The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles - Ken Kuhlken (funny books to read txt) 📗

anybody.”

“Should we pray for her? And for you? And, wasn’t there a little one.”

“Florence.”

“Can I pray right now?”

Tom accepted the offer, though an old terror had already begun to rise. As she moved her chair closer to his, he felt blitzed by a squad of demons. She grasped both his hands. Though she barely squeezed, he tensed to keep from recoiling, as if she had caught hold with fiery pincers.

She began by praising God for his grace and mercy to sinners like them, fervently requested the coming of his kingdom and torrents of the latter rain. She pled for forgiveness of all transgressions on the part of Milly and her children, and for the Holy Spirit to call them ever closer. For a long while, she fell silent. Then she commenced to quake and sing in soft, ghostly tones and long circular phrases, in a strange, tender language. He let himself shiver, chilled all over and through except where she held him with her burning hands.

Twenty-three

TOM rode south along Central, past Sugar Hill Barber Shop, past a hobo camp alongside a creek shaded by cottonwoods, houses painted gaily in the Mexican style, and small factories with big incinerators pouring black smoke. Even before he hopped off, he caught the scent of Mud Town Barbeque, to which he had delivered tons of ribs.

The closer he came to the place, the more he lamented having skipped lunch. Inside, he asked Moze, a waiter and part-owner, for directions to Frank’s address. Moze obliged, noticed Tom licking his lips, ordered him to wait, and fetched a sack of ribs.

Tom was still gnawing when he reached Frank’s block, in a gone-to-seed tract the developer no doubt billed as craftsman bungalows, though they lacked any evidence of craft. Judging from the way some of them leaned, earthquakes had abused them.

In place of sidewalks, weedy dirt paths separated the street from the front yards. Some yards were grass. Others were adorned with succulents, rock gardens or patches of young winter vegetables. From a distance, Frank’s house appeared among the tidiest on the block, though the knee-high lawn had begun to go brown. Tom didn’t notice the broken window off the porch until he approached the steps.

He climbed, and knocked on the door out of courtesy and habit, though he doubted anybody lived there now. After a minute or so, he tried the doorknob.

Inside, he balanced on two-by-four beams above a crawl space littered with trousers, dresses, underwear, cans, broken bottles and dishes. Whatever looters hadn’t bothered to salvage.

They had spared one parlor wall. A painting of bright garden flowers hung surrounded by photos. One photo showed a crowd of people, brown and white, outside the Azusa Street mission. Another was a framed photo-portrait of Frank Gaines, with the wide and hearty smile Tom remembered and a lovely, pale brunette. Frank held her close to his side. Though bosomy, she looked frail.

Tom crossed the room, teetering on a beam. He plucked the photo off the wall and tucked it under his arm. Then he hopped beam-to-beam, reached the kitchen and peeked in. The floor was intact and tiled, strewn with litter, cleaner where the ice box and stove used to be.

Tom guessed the house wasn’t a rental. A landlord would likely have found a new tenant or boarded the place. Madeline, the city clerk and redheaded charmer, hadn’t found any deed in Franks’ name. Maybe, Tom thought, the pale woman owned it. Harriet? His next task was to find her. For a start, he needed her last name.

He left the place to ghosts and looters. The neighboring house he picked to start his queries was a challenge to reach. He inched his way through a maze of tangled weeds, a rusty bicycle frame and wheels, the remains of what might’ve been a sled, a bottomless bucket, and a decapitated baby doll. As he neared the house, the front door flew open. A small boy in socks and drooping underpants charged out, followed by a taller, shirtless boy who waved a broom and yelled death threats.

The boys raced past and circled the yard, yelping and tripping. Tom proceeded to the doorway. “Hello in there?”

A gang of tinier boys dashed to the door, stopped just inside, and stood gawking through the doorway at him.

“Mom around?” Tom asked.

She peered out of a back room, then crossed the parlor dodging piles of clothes and bedding. “What, Mister?” Like her sons, she was bone thin and blond enough to pass for albino. She pointed to the framed photo under Tom’s arm. “Been helping yourself?”

“Got a minute?” Tom asked.

With a raised fist and a bark, she chased the boys out of her way. She stepped outside, crossed the porch and sat on a step. She patted the wood beside her, meaning Tom should sit there, and pulled a sack of tobacco and Juicy Jay’s rolling papers from a pocket of her housedress.

“You the law? Insurance? What? About Frank, for sure.”

“You know who killed him?”

“You kidding?” She blew smoke. “Could’ve been most anybody. Colored and a white gal’s trouble enough. When she drops dead, folks go talking.”

“Dead? Harriet?”

“Yes sir, only some months back. And she ain’t no older than me.” The woman glanced over at Tom, probably itching for a compliment. When he didn’t comply, she said, “Folks say the Klan killed him, they don’t know from nothing. My cousin’s Klan, he tells me that bunch don’t do half what the gossips have them doing. He says they just aim to keep the commies and developers from ruining the country.”

“Tell me about Harriet?”

“Never done nothing to cross me. She had, I might could call her a hussy, the way just the sight of her got my so-called husband lathered. Mister, I’d suspect he might’ve killed Frank, on account of what the gossips saying, as how Frank been the one killed Harriet. Only my man’s up in Montana. He lays track for the Union Pacific. Keeps him gone, leaving all these little devils to me alone. Jesse,” she called, “you mash my broom, I’ll whoop you with it. You get over here.”

The boys plodded over. The woman said, “Tell the gentleman about Miz Harriet.”

The taller boy said, “We done found her out back in the flowers. She was blue.”

When the boys ran off, he asked, “She go by Gaines or another name?’’

“Gaines, sure,” the woman said. “She got another?”

Tom shrugged and said goodbye.

From a neighboring porch, a gray-bearded colored man watched Tom as though awaiting his turn. He wore a porter’s cap and sat tall on the high end of a sagging sofa, sharpening a kitchen knife with a whetstone. “Here about Frank?” he bellowed as Tom approached.

“Yes sir,” Tom called out. He stopped at the foot of the porch steps.

“You family? Harriet side?”

“No sir.” Tom wagged his head and raised his voice. “Frank ever talk about Azusa Street?”

“Many’s the time.”

“That’s where I knew him.”

“You a holy roller?”

“My mother. Any police been around since Frank got killed?”

“Police,” the man snorted. “What you think?”

“I expect they haven’t. That’s why I’m here.”

The man sharpened his blade with added force and resolve. “Well sir, you go tell whosoever you please Harry Chandler the man killed Frank.”

Tom must’ve looked dumbfounded as the old fellow said, “No, no, not with his own soft hands. His union busters, they do his bidding. And you can tell whosoever you report to, tell him Lincoln Peters, he the man say so.”

While the man tested his knife on the hair of his forearm, Tom said, “Mister Peters, did you see something that proves what you’re telling me?”

The man laid his knife and whetstone on the sofa arm. “Son, Frank a union man, much as anybody can be in General Otis and Mister Chandler’s town.”

“The way I heard, Frank was a stevedore.”

“No sir, he were not. A welder. Worked on oil rigs and ships, down in Chandler’s yard. Till the strike. He spoke out. Speak out, they kill you. You going to see Mister Chandler?”

“Yes sir,” Tom said, and meant it as a promise.

“You tell him, he got the spine, he need to come talk to Lincoln Peters.”

“I’ll do that.”

Tom thanked the man and crossed the street. A woman was plucking tomatoes from vines staked and rising as high as Tom’s shoulders. When she sensed him, she turned and yipped with surprise. She wore a reboso that covered all but the head of a tawny baby with bulging ebony eyes.

In high school Spanish, Tom explained he was looking for clues about the Frank Gaines murder, and told her why. The woman wrapped her baby tighter. Then she spoke. He asked her to repeat, more slowly.

Pausing between each word, she told him Frank was a caballero who always overpaid for tomatoes. And she described a Chevrolet she had seen parked across the street from the gentleman’s house, just as dark fell, on a stormy night two weeks ago.

“Domingo?” Tom asked.

“Si, Domingo,” she said with assurance.

He asked if she saw the driver or any passengers. No people, she said, only the car, before the rain and darkness sent her inside.

With a frown and a furtive glance behind her, she returned to pinching leaves off her tomato plants. Tom was thanking her when he noticed a tan Nash parked just far enough up the street so he couldn’t read the license. He started walking that way. Before he’d made ten steps, the Nash pulled out and drove off.

Tom returned to the woman. “A Chevrolet? Por seguro.”

“Pues si,” the woman said. “Chevrolet. Negro and Shiny.”

Tom sighed, and said adiós, deciding nobody would mistake a tan Nash for a black Chevy.

Twenty-four

VIOLET Weiss and six-year-old Una wore matching yellow sundresses that rustled in the Santa Ana breeze Tom was enjoying until Vi’s expression altered his mood. He had known her eighteen years, and never before seen her look ornery or miserable. Today, he saw both.

She and Una showed Florence and Tom across the backyard past the fishpond to the redwood bench under the magnolia. The bench featured a bouquet centerpiece. Tulips and daisies surrounded a single white rose. Vi loved flowers. That mutual passion had kept her friendly to Milly even after Tom’s mother called her a snoop.

Tom gazed over the flowerbeds at the edge of the Weiss property into the yard he remembered as a magical place, with flowers so high and abundant, he often ran and hid there, amidst rows of plump boysenberries whose vines jabbed and scraped long red lines in his skin. Now it was brown and forsaken.

Leo came out with a pitcher of lemonade and a flask. Violet scowled. On her round and soft face, any sour expression usually looked like a comic pantomime. Not tonight. She seated Tom and Florence and poured their lemonade, then wheeled and marched to the house without excusing herself.

“Vi get some bad news?” Tom asked.

“Yeah,” Leo said, “when she married me.” He lifted his flask in evidence. “You see her coming with a weapon, don’t ask, just run, I'll be right behind you.” He tipped the flask into Tom’s tumbler. To Florence, he said, “Sorry gal. You’re not legal.”

“Legal?” Florence said. “Maybe I should turn you two in.”

Tom let his sister and Leo chat about Florence’s school and the last time she had a bowl of Violet’s chili. Then Leo said, “Take a big gulp, Tom. Get ready. Honey, don’t listen. This is man talk.”

Florence made a pfft sound and inserted a finger into one ear.

“Chief of Detectives knows every step you’ve made this past week,” Leo said. “Knows all about the Forum, Frank Gaines.”

“He admit Frank got lynched?”

“Naw. In his book, Gaines was fomenting a strike at the Long Beach shipyards. Says somebody must’ve ran Frank out of town. That’s the kind of game Harry Chandler plays, he says. Chandler’s a Lutheran, finds murder distasteful. And then he says, ‘Weiss, you’re a policeman, and as such you don’t go helping a civilian investigate a murder that’s nothing but a tale dreamed up by some negro thinks he’s a Greek philosopher.’ He says your Socrates heard Frank Gaines got run out of town and saw an opportunity to arouse the coloreds, increase his circulation. He puts on a smile, and says, ‘Leo, don’t believe whatever you see in print. Hearst is backing the progressives, worming his way back into politics. Chandler, he’s all development along with his California Club cronies. And this Socrates, he’s a mouthpiece for the Bolsheviks.'

“Next, he says I’ll need to go up to the Owens Valley and work with the local sheriffs, where a fellow reported the latest plot to sabotage the aqueduct. I