Death Was the Other Woman Page 12

  “I keep hearing that,” I said. “But it still doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  Dex kinda stretched, as though he were weighing his words before he spoke. “Do you know who Chummy McGee is?” he asked. I shook my head, and Dex continued. “Well, Chummy pretty much has the L.A. waterfront sewn up.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “Well, the gambling ships off Santa Monica, for starters. You know the ones? Chummy’s outfit is responsible for those.”

  “You mean he owns them?”

  “More like he owns the action on them—the gambling action. At least he owns a piece of it. The piece that counts. Then the booze that gets brought in by sea—”

  “I guess that would be most of the booze in L.A.”

  Dex nodded. “Chummy again. The club in Santa Monica— you know the one—on Front Street on the Boardwalk?”

  “Sure I do. Club Casa Del Mar?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Chummy’s turf entirely. A lot of gambling, and whispers of white slaving too.”

  I could feel my eyes get wide. “Really? I thought it was a private club.”

  “Well, there’s that. But there’s more there too. But it’s whispers, you know. No one really talks about stuff like that. Not out loud anyway.”

  “This Chummy sounds like a pretty powerful guy. I guess that means his right-hand man would have been pretty important too.”

  Dex winked at me. “Now you’re getting the picture.”

  “So I guess what you’re really telling me is that Brucie Jergens’s husband probably didn’t die of natural causes.”

  “I always said you were a quick study, kiddo. But yeah, I’d guess he didn’t die of a heart attack.”

  I stopped and thought for a minute. Something was beginning to make sense. What had she said? I’m Ned Jergens’s widow. Money’s nothin’ to me. It wouldn’t be, either. From that Dex was saying, it was a fairly safe bet that Ned had died while on the job. If Chummy McGee was half the mobster Dex was describing, he’d make sure Ned’s widow was taken care of.

  On the other hand, Mustard had indicated that Brucie was in some sort of trouble. What could that have meant? And then it occurred to me. “She needed a place to hide out,” I said aloud. “That’s what Mustard meant. He was trying to hide her from something. From someone. That’s why he wanted her at my place; he figured she’d be safe there.”

  “I dunno, Kitty. That sounds a bit farfetched to me. I mean, if he was trying to stash her, why would he take her to the Zebra Room the other night?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. Dex had a point. “Maybe he figured she’d be safe in plain sight?”

  “Or maybe he was so bamboozled by her, he let what he wanted get in the way of what he knew was right. Though that doesn’t sound like Mustard.”

  I agreed. It did not.

  “But what about Mustard?” I asked. “How does he fit into all this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, how does he even know Brucie? Or Chummy for that matter?”

  “You’d have to ask him that,” Dex replied.

  “But still,” I insisted, “they must have some sort of connection, right? Does Mustard work for Chummy?”

  “You get that out of your head, Kitty,” Dex said, with more force than I felt my comment had demanded. “Mustard is not a gangster, so don’t even think that. And certainly …” He shot a look over his shoulder as though checking to see who was there. There was no one. It was after the lunch rush, if there even was such a thing in this place. The only other patron was an old man in a threadbare suit eating a piece of apple pie a la mode with obvious enjoyment. Dex dropped his voice and started again. “Certainly never, ever say it.”

  I ran my finger absently around the lip of my empty coffee cup, contemplating my boss. This was a side of him I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t think I liked it. Even if he was quite often morose, he was usually confident. The two balanced each other out—Dex’s personal yin and yang. This was different. I wondered if it was possible that with the receding of his own darkness, he was also losing the edge that was the only advantage he’d had in a tough game.

  The other possibility was that I was overreacting. That Dex’s alarm had come from a genuine concern for his old friend. Or maybe even that there was more to Mustard and his underworld ties than I’d ever suspected. Maybe it was a bit of both.

  “I didn’t say he was a gangster, Dex.” He indicated I should lower my voice, and despite the nearly empty restaurant, I did. “I was just thinking, what is it Mustard does, exactly? And how does he always have these connections to everything?”

  Dex seemed to think a while before answering. “Like I said before, Kitty, those are questions you’ll have to ask Mustard yourself. And not just ‘cause I don’t want to answer you, but ‘cause I think the man himself could best explain it. Let me tell you one thing though: no matter what you may think or even what you may sometimes hear, Mustard is not a gangster. Whatever he does, he does on his own.”

  “Sometimes with you,” I pointed out.

  “Sometimes with me,” Dex nodded. “But that’s different. He helps me out sometimes, but it’s nothing to him. Mustard and me …” He hesitated. I thought he was searching for words. “We share some things, Kitty. We’ve been through a lot together.”

  I nodded. “You’ve told me a bit.”

  “Have I?” And then smiling, he said, “I guess I have. You know I don’t remember any of what I told you, don’t you?”

  I thought about mentioning what he’d told me about his wife, Zoe, and asking what had happened to her and to their son. But when I looked into Dex’s clear eyes and noted again the new lightness about him, I decided that this was not the time. “I guess I do know that,” I said instead, not entirely certain I was telling the truth.

  “So if I’ve told you some of this in the past and you don’t want to hear it again, you’ll hafta stop me. But like I said, we’ve been through some stuff together, Mustard and me. Stuff that tests a man. I know that in a tight spot Mustard will cover my back. I reckon he has reason to know the same thing about me. The other things? I’m not sure they’re as important. But the part where I know I can count on him, no matter what… well, it means a lot.”

  Dex was being oblique enough that I figured he’d never get around to answering what I’d asked. What he was telling me was maybe more significant: that sometimes knowing the inside of a man was as important as—maybe more important than—knowing the outside. Important enough that it even made the other stuff not matter so much.

  At least that’s what I thought he was telling me. I’d have to think about it for a while, and as things turned out, I had several hours of sitting in a car in front of me without a lot scheduled besides thinking.

  Dex called for the check and we got back in the car. As we drove, I didn’t see the vine-dotted hills of Salinas or the majestic coast off Big Sur. I saw a mud-filled trench, smelled cordite, and heard men dying. And I saw Mustard and Dex back-to-back, bayonets extended, confused and afraid, but knowing the only true thing in the world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  WHEN WE GOT TO SAN FRANCISCO, it was raining. Which is no big surprise in itself; it rains there a lot, or so it seems when you’re from Los Angeles where rain is more the exception than the rule. And while the rain in my home city may be less frequent, when it does happen, it’s much more dramatic.

  The rain in San Francisco is part of the landscape; it falls upon the steep and pretty streets casually. When it rains in San Francisco, it’s easy to feel it will always rain, has always rained. It feels like it’s meant to be.

  This difference in the rain sums up the difference in the two cities. Los Angeles rain is wild, rugged, and determined. It is infrequent, but when it comes, it beats upon the city like a living thing, as though it intends to stay alive. San Francisco rain is confident. It understands that it has a proper place in the world, in the natural order of the city. It is a part of
the fabric of the place, of the life. It lacks the wild edge of Los Angeles rain. It lacks a certain desperation.

  So we arrived in San Francisco in early evening, at what appeared to be the height of a cleansing downpour. I gave Dex an address in the 2000 block of Broadway in Pacific Heights. We found it without any trouble, though Dex whistled when he pulled up to the curb. “That’s quite the pile,” he said as he dropped me off. He was being dramatic, but if anything, it was an understatement. Cleverly Manor was quite the pile indeed. It commanded all of that part of Broadway, and it had a view of the downtown core and the bay from every window at the front of the house.

  “That’s quite the heap too,” he said, pointing at a low-slung two-seater sports car parked at the curb. It was the color of rich cream. “An Auburn Speedster, if I don’t miss my guess. I don’t think much of the color though … makes it look like a woman’s car.”

  “It probably is a woman’s car, Dex. It’s probably Morgana’s.”

  “Nice,” he said. He stayed in the Packard with the engine idling, while I walked up the steps and knocked on the door. When the maid who opened the door told me Miss Morgana was at home, I turned around and waved, slightly touched that Dex had insisted on making sure I was all right before he zoomed off into the city.

  Morgana Cleverly was delighted to see me, though somewhat surprised. We had been friends since childhood, with much in common including fathers deeply involved in the business of finance. From the looks of things at Morgana’s house, however, her father had invested more wisely than had mine. I knew that, in any case, San Francisco investors had overall fared better than those in Los Angeles. For one thing, none of the San Francisco-based banks had gone under, which was more than you could say about those in my home city.

  Morgana herself looked polished, well groomed, and expensively turned out. At twenty-three, she looked slightly older than she had when I’d seen her last, but the two extra years suited her. The things that had been kittenish in the girl I’d known had matured, and she stood before me now a sleek and happy cat.

  “I would have called,” I told her, when she found me, valise in hand, where the maid had left me in the vast foyer. “But so much has changed, Morgana. I… I couldn’t bring myself to discover what might not be the same here as well.”

  Morgana’s startled expression changed into one more familiar, and she moved to give me a hug. “Come here, you goose,”

  she said, embracing me. “Of course nothing has changed,” she said, “and everything has. We’re grown-ups now, aren’t we?”

  I nodded. But I felt as though I’d been a grown-up for a long time.

  “I was afraid you’d be away at school.”

  “Vassar?” she said. “I decided to put that whole thing off for a time. I’ve been having so much fun here, I couldn’t bear to pull myself away. But what would you have done if I wasn’t here?” She poked one elegant finger at my valise. “It looks as though you’ve come to stay.”

  I smiled at her, embarrassed, but only slightly. “Only one night. Perhaps two. I had the chance to come to the city, and I decided to take it. I hoped to find you at home,” I told her, “and I had the feeling I would. Call it intuition. But there were others I could have visited if you weren’t here. You were my first choice though.”

  “I’m so glad, darling. But come, let’s not stand here. We’ll have tea brought ‘round. We’ve got so much to catch up on.”

  And we really did. Though we’d once been best friends, circumstances had forced … not a rift but a very definite separation. I’d not wanted her to see me as a possible charity case. For her part, she now told me she hadn’t known what to say to me when she’d heard what had become of my father. Her family had been fortunate, mine had been destroyed, and she’d felt guilty and unsure. After a while, she said, time had passed, and our lives had become what they were.

  A servant had opened the door, but Morgana herself led me down elegant dove-colored hallways to her own beautifully appointed sitting room. You could see at a glance that nothing here had changed in a significant way. The soft-slippered servants remained at their posts. A swimming pool the color of the Mediterranean in summer still dominated the garden, and even on a rainy autumn day, I knew the staff would be keeping it heated and ready, should it please us to use our afternoon in this way.

  As inviting as that sounded, on this day we did not swim. Instead we sat in Morgana’s private suite, the air cool enough that we could see mist rise off the pool where the warm water met with the cool air. Beyond the pool dropped the city and, beyond that, the bay. This might not have been the most choice spot in San Francisco, but I had a hard time imagining what would be better. I said so aloud, so Morgana set me straight.

  “Daddy is building a house at Belvedere. He says that the noise of the city is growing irksome to him.”

  “Belvedere,” I repeated. “Where’s that?”

  Morgana pointed out into the bay toward an island I’d never noticed before. “You’ll think I’m fabricating, Katherine, but it’s out there, for heaven’s sake. He’s acquired thirty acres and the best architect in the city—someone stuffy and British, though I can’t think of his name—and they’re concocting the most monstrous estate that can be conceived.”

  “But why, Morgana? Cleverly Manor is perfect.” And it was. There was room there for ten families. Perhaps twenty, if they were Irish. And the house was beautiful and modern, having only been completed in the mid-1920s.

  “Oh, he has all these wonderful reasons, Katherine. And when he tells them to me, they all make perfect sense. But to be perfectly honest, I think he’s doing it to keep an eye on me. An island. Think of it. I’d be trapped! I’m sure that’s what he’s thinking.”

  “You’re being silly,” I said.

  “I’m not! Wait until you see. Belvedere is like the moon, Katherine. No restaurants, no stores. Just all these stately homes. Tea on Sundays, dinners on Saturdays. Reading, embroidery, piano.”

  I laughed, and after a heartbeat or two, she laughed along.

  “You’re being silly, Morgana. You know you are. If, as you say, he’s only just acquired the land and hired an architect, it will be years before he’s finished the house. Years and years and years. Probably way beyond the time you’ll still be living at home. You’ll be off and married and have your hands full with your own small Morganas by the time he’s done with it. Darling, he’s not planning to trap you; he can’t be. He’s planning for when you’re gone.”

  I felt the most loving twinge of envy then; I can’t think how else to explain it. Everything in Morgana’s world seemed to have gone on unaltered. Oh, time had continued to pass; she was older and had the concerns of a young woman instead of a girl. But her home was intact, her parents stood over her shoulder and watched out for her, and the dove grey walls continued to shelter her, just as they had when we were children.

  My life was very different, as were my concerns. I would not have wished less for Morgana, and I certainly wouldn’t have wished her ill or evil, but I wouldn’t have been human had I not wondered why her life should have continued as planned, while mine … well, mine seemed to careen on unexpected course after course. I had uncertainty and she had safety. I wondered what that felt like.

  Over tea, she told me about a half year spent in Europe with two of our mutual friends, along with a couple of aunts to chaperone. I found that I’d gotten used to tableware that was more rough and ready. It was strange to use elegant china again. I sat in a slipper chair near the window, where I could see the last of the rain and a newly rising fog while carefully balancing my cup in my hands. The porcelain was almost translucent and as delicate as the wing of a baby bird.

  Morgana had started the telling cautiously. I was aware of her intelligent eyes on mine when she began talking about her trip to Europe. I suppose she was afraid that I might be hurt by tales of her time abroad, since in my reduced circumstances trips to Europe were completely out of the question. I was glad wh
en she relaxed after a while. After all, my misfortune had nothing to do with her. I was glad to see that not everyone was in the same boat. It would have been a very full vessel.

  “Europe is somehow less jolly now, Katherine,” she said, as she finished her story. “Maybe it’s the Depression touching things there as well? I don’t know. But there’s a shadow now; I can’t describe it. I didn’t enjoy this trip as much as our last.”

  That had been the summer of our eighteenth year. Morgana’s parents had called it our proper and modern coming-out. My father had just grunted and signed the necessary checks.

  “But listen to me,” Morgana said, after a while. “I’ve been going on about everything here. Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself. Tell me about your life.”

  Hesitatingly at first, I did as she asked. I told her about Dex and Mustard and my job. Almost from the beginning of the telling, I could see Morgana was fascinated. I knew that, from where she sat, I was describing an inconceivable life, more foreign to her than any she’d seen in Italy or France.

  And not just foreign. As I spoke, I saw a growing admiration light her face. I didn’t understand at first. And then I did. The things Morgana had were wonderful, but she’d not done anything to cause them to be. My life was uncertain. There were elements of it I could never hope to control. But it was mine. I didn’t usually think of it this way, but I realized then that, for better or worse, I had a hand in shaping my life, creating my future.

  I thought about the boarding house my home had become. I thought about the office. About not always having enough money to take Angels Flight home when, in another time, I would have had a car and driver or perhaps, as Morgana did, my own little car. I thought about Dex and Mustard, and oddly enough, I thought about Brucie.

  So much had changed. In a way I was surprised when I realized I wasn’t jealous of Morgana and her life. And I realized that somewhere along the way I’d begun to make my own.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  AFTER WE’D SPENT A FEW HOURS catching up, Morgana insisted on ringing up a bunch of our old friends and organizing a night on the town. It wasn’t as easy as it would have been a couple of years before, Morgana explained between calls, because several of the girls had gotten married.