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

Adam, or monkeys. The question is, what’re we going to do about it.”

“So, we ought to do what?”

“That’s a tough one. Like I said before, give me a day or two.”

They didn’t need to ride the streetcar home. When they docked the rowboat, Leo came around the line and met them. “Milly’s staying put.”

“You’ve seen her?”

“Found a place uphill from her duplex. It gave me a view right into her back yard. Not an hour ago, she was puttering in her garden.”

As they strolled around the lake toward Leo’s car, a Mexican boy came running their way. He ran up to Tom and handed him a small manila envelope.

“What’s this?” Tom said.

The boy gave a look as if he’d encountered a nitwit. “Is a letter.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“A lady. Gave me a quarter.”

“You see her?”

The boy looked all around. “No, she gone.”

“What’d she look like?”

“Not so good.”

Could be Emma Shaefer, Tom thought as he lifted the flap of the envelope.

The boy said, “Don’ you give me another quarter?”

Since turning over a quarter would’ve left the boy richer than Tom, he said, “Scram.”

The letter was written on stationery cadged from the Knickerbocker. “Your mother will come to the tar pits tomorrow at 7 a.m. She expects to see you there, alone.” No name, but he knew the handwriting all too well.

Fifty-eight

TOM wished he could count the times he had gotten visited by nightmares about the tar pits. He’d gone under the black goo so many times, though he couldn’t remember so much as actually sticking a toe in the crud, he could feel the sensation more clearly than walking in rain or a dip in the ocean.

Florence warned him not to go and Leo backed her. He didn’t tell them he meant to learn whether Milly killed their father, no matter what method the interrogation required. He only persuaded them by promising he would watch from a distance, make sure Milly hadn’t brought a gang of thugs to pitch him over a low fence into one of the pools with the bones of saber tooth tigers.

He broke the promise. Whatever equipped him to play fullback also refused to let him shy from walking straight into the park and around the pools. He watched his periphery and listened for footfalls behind his back. He circled every pool at least twice, and kept watch on every visitor, even couples with children. He stayed until 8:30 a.m., watching and wondering how many human bones might be in there with the tigers and mastodons.

He only left then because he had deciphered what the note from Milly meant. The message came clear: She was still able to take his life at will, and she always would be.

A half hour later, he stood in line in the Hall of Records archives. One hand held his hat. In the other was an IOU he’d jotted for dinner and dancing at the Casa del Mar.

Until he reached the front of the line, Madeline didn’t let on she saw him. Then she said, “Aw, you’re the fellow called about some deeds?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Follow me, please.”

Once she’d got him alone in the labyrinth, she stayed beyond arm’s length. “What do you need, Tom?”

“Nothing. I mean, company.”

“Uh huh.”

“I mean your company.”

“That so?”

He handed her the IOU. She smiled and shook her head, which made her wavy hair bounce. “Casa del Mar is a pricey joint. Think you can pay up before I grow old?”

“Every morning I’ll meet the newsboy, scour the help wanted page.”

“You do that.”

“Meantime, one of these evenings, how about we harmonize on a few tunes.”

She allowed a pensive moment. “You like strings?”

“Do I ever?”

“I know a couple guys who swing on guitar and fiddle like Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang.”

“Tell you what,” Tom said. “How about we work the kinks out of our act before we call in the strings?”

She gave him a soft, pretty laugh. “I know what you’re up to. Listen, Tom. If you get hungry, come by my place. Bring Florence, if she’s hungry too.”

He was hoping she might give him a peck on the cheek as she passed. She didn’t.

All the way home, on top of his other concerns, he felt like a charity case. So he searched the cottage for something to sell other than his clarinet. He thought of Florence’s radio then felt like a bandit for even considering.

He brought out the Selmar clarinet, for which he had spent almost two years saving his pennies and trading up. He played “St. Louis Blues” and “Crazy Blues,” then packed the instrument into its case. When he visited Madeline, he would play his bamboo flute.

He was on his way out of the court when Leo’s Packard pulled to the curb. He leaned out the passenger window. “What’d Milly have to say?”

“She didn’t show?”

“Hmmm. What do you make of that?”

One of these days, Tom would explain. Now he said, “What do you make of it?”

“Well, here’s a clue. This morning, no sign of her. So I went to the door. She didn’t bother to lock up. I spent a half hour scouring the place, not counting the times I ducked outside to get out of range of those smelly flowers. I can tell you the closet and dressers are empty. So I asked around. Neighbors saw a couple colored fellows sizing up the neighborhood, dressed in flashy suits. You say she didn’t show at the pits, I’m betting, sometime during the dark of night, either she went for a ride with the coloreds, or she headed for parts unknown. Where are you going with the licorice stick?”

If Tom could’ve thought of a reasonable lie, he would have used it. Nothing came. “Pawn shop.”

“The devil you are.” Leo reached for his wallet, emptied it, and tried to hand Tom a stack of ones and fives.

“Nope.”

Leo said, “Thing is, I want a clarinet, I’m offering more than some pawnbroker will, and I’m a whole lot more likely to let you borrow it, if you promise to treat it right and stop by once a week to give me lessons.”

Tom hated taking the money. But he had a sister, probably as hungry as he was. He handed over the case, pocketed the bills, and double-timed to Abuelito’s. He bought a whole chicken, a heap of vegetables, bread, butter, a sack of rice, and a tin of strawberry jam. He was cooking when Florence came home.

She sniffed, dashed into the kitchen, gave him a wild embrace and chanted. “Yum, yum, yum.”

When she asked what occurred at the tar pits, he said, “Milly didn’t show,” but left out his conclusion.

Half way through dinner, she said, “Say, I haven’t eaten this well since you stuck your nose between me and Pablo.”

“Hunger keeps you trim and fit,” Tom said. Then he passed along Leo’s news about Milly.

Her eyes hooded. She made fists then let go and shoved her plate aside. “Tommy, do you think those flashy negros killed her?"

“I prefer to think they scared her away. Far away.”

“Then are we going to track her down?”

“Suppose we do. And suppose we catch her. Listen, yesterday you asked, what do we do about this evil blood of ours.”

“And you didn’t say.”

“Well, the way I see it, some folks stake everything on their dreams. When they don’t come true, they go looking for answers why. Sometimes the answers are true, sometimes they’re lies or just screwy. You find the wrong answer or none at all, it’s tough to keep from getting bitter.

“See, bitter people can’t keep from hating. When you hate enough, killing comes easy.”

“What’ll we do?” Florence asked. “Don’t dream?”

“Dreaming’s okay. Some kinds. Only, while we’re out chasing our dreams, suppose we keep our eyes and ears open, look for what’s beautiful. Sights, sounds, people. And when we find them, suppose we remind ourselves to be thankful just because they’re around. I’m betting, as long as we keep ourselves thankful, we won’t be killers.”

“Milly loves beautiful things like flowers.”

Tom had to grope for an answer, but soon enough one came, with the warm feeling of truth. “Only if she grows them herself,” he said. “If she doesn’t have to thank anybody.”

Fifty-nine

NOVEMBER 2, 1926, was the first election in which Tom could vote. That morning, he recalled Boss Parrot saying, “What the people believe doesn’t matter. What does matter, is how they vote.” He thought he would sooner pass up voting than vote wrong. Meaning he needed advice from someone who studied the issues. The only trustworthy advisor who came to mind was in jail until after the election.

While he leafed through the Forum copies he’d borrowed from the library, he remembered one he hadn’t chosen. A voter’s guide.

An hour later, in the library, he discovered more than he sought. A handwritten draft of a Forum from the day Socrates got jailed. Tom imagined the sly publisher deposited such a draft in the library every time he wrote one. He knew if he tried to expose the wrong stuff, the wrong people would hear, and act.

October 28, 1926

For the people:

This reporter offers apologies for his belated word on the election of Tuesday next. Some truths which in retrospect appear obvious, prior to the fact may elude even the diligent.

May of this year, the people voted to fund a new railroad depot on the Plaza, which, as was revealed in the August 6, 1926 Forum, will further enrich Mister Harry Chandler and his California Club brethren, due to their ownership of surrounding properties.

Better we had chosen to side with progressives' customary enemy, the Southern Pacific railroad, and relegate the depot to renovation in its current site. From that location, the railroads, electric and otherwise, could establish new lines, below ground, surface and elevated, to suburbs and outlying cities, through rights of way they hold.

New lines from the Plaza site will prove far too costly, as the elite will set the price. Clearly gross economics, also known as greed, has ceded the future of our city to drillers and refiners of oil; manufacturers of automobiles; and developers of tracts in areas to be chosen by city planners whom all concede are pawns of said oilmen, manufacturers, and developers. At the head of whom stands Harry Chandler.

Once again, we the people have been swindled. Need I argue that all of us who toil with muscle or mind to feed, clothe, and house our families, are better served by trains than by automobiles we can only afford by denying ourselves moments of leisure and thereby denying our children the care and attention upon which they thrive.

Although the future appears set in asphalt, this reporter will lodge his protest by casting a no vote on each of the several propositions meant to fund new roadways or alleviate traffic congestion.

Until public transportation to all our citizens is assured, he will so vote and urge his readers to follow suit.

 

Tom voted accordingly.

Sixty

TOM and Florence arrived an hour early for the Angelus Temple service. As they entered the crowd and stood attempting to discern where the line began, Tom felt a tug on his arm. For an instant, he imagined the ghost of Fenton Love. Then he heard the soft yet stern voice of Emma Shaffer.

“Sister requests a moment with you. Both of you.”

They followed the woman, who parted the crowd and led them past the reporters and swarthy fellows standing guard, into the parsonage and up the winding stairs to the sitting room.

Sister Aimee, already dressed for the performance, rose off her settee and reached her arms out wide. She embraced them both at once.

“How are you faring?” she asked.

“Okay,” Tom said.

Florence, as shy as he had ever witnessed, only cracked a demure smile and nodded.

“Sit, please.” Sister Aimee returned to her settee.

When the Hickeys were seated across from her, she said, “You two have faced trials most of us couldn’t imagine and prevailed. I’m awed and grateful.”

Florence said, “Tommy’s the best.”

“You know about Milly?” Tom asked.

“I do.”

“Want to tell us how you found out?”

“I’d rather not,” Sister said. “I do have something to offer that may assist in putting all this horror behind you. It’s this:

“Fenton Love adored your mother. Before she chose Mister Boles, and perhaps afterward. Your mother is a remarkable woman. Troubled, yes. Insane perhaps. But her power to captivate and persuade is rare. Certainly her beauty plays a part.” She paused for a deeper study of Florence, who blushed yet didn’t avert