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

as Tom remembered him, always the gentleman, the one who could take the unruly outside without breaking their spirits and, after some prayer, send them on their way feeling delivered. Brother Gaines, she recalled, always had a dollar to pass along to them who needed one.

“Brother Gaines and Brother Seymour, twins they could be. Brother Seymour, you don’t s’pose they murdered him too?” William Seymour was the pastor who founded the Azusa Street mission, and the visionary of the worldwide movement it inspired. Tom had read of his death, three or four years ago. Reported as heart failure. “They?”

“Same as killed Brother Gaines, boy.” Her head wagged as if from a spasm. “Thing is, Brother Seymour, he be inviting everybody in, like Jesus his self, Tommy, he don’t pay any mind what color. Like the good Lord, he say, come unto me and I am goin’ give you my spirit. Jesus say that. And Brother Seymour, just like Jesus. God surely blessed that man, Tommy, the work of his hands, because that man didn’t hate nobody but loved us all.”

“Frank was that good?”

“Like they was twins.”

“Who’d kill somebody like that?”

“Many folks have troubled souls, Tommy.”

Tom nodded and moved the Stetson from his lap to the porch rail. “You’ve seen Frank since you got back from Texas?”

“No sir, I have not.”

“Hear any mention of him?”

“Just he took up with a white gal came around to the mission. Name of Harriet.” She chewed at a hangnail and sifted through her memory. “A married lady, I do believe.”

Tom wanted to sit all day and evening with Emma, watch the sunset and working folks on their way home, find some memories or stories they could laugh together about. But if he didn’t hustle back to his route this minute, he couldn’t make his deliveries, drop off the truck, and arrive on time for rehearsal.

As he stood and donned his hat, he noticed Emma deep in thought. “Something else? About Frank?”

“Now Tommy.” She spoke hardly louder than a whisper. “This be gossip. Ladies telling tales. You hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Lady say Frank got himself mixed up with some of those bootleggers.”

“Which lady?”

Emma lied again. “I surely don’t recall.”

Nine

THE band used to feature twenty musicians before Gary McClellan, the leader, ran off with Adelita, the singer. Tom convinced eleven to stay. He renamed the band “Ernestine's Boys.” Banjo, string bass, and drums in rhythm. Piano, five-piece horn section, himself on clarinet, and Ernestine of the mighty pipes.

For giving the singer top billing, the jokers among them accused him of having eyes for Ernestine. Oz, being Ernestine’s man, didn’t care for the joke. He kept aloof, on the lookout for evidence. So Tom decided, if Oz showed up late or tooted some notes that soured the arrangement, he had better go easy on the nagging. Otherwise, Oz might see Tom’s words as a move to knock him down a peg, a play to make points with Ernestine.

Tonight, Tom’s ambitions were small. A few numbers had given them fits. “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” wouldn’t wrap around the jerky rhythm Omar on banjo wanted to give it. And the horn section couldn’t agree on harmony.

McClellan had left Tom most of the band’s arrangements. Boys in the band provided others. But he needed to adapt every arrangement to his personnel. Which often kept him awake long into the night.

He tried to turn his mind to the music. But Frank Gaines haunted him, as did the fact that he had run so late on the route some afternoon customers bawled him out. At his last stop, Merlin’s Grocery in Burbank, he got told if he wanted to keep the account, be back with a fresh cut side of beef first thing tomorrow. To cap the reproach, Merlin failed to hand over the usual sandwich Tom counted on as his Wednesday supper.

Before he attempted to rustle the boys into making like an orchestra, he rapped his baton on the wall until they paused their chatter. “That broadside Oz passed around last time, about the lynching. Anybody knew Frank, what he was up to, who had it in for him, any old thing like that, let’s hear it.”

Besides Oz and Ernestine, only Samuel, first trombone, was colored. Samuel gave him a look Tom supposed meant whatever he knew or didn’t, he didn’t mean to tell any white man. The others turned back to gabbing and fussing.

Tom shooed them into place. They were halfway through the first rough cut of “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” when Oz and Ernestine strolled in.

Tom continued mouthing and muttering the lyric while the band completed the run-through and the singer stood beside her man while he unpacked his gear. When they joined in, Tom asked the horns to try backing the vocal with the melody line, on the chorus. After one middling attempt, he passed the baton to Rex, the pianist, and asked him to take over. He motioned for Oz to join him, away from the others.

Oz came, hands out, palms up, his face asking, What in the world? “Don’t talk to me, boss. It’s the Mick can’t carry a tune.”

“Sounded swell,” Tom said. “What’s the latest on Frank Gaines?”

“Latest, you say? Latest is, we all waiting for the next one of us to swing from a tree. That’s all. Latest,” he sneered. “What, you expecting Bill Pickett goin’ ride in and lasso the Grand Dragon?” Pickett was a colored Hollywood cowboy and rodeo star. “Say, whose side you s’pose Tom Mix be on?”

“You know for a fact it was the Klan?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know but what I read. Same as you. Who you think?”

“I want to talk to the guy who wrote about it. You know the publisher?”

Tom winced at the sudden recognition that his asking for the publisher might prompt Oz to suspect him of ties to the Klan, who might reward whoever handed over the journalist crusader. But Oz looked simply curious. “What you want to know him for?”

“Frank and I go way back,” Tom said. “He was the fellow bouncing me on his knee while the congregation howled to the Lord, down at the mission on Azusa Street.”

Oz shook his head and a grin broke out. “You been a holy roller.”

“My mama was for a time,” Tom said.

Oz looked over at Ernestine and waved, probably to clue her not to fret about a clash between her man and the bandleader. “I don’t know about this publisher. But I know somebody might know.”

After rehearsal and a streetcar ride, Tom jogged the two blocks from Wilshire Boulevard to Cactus Court. He ran past the jumping cholla. The reunion with Emma had charged him with optimism. On his own, without Leo’s help, he might gather enough truth to persuade a certain USC politics prof and football fan to introduce him to some assistant district attorney like Joseph Ryan, the young intern who had set out to bring Sister Aimee to her knees. An ambitious crusader like Ryan might just risk his neck and career to break the silence and win a cache of political spoils.

No lights shone in the cottage. Tom opened the door and called for Florence. No answer. He went to her room and peeked in. Her bed was made and the quilt pulled tight. Her school uniform lay in a heap. No mess in the kitchen. He surmised she came home and left in a hurry, before dark.

He locked the cottage and strode up the path and along the sidewalks of Virgil Street, Vermont Avenue, and Third Street to the Top Hat. Mister Hines might’ve been waiting for him, the way he spotted Tom from a distance and wagged his creaky head. As Tom neared, he said, “She already gone.”

“When’d she leave?”

“An hour, maybe two.”

“Anybody with her.”

“Yessir. She gone off with a Mexican fella.” He pointed east.

“You know him?”

“Can’t say I do.”

Tom imagined he knew where to find her, a quarter mile up and across Third, in a juice joint alongside which goings on at the Top Hat were a temperance league social.

As far as Tom knew, the joint didn’t have a name. The storefront was a magazine and cigar stand. The speakeasy was deeper into the building, behind wall or two. To reach the action, folks came around back, up the alley, and entered from the loading dock.

Tom knew how the establishment operated. Earl, his first trombonist, made book for Charlie Crawford’s mob, which ran the joint’s betting games.

The doorkeeper looked like a German foot soldier who lost his pride along with the war. He squatted on the dock in front of the loading doors, yards away from the speakeasy entrance.

Tom approached and mentioned Earl. The fellow stood, shuffled to the door, rapped twice then gave a soft kick. The door slid open. Smoke billowed out.

As soon as Tom stepped inside, a portly bar maid in a flouncy blouse and knickers approached. She shouted to make herself heard over the bawdy laughter, curses, and disputes. “What are you drinking, lover boy?” Meaning did he take his gin straight or with tonic water.

He yelled, “Nothing tonight. Tonight I’m looking for my little sister.”

He was about to describe Florence when the bar maid pointed with her chin. “Only one here got your looks, darling. But she ain’t so little.”

Now that his eyes had adjusted, he saw Florence’s blond curls and curvy torso in a glittering dress with bangles at the hem and a silver belt tight around her tiny waist. She was in the third standing row that encircled a roped-off square, which would’ve better served cockfights or dog fights but tonight featured a pair of wiry colored boxers. They danced around the ring, glaring at each other while flexing their arms and shoulders and kneading the air with bare hands. Shifty characters snaked through the crowd, collecting bets.

Florence hung on the arm of a hatless fellow with thick, oily hair and cheeks either sunburnt or rouged. Mister Hines had called him Mexican. When Tom reached his sister, she had her lips close to the man’s ear. Tom attempted to eavesdrop but couldn’t hear over the racket. From behind, he placed his hands on the sides of her waist. She whirled in his direction just far enough to recognize and hiss at him. Still she let go of the Mexican. Tom pulled her to his side and guided her to the door. The Mexican followed.

Out on the dock, the Mexican cracked his knuckles, though he looked nothing like a scrapper. His shirt and trousers were tight as a toreador’s. “You,” he said, and stuttered with indignation, “You think I gonna let you go filching my doll.”

“Yep.” Tom kept his eye on the guy’s hands, in case of a shiv. Florence said, “Don’t let the big lunk scare you off, Carlos. There’s always mañana, no?”

Proud Carlos swelled, rolled his shoulders, and braved a half step toward Tom. “Who you are?”

“I’m the guy who knows how to get you deported,” Tom said.

The Mexican retreated. “Why you say I am no citizen?”

“One reason, citizens know you can do five years for even holding hands with jailbait.”

“That so?”

The man attempted to redeem a portion of dignity with a disdainful scowl while he eased himself off the dock, before he vanished down the alley.

“One of these days, tough guy,” Florence said, “you’re gonna meet your match.”

She stumbled on the steps, broke a heel as she landed in the alley, plucked off both glittery shoes and flung them over a fence. Then, while she used her long legs to stride ahead of her brother, a half-dozen times she turned far enough to glare at him and holler.

“I’ve had it, Tom.”

And, “That’s the last straw.”

He paid her little mind, furious as he was on account of her behavior standing between him and the chance to devote his precious little free time to investigating the Frank Gaines murder. After she ran dodging traffic across Third Street, accompanied by angry horns and wolf whistles, Tom caught up, grabbed her wrist, and wouldn’t allow her to wrench away. He flagged a taxi.

A jitney pulled to the curb. Tom delivered Florence into the back seat and shut the door. Then he leaned on the open front window ledge and asked the driver to see his sister home and walk her to the door. The driver held out his palm. Tom rummaged through his pockets and billfold and came out with $2.50. Every cent he had, until Friday. As he gave it up, he made a point of studying the driver’s face.

The cabby said, “It’s jake, boss. I got a decent wife and three babies mean the