime. The boy ran out.

“Sit down, young man,” the barber said. “I can make you look like Barrymore. Shave too?”

“I’ve got my own razor.”

“Swell by me. Save me working round all that misery. What, you go off and fight a war?"

Tom nodded. The barber chuckled and covered him in a sheet. Even before the first snip, spectators appeared. They formed a crowd in the doorway and watched as if they suspected the barber might cut more than just hair. Tom wondered how many of them knew about Frank Gaines.

The boy came in and returned to his lair behind the bar. Tom watched a long-necked fellow who joined the rear of the crowd. His skin was dark and rough, nappy hair parted in the middle, which made ridges along both sides. He wore rimless glasses and a suit coat over a lacy shirt.

The barber held out a mirror for Tom’s approval. When Tom had dismounted from the chair, given the barber a quarter, and gone to perch on a bar stool, the long-necked fellow came and joined him.

“I don’t pay for stories,” the man said. His voice, wistful and unhurried, reminded Tom of a balladeer’s.

“Fair enough. My story isn’t worth a thing, except to me. It started on Azusa Street, almost twenty years ago. Care to hear it, Socrates?”

The publisher rested both arms on the bar behind him, ready to listen, as was the barber, leaning on the arm of the nearest chair.

The publisher kept a stoic expression while Tom tried to recall to life the mission and the little boy who witnessed the saints heave, thrash, and make eerie harmonies out of howls, pleas, and incantations in a bedlam of sounds they called tongues.

Tom’s story gave a clear message. While the saints considered Christ their savior, his personal savior was Frank Gaines.

The publisher held up a hand. “Brother, you want justice for Frank. That what it is?”

Tom nodded. “But it’s taking too long to get to first base. One problem, I don’t believe your story about the gentleman out for a stroll. That particular morning, the newsboys called it a deluge.”

Socrates smiled. The telephone on the wall gave a startling clang, which called the barber away from his post.

“Who brought you the story?” Tom asked.

“I’ll stand on what I wrote.”

“Give me something else then. An amigo of Frank’s, his family, where he worked, went to church, drank, or whatever he did.”

The publisher reached into his coat for a steno pad. He scribbled, tore off a sheet, folded it into fourths, and handed it over. “Go to