The Body in Griffith Park

by Jennifer Kincheloe

  She drew a picture of a gun in the dirt with her toe. She drew a picture of Joe in his underwear with a mysterious point in front. She scanned the sky for vultures, just in case, and saw a condor soaring overhead on giant wings. It was a lovely sight, but she’d rather be looking at the deado. It was a cock shame that she was a woman, because if she were a man, she could make love to Joe Singer and examine dead bodies with impunity. But as she was a woman, the two things she wanted most were denied her.

  It wasn’t fair, just like tight corsets, no votes, and submission to husbands.

  And so, Anna did what any lady would do in her situation, faced with grave injustice, alone at a potential crime scene that was begging to be investigated.

  She tiptoed to the body.

  It was a gruesome sight. The man’s head lay turned to the side as if watching the view down the mountain. His face teemed with ants, making it hard to discern his age or features. His thick hair, stiff with pomade, looked absent of gray. His mustache curled up just so. His suit was new and made of fine material, but the color was ugly—some kind of orangey, greenish, brownish herringbone. She checked for a label but found none. No doubt the tailor did not want to own that suit.

  Anna circled the body as if she were a dancer and he were her partner of sorts—one with a propensity for vacuous staring. She wrapped her hand in a handkerchief, picked up his hand, and tried to bend his fingers. They held stiff. He remained in the peak of rigor—dead no more than thirty-six hours. Given that his hand was ambient temperature, she thought at least fourteen.

  His silk tie was fiercely ugly. The man had money, but no taste—something his family should have contained. Had he no family? Were they dead, estranged, or just far away? She unbuttoned his coat and dug through his pockets. She found no wallet, no calling cards like a gentleman might carry, just a cheap, dirty handkerchief with no monogram and a salacious-looking dime novel that she wouldn’t mind borrowing. In a coat pocket, she found a bottle of headache medicine with the name of a pharmacy in Oklahoma City. A small amount remained. Perhaps his family, who should be monitoring his wardrobe, was yet in Oklahoma. She put the bottle back.

  She noted a depression marring the ground beneath his knee. Tiny pebbles stuck to the ugly wool at that knee, partly embedded in the fabric. Anna squatted again to heave the body over to its original position so that his hand once more lay near the gun.

  Joe would return any moment, so Anna picked up a branch and swished it over each of her footprints until they were eradicated. Then she tossed sand, gravel, and a handful of dried leaves over the spot to hide the marks.

  Then she noticed other smooth spots in the dust.

  When Joe returned, Anna was dressed and waiting back in the place he’d left her. “Thanks Sherlock. Now, you’d better get down the mountain before the coroner comes and sees you.”

  “I think we should check the gun for fingerprints.”

  “Um hm.”

  “Remember, ‘Every contact leaves a trace.’”

  “I know Locard’s Exchange Principle.”

  “Did you read Locard’s L’enquete criminelle? Because it’s in French, and I didn’t think you read French.” “I read a translation.”

  “I read the original.”

  “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hightail it down the mountain.” He treaded on soft dirt over to the body. He whipped around and glared at her. “Speaking of leaving a trace, Anna, you examined him. I can tell you wiped your footprints away. It’s too smooth here.”

  “No. Those aren’t mine.”

  “Don’t try to deny it.”

  “I’m not denying anything. My wiped-away footprints are on the other side of the body, more artfully disguised and sprinkled with leaves. I’m not the first person to erase my footprints from this crime scene. I will also note that he was kneeling when he shot himself. He died backward execution style—that is, shot in the forehead.” Anna lifted her skirts thigh high and dropped to one knee, knowing very well her stockings would get ruined, but figuring it would be worth it. “If you roll him over, you can see the impression from his knee and the tiny rocks embedded in his pants. His pants are dusty everywhere, but there are only rocks at his knee. Then he fell sideways like this.” She fell, catching herself with her palms. She rolled over and showed Joe the resulting mark on the ground and on her stocking.

  Joe considered her carefully. He moved to the body and examined the knee. “You’re right, Sherlock.”

  “Of course I’m right. Somebody put him out of business. And I can’t believe, after all we’ve been through, you’re not letting me help.”

  “Anna, if they find out we were in the park together, you’d lose your job, and I would never see you. I happen to love you, so just get down the mountain and on the tram before the coroner gets here.”

  Anna returned to the station and the sharp scent of convicts and cigarette smoke, wiping her feet vigorously on the mat at the door. She took out her handkerchief and brushed dirt from the tops of her boots. She glanced up to find Wolf observing her closely.

  “Where you been Assistant Matron Blanc?” he asked.

  “Hunting a truant.”

  “You got dirt on your boots.”

  “So.”

  “What do you bet that when Joe comes through that door, he’ll have dirt on his boots.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “I’m a detective, remember? He telephoned from the call box at Griffith Park. Honeybun, if Matron Clemens or Captain Wells suspect you’ve been fraternizing, you’d be fired and there’s nothing I could do to protect you.”

  “What if I’m not the fraternizer? What if I’m the fraternizee?”

  “Then they’ll blame you for being a distraction. But if Detective Singer is giving you trouble, you come to me.” He grinned, promising trouble of his own.

  Matron Clemens clipped over, her white tie starched to perfection. Anna’s tie had dirt on it.

  “Good Morning, Detective Wolf. There you are, Assistant Matron Blanc. I’ve been looking for you. Did you accomplish your task?”

  “Sure did. Didn’t you, honeybun?” said Wolf.

  “Why, yes. I did. Positively,” Anna lied. Truthfully, she hadn’t accomplished her task with the truant or with Joe Singer. “That is, I looked for Eliel Villalobos.”

  “Good. That’s all we can do,” said Matron Clemens. “I’m going to address the Friday Morning Women’s Club tomorrow. They are starting an effort to find employment for girls who would like to escape a life of sin, and they’ve asked us to help them. Assistant Matron Blanc, you know some of the girls in the brothels. Are there any you know who might want to change their lives? If you could find someone to give her testimony, I’m sure it would help with fundraising.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Very good.” Matron Clemens clipped away.

  Wolf leaned in close to Anna. “I know how you are. You saw the body and you’re going to want to get involved.”

  “Of course I want to be involved. He was shot, backward execution style.”

  “But you can’t. You’ve got to forget about the body and concentrate on your matron duties. Find jobs for prostitutes. Watch lost kiddies. Look out for lady prisoners.”

  “I can do both.”

  “I’ll tell you what. If we need to question a female suspect, I’ll ask for you in particular.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Anna wished she could accomplish her mission—to recruit prostitutes for the Friday Morning Club meeting—without going to the parlor houses. It wasn’t that she minded the girls. They had always been kind to Anna. But she had far too many bad memories. As she could not avoid going—it was a matron’s duty—she would at least try to finish before dark.

  Hurrying to the trolley, Anna passed a newsie hawking the Los Angeles Herald. He looked all of nine, but his shrill voice pierced Anna’s ears. “Evelyn Nesbit Shaw Seeks Annulment from Marriage to White’s Slayer. Read all about it.”

  Ann
a despised the Herald but bought the paper for a closer look at Mrs. Shaw’s hat. The brim was small, the feathers voluminous. She wished she knew what color it was. She then noted another headline of interest. “Local banker commits suicide.” Anna squeezed her eyes shut. So many bankers had fallen on hard times when the Knickerbocker Trust Company collapsed last year. So many banks had failed, including Blanc National, her father’s bank. Anna could have saved the bank by marrying Edgar Wright, who had been rich enough to solve all their problems. He was handsome, pleasant, and young. He loved her. But she had chosen to go undercover in the demimonde to save women from a killer. Neither Edgar nor her father had forgiven her. Now Anna was disowned, and Mr. Blanc was ruined. She didn’t know how he fared.

  And so, Anna feared opening her eyes—afraid that the name of the suicide victim would be Christopher Blanc, and she would be culpable. Culpable and doubly culpable. She was, after all, on her way to the demimonde now.

  She stilled her trembling hand, bravely opened one eye, and read. The banker wasn’t her father. She didn’t know him. She exhaled in relief.

  Anna disembarked from the trolley on New High Street. Madam Lulu’s brothel, popularly known as Canary Cottage, did not properly open until after dark. It stood three stories high and was colored like Christmas, with red bricks, green trim, and heavy scarlet drapes. It was nearly enough to put Anna off the holiday. Seven fleabitten cats stalked and pounced in the yard, with several more strays roaming the adjacent empty field. Anna could hear ragtime piano being played and it ran circles on her insides, which twisted with anxiety. She had gone undercover in this particular brothel when hunting the New High Street Suicide Faker, the killer who targeted parlor girls. She had gambled her family, her reputation, and her fortune to dispatch that villain. She had put a stop to the murders at great personal cost. As she saw it, Madam Lulu owed her.

  She knocked hard and loud on the familiar side door and waited.

  A painted bird of a woman, middle-aged and thick-waisted, answered—Madam Lulu herself. She wore a red satin robe—a bad copy of a Japanese kimono—and her dyed coiffure looked slept on. Her dried lips were stained with rouge.

  Anna liked the lady. Madam Lulu closed one eye as if looking through the sight of a gun. “Well if it ain’t Anna Blanc.”

  “Aren’t you pleased to see me?” asked Anna guilelessly.

  “That depends on why you’re here.” She opened the door so that Anna could enter.

  The décor was lush and vulgar, like the woman herself. The room went on forever. Scarlet carpets covered the floor; chandeliers with icicle crystals hung from the ceiling. A life-sized oil painting of a woman in a partial state of undress smiled brazenly from the wall. There was a floor for dancing and two concert grand Steinway pianos. Balconies overlooking the grand salon encircled the two upper floors. Doors on the balconies led to bedrooms. Stairs led to balconies. It smelled of cigars, spilled whiskey, and Madam Lulu’s rose perfume.

  A strapping man, middle-aged and Negro, pounded out ragtime piano for two young women who sat on the floor playing cards in afternoon frocks. He was, she suspected, Madam Lulu’s lover. Anna smiled and offered them a little wave. The women waved back. She didn’t know them. A different girl in an Arabian-style costume practiced her hoochie coochie on the dance floor, rolling her hips and belly to a sultry, imaginary tune that was nothing like the ragtime music.

  Madam Lulu scratched her powdered nose. “Benzene?”

  Anna considered. If she had to be here, she deserved whiskey, but wasn’t sure whether Madam Lulu would charge for it. Limited by a matron’s salary, Anna needed her money for other things—like to pay for the new revolver she’d bought on credit, and those two children she had tracked down and now kept in the country because she felt responsible for their mother’s death. She folded her hands primly before her and perched on a velvet settee. “No thank you.”

  Madam Lulu waddled over to the bar and poured Anna a drink anyway. She put the whiskey in Anna’s hands. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s on the house.”

  “Thank you.” Anna took the glass and tossed it back. The familiar, pleasant burn warmed her throat and soothed her nerves. It wasn’t as nice as the whiskey man’s whiskey, but it wasn’t as bad as her own.

  Madam Lulu plopped onto the couch beside Anna. “Now why are you here?”

  Anna had to raise her voice above the music. “The Friday Morning Club is starting an effort to find employment for any brothel girl who wishes to reform and earn an honest living.”

  “So, you’re trying to rob me of my girls?”

  “I imagine some of your girls would rather not be treading the primrose path. Surely you wouldn’t begrudge them that. Last summer, when I was undercover, Charlene mentioned she planned to quit.”

  “Charlene is getting old. She’s twenty-five if she’s a day.”

  “So, you see, this could be a good thing for your more senior girls. Planning is in the very early stages. Right now, I just need a girl to testify to the ladies at the club meeting tomorrow. Tell about her troubles and woe so that they will donate money to the cause. Then we can, I don’t know, open a hat shop or something.”

  “A hat shop.”

  “I’m merely speculating, but yes.” Anna’s eyes brightened with the brilliance of her idea. “The girls could trim hats. Then we could sell them and make a bundle.”

  “A bundle,” Madam Lulu said flatly.

  “Of course, they’d need to be tasteful hats if we wished for them to sell.” Anna frowned. “So, we could only really help girls with good taste.” Anna brightened again. “Although girls with bad taste could make hats for customers with bad taste, so we could help everyone!”

  Madam Lulu relaxed back against the settee and stretched. “I’ll tell you what. You want to try to recruit my girls for your little hat shop, Princess, you be my guest.”

  From Madam Lulu’s smile, Anna felt like there was something she didn’t understand.

  “I shall then. Perhaps I should speak with Charlene first. She’s thought about this. She could give the speech to the ladies.”

  “What speech?”

  “About how she planned to live a life of virtue, but things came up, etcetera. So now she’s forced to live a life of sin and how she’d do anything for a chance at being an honest woman again.”

  “So this is what you’ve been up to?”

  Anna’s brow wrinkled. “I’m working a new case. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about a man in an ugly suit murdered in Griffith Park?”

  “Nope.”

  Anna stood. “Then I should be off.”

  Madam Lulu’s puffy hand turned palm up. “Not so fast. That’ll be fifty cents.”

  “For what?”

  “The whiskey.”

  “Fifty cents is steep, and all I have is my trolley fare. And you said—

  “Princess, that was before I knew why you was comin’.”

  Anna returned to Central Station late, in the dark, and sweaty from walking. Also, she’d stepped in gum. She stuck to the floor with each gummy step. But at least she’d convinced Charlene to speak to the Friday Morning Club the following day.

  Anna stayed at the station long past dinner, waiting to interview a confused old lady—a witness to a robbery. It was a gift from Wolf, the most senior detective. It wasn’t a murder, but it was police work.

  “A beat cop is bringing her in. She’ll be here any moment.” Wolf flashed his teeth at Anna and held her eyes too long.

  A tired Joe Singer dragged into the station, along with six cops in muddy boots and five men in handcuffs, only now back from Griffith Park. Anna’s heartbeat quickened as she watched the captives. Murder suspects?

  Wolf gave her a warning look. “Mind your own business, Assistant Matron Blanc.”

  “About what?” She blinked innocently.

  From across the room, Joe began casting her smoldering glances so that she could barely concentrate on the criminals. He sauntered by and whispered
, “Marry me.”

  It weakened Anna’s resolve, and if a justice of the peace had been present, she might have succumbed. Luckily, there was no justice of the peace. She would have to avoid them at all costs.

  CHAPTER 5

  The meeting at the Friday Morning Club began boring, grew interesting, and then exploded. Attendance was excellent for eight in the morning. A hundred women crowded the assembly room wearing hats with brims so wide they touched.

  There were forty-five minutes of gavel bangs and monotonous business before the first speaker, an elderly woman in her fifties. Her chin barely cleared the podium, yet she boomed, “Why is it that men who will protect so carefully their own women—wives, sisters, and daughters—from even an evil thought are willing to degrade other young girls, who only lack the same help and protection? Only when the sterner sex advances from their hopeless attitude of moral apathy can social regeneration begin.”

  The ladies clapped.

  “Something is terribly wrong. Do not attach blame to fallen girls. Do we blame flowers that grow awry and force their shoots in the wrong direction through lack of proper supports? No! Women should be less concerned about protecting their sons and husbands from the vampire and more concerned about providing support to girls . . .”

  The lady went on about women’s responsibility to mother fallen girls and then ended with a bang. “The former reticence on matters of sex is giving way to a frankness that would startle even Paris. I hereby declare that it is sex-o-clock in America!”

  Anna’s ears perked up and she clapped loudly. Regrettably, that was as frank as it got.

  Next, a woman of Anna’s acquaintance—a Mrs. Morgan—came to the podium. The lady no longer acknowledged Anna after last summer’s scandal. She was a tight-lacer with a tiny waist that made Anna’s own small middle seem average at best. The tight-lacer wore a tasteful gown that pooled on the floor behind her in a silk train. Somehow, the lady found the breath to ramble on and on about fallen women and how though some had chosen a life of sin (she glared at Anna), most were hapless victims who simply required opportunity to be redeemed and elevated once again, although they couldn’t be truly elevated because, once stained, virtue could never truly be unstained.