That night, Anna walked home beneath an azure umbrella. She liked the sound of rain on the fabric, and she couldn’t ride a bicycle in her matron’s uniform. She was jealous of men with their trousers and wondered if something couldn’t be done about the immobility imposed by her skirt.
A yellow Rolls Royce convertible sailed past Anna on the street, sending up a spray of muddy water that splattered her frock. Anna hardly noticed the muck. A young man was driving—someone Anna didn’t recognize—but the car she knew. Her father had given it to her for her eighteenth birthday, and it had been her favorite thing, though she’d always had to share it with a chaperone. He must have sold it. He was having money troubles. Anna followed it with her eyes until it turned down Broadway. She lifted her chin and tried to convince herself that she could live without it—that she could live without her father. She could, could she not? Anna swallowed. Hard.
She steeled herself and swished past a pharmacy soda fountain on Main Street, looking through the plate-glass window and wishing for an ice cream, which was not in her budget. Not unless she gave up whiskey, got paid, or sold something. Potted palm trees and bowls of wax fruit decorated the counter. The soda jerk filled a glass from a gleaming fountain. She saw Joe Singer sitting on a stool at the long counter next to a girl whom Anna didn’t know. Beside them, behind a newspaper, she saw a gray bun, likely attached to a chaperone. The girl had golden curls and looked treacle sweet, pretty enough for a postcard. Joe was leaning toward her and smiling flirtatiously. She was leaning away, like a proper girl would, but her fluttering eyelashes told the real story.
Anna no longer wanted ice cream. She felt ill.
When Anna arrived home, she collected two matron’s uniforms and headed straight for her seamstress’s apartment. She stayed up most of the night guiding her dressmaker in the creation of the world’s best, and perhaps only, custom made, semi-official, police matron bloomers. They were necessarily sewn from her existing white wool uniform skirt and fit loosely in the thighs, tight in the calves like men’s breeches but with strips of white ribbon and a ruffle at each ankle. She topped them with a skirt of the same material, which was slit in front for ease of movement and had pockets large enough to hold her new revolver. Regrettably, it required two regular uniforms to create a single new improved one.
Anna’s design was worthy of Paul Poiret himself. The price had been excruciating.
At daylight, Anna trudged home with a headache and a twenty-dollar debt. The seamstress charged extra when customers came late and needed their clothes finished by dawn. The price had been a shock. It wasn’t the first time Anna had called on her dressmaker at home in the evening. It was the first time she had had to pay the bill. Anna had given her all her money, but it wasn’t enough, so the woman was holding onto the bloomers until Anna paid the balance. This defeated the point of late-night tailoring entirely. Now Anna had but one uniform. She already owed a gun shop for the new revolver she had bought on credit, her pistol having burned up in a fire. What happened to people who could not pay their bills? She feared she was going to find out. If Matron Clemens knew, she might dismiss Anna.
And how long would her Cracker Jacks and kippers last? Her toothpaste? Her scented soap?
Anna arrived home and headed straight for a jewelry box. Her father had confiscated most of her gems—pieces by Lalique, Tiffany, and Fouquet. He’d kept sentimental gifts and heirloom jewels that had belonged to her mother or had been in the family for generations. He’d taken all but three hatpins, which had been on her head, and a hair comb on loan to her best friend Clara on the night Anna was disavowed.
She selected the comb, made of tortoise shell and adorned with a golden phoenix feather crowded with opals and diamonds. One could remove the feather and wear it as a brooch. It had been a present from her grandmother, now deceased. She held it to the light, turning it, and watching it sparkle. The thought of selling it made her sick. Anna put it in her hair one last time and gazed at herself in the mirror, chin high, face red, eyes shining.
She would ask Wolf where the best pawnshops were. Cops would know. Pawnshops were the purveyors of stolen treasure.
CHAPTER 6
Anna kneeled on the floor filing envelopes containing the records of juvenile offenders. During the previous two weeks, she had trolled the city for obscene billboards that promoted salty dance shows and reported them to Captain Wells, who had them removed. She hunted the slippery, shoplifting treat girl, Jane Godfrey, albeit unsuccessfully. She encountered several young blossoms at a skating rink who disappeared into the bathrooms with clean cheeks, and then emerged wearing rouge. She lectured them, washed their faces, and sent them home. She collected two children from a brothel and escorted the offending mother to the station to pay her fine, as it was against a city ordinance to raise children in the red-light district. Anna always hated that task and had told the mother that the children were no better off with the cranky nuns at the Orphans’ Asylum, and that they certainly ate better in a brothel. All of this she recorded in detail and subsequently filed the reports.
Perhaps Anna hadn’t been at her best during the last two weeks, preoccupied with other things. Presently, her mind was on severed heads, jail sentences, and unpaid dress bills, so that records that should be laid to rest in the As were sometimes lost in the Bs. Once per day, she said a silent prayer to Saint Agnes, patron saint of virgins, that all the other women in LA would find Joe Singer unbearably ugly. Every second night, she washed her shirtwaist and wore it slightly damp to work the next day. Now it was she who smelled wet. She tried to overcome this by wearing extra Ambre Antique parfum, but the bottle wouldn’t last forever.
Anna hadn’t encountered Joe since their fight in the stables. Even though she could no longer love Joe because of his treachery, his absence left a hollow place in her gut, which couldn’t be filled with Cracker Jacks or whiskey, though she had tried.
As Anna ruminated thus, Detective Wolf came up behind her, so close she could feel the heat of him and smell his floral cologne. He leaned over her shoulder. “Good morning, Assistant Matron Blanc. I need your help.”
Anna glanced up. “I need your help, too.” She blushed. “I need to find a pawnshop.” Anna removed the phoenix feather comb from her purse. The diamonds and opals sparkled against the backdrop of the dingy station. Her chest ached as she put the comb in Wolf’s hand.
He picked it up, turned it in his palm, and whistled. “You can’t sell this in a pawnshop, honeybun.”
“Why not?”
“Because no one who frequents pawnshops could afford it. It looks like something a princess would wear.”
Anna took it back. “Where can I hock it?”
“Where did you buy it? Maybe they’ll buy it back.”
“Paris, I think. The designer is French. Lalique.”
He raised both brows.
Suddenly, Anna felt self-conscious about owning such a treasure—something so precious that no one could afford to buy it from her. She colored. “It was a gift.”
“Find the most expensive jeweler in town and see if they’ll sell it for you on consignment.”
“I suppose they’ll take a cut.”
“I’d guess fifty percent.”
Anna nodded grimly. It was torture to contemplate. She’d been paid twice since she’d found the head. Most of the money went for back rent, and she still owed her landlord a deposit. She had a little left to buy food and whiskey, which was a priority, provided she was careful. As long as she avoided her dressmaker and her landlord, she should be all right. But she tired of wearing the same cumbersome uniform every day. She needed her bloomers. And a kettle. And a spoon. And so many things.
She extended her hand to Wolf and pressed the jewels into his palm. “Will you sell it for me? I can’t bear it.”
Wolf studied her face. “Sure.” He slipped the phoenix feather comb into his inside coat pocket and grinned. “Don’t be glum, honeybun. I’ve got a job for you.”
Anna perked up. Wolf was a detective, and doing detective work was her life—at least she’d like it to be. She smiled the brightest smile she could muster. “Anything.”
“Your eagerness pleases me greatly. I wish ‘anything’ was an option. But, apparently, a foul-smelling trunk’s been found in an apartment building in Chinatown. We think a dead Chinaman’s inside. I need you to go to Chinatown and help interview a female witness. Reportedly, she’s hysterical. Normally, I’d send Matron Clemens, but she’s had to leave town. Her aunt died.”
Anna’s face lit up. “That’s wonderful news!”
Wolf grinned. “I’m glad you see the sunny side, honeybun.”
“I mean . . .” Anna transformed her countenance to look deathly serious. “I am sorry about Matron Clemens’s aunt. Will she be away from the station long?”
“She’s going to Chicago. I’m afraid she’ll be gone for a month.”
“Jupiter.”
With Matron Clemens out of town, Anna could do as she pleased, provided Wolf didn’t watch her too closely. Anna folded her hands in her lap and, after an appropriately somber pause, burst out, “Will I be working with detectives?”
“You sure will.”
Anna beamed. “I’ll do it, gladly.”
“You’ll be working with Joe Singer.”
Her smile tightened. Working with Joe would be like going to the dentist.
Joe Singer approached, his face set, his eyes fixed on Wolf. Her stomach flipped and she rose to her feet, knocking an envelope onto the floor so that its contents—the life details of some young criminal—spilled onto the hardwood.
Joe wore plain clothes, not a uniform, and didn’t even have the courtesy to glare at her. He tugged at his hair. “Wolf, please. Don’t send Assistant Matron Blanc. It’s too dangerous. Why don’t you send Detective Snow or one of the patrolmen?”
The thought of being replaced by Detective Snow horrified Anna. Detective Snow was dead up to his ear tops.
Wolf cleared his throat. “The lady witness won’t talk to a patrolman.”
Anna lifted her chin. “I refuse to go with Officer Singer. Send me alone. I can do it. You can put him on traffic tickets or something.”
Wolf spoke in a quiet, soothing tone. “Honeybun, you aren’t a detective. You aren’t even a cop. We just need you to calm the woman and pry out information that she wouldn’t tell a hairy ape like Joe.”
“Joe’s not a dick either.”
Joe squeezed his eyes closed as if waiting for some impending disaster.
Wolf laid his hand on Anna’s shoulder. “That’s just the thing. He is. He’s been promoted.” Wolf turned to Joe. “Would you mind bringing me some chop suey?”
Anna said flatly, “I’m the best man-tracker you’ve got. I should be a dick.”
Wolf grinned. “Honeybun, it would take two of you to meet the weight requirement.”
Anna knew this to be true. She fell six years, eight inches, and sixty-two pounds short of the minimum requirements for being a cop in LA. But neither was she old, married, and plain—the requirements for being a police matron—and she was working out just fine. Besides, Joe wasn’t twenty-five yet. He got hired because his dad was the chief.
Wolf said, “The witness refuses to come into the station because her husband, who manages the apartments, never lets her leave the building, and she’s scared. I just need you to go to the apartment building on Juan Street and interview the lady with Joe nearby to help and to guide. If you do well, you can help interview females involved in other cases. And it seems you should be more amenable to whatever I ask given that I put my neck on the line for you.”
Anna’s face contorted in horror. He was holding the head over her head.
Joe’s ears were red. Wolf put his arm around him and walked him off toward the kitchen. Anna heard him murmur, “Young Joe, you’ve got to separate your work from your play.”
Anna couldn’t hear what Joe answered back. The blood was rushing in her ears.
CHAPTER 7
Anna and Joe clopped down the stone steps together, with an order from Wolf for chop suey. Joe lugged a camera and a leather bag of tools, his weapon strapped in a holster. Anna carried a revolver, fountain pen, and monogrammed leather-bound notebook in her silver net purse. It was the swellest of all her purses. The pattern was like fish scales, which bent and glistened and flashed in the winter sun.
Joe gestured to her purse. “Is that real silver?”
“Yes, why?”
He shook his head. “You’re lucky you’re with a cop.”
“I’d be luckier if I were with a different cop.”
Joe threw back his head and laughed quietly.
Anna smoothed her skirts. “I’d rather go without you.”
“You need me. I have the address.”
“I bet I could find it without the address.”
“I’ll take that bet. What are we betting for?”
Anna tapped her lip thoughtfully. “Juicy Fruit. A year’s supply.”
Joe shook Anna’s hand and grinned. “Juan’s a long street.”
“I’ve seen the map.”
The road churned with streetcars, autos, wagons, bicycles, and reckless pedestrians that all jammed up at the corner like sticks in a beaver dam. On the sidewalk, Anna and Joe waded through the crowd toward the trolley stop. When they arrived, Anna turned to face him. “Why don’t you want me to go to Chinatown? I’m a good sleuth. I’ve investigated in the parlor houses while a killer was slaughtering girls.”
“And you almost died.”
“So did you.”
“Anna, Chinatown is hot right now.”
“Tourists go to Chinatown.”
“They don’t know what I know. If violence breaks out, you don’t want to get caught in the crossfire. You saw what the tong did to Ko Chung. They kill whoever they’re ordered to kill, and it doesn’t matter who’s watching or who gets in the way.”
“You’re just as likely to get shot as I am.”
“No, because you’ll stand out like a horse in church. There are twenty Chinamen for every woman, and the ladies who are there mostly work in the cribs, so everyone will assume you’re a prostitute.”
“That’s not new.”
“The white men in Chinatown are dangerous, too. They don’t like white women going anywhere near a Chinaman. They’ve even threatened the missionary women.”
“I brought my gun.”
“Most of the city’s brothels are there. Every other shop is an opium den, a gambling joint, or a saloon, and they’re all run by the tongs.”
An engine backfired on the busy street, sounding like a gunshot. Anna flinched. “I’m not going to give up my opportunity to solve a crime because you think it’s dangerous. Wolf ordered me to go, and I’m going. You might as well get used to it.”
“Fine. You can interview the witness like Wolf asked you to do, and then you’re going back to the station.”
She speared him with a pointed look. “Are you bossing me?”
He threw his hands in the air. “Anna, I outrank you.”
Anna and Joe boarded a Red Car. She sat on a wooden seat. He stood, grasping a canvas strap hanging from the ceiling. Neither spoke. When the trolley halted at the corner of Main and Marchessault Streets, Anna hesitated. She said again, “But tourists go to Chinatown.”
“Less and less. White men come slumming because they like their gambling, and they like their women. I’m telling you, Sherlock. Even the Chinese are leaving for other Chinatowns. We don’t know if, when, or how the Hop Sing are going to retaliate for the death of Ko Chung, or whether the Bing Kong are done punishing them for the missing singsong girls. They are on the brink of war. You don’t want to be standing in the street when a bunch of highbinders start shooting at each other.”
She took a long deep breath for courage, and stood, moving toward the door of the trolley.
The Plaza was a small, round, grassy park, with sidewalks that looked like the spokes o
f a wheel. Anna and Joe trudged across it toward a market. A hundred horses lined one half of the Plaza, hooked to wagons brimming with celery, strawberries, and other produce. There, in the muddy street, the Chinese sold vegetables to the people of Los Angeles. It was the edge of the white world, where East met West—the edge of safety.
Apart from Mr. Yau, Anna had never seen a Chinese man up close—ones with bodies anyway. They came in such variety, and it strained her propriety not to stare. There were at least a hundred of them. They favored dark pants and tunics that looked like pajamas, and broad brim hats. Some had short hair. Others shaved their foreheads and had long queues that fell to their waists or even lower. Evidently, she interested them as much as they interested her. Their brown eyes arrested her, following her among the horses, carts, and crowd without compunction. Anna averted her own gray eyes.
Joe linked his arm through hers. “Come on.” Anna shook him off.
“Fine,” he said.
They slipped between two wagons, Joe striding in his boots, Anna tiptoeing through droppings, which scented the air along with the earthy smells of vegetables. Chinatown lay nestled between Sonoratown, Little Italy, and Frenchtown, with slaughterhouses to the south, downtown to the West, and railroad yards to the east. All races of men shopped from the wagons because everyone had to eat.
Anna and Joe turned onto Marchessault Street, and the crowd thinned, becoming more predominantly Chinese. The buildings looked old, like a picture she had seen of LA when it was just a Wild West town. Though the January sun was shining, it had only dried the top layer of mud, so, though the crust on the street looked hard, a woman in Paul Poiret shoes could sink in up to her ankles. Anna saw no other ladies on the street to object. Apparently, Chinatown was a broken down, man’s world. It sorely needed pavement and a woman’s touch. Anna spared her shoes by hopping among planks and rock islands that rose above the mud, staying on the brick sidewalk wherever possible. A sudden cesspool smell assaulted Anna’s nose, and her lip curled.
The Woman in the Camphor Trunk Page 4