Blood and Oranges

by James O. Goldsborough

  Society pages are all about names—the more, the better—and the names must be spelled right and their gowns precisely described, and of course the gown’s designer must be identified, and the photos must be taken straight on—no profiles or at least not from the bad side, which is usually the left for some reason. And quotes. You get quotes wrong at the risk of lawsuits from people with more money even than the Chandlers. Society pages are good for training eyes and memories. Unlike newsroom reporters, the one thing a society reporter never has to do is ask for ages. Society pages don’t run ages because they would all be lies.

  Miss Adelaide’s department occupied one corner of the Times’s huge third-floor newsroom and tended to be left to itself. Technically, Miss Adelaide reported to McManus, but in reality, she was autonomous. In her time with Miss Adelaide, Lizzy rarely ventured into the main newsroom. She had no business there. The males, though, sensing that she would soon be out of her cage, were curious. Most of the females working society were of a certain age and tended to the homely side. Lizzie was neither.

  It started with Max Untermeyer, star reporter, who walked over one day, plumped his ample behind on a corner of her desk and said: “Doing anything tonight, hon?”

  “I have to go straight home, Mr. Untermeyer.”

  “Call me Max.”

  “I have to go straight home, Max.”

  “Got a sweetie?”

  “I don’t like sweets.”

  After three months, McManus kept his promise and transferred her, not to the newsroom but to the hall of justice. He hesitated at first, for Eddie Mull’s name had been popping up here and there lately and Willie was always in the news. But he stuck to his view not to make decisions about Lizzie based on her name. He talked with Miss Adelaide, who confirmed everything he thought. She was a thorough and relentless reporter, just what the hall of justice needed, a place that had become an old boys’ network of reporters and cops bowling together and hoisting together and sitting on more stories than they produced.

  It wasn’t a popular decision. The hall of justice is a huge beat that includes everything that touches on law and order in Los Angeles City and County—namely police, sheriff, courts, jails, district attorney, public defender, tax collector and coroner. The Times had had dozens of people at the hall since it was opened in 1925, old and young, cronies and cubs, fast and slow, cynics and optimists, but they had one thing in common: They were all males. Lizzie was the first female. Pat Murphy, the bureau chief, visited McManus and asked him not to do it. The guys, he said, meaning the cops, reporters, and assistant DAs who ran the place, wouldn’t understand. “Are we so hard up that you have to take girls off the society pages?”

  “Don’t get your prejudices up, Murph. She’s a good reporter. She’ll do a good job.”

  “What about her name?”

  “If they ask, just say the Times never asks reporters about their parents.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Say it anyway.”

  “There’s something else.”

  “What would that be?”

  “She’ll be a distraction.”

  “She won’t. Lizzie has learned the fine art of being inconspicuous. The boys in the newsroom found that out and now it’s the turn of the boys at the hall. Take her around to all the departments. Don’t delegate. You make the introductions.”

  The district attorney, Barton Pitts, was out the day Murphy took Lizzie to his office. He’d already taken her to the offices of the sheriff, police chief, and judges, and was saving the coroner, appropriately, for last. He’d arranged the DA’s visit for when Pitts was out because Murphy regarded Pitts, a Texan twice elected on the basis of not interfering in the city’s business interests, legitimate or otherwise, as his own exclusive property. Nobody on the Times was allowed to see Pitts without Murphy’s express approval, which never was given and therefore never sought. Lizzie would have to be satisfied with the assistant DA.

  Pat Murphy had been at the hall of justice from the beginning and knew everyone in the building, some as corrupt as Pitts and some as virtuous as Murphy’s own daughter Mary, who was a nun. His dossier on Pitts was as thick as a Tolstoy novel and went on growing. He kept it hidden at home in a place known only to himself—and to Mary, just in case. Until Murphy was ready, no other Times reporter was allowed close.

  “Corrupt as they come,” Murphy wrote in his notebooks, cataloguing such crimes as protecting bootleggers, taking payoffs from gambling ships and protection rackets, kickbacks from contractors and shielding movie studio bosses from various crimes in return for being supplied with starlets. Murder was not included in the notebooks for the simple reason that time would run out for Murphy. Pitts’s style of living far exceeded his district attorney’s salary, and he was not shy about displaying it. His tentacles reached into every corner of the city, including the Times itself, which had endorsed his election—twice. His knowledge and his connections were his protection. He was protected from everyone but Pat Murphy.

  Chapter 15

  They began meeting at Angie’s place. Sometimes Willie drove his blue Chevy Roadster, parking in different spots around the neighborhood so it would not be recognized. Sometimes he arrived on the Red Cars from the temple, sometimes on the Yellow Cars which came up Sunset to Glendale. They were discreet, Willie always arriving and departing alone, incognito.

  Deprived of affection for so long, he hungered for her. “Girls are so far ahead of boys,” she said. “It takes an older man to make us even.” They spent hours awake in bed, fighting off sleep to rest in each other’s arms. She’d never learned to make love before, just did what Gil told her. If Willie awakened first he would place his hand gently on her thigh and move it slowly upward. The smoothness of her body was astonishing and his hand moved along the curve of her hip and over skin as smooth as the silk sheets he’d bought for her bed.

  Afterward, they liked to lie in bed reading scripture. He was amazed at her knowledge and gift of communication. She could take a snippet from either testament and turn it into a sermon. She had the gift. She was Sister Angie now, an authentic Pentecostal revivalist who, astonishingly, proved to have healing powers comparable to his. Her father, the Rev. Jimmy Smallwood, a Beaumont Baptist, had infused his daughter with Pentecostalist urgency before she was a teenager. (“Christ could return any minute, and we must be prepared.”) The Soldiers loved her, and the ranks were soaring, coast to coast. She delivered the sermons every other Sunday, giving Willie more time to work on his Sunday night shows.

  She demanded nothing of him, so that having found her, he began to fear losing her, as he’d lost Millie. He could not go through that again. The more they loved, the more addicted to her he became, the more he was afraid. She gave him no reason to fear, but he feared anyway. What had he done to deserve this gift, he asked himself, knowing it could not last, knowing it must not last if he was true to Saint Augustine. He sought to fortify himself:

  “Let it end,” he said, “and I will look back on this time as a new man, a better man, a stronger preacher. I am gaining strength.” His body was performing as the Lord meant it to. He read from Corinthians: “The body is not for fornication but for the Lord.”

  He saw the change in Angie as well. When first they met, she was silent, suspicious, repressing her piety. Now she was vibrant, radiating love and energy and inspiring others. She’d become the temple’s virginal star. Letters poured in from mothers testifying how Sister Angie had changed their daughters’ lives and from men bearing witness to their new respect for women. Hundreds of new people joined the regiments of Soldiers for God every week. In the city, crime was down, the newspapers attributing it to the Church of the New Gospel.

  The newspapers had rallied to him—or was it to Sister Angie?

  “They offer not the torments of hell, but the joy of salvation,” a Chandler editorial proclaimed following a long investigation by T
imes’ s reporters. “They never fail to keep their eyes on the ultimate goal: rebirth of the congregation.”

  Henry Callender brought him the editorial under the headline. “Rebirth of the Congregation.” The words jolted him. Recently he’d gone to a theater off Sunset to see Birth of a Nation, a silent movie so strange and powerful that he’d sat through it twice. The theme, “a mighty cleansing must be wrought,” was etched in his mind. What providential urge had sent him to see a movie about the Ku Klux Klan saving the nation from former slaves? He began to see his task clearly: rebirth of Los Angeles would be the basis of his sermon on race, the sermon he’d pondered since meeting with John C. Porter and Fred W. Gilmore.

  He began writing on the lined pad he used for drafting sermons, his neat, small script fine and clear so Miss Shields could easily correct and transcribe. On the top he wrote: “Rebirth of the City Through a Mighty Cleansing.”

  The words flowed from his pen:

  Sacred city hewn from the desiccated plains by the toil of our forefathers; city of sunshine, virtue and health eschewing forever darkness and vice. But beware of poisons: poisons from abroad eating away at the fiber of our community and the purity of our life; toxins that would destroy our homes, besmirch the purity of our womanhood and sully our social intercourse. The Lord has delivered us to this blessed place, the City of Angels, guarded by the Archangel Gabriel. We have brought forth the water that nourishes the orchards and sustains our life. We are flourishing. We will not be contaminated; we will not be overrun; we will not be defiled. We will be reborn through a mighty cleansing.

  “What do you think?”

  The sun was just showing through the curtains, and he had read it aloud to her in bed. They’d slipped out to a little Valley restaurant the night before and come home to make love. She was on her back, naked and propped up against the pillows, semi-dozing, sheets just covering her breasts. He found it hard to concentrate.

  “Poisons?” she said. “Toxins—what are you talking about, Willie?”

  “Well, you know . . .”

  “What do I know?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Foreigners . . . Jews . . . Mexicans.”

  She was silent so long he suspected she’d fallen back asleep. He looked over, saw her eyes wide and staring at him.

  “Jews . . . Mexicans?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mexicans?”

  “Yes, Mexicans.”

  She’d turned, the sheet slipping. His gaze passed to her body, and he was aroused.

  “What do you mean, Mexicans?”

  “What do I mean? I mean Mexicans, people from Mexico.”

  “Willie . . .”

  “Dearest . . .” He moved toward her. She felt his erection poking against her thigh.

  “You can’t say that.”

  “I can’t say what?”

  “You can’t give that sermon.”

  “What do you mean I can’t give it?”

  “You can’t give it, Willie,” she repeated, louder this time, pushing him away.

  “But why?” He had begun to wilt.

  She closed her eyes and laid back against the pillows.

  “Don’t give it!”

  “But why?”

  “Because I am Mexican!”

  He was stunned, limp instantly, uncomprehending, nothing Mexican about her name. Why was he suddenly afraid? “You?”

  “Me.”

  He fell back onto his pillow, the sermon slipping to the floor. Now it was he who lay on his back, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling.

  She was mystified. “Being Mexican’s not that bad, you know. I’m really only half Mexican.”

  He said nothing. Outside a Big Red Car clanged down Glendale Boulevard.

  “Willie, for heaven’s sake. Why should it matter?”

  “No, no,” he said, sitting up, urgency in his voice, “it’s not that, not that at all.”

  “What is it then?”

  “It is that I am Mexican, too!”

  “You?”

  “Me, me. I am Mexican! Mexican!”

  He was crying.

  “You?”

  “Me.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! Mexican!”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “Hallelujah!” he repeated, and they fell into each other’s arms.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Fred W. Gilmore telephoned, and this time when the men returned to his office they were not bearing gifts.

  “It’s just that the time is not right,” Willie said, adopting his most righteous tone. “That’s all I can say.”

  It’s not what they had come to hear. “When we are in charge,” said John C. Porter ominously, “we will remember those who fought with us, like the Rev. Bob Shoemaker, and those who stood on the sidelines. We want you on our side, Reverend. We need you.”

  “It is a delicate matter,” said Willie.

  “It is an urgent matter,” said Porter.

  “I need more time.”

  “We’re out of time. The situation grows worse with every passing day.”

  Willie shook his head and stood up.

  “You will regret this, Reverend,” said Gilmore, standing in the doorway on the way out and ignoring Willie’s proffered hand.

  Miss Shields looked on.

  “You will regret this more than you know,” he repeated.

  Miss Shields wrote it down.

  Distressed and needing solace, he caught a Big Red Car to Angie’s that evening. A gentle man, he did not like to have enemies, powerful and threatening enemies. No sooner was the trolley in sight of her building, the familiar façade with its tall palms lighted from below and friendly green awning, than his spirits began to lift.

  He found her pacing the floor.

  Something was badly wrong.

  “Tell me.”

  He tried to hug her, but she pulled away.

  “Tell me.”

  She walked to the window and looked out. The silence frightened him. Was this it, the break he’d feared but expected, the terrible swift sword of retribution. He was a sinning fornicator who had no right to the happiness this woman had brought into his life. Had the time finally come?

  “Angie, please. Some terrible thing has happened. I must know.”

  Silence.

  “What is it, dearest?”

  She spun around suddenly to face him. “My husband . . .”

  Willie’s face drained of all color. Of all the things he expected, all the things he deserved, to hear of a husband was the last. Fornication could be forgiven, but adultery?

  “Your husband?”

  “He called from Bakersfield—says he’s coming.”

  Sinking down onto the couch, closing his eyes, he listened as she told him of the past she’d never talked about and he’d never asked about; never asked about because something told him not to ask about it, because he feared something exactly like this, something that put everything at risk, not only their relationship, but everything he had built, his very existence. He knew the reckoning would come, it always does; he knew the Lord’s ways. She was his drug, his habit, his secret love. He knew.

  “Let’s go away, Willie.”

  He was astonished. “Go away?”

  “Just for a little while—why not? I told him not to come, that I wouldn’t see him, that I was divorcing him. Listen, I know Gil. If I’m not here, he’ll lose interest and go away.”

  “He knows where you live?” he said, shocked.

  “He has a key.”

  “He has a key?”

  “It was a mistake. He wanted to—oh, never mind. I should have had the lock changed. Everything was going so well. Why does this
have to happen?”

  She stared at him, her dark eyes pleading.

  “But run away? You’re not serious.”

  “No, no, not run away, Willie—go away until he’s gone, that’s all.”

  He would not panic, could not allow himself panic. Too much was at stake. He stood up, his mind turning, churning, a kaleidoscope, seeking an answer. He came close to her, and this time she did not back away. Taking her in his arms calmed them both. He kissed her hair and forehead. And suddenly he heard the voice, just as Augustine had heard the voice in the garden so long ago. It said: “If not now, when?”

  “Pour me a little scotch, will you dear. Let’s talk about this.”

  Chapter 16

  They arrived in Southampton after an easy crossing on the Normandie, stayed two nights at Portsmouth, crossed to the Isle of Wight for a day of hiking, rented a car and motored to Bath and Bristol, coming back to London through Oxford. Maggie struck out on her own each day, disappearing after breakfast to the local flying field, leaving Cal to see the sights and study the newspapers, which grew direr by the day. She was a flying phenomenon in a nation where women had not yet taken to the air. In London, Cal had to drag her away from her flying friends at Penshurst Airfield to keep to their itinerary.

  Britain was in frenzy over Hitler, divided between those who would accommodate and those who would resist. Germany had annexed Austria in the spring, and even as the cousins motored across England was preparing for Czechoslovakia. The fear was that if France and Britain did not stand firm, Poland would be next on Hitler’s menu, which meant all-out war. Every London pub was thick with men nursing pints, flicking darts, and arguing over the best means of dealing with the Huns, as they oddly called them.

  They ferried to Holland and caught the Berlin train, crossing into Germany at Aix-la-Chappelle and getting their first taste of goose-stepping and Nazi salutes. Unlike London, steeped in dread, Berlin was bubbling with energy and excitement. Staying at the Adlon, Maggie met a young Prussian pilot who kept a Fieseler F5 at Tegel and hated Hitler. Lt. Joachim von Falkenberg was outspoken to the point of recklessness and perfectly suited for flying with Maggie. They flew three days running, leaving Cal to dine alone. The second night, seeing she was not returning, he introduced himself to a young lady at the hotel bar and invited her to dine with him. Afterward, they retired to his room where she showed him how things had been done in the happier Weimar days. Cal had no idea what Maggie was up to, at least not until the third night when a phone call from Falkenberg told him to come quickly to the Virchow Clinic. There’d been an “air incident,” he said, leaving Cal to ponder during the short taxi ride to Wedding what that might mean.