City of Dragons (10 page)

She found him there. But it wasn’t him. It was someone who looked like him, but already didn’t smell like him. Someone who had been too close to a shell. Too close. To the front. Too close. To the cause. Too close. To her.

Johnny.

There were always couples walking down Mason. The Curran was down the street on Geary, the hotels were around the corner. Couples liked places like that, places that danced and swung to a gentle rhythm, his hips against hers, her lips brushing his neck.

The ice was melting, diluting the amber brown of the rye. She eyed it critically, looking for something, forgetting what it was. Eddie Takahashi, maybe. Or Betty. Or Mrs. Whatsit’s husband’s killer, if he was killed, which who the hell knew. Or Rick.

Last year she’d told him “No expectations.” He didn’t listen to her. They never did.

There’d never been any, and never would be any. She made sure of that. But hope … hope died slowly and painfully, one gasp—one call, one drink, one look—at a time. She saw it on his face.

She didn’t want to hurt anybody. She just wanted to be left alone. With the Memory Box.

Phil found her at Dianne’s once, and she’d known he wanted her, wanted her bad. It was one of the social hours, when the young men with old faces came in, sweat on their eyelids, looking. Phil smelled like a cop, like cough drops and tobacco and carbon paper. They never smell like guns … only in the pulps. They never look like Spencer Tracy or Gary Cooper, either.

Dianne called it teatime, and her girls were always on the menu.

Before Burnett’s.

She’d felt him tense, felt him wish his hair wasn’t gray and his stomach muscles were what they were back in ’17. She felt him want her, but she didn’t let him have her.

He was a decent man. And he wanted her too much.

So they played like they were uncle and niece. Phil the protector. Phil, the man who helped her nail Burnett’s killer. And the Incubator Babies racket. Phil. Who wanted her too much.

A party of six was walking down the hill now, loud, wearing the white badges of humanity and playing with chopsticks that one of the men was throwing in the air. Their looks said: I care about China, and incidentally, I like a damn good time.

She was fair. She’d stayed a friend. She didn’t fade, didn’t disappear, didn’t melt into the city and forget their names. No, she remembered. She locked them in the Memory Box. Separate compartment.

She didn’t need Phil. Or Rick. Or her washed-up, drowned-out father. Didn’t need anyone. Would never need anyone again. Once in a while, she liked to be around people, people eating and drinking and making noise, and she reached in and pulled out the name of someone still around, someone who was still talking to her. She called them friends. Sometimes they called her back. If they didn’t, she moved on.

Miranda Corbie. Private Investigator. That was who she was. She liked the sound of it. She took another drink.

Her name meant “things to be wondered at.” In Latin. She’d heard him recite “Oh, brave new world, that has such people in it” too many times to give a shit anymore. She figured he named her so he could repeat the line.

She’d been conceived the third day of the Quake and Fire. His father, when sober, was meticulous in his reporting of the incident, as he called it.

Her mother was a girl, barely sixteen. She worked in a bar. When it hit, she thought she was going to die. She and another boarder, an educated man, a teacher of English literature and a very minor poet, escaped together, ran from the tremors and the fire and found solace in a tent in Golden Gate Park.

It was an act of desperation for both of them. Probably the last time her father ever thought with anything other than his frontal lobes or a whiskey bottle. He was such a pissy bastard when he didn’t drink.

She was born on a cold, crisp January Sunday, nine months to the day. She never knew her mother. Her father made sure of it. He had a career to think of, and he made it clear to the world that he was caring for a relative’s infant who’d been recently and tragically orphaned. He’d adopt her later. Like that made a difference.

Miranda Corbie, Private Investigator. She liked that. Her mother’s name was Corbie. She’d never been able to trace her, figured she was dead, and took her last name. It meant “raven” in Scottish. She liked that, too.

The Chesterfield tasted good with the rye. She leaned her head back, staring across at the brick apartment building she faced, watching.

Once in a while she saw someone who danced like him. Someone who walked or smoked or flirted like him. And she’d unwrap the Memory Box and take it out, drink too much. Like Madame Pengo, she’d look through the highball glass and see her past.

She didn’t really give a damn about the future.

Miranda got up from the window, tumbler in her hand. She flipped on the radio, but all they were playing that night was “Someone to Watch Over Me.”

Part Two

The Parade

Seven

S
an Francisco yawned and stretched, waking to Monday morning with a hangover. Chinatown shutters squealed open on rusty hinges, the streets shut off now, self-contained, the cotton-candy smell evaporated, the carnival gone on a dilapidated coach car to smaller, more simple places.

Old women swept chicken bones and popcorn and cigarette butts from foyers. Incense burned, sending curling waves of smoke drifting down to the Bay, to tickle the noses of businessmen on the ferry to Oakland.

Filipino and Japanese businesses huddled around the outskirts, lumped into the district by default, hanging on to what warmth they could find. Walls outside, walls inside. Hemming them in. Driving them out. Nowhere to go but back to Chinatown.

San Francisco watched, blind. Any holes in the wall were filled with money, Rice Bowl Parties, parades. As the drunk at Vanessi’s was fond of saying, they all looked alike.

Light streamed through the gap in the curtains. Miranda opened an eye, watched the dust motes dance. The other side of the bed was cold. She reminded herself to get a smaller one.

The satin sleeves of her tailored nightshirt soothed her skin, and she padded to the window, across the wooden floor with its scattered rugs and faded polish. The weather was bright, and it was later than she wanted. She peered out on the Mason Street traffic.

There was a green Olds across the street.

She cursed her slowed reflexes, jerked her head behind the curtains. Her tongue was thick, didn’t belong to her. Goddamn it. Wake the hell up, Miranda.

She stumbled toward the kitchenette, her hands shaking while she poured the Hills Brothers. A victory in not dropping the glass ball. She splashed some water on her face, rubbing it with her hands. The deep brown liquid bubbled to the top, the aroma of hot coffee filling the small apartment. Her own version of incense.

She walked to the window. Olds still there. Dark windows. She couldn’t make out the plates.

She found a couple of dollars crumpled up in the purse she’d used last night, threw on her robe and pressed the buzzer for the doorman downstairs, waiting for the sound of footsteps before she opened the door.

“Miss Corbie? You needed something?”

Roy stood in front of her, hat in his hands, his uniform hanging loosely on his thin frame. Thirty-five and overeager, he cruised the piers for an occasional sailor, but never brought him home to Mother.

“Can you leave the building for a minute, go up the hill to the market on Bush, come back down with some cigarettes?”

“Don’t you worry, Miss Corbie, I’ve got some Chesterfields if you—”

“I need you to walk out of the building. Check something for me but not get noticed. Can you do it?”

His blue eyes, always on the vague side, darted back and forth, from her to the dollar she was holding.

“Can you do it?” she repeated, fighting the urge to scream at him.

He whispered: “It’s a case, isn’t it? I’ll be happy to help, Miss Corbie. Anything you want. You know I—”

“Take this. Walk up to Bush, go to the corner market. Buy me some Chesterfields and a pint of Tom Moore. Across Mason, you’ll see a green Olds with dark windows. Don’t look at it too much.”

Roy shrank further back into his uniform. His voice rose into a stage whisper. “Are they criminals?”

Miranda rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know. Just memorize the plates—the license plate numbers. As soon as you get to the market, write them on a card.”

She fished around in her purse. “Here’s one of mine. Walk back down the hill, don’t look at the car, come straight up here. If I’m in the shower, slide the card under the door and bring the bag back later. Got it?”

He nodded. His Adam’s apple bobbed beneath the uniform tie.

She handed him two dollars. “Pack of Chesterfields and a pint of Tom. Or any bourbon, if they don’t have it. Keep the change for yourself.”

He raced down the stairs, not waiting for the elevator. She didn’t dare look out the window again. Ran a finger through her hair, feeling her cheeks and throat. Goddamn rye. Bourbon never made her feel like this.

The pipes whined when she turned up the hot water. The heat felt like ice running down her thighs and hips, washing away the stains of the night before.

Miranda stretched a long leg out on the toilet, rubbing the latest cream to promise eternal youth into her calves and ankles. Legs, breasts, and face. Her meal ticket, along with the carefully folded license in her pocketbook.

She examined her skin. Bent and stretched again, knees straight, feeling the backs of her calves pulling her as her fingers dangled above the ground, enjoying the tension in her muscles, the pain of the exercise. She slowly lifted herself up, faced the mirror.

Cupping her breasts in each hand, Miranda judged them with the dispassionate interest of an artist. Still firm. Cleavage good. Nipples not too big. They’d last a few more years. If she stayed away from the rye. She massaged the cream into them, adding more to her elbows, her upper arms.

Calistoga, after this. After the Takahashi case. Cases, she reminded herself. There was Mrs. What’s-her-name this afternoon, the one who thinks her husband was knocked off. Eddie Takahashi and Mr. Whithers or Whatsit or something. Winters. That was it—Winters.

She slapped under her chin, making faces to keep her skin taut. Layered on more cream, taking extra precautions around her eyes, not looking in them. They were a little too red. She’d need some drops.

She stood back, hands at her side, facing the mirror. A few more years. After that, maybe they’d all be dead.

Miranda threw on her long, thick robe, tucked her feet into slippers, and walked to the foyer, making a skidding noise on the slippery wooden floor. Time to find out who the hell was following her around.

She frowned. No card, no Roy. Her hand froze halfway through her wet hair. She’d forgotten to lock the door chain. And on the entry table was a card she’d never seen before.

The gun was in her purse … or was it? She fought the urge to run, forced herself to stay still. She could still smell the coffee, and now … a trace of something else. Cigarette. And men’s cologne.

The knock at the door made her spin, her robe gaping. She backed up against the wall by the door, trying to control her breathing. Another knock.

“Miss Corbie?” Roy’s voice sounded tremulous, apologetic.

Miranda leaned against the cold stucco, tightening her robe. No one else was in the apartment. Not now. But while she’d been in the shower, while she’d been taking care of her body, someone violated her home.

She opened the door. Roy held out a small paper bag. “I had to walk three blocks to find the Chesterfields, Miss Corbie.”

“Did you get the plates?”

He stuttered, plucking at an eyebrow. “I-I couldn’t remember it all—I had to w-walk farther, trying to remember, and b-by the time I came back down the hill they were gone. I c-could only remember part of it.”

Miranda grabbed the card and bag out of his hands, and started to shut the door. “Thanks.”

“I’m r-really sorry, Miss Corbie—”