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

a beer and I found our little house. A half hour south of the city, Sr. Gomez said, nothing down there, just a village with a little tienda and some fishermen. You’re surely not alone, he said as I paid the deposit and rent, and I said I was with my husband who was doing some shopping. The house is by itself, he said, but it’s okay. Never had a complaint. He gave me the key and here we are.

“You bastards don’t have a thing on me,” he kept shouting from his cell, and after three days of no sleep they let him go. Didn’t even take him to court.

He’d lose his job but so what? This was better. He laid in some food at Angie’s, bought a bottle of rum and waited. Each day he read the papers: mystery unsolved, search continues, Klan questioned, husband held, candlelight vigils and evening prayer, reporters and police fanning out over the state, brother’s reward money up to five thousand dollars. It was the chance for the reward that kept him. Sister Angie was worth five thousand dollars and the price was rising. He knew Angie’s habits. Who better to find her than her husband?

Each day he roamed the city searching for clues. He joined the vigils at the temple, talked to people, stopped by police headquarters to complain about the tail they put on him. Each night he returned to Angie’s to drink rum, fix some canned hash and beans, lie on the sofa listening to the radio and get mad as hell. He found men’s clothes in the closet. The son-of-a-bitch is shacking up with my wife, he repeated to himself. One day he’ll walk into this room and find out what happens.

He hadn’t missed her in Bakersfield. Girls were crawling the bars in Oildale, or not so much girls as women. Angie was a girl and he preferred women. He also preferred variety. He was going through the Oildale women one by one and was far from done. Only now he was done because he was moving on. Suddenly he wanted Angie again. Not permanently, permanently she bored him, but for a little while. She did some good things. He went into her room, pulled out her underwear, sniffed it and masturbated into it. He felt better but didn’t get it all. He went out and caught the trolley to Chinatown. He needed a woman, and Asians were always good. His tail caught the trolley with him. Maybe he would get laid, too.

McManus had thought it over. Reporters arriving from everywhere, everyone looking for the missing preacher and the girl—was she his girlfriend?— who had left no trace. Disappeared into thin air and that was very hard to do. Car missing, but what did it mean? What burned him most was that this was a local story, an L.A. story, a Times story and his job was to find them and make sure the others didn’t find them first—especially Hearst! He had six reporters on it: Klan, love nest, mob, suicide, angry husband, and the Times had printed it all. Dozens of tips, mainly from another of the Rev. Willie’s Soldiers having had another vision.

He had his own vision and summoned Lizzie from the hall of justice.

“What are you hearing over there?”

“Nothing everyone isn’t hearing.”

“Even from Aldridge?”

Lizzie was shocked, genuinely shocked, for she thought she knew McManus, knew him to be a gentleman. But he’d just asked about the man she was dating, Asa Aldridge, assistant district attorney, one of a dozen working for DA Pitts. She didn’t answer.

“Look, Lizzie. Everything about this story is different. I’m asking you about Aldridge and in a minute I’m going to ask you about your father, because, honey, I am a desperate man. Aldridge is on the frontline over there. If he’s told you anything I want to know.”

She sat quietly, legs crossed, watching McManus light up another cigarette, looking out the window, trying to compose herself. She was as surprised as she was shocked for she and Asa had been almost paranoically discreet. He believed that no one in the DA’s office knew a thing about them, and she believed the same about the Times. Yet here was the city editor knowing and asking.

“The truth is, Larry, that we don’t talk about it.”

He blew out a huge mass of smoke. “Okay, I believe you. Now, on to the next question: isn’t Willie Mull your uncle?”

“He is.”

“He is your father’s twin brother.”

“He is.”

“Have you talked to your father about it?”

“Larry . . .”

“I know, I know—I told myself I’d never do it, but we have to find them, don’t we? Your father won’t talk to reporters. Has he told you anything that could help us?”

She answered honestly. “He has not. I think something came up between them. I don’t think they’d been talking.”

“What do you think—where did they go?”

She felt the conflict, understood why she hadn’t been asked or volunteered information. Of course, she knew about it. She’d known ever since the night Willie and Angie walked in on Cal at Sunset Tower. They all knew and hadn’t said a thing. It was nobody’s business. Only now it was. The city editor was asking his reporter what she knew.

She took a deep breath and dodged. “I have my ideas.”

“Which are . . .”

She was buying time, making up her mind. She studied his face—honest, tough, tired, creased from smoking, booze, not enough sleep, younger than he looks but newspapers do that to you. Get out in time they say, but no one does. You’re either in or out.

“They speak Spanish, you know.”

“Who speaks Spanish?”

“My father and uncle.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“My hunch says Mexico.”

“Nah, we’ve combed Tijuana top to bottom. Talked to everyone, Customs, Border Patrol, cops, hotels, nothing. Mexicali, too. They know there’s a reward.”

“What about below the border?”

“Mexico’s a big place.”

She picked the morning paper from his desk, turning to the entertainment section, passing it