City of Ghosts (A Miranda Corbie Mystery) (40 page)

“More like five. Fade if you want, but the manager can still ID you. And if you don’t spill it—I will.”

The agent stood up from where he’d been crouched by Wardon’s body, a frown on his face. “I’d rather take my chances with the bulls than my boss. Sing all you want, canary—I’m checking the joint over for three minutes and I’ll be out by four. If you’re smart, you’ll join me for lunch. That is, if you can hold it down after this. Crab salad at Fishermen’s Grotto—my treat.”

She raised her eyes to his. Ignored the invitation.

“The bulls will find you.”

“Not behind State Department walls.” He grinned at her, nose still wrinkled. “Peace pipe, Miranda?”

She shrugged. “You don’t stay, I don’t stay. I don’t get left holding the goddamn bag.”

He was bent over Wardon’s body and picked up something from the floor with a pocket handkerchief. “Whatever you want, lady. Look at this.”

Miranda’s eyes were focused on the stacks of paper and envelopes, matchbooks and ashtrays of cigarette butts on Wardon’s coffee table. Small black-and-white snapshots lay underneath a pile of receipts and a matchbook, and she moved them around with a finger.

Sudden intake of breath.

In front of her was a photograph of a smiling, immaculately suited Edmund Whittaker.

She looked up at Scott, who was still bent over Wardon. The agent was holding out an employee ID card from Treasure Island.

“It was wedged under Wardon’s shoulder.”

Cheney’s florid, smiling face was smiling up at her from the green card.

Her eyes met Scott’s.

“You know where he lives?”

The agent nodded, slipping the card in his pocket. “My car’s outside. And our five minutes are almost up. You coming?”

She twisted her neck, trying to memorize the arrangement of the paintings in the room, eyes traveling back to the girl with the letter.

*   *   *

Miranda paused on the ground-floor landing, breathless from rushing down the stairs.

“I don’t have the fucking government to hide behind, and I worked too hard to lose my license over some hotshot G-man who’s listened to
Gang Busters
one too many times. I’m leaving a message for the cops before we see Cheney.”

He shrugged, started to push open the main double doors.

“However you get your kicks, honey. Just don’t be more than a minute, or you’ll lose your ride.”

Her voice was short, fingers clamped together in fists at her sides.

“You’ll wait.”

A gust of fresh Bay air, carrying the cleansing smell of eucalyptus and salt, blew in through the open door as the agent strode outside. Miranda quickly ran to number 3.

Mr. Butterick’s door was still open about a foot, and he was on the phone with what sounded like a friend, voice higher-pitched and almost hysterical.

“Yeah, I might need one quick, Harry, you know they always point their goddamn finger at the super…”

Miranda cleared her throat and he looked up at her, hand over the phone, eyes scared.

“I called the cops, lady, like you said.”

“Good. When Inspector Fisher gets here, give him this.”

She opened her purse and pulled out a business card from an inside pocket, grabbed the pencil she always carried, and scrawled a note on the back.

“It’s very important. Don’t lose it, and don’t forget.”

The manager held out a shaking hand for the card, glancing down at the phone he was still holding.

“Ain’t you staying, lady? Somebody’s gotta stay with—with—”

“Yeah, I know. Get up there, Mr. Butterick, before the busybody in number nine gets overly curious.”

He shook his head, clutching the phone like a life preserver. “Uh-uh. I got rights. I’m gettin’ a mouthpiece. I’m not goin’ back up there.”

She turned to leave. “Suit yourself. Maybe you’re tired of living here for free, putting off maintenance complaints for months and ignoring a knock on the door. Maybe the owner of the building won’t mind a little bad publicity for his super.”

She headed out the door, whisper behind her back.

“I gotta go. Call you later and get Zeike lined up for me, all right?”

By the time she was at the front doors, Butterick was trudging up the stairs with alacrity, breathing hard, face red, mumbling to himself.

*   *   *

Scott was double parked outside, ignoring the honks and glares of a delivery truck and a gray sedan trying to move around him.

Miranda climbed in, looked around.

1938 blue Ford coupe, on the fast side. Maps for California and Nevada jammed in the side door. Cigarette butts in the ashtray, couple of stray matchbooks on the floorboard. Not much in the way of personality.

“This your car?”

“Yeah. Why, don’t you like it?”

“It’s OK.”

Legs trembling, body starting to shake. Goddamn it, no time to break down, not now, now with Cheney ahead of them. She dug out a Chesterfield and lit it with a Bank Club matchbook. Deep inhale, rolled the window down.

“You smoke?”

“Yeah.”

“You know where you’re going?”

He glanced at her briefly at a red light on Mason, grinned.

“Yeah. Told you we had Cheney doped.”

“So where are we going?”

“Blumset Apartments, 1040 Sutter.”

Miranda wrinkled her brow. “That’s what—five blocks away? Convenient.”

He swung the car right, nodding. “Neat little system they got. Looks like they turned on each other, though. Happens with crooks.”

She gulped the stick again, trying to quell the shaking. Studied Scott.

Brown pinstripes, medium-brim brown fedora, dirty and badly folded pale yellow display handkerchief. Expensive watch, almost out of place, on his left wrist. Face neither handsome nor ugly but somehow attractive, strong jawline, athletic build. His eyes were continually on the rearview mirror, body tensed and alert, almost jittery.

“Sound like you speak from experience.”

“I do.”

“State Department stepping on Hoover’s toes these days?”

He laughed, as they cruised past Jones toward Leavenworth. “I didn’t always work for Uncle Sam.”

“Cop or private dick?”

The coupe rolled to a stop in front of the Blumset, a large apartment building squatting at the foot of one of Sutter’s low hills. Scott pulled the car into a parking spot at the corner of Larkin.

“Save the interview for the crab salad. We’re here.”

She reached into the ashtray and pulled it out. Camel butts.

She crushed out the Chesterfield, spoke slowly.

“I like to know who I’m forced to work with. And by the way—since Jasper is dead, why should you people care who killed him? I thought your interest began and ended with whether or not he was double-crossing you and spilling real secrets to the Nazis.”

Scott’s hand was on the door handle. He turned his head back to meet her eyes.

“We care, honey, because we want to make sure the Nazis and the Reds know they weren’t being duped. The game’s not over just because one player is dead. They’ve been depending on a certain flow of information, and if that information stops, well … I’m sure Jimmy explained it to you—lives hanging in the balance and all that. It’s true, no bullshit. We gotta chase this down and find out who killed Jasper and why. Gotta protect the program.”

She nodded. “So you can line up another pigeon to take his place.”

“War’s coming, Miranda.”

“Yeah.” She looked up at the agent.

“You’re not local, I’ve already got that doped. So what’s your last name?”

His eyebrows furrowed. “We don’t have time—”

“Give me your goddamn last name. Call it professional courtesy.”

He stared at her for a few seconds, face flushed, then laughed.

“Petrie. Ian Scott Petrie. Hell of a lot easier to just call me Scott. Let’s go, toots—you can learn more at lunch. Though I gotta say your Dungeness doesn’t hold a candle to blue crab.”

Goddamn, arrogant sonofabitch …

Miranda opened the door of the Ford and stepped out onto the curb. Her legs and ankles ached. She closed her eyes, fighting a dizzy spell.

Shit, fucking exhaustion, not now, not now, they were so close …

Scott was already walking toward the entrance doors. She held her hat on with one hand, running toward him.

He glanced over at her. “Cheney’s in number twenty-four.”

Together they walked into the decorated foyer, old and dusty but still clinging to a self-image of respectability. Most of the names on the mailbox outside had been scrawled in blue ink a few years ago. Not much turnaround, not like the Zenobia.

The Blumset had an elevator, the old-fashioned kind, cage and wires and a prayer to take you up five floors. An old man in a faded red uniform was sleeping on a wooden stool in a corner, spittoon on the floor at his feet. A few flies buzzed around it, reminding Miranda of how they’d found Wardon.

“We need apartment twenty-four.”

The old man opened white-blue eyes with a start, focused first on her, then on Scott, then back to her again.

“That be the fourth floor. Get in, young folks, get in. Gertie won’t drop you.”

The old man pushed some buttons and levers, and the elevator shuddered with a loud groan.

“She don’t like to get woke up from a nap. Hell, neither do I!”

He laughed, red mouth lined with a just a few teeth, yellow and worn from tobacco juice.

Miranda smiled at the old man as the elevator slowly rose, clanging metallic noises accompanying every few feet of movement.

“Thanks, Pops.”

“It’s my job, girlie. Always glad to help a young couple get to where they need to go.”

Miranda glanced at Scott, frowning, while he grinned at her. The crate finally arrived, settling in at the fourth floor like an old lady with a hot-water bottle. The operator pushed the doors open with an effort.

“Fourth floor. Apartment twenty-four is down to your left, then turn left again.”

She pressed a dollar into his withered hand. “Thanks.”

He raised his eyebrows, nearly toothless grin. “Anytime, girlie, anytime.”

Scott was already making strides down the dim hallway, faded lithographs of sentimental scenes and English villages dotting the walls, a few torn pieces of furniture filling empty space. Most of the apartments seemed on the small side, suitable for singles or couples with indifferent taste and lack of means.

The light grew stronger when they made the second turn left. Sun shone through a dirty eight-paned window at the end of the hall.

The agent glanced at Miranda as they stood elbow to elbow in front of number 24. He raised his fist to knock.

“Mr. Cheney? Mr. Cheney?”

He tried three more times. Either the neighbors weren’t home or nobody cared, no snoops, no cracked-open doors.

Scott turned toward her. “Manager?”

She shook her head. “No time. I left a message for the cops to meet us here. Did you try the door?”

He looked down at her, lips twisted upward in a smirk. “You really think it’s going to be open?”

He reached a hand out to the tarnished brass knob and gave it a twist and a pull.

The door swung wide.

They stepped across the threshold.

Clothes on the floor, boxes packed, all the signs of a quick and hasty exit.

They walked into the main living area, sun motes streaming gently on a few books and boxes of china and other kitchen items sitting haphazardly on the floor. The room was eerily soundless except for honking cars outside on Sutter. A five- or six-year-old radio sat crookedly against the corner, pile of newspapers and letters spread out on a coffee table.

They moved into the small bedroom, mattress stripped clean of sheets and blankets, more papers on the nightstand, and then into the kitchen, where china lay in unpacked boxes. Bathroom and closets, every door in the apartment, methodically opening and shutting.

No blood, no sign of foul play.

No paintings.

And, Miranda thought, forehead wrinkling, as she fought the exhaustion overwhelming her … no suspect.

Cheney was gone.

Thirty-five

The next three hours blurred by, haze of cigarette smoke and two rolls of Life Savers, Meyer’s hand on her shoulder, gently paternal, lines on David Fisher’s face and fresh gray hair around his temples.

Uniforms showed up, followed by the inspector. The super of the Blumset, a thin, querulous woman somewhere between forty and sixty, made her presence—and displeasure—known.

No, Mr. Dirk Cheney was a good tenant, always paid on time, no loud parties, no “unsuitable company” at odd hours, no complaints except for those policemen’s boots all over the rug, who is going to pay for the cleaning, she’d like to know, and what about all that funny powder?

Scott flashed a badge, speaking in low undertones to Inspector Fisher, grin and a handshake. The cop’s troubled eyes returned to Miranda, brow wrinkled, mouth holding on to mystery.

Her legs trembled as she leaned against the wall, looking around the apartment.

Not much dust, not like Wardon, so Cheney had waited awhile before the disappearing act.

She’d poked in one of the piles of old mail on the kitchen table before the bulls arrived, unearthing a brochure for the
City of San Francisco
and a tourist sheet on hotels in Mexico City. That combined with a torn ticket from Friday’s train, dropped in haste by the fugitive and scoured from the floor of the bedroom by a zealous cop, cemented the story. Fisher called Southern Pacific, confirmed a room had been reserved for a Mr. Cheney on the
City of San Francisco,
confirmed that they had no record of him ever leaving the train at Ogden.

Open and shut, just like a fucking coffin.

Only funny thing was the missing art. Maybe he was out of room in the car he drove—a ’37 DeSoto—maybe he had it stashed under a different name in storage somewhere in the city, to be reclaimed when Jasper and Wardon were forgotten and all the heat turned off.

She passed James’s number to the inspector, hoped like hell the State Department bastard would at least confirm she’d been working for him. They owed her that much, and the case, as described, was over. Couldn’t tell Fisher about Nazi secrets and Fritz’s parties, and
entartete Kunst
and the millions Cheney was figuring on making, by himself, partners eliminated.