I pulled the bourbon out of Bill’s desk drawer at the office and poured two fingers into a tumbler. Then I added a third. The bite of the tan fire on my dry tongue was bracing. I had chided Bill for his now-and-then habit of a drink during working hours, but now I completely understood.
What next? So far I knew that Mary had left her clothes and other items behind and had gone without saying goodbye to anyone. Mrs. Smith had been awfully fast on the mark to get rid of her stuff, cleaning out her room shortly after she left. The red notations in the ledger matched up with girls who seemed to have no local ties and had also moved away from the house. The town was full of workers from the Midwest who’d left small-town life for good jobs at the aircraft factories.
Like Mary.
I pulled the list of names from my handbag and started making phone calls. After working my way through the personnel departments of all the factories with my story of checking employment references on a group of girls who wanted to rent a house together, I learned that they had all left their jobs with no notice, just didn’t show up one day.
Just like Mary.
Then I called the coroner’s office. Ten minutes later, saying goodbye and promising a home-cooked meal for Bill’s buddy there, I hung up and looked at the list again. None of them had shown up as bodies. It was as if they’d vanished into thin air.
Just like Mary.
I had a pretty fair idea that something was afoot in that old place, but I had no proof. All the girls with Ys on their paperwork had disappeared. Except for me. Was I next on this filthy list? Was I slated to die just because I seemed to be alone in a strange town? I slammed the glass down so hard that the pencils lifted and resettled in their holder, and the phone jumped off the hook.
That’s it, I decided, and reached for the phone to call Mike McGowan at the police station. I knew the number by heart—Franklin 1101. Bill had had me commit it to memory before he left. “If you’re ever in over your head, doll,” he’d said with a clownish half-grimace, “you call Mike, got that?” I’d laughed, shaking my head, and quivered my bare shoulders in mock fear. He’d just looked at me and given me a big kiss hot enough to melt the North Pole.
We were in love, and he was going away. The next morning he took a cab to the navy base, got on his ship, and I hadn’t seen him or heard from him since.
I started to dial—and then hung up. What would Mike say to me, half in pity? No habeas corpus, no crime. Bill wouldn’t go running to the cops, not before he had proof. I knew what I had to do—go back to the house and find something concrete.
I sighed as I changed out of my dress and back into my Rosie the Riveter dungarees.
Downstairs on India Street, the day was just winding down. People were heading toward the Waterfront Bar to have some beers. Sailors three and four together were laughing and talking too loud. The driving beat of “String of Pearls” pulsed from a radio. A newsie announced, “Allies take Salerno! Get yer late edition here!” I bought one and tucked it under my arm.
The iron monger rode down the street in his old buggy with the run-down nag, calling, “Rags, iron, any old iron!” Mr. Papadopoulos from the Greek café came running out of the house with an armful of rusty Model T parts.
A streetcar jangled up the tracks and I ran to catch it. “That’ll be a nickel, lady.”
I pulled out my coin purse. “Transfer, please,” I said.
“Okay, Rosie.”
I read the headlines while holding on to a canvas strap as the car swayed and bounced. One man, seeing my amateurish clinging, vacated his seat and with a patriotic salute waved me to it. I smiled and settled in to read the paper.
That night, before I allowed myself to lie down on the narrow bed, I again pushed the suitcase against the door. My mind sparked with thoughts, like men flicking cigarettes in a dark room. I tossed and turned, and as the first hints of dawn came through the edges of the blackout curtains, I dropped into a leaden sleep.
I had breakfast with Nancy in the musty dining room—three cups of coffee and a heel of bread with a scraping of margarine on it. We were the last ones at the table and Mrs. Smith was looking at us balefully. As soon as we began to slide our chairs away from the table she pounced on it like a vulture and began to clear it off.
“Come with me,” said Nancy, leading me to a back door and down a short flight of steps to the backyard. The yard was still in full summer dress, even thought it was September. A profusion of datura and morning glory tumbled over the back fence. Arches and paths ran around rosebushes heavy with nodding blooms; day lilies, carnations, and lobelia grew out of cracks, and paths of wood chips and slate stones wound round lush lawns.
“Oh, Nancy, this is beautiful! A secret garden! It’s like being in another world.” My previous trip through the garden had been too brief and panicked to notice much. I twirled around and around, enchanted and bewitched by all the flowers and vines. The scent of jasmine and roses and blooming cacti filled the air and swaying grasses danced with towering blue delphiniums. Bright orange canna lilies stood tall.
Nancy stepped under a bower of bougainvillea and grape vines and came out with a battered cardboard box. I ran up to see a tiny brown puppy with black spots on his back and big floppy ears.
“I got him yesterday. He’s part beagle and part lab. And he’s all mine.” She pulled out a greasy paper bag containing pieces of last night’s dinner and this morning’s bread and fed it to the puppy, who whimpered and then chowed down like he was starving. “His name’s Spot! Here, you take him and I’ll put on his leash,” she said.
He was soft, warm, and wiggly as I held him. I looked skeptically at the length of cord she was attaching to his collar. When she was done, I put Spot down and he ran in circles around her, tangling her feet with the rope. She tried to step out of it, tripped, and sprawled on the ground. The little dog took off and we tried to catch him. He thought it was a game and kept on running, then stopped abruptly, sitting, tongue out. He caught a new smell, lifted and twisted his head, ears swinging, and suddenly took off again.
“Oh no! If Mrs. Smith catches me with Spot, I’m ruined,” wailed Nancy. “It’s just I’m so lonely here and the beggar boy said his papa was gonna drown the whelp, so I had to take him.”
I was scanning the yard, looking for the little dog, dreading discovery by the landlady, when I saw him digging busily in a pile of dirt in the far corner. I trotted over there and scooped him up, then looked at where he’d been digging. For a small dog, he’d pawed pretty deep into the dirt pile. I saw something white and angular sticking out. A horrible idea formed in my head, but I didn’t want Nancy involved. I knelt down and swept dirt over the object.
“Here he is, safe and sound,” I said, and handed Spot back to her. “Let’s get going, we don’t want to be late for work.”
Nancy stashed Spot in his box and we ran for the bus.
I spent the day pacing back and forth in the office, working up my courage. I had to go back and see if my suspicions were true. The white thing in the dirt looked like a bone, and not a soup bone, either. I was terribly afraid that I’d found Mary, dead in the backyard.
I taped several layers of newspaper onto the lens of a flashlight and took it into the closet to see how well it worked. It gave off a sickly light, just barely enough to see by, and I hoped not enough to violate the dim-out regulations—or be noticed by the Smiths.
Five o’clock found me back on the bus, heading up the hill to 20th Street. I was so nervous that I could barely hold up my end of a conversation, but the other girls had enough silly chatter that no one noticed. I got ready for bed like everyone else, but then changed back into my dungarees and shirt and lay silently on the bed waiting for the darkness to be complete. The sap was in my back pocket, and I could feel it pressing into my behind. By eleven o’clock it was pitch black out and I couldn’t hear anyone moving in the house. It was time for me to get to work.
I grabbed my shoes and carried them as I slid my feet slowly over
the wooden floor. The door opened with a tiny noise, and I paused there for several minutes until I was sure I hadn’t woken anyone. I crept down the stairs, staying close to the wall to keep the steps from creaking as I gently lowered my weight onto them. I glided through the kitchen and eased myself out the back door.
The garden was fragrant in the night, and the air was cool. A car ghosted past with only its running lights on. I sat in the damp grass and slipped on my shoes, then walked back to the corner and felt my way over to the dirt pile. I turned on the flashlight and laid it in the dirt angled downward. I found the hollow I’d partly filled in and began digging. The dirt was sandy and moist in my hands. I carefully brushed it sideways until I saw the bone. A dainty triangle of bone, a fingertip, still attached to the next joint by tendons. As I excavated further, I saw shards of flesh clinging to the bones. The smell of decay was overpowering. I felt sick to my stomach and lurched off to one side and threw up.
I brushed the dirt back over the remains of the small hand, picked up my flashlight, switched it off, and walked gingerly through the blackness toward the side gate. Now I had evidence—proof that at least one of the girls who had “moved” was really murdered. I couldn’t wait to hear what Mike McGowan thought of my find.
As I reached out for the gate latch, something snuffed in the shadows. I turned, not so much startled as expecting to feel Nancy’s puppy brush up against me. But there was nothing.
“Bitch,” the darkness said. What seemed to be a large bush to the side of the path reached out and grabbed me from behind. A cloth-draped hand clamped over my mouth, a thick, strong arm reached around and pinned my arms to my body. I smelled the sickly sweet odor of chloroform and tried to hold my breath. The combination of the burn of vomit in my throat and chloroform in my nose made me gag. Fury and panic took over—and somewhere, a cold reminder of one of Bill’s lessons in self-defense.
Stomp on the instep. Go for the crotch, the eyes. Spin inside the arms.
I tried to spin but the man was too strong. His arm was thick and hairy. The chloroform was closing me down. With the last of my conscious strength, I kicked up my leg, then stomped his bare foot with the heel of my shoe. He made a noise like a startled pig. I finally managed to whirl around as the man’s grip loosened. Then with a clenched fist I hit him below the stomach. My knuckles met flab and then bone, and I grabbed below the bone and twisted as hard as I could through the thick pants.
Now my attacker actually squealed. “Shit!” he gasped, curling over. Mr. Smith’s voice, definitely. And it smelled like him. I pushed him away, grabbed the sap from my pocket, and swung it wildly. It was too dark to see more than vague outlines. The sap didn’t connect. I took a step back and turned my head, following a faint movement. A shadow the size of a truck coming back to hurt me. I swung again. The sap came down with a wet crunch on Smith’s clutching hand. He drew back and squealed again, so much like a pig. I zeroed in on his head and swung again. He fell with a heavy thump, like so much dead meat.
The back door swung open and Mrs. Smith peered out. “George? George!” she called. “Are you all right?”
I ran for the gate and fled down the street. There was a tiny sliver of light in the upstairs window at the corner grocery. As instructed, I pounded on the side door. The window raised with a high squeak of old wood on wood and Mrs. Giordano peered out. “Now look here,” she called, “this is far too late!”
“Do you have a phone? I have to call the police! Let me in,” I begged.
“What’s this about? Who’s there? Laura, is it?” Her gray hair hung down in a long braid as she leaned out the window, and I wished it were long enough to clamber up, like Rapunzel’s.
“It’s an emergency, let me in! Someone’s going to kill me.”
“Well, we’ll have none of that—this is a nice neighborhood! The mister’ll be right down.” I could hear her yell something in Italian to her husband, then his heavy steps on the side stairs. The door opened and I dashed in past him. I hoped I wasn’t leaping from the frying pan into the fire. Mr. Giordano was short and round. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt and suspenderless twill workpants that exposed a great deal of pale, hairy belly.
“Come in, missy, what’s the trouble?” he asked, and I felt like crawling into his big arms for protection.
“I … I just need to use the phone. And maybe wait for the police.” I began to shake. Mr. Giordano shooed me upstairs into the apartment. Mrs. Giordano put the kettle on while I used the phone. She looked at the curtained window and the darkness behind it while the tea water boiled. “They should just try it,” she muttered, holding up the biggest butcher knife I’d ever seen. “Let them try it!”
“Watch that thing,” her husband said.
I gave a deposition about what I’d seen and a judge issued a search warrant for the house and yard. Then I headed back to the office. Now I had to wait and see if it was Mary’s body I’d found—and if there were any others there. The police brought in a team of men to shovel deep into the lush garden. They found the body in the dirt pile right away and arrested the Smiths on suspicion of murder. They kept on digging—in the dirt pile, in the lush garden beds, under the bower where Nancy had hidden Spot. The final count was six.
Six lost women. Six human beings, like me, like the girl next door, like all the rootless, hopeful young women in this goddamned country, this goddamned world.
Goddamn Bill for not telling me how bad it could get. Goddamn me for my happy little smart-girl moxie.
Mike McGowan called me with the news. “Good work, Laura. You really uncovered a can of worms. Bill would be proud.”
Bill could sleep at night after this kind of thing.
“You were lucky to get away in one piece,” Mike went on.
“A little luck,” I said, my stomach taking a twist. Mike knew about the sap, which wasn’t strictly legal. We both knew that if I hadn’t had it, I would have ended up in the garden as number seven. “Any idea what the Smiths were up to?”
“Well, it seems they were taking a novel approach to war profiteering. Girls who disappear don’t take their room deposits. Or their purses. They had a tidy sum tucked away.”
“That’s awful! Those poor girls.”
“It’s not a pretty world out there, Laura. So, you going to call Przybilski first or do you want us to do it? He’ll have to come down and see if he can ID his sister’s body. Not that there’s much recognizable to ID with. We’ll probably need dental records.”
“I’ll call him, Mike. Thanks.” I rang off and stared at the phone. Then I called the navy base and left a message for Przybilski to come see me.
I rehearsed a hundred different ways of breaking the news. Przybilski showed up later that afternoon. There was no easy way, so I told him straight out.
“I’m so sorry, but I think your sister’s dead.”
“What! What happened?”
I explained. He sat and hung his head as he turned his cap around in circles, his hands sliding over the stitched brim with a tiny rasping noise. I offered to come down to the coroner’s office with him, but he said he’d go by himself. I gave him back the picture of Mary and he stared sadly at the bright face of his sister. “I guess that’s it, then.”
“One more thing.” I felt like a rat, a war profiteer myself, but this was a business, after all. “Here’s my bill.” I slid the invoice across the desk.
“I don’t get paid again till the end of the month. But I’ll be back with it.”
“Okay, Navy, I trust you.” We shook hands and he walked out into the sunny afternoon. The bay was still sparkling.
GOLD SHIELD BLUES
BY JEFFREY J. MARIOTTE
Mount Soledad
Mount Soledad was a cushy gig.
Mostly, it was a matter of driving around in a company car with a light bar on top and the Gold Shield Security logo emblazoned across the doors. Occasionally, I had to interrupt drag-racing teenagers, and even more occasionally respond to a dispatch call,
which more often than not turned out to be raccoons or feral cats, rather than genuine intruders. What security companies never tell their customers is that most actual break-ins take place in lower-middle-class and poor neighborhoods, where the loss of property can do real damage to a family’s shaky financial status. The rich have fences and walls and alarms, buttressed by decent police response times and private security companies like Gold Shield. The bad guys know that, and since your high-class cat burglars are mostly fictional, most real-life burglars don’t bother trying to hit the mansions of the rich.
So when I got a call from dispatch, one overly warm August night, sending me to a house on Via Capri—a reported intruder—I wasn’t too worried about what I’d find when I got there. I knew the place from the outside, high up on the hill, facing west-northwest for the primo ocean view. An eight-foot masonry wall, spiked on top, surrounded the property, and a cobblestone drive led through double wrought-iron gates before sweeping up to the house.
When I arrived, less than five minutes after taking the call (my strobes slicing the darkness into ribbons of tinted black), the gates were closed. I pulled up to the call box mounted on a post, and pressed a button. In a moment, a crackly voice responded. I identified myself and was buzzed in. The gates parted with a slow majesty, and I drove through into a lushly landscaped estate full of mature trees and what looked like enough lawn to graze cattle on.
It was hardly unique in that. Some of the priciest real estate in La Jolla—itself one of the most expensive enclaves in the United States—was on Mount Soledad. Dr. Seuss had lived here; I sometimes saw his widow out and about in their Caddy with the GRINCH license plate.
Every light in the place was burning, showing me a three-story Tuscan-style home, all vast slabs of stucco in a dark mustard color with turrets and red-tile roof and all the extras. I parked between the house and a fountain that looked like it belonged on a postcard from Rome. By the time I was out of the car, flashlight in hand, a front door opened that two Los Angeles Lakers could have passed through, one standing on the other’s shoulders.
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