The Wrong Girl

by Donis Casey

  This was exactly what she was doing when she felt her first contraction. She said nothing, but her eyes flew open, as well as her mouth, and Mr. Hashiyara, sitting opposite her on the floor, calmly stood and helped her to her feet.

  “Breathe like I taught you. Stand quiet and still. I will tell Mrs. Gilbert. Breathe like I taught you, and all will be well.”

  * * *

  Giving birth was no more a mystery to Blanche than sex had been, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid. Her sisters had told her that birthing was horribly painful, but that it was all worth it when you held the baby in your arms for the first time. She only had the pain to look forward to. And she was very young, barely sixteen now, and had heard that the first delivery was especially hard for young mothers.

  The doctor and Mrs. Gilbert sat with Blanche in her room as she labored. The French doors to the balcony were flung open to take advantage of the beautiful spring day, and the air was perfumed by pots of flowers hanging off the railing. Between contractions they talked of ordinary things, and Alma buzzed in and out, seemingly more excited than anyone else. Jack Dempsey shared the bed with Blanche until it was time to push, and then he was unceremoniously dumped in the hall.

  All in all, the whole experience wasn’t any fun, but it wasn’t nearly as awful as Blanche feared. And when it was all over, she lay back on her pillows and stared down at the fuzzy-headed little creature in her arms, trying not to care about him.

  Mrs. Gilbert, sitting in a chair beside the bed, watched her watching the baby, and said nothing. But Blanche could tell by her expression what was on her mind.

  “I can’t do it,” Blanche said.

  Mrs. Gilbert was not surprised. “Are you thinking of keeping him?”

  Blanche shook her head. “No, I can’t keep him. But I can’t give him to strangers. I can’t…never see him again.”

  “You can’t have it both ways, honey.”

  But Blanche had had months to think about this day and formulate a plan. “I think I know a way, Mrs. Gilbert.”

  1926, Santa Monica, California

  Oliver receives a call that may lead him to a Vital Clue.

  “So Graham Peyton is dead! I wondered what happened to him.”

  Ruhl had given Oliver the names of Dix’s major brothels in the Los Angeles area. Verbally, of course. No written list existed or was ever going to. There were so many that in order to know where to start, Oliver basically threw a rock and hit one, which happened to be the one closest to his apartment in Santa Monica. The establishment was located in a large house in a tree-lined residential area, on an isolated corner in a nice neighborhood. Oliver wondered if the neighbors had any idea what went on inside. Maybe not. The parking area was located discreetly behind the house. The first floor had been converted into an all-night bakery selling muffins and cakes. It was the most popular bakery in town.

  The woman who ran the bawdy house looked more like a schoolmarm than a madam. Tall and bony, with a no-nonsense expression, she ran a tight ship. She had shown Oliver into a gaudy parlor located behind the bakery and served him tea and cakes before getting down to business.

  “Mr. Ruhl told me to cooperate, though I don’t know what I can tell you.” The madam said. She shook her head. “I liked Peyton. He was good-natured and didn’t abuse the girls. He was a great supplier of whatever you needed—blow, hooch, mary jane. He liked them young and I could always count on him to bring me fresh, barely used girls. He was Dix’s fair-haired boy, too, so if he wanted an occasional tickle, I wouldn’t charge him and then he’d put in a good word for me with the boss.” A wistful expression briefly crossed her face. “I kind of miss him. I don’t know how he died, though, or when. He was just here one day and gone the next.”

  Oliver tried a little cake with white icing. It was delicious. “What did the girls he recruited think of him?” His question was muffled by a mouthful of pastry.

  “Oh, usually they were…reluctant when he’d first bring them in. They’d settle down eventually. I try to keep my girls happy and healthy as possible. It’s just good for business. I told him he shouldn’t lead them on, tell them he loved them before he recruited them, that he’d get himself in trouble one day. Sued by some girl’s relatives for breach of promise or something like that.”

  “So did he? Get himself in trouble?”

  “Not that I know of. He’d always laugh it off. Said he was careful about which girls he chose. Of course, this is not Dix’s only pleasure house, so who knows what kind of trouble Peyton got into somewhere else?”

  “Can I talk to some of your girls? I’d like to hear what they have to say about him.”

  “You can ask all you want, none of them are going to know anything. That was five years ago. I don’t have any girls working here now who were here that long ago.”

  “Really? So the whore business has that big a turn-over?”

  The woman was pretty sure she had just been insulted. She set her teacup down hard enough to rattle the saucer. “This is a top-of-the-line establishment. If you want a crib joint, you’ll have to go elsewhere.”

  So Oliver did. He visited four separate houses in Santa Monica, Bel Air, and Hollywood that day, and though they were all very different places, with working girls of all possible stripes, he got more or less the same story in all of them. He did manage to find a few girls (not so girlish anymore) who had been “recruited” by Peyton. Many told a common tale—seduced and abandoned, no money, nowhere to go, with little option but to carry on.

  Some of the soiled doves seemed content enough with their lifestyle. Some were downright jolly. “I could never make this much money doing anything else,” a perky redhead told him. “It beats the hell out of being a shopgirl. Why, I’ll be able to buy my own house in a year.”

  But not all of Dix’s employees were so happy. Oliver couldn’t help but ask one tired-looking woman, “How do you stand it?”

  “Cocaine helps,” she said matter-of-factly.

  * * *

  Oliver had just arrived home, tired and discouraged, mostly about the sorry state of human nature, and was hanging up his hat when the telephone rang, two short rings and one long. It was for him. He briefly considered not picking up. He had spent a long day trudging around Hollywood and Los Angeles and was desperate for a drink and a bath.

  He sighed and picked up the earpiece. “Oliver,” he said.

  His tone was sharper than he intended, for there was a moment of tentative silence on the other end before a woman said, “Is this the private dick who talked to Maurice at Philippe today?”

  Oliver sat down at the table and loosened his tie. “Yes, it is. Ted Oliver, here. Are you the woman who knew Graham Peyton?”

  “What’s this about?” she said, in lieu of an answer. “Maurice says that Graham is dead?”

  “A skeleton with Peyton’s wallet on it was discovered buried at the beach a few days ago, after the storm. Been there a long time. I’m trying to reconstruct the last few days of his life. Maurice told me that the last time he saw Peyton he was having a meal with you, Miss…” She didn’t take the hint, so Oliver continued. “…and there was an incident involving another woman. Do you remember that?”

  “What if I do?”

  “As far as I have been able to discover, that’s the last time anyone saw Peyton alive. Maurice said you two left together afterwards, so I was hoping maybe you could fill me in a bit on what he did for the rest of that day, or however much longer you know about.”

  The voice on the other end took on a lighter tone. “I always wondered what happened to the bastard. I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re wondering about.”

  “I never thought you did, Miss…”

  “You can call me Miranda.”

  “…Miranda. I don’t want to talk over the telephone. Would you be willing to meet me for a chat? Tell me about the in
cident at the restaurant and anything else you can help me out with. I’d be happy to pay you for your time.”

  “Sure. I’d be glad to. For dinner and a hundred bucks.”

  ~“A hundred bucks?

  You slay me, Lady!”~

  Miranda chuckled at Oliver’s response. “I promise it’ll be worth it.”

  “All I want is information, Miranda, nothing else.”

  “And all I want is dinner and a hundred bucks. And I promise it’ll be worth it.”

  It was no skin off his nose. K.D. Dix was paying for it. But he said, “It better be. Where are you? Can you meet me tonight in Santa Monica?”

  “Yeah, I can do that.”

  “All right. Seven o’clock at Bay City Italian on the corner of Broadway and Lincoln. How will I know you?”

  “I’ll be the blonde with the flower in her hair.”

  Oliver hung the earpiece back on the hook and sat back. A hundred dollars. He’d almost bet the same amount that her information would turn out to be worthless.

  1921, Tempe, Arizona

  Goodbye, sweet Billy Ray. Have a wonderful life.

  Blanche didn’t know what had awakened her—the scent of blossoms, the touch of dawn on her eyelids, the rustle and mewl coming from the basket on the table next to her bed. She stood up and leaned over the baby, squinting in the dim light at his perfect face. His eyes were closed still. He was probably dreaming, of what, she couldn’t imagine. He had not had time in his fourteen days of life to have had any adventures. Perhaps he was dreaming of heaven, where he had been waiting to be born. Or maybe of the life he lived before starting out on this one. His little mouth pursed and his forehead wrinkled. He looks worried, Blanche thought. Maybe he knew more than he was letting on.

  Blanche placed a tender hand on his gently rising and falling belly, and he sighed. Are you worried, little man? If you are, it’s no wonder.

  The morning light was gray and filled with amorphous shapes. The casement window above the bed was open, letting in the sweet, barely detectable aroma of oleander blossoms adrift on the air from somewhere. She sat down on the bed. It was still too murky to see clearly, but she knew all there was to know about the long, narrow bedroom that had once been the back veranda of her Aunt Elizabeth’s house in Tempe, Arizona.

  The room had been built onto the back of the main house and had its own entrance, giving guests a modicum of privacy. Several tall windows provided a view onto Elizabeth’s deep, tree-covered backyard. The flagstone floor was softened by several rugs. The large double bed upon which Blanche sat had been pushed up against the end wall, and a dining table situated against the back wall of the house had been repurposed as a desk.

  The world had changed since Blanche was last here, five years earlier—before Graham, before California. Before Mrs. Gilbert, asleep on the cot in the corner, or the baby asleep in his basket. She had been a little girl then, and sick with a lung infection. She was sixteen now, and after all that had happened since she last slept in this room, she supposed she had to think of herself as a woman, whether she felt like one or not.

  She had never expected to be here again, at her aunt’s house in Arizona. Not now, perhaps ever. If she hadn’t been such a fool she wouldn’t be here now. But even if she wanted to, there was nothing she could do to take it back, to become the person she had been before.

  With Mrs. Gilbert in tow, Blanche had shown up unannounced at her Aunt Elizabeth Kemp’s door with the boy in her arms. Elizabeth and her husband, Webster, were rich, at least in Blanche’s estimation. They were both lawyers and had their own busy firm, Kemp and Kemp, in downtown Tempe.

  Blanche asked Elizabeth to wire Mary Lucas, Blanche’s second-oldest sister, who lived with her husband, Kurt, on a farm within walking distance of her parents. Mary was a natural mother, and Blanche could think of no one in the world who would give her little boy a better home. Mary and Kurt loved children and were always collecting odd strays to add to their family. They had enthusiastically agreed to take on one more, and Elizabeth Kemp, Esq., had agreed to take care of the legalities. The day after they received Blanche’s wire, Mary and her husband, along with Blanche and Mary’s parents, had boarded the train in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and were at this very minute on their way to Tempe, Arizona.

  Elizabeth had offered to make arrangements to telephone Oklahoma, and even to pay for the call, so that Blanche could speak to her mother for the first time in nearly a year. Blanche had refused. Her parents finally knew she was alive and well, and that was enough for now.

  In the gloom she clutched her two hands together and closed her eyes. There was a verse in the bible…her mother would remember…Sarah or Hannah or someone like that had a baby, and she rejoiced, for now her words gave her power over others. Could that be true? Now that Blanche was a mother, did her words have power? If only she had something that had belonged to him, to Graham. A thing of his that she had stolen. She would press it to her heart.

  ~“Curse you,” she murmured.

  “Curse you. Curse you. I hope you die.”~

  Eventually the baby’s thin cry brought her back to the present. She cradled him in the crook of her arm and slid her feet into a pair of crocheted slippers before tiptoeing past Mrs. Gilbert, still asleep on her corner cot in Elizabeth’s converted-porch guest bedroom. She carried the boy into the kitchen to warm a bottle in a pan of water on the gas stove. She wished she had a name for him. It didn’t seem right to come into the world without your mother giving you a Christian name or your father a last name. But she figured that naming him wasn’t her place anymore. She wouldn’t be his mother for much longer.

  When Blanche opened the screen door into the kitchen, Elizabeth’s housekeeper, Felicia, turned to look at her and wiped her hands on her apron tail.

  “Sit down, honey,” Felicia said. “I’ll fix you up some pancakes.” Her smile was bright. Perhaps a little strained. “Mrs. Elizabeth got a delivery from Western Union first thing this morning. The adoption papers have come. Your sister and your parents should arrive from Oklahoma very soon.”

  Blanche said, “Ah.” She sat down at the kitchen table with the boy in her lap. “He’s going to want a bottle right quick. You want to warm one up for him?”

  Felicia set a tall stack of pancakes on the table in front of Blanche and held out her arms. Blanche handed the bundle to her.

  “Poor little thing,” Felicia murmured, just loud enough for Blanche to hear.

  “I’m sorry if you think I’m doing wrong, Felicia,” Blanche said as she reached for the syrup. “But I’m not going to change my mind.”

  ~Later That Same Day…~

  Blanche, Elizabeth, and Mrs. Gilbert arranged themselves around the dining table in the parlor, Blanche next to Aunt Elizabeth, the adoption papers arrayed before her on the tabletop. Elizabeth kept scanning Blanche’s face. Blanche had asked to hold the boy again, and she knew that Elizabeth would not relax until the adoption papers were signed and filed at the county courthouse. Blanche looked down at the baby in her lap, sleeping the sleep of the innocent and unaware of the chaos his very existence had caused. Was causing still.

  Blanche’s mother swore that there was no love like a mother’s love for her child. Did Blanche love this little fellow? He had been the source of so much trouble for her. She didn’t blame him for it, of course. She gazed at him, trying to see herself, or his father, in his face. He had dark hair, like hers. Otherwise, he looked like every other newborn baby. Cute, delicate. A blank. She felt a curiosity about him. Who is he? Who will he turn out to be? An honest, straightforward man like her father, or a huckster and a liar, like Graham? Are people born one way or the other, or do their parents raise them up to be however they end up being? Her parents were paragons, that’s what she had always believed. And look how she had turned out.

  No, this was best by far. He should be brought up by people who know how t
o be parents. He should have that chance.

  She looked at Aunt Elizabeth. “Can you show me where to sign?”

  “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” There was no judgment in Elizabeth’s voice. “Once you sign, there’s no going back. This child will belong to your sister and you won’t have any say about him.”

  Blanche shrugged. “I’m sure Mary and Kurt will let me see him whenever I want.” She picked up the fountain pen with her free hand, anxious to get this over with. Elizabeth nodded and slid the papers toward her.

  “Sign here.”

  The scratching of pen on paper filled the silence.

  Elizabeth’s turned over a page. “And here.”

  When Blanche put down the pen, Elizabeth drew a breath. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. Her dark eyes didn’t reveal anything. Well, Blanche thought, maybe a touch of pity. Blanche lifted the baby from her lap and handed him to her aunt.

  I don’t feel happy, but why am I not sad? Blanche wondered. Why do I feel nothing at all?

  Mrs. Gilbert reached across the table and gave Blanche’s hand a comforting squeeze. She said to Elizabeth, “Do you know what they mean to call him?”

  “They were thinking William Raymond, at least that’s what Mary wired, after our Uncle Raymond. Billy Ray Lucas. She liked the way it sounds.”

  “That’s nice,” Blanche said, though she didn’t think it was nice at all.

  Elizabeth leaned forward and clasped her hands on the tabletop. “Mary and Kurt and your folks will be here tomorrow to fetch you and the baby back to Oklahoma, Blanche. Your mama and daddy are heartbroken with missing you. Mary says it just isn’t the same at home without you. Your sisters don’t know what to do with themselves. They all miss you so much. They are desperate to see you.”