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

room. She sat with knees together and hands in her lap, the pose Milly used to enforce upon the girl while she yelled motherly threats or lectures.

“Stand up, babe,” Tom groaned.

She was in his arms so soon, he barely got a look at the sequined dress, torn at the hem and waist, exposing most of her belly. He gazed down at a swollen bruise, big as a saucer, on what used to be an exquisite cheek.

Forty-four

SHORTLY after four a.m., while splashing his face at the bathroom sink, Tom decided to follow an impulse to visit Echo Park, now, close to the hour Frank’s body got cut down and stolen away.

He checked on Florence, found her asleep with knees drawn up, a hand covering her cheek. He dressed and left her a note on the kitchen table. “Don’t go to school. Wait for me.”

He jogged the blocks to Wilshire, stopped beneath a street lamp, counted his money and hoped a dollar would get him all the way before daylight. He waved at three cabs before one pulled over.

The cabbie was dark and bald. When Tom directed him to Echo Park, he said, “Which side are you on?”

“You mean Sister, the kidnapping?”

“What else?”

“I’ll pass,” Tom said. “You?”

“Suffrage, that’s the fly in the ointment. You let the gals vote, next thing they got a radio station and go filling empty heads with every whatnot comes to mind. You got a name, bud?

“Tom.”

“You see, Tom, women don’t think in any kind of straight line, but in loops and circles that cover plenty of ground but don’t end up anywhere at all. Am I right?”

“Could be.”

“Thing is, they say something, don’t matter how preposterous, damned if they don’t start believing it. This Sister, that’s why she lies so blasted well. Believes every word of it, she does.” He carried on about a magazine Pastor Robert Shuler put out, and Shuler’s opinion that Sister Aimee was a crook and had been from the beginning, swindling the gullible and pocketing the scratch. “My wife, bless her soul, got hold of the magazine and next day ran down to the courthouse and punched one of Shuler’s sidekicks, right in the snout.”

As he pulled to the curb alongside Echo Park, he said, “Vote, nothing. It’s dangerous enough we let them learn to read. Hey.” He pointed at Angelus Temple. “Suppose she gets to be our governor? Or president. Then what?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

Tom handed over a dollar, no tip, and felt like a scrooge even before the man’s nose wrinkled at him.

As the cab pulled away, he walked out from under a streetlamp and leaned against the trunk of a willow about twenty yards toward the lake from the hanging tree. Dark hadn’t begun to fade. A stormy cloud blotted the moon. Few stars appeared. If a body hung from the oak today, Tom would need to keen his eyes to make it out.

He remained in the darkness, squatted to make himself less visible, and swept his gaze back and forth from Angelino Heights past the Bible school, parsonage, and temple to Glendale Boulevard.

When something white and shadowy moved slowly past the parsonage and into the road, Tom at first doubted he had seen anything but an illusion. Then the shadow became a girl. About Florence’s height, perhaps Florence’s size, though her loose dress kept that secret. She had dark hair and long white arms. She entered the park and sat on bench about thirty yards east of the hanging tree.

The first hint of gray sky appeared as Tom approached the girl. She sat with head bowed and hands on her knees. Not until he drew almost close enough to touch her did she glance his way. She gave a tiny shuddering yip. Her hands made fists beneath her chin.

“Good morning,” he said, in a voice that sounded harsh though he had tried to make it gentle.

“Oh. Yes it is.”

“You like this time of day?”

“Oh, I do. It’s my prayer time.” Her small mouth quivered as if she were searching for more words. Tom guessed she was of the sort who appeased their nerves by talking. While trying to make a kind face, he observed her rosy cheeks and cornflower eyes set off by thick dark lashes. He couldn’t detect a trace of makeup. She looked so pure, he sighed and thought about what Florence might’ve become had he managed to expel Milly from her memory and keep her away from the wolves.

“You pray a lot? Out here?”

“Oh, yes. Every single day.”

Tom felt his heart leap. He hesitated to ask more, for fear of disappointment. He caught a breath. “Every day? Even when it rains?”

She treated him to a melodious laugh. “Sure, I do. I’m from Portland. Besides, I have a parka and an umbrella.”

After he squatted to keep from towering over her, she said, “You look like Jesus.”

“Huh?”

She pointed down where his fingers drew a pattern through the dewy grass. “You remember, the woman taken in adultery. Oh dear,” she gasped, then blushed and turned her face toward the hill.

“Listen, can I ask you something important?”

As she turned his way, her chest heaved with a deep breath. “All right.”

“Two weeks ago Monday, October eleventh. We were having a rainy spell.”

“The rainiest day since Portland?”

“That’s the one. You were here?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Who else was here?”

“Well, two police cars. And a man, rather small, perhaps a negro. Or a very dark Mexican. He was sick. I suppose he was sleeping in the park. They do that. I’m learning Spanish. I’ve spoken to gentlemen who walked all the way from Mexico. Imagine.”

“The police found the sick fellow?”

“Either the police or Joe, I believe.”

“Joe?”

“He works for our blessed Sister, cleaning up and fixing things. He may come outside soon. He usually does.”

“He was with the police?”

“Yes, he talked to them while they carried the sick man to the police car.”

“Anybody else around?”

She squinted and folded her hands at her chin. “No.”

“Did they come talk to you? Joe or the police?”

“They may not have seen me.”

At first, Tom couldn’t believe they would miss a girl in the all-white Bible school uniform, like the nurse outfit Sister commonly preached in. Then he caught on. “What color’s your parka?”

“Dark gray.”

“You’re an angel,” he said.

She gave him a teasing smile. “Thank you, Mister Jesus.”

“Tom."

“Mary Beth.”

After he described the shift custodian he’d questioned a week ago, and she confirmed that was Joe, he said goodbye and hustled through the park, past the lake, and across Glendale Boulevard.

He arrived downtown with the first office workers and salesclerks and strode up Temple to the Examiner fortress, hoping the business operation of the newspaper didn’t keep bankers’ hours.

The front gate handle turned and let him in. But he hadn’t gone many strides across the patio before a yawning guard stood, approached and requested his pass.

“Yeah, it’s right here,” Tom said and groped in one pocket then another while he kept walking, across the fountain and into the hallway, and along the glossy mosaic tile. By the time he reached the photo gallery, the guard had fallen yards behind.

Tom inspected the portraits. As the guard caught up, he laid a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “Look here, chum. No pass, you’re on your way out.”

“Hold on,” Tom growled, which bought him time enough. On the top row of photos hung Carl Calhoun, who looked younger without the handlebar mustache. “Joe the janitor,” Tom muttered, as he fished in his pocket and handed the guard a quarter. “Buy yourself breakfast, amigo.”

Forty-five

“AW . . .” Tom bit his lip to keep the next words from spilling out and offending the ladies around him. He had just remembered leaving his scribbled theories on the coffee table.

At the end of the line, he bounded off the streetcar and ran the blocks to his cottage. He had his keys out before he entered Cactus Court. He unlocked and threw open the door, and leaned against the wall catching his breath. The shorthand notes he had scribbled were still on the sofa, which let him hope Florence hadn’t seen them.

He eased open the door to her room and peeked, marveling at her ability to sleep in after being thrashed and charged with a wicked felony.

But the bed was vacant. He returned to the parlor grumbling about her going to school against his orders. He sat on the sofa beside his notes, and noticed another note on the floor written in Leo’s boxy scrawl. He picked it up and read. “Still no Boles. Previous employer, Chandler shipyard. No evidence anti-union activity. Investigate later. Next stop. Echo Park. Talk to neighbors, use badge to loosen tongues.”

He thought of returning to the park, inviting Leo to join him for a talk with Carl Calhoun, alias Joe the graveyard shift custodian. But Florence came first. He needed to know whether she had read his notes, to check on her wounds and comfort her better than he had last night, and to decide what he could tell her.

Besides, before he settled with Fenton Love, he wanted to get a more thorough account of events at the Top Hat.

He went to the kitchen for a slice of bread and an apple to eat on the way to Hollywood High School. He was reaching into the ice box for butter when a hard rap sounded.

When he opened the door, he met Oz. He stood aside.

“Come on in.”

“No need.” Oz looked timid, hardly his usual state. He kept shifting his weight right to left and back. “Just bringing a message from the boys. Thing is, a Mexican fella got him a hotel in Rosarito Beach, not far past Tijuana, he booked the band for Saturday.”

“Tomorrow."

“Sure did. Fella goes by Manuel. And what he told Rex is, we half as good as folks say, he means to book us Saturdays on and on.”

“Swell,” Tom said. “What’s that mean?”

Oz nodded. “You reading me. Thing is, what the boys got in mind, we all going down there tomorrow, else Rex going to take over for you. For good, is what it means.”

Though Tom had seen the punch coming, it knocked the wind out of him. “Says Rex?”

“What all us say. You got a day, Tom.” He nodded again, backed off the porch and turned up the walkway.

Tom stood a minute, groping for an idea that might keep him from losing his dream, before he stepped off the porch and shuffled up the walkway. Instead of dodging the cholla, he swung his leg back and kicked the villain, which flew past one cottage and landed beside Señor Villegas’ porch.

Tom followed the cholla and strode past it to his landlord’s door. When Villegas appeared, Tom asked to use the telephone.

Rex didn’t answer until after a dozen rings. Then he said, “What kind of degenerate calls a guy in the middle of the night?”

“The degenerate whose band you’re about to snatch.”

“Hey, somebody told you I want it, he’s all wet. I want to play, Tom, that’s all. Somebody’s got to lead. It’s me, so be it.”

“Who’s this Manuel?”

“Tijuana big shot. Got wind of us from some nephew called Pablo. What’s got the boys jumping, this hotel works out, we don’t only get Saturdays, we get Fridays at Manuel’s cousin’s speakeasy down on Balboa Island. You hear what I’m saying. Friday Balboa. Sleep it off, motor on down the coast to a posh hotel in the land of sultry señoritas. Sunday, motor on back just in time to rest up for the grind. What could beat that, short of the Coconut Grove?”

Tom swallowed hard. “Do it.”

“Huh?”

“It’s all yours.”

“Think it over, Tom.”

“I just did. I’ve got a sister.”

“Boy,” Rex said, “that’s a fact. I’d call her a sister and a half.”

Tom set the telephone receiver in its cradle.

He wanted to go find Pablo, this minute. Shake the truth out of the pretty boy. Find out whether Manuel from Rosarito was on the level, or just another stooge in Hearst’s employ. Decide if the Rosarito booking was no more than a ploy to lure Tom away.

But Florence still came first, after he used the Villegas telephone to set up a meet with Socrates. Maybe the Hearst, Milly, and Carl Calhoun connections would convince the man to stall the citizens and their tommy-gunners.

The directory was on the marble table beside the phone. Tom found and dialed the number of Sugar Hill barber shop.

The barber answered.

“Tom Hickey here. I’m on my way, need to