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

bookstores, and in the Archives lobby. He stood in front of the counter savoring while he asked himself how someone in the know would begin a search for death certificates, marriage licenses, deeds, or whatever might give him something about Frank Gaines.

He glanced at the counter and noticed the clerk staring. A redhead with a china white face, arms adorned with a few delicate and well-placed freckles, and a smile that implied she either knew the way to paradise or knew she was the way to paradise.

She said, “I’m here to help, and I’m plenty good at it.”

Tom wondered how much longer he would need to renounce women for the sake of Florence and music.

“What’ll it be?” she asked.

“For starters, how about telling me what I’m able to see.”

“Depends.” She allowed a long moment, probably in case he cared to imagine what her cooperation might depend upon. “What are you? Police? Lawyer? Or just some good looking stiff passing the time?”

Tom knew he didn’t lie well. Besides, he hadn’t thought of a story any better than the truth. “A pal of mine got murdered.”

“Sorry.” She lowered her eyes. “That’s a tough one.”

“Yes ma'am.”

She leaned forward, made her silky voice softer, and beckoned him with a red tipped finger. “Tell me more.”

Tom rested his elbows on the counter. “If I do, you’ll help me out?”

She looked both ways and over his shoulder. Then she whispered, “See, some of us are civil servants, play by the rules. The rest of us, it’s only an act.”

“Lucky for me.”

“Righteo.”

Tom saw no need to mention the lynching or cover-up. “The morning of Monday, October fifteenth, Franklin Gaines was found dead in Echo Park. Anything I can turn up might help.” She reached under the counter for an “Out to Lunch” placard and placed it on the counter. “Follow me, comrade.”

While Tom followed, he commanded his eyes to avoid her swaying hips. His eyes wouldn’t obey. Her sunny yellow skirt was cotton yet it clung to every wondrous swell, contraction, and ripple.

The archives were windowless. The overhead bulbs gave off no more light than candles would. The hallway was hardly wider than his shoulders, the rooms off it small and crowded with dusty shelves and file cabinets. Tom sneezed. The redhead blessed him.

“If I came in here without a guide,” he said, “I might never find my way out.”

“It’s a puzzle. They might not find us for days.” She gave him a wink. “How would you like that?”

Tom felt a fever rising. “You’d consider a rain check?”

“Well, I like a guy sticks to business. You talk to his neighbors yet?”

“I don’t know where he lived.”

She entered a room and peered down a row of files, pulled one open, rooted through it. “Doesn’t own any real property. He married?”

“Could be. We lost touch some time ago.”

He followed her back to the hall and two rooms deeper into the labyrinth. Again she peered and rooted then turned and shook her head. “Never married, not in Los Angeles anyway. When’d you say he turned up dead?”

“Monday, ten days ago.”

“He could’ve got filed by now.” She led him down the hall to a room with a hand-lettered sign above the doorway: “The Dead.” Like a story a mousy girl who tailed him around USC gave him to read. “Anybody named Colleen work here?”

“Nope,” she looked up at him. "Why?"

"I thought she might've hung that sign." He pointed.

"Maybe she snuck in." She turned back to the file drawer and put her fingers to work while Tom stood admiring the nape of her neck below the bobbed hair.

“He’s probably in transit,” she said. “I’ll do some snooping. You got a telephone.”

The winsome smile made him wish he had attended to Florence’s pleading and leased a telephone. “You can call Fairfax nineteen-seventy-two, ask for Leo. He’ll know where to find me.”

“Fairfax nineteen-seventy-two. Got it.” She batted her eyes and swished past him into the hall.

In the lobby, a half dozen folks waited in line at her counter. Tom thanked her. They shook hands warmly and traded names. She was Madeline. She winked goodbye.

“Madeline,” Tom said, “you're a gem of a public servant."

“Why thank you, Tom.” Her emerald eyes twinkled. “A girl likes to feel appreciated.”

Tom walked outside with spirits boosted, though he had no right to, as he’d learned nothing. Then he glanced across Temple Street.

A couple yards from the Broadway corner, a man leaned against the construction barricade, gazing over the other pedestrians. Though the man wore his homburg pulled low, Tom recognized the temple usher, the driver of a tan Nash. Maybe the guy who bullied the kid into shooting.

Tom broke into a sprint that concluded after he saw the bus that was slowing to park between him and the usher. He threw head and shoulders back, and used a double straight-arm to keep from plowing into the vehicle, which belonged to the police.

The driver bawled him out. Tom apologized. By then, the usher was gone.

Twelve

AFTER parking his meat truck in the Alamo lot and swabbing out the icebox, Tom hustled through the butcher shop. He was on his way to the gents’ until Bud Gallagher called, “Tom,” and waved him over.

Usually, when they met in the shop, Gallagher tossed him a new gag line or a hunk of entrails Tom needed to catch or suffer the consequences. Today Bud wore a face as grim as his bloody apron.

“Make it quick,” Tom said. “I’ve got to iron my shoelaces.”

“Get on with it then, and meet me out back.”

Tom used the gents’, scrubbed away the day’s grit and gore, then weaved around the butcher counters, dodging bloody splatters and hoping Bud would offer a clue or tip about the investigation. He supposed the boss had consulted Gallagher about his pursuit of the murderer.

Bud was waiting beside his Chevrolet coupe parked against the high chain fence beyond which a lineup of trucks crept toward the produce market. He said, “I hear you’re playing Sherlock.” He sat on the running board.

Tom nodded and joined him. The car tipped their way, as they were both big men. They sat close, to hear over the trucks’ roars and rattles.

“Thing is,” Bud said, “you’re getting a swelled head if you think you’re such a scrapper you can take on what the police aren’t willing to.”

Tom, impatient with getting reminded how incapable he was, allowed his voice a note of disrespect. “What would you have me do, Bud?”

“For one, ask yourself what are the chances your old pal didn’t have it coming.”

Tom’s scowl changed Gallagher’s tune. “Okay, say he didn’t have it coming. Say you get a line on the killer. Now what? You mean to call in the police, the same folks who already didn’t give a damn?”

Tom shook his head, wishing he believed the police actually didn’t give a damn. By now, he believed some of them were in on the coverup and possibly the murder.

“Then what?” Bud demanded. “You planning to fix him on your own?”

Tom said, “I find him, I’ll come ask your opinion. Meantime, I’m looking for answers, not criticism.”

Gallagher stood and loomed like the Phantom of the Opera in a movie Florence insisted her brother come to the Egyptian for. “I got one more piece of criticism. When a friend’s looking out for you, you don’t spit in his eye. Now get up off my car.” Tom obliged.

“Question?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“If I do, it’s not for you to know.”

Gallagher hopped into his Chevrolet, fired it up and drove off. Tom stood and watched, ruefully deciding if he couldn’t trust Gallagher, Mister Woods, or Leo, he would make a point of trusting nobody.

As he rounded the building toward the vendors and Japanese chatter on San Julian Street, he asked himself whether Woods and Bud were holding back answers, or if a guy with a lively imagination like his made a bum investigator.

 

BY the time Florence dressed then changed at her brother’s insistence and primped until her hair not only featured a perfect flip just above her shoulders but also had gotten even wavier than Tom’s, they missed the six p.m. streetcar.

Ten minutes later, the next one arrived. They crammed themselves on board. Then Florence said, “Tommy, what do you think Milly will do? About us showing up at her church, I mean.”

“They’ve got about twenty of these services a week. Odds of her being there tonight are slender.”

“Odds of her finding out we came are damned good.”

A woman with a prim and doughy face gave Florence a “shame on you” look. Florence leaned her way and opened her mouth. Tom cupped his hand over it.

They reached the Temple in time to get seated in the second balcony. The moment they sat, Florence began to squirm. Tom wondered if, no matter that she could sit entranced through a Sister Aimee radio broadcast, actual churchgoing conjured more visions of Milly than his sister could abide.

Tonight featured a choir of forty or so in scarlet robes, and a full orchestra of whose expertise Tom heartily approved. As the orchestra struck up the opening phrase of the third piece, Tom caught the melody right away.

It wasn’t a number he expected out of Sister Aimee. But she came sweeping down the ramp in a dark blue caped uniform. She wore a Civil War cap and carried a Union flag on a short pole. She waved it above her while she took the solo on “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Tom knew most of the words, but a verse he didn’t recall both tripped and intrigued him.

“I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel.

As you deal with my conviverous soul with you my grace shall deal.’

Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel.’

His truth is marching on.”

Tom was a reader who possessed a well-stocked vocabulary, but it didn’t include “conviverous.” He reached for the pocket note pad and pen he carried since pretending to be an investigator. As he finished jotting the word, Florence leaned over and whispered she needed to powder her nose.

He let her go.

Sister Aimee claimed she had recently prayed for a revived spirit and been answered by an astonishing vision of the coming rapture and of the heavenly choir and orchestra of angels descending to accompany the saints in their journey home.

Tom got distracted watching for Florence to return. Then he heard the preacher exclaim, “The Lord put His hand to His mouth and gave a shout, and every angel struck his harp of gold and sounded upon the silver trumpets. For years, artists have sought the lost chord. But, oh, surely never was a chord of such wondrous, melodious beauty as this.”

Tom began to fret and think he should’ve followed Florence and waited outside the powder room. He scanned the aisles on the ground floor, then decided to go find the wayward girl before she enchanted some yokel having a smoke out front. He imagined her persuading the fellow salvation could wait until his billfold got thinner, and meanwhile, they should go out dancing.

He tiptoed and pardoned his way to the aisle, found his way to the side-by-side lavatories, and waited a few minutes before a gal dressed as if for a barn dance approached. He requested, if she found a blonde wearing beige and a cocked sailor cap in the ladies’ room, tell her to make it snappy. Then he waited until the gal came out and reported no Florence.

Outside, all he encountered were latecomers and a few lost souls peeping and listening through the open doorways.

Soon the congregation began to file out. Tom wandered from one exit to the next. When he saw a shiny outfit, the color Florence had settled on after her big brother nixed the slinkier purple one, he fixed on it. The dish inside the outfit wasn’t Florence. But she held his attention long enough so that when he turned and commenced wandering, he nearly stepped on the boots of the bouncer.

The man squinted his eye under its swollen brow. He began to gnaw on something.

“Well now,” Tom said, “shall we talk here or go across the street?

The bouncer spoke from the side of his mouth, without wasting breath, like a ventriloquist working his dummy. “What’s to talk about?”

“How about why you tailed me in a Nash, loitered across the street from the Hall of Records and beat it when I spotted you, and why you bluffed a kid into firing a shot my way. Or we could skip all that and go