The Secret Life of Anna Blanc (19 page)

When Joe and Anna tired of singing, they fell silent. Anna became more aware of the shadows, and how the big ones could be hiding a man. Joe kept revisiting certain sites, perhaps the very places where the crimes had occurred. She thought of Jack the Ripper, and how the officers had walked right past him that night in Mitre Square; how he had held in his hands the bloody evidence of his crime. She was thinking of the strangeness and the danger and how she was hanging on the arm of a man who went to brothels when Joe startled her with a compliment. “You're pretty brave for a socialite.”

“I know.”

“You know?” He smirked and shook his head as if her ungracious remark was both shocking and just what he had expected. “So, how could you tell my bathroom mirror was broken?” He casually walloped a pinecone.

Anna took her turn, kicking it with her toe, sending it hissing down the road. “Because you've missed a spot shaving every day since a certain Thursday, but before that you never missed a spot.”

Joe slowed his stride, and his hand went to his jaw, feeling for stubble.

“Right side,” she said. “I assumed you broke your mirror sometime after you dressed that Wednesday, but before you dressed on Thursday. You had about sixteen waking hours to break it Wednesday, but only one or two on Thursday. So, I guessed Wednesday.” She held her breath, watching his face for a reaction.

His eyebrows shot up and his lips curved into an admiring half-smile. “You're right.” He booted the pinecone.

Anna flushed with pleasure. She had impressed a real policeman, albeit a corrupt one. She eagerly continued. “And usually, unmarried men live with their families. Your father must have a nice house, yet you live alone. So I thought you might not get along.” She looked up at him for confirmation, holding her breath again.

“How did you know I lived alone? Because no one told me that I missed a spot shaving?”

“That and your shirt tails are rarely tucked in properly.”

“You spend an awful lot of time watching me, Sherlock.”

Anna made a little noise of disgust. “I'm simply watching my back.” She kicked the cone and it rattled down a storm drain.

Joe led Anna into the Japanese section of Boyle Heights, where the night was several shades darker. There were no sidewalks or lampposts. The few people they passed looked to Anna like giant porcelain dolls, their skin reflecting the moon. The cooking smells were strange, and a trash bin overflowed with trimmings from unfamiliar vegetables. Joe had ceased to distract Anna with songs and questions, but at least he still held her arm. She dreaded the thought of traveling similar streets alone next Monday night on her trip to the coroner's lecture at USC.

She looked up at Officer Singer. He had blackmailed her, but he was useful for walking dark streets, and he seemed in a good mood—that is, he returned her look without glaring. Maybe they could strike another deal. She blurted, “I need an escort to the coroner's lecture on Monday night.”

His face was perfectly symmetrical, except for certain smiles—his “scorn Anna” smile, which squished his whole face to the left; his “amused at her expense” smile—a close-lipped quarter moon; and his “mocking Anna” smile, in which he showed more of his left pearlies than his right. His left pearlies were showing, so she braced herself.

“If you're sweet on me, Sherlock, you should ask me to the fair or something, not to an autopsy.”

“It will take me forever to get there. I don't have trolley fare so I'll have to walk.”

“Don't risk it. He's not even that interesting.”

“You could meet me at the top of Angel's Flight. At six. I have to wait until the coast is clear to climb out the window, so I might be late.” She rummaged in her purse for the whiskey bottle, and held it out to
him with a hopeful and pathetic smile. “Wait for me? You could have my benzene.”

Joe studied her face. “You sure go to a lot of trouble, Sherlock.” He took the bottle from her hand and tucked it in his coat. “I'll take you to the coroner's lecture if you tell me why you're so dead set on catching murderers and hunting rape fiends.”

“For the same reason you are.”

He laughed. “I'm not. I need the money. But you don't. Aren't you risking a lot by lying to the man you love? You can't keep up this charade forever. What's he gonna say when you get caught?”

“I won't get caught.”

“Really, Sherlock. Why are you working at the station?”

“Why do you sleep with prostitutes?”

He threw up his hand. “That's changing the subject, but who says I do?”

“Well, don't you?” She peered into his face to see if he would lie. How did one tell? He didn't look like he could lie.

“No.” He popped a peppermint into his mouth, and didn't offer her one.

Anna raised an eyebrow. “So, you're against prostitution.”

He shrugged. “I'm not for it. I'm not against it. It just is.”

“That's shocking coming from an officer. Aren't you supposed to be paragons of virtue? Cleaning up society and all that?”

Joe blew out a burst of peppermint breath. “Sherlock, let me give you a little schooling in life. Prostitutes pay fines to the city. The city uses those fines toward paying the police force, including matrons. So how do you think the police view the brothels?”

Anna was silent for a moment. “I see. Their fines help pay my salary so that I can come and take away their children.”

“I never thought of it that way, but I suppose that's right.”

Anna was quiet for a moment. “What was Matron McBride's opinion?”

Joe's face darkened. He found another pinecone and kicked it. “I guess she wouldn't like children being raised in a brothel.”

“Matron Clemens said you would give me her address.”

“Nope.”

“Why not?” Anna demanded.

“She moved to Denver. Left no forwarding address.”

“Is she your relation?”

He squinted at her. “No. Why do you care?”

Anna looked at her silver shoe buckles. “I just…I never meant to get her fired.”

Joe's voice dropped an octave. “I wouldn't bring that up. Not when I've got a gun.”

Anna shut her mouth.

While Anna and Joe strolled, Detective Wolf had been faithfully following the contentious couple, taking short cuts to intercept them, running ahead, sneaking behind, with the utmost stealth and discretion. He urgently needed to find a privy. It was late and dark, so he crept into the back yard of a private residence, located the outhouse, and proceeded to use it. When he emerged, Joe and Anna were gone and a man with a long wiry beard was pointing a shotgun at him and shouting in Yiddish.

Meanwhile, Joe steered Anna down toward Hollenbeck Park, the most forbidding place they'd been—twenty-one acres of horticultural danger. “We're lovers now. On a rendezvous.” He said it plainly, like he was ordering liver in a restaurant.

Anna scoffed. “You'd rather play lovers with a male officer than with me.”

“That's the long and short of it.”

“You don't think I'm pretty?”

“Oh, you're good bait. But you don't fight, except with me, and
every time I turn around, you're trying to get me in trouble. Other than that, you're all right.” He put his arm around her shoulders and, because she was a professional, she slipped her arm around his waist. His eyes smiled and one corner of his mouth twitched.

Some might say such an embrace was an atrocious breach of decorum. Anna reasoned that it wasn't much different than dancing, and there was no chapter in the
Youth's Educator for Home and Society
that covered one's deportment when strolling through Babel, unchaperoned, stalking a rape fiend who may be stalking you, with a man who was posing as your lover for purely official purposes. Someday, she would write such a chapter and recommend that a woman should always stalk rape fiends in the arms of a policeman. She might even go so far as to recommend Officer Singer, because he looked like the Arrow Collar Man, his arms felt nice and strong, and he would serenade you.

The air smelled like jasmine. They walked the perimeter of the park, negotiating a maze of flora that made it the perfect place for a lover's tryst or an ambush. Everywhere, there were shapes and shadows and places to hide—tall, jutting pampas grass; the twisted roots of a giant fig tree; hedges, bushes, and trellises. Anna attempted to soothe herself by picturing Officer Singer in his swimsuit, but it only made her heart beat faster. She cast a glance behind them. “I haven't seen Wolf in a while.”

“I know. Do you want me to take you home?”

“Certainly not.”

“We'll find a place to sit and see if he catches up. Keep your eyes open.”

Anna leaned on Joe, padding on her tippy toes, so the backs of her heels didn't sink into the soft grass. When they came to a muddy gully, he tightened his hold on her and easily lifted her over.

Anna was a little drunk on this brew of danger—both from the rape fiend and, she was coming to realize, the proximity of Officer Singer. He was strong and smelled nice, even on a hot July night, and his body buzzed with an electric charge that made her tingle all over. She snuggled closer to him just to see what he would do. He cleared his throat and adjusted his trousers.

They were completely alone, more alone than she'd ever been with a man, except for those few minutes with Louis Taylor, which the Pope said didn't count. They strolled deeper into the park, arms around each other, down near the lake where the moon shimmered on the water like a pearl. It smelled of algae and cut grass. They found a bench, which Joe dragged to the edge of the lake so that the water was at their back, a natural barrier to attack. He took out his handkerchief and wiped off the dew so she could sit. Bats fluttered in the trees. Crickets and frogs sang into the silence. Joe added to the music, humming something from
Floradora
, quietly, unconsciously.

Anna found herself thinking less about the rape fiend and more about Officer Singer, her curiously dampening nether parts, and how love was such an illusion because right now she wanted desperately for him to kiss her. Joe Singer, a man other than her fiancé, who stood several rungs below her on the social ladder, who had blackmailed her and thrown up on her shoe, and who, if she kissed him, would surely abandon her and break her heart so she would never even get the chance to live with him in poverty.

And she ought to consider Edgar. He was saving her from a bronze reputation and a spinsterhood in bondage. He was helping her father's bank. He was charming, well-made, and well-dressed, and she planned to fall in love with him if she could ever get a moment of his time.

No. She knew better than to trust her nether parts. Louis Taylor had taught her that. But Officer Singer was still there, with his muscly arm wrapped around her, and he would be for most of the night. The moon shimmered, the crickets chirped, the young man smelled nice. She wished she had silver shoes like Dorothy, so she could click her heels and escape to Kansas where, she imagined, all the policemen were ugly.