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

even make the top three. The winners were whisked away to pose while the also-rans were left alone under the umbrellas by the lemonade and cotton candy stands.

It wasn’t that Eddie had no experience with women. He’d gotten away from Tesoro sometimes and had his experiences. As a fishing town, Monterey was full of professionals who knew how to keep sailors happy, but they were not for Eddie. It also had its semipros, girls eking out livings working the shops and canneries and not averse to occasional evening activity. Eddie had liked one or two of them over the years, but it was his bad luck never to find a Monterey girl he wanted to marry.

At Ocean Park, the girls who weren’t whisked away stood around drinking lemonade, putting on brave faces and looking slightly embarrassed in high heels and tight bathing suits. Slowly they drifted off—all but Number Seven, who stood alone, smoking a cigarette. Eddie stood off a while watching her, thinking she looked a little sad. She must have clothes somewhere, he thought. Not that she would necessarily want them in the heat, but she couldn’t go far from the beach in heels and a bathing suit. Maybe she needed a lift.

“Sorry, I thought you were the best,” he said, coming up and ordering two lemonades. “I voted for you.” Her smooth skin glistened in the heat, and he was aroused.

“You’re one of the judges,” she said, putting out her cigarette on the boardwalk. “Should we be talking?”

“The contest is over. I’m Eddie Mull.”

“Thank you for your vote. The others didn’t seem to agree.”

He laughed. “They wore sunglasses. Maybe they couldn’t see well.”

“Did you try to persuade them?”

“Well, it’s not like a jury. We didn’t consult. Frankly, I wondered what some of those girls were doing in a beauty contest.”

She frowned. She was a wholesome-looking girl with thick brownish hair, feminine without glamor, the healthiest-looking girl in the contest he thought, something earthy that appealed to a Salinas ranch boy like him. The lemonades came.

“Say, how do you think that makes me feel?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How did you mean it?”

“I meant it as a compliment. That’s why I voted for you. Say, don’t you have clothes somewhere. Maybe I can give you a ride. What’s your name, anyway, Number Seven?”

She didn’t answer right away. She has something, Eddie thought, though clearly is wary. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned clothes.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Shouldn’t I know the name of the girl I voted for?”

“Okay, I’m Cornelia, Nelly for short. Nelly Sinclair. Now you know.”

“Where you from?’

“Iowa, like I told the mayor. Couldn’t stand the cold.”

“You’ve come to the right place.”

“Haven’t we all.”

“How’d you happen to get in the contest?”

“Just came down.”

“You got a job?”

“Say, are all the judges this curious?”

“Is it a crime?”

“I’m at Woolworth’s.”

“What do you do at Woolworth’s?”

“What do I do? What does everybody do at Woolworth’s? I’m in sales, ladies’ stockings to be specific.”

“How would you like to work for me?”

Chapter 4

Water and sunshine weren’t the only things bringing people to Los Angeles. The second California gold rush began in Los Angeles, and this time the gold was black. La Brea tar pits, oozing tar and dinosaur bones along the place one day to be called Wilshire Boulevard, were a clear sign oil was down there somewhere. A failed gold prospector named Ed Doheny who’d come to town before the water was not the first person to drive a stake in the ground near Rancho La Brea, but he was the first to get down past the tar to the less viscous stuff that shot a hundred feet into the air and got a few streets named after him.

Like Ed Doheny, H. H. Callender, a Scot, had worked his way west digging here and there for this and that, ending up as far west as he could go, planting his spade one more time and coming up dry. Eddie met him at another Ocean Park beauty contest on Lick Pier, on another hot summer Saturday. He was a married man by now with a second baby on the way and didn’t hang around after the contests anymore chatting with contestants. Callender approached him as he left the pier, said he had a business proposition.

Eddie Mull had established a reputation, was often approached by people he didn’t know and often listened. Some of the listening was a waste of time, someone claiming inside information on this or that, land or water or zoning, real estate specialties. Eddie learned to listen just long enough to get the gist and get away without being rude if there was nothing in it. This time, for some reason, he lingered, something in the way the man talked, something honest in the pale blue eyes and grizzled face that made an impression. And it didn’t hurt that he had a good Scotch-Irish name like Callender. Eddie invited him for a cup of coffee.

They strolled the strand, pushing through the weekend crowd and settling in the shade of a shop that looked out on the beach. Eyeing a pyramid of oranges, Eddie ordered coffee and oranges for two. Callender looked like he could use some vitamins. In the distance, heads bobbed and surfers rode the breakers. Heatwaves wiggled up from sand that was mostly a blanket of towels and umbrellas. In front of them, along the strand, flâneurs passed, men in boaters, women in sunhats, children pulling on saltwater taffy and doughy pretzels. From next door came the sound of baseballs striking metal bottles and farther down sharp pings from a shooting gallery. Eddie was enjoying himself, pleased he’d not rushed back to the office, content to slow down for a few minutes and savor his very successful life. Lick Pier had been good to him before, why not give it another chance. He glanced at his odd-looking coffee companion and waited for the pitch. If he could have seen into the future he might not