City of Dark Corners by Jon Talton (novels to read .txt) 📗

came down her street. I finally gave up my watch and drove the empty drags of Phoenix, half aimlessly, half chasing four-door Chevys. Finally, I went home, put on a Duke Ellington record, and started to read some of the material Victoria had retrieved from the college.

As a homicide detective, I often imagined the victims speaking to me. I would talk to them in my head, sometimes out loud: “Tell me how you died. Tell me what happened. Who did this?” It was a useful mental exercise in the investigation.

This time, Carrie was speaking to me through entries in the two-inch-thick diary, written in blue ink, feminine cursive. I would soon realize that some of the contents were more personal than I expected. I picked some random diary pages to get a flavor.

* * *

CARRIE DELL’S DIARY 5/15/32

Tonight K was giving her dewy smile as “Edward” laughed, his cigarette holder at a jaunty angle. P was blowing smoke rings, projecting disinterested bravado. She is all sardonic irony. I caught two lovebirds in the hallway outside the kitchen. The party was only getting started.

This is so easy it’s scary! We’re up and running like my wild palomino when we raced through the woods in autumn. Dad always said I should run my own business, work for myself. But I bet he never had this in mind. With the right connections, Prohibition makes everything possible. People are such hypocrites. The biggest moralists are the biggest libertines. Scratch that prissy, churchgoing surface and there they are. Revealed! Naked as can be. Someday I’ll make them characters in a novel. Times are hard, but big money is to be made from this crowd, with the right partners. I think I’ve got them. Now if I can keep trusting them. My bet is that money will ensure that.

So far, the business is operating as I intended. We’ve started with a core of a dozen regular clients. I checked out each one myself, made sure the connection was right and tight. You wouldn’t believe who some of them are, and Cynthia’s not telling. Confidentiality is what we’re selling. Am I a poet and don’t know it? The Biltmore job is the perfect cover. Better than that, really. My business actually complements theirs.

Carrie Dell is a long way from Prescott and not going to end up as a teacher. I can feel the sidewalks of Greenwich Village under my feet, being on the arms of handsome beaux in the jazz clubs of Harlem. But…must not get uppity, girl. Always watchful. Always on guard.

CARRIE DELL’S DIARY 9/20/32

He tells me to call him Frenchy. But I love his real first name. Leonce. It has music to it. My Frenchman. My Cajun lover. The appeal of an older man, and, no, I’m not looking for a daddy. His forty years vs. my nineteen. So I call him Leonce and he always laughs.

He’s so much more interesting than the college boys who want me. He’s worldly, dangerous. I always went for the bad boys. But his bad side is real, earned. He’s a real detective, too.

He tells me about the police, and it’s exciting. His fellows on the “Hat Squad,” he calls it. I sit in the car and watch them. The ones he talks about the most are Turk Muldoon, Don Hammons, and his brother Gene. That’s the detective who caught the University Park Strangler. Leonce is envious. Gene is also tall and handsome, and Leonce is envious of that, too. It’s an itch my Frenchman can’t scratch. I know the advantage that good looks convey. I wonder how Gene uses his?

We go to fancy dinners and speakeasies, and he introduces me as Cynthia. It’s a name I found in the newspaper women’s page. I like it. I can tell he’s worried, though, that people might see us together and tell his wife. He hates her. She hates him, at least to hear him tell it.

My group is envious. They want to know who this man is. And he’s interested in them. It makes me proud and territorial, a little jealous.

Tonight we got a hotel room and he finally took me. I didn’t resist. He likes his love rough. I acted as if it was my first time. He wondered about that because it didn’t hurt, no bleeding. Maybe all that horseback riding already “broke me in.” Ha! I was barely drunk and remembered every second. How his muscles flexed and tensed. He told me he loved me. How the tables turned as we went on. He doesn’t know that he isn’t my first affaire!

The taker became the taken.

Afterward, when I told him I was a virgin, he didn’t believe it. He was wondering what lovers—mythical Adonises in his head—had me before him, were handsomer and more skilled than him. I could tell. And I ain’t telling. It showed me I could make him jealous, too. Oh, if he only knew the truth.

I’ll wrap him around my thumb.

CARRIE DELL’S DIARY 11/1/32

Big Cat is my best lover and my biggest risk. Tonight he exploded on me, slapped me. I punched him in the nose and I thought he was going to kill me. I’m not making it up. I could see the murder in his eyes, and I know he’s capable of it. He could do it and nobody would ever know, he’d get away with it. But I was able to play sorry girl and cry and pretty soon we were in bed. “I’ll make you laugh instead of cry, baby girl,” he said. I’m nobody’s baby girl.

Big Cat has muscled in to take a bigger share of profits. I don’t like it. This isn’t the agreement. But, as he said, “What are you going to do about it, baby girl?” For the first time, I feel over my head. How will he react if I tell him that I’ve missed my period?

Seventeen

The next morning, I woke up with Carrie’s diary on my lap and the phonograph needle scratching.