The Secret Life of Anna Blanc (39 page)

The room was dark and close, with the smell of burning tobacco. She saw him peering through a window overlooking the grand salon, one strip of his body illuminated by a beam of light that Anna had let in through the door. Startled, he turned and raised his arm to cover his face. “This room is occupied!”

His voice sounded angry and falsely deep. Still, she recognized it. Anna's heart leapt and she smiled into the dark.

Joe Singer had come to catch the killer.

“Get out!” screeched a feminine voice that she did not recognize. A beam of light fell across the bed and lit a lock of blonde hair, a pair of small red lips. Even in the dark, Anna could tell the whore was not pretty.

Anna's hands fell limp at her side. Her gun clattered to the hardwood. She knew then that all men were liars, that love was just an illusion, and that it would have been better for her if she had never been born. Despair rose in her throat. “You…you…pig!”

Joe Singer's voice broke. “Oh, Lord.”

Anna bolted. She pushed past Charlene and Big Cindy, who were hovering in the hall. She hurtled down the stairs, shoes clacking on every third step.

Joe charged after her. “Sherlock! Stop! I can explain!”

Anna touched the tile and lunged past some men from the force. She bolted past Wolf, whose arm hung in a sling, and shoved her way through the crowd, running toward the kitchen.

Joe hit the bottom step calling, “Sherlock!” The cops' heads followed Joe as he pushed out the front door, headed in the wrong direction. Wolf sighed. “Someone arrest Joe.”

Anna streaked into the kitchen, past a smoking oven and out the back, through the empty lot where Peaches Payton's body had been picked apart by vultures. Cats trailed after her, waving their tails in the air, hoping for food. She left them behind, cutting across to the sidewalk. Prickly burrs stuck to her stockings and she trailed a stalk of anise. She kicked off her heels.

Joe fought his way through the crowd, pushing out the gate that jingled with cowbells. He saw his suit heading east down New High Street and followed at a gallop. “Sherlock!”

Anna ran fast. Joe's hat jumped from her head and rolled into the gutter, and her hair came undone. She splashed through garbage and muck that smelled like a privy and stained her tattered stockings. Her feet were raw from the pavement. Footsteps rang out behind her.

Joe was gaining. She heard him call, “Anna! Sweetheart! It's not safe.” Anna didn't fear the red-light district, with its rough saloons and pleasure houses. She feared Joe Singer. He had slain her.

Up ahead, a man was watching Anna, her gait and hair betraying her gender. He began hulking in her direction. His bearing exuded hostility. Anna despaired. It was Scylla or Charybdis, the known reprobate or the unknown hulk.

She didn't think twice. Her small, cut feet slapped the pavement toward the shadowy stranger. As she neared him, she lowered her head and tried to dodge around him, but he caught her up, squeezing her around the waist with tree branch arms. Anna shrieked and thrashed, bashing his shins with her heels, and getting smelly muck all over his very nice sack coat and contrasting trousers.

“Anna!” he said. “Anna! It's me. Edgar.” Stubble peppered his well-made jaw, and his eye had swelled purple from where she had punched him the night before. A new welt rose on his cheek, probably from her elbow. “Anna! It's okay. Anna. You're safe.” She stopped struggling and went limp in his arms.

Joe bore down on Edgar like a freight train, his hair flopping, flinging sweat. “Sherlock! I'm coming!”

Anna threw herself against Edgar's chest. His arms clamped protectively
around her. Joe reached them and stumbled to a stop. His uncertain eyes flitted between Anna and Edgar. “Sherlock?”

Anna buried her face in Edgar's armpit. Edgar boomed, “You did this to her! You did!”

Joe ignored him. “Anna, look at me. Sweetheart. It isn't what you think!”

“And what would you have her think, Singer? That she's a detective? So you can dress her up like a whore? I can't imagine what you had planned for her in the red-light district tonight!”

Joe pointed at Edgar. “You, shut up.”

Edgar bared his teeth. “She was innocent! And you lured her with lies, because you wanted her. You ruined her!”

Joe pleaded, “Anna. You gotta let me explain.”

“Stay away from me you…you lowly dog! I hate you!” Anna buried her face again. She could hear Joe standing there, breathing like a beast. She felt him watching, but she didn't look.

“Go away, Singer! Before I kill you! This is the last time I say it. Stay away from my fiancée!”

Anna began to tremble. She couldn't stop. She shook and shook while Edgar stroked her hair. “It's all right, Anna. Shhh. It's all right.”

Anna didn't hear Joe anymore. She turned her head to liberate one eye and looked down the alley.

Sirens wailed and a cop car pulled up behind Joe. Wolf ran into view with Captain Wells.

“Let's go,” Edgar said. He guided her quickly to the curb, where a black truck waited. Ugly red-light women laughed and blew kisses to Anna from their stalls.

Salt tears stung Anna's lips. Edgar coaxed her onto the rough leather seat, holding her hand, which was slick with their sweat. He set the crank and climbed behind the wheel. As he pulled away from the curb, he glanced back and laughed bitterly. “Joe Singer is getting arrested. That should make you feel better, darling. I know I do.”

Anna didn't look. Her face wrinkled up like a cabbage. She made a sound—something between a laugh and the bark of a dying seal.

Edgar slid his hand down her back, nudging her forward. “Put your head between your knees and breathe. You're going to be all right. You're safe now.”

Anna did as she was told, still trying to catch her breath, trying to calm her shaking self. But she wasn't safe. She was irreparably damaged and not at all sure she wanted to be in a world where Joe Singer was not good.

Edgar steered the truck down Commercial Street, heading east, out of town. Anna wiped under her eyes and blew her nose on Joe's suit sleeve. “You were at the brothels again…for business?”

“No. I came to find you. I looked everywhere for you—the police station, the Breedloves', the Orphans' Asylum, the church, the club. Then I heard a rumor you were at Canary Cottage,” he said. “But it's bedlam. Cars and horses everywhere. Crowds blocking the street. This was the closest I could park.”

Anna sat up straight. “Edgar, didn't you see the paper?”

“I saw the article.”

She laid her palms on her hot cheeks. “But everyone in the country is going to know that Anna Blanc was arrested for vagrancy in a downtown brothel.”

“It's…unfortunate.”

Anna's face flashed. “Unfortunate? It's ruinous! I can never be in society again. What on earth are you going to do with me?”

“Take you home with me. Marry you, if you want.”

Anna blinked at him, eyes wet, and wondered again if she knew anything at all about the world. “I don't understand. How could you still want me?”

He took his gaze from the road and fixed her with it. “I guess I'm mad for you, Anna. I can't help myself.”

He
was
mad. Mad like Heathcliff. Crazed by a Wuthering Heights love that transcended death and betrayal. Yes, he had neglected her, but only to win her hand. Now he was banishing himself for her sake. Anna felt a tenderness for Edgar that she'd never felt before.

Still, she would trade this good man's love to have Joe Singer back. Not the real man, the profligate liar, but the imaginary one that she had
loved and now knew had never existed. The thought of him sent her weeping again and it made her feel guilty.

“Don't cry, Anna. We'll start over. We'll go to Europe and live privately.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “Or go to Buenos Aires. It's very civilized.”

Anna nodded. She didn't care where they went, as long as it was far away from Los Angeles.

Edgar sped down Commercial Street, heading out of town, toward Pasadena, where so many of the East Coast rich had settled. Tall buildings gave way to single stories. Buildings were fewer, then rare. They passed an ostrich farm and groves and groves of oranges. Edgar took a private lane. It was lonely and dark and Anna coughed on the dust. It ended at a large house, a Gothic Revival, nestled among acres of fragrant citrus. There was something solemn about its pointy roof, like a church. A trellis hung with blood-red roses.

Anna put her hand on the truck's window. Her breath fogged the glass. “This is your farm?”

“One of them.” He shrugged. “But I'll sell it. Anyway, it's a good place to hide out until we make some plans.” The lights in the house sputtered and went dark, every room at once. Anna gasped. Edgar squeezed her hand. “It's just the electric plant, darling. It shuts off at midnight.” He got out and opened the truck's door for Anna.

Anna nodded and took his arm, limping onto the gravel drive, nursing her battered feet, the hem of Joe's trousers dragging. Edgar swept her into his arms and carried her through the arch of roses and up the veranda steps.

At the threshold, she braced her hand against the doorframe. “This isn't proper. We're…alone.”

He smiled contemptuously. “A funny thing for you to say, but if you want I can sleep in another room.”

Anna swallowed. She'd thrown propriety out the window when she started working for the LAPD. She'd virtually cast herself as a prostitute by going to the brothel. She deserved his bitter sarcasm. “I…I'll do what you want.”

“Good.”

She let her hand drop and Edgar carried her inside, setting her down on the soft carpet in the foyer.

“You never asked me what I did in the brothel,” she said. “Don't you want to know?”

“My love, I don't think I could bear it.”

The house was elegant and empty. In the foyer, lit by the moon, she saw a coat rack and a table. Edgar struck a match and lit an oil lamp. The smoke smudged the ruffled blue globe. It smelled like sulfur and cast shadows across the walls. Edgar hung up his hat. His voice sounded tight. “Is that Joe Singer's suit you're wearing?”

Anna nodded. “I borrowed it. For a disguise.”

“Take it off!” He took a coat from the rack and thrust it at her.

She scooted into the dark parlor, away from his eyes. He followed with the oil lamp and watched her. Anna slipped out of the jacket and unclipped the suspenders, illuminated by flickering lamp light. Blushing, she removed the notebook from her pocket, and stepped out of the trousers. Her petticoats were bunched around her waist. She quickly unfurled them, smoothing them down over her drawers. Edgar's eyes skimmed her lingerie coolly, as if imagining whose eyes had been there before. She turned her back, peeled the shirt off over her head, and put on the coat.

With a sudden violence, Edgar snatched up Joe's clothes and stuffed them in the fireplace, dousing them with kerosene from the lamp. He lit a match and the clothes caught with a
poof
. The scent of burning wool invaded the room.

The violence of it made Anna tremble. She could hear mice in the walls. “Where are the servants?”

“I sent them away this morning. I thought you'd like privacy.”

“I do.”

He poured two brandies from a decanter and turned up the lamp, brightening the room. Several Franz Bischoff paintings of the Coast hung on the floral-papered wall. Anna loved plein-air. She hadn't known that he liked plein-air. There was a Persian carpet, a geometric Tiffany
lamp from New York, and a talking machine with a stack of records. She limped over to the stack and flipped through the heavy disks—“A Bird in a Gilded Cage,” “Un Bel Di Madama Butterfly.” Edgar came up from behind and reached around her, raising goose bumps on her skin. He selected a record, turning the crank, and set it spinning round and round. He smirked as the machine warbled, “I Can't Tell You Why I Love You, But I Do.”

Anna's cheeks flushed again. “I should warn you, the killer might come for me.” Saying it made it seem true. Fear crawled up her back. She shivered.

“I'll always protect you, Anna. Haven't I proven that?” He put his hands on her shoulders and drew her to his chest. He didn't sound afraid. Anna leaned against him, sipping her brandy, and wondered if he even believed there was a killer, or if, like Snow, he simply thought she was crazy.

Anna was suddenly conscious of her dirty feet and the muck she was tramping on the carpet. She looked down at her bare filthy legs. Edgar followed her gaze. “Would you like it if I ran you a bath?” he asked.

Anna nodded. Edgar disappeared into the kitchen. She perched on the edge of the settee. The song finished and the record ran out. She picked up a book from the end table. It was a copy of
Wuthering Heights
.

Anna soaked in a claw foot tub. Only her head and battered feet rose above the tepid brew. Edgar had sprinkled rose petals to make it smell nice and put almond oil in the water. He had lit beeswax candles all along the marble-topped vanity. He had given her sweet sherry in a cut crystal glass, which she had downed in one shot, and cake and cut oranges, which remained untouched. The candles cast shadows on walls that were papered with hand-painted birds nesting in wisteria.

Edgar knocked. Instinctively, Anna's arms flew up to cover her breasts and her knees bent up to her chest. “Yes?”

The door creaked open a crack and Edgar's arm appeared, holding a little knit pad with a picture of a chicken. He set the pad down and retreated, coming back with a large kettle of boiled water, wrapped in a towel to conserve its heat. “In case you want to warm up.” He left the kettle sitting on the chicken. The door closed and she heard him rustling around in the bedroom.

“Thank you,” she called.

The evening was balmy, so Anna left the kettle steaming on the tile. Edgar was being extra kind. He wanted to sleep in her room that night. But, for once, she wasn't dreaming about the mysteries of married love or trying to picture what Edgar looked like under his bathing suit. If Louis Taylor had made her suspect of passion, Joe Singer had discredited it forever.

Instead, she imagined Eve, a shimmering spirit with branding eyes, haunting Anna because her debt went unpaid. Anna tried to force the image out of her mind, but she felt Eve's cold presence, and the ghosts of all the girls who had never been avenged. Would Joe solve the crimes
without Anna? Now that she knew Joe visited brothels, it was unclear which side of the law he was on. He himself was a suspect. The very thought sucked strength from her body and she choked back a sob.

Anna climbed from the tub, collected her notebook, and slid back into the tepid water. The rose petals swirled like snow. She read over the list of Protestant patrons from Canary Cottage, and the notes she had taken on each from their brief conversations. She had never seen Joe Singer at mass, so she added his name to the end of the list. She bit her trembling lip. He was a pig, but surely her former lover could not be a murderer, and if he was a murderer, she'd rather be his victim than live with the knowledge. She scratched his name out. Then she wrote it again. Then she scratched it out a second time. The pencil tore the wet paper. Anna growled in frustration. In addition to his other crimes, Joe Singer interfered with her deductive reasoning. She had to forget about her deceitful lover and concentrate on the clues. She crossed her cut feet on the edge of the tub.

Anna looked at the remaining names and tapped the pencil on her lower lip. The killer would need to be rich to afford the Poodle Dog, or a big fish who received services on the house. Or he could be the son of a big fish…Anna slipped down in the bath and put her head underwater, hoping she would drown. She held her breath until she saw twinkling stars and surfaced gasping. She wrote “rich or powerful” at the top of the page and crossed off Douglas Doogan, the patrolmen, and any men with bad clothes.

Anna ran a dripping finger down the list. Her suspects had been whittled down to three men—the mayor, Louis Taylor, and M. M. Martinez. Her pulse quickened.

Madam Lulu said the murders had started seven months ago, late in January, and that she was aware of no murders prior to that time. This made sense from Anna's counts of suspicious deaths in the police files. Twice, a girl in the cribs had been beaten to death by a boyfriend or the maquereau for whom she worked, but those deaths weren't passed off as suicides.

Like all beginners, criminals must start simple. Wolf had said so.
A person doesn't simply wake up one morning and, after coffee and kippers, lure a prostitute out of a brothel, dress her up like a bride, and fake her suicide. A beginner might, say, crack a girl's skull with a rock and leave her where she fell, in a puddle of bloody brains.

According to Monique, the first murder had had all the same elements as the last three. The first brothel victim should have died simply, but she hadn't. Anna could only assume that she was not the first victim. The New High Street Suicide Faker had not begun on New High Street. He knew seven different ways to kill. He killed in one place and staged the suicide in another. The wedding symbols told a complicated story, and he felt confident enough to leave them as his signature.

Maybe, like the Boyle Heights Rape Fiend, the New High Street Suicide Faker had been killing brothel girls for years, somewhere else. In another neighborhood? Maybe he'd killed brothel girls in another city and had to flee because the police suspected him. There were several men on the list who'd come to LA recently. She crossed off longtime residents.

Anna scanned her notebook. She put the pencil back in her mouth and chewed. She chewed and chewed until the paint peeled and the wood splintered.

There was no one left on her list.

Edgar called through the door in his round, upper-class accent. Anna jumped. There was something harsh in his voice—an angry urgency. “Are you all right? You're taking an eternity.”

She heard his forehead rubbing on the door, his hair making friction sounds. She had left him alone too long, and he was no doubt stewing on the image of Anna in the brothel.

The bath chilled her now. She had forgotten the hot water. Anna stood up and wrapped herself in the warm towel that had covered the kettle. “Just a minute.” She looked down at the little pile of underthings on the floor next to her holster, the mucky shredded stockings, the garter tangled with her knife, a pair of garish new red drawers that she had borrowed from Big Cindy because Anna had no clean ones. Anna wilted. At home, wrapped in tissue paper and lavender, her tasteful,
silky robes de nuit languished with the rest of her trousseau. Garish red, secondhand drawers were not what she had planned to wear on her wedding night.

She pressed her mouth against the door. “I have no clothes. Not a stitch.”

Now she detected a smile in his voice. “I have something. Just wait a minute.”

His footsteps receded and a wardrobe creaked. In a moment, Edgar's hand poked through the door holding her wedding gown on a hanger—the one she'd ordered for Saturday. His arm was draped in the silk sleeve of an oriental robe. The fabric shone, lovely and blue, embroidered with lotus flowers.

Anna took the gown from his hand and his sleeve disappeared. When he closed the door, Anna dropped her towel down the laundry chute and put on the corset, drawers, and gown. Her hair dripped on her silk dress, leaving long rivers of gray. She twisted the strands up into a plain bun without looking in the mirror. She knew she looked bad for Anna Blanc, but Edgar had no Princess Pat or walnut stain—not even a hairbrush. There was nothing she could do, so why wallow in it. She sat on the cold porcelain commode with the lid down and chewed her lips for color.

This felt all wrong. She didn't want to be deflowered. Not so soon after falling in love with Joe Singer and being thrown violently out of love by his inconstancy and whoring. Edgar didn't seem to know how to be. One minute, he was as sweet as Hershey's chocolate, and the next minute as bitter as the cooking kind, which looks the same but packs a nasty surprise. She couldn't blame him for being different now. She could only be grateful. He had done so much for her and, unlike Joe Singer, he only went to brothels for business. So tonight she would let him have his way. It was the least she could do.

Edgar knocked again. “Don't be nervous, darling. I know…It's all right if…you're not a maiden. I'm resigned to it.”

Anna frowned. Surely Edgar didn't believe the libelous paper or the dirty rumors. Did he think that she was lying about her brief,
unconsummated marriage to Louis Taylor? Or, worse yet, that she had given herself to Joe? Of course she
had
given herself to Joe, but he hadn't taken her and so it didn't count. She lifted her chin in indignation. Edgar was the one who wasn't a maiden.

“I am,” she said indignantly.

Edgar sighed into the door. “I know you did things…for a reason. Your intentions were good. Someday, you can explain, and I'll be ready to hear it. What I mean is, I've thought a lot about it, and I love you regardless.” The heel of his hand made a thump on the wood. “Anna, you are my Gomer.”

Anna's lungs stopped. She braced herself against the wall, lest she slip off the commode. He had lied to her.

Edgar wasn't Catholic.

Not only that, her fiancé was certainly the killer. The man she cared for and planned to love once her heart mended, the man who would shelter her and buy her pretty things, the charming, very presentable man who liked plein-air—he was a killer. And there was a distinct possibility that she was about to die. Though she had nothing left to live for, Anna didn't want to die. Not yet.

Anna squeezed her eyes shut and puffed her mouth out like a blowfish. Edgar didn't seem like a killer, with his curls and his sometimes shy smile. But if she had learned anything from this series of tragic debacles, it was to rely on her head and not her heart. And so she concentrated.

The answer came to her. She would hold him at gunpoint, tie him up, and call the authorities. It was as simple as that. She scrambled across the rug to her holster and picked it up. It swung from her hand empty. She had dropped her gun at Canary Cottage while fleeing from Joe—one more reason to be angry with her former lover. She hitched up her wedding gown and slipped on her garters, fastened Cook's paring knife onto her leg. As a second thought, she unbuttoned her dress and removed her corset for the sake of agility. She would try to run for the trees, but if Edgar caught her she would have to fight.

Edgar voice was darkly insistent. “Let me in, darling, or I'll simply get the key.”

Anna picked up the kettle of boiled water using the little knit pad with the picture of a chicken, which she slipped from underneath. She lifted the lid and hot steam assaulted her face. The key turned in the lock with a click. The door opened and Edgar stood in the doorway in an elegant
chinoiserie robe de chamber
and matching slippers, his brow furrowed, his bruised shins bare, his eyes glittering. She hesitated. He looked spanking fine in Chinese silk. The black eye she had given him made him look more interesting, more adventurous. He smelled nice, too—like silk and petunias.

Edgar moved towards her. “Anna?”

Anna was momentarily paralyzed by the absurdity that a man so beautiful could be a killer. He reached out one smooth, manicured hand. “Anna?”

Edgar's touch galvanized her. She splashed the steaming kettle in his face and slipped past him into his bedroom, her bare feet skidding across the carpet.

He screamed, “Are you mad?”

He was quick, charging after her as she flew for the bedroom door. She put her hand on the knob to swing the door open, but he was already upon her, forcing it shut with his full weight and trapping her between his outstretched arms. He shook his head like a wet dog, spraying her face. His face glowed as if sunburned. “Anna! What's wrong with you? That hurt!”

She cowered beneath him, moon-eyed, her teeth chattering, her heart beating like a hummingbird's wings. He simply stared at her, red and furious. Air from each of his hard breaths pelted her cheek. He didn't move. They stood there and the clock ticked. Gradually, his breath softened and slowed. She watched his rage melt into confusion, then concern, and finally understanding. The deep furrows on his brow were like ripples in water. His voice was flat. “You aren't well, Anna. It's all right. I'll call a doctor.”

He grabbed her firmly by the wrist and steered her down the stairs into the hall. She let herself be taken. He was leading her closer to the door.

Edgar sat her in a hard oak chair in the corner near a hall table with a telephone, and blocked her in with his long, lean body. “Stay.” He shoved his palm out, gave her a stern look, and turned his back to her to pick up the telephone. The room was perfectly quiet. She heard the telephone click.

Anna sat stiffly in the chair and hoped. A doctor might be her salvation. When they were alone, she could tell him that Edgar was a vicious, insatiable killer who preyed upon prostitutes, like Jack the Ripper. She ground her teeth. It would do no good. Edgar would tell the doctor that she was insane. Isn't that why he was making the call? Because he thought she was mad? Isn't that what the newspaper printed—that she was delusional? The doctor wouldn't listen to Anna. He would give her pills and lock her up in the giggle-giggle ward of the bat house. He would throw away the key and she would roam the halls forever in a shapeless hospital gown with no corset and no drawers.

The white lotus flowers on Edgar's silk robe stretched innocently across his broad back, in perfect contrast to his dark curls. Anna's eyebrows rose together in a little teepee of consternation. He looked so handsome in that robe—nothing like a killer. But that kind of thinking had been her downfall when she failed to stop the Boyle Heights Rape Fiend. She vowed not to make that mistake twice—not to flinch because of beauty. Her very life depended on it.