City of Sharks

by Kelli Stanley

  Not much in the way of personality, other than a Daily Racing Form on a leather desk chair with a rip down the middle, and a matchbook from The White House department store near the slightly neater pile of work.

  A scratched, unpainted door on the opposite corner of the room was ajar.

  Sounds of uneven breathing, a kind of low, panicked hum, shuffles and thumps.

  Miranda pushed it open.

  Louise was standing in the center of a small supply room, boxes of typing paper, typewriter ribbons, ink bottles, envelopes, and stationery lying in disordered heaps on shelving built into the walls.

  Her head pivoted at the sound of the door hinges.

  “Oh—Miss Corbie—I was just—just looking for that key, the one I couldn’t find last night—I thought it might help the police.”

  “I thought you said you kept it in the other room—a filing cabinet, if I remember correctly.”

  The blonde nodded too many times, eyes avoiding Miranda as she squeezed by her and shut the supply room door.

  “Yes, that’s right, but yesterday was so hectic, and Mr. Ward has borrowed it from time to time, and once he left it in here…”

  “Louise—forget about the key right now. I need you to talk to me before the police question you any further.”

  “I—of course, whatever you say.”

  The blonde led her through the small central area and back into the meeting room, shutting the door and turning to face her.

  “I just can’t believe it—Mr. Alexander—who would want to do such a horrible, evil thing?”

  Miranda studied the secretary. “There’s a chance Alexander’s murder is connected to the attempts on you.”

  The blonde’s eyes grew big and blue and she put an open hand to her mouth.

  Either she hadn’t connected the dots or she was a better actress than Olympia, Washington, usually produced.

  “That—that’s so, Miss Corbie, I hadn’t thought of it.”

  Miranda guided her toward one of the round-backed chairs by the main table.

  “Sit down. We haven’t much time. Why were you here this morning?”

  The secretary’s hands gripped the armrests. “We are about to go to press with a large run—a short biography of Winston Churchill, Mr. Alexander’s had it on the back burner for some time—and I wanted to get an early start.”

  The blue eyes flicked back and forth between Miranda and the wall. Miranda nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “I—I came in like always—”

  “Was the door locked?”

  “Yes. I used my own key. Then I started to set up the typewriter and I noticed Mr. Alexander’s office door wasn’t shut.”

  “That was unusual?”

  The blonde nodded. “Niles is very neat and particular and never leaves his door open, whether he’s in the office or not. He doesn’t like people to know if he’s in. Didn’t like people to know,” she added in an undertone, voice tremulous.

  “Then what happened?”

  “I—I tapped lightly on the door and called his name. I didn’t—didn’t hear anything, so I pushed ever so gently and—and the door swung open a little, and I took a few steps toward the desk before I realized—before I actually saw…”

  The secretary heaved, chest jerking in a spasm. “I knew he was dead. He had to be. I didn’t know what to do, I—I guess I called you and then you told me what to do and I called the police and asked for that policeman you told me to ask for and then they came with doctors and the doctors came out of the room and shook their heads, and—and—”

  Miranda patted her shoulder, stemming the flood. “I know. What was in the safe in Alexander’s office?”

  Louise stuttered, breathing faster. “Hi-his safe? Only Niles and Sylvia had the combination—”

  “I didn’t ask you that, Louise. I’m asking you if you knew what was in it.”

  The blonde looked up at her, lips parted, breath still audible. “Money. Money for emergencies, Niles said, and his most important manuscripts, books he thought would really leave a mark. S-Smith’s new book, I think.”

  “The one about Alcatraz?”

  The eyes grew larger and darker, the secretary’s voice higher. “Who told you that?”

  “Roscoe. Is it true?”

  Louise bit her lip and nodded, red creeping up her neck and cheeks. “It was supposed to be a secret—an exposé.”

  “Have you read it?”

  A slightly longer pause. “No.”

  The secretary was looking down at the floor. Miranda’s tone was dry.

  “Too bad. Someone’s stolen it.”

  The blonde looked up as though someone had just shouted “Fire.”

  “How do you—”

  “Sylvia Alexander just opened the safe. Bunny Berrigan checked and found the money but no manuscript.”

  Louise slowly stood up, eyes blinking. “I should go to her.”

  A bang signaled the opening of the anteroom door, and Fisher’s voice boomed through the cheap wood of the interior offices.

  “Miss Crowley? Miss Crowley?”

  The two women hurried out of the meeting room, Louise shutting the door behind her, hands automatically brushing off the fingerprint powder on the sides of her skirt. Fisher raised his eyebrows, looking from the secretary to Miranda.

  “We’re moving down to the Hall for statements, Miss Crowley. We’ll need you to come with us.”

  The blonde looked at Miranda, who nodded.

  “Meyer will go with you, Louise. Gather your things.”

  The secretary moved hurriedly toward the outer office and her desk. Inspector Fisher eyed Miranda, dragging a thumb nail across the shadow on his chin. “You’re not accompanying your client?”

  She shook her head. “Who else are you dragging down to the barn?”

  “Mrs. Alexander and Jerry Alexander. And Howard Carter Smith, if we can find him—seems he’s out of town. It was his book that was stolen.”

  “An exposé about Alcatraz.”

  The burly cop arched an eyebrow again. “You been holding back on me?”

  They stepped into the outer office. Meyer was standing and nodded at Fisher.

  “I understand you would like Miss Crowley to make a statement, Inspector. I am representing her.”

  Fisher made a guttural snort. “Kinda figured that, Mr. Bialik.”

  Louise stood ready by her desk, quiet and composed, as if she were going to church. Bunny Berrigan and Roger Roscoe were sitting in the waiting area, both silent. Sylvia and Jerry were already gone.

  The grizzled uniform on guard stuck his head through the main door.

  “Reporters have left, sir.”

  Fisher nodded. “Then let’s go.” He started toward the now open doorway, Louise following and Meyer trailing behind. Roscoe rose from his chair.

  “I should go with you.”

  Fisher turned his head back briefly. “No, Mr. Roscoe, I’ve already told you. We’ll be contacting you soon.”

  The writer grabbed his weathered fedora and clamped it on his head. “I’ll at least walk out of the building with you. I feel like I’m suffocating.”

  The inspector shrugged as the party exited the offices of Alexander Publishing, two cops still flanking the door. The clicks of Meyer’s cane echoed down the marble halls of the Monadnock.

  Miranda took a breath in the silent, still office. She turned to Bunny Berrigan, the redhead slumped in a Windsor chair, staring at the wall.

  “You really loved him, didn’t you?”

  Bunny pivoted her head, eyes locking with Miranda’s. They were swimming now, the blue drowning in tears.

  Miranda held out a hand to help pull the other woman up.

  “Come on. Let’s talk.”

  * * *

  Tascone’s wasn’t private enough, the dives across the street at the start of Kearny too private, the kind of places where you lined the bar to drink cheap gin and rye, drowning your sorrows while the fat man
at the piano banged out “Don’t Worry ’Bout Me.”

  Not the spot for Bunny Berrigan, not today.

  “John’s Grill, Miss Berrigan. You could use a good steak and eggs platter.”

  The response was as automatic as Elektro, the Smoking Robot.

  “Call me Bunny. Everyone does.”

  They reached the ground floor, conversation or questions held in check by the need to tread carefully down the Monadnock maintenance stairway. Reporters might still be at the elevators; hell, they could be waiting at the back door leading into Stevenson Alley, too, but the stench of steel garbage cans caked with rot and mildewed mops soaking in cold, black water might convince the newshawks to wait it out in more hospitable climes.

  Miranda stepped around a threadbare sock covered in something green and dug in her pocket for a pack of Chesterfields.

  “Want one?”

  Bunny shrugged, accepting the stick. The women walked around the corner in silence.

  “Hope you don’t mind going the long way. Figure we’re less likely to meet up with a reporter.”

  Bunny inhaled the Chesterfield, smoke billowing from her nose. “Yeah.”

  “You need to get to the bank or anything with that money?”

  The redhead shook her head. “Sylvia gave me the combination. I took what we needed for one week, in case the printers and vendors demand cash. They do, you know, when there’s a hint of instability, and since the company was Niles and Niles was the company…” her voice trailed off, and she finished, almost inaudibly, “Can’t get much more unstable than that.”

  They’d almost reached the corner of Fourth when the publicity woman made a strange choking noise. Bunny was staring straight ahead, some color back in her face.

  “I don’t need breakfast. I’m all right. I’ve got to find Smith.”

  Miranda took a breath. “Bunny—the cops are gonna want—”

  “I know. That’s fine. I’ll tell them everything. But first I need to find Smith.”

  The redhead dropped the butt of the stick, ground it with her black leather pump.

  “Thanks for the cig.”

  Miranda studied her. “You know your relationship makes you a potential suspect, right? They love to put the finger on ‘scarlet women’—and your hair color won’t help.”

  Bunny nodded. “Yeah. I suppose so. Though I’d never hurt Niles, and believe it or not, I’d never hurt Sylvia. And I still don’t know how you figured it out.”

  “Experience.” Miranda drew down hard on the remains of her Chesterfield, looking up at the other woman shrewdly. “At least you’ll know what publicity angles to expect. How long were you his mistress?”

  “Three years. We were—we were like an old married couple in a lot of ways, you know?”

  “I know you loved him. Makes it harder and easier, all at once.”

  “Yeah. It was goddamn hard sometimes. Especially because of his reputation, which was mostly just bullshit, though Niles, being a man, did nothing to discourage it. And especially because I care about Sylvia so much. Be a lot easier if I didn’t.”

  Miranda’s words were carefully chosen, her tone nonchalant. “At least Sylvia always thought it was the secretaries. Louise must have made things easier.”

  The redhead opened her mouth and shut it again, before the blue eyes solidified into steel, her mouth a twist of rust-colored wire.

  “Good-bye, Miss Corbie.”

  Bunny turned on her heel and walked back toward the Monadnock. Miranda watched her vanish down Mission Street, frowning in thought.

  * * *

  Something’s wrong with Louise.…

  Words of worry from Roger Roscoe, and not only about the secretary.

  Were the letters and attempts on Louise a smoke screen, a sleight-of-hand to distract from the real victim, Niles Alexander? Did Louise write the letters herself? Was she guilty of murder?

  Miranda tore into the eggs and hamsteak with a knife, mouth a grimace. John’s Grill was almost empty, the cooks outside smoking cigarettes, gearing up for the coming lunch crowd from the Flood Building and Powell Street, dishwasher whistling “I’m Nobody’s Baby” from the kitchen.

  No. She’d seen too many Louises, small-town girls with ambition and fear and crippling self-doubt, tops in the typing pool and beat up in the bedroom. She’d stake her license on the secretary’s innocence … but not her honesty.

  Louise Crowley was lying to her, lying about the book stolen from the office, lying about the key she said she was looking for, lying about the man she met at Playland. What was it he’d said the night before? Something about not getting something from where she worked, something about a “job for life” and Alcatraz …

  Alcatraz, baby, not the fucking palace …

  She sat upright. Alcatraz in Smith’s stolen book, Alcatraz at Playland.

  Too much of a coincidence, and she didn’t like coincidences.

  Alcatraz was suddenly too popular for a desolate and dreary prison, San Francisco’s own fog-bound Devil’s Island. Smith writes a book about it, some kind of undercover exposé, Louise’s brute of a lover—whose identity and existence she kept carefully hidden—mentions it, Bunny Berrigan abruptly decides finding said author Smith and his book is more important than a Winston Churchill print run deadline.

  Alcatraz, Alcatraz Island, damned city, dangerous city, a city of sharks.

  And what about Alexander’s wife Sylvia, heiress to heroin, and the whereabouts of her rapist running back son? What about Bunny Berrigan and the other editors and Smith and Roscoe himself?

  What about the list of malcontents Louise gave her, the would-be writers, the poor bastards that might kill for a slight against their prose, rejection answerable only with homicide?

  Miranda pushed the plate away and drained the coffee cup, settling it back on the saucer with a weary clink.

  Too many questions.

  Maybe Allen would find something on Louise Crowley, some nugget of indiscretion stored in the mammoth Pinkerton files, something Miranda could use to figure out what she knew—and why she was lying about it.

  Miranda tossed a dollar on the table, heading out to the bright September sunshine of Ellis Street.

  * * *

  The phone in her office was ringing, and she fumbled for a few seconds trying to unlock the door.

  “Miranda Corbie, Private—”

  “We have a problem, dear girl.”

  Meyer, uncharacteristically grim. Miranda sank into her office chair, staring at the sepia Martell’s calendar, smiling blond girl, just like Louise Crowley …

  “Tell me.”

  Her attorney cleared his throat. “As you know, the inspector was to question Miss Crowley. Before he started—he has been taking statements from Mrs. Alexander and her son—a report came back from their laboratory. Mr. Alexander’s shirt, you remember, was covered in a liquid.”

  She reached into her pocket and shook out a stick. “Go on.”

  “The liquid was gin, with a high content of potassium cyanide.”

  Her throat was dry. “And?”

  “The police had already searched the premises but—with this news—the inspector ordered another, more thorough going-over. Just a few minutes ago, he received word that one of his men found a small vial of potassium cyanide in the office.”

  Miranda leaned forward in the chair, cigarette clenched tight in her fist.

  “Where, Meyer, tell me goddamn where—”

  His voice was somber.

  “Miss Crowley’s desk. They’re holding her for murder.”

  Eleven

  Meyer was waiting for her, patiently throwing donut crumbs to pigeons on the corner of Washington and Kearny, men in suspenders and stained fedoras warming themselves on the grass of Portsmouth Square, making odds on how much bail the judge would set, watching the coppers and clerks filter through the doors of the Last Chance Saloon down the street.

  St. Mary’s chimed eleven.

  A DeSoto screamed down
Washington and made her jump, “Sing, Sing, Sing” blaring through the windows of Chinatown Restaurant, along with the smells of chop suey and ginger-steamed pork.

  Miranda lengthened her steps down the hill. Meyer looked up, mouth grim, crumpling the remains of the donut with one hand and casting it to his cooing flock.

  She shook out a Chesterfield and lit it with the Ronson Majorette.

  “Louise talk?”

  Her attorney sighed. “No. She fainted. The Inspector hasn’t actually charged her yet, but I expect he will do so momentarily. I am hoping you can help forestall him.”

  “Maybe. So is she in hysterics or what? Can’t they get anything out of her?”

  “Miss Crowley has been nearly as catatonic while conscious as she was while unconscious. She does not respond to questions—indeed, she pays no attention to her surroundings at all, which—as you know—can be quite dangerous in a holding cell.”

  “Can’t you get her out on a habeas?”

  “I’m trying.” Meyer sounded uncharacteristically curt. “Your client—our client—is not cooperating.”

  She patted him on the shoulder. “It’s been a tough morning. Let’s go in.”

  “Did you bring the letters?”

  “In my purse. What did you tell Fisher?”

  “That you had substantive proof Miss Crowley could not have murdered her employer.”

  Miranda raised an eyebrow. “Is that all? You oversold me, Meyer.”

  Her attorney smiled for the first time, wrinkles creasing his fat cheeks as he removed a handkerchief with a flourish and wiped his brow. He replaced it in his pocket, brown eyes steady on Miranda, and tapped his cane for emphasis.

  “That, my dear, is impossible.”

  * * *

  Click.

  The minute hand jerked a notch, electricity humming.

  Originally a crisp black-and-white, the clock was now more gray and yellow, stained by the bodies of crushed insects, moths’ wings, and fly spittle, dulled by the thick blue smoke of Fatimas and Luckies, swirls drifting upward from the scarred desks and tight lips of cops and captured, lipstick-smeared Kool in the mouth of Pickles’ newest girl, vice dick chewing a Camel and giving her the once-over.

  Miranda exhaled, blowing smoke over Inspector Fisher’s left shoulder. He was slumped forward, muscle on his short, stocky frame softer than a couple of months ago. More gray in his hair, more lines in his skin.