After the doctor left, Anna drifted up and down the hotel hallways on doctor’s orders and Joe’s arm. People averted their eyes instead of looking upon her with admiration the way they normally did. No matter that Joe had covered the mirrors; the strangers were her mirrors. This, Anna feared, was to be her new life as a monstrously ugly, fingerless woman. Without her beauty to rely upon, she must concentrate on developing character, like the nuns had always said. And, she should develop her detective skills.
Anna took note of the calico curtains, which, oddly, hung drawn in the middle of a warm winter morning. Through a one-inch gap, she could see through the window that a crowd of people filled the street. She could hear their voices. She leaned on Joe to steer him. “To the window, please.”
Joe steered her away. “I don’t want you to look out the window.”
“All right, I trust you.” She fluttered ape lashes.
“I’m skeptical but touched.”
Anna tried to pull him in the direction of the window. Joe dropped anchor. In her weakened state, she couldn’t budge his manly and determined frame.
Now Anna could hear the crowd jeering. She let go of Joe and lurched toward the window.
He caught her around the waist. “Anna, don’t.”
“It’s not your decision.”
He let go. “No Anna. It’s a—’
She hobbled forward and threw back the curtains.
“Hanging.” Joe put his arms around her from behind.
In the street, two men stood on gallows. One wore a noose. He looked up and locked eyes with the ape in the window adding horror to horror. His face twisted. Before she could take in the scene, before she could steel herself, the trap door opened, and the man swung.
The morbid cheers of the crowd drowned Anna’s cry of dismay. The man convulsed on the end of the rope, like Georges in a fit, and then stilled. He had been alive and now he was dead. He had been someone’s brother perhaps, and now he was nothing.
Anna’s knees went weak and she collapsed against Joe. She turned, hiding her face in his shirt.
The image of the dying man seared itself into her mind, and though she no longer saw him with her eyes, she saw him. She saw his face clearly, a handsome face with tanned skin, a patrician nose, and gray eyes. Georges face.
Joe swept her up into his arms and carried her back to their room. He laid her on the bed, where she wept until she fell asleep.
In the morning, Joe brought Anna coffee in bed. “The hotel owner asked around for me. Georges isn’t in Yuma. But we knew that.”
She said, “How long have we been here? Five days?”
“Six.”
“We have to leave. We have to exonerate him.”
“Your brother has got the best lawyer in Los Angeles—arguably the country. Even if he’s guilty, the prosecution has a hard road. He’s just got to show up to court in three weeks.”
“When is the next train to Oklahoma City. I have to be ready.”
“There are fruit trains almost every afternoon. But you aren’t going to Oklahoma City. You aren’t going anywhere. Not until you’re better.”
“Are you bossing me again?”
“Anna, this is police business, and I outrank you.”
Anna chose to ignore this. In the LAPD, she could never have any rank at all. She had long since decided that the LAPD ranking system failed to honor her, thus she would not honor it, though she would give the appearance of honoring it when expedient or necessary to avoid punishment.
“Sherlock, you know that if rank were based on ability or dedication or bravery, you’d outrank us all.”
She sat up in bed, smiled sweetly, and lisped, “Thank you, Detective. I feel much, much better. As good as new. And time is of the essence as my brother’s very life is on the line. His court date is approaching. He could hang.”
“Sherlock, your life is on the line. Take your laudanum.”
It became clear to Anna that Joe might be more of a barrier than a help, and she needed a plan. He gave her a spoonful of laudanum, and when he turned his back, she spit it out on the floor. It didn’t matter how extreme her pain, she must be ready to seize any opportunity to get to Oklahoma City. This required a clear mind and supernatural reinforcements.
Anna prayed to Saint Dismas, patron saint of condemned men, that Georges would not hang like the man in the street, dying to the jeers of a bloodthirsty crowd, and that Anna would be good if that’s what it took to save him.
And so, Anna concentrated. She repeated to herself over and over, “I will not tell fibs. I will be giving, like Matilda. I will not steal spectacles from men on trollies.” With sadness she repeated, “I will not make love to Joe Singer.” This virtue should be easy as he would no longer want her, nor would anyone else. Also, he had thrown her brother in the bull ring.
She said a prayer to Saint Drogo of Sebourg, patron saint of ugly women, that she would be able to keep her vows, and that exceptions could be made in special circumstances such as emergencies or when her need was very great.
Anna spent the morning, wandering the halls frightening guests because the doctor said it was important for regaining strength. When Joe slipped his arm through hers, she said, “I don’t need to lean on you. I told you, I’m better now.”
“Maybe I like holding your arm.”
Anna let him help her but said nothing. What was there to say? She was ugly. He was scrumptious and trying to hang her brother.
She passed time beating Joe at poker as her new face had only one expression—orangutan—thus she had no tell. She could think of one thing only. Saving Georges from the noose.
Joe tried to distract her, reading aloud to her from the proprietor’s collection of pulpy dime novels.
A group of female figures was discernable on the quarter deck. At the sight, a thrill of anguish ran through our breasts. We would have laid down our lives to save them from their inevitable doom, and yet what could we do in the face of such a tempest. As I thought of the impossibility of rendering succor to those shrinking females, as I dwelt on their lingering agonies—
Anna, who normally loved lingering agonies in dime novels, was plotting in her head. She had to get Joe out of the way so she could take the train to Oklahoma City. She interrupted him. “You should take a bath?”
“Are you saying I smell?”
“I would never.” But he did smell. Intoxicating.
“Baths cost money and I just took a bath last night. Fourteen hours ago.”
“I’m just saying you should take another one.” She wrinkled her nose.
Joe sniffed his armpit, looking puzzled. “All right. But we were just getting to the good part. You know he’s going to rescue those shrinking females. I’ll bet you a Coca Cola he hooks up with one by the end.”
“I’ll bet you two to one the shrinking females all die a horrible death.”
“I’ll take that bet. It’s a dime novel; you know they’re going to survive.”
“Not always.” Anna stared at him pointedly and waved her hand in front of her nose.
“All right!” Joe sighed, set the book on the nightstand, and stomped to the bathroom down the hall. Anna could hear him running the cold bath water. She heard him tramp down the stairs to get kettles from the kitchen. It was not the Hotel Alexandria. This was Yuma.
Anna went to the mirror, closed her eyes, and tugged off the sheet that had shrouded her reflection for so many days. She counted to three and then opened, stifling a gasp. Her complexion remained ruddy instead of its normal milky white, making her gray eyes glow unnaturally by contrast—like two silver coins in the sun. Her ears appeared abnormally small, mere warts upon her swollen head. Her mouth and tongue protruded, though less than before. The effect was distinctly masculine. A face perhaps only a brother could love.
She steeled herself against tears. Today she would begin life as an ugly, lonely man-woman.
It occurred to Anna that manly clothes could be a better thing. Even a boy
orangutan outranked a human girl in the eyes of the LAPD. If she looked male, ape or no, Sergeant Tribble might take her seriously. She just needed to steal Joe’s clothes, slip away, and take the train, provided one came this afternoon. Then she could proceed with her investigation to exonerate Georges with clout. She tried to remember what time she heard the whistles? Four o’clock? Five o’clock?
Anna dressed in Joe’s extra set of clothes from his carpet bag. What she didn’t put on, she threw out the window. She gathered up all the bedclothes and the sheets from the mirror and heaved them over the sill, watching them crash into the bushes below. She collected his brass LAPD badge in the shape of a star and stowed it in her pocket.
Out in the hall, she heard Joe’s footsteps and the bathroom door clicking open and closed. She waited until she thought he was good and naked, grabbed a hatpin, and slunk out. She could hear him singing in the bath.
I’m goin’ get right up and put on all my clothes.
I’m goin’ to go right out and take in all the shows.
I’m goin’ drive around in an open carriage.
If I meet my girl there’s goin’ be a marriage.
Anna checked her wrist watch. It was 4:00 p.m. and she hadn’t yet heard the train whistle. This was a good sign. She quietly picked the bathroom lock with the hatpin and opened the door. Joe Singer sat in a big porcelain bathtub, surrounded by bubbles to his waist, singing and scrubbing his head. His eyes were closed, his broad chest interesting and bare. Regrettably, she didn’t have time to look. He slipped down under the water to rinse.
Anna gathered up his clothes from the floor and his skinny leather wallet. She scooped up his towel and bath mat. His head broke the surface of the water. He rubbed his face, slicked back his hair, and opened his eyes. They popped. “Sherlock!” He leapt to his feet.
Joe stood there naked, glorious, and sparkling wet. His body was like a marble statue, but with no discrete fig leaf, just a few unfortunate clumps of bubbles. His blue eyes burned with some unknown emotion.
Her feet stuck to the planks. With her whole being, Anna wanted to stay. She wanted to stay and watch the bubbles pop and watch him air dry, or better yet, to dry him herself. She had his towel.
In the distance, a train whistle blew.
She remembered that she was an ape and her brother might hang. Joe lunged for her. Anna leapt backward, out of his grasp. It took all her strength to turn and run, closing the door behind her.
CHAPTER 36
Anna ran toward the sound of the whistle. When she reached the station, the train had started to roll. She tried her best to run for it. Behind her, she heard Joe’s voice calling. “Anna!”
He was as resourceful as he was delicious.
His sweet yelling voice cut her. She knew she was choosing Georges over Joe. She didn’t turn around, though she was curious to see what he was wearing. She grabbed the rail of the rolling caboose and hauled herself up the steps. Only then did she turn to look for Joe. She could hear him but did not see him. Then, he flew through the depot onto the platform, leapt off the platform onto the tracks, streaking along like he himself was a steaming locomotive. He was wearing someone else’s overcoat, his churning legs bare beneath it.
A cop pursued him, blowing a whistle.
The train had not reached full speed. Joe was gaining on her. The cop was gaining on him. Anna gripped the rails.
He was running right behind the caboose, glowing with exertion. Anna dripped with sweat, because, if Joe caught the train, he would surely make her get off, and she would have to face what she’d just done. He lifted his determined eyes to the rail and leapt. Anna watched him fly, his hands grasping for the rail. His fingers made contact. For a moment he hung there, his toes on the train, his fingertips on the rail. Their eyes met.
She didn’t think he would forgive her for this. “Goodbye my love.”
He slipped off, landing briefly on his feet, then falling back onto his biscuits, his coat flying up, exposing his manly legs. Joe grew smaller. “Sherlock!”
Anna waved and watched until he was just a dot on the tracks being arrested for indecent exposure and theft of an overcoat. She felt stunned at what she had sacrificed. She blew her love one final kiss and slowly, sadly made her way through the caboose into the passenger section of the train.
Anna lowered herself onto the hard, wooden bench in third class, the only seat left, right outside the closet containing the toilet. She hadn’t yet bought her ticket, but she had Joe’s wallet. She could buy it on the train.
Guilt poked at her heart. Joe wouldn’t be able to pay the hotel bill, and they’d likely throw him in jail. She thought of Georges in jail because of Joe, and the guilt went away. She could always bail him out on her way back through Yuma.
A woman sold meat sandwiches from a little cart, but when Anna pulled the bread apart to look at the filling, it looked green and had a bad odor, so she tossed it out the window. It would be a hungry two-day journey and she didn’t feel well.
No one on the train spoke to Anna. In fact, they scooched away from her, no doubt because of her face. For so many years she’d been beautiful—the most beautiful woman in the room, perhaps in all of California. She hadn’t realized the privileges her loveliness had bestowed. She hadn’t considered them or noticed until they were gone. Now ugly and dressed as a man, no one smiled at her or engaged her in charming conversation. No one offered to buy her food or wine or upgrade her seat to first class for free.
How inconvenient to be ugly. How sad to be alone. But the swelling did impart one gift—coarse, manly features—a manly countenance to wield in this a man’s world. Full personhood and masculine authority for fighting crimes.
Take that Petronilla.
Anna spread out in her seat, her knees comfortably apart, and openly read Dark Secrets, one of the hotel proprietor’s seamy pulp magazines for men, which she had borrowed because it was an emergency.
As they neared Oklahoma City, Anna watched the open landscape from the window. Everything looked flat and white with snow. Anna had only seen snow once before when her father had taken her to Mount Wilson. It had been magical, though she hadn’t been allowed to make snow angels or have a snowball fight. She had been treated to a new fur coat, hat, and muff, which she had only worn once. It was a shame she didn’t have it with her now.
When Anna disembarked from the train, the porter did not offer to hand her down, but stood idly nearby. She jumped down the last big step—a challenge in Louis heels and rolled-up pant hems—and scowled at him. No one opened the door for her as she crossed the threshold of the depot. Everyone gave her a wide berth.
Her finger hurt.
She moved out onto the unpaved streets of Oklahoma City with its dirty snow, busy sidewalks, and new brick buildings with turrets and awnings. There were horse-drawn buggies and trolley tracks, but apparently no cars. Los Angeles, it was not. It had, until the previous year, been Indian Country. Most people were white, but she did pass Indians on the streets. They wore wool suits and broad brimmed hats with no feathers at all. Their dark skin and high cheekbones made them unmistakable. Instead of coats, some draped themselves with blankets, which they accessorized with brightly colored beads. Anna approved of their aesthetic. She felt sorry they had lost their land. She would like to tell them so, but they spoke their own language, or perhaps many languages. Anna couldn’t tell, and none of them spoke to her as she was very, very ugly.
Anna asked a woman the location of the police station, but the lady hurried off without answering. Anna wanted to say, “Wait, I’m beautiful on the inside,” but she’d stolen Joe Singer’s wallet and it wasn’t true. She didn’t want to add this lie to her long list of sins.
Anna decided to walk the length of Broadway. If she didn’t find the station itself, she would surely find a cop. Cops earned their livings helping even ugly people. As she trudged on paths of packed snow and ice, she blew into the air to watch the cloud of frozen breath coming from her mouth. The co
ld numbed the pain in her finger.
She had two goals for her visit to Oklahoma City: First, to more thoroughly interrogate Samuel Grayson’s father to find out why his son had gone to Los Angeles in the first place; and second, to find out more about Samara Flossie’s father, rule him out if he were innocent, and to capture him if he were guilty. She decided to start with Sergeant Tribble. Though he was incompetent as a detective, he knew where to find Samuel Grayson’s father.
The police station did indeed stand on Broadway. She brought her ugly self up the steps, into the warmth, and stood at the shiny wooden counter waiting for the clerk. When it was her turn, she lowered her voice several octaves. “Good afternoon.”
At the sight of her distorted face, the clerk recoiled. She soldiered on. “I’m Detective Singer with the Los Angeles Police Department. Please tell Sergeant Tribble I’m here.”
“He’s out.”
“I’ll wait.” Anna lowered herself gracefully into a chair. She crossed her arms, not in anger, but to hold herself, for she needed comforting. She almost forgot to spread her knees like a man.
Some cops came into the station through the backdoor. The clerk hurried to them as if he had a tale to tell. Shortly, he returned and ushered Anna into a small, smoky office. Sergeant Tribble balanced his cigarillo on the side of a broken china plate and stood, his gawking eyes fixed on Anna. He extended his hand. “Detective Singer, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Forgive my surprise, but that is some face.”
Anna was aghast at his candor. “I’m not that ugly.”
“I’ve got to be honest,” he said. “Yours is the ugliest face I’ve ever seen.” He laughed as if what he had said was funny. “I don’t know how you do your work. I’ll bet witnesses run screaming.” He ho-ho-hoed.
Anna frowned, not at his rudeness but at the implications for her investigation. If witnesses were to run screaming, her whole trip, her whole deception, the loss of her beauty, the loss of Joe was for naught. It made her feel like she had nothing left to lose.
The Body in Griffith Park Page 23