Blood and Oranges

by James O. Goldsborough

  Each day he roamed the city searching for clues. He joined the vigils at the temple, talked to people, stopped by police headquarters to complain about the tail they put on him. Each night he returned to Angie’s to drink rum, fix some canned hash and beans, lie on the sofa listening to the radio and get mad as hell. He found men’s clothes in the closet. The son-of-a-bitch is shacking up with my wife, he repeated to himself. One day he’ll walk into this room and find out what happens.

  He hadn’t missed her in Bakersfield. Girls were crawling the bars in Oildale, or not so much girls as women. Angie was a girl and he preferred women. He also preferred variety. He was going through the Oildale women one by one and was far from done. Only now he was done because he was moving on. Suddenly he wanted Angie again. Not permanently, permanently she bored him, but for a little while. She did some good things. He went into her room, pulled out her underwear, sniffed it and masturbated into it. He felt better but didn’t get it all. He went out and caught the trolley to Chinatown. He needed a woman, and Asians were always good. His tail caught the trolley with him. Maybe he would get laid, too.

  McManus had thought it over. Reporters arriving from everywhere, everyone looking for the missing preacher and the girl—was she his girlfriend?— who had left no trace. Disappeared into thin air and that was very hard to do. Car missing, but what did it mean? What burned him most was that this was a local story, an L.A. story, a Times story and his job was to find them and make sure the others didn’t find them first—especially Hearst! He had six reporters on it: Klan, love nest, mob, suicide, angry husband, and the Times had printed it all. Dozens of tips, mainly from another of the Rev. Willie’s Soldiers having had another vision.

  He had his own vision and summoned Lizzie from the hall of justice.

  “What are you hearing over there?”

  “Nothing everyone isn’t hearing.”

  “Even from Aldridge?”

  Lizzie was shocked, genuinely shocked, for she thought she knew McManus, knew him to be a gentleman. But he’d just asked about the man she was dating, Asa Aldridge, assistant district attorney, one of a dozen working for DA Pitts. She didn’t answer.

  “Look, Lizzie. Everything about this story is different. I’m asking you about Aldridge and in a minute I’m going to ask you about your father, because, honey, I am a desperate man. Aldridge is on the frontline over there. If he’s told you anything I want to know.”

  She sat quietly, legs crossed, watching McManus light up another cigarette, looking out the window, trying to compose herself. She was as surprised as she was shocked for she and Asa had been almost paranoically discreet. He believed that no one in the DA’s office knew a thing about them, and she believed the same about the Times. Yet here was the city editor knowing and asking.

  “The truth is, Larry, that we don’t talk about it.”

  He blew out a huge mass of smoke. “Okay, I believe you. Now, on to the next question: isn’t Willie Mull your uncle?”

  “He is.”

  “He is your father’s twin brother.”

  “He is.”

  “Have you talked to your father about it?”

  “Larry . . .”

  “I know, I know—I told myself I’d never do it, but we have to find them, don’t we? Your father won’t talk to reporters. Has he told you anything that could help us?”

  She answered honestly. “He has not. I think something came up between them. I don’t think they’d been talking.”

  “What do you think—where did they go?”

  She felt the conflict, understood why she hadn’t been asked or volunteered information. Of course, she knew about it. She’d known ever since the night Willie and Angie walked in on Cal at Sunset Tower. They all knew and hadn’t said a thing. It was nobody’s business. Only now it was. The city editor was asking his reporter what she knew.

  She took a deep breath and dodged. “I have my ideas.”

  “Which are . . .”

  She was buying time, making up her mind. She studied his face—honest, tough, tired, creased from smoking, booze, not enough sleep, younger than he looks but newspapers do that to you. Get out in time they say, but no one does. You’re either in or out.

  “They speak Spanish, you know.”

  “Who speaks Spanish?”

  “My father and uncle.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “My hunch says Mexico.”

  “Nah, we’ve combed Tijuana top to bottom. Talked to everyone, Customs, Border Patrol, cops, hotels, nothing. Mexicali, too. They know there’s a reward.”

  “What about below the border?”

  “Mexico’s a big place.”

  She picked the morning paper from his desk, turning to the entertainment section, passing it to him. “Look at the ad at the top.”

  A photo showed a hotel’s long arching veranda rising up amid palm trees and white sands stretching to the ocean. Tanned couples sunning themselves.

  ROSARITO BEACH HOTEL

  SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR

  ROSARITO: OUR NAME IS DISCRETION

  “That’s my hunch.”

  “Why?”

  “Now look at the bottom, at the ad for the Temple of the Angels. Those ads run every day. Hard to see one without the other . . . the word ‘discretion.’”

  His eyes moved between the ads, up and down, up and down. “You might have something.” Reaching in his desk, he pulled out some forms. “Get five hundred dollars from the cashier—take fifties and twenties. Discretion can be expensive but try to bring some of it back. Take Luis Ortega with you, good photog. He speaks Spanish.”

  “I speak some Spanish.”

  “Perfect. You can practice all the way down.”

  With a stop, they made the border in three hours and turned south onto the coast road, direction Rosarito. She liked Luis, a cheerful man whose family had been in Los Angeles for a century, before California was a state. They took fishing trips deep into Baja. “No Rosarito Beach Hotel in those days,” Luis said. “Just adobes. Hotel went up in the twenties.”

  A twenty at the reception desk bought them a supercilious smile and lecture from an assistant manager that the hotel never showed its register, never gave out information on guests to anyone, including the Los Angeles Times.

  She asked for the twenty back.

  “What twenty?”

  The dining room was empty, too late for lunch and too early for dinner. Drinks were being delivered to the pool. They chose a table by windows, overlooking beach and ocean. They ordered sandwiches and beer.

  “I still have a feeling Uncle Willie saw that ad. How could he have missed it?”

  “You really think he would do that—a preacher?”

  She trusted Luis. Anyway, photographers don’t blab. “Have you ever been to the Temple of the Angels, Luis?”

  “I’m Catholic.”

  “I went one time—curiosity. A Sunday show.”

  “And?”

  “Angie was playing Mary Magdalene. I kept thinking—poor Uncle Willie.”

  “That bad, eh. Look, they left L.A. late, probably hit the border at dawn. That puts them at Rosarito at six or seven. Maybe they just stop for breakfast. Gringos—they wouldn’t take a chance with a street café. A place like this, chance to clean up. Say, I have an idea. Peel me a couple of twenties from your wad.”

  He motioned to the waiter lingering by the kitchen door. They whispered in Spanish, a bill was passed and the waiter disappeared. “Now, we’ll see.”

  After a while a different waiter came over. Another bill was passed. He might have seen them he said, thought they were Mexican, spoke Spanish, didn’t think a thing of it, why would he—just a man and a girl on their way somewhere. He remembered because they came in early, had to wait for the kitchen to open. Never saw them again.

/>   Luis finished his beer. “You know, if they stopped for breakfast but didn’t stay, then they were heading south, which means Ensenada. Not much south of that. I’ve been down there.”

  Chapter 18

  “Buenos dias.”

  Wearing Levi’s he’d bought in Ensenada and an old shirt, Willie shuffled into the kitchen, waking her from her reverie. With the beard and his Spanish she could put him on any fishing boat and he’d be a native. Here I am, she thought, just like my poor mother, living with a middle-aged preacher. The thought stopped her. Did this have something to do with Papa? She looked at Willie, smiling, barefoot in their little house, sweet man, so different from Papa. Willie was good at making love and she could not imagine her father with her mother at all. He would have been like Gil—short, ouch, bang-bang.

  “We should go to the isla today,” she said, “catch some fish.”

  “I mean to read my Bible today, my sweet. Sit with coffee and oranges in a sunny chair—like Jesus in Jerusalem.”

  “Where does the Bible say that?”

  “You have to imagine it.”

  “You read your Bible and ate oranges yesterday.”

  “Yes. I’ve been doing some thinking.”

  The house was on a bluff, and to reach the ocean they had to climb down a steep cliff. They had no electricity, only gas lamps and butane for the stovetop. Water and groceries came from the tienda three miles away around a headland. Beyond the headland, the hills fell down to a small bay, home to a dozen adobe houses and the tienda. Below them, a rock promontory shielded the beach and formed a small cove. To the south, Isla San Martín was partially blocked by the promontory. To the north they saw fishing boats far out to sea off Ensenada. Exploring the cove, they found tidepools where water was warmed by the sun. She would slip in naked and bask like a water nymph until Willie could stand it no longer and go in after her. Then back to the house for fish, tortillas, wine, sex, and naps. And every day it grew closer to the end.

  He’d escaped into the wilderness and now, like Moses, purified, must find his way back again. Renunciation. Had not Augustine made it clear? It is through the sexual act that original sin is passed. “If not now, lord, when?” To be a missionary—that was to be his life again, as in China, as in the San Francisco slums, before money poured over him, befouling him, money from his poor mother’s death. Ah, Mamá! He knew now. The temple was not built by God’s little people but by Eddie who had let their mother die and stolen from Henry Callender. He, Rev. Willie, was the accomplice. He had agreed to everything along the way.

  “We will turn in the keys and drive to Tijuana,” he said at breakfast the next morning. “We will leave the car, cross the border and catch the bus to Los Angeles. We are returning to the path of the Lord. If He chooses to punish us for having loved, we will do our penance. I will walk the hills in my bare feet. You will come with me.”

  She didn’t answer. He must leave, she thought, but must I?

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Coming down the mountains into Ensenada, Luis turned off the highway and onto Calle Segunda. They would check the hotels and Hussong’s.

  “We used to stop at Hussong’s,” he said. “Dad wanted a beer and I went in with him to read the papers. They have all the papers, including the Times. Very big cantina for gringos.”

  She pointed across the street. “Let’s start with that real estate place.”

  Saturnino Gomez, proprietor of Inmuebles y Propiedades, had finished lunch and returned to his agency for a nap. At four o’clock, he reopened and was settling in for one more quiet afternoon. Business was not good. The Depression was bad for everyone. There were days when the only people to cross his threshold were Calle Segunda neighbors. He looked up when the young couple walked in, clearly gringos—at least la rubia. “Good afternoon.”

  Lizzie smiled, happy to hear English. “Maybe you can help us.” She took a photo of Willie from her folder. “Have you seen this man?”

  “Ah, el pastor. Very big story. No, I have not seen him. Good face. I would remember. But try Hussong’s. They all stop at Hussong’s.”

  “This woman,” said Lizzie, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen her either.”

  He looked closely at the publicity photo of Sister Angie in white robes, hands clasped behind her head, long sleeves billowing out like wings, halo over the head, an angel.

  He chuckled. “Oh, no, Señorita, I would remember something like that.”

  “Well, thank you anyway,” she said, turning to go, then turning back to hand him twenty dollars. “Take this is for your help.”

  He was rubbing his chin. “Thank you, Señorita, but . . . I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Something there. Do you have another photo of the girl—you know, more natural?”

  She took out a newspaper clipping, a photo of Angie without wings and halo.

  He studied it for some time. “Could be. Very close. She came in alone, spoke Spanish, said her marido was shopping. Rented a house off a dirt road a half hour south. On a hillside over the ocean. Just a month. She should be coming back soon for the deposit.”

  The highway was a rough asphalt road. “Someday this will go all the way to the end, to Cabo,” said Luis. “I hope I am still alive.” They passed a few other cars, heading north. One of them, a blue Chevy, had once been on the stage at the temple. Lizzie, who sees everything, would have noticed, but she had closed her eyes for a few moments.

  The door was locked. They went around back. She picked up a woman’s bathing suit draped on a chair to dry. “Still damp.” She peered in the bedroom, the mattress turned down. The kitchen, everything put away.

  “We missed them,” she said.

  “Why leave the bathing suit?

  “She wouldn’t need it anymore.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  He was ready to leave. For three weeks he’d led a dog’s life, drinking rum, visiting whores, tracked by flatfeet, back at night telling himself to move on, get his life back. He was tired of reporters. He talked to them at first, why wouldn’t he? It’s what happens when you cut a woman too much slack, he told them. They might never turn up. If it was him, he’d know how to disappear. There are places in the bayous where no one ever goes, places where the Cajuns have lived by themselves for two centuries and the strangers that go in after them don’t come out again. Or parts of Mexico. He’d driven to the oil fields near Tampico without seeing ten people. Angie’s mother was Mexican. They could go to ground in Mexico and never surface. He’d read every word printed since he hit town and no one knew a thing. Police incompetence he could understand, but neither had the newspapers picked up the scent.

  Curtains drawn, lying in the dark on Angie’s bed with his bottle, aroused because he could still smell her but too drunk to head for Chinatown, he decided it was time to move on. He’d thought about it, even thought he might get in on the reward. Trouble was that they’d never give him the money, not as her husband. Anyway, he’d probably kill them first.

  He would wait until midnight and slip out the back. Why would the cops care where he went anyway? Maybe he’d get a job on one of the oil platforms they were building in the Gulf. He’d heard about that: platforms miles out there, people living like it was a hotel on some Caribbean island. Nobody would find him. He lay there drinking and drifting and dozing in the dark with one hand around the neck of the bottle and the other around his large warm dick. He’d finished a can of corned beef hash and bag of potato chips. He didn’t want to fall asleep with the open bottle for he’d already done that and the bed stank of rum. Sneak out the back, circle around the building to escape the flatfoot, who would be asleep in his car anyway.

  The coach dropped them at Fourth and Olive just after ten o’clock. They waited a moment by the depot, a stooped, bearded man in Levi’s, shirt and sombrero and a young woman in a cotton dress with a Mexican mantón draped over her shoulders. The border buses dr
op off people like that at Fourth and Olive all day. Two cheap suitcases sat beside them on the sidewalk. He hoisted them, and they started up Olive. Reaching Second, they had a short wait before the Big Red Car from Alameda clanged to a stop. They walked to the rear of the near-empty car, beginning a trip that would take them onto Glendale Boulevard, past Echo Park, past the Temple of the Angels, past Sunset, past Silver Lake and over the dry bed of the Los Angeles River to Angie’s apartment in Glendale.

  “What day is it, Willie?” she asked.

  They could have bought newspapers, could have bought them in Carlsbad or Oceanside or San Juan Capistrano or Newport or any of the stops along the way and read all about the frantic search. The Times and Examiner were on sale at the newsstand at the depot on Olive. They had no interest in newspapers. Willie had seen the papers at Hussong’s days before, and the only thing changed was that they were back and no one knew it. Had they bought newspapers they might have learned about Gil, but maybe not. Anyway, they didn’t.

  “It’s Wednesday,” he said.

  The trolley ran by Echo Lake, pretty little lake that first caught his eye when he was looking for a site. The park was dark, just a few couples strolling, and men with dogs, people bundled up against the night chill in the air. He sat quietly, Angie at his side, both staring out the window, thinking of the past, thinking of the future, listening to the whirr of metal wheels on the tracks and the swoosh of the trolley doors as they opened and closed, a few people in and out, not many for it was late. Past Park Avenue, the conductor clanged a car off the tracks, out of his way. The car didn’t argue.

  Around a turn and there it was: The Temple of the Angels, his Temple of the Angels. The conductor opened the door and the car sat waiting. People coming out of the temple, coming toward the trolley. Over the temple doors a large banner announced: “Rev. Willie, Sister Angie: Candlelight Vigil Tonight 8:30.”