By the final verse, everyone in the hall—guards, nurses, doctors, psych techs, and patients—were singing “When I’m at Camarillo” with Wilma. She gave Chester one more piano interlude at the end, then they both finished with a flourish. Wilma let that sheepish smile glow on her face. She brought her lips close to the microphone, just shy of kissing it, and said, “Thank you. Goodnight.”
Two days later, the lyrics to Wilma’s song made it into nearly every satchel and wallet in the asylum. Patients sang it when they mopped or cooked breakfast. Nurses hummed it through the rounds. Wilma became a madhouse celebrity. Her cafeteria time was filled with notes and apples from admirers, male and female alike. Wilma let the good feelings glow down on her, but she also knew that they didn’t mean much. She still had to clean Muriel’s room and the rest of the TB ward. She still couldn’t swing a transfer to the laundry. She still had ten and a half months of her yearlong sentence to go.
At least, that was the case until one of the guards pulled her aside on the way to supper. His last name was Giroux. If he had a first name, Wilma had never heard anyone use it. Giroux was tall and lanky. He wore a pencil-thin mustache and enough pomade in his hair to choke out the perpetual aroma of paraldehyde. He was Canadian and had come to Camarillo by way of London and the Royal Air Force. He did almost no work at the hospital. If a ruckus erupted, you could find it by going to the space Giroux had just vacated. If you wanted to escape, you did it through Giroux. At least that’s what the bughouse gossip said.
Giroux placed a gentle hand on Wilma’s elbow just outside the dining hall and steered her along a sidewalk that was supposed to be out-of-bounds for patients. Wilma hesitated. Giroux said, “Don’t worry. You can’t get in trouble when you’re with me.”
Wilma followed him down the path strewn with morning glories.
Giroux kept his hand on her elbow. He said, “Your song has become quite the hit.”
Wilma smiled. “Folks seem to like it.”
Giroux gazed forward as if, somewhere up ahead on the path lay his thoughts. He walked into them. “The tune was familiar. Was it George Formby?”
“On the nose,” Wilma said. “I just changed the words to ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows.’”
Giroux snapped the fingers on his left hand. “I knew it. Not many folks know Formby on this side of the Atlantic. How do you?”
“My sister works in pictures. A British cameraman gave her the 78 as a gift.”
“Do you know any more of his ditties?”
“All the good ones.” Wilma listed the songs on the 78.
Giroux nodded along. “What else can you play?”
“You name it. Benny Bell. Tin Pan Alley numbers. Dixieland. Everything. What do you want to hear?”
Wilma and Giroux reached the end of the dining hall. The sidewalk turned to the right and followed along the southern wards. Patients could look out the windows at these grounds, but never walk them. Giroux turned right. Wilma walked along under his protection.
He paused again, walking toward his next thoughts. Wilma waited. He asked, “Have you played much for audiences?”
“Some,” Wilma said. “Not much.”
“I have to ask you something.” Giroux’s voice grew small, tender. “Have you ever, or, let me rephrase, would you ever. No. One more try. Could you possibly be coaxed into playing numbers at affairs that reflect, let’s say, less than traditional values?”
Wilma had seen enough men beating around enough bushes to guess what idea he was trying to scare up. “Are you asking me to play a burlesque show?”
“Now we seem to be close to an understanding.”
“We also have a problem, that being the fact I’m a patient here until the spring of 1944. There are no burlesque theaters in the bughouse.”
Giroux nodded. He adjusted his hold on Wilma’s arm so that he seemed to be cupping her elbow. “Arrangements can be made. Your sentence can be commuted.”
Wilma didn’t want subtleties. She asked, “You can get me out of here?”
“It depends. How do you feel about nudity?”
“Why, Officer Giroux, I’m nude under this state-issued dress.” Wilma tried to catch his eyes and bat her lashes. Giroux continued to face forward.
“How do you feel about performing your ukulele in the nude? For a small, select audience.”
Wilma stopped walking. Giroux turned to face her. Wilma ran a fingernail along his jawline. “Honey, you get me out of here legally, a select audience can watch me sing and dance my bare ass all the way back to Highland Park.”
Giroux looked down at Wilma’s feet. A wolfish smile crept across his face. He let go of Wilma’s elbow and offered his hand to shake. Wilma, not exactly sure what she was agreeing to, shook. They started back down the path toward the dining hall.
“Of course, you’ll keep all this under your hat, both before and after I make arrangements.”
“Of course,” Wilma said.
Good to his word, he secured her release one week later.
JACK, 1946
JACK GREETED the sunrise the next morning from the porch of his parents’ house. He had a cup of coffee and a copy of his wife’s book. The book rested on his lap. Jack rubbed his thumb over the smooth front cover. He did this unconsciously, as if the book were a kitten. Now and then, he’d lift his mug of coffee to his lips.
The neighborhood gradually woke up around him. Lights came on in bedroom windows, then in kitchen windows. Soft rumblings grew slightly louder at a sloth’s pace. Men emerged from doorways with hats on heads and briefcases in hands. On one or two porches, an aproned wife kissed her husband goodbye. Cars floated down Avenue 52 and merged into the bigger streams of York and Figueroa. The city got down to the business of staying a city.
Through it all, Jack refilled his mug a time or two and caressed his wife’s book without looking at a word inside it. When the clock struck eight, Jack went back inside, ran a comb through his hair, dressed in his last remaining suit, and strolled a half dozen blocks down York to the police station there.
Word must have gotten around that Jack was once again among the living because no one treated him like a ghost when he walked in. Old coworkers rose from their desks, shook his hand, patted his back, asked questions that they didn’t want answered about the war, and tried to convince him to come back to the force. A few made jokes about the egg the Oxnard thug had planted on his jaw the day before. Jack smiled and goofed through it for as long as he had to, then he excused himself to head downstairs to see Stacchi in Records.
Stacchi worked alone in the basement of the station, filing away old or cold cases, answering the phone, mostly loafing. He’d been a patrolman like Jack until he was caught taking one too many bribes. The higher-ups liked Stacchi, so instead of firing him, they stuck him where he wouldn’t have much to sell.
Jack found him with his nose in a filing cabinet. A cigarette was burning on his desk. The ash was less than a quarter inch long. A desk drawer hung slightly open. The chair was spun away from both the aisle where Stacchi stood and the desk itself. Jack pointed out this evidence and the story it told. He said, “You heard my footsteps and quick made like you were working, huh?”
Stacchi smiled. “What happened, Jack? They made you detective?”
Jack stepped forward for the handshake and pleasantries. Afterward, Stacchi invited Jack to take a seat on the other side of the desk. “What really brings you here?” he asked.
Jack pulled out his wallet and set a twenty on the blotter. “I’m wondering if you can get some information for me.”
Stacchi looked at the bill. He nodded.
Jack said, “I’d like to know the names and current addresses of women who were sent to Camarillo for the alcoholic cure between February and May of 1943.”
“And that’s worth only twenty bucks to you?”
Jack knew Stacchi was a master of the bribe. There wasn’t a whole lot of money to play with, especially since Jack didn’t have a job and would hav
e to buy a new suit before too long. Twenty seemed generous to him. It was a lot of goddamn money. He said, “When I started out before the war, twenty was just about a week’s pay. It’s nothing to sneeze at.”
“I’m not sneezing,” Stacchi smiled. He’d lost a few teeth since Jack had worked with him. The front four were still hanging in there, but his fangs were gone. “I just want to know what you’re looking into loony girls for.”
Jack weighed the truth and found it a little heavy. In all likelihood, these records would be downtown at headquarters, not at the York station. Stacchi wouldn’t see them, wouldn’t see Wilma’s name on the list. He’d just be the go-between. Jack said, “Wandering daughter job.”
“What? You take over the old man’s business?”
Jack shrugged. “Not really. Just this one case. The girl’s parents were close with the old man. They came crying. I got soft.”
“You always were soft,” Stacchi said. He pulled the telephone close and dialed direct to the central station. He chatted briefly with his buddy, then asked for the list. “I’m sending a plainclothes guy to pick them up. Name’s Jack Chesley. You’ll know him by his cheap corduroy jacket.” Stacchi paused, laughed. “Will noon work?”
Apparently, noon was soon enough. Stacchi hung up the phone and made the twenty disappear. “You got that, kid?”
“Noon at Records downtown,” Jack said. “I got it.”
Stacchi shook Jack’s hand. “Don’t be a stranger,” he said.
A few hours later, Jack picked up the information from records, easy as pie. They were handwritten on three sheets of white paper. No envelope. Jack glanced through them only long enough to find Wilma’s name. It was there, right next to the word “deceased.” Jack folded the papers in half and in half again. He stuck them in the inside pocket of his corduroy jacket, thanked the clerk, and headed out.
Jack heard his name when he hit the street in front of the central station. He turned to find his old partner Hammond trotting down the steps. In his police blues, with his hat covering the balding grays, he looked years younger than he had in Cole’s a couple of days ago.
Jack waited for him to approach. “What’s with the buzzer?” he asked. “I thought you said you retired.”
“Retired?” Hammond sent a friendly punch into Jack’s forearm, harder than it needed to be but not hard enough to raise Jack’s hackles. “I’ll never retire.”
Jack held Hammond’s glance for a second. He knew the guy. Hammond wasn’t lying now, which meant he was lying at Cole’s.
Hammond offered a third interpretation. He said, “You must be losing it, kid.”
Jack shook his head like a dog trying to dry himself. “A couple years in a prison camp will do that, I guess.”
Hammond started down the steps. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go into Little Tokyo and jaw.”
Jack followed.
They walked down First Street, past the city buildings and into the Japanese section of town. Jack had known this neighborhood well when he was stationed around here. It was a place to take a break, to hide out from all the madness up around Bunker Hill, maybe get a bite to eat if you trusted the waitress to bring you something good even though you couldn’t read the menu and she couldn’t speak English. He liked the idea of that kind of meal today: the soups with thick noodles and soft meat, something easy on his aching jaw.
A block into Little Tokyo, Hammond pointed out what Jack had already noticed. “Not many Japs around here. You see that?”
“I do.” Jack nodded. “What happened to them?”
“What do you mean, what happened? We shipped them out.”
“What? Where?” Jack hadn’t exactly had the opportunity to read a newspaper for most of the past four years. Any news the Air Force or prison guards didn’t see fit to give him, he didn’t get. He’d heard plenty about the Japanese, but not about the Japanese in America.
Hammond filled him in on the internment camps and the changing shape of Little Tokyo. He waved a hand in front of him. “As you can see, it’s mostly dark meat now.”
A passerby stepped to the side to avoid Hammond’s hand. He shot a sideways glance at Jack and Hammond. Jack greeted him with a head nod and kept walking.
Hammond led Jack into a dive with all the food laid out cafeteria style. Jack picked what was soft: stewed greens, blackeyed peas, cornbread. Hammond piled a plate full of boiled meat. They carried their trays to a cashier. Hammond nodded toward Jack. “He’s with me.”
The cashier waved them both through. They sat at a small table.
Through a mouthful of meat, Hammond said, “You ain’t playing it smart, are you, kid?”
“What do you mean?”
“I hear you’ve been going up and down Wilma’s old street, asking questions.”
“I did,” Jack said. “What of it?”
“That’s not backing off, is it?”
“No,” Jack said. “But it was before you told me to.”
Hammond stuffed some more meat into his face. He chewed it enough to allow himself to talk, but not enough to allow him to swallow. “What are you telling me? Make it clear.”
Jack set his fork down. He crumbled some cornbread into his beans, where it gradually sunk into the juice and ham fat. “I went down to Newland Street and asked some questions. No one told me anything except that my wife was a whore. I started to think that she really did just get drunk and fall in a tub. Then I went to see you, and you told me to back off. I took that to mean that Wilma was into some kind of business I don’t want to know about, so I stopped asking around. Clear enough?”
“Sure,” Hammond said. He took another bite and chewed longer this time. “One more question. What did you do yesterday?”
“Got the old man’s flivver running again.”
“Did you?”
“I did. It’s parked back at the clubhouse. I’ll show you after lunch.”
“And what happened? A wild wrench flew up and gave you that knot on the chin?”
Jack lifted his beans close enough to sniff. They seemed safe. Salty, but safe. He dumped a heavy spoonful into his mouth and used the chewing time to think. His jaw didn’t like all this teeth grinding business. Jack kept at it until he could fashion a response. “I’m not too smart about any of this, Hammond. Suppose you tell me what you think it is that I need to be protected from. You think I’m going to find out my wife started sleeping all around town once she thought I was dead? I already know that. You think I’m going to find out about her time in the bughouse? Hell, she wrote a book about it. So what could she have been doing that you don’t want me to find out?”
Hammond raised his knife. He hadn’t used it on his meat, yet. He hadn’t needed to. The beef had been boiled down into soft strands. He pointed the knife at Jack. “You’re stupid, kid, but you’re not that stupid.”
Jack figured he’d lay a face card down, just to see how Hammond would play the hand. “Wilma was murdered, wasn’t she?”
“Of course, Jackie. We all know that.”
It seemed time to call Hammond, so Jack tossed his hand onto the table. “And you know who murdered her?”
Hammond put the knife down. He shook his head. “I don’t know. I have ideas, but I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you tell me your ideas, then?”
Hammond dropped his eyebrows and stared at Jack. He held the eye contact far beyond the point of comfortable. Jack didn’t look away. If they were playing a game, Jack wasn’t going to give in easily.
After nearly a minute, Hammond looked down at what remained of his plate of boiled meat. He shoveled the last of it into his gullet. “If you get too close to this, there’ll be another murder that I don’t want to know about.”
Jack chewed on this for a second. “You think I’m going to kill whoever killed Wilma?”
Hammond pushed himself back from the table and stood to leave. “No.” He plopped his hat back on his head. “That’s not at all what I’m worried about.”
>
WILMA, 1943
IT WAS NO burlesque theater: no stage, no costumes, no comedians, no dances, no dressing room, no props. Giroux brought Wilma to a ground-floor suite decorated to look like the penthouse on a B movie back lot. The room was long and thin like a dining hall. A beat-up baby grand sat in the corner, wood warped and legs wobbly. You didn’t need to plunk the keys to know it was out of tune. A hallway beside the baby grand led to a bedroom and bathroom. On the other side of the room, eight men were gathered around an octagonal poker table. Just beyond them stood the bar. A bartender with thick, hairy forearms shook a batch of martinis. Cheap chintz loveseats and armchairs swallowed most of the room. The men in attendance had gathered the furniture in front of a portable movie screen. Nothing showed on the screen. Most of the men had vacated the seats and were drifting toward the bar.
Giroux had somewhat prepared Wilma for this scene. He’d rescued her dobro ukulele from the bughouse. He’d given her a dark indigo dress—formfitting, but absolutely the wrong color for her pale, freckled skin. “Don’t worry so much about the dress,” he’d told her on the drive north from Camarillo. “You’ll take it off after three songs.” And he’d explained the deal: she’d sing and play, stripping a little between each tune. By the sixth song, she should be topless. By the seventh, bottomless. She’d only do an eighth if they called for an encore. Afterwards, she’d stay and entertain the gentlemen. When Wilma asked, “Entertain? Like how?” Giroux waved it off with his slender fingers.
He hadn’t prepared Wilma for the oily feeling in the room, like a crop duster had just coated it in DDT. These men had something about them, some weird cocktail of anger and lust and desperation. They didn’t do or say anything specific. Wilma just felt it. It’s okay, she told herself. You’re just out of the bughouse. Everything will feel weird for a day or two.
Giroux led her to the area between the portable movie screen and the horseshoe of furniture. A chubby fellow came over to meet them. His red suit had wide shoulders and pegged pants, something like a zoot, only tailored with wartime wool rations in mind. He looked at Wilma and asked Giroux, “This her?”
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