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

faded, she brought her hands from her face to her lap.

“Babe,” Tom said, softly as he could manage, “damn me all you want, I’m not going to stand by and let you swill gin and go cheek-to-cheek with every rube that can raise a quarter.”

“That so?”

“It is.”

“Then I guess you’ll be giving up the band, coming home nights to play Chinese checkers with me.”

“First, how about we talk things over?”

“Nothing to talk about, Tom. I’m me. You’re you. You don’t like living with Milly, you go it on your own. I don’t like what you want for me. So I do things my way.”

“What do I want for you, Florence?”

“You want me to be a wallflower that cooks now and then, and cleans up after herself, anyway. A kid that looks to her big brother for all the answers. About right?”

He could think of no good answer, and she had him doubting his own motives. “Maybe I should call Milly,” he said. “Tell her to come and get you.”

Florence appeared to shudder. She crossed her arms over her breasts. Then she cocked her head and stared while shaping a coquettish smile. “You won’t send me to Milly.”

“You sound mighty sure.”

“I’m sure,” she said. “You love me too much.”

Seven

TOM meant to wake up in darkness, but he miscalculated. The sky was beginning to gray when he hopped onto the streetcar at Wilshire and Vermont.

The car was at least half-full. Aside from a couple up front whom Tom counted as lost souls, probably insomniacs, the riders were laborers. Brown cleaning women, Japanese gardeners, white and Mexican men of the building trades. When Tom was a small boy, morning and evening riders wore ties, suits, and shirts crisp from the cleaners.

He arrived at Echo Park before the sun topped Angelino Heights. The park looked imbedded in a salty mist that so far held back the daylight.

Since lanterns above the temple entrances were on, meaning they burned all night, he couldn’t imagine the killers parking near the tree. Neither would they have parked on Glendale Boulevard with its streetlamps. Which meant they must’ve dragged Frank from the unlit narrow road at the foot of Angelino Heights. That stormy night, anyone who saw would’ve been a resident of one of the cottages low on the hillside, or looking from Angelus Temple.

From the sidewalk of Glendale Boulevard, Tom rounded the temple, peering through glass doors into the foyer, then darting glances he hoped looked innocent at the parsonage windows and balconies. As he began to cross the path that ran between the temple and the Bible school, he encountered a fellow wearing overalls and carrying a lunch pail. He put on a friendly expression. “Morning.”

The fellow made a weary attempt at a smile. He didn’t look much older than Tom, though rimless spectacles, handlebar mustache, and a decided paunch aged him.

“You work for Sister?”

“Yep.”

“Night shift, huh?”

“Custodian, after service till six a.m., provided I get the place spotless by then.”

“Work Sunday nights, do you?”

“Listen, Bub, I don’t catch the six-twenty, I’m liable to fall asleep on the bench. Adiós.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

“Suit yourself.”

Tom kept abreast of the custodian’s long strides, wishing he had read a book, or taken lessons from Leo, on tricks to use when interrogating. “A week ago Monday, during the deluge, did you see a fellow hanging from the big oak?”

Without breaking stride, the man said, “Hanging, you say?”

“By a rope around his neck.”

“That’s a hell of a question.”

“Got an answer?”

“Ask me something doesn’t sound like it came from a guy smoking loco weed, you’ll get your answer.”

“Try this. A week ago Monday, did you see any cops in the park right around dawn?”

“Didn’t see a soul. Then again, I don’t go looking for trouble. And rain like that might please the ducks. But me, I care to go swimming, I go to the beach.”

A streetcar bell clanged. The man gave Tom a steady look. He was either on the square or an accomplished liar. He tipped his flat cap and set out jogging toward Glendale Boulevard.

Tom crossed the street and walked into the park. He hadn’t gone twenty steps toward Angelino Heights when something zinged past the right side of his head, loud enough so it set his ear buzzing. It thunked into the hanging tree.

He dropped to his belly, crawled to a nearby shrub, and peered around the edge. When he spotted something blue halfway up Angelino Heights and moving higher, he bolted from cover and dashed forty yards to the wide trunk of a willow. Since no more shots had sounded, he only stopped for a breath. Then he sprinted out of the park, across the road, and ducked behind a delivery wagon parked at the base of the hill.

A strip of vacant lots zigzagged up the slope. Pepper trees, elms, and a pile of rubbish offered him cover. The higher he climbed, the less his hope of catching the shooter. But on a wide ledge, as he passed the remains of an outhouse, he noticed something through a crack in the wall. An ankle and black boot.

As a fullback he’d learned to cram fear into his belly and not let it out until the whistle blew. So he tested that skill, and rushed around the wall.

A well-freckled boy, about ten years old, with buzzed reddish hair, squatted there, gaping up at him. A small lever-action rifle lay at his side. His hand rested on the stock. Tom kicked the gun away at the same time he lunged and grabbed the collar of the work shirt that must’ve belonged to the kid’s big brother. He lifted the boy to eye level. “Were you shooting at me?”

“Cripes no,” the boy yelped. “I wouldn’t shoot at nobody. Only at rabbits. Maybe a crow now and then.”

Tom used his free hand to point down the hill. “Which of those houses do you live in?”

“Hey, Mister, don’t go snitch on me.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“See, a cop put me up to it. Let me down, I’ll tell you.”

Tom obliged.

The boy said, “I was after a jackrabbit when this big guy, taller than you even, he comes out of nowhere, scares the piss out of me.”

“Uniform?” Tom asked.

“Nope. But he shows me this badge. Then he says, ‘See that fat tree? When I give you the nod, take a shot. You hit it, I let you be. You miss, I’m running you in.’ I say, ‘What the hell you want me to shoot an old tree for?’ He says, ‘To put a fright in a bum who’s been stalking around the temple, giving a headache to Sister.’ I say, ‘Why don’t you go pinch him?’ He says, ‘Shut up, here he comes, now’s your chance.’”

Since Leo had clued him to the danger from cops, Tom bought the story. He wondered if the cop hoped the shot would go astray and rid the city of a problem.

“This tall fella have a squint eye?”

The boy shrugged.

Tom pointed to his chin. “A scar right here?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“He wear a homburg?”

“You got that part right.”

“Here’s our deal,” Tom said. “Either you're going to do me a favor or I’m coming back to find and wallop you before I snitch to your folks, got it?”

The kid nodded.

Tom jotted the Villegas phone number on his note pad, ripped off the sheet and passed it to the kid. He nodded toward the hillside lane. “Go to every house, ask if anybody saw a man hanging from that tree." He pointed. “Would be a week ago Monday. Or if they saw cops in the park around dawn that same day. Would’ve been early morning during the hard rain. Somebody says yes, make sure they call this number, leave a message for Tom Hickey.”

“That your name, Hickey?”

“What of it?”

“Nothing,” the boy muttered. “I’m with you.”

Eight

TOM felt crooked for stealing work hours to run errands that, on top of being personal business, put him behind schedule on his route. He promised himself only to stop for a minute at Emma Gordon's, long enough to say he had missed her all these years and ask if they could meet around suppertime. Or to leave a note to that effect.

Ho Ling had told him where to find her. On East Seventh Street. The neighborhood featured burnt orange lawns, wilting trees, and parched houses, as if a fire only singed while passing through. Tom thought he smelled a dairy, though he didn’t spot any cows.

Emma’s address lay between a truck farm, where cabbage and winter greens and plump tomatoes flourished, and what looked like a junkyard conceived by a mad or whimsical artist. Stacks of tires rose into a pyramid, and several cars stood half-planted with their noses in the air.

Now that the mist had blown away, the hottest day in weeks was upon them. With a cloudless sky, the sun at its zenith, folks walking or tending their gardens moved like sloths. Most of them shaded their eyes.

He spotted Emma on the porch of a place that could’ve been two shacks jammed together to form an ell. Beside the house was the boarded-over, crumbling foundation of a larger structure.

Emma sat with legs parted, elbows on her knees, using a folded section of newspaper to fan her glistening face.

She stared, her mouth crinkled and her eyes full-rounded, as if studying something that puzzled her. The sight of a delivery truck stopping in front of her house didn’t alter her expression. Neither did the strange white man hopping out of the truck and striding toward her. Maybe she couldn’t see well enough to notice details. Or maybe she had seen so much, nothing surprised her anymore.

Tom stopped at the foot of her porch. “Miz Gordon,” he said. “I’m Tom Hickey.”

Now her eyes shut, her mouth fell wide open and something between a whoop and a wheeze issued out of her. She dropped the newspaper, heaved to her feet and clapped. “Lord, this most surely is my Tommy.”

He climbed the two steps, wrapped her in his arms, and held on until she said, “Now boy, don’t you be squeezing the life out of me.”

In her presence, Tom noticed changes in the muscles of his shoulders and neck, their tautness giving way. He felt himself breathing deeper, like folks who climb out of the car during a Sunday drive into the country. Being with Emma felt like coming to a home he had never known but always longed for.

For a half hour or more, Tom listened to stories about how Robert, her late husband, lost his job as a stevedore when the war ended, and how the killer flu the doughboys brought home convinced them Texas was safer. Besides, they had a son down in Paris, who carried on about how the town was pretty as its namesake and friendly to colored folks. But she found it neither pretty nor friendly, and when Robert died, their son moved to Chicago for decent wages, and took her grandbabies with him. Then she chose to come back west, be near her sister and what dear friends hadn’t yet passed.

They talked in the kitchen, while Emma squeezed lemons into a pitcher, hacked chips off the block in the icebox, and added the water and sugar.

Back on the porch, Tom confessed his abduction of Florence from Milly.

Emma said, “Wooee, you some nervy boy.”

“Our mama was acting crazy.”

“Your mama got a troubled soul, Tommy. Yes she does.”

“Say, Miz Gordon, I’ll bet you remember Frank Gaines.”

Her soft face petrified. “Why you ask?”

He wouldn’t make himself use the word lynched. “Did you know Frank got murdered, a week ago Monday?”

Folks as good as Emma shouldn’t bother trying to lie, Tom thought. The way she shook her head, she might’ve been watching a pendulum. Then her eyes shot venom at Tom’s. “Who done it, boy?” she demanded.

Tom shrugged and accepted a portion of disgrace, just for being white. “I’m looking into it.”

“Why you lookin’ in? You police?”

He told her about the broadside, and the cover up. All of which he supposed she already knew. He didn’t mention Leo.

While they let a silent minute pass, Emma rocked sideways. Maybe she was praying. Tom imagined soon she might break into a chorus of supplication in words that sounded like Chinese or Swahili.

He asked, “Want to tell me all you know about Frank?”

“Yes, I surely do.”

From the way she talked, she might not have seen Brother Gaines since the old days on Azusa Street. She portrayed Frank