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

class="body-text1-western2">The whites of his eyes were flamingo pink. He slumped sideways to lean against the door jamb. His vest was unbuttoned. His tie, which sported a hand-painted cluster of purple fruit, hung loose to one side. Tom pointed to the cut-glass tumbler he held partly hidden by the wrinkled shirttail outside his trousers. “Nightcap?”

“What of it?”

“You want to stand aside and let me in, I’ll tell you what.”

Leo backed a step. “Don’t bother telling me what I already know.”

Tom entered and shut the door behind him. He followed Leo into the kitchen. “Just what do you know?”

“Where you’ve been. What’s going to happen next, provided you don’t change your ways. You old enough to drink yet?”

“Would be,” Tom said, “if I lived where drinking was legal. Anyway, I’m not drinking tonight.” The last thing Tom needed was to bedevil his already flummoxed mind. He returned to the parlor and flopped onto the sofa, trying to guess what Leo knowing his movements could mean.

If police had reported to Leo about Tom's visit to Angelus Temple, then Leo had reported his intention of going there. Which meant the bouncer and tail, the Nash driver, could be police.

When Leo appeared, he was clutching the tumbler in both hands. He sank into his easy chair.

Tom asked, “Where was it I’ve been?”

“Getting religion.”

“Okay, and the guy following me is?”

Leo raised his tumbler as if for a toast and drank it halfway down.

“Level with me,” Tom said. “Are you sitting this game out, like you said, or playing for the Two Gun Davis team, say filling them in on my plans?” He waited for a reply.

Leo only sipped his medicine.

On the wall above Leo hung a Charles Fries painting of an oak grove and clouds, the centerpiece of Vi’s California Plein Air collection. The most gnarled oak reminded Tom of the hanging tree. His blood heated and rose to his head. “You think I’m some loose cannon, needs police protection?”

Leo made a pfft sound. “I think you’re a kid who’s got plenty to learn before he ought to take on the big boys. You say there’s a hush on the newspapers, radio. Meaning the stakes are this high.” He lifted his hand all the way. “Month or so back, Wobblies hold a meet up in Long Beach to gripe about the way labor gets treated by the oilmen and shipbuilders. A gang of citizens crash the party, a half dozen Wobblies come out as stiffs, and plenty more on stretchers.”

“You telling me the cover up’s about politics?”

“Sure, could be, but what I’m telling you is, the citizens that crashed the Commie party, I know a couple of them, and I know they’ve got their eye on you.”

“Cops?”

“Maybe.”

“How about giving me their names.”

Leo only scowled.

“Any of your cop pals also Klan?”

“Watch it, Tom.”

“Say, Davis himself could be — what do they call the Klan boss — the dragon? How about that? Suppose he heard some brethren of his got too zealous, so he issued a hush on the story.”

Leo appeared to consider before he said, “If the Chief had a way to keep the news hounds hushed, I’d hear about it. Now, for the last time, lay off.”

“You think I ought to let some goons get away with murdering a pal of mine?”

“I’m saying you’ve got a future. So does Florence. Where would she be without you?”

“I’ll watch my step.”

“You do that.” Leo heaved to his feet, set his drink on the chess table and tucked in his shirttails. He plucked his bowler hat off the rack, shuffled to the front door and threw it open. “I’ll run you home.”

“You might want to tell Vi? In case she wakes up.”

“Gone to her sister’s.”

Leo’s dour look broke through Tom’s annoyance. In a softened voice, he asked, “Want to tell me about it?”

“About what?”

“Vi gone to her sisters.”

“Not on your life.” Leo threw back his shoulders, marched across the porch, down the steps, and along the path to his garage. Backing his Chrysler roadster out of the garage, he missed the driveway and uprooted a trellis draped in bougainvillea.

Before Tom hopped in, he offered to drive. Leo snorted. Thereafter, Tom kept his mind off the car’s slight but constant weaving by keeping watch. He saw one tan Nash stopped at the intersection of Wilshire and Van Ness. As they passed, no matter how hard he peered, the driver looked like a shadow. The Nash swung a left and headed west, away from them, on Western.

The running board of Leo’s roadster scraped the curb of Virgil Street in front of Cactus Court, where Tom rented the rear faux-adobe cottage on the east side. He had one foot outside when Leo said, “Get yourself a weapon. A sap, a length of pipe. Something that’ll knock 'em out. And keep it handy.”

“Knock who out?”

Leo yanked the steering wheel away from the curb. “If you knew how to use a gat, and if I didn’t figure any shooting would sure get you hanged, I’d lend you one of mine.”

“So it’s cops,” Tom said.

Leo grabbed the handle, slammed the door, pulled away, swung a wide turn, and weaved down Fourth beneath the hill of Moorish villas.

Six

ROGER Villegas owned Cactus Court, which he called the final remnant of his heritage as the descendant of Spanish land grant nobility. Last summer, following the heat-wave massacre of the grass that bordered the walkway between the two rows of cottages, he planted more cactus. Tom had twice since gotten attacked by the jumping cholla. When the evil plant stabbed Florence, Tom complained.

Villegas only chuckled. “Tell her to start wearing denim in place of those long bare legs.”

Tom had learned, no matter how tired, distracted, or agitated, to concentrate on his steps when arriving home. Besides, he had Frank Gaines, Emma Gordon, Leo’s betrayal, and the infamous LAPD crowding his mind. So he didn’t notice that his cottage was dark until he reached the door. Florence never slept without the light on in the hall between her bedroom and Tom’s.

The cottage door was locked. He used his key. But just as he laid his hand on the knob, he got spooked by a thought Leo’s warning must’ve prompted. He pictured the bouncer and another Palooka on the couch, with Florence gagged and squeezed between them.

He needed a pistol. Shooting couldn’t be hard to learn. A sap wouldn’t take out a guy across the room. He backed off the porch and picked up an egg-shaped stone.

He turned the knob with his left hand, kept the stone in his right at ready, and used his foot to ease the door open. Nobody on the couch. All he heard was cicadas and a scratchy phono at least two cottages away. Al Jolson singing “Mammy,” a number Tom detested. He preferred dog-howling to Jolson.

He flipped on lights, peered around the parlor, then into the kitchen, and then each of the other three cramped rooms. For a minute, he sat on the edge of his bed and kicked air. From now on, he vowed, wherever he went after dark, Florence went with him.

He rushed out, avoided the chollas, turned left onto the sidewalk and double-timed to Vermont and on to Third Avenue. He hustled past the bakery, hardware, boot and saddle shop, and newsstand to the old livery stable. Max Van Dam had deodorized the place, touched it up with a smattering of chrome and neon, and christened it the Top Hat Ballroom.

Tom knew the colored doorman. This wasn’t the first time he’d come to fetch his sister. He gave old Mister Hines the fifty-cent admission plus a dime tip. “Florence here?”

The doorman leaned close and confided, “Lest she done slipped out while I gone to use the gents’.”

Inside, a lifeless trio fronted by a bald, toothy fellow mangled “Bye Bye Blackbird.” Tom passed through the ballroom without much bothering to look for his sister in the smoky blue glow. The gals ranged from too young to Tom’s mother’s age and beyond. Those who danced downstairs for a nickel couldn’t play in the same league as Florence, no matter how brazen, glittery, or painted they made themselves.

Upstairs, she could earn a quarter a dance.

At the foot of the staircase that led to the liquor and quarter-a-dance girls, Tom nodded at the tiny sentry who called himself Abe since some wag told him he resembled the president. His uniform was stovepipe trousers, a sky-blue double-breasted jacket, and a high-top-hat. He said, “I told her what you think about her coming here.”

“And she said?”

“She said, ‘My brother changed his mind, with rent coming due and all.’ Then she gave me that baby doll look. You know, I’m a sucker for the Janes.”

Tom emphatically shook his head. “When I change my mind I’ll come tell you.”

Little Abe saluted.

The combo upstairs, livelier than the trio, commenced the second verse of “I Cried for You” just as Tom spotted his sister. She wasn’t hard to spot. Even the waist-denying sequined flapper costume couldn’t hide the hourglass shape. One of her long, white-as-cotton arms draped around the neck of a fellow whose high-cuffed slacks, eager eyes, and cowlick notified Tom he was a tourist.

Tom approached his sister expecting to be greeted by her on-the-town scent, as if she had bathed in gardenia water. But as she turned and exclaimed, “Phooey,” he caught a whiff of grenadine, Florence’s remedy for the acrid taste of Top Hat gin.

The tourist stiffened and opened wide his mouth as if to object to Tom’s cutting in. But after his eyes met his rival’s, he turned to chewing on his lip and stuffing his hands into his woolen coat pockets.

Florence cocked her head and reached for her brother’s shoulder. “Aw, Tommy, I’m just getting started. It’s early.”

“Yeah.” He grasped the hand, lifted it off his shoulder, and pulled her to his side. “A few years too early.”

She went along without a fuss, but smiled or winked at every man along the way. On the sidewalk, she stopped to pluck a Chesterfield out of her beaded purse and torch it with one of the new lighter gadgets that would’ve cost Tom most of a day’s wages.

She strode ahead of him. He let her go, but quickened his step to keep within a few yards. Even in her fury, she walked in the way that made her hips sway and roll and made Tom regret he hadn’t long ago moved the two of them out of the city to a place where men don't dance and fashion means a pinafore.

Just last week, one of the boys brought to rehearsal an article from Collier’s. Los Angeles, the writer proclaimed, offered more than just sunshine and surf. It also led the nation in suicides, embezzlements, bank robberies, drug addicts, drunks, and murdered or murderous celebrities. Rex, the piano man, suggested a slogan the developers and boosters might use. “Come to the Promised Land, a dandy place to die.”

At the cottage, Florence used her key and stomped inside then threw the door back at him. He caught it, entered and locked the door while she kicked off her high-heeled pumps and turned on him, her blue eyes gone fiery green. “What in the devil do you want with me, Tom? I’m a big girl, can’t you see?” She wiggled and posed to prove it. “I’ve got my own mind and my own ways and you’re not my daddy.” Then she hollered, “Damn you, damn you, damn you.”

The sight made Tom queasy. He thought, it’s Milly inside her, and caught hold of her shoulders.

She punched him in the belly. He pushed her to arm’s length and held on while she flailed and kicked at his shins with such abandon she would’ve fallen if he hadn’t caught her by one of the thin straps looped over her bare shoulders. The strap tore.

She stopped still. As he let her go, she back-stepped, then collapsed onto the sofa. “My dress,” she moaned, staring at her brother with bulging eyes, as if he were a brute who attacked her. Then her hands flew to cover her face.

She wept, and Tom stood wanting to hold her but judging she wouldn’t allow it. For a minute, the weight of raising Florence nearly brought him to his knees. He knew nothing about what a parent should do with a girl too smart, too pretty, and too wild at heart.

Maybe, if he found her a daytime job, if she finished high school at nights like he had, that would keep her out of the speakeasies. Maybe he led her astray by giving her too much freedom.

As her weeping