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

might notice him there and wander over, feeling the need to talk. An early riser, a day sleeper, or an insomniac. A witness to the lynching of Frank Gaines. Maybe the source of the Forum report. Although he couldn’t imagine anyone strolling at dawn in a deluge.

No one came. The only people who glanced his way were a few women and girls, clearly more interested in him than in the hanging tree. Aside from his large nose, Tom was a handsome fellow.

After promising himself to return and canvas the neighborhood, knock on doors until he learned something, he crossed the street. A half-hour before the service, the pedestrians reduced Park Avenue to a single lane. He scanned faces in search of one he knew from Azusa Street fifteen years ago, and pondered: if he saw Milly, should he march over and question her, though she hadn’t been a friend of Frank Gaines. She had claimed Frank was wicked, and warned Tom away from him. But no matter her opinion, or jealousy, she might’ve kept up with his comings and goings. Like veterans of battles, folks who shared common experience as extraordinary as the Azusa Street revival often kept tabs on each other.

On the other hand, any contact with Milly was risky. The sight of him could provoke her into a crusade to regain her still underage daughter.

Whenever Tom glanced behind him, the crowd appeared to have doubled. He nudged his way around, peering more closely wherever he spotted a dark face. They were plentiful but far from the rule. This was no Azusa Street, where you found more dark folks than pale, and ample shares of the colors people called brown, yellow, and red.

Ushers eased open the dozen double doors, in unison. The multitude began lunging into the temple. At the doorway, Tom found himself squared off against an usher inches taller than his six foot one. The fellow appeared to have singled him out. Tom shook the offered hand. The man eyed him head to toe. But this was no admirer. He might’ve been a speakeasy bouncer. A ruddy, clobbered face, flattened nose, scar in place of a cleft on his chin, and squinting right eye.

“Welcome,” the bouncer said, in a raw voice and with a thin smile that meant the opposite. Then he turned and walked away.

After the dubious greeting, Tom loitered in the foyer, backed against the interior wall, watching arrivals. He only gave up his post when the bouncer, staring over the crowd, rolled his hand and pointed to the archway that led into the sanctuary.

Tom obliged. A woman usher tried to lead him down front. He thanked her, veered off and made his way to the steps. He found a seat midway across the front row of the mezzanine balcony, supposing that vantage offered as strategic a position as any from which to study the crowd. Even before he got settled into the cushioned seat, he spotted the bouncer. Up front. Staring.

The fellow mistook him for a reporter or other antagonist, Tom supposed. With the reverend Sister standing accused of perpetrating a fraud most nervy and outlandish, the Temple had plenty reason to station a bouncer at the door. According to the last report Tom read, the prosecutors had exposed as a fraud the mystery woman who claimed she, not Sister Aimee, resided with one Kenneth Ormiston in a Carmel cottage during weeks Aimee claimed the kidnappers held her in Mexico.

Tom moved his Stetson fedora, the most expensive piece in his wardrobe, from his head to his lap, and continued to search the multitude for any face that would carry him back to Azusa Street. But once Sister Aimee came swooping down the ramp from the backstage mezzanine, Tom lost sight of all but her.

Though the Sister was no beauty queen, she was a looker, even with her thick brown hair coiled into a tight bun and her bosomy contour disguised by a nurse uniform and cape. Her bodily grace was more suited to sport than to dance. Still, she glowed. Not from any visible lighting, but as if she had conjured a way to enshroud herself in moonlight.

When Tom had listened to the Temple choir over Florence’s radio, he gave them high marks. He admired old hymns. No matter the lyrics, he could attend to the melodies, harmonies, and arrangements. Gifted vocalists of all sorts, unless they went too operatic, could make him shiver ear-to-ear. Most any rhythm set his feet and fingers tapping. The temple’s drummer, Sister had lured away from the Pantages Theater.

But tonight, no choir, no orchestra. Sister Aimee glided to stand beside the grand piano. A pianist in tails and top hat strolled out from behind a trio of potted palms. His trousers hadn’t yet touched the bench when he commenced a two-barre lead-in.

The preacher opened wide her long, graceful arms and crooned:

“If I have wounded any soul today,

If I have caused one foot to go astray,

If I have walked in my own willful way,

Dear Lord, forgive!

If I have been perverse or hard, or cold,

If I have longed for shelter in Thy fold,

When Thou hast given me some fort to hold,

Dear Lord, forgive!”

Her vibrant contralto delivered the lyrics with such passion, they convinced Tom she meant them. She might be nuts or a swindler but, at least while she sang that number, she believed.

He felt eyes on him. He crooked his head around and found himself gazing into the watery dark eyes of a woman whose hands reached for the sky. Her bony arms quivered. Her tongue lolled back and forth.

Once Sister launched her sermon, as soon as Tom heard the word mother, he wanted to run. She was telling a story of an old widow who lamented that she hadn’t spent a life winning souls, and of a friend who reminded the widow that her sons were missionaries, in China and Africa.

Sister would speak a few sentences, then repeat a line and pause for shouted amens and hallelujahs, which often came joined by white hankies waving. The woman behind Tom bellowed her amens so loud and jerked her uplifted arms with such fervor, and jumped up and down so often, Tom expected her to break into a babbling tongue.

The widow in Sister Aimee's tale had born and raised, along with the missionaries, a younger son. Sister went to her knees, acting his part. “Mother,” she vowed, “I am never going to leave our little home with the roses climbing over it until the day the Lord has taken you up to heaven. I am going to stay here and look after you, Mother.”

Tom could listen no more. Instead he peered below, searching the pews for an even vaguely familiar face.

Moments after Sister concluded the sermon and opened the service to vociferous communal prayer, Tom heard his name called out. He turned and saw the woman of the loud amens flash him a grin.

A sizeable number of folks stood and pardoned their way to the aisles and fled. Probably tourists who’d had as large a helping of Pentecostal fervor as their schedules or psyches allowed.

Tom sat crooked half around, waiting for the amen woman to make her move. When she stood, so did he.

On the Park Avenue sidewalk, he found her waiting, leaning on the fence outside the parsonage. She was short and bone-thin, with knobby shoulders and a milk chocolate face. She looked young enough so she might’ve been one of the Azusa Street children.

Out here, she acted timid. “You Tommy?”

“Tom Hickey.”

“I know Hickey. I remember your mama. And a baby girl.”

“Florence,” he said. “Your name?”

“Mavis.”

“How about Frank Gaines?” Tom said. “You remember Frank?”

Her head began wagging. “No sir. I don’t know a soul called Frank. No, I surely don’t.”

She too had read the Forum. Rather than call her a liar, he asked, “How about other folks from the mission. Do you keep up with any of them?”

Her eyes brightened, and she reeled off a few names Tom didn’t recall. But when she named Emma Gordon, he said, “Hold it, please. Does Miz Gordon come here?”

“Here to the Temple. No sir.”

“You know where she lives?”

“I surely don’t. But I believes she works at a laundry. In Chinatown. Ho Ling be the Chinaman’s name.”

A lanky dark fellow wearing a derby came stalking at them across Park Avenue. A fist swung at his right side as though preparing for action, maybe clutching a sap.

“Well now,” Mavis said, “here come my ride. Lord bless you, Tom Hickey.”

She clutched the man’s hanging arm and hustled him away, no doubt explaining her acquaintance with the husky blond boy.

Across the park, a streetcar bell clanged. Tom might’ve caught it, but he couldn’t quite make himself run, so absorbed was he with thoughts of Emma Gordon.

In a recurring childhood daydream, he got rescued away from Milly, who had stolen him from his real mother who looked like Emma with her angel smiles. Emma with the gleaming eyes he saw when the dirt floor and the walls of the mission shook and all around him folks thrashed, teetered and toppled, rolled on the ground, wept, and sang or hollered in fits of ecstasy, and Emma came running to scoop him up and deliver him out of there, out to the patch of lawn where she often rocked him in her strong arms and sang a tender hymn.

He hadn’t seen her since Azusa Street. Once Milly changed her beliefs, anyone who didn’t change with her became a pariah.

By now Emma must be seventy-some, Tom estimated. He imagined her plump as ever and with skin like velvet except on her hands. She would wear a dark cotton dress that smelled of lye soap and a modest hat with a flower on the side or no hat and the flower bobby-pinned into her stiff, shiny hair.

He ambled across the street, went to the hanging tree, and stood beneath the rope-gouged limb remembering Frank Gaines’ ice-white eyes and crooked mouth that always looked primed to boom a laugh. In the mission, while others sang and shouted, Frank often whooped what they called holy laughter. Holy or not, Tom believed the laughter came from Frank’s heart. Most anything could make Frank glad. Tom remembered him telling someone he came looking for God because he needed somebody to thank.

When Tom heard the next streetcar one stop away, he gave up his reveries. He was rounding the east end of the lake, passing a gaggle of ravenous ducks, geese, and mud hens, when he noticed the temple bouncer squeezing himself into the driver’s seat of a Nash sedan parked at the curb across Glendale Boulevard.

Tom made a dash to the streetcar, hopped on, and pardoned his way into a seat on the right side of the aisle, across from a couple he had seen going into the service. The man, though he wasn’t a dwarf, could slouch and pass for one. His woman might’ve played tackle for the Cardinals. Before the service, from their sheepish and hungry stares, he would’ve bet they were lost souls. Now, they held hands, and their eyes appeared moist with gratitude.

As the trolley pulled out, so did the Nash. When the streetcar stopped at First Street, Tom watched the Nash pull over behind. Again, at the Beverly Boulevard stop, the Nash pulled to the curb. Neither of its doors opened.

Tom wasn’t about to lead the man to his court on Virgil Street. So far as he could, he kept his home a secret, on account of the unpredictable Milly. Besides, most of the USC football team, whom he wasn’t inclined to trust around women, had met his gorgeous sister.

After transferring at the end of the Wilshire line, he kept the Nash headlights in view while he rode the bus to La Brea, a few short blocks from Leo’s.

Running from trouble wasn’t Tom’s style. Besides, no matter how fast he could run, he wasn’t going to lose the tail unless he scaled fences and cut through a yard or two. Instead, he strolled the blocks, then climbed to Leo’s porch. He stood beside the front door under the porch light, and watched.

The Nash rounded a corner then sped up. As it passed, Tom smiled. He imagined the bouncer would return tomorrow to Leo's home, maybe accompanied by some Rasputin elder come to uncover Tom’s sinister motives for spying at Angelus Temple. And he would find himself facing off against an LAPD detective.

Five

THE Nash turned the corner. Tom stood and watched the neighborhood long enough to decide the bouncer didn’t intend to round the block and park for a stake out.

He was about to knock when the door swung open. Leo filled the doorway. “Bed time,” he grumbled.