Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

“Hold on . . . ? But there’s a fire here!”

“Lizzie, is that you? Teddy Lubrano here.”

“Teddy, my goodness. It’s been so long. Yes, it is me, at the central library, which is on fire. I think it’s arson, and I think I saw the boy who set it.”

“I’ve got people on the way.Times car. Give them everything you have. Wait outside on Fifth Street. You stay there, Lizzie, don’t you move.”

They followed the others out of the children’s room, people moving steadily but nervously across the main room and down the stairs, bumping a little more than they meant to do, in a hurry but not a panic, handkerchiefs still out as breathing was hard in the acrid air. Kenny was carrying Eric, Cal, little Maggie.

The shrill scream of the fire alarm merged with the sirens of the fire engines as they reached the ground floor, were swept out the door by twos and onto the sidewalk. They crossed the street while Lizzie searched for theTimes’s car. Lots of smoke but no flames—fire still trapped inside, feeding on books from across the ages, seeking nourishment to break out. The crowd stood stunned, quiet, awed by the uncontrolled brutality of fire, listening, watching, glass shattering, wood cracking, timbers falling, sirens, smoke pouring out, fire finally making it through broken windows, flames licking out, desperate for oxygen.

They stood together, holding hands. Three women, two men, two children, one extended family.

Cal put his arms around the sisters, who each held a child by the hand. “Fitting end to the Mull story,” he said, softly. Dominique watched him, wondering.

Lizzie turned to him. “Meaning?”

“Starts in water . . . ends in fire.”

She looked down at the children, smiling at little Maggie and squeezing her hand.

“Ends? Won’t that depend on what these two have to say about it?”

Coda

They caught the blond man, a compulsive liar and exhibitionist named Harry Peak. He was arrested, but never charged, though there wasn’t much doubt that he did it. He’d told friends about it. Lizzie could not identify him. The boy she’d seen had long hair. Harry had short hair. Detectives found his barber. Only one other person had noticed him that day, and she wasn’t sure either. It was mere coincidence that Harry picked the day of her reading to set the fire. Nothing personal. Didn’t know a thing about the Mulls.

Harry sued the city for $15 million for false arrest. The city counter-sued for $23 million, the estimated value of the lost property. He was paid $35,000 in a settlement. More than a million books were consumed, priceless ancient monographs to contemporary pulp. Fire didn’t know the difference. The library stayed closed for seven years. Harry didn’t have time to enjoy his money. He died of AIDs. Life returned to Los Angeles normal.

Westport Beach Club, 1938, looking north toward Venice oil fields.

Acknowledgments

I will start with my parents, who had the good sense in 1945 to head west. We’d been an eastern family up to then. I was eight years old and about to discover the greatest place in the world. We lived at the beach. There was only one freeway, the Pasadena. I rode the trolley downtown and to Venice and Ocean Park. I fell in love with Los Angeles.

As for writing, the first tip of the hat would be to Charles McCabe of the San Francisco Chronicle, the “Fearless Spectator,” who helped me land my first newspaper job in that once great newspaper city, although I was completely unqualified. Next would be Sandy Zalburg, city editor at the Honolulu Advertiser, who taught me how to write. Years after I left Honolulu in a huff, Zalburg, spying an article of mine in the New York Times Magazine, wrote to me as follows: “Enfin, I said to myself, the twit is learning how to write tersely. Mazel tov.” Other fine editors along the way who helped: Henry Bradshaw and Larry McManus in San Francisco, Buddy Weiss and George Bates in Paris, James Chace in New York. A writer’s education never stops.

The road from newspapers to fiction is a bumpy one. After years of suppressing opinion and imagination—just the facts, ma’am—you suddenly face blank pages demanding opinion and imagination. You meet new kinds of editors, ones less concerned with writing tersely than with telling a good story. I was fortunate to find editors like George Walsh at Macmillan, Sheryl and Harold Maguire at the Local History Company, David Wilk at Prospecta Press, and literary agents like Tom Wallace.

Beyond editors, acknowledgment is owed to colleagues, mentors, supporters, people who helped smooth the path. I would single out Bill Bundy at Foreign Affairs, Flora Lewis at the New York Times, Tom Hughes at the Carnegie Endowment, Don Cook and Chuck Champlin at the Los Angeles Times, Neil Morgan at the San Diego Tribune, people willing to take a certain risk, believing it would all work out in the end.

They were right. This story, my story, the story of twentieth century Los Angeles, owes something to all of them. As for relatives and friends, I would single out my sister, Carol, who had to take three buses to Marlborough School after they junked the trolleys; my brother, Bill, who was only two years old when we hit the coast and thus regards himself as a true native; and Bobby Taylor, who first showed me how to explore the Ballona wetlands in a raft.

Copyright © 2021 James Oliver Goldsborough

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any fashion, print, facsimile, or electronic, or by any method yet to be developed, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Published by:

City Point Press

P.O. Box 2063

Westport, CT 06880

www.citypointpress.com

Paperback ISBN 978-1-947951-30-3

eBook ISBN 978-1-947951-31-0

Book and cover design by Barbara Aronica-Buck

Map illustration by Georgana Winters

Beach Club photo that follows the Coda, courtesy T.O. McCoye