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

to the temple, but been by it enough times, right smack on the Glendale-Burbank Line, one of the finest lines of all, private right of way, no cars to slow us down.”

“But you were a commissioner, not a trainman . . .”

“I was a trainman before I was a commissioner. I’ve been on every line in the city, dear, know ’em all, ask me anything.”

She turned her tape recorder back on. She still had no feeling for this story, for how to approach it, for where its center was. Usually she knew from the beginning what she had and what she didn’t and whom she needed to see to fit everything together. This story was too amorphous. She needed to pull back to view it better, go up on a hill like the generals do to look down and see the big picture. The heart of the story—that some mysterious Roy E. or E. Roy comes to town and takes over its transportation network without anybody noticing—was simply too preposterous. Takes it over and takes it apart. Cities have utilities boards and city councils and mayors and newspapers to prevent things like that. How could this have slipped under the radar? That was the guts of this story—that the whole thing was done in secret. Why didn’t Fred Barrett blow the whistle instead of disappearing up into the mountains? Or did he?

“Say, come to think of it, Eddie Mull was Willie’s brother. Are you . . .”

“Eddie Mull was my father.”

He stared at her for some seconds before dropping his eyes. “That’s a load of grief that you’ve had, young lady. More than enough for one family, I’d say.”

“Thank you.”

He held up his mug. “You use another?”

“I think I could.”

He ordered, and they fell silent for a while, both facing the fire, both lost in their thoughts. When the new drinks arrived, she took a big swallow, and when the grog had run down deep enough to warm her toes a little more, she checked her recorder and turned back to face him. “Okay, Fred, now you’re going to tell me what you plan to do about this.”

“Well, you remember back at the house when I said the story was part of the record?”

“Try to find it,” you said.

“Well, darlin’ you’ve come to the only man who knows where to find it.”

Chapter 33

Playa del Rey wasn’t much, which was its charm to the few hundred souls who lived there. A sandy hill and beach on a trolley line to Culver City and downtown, with a spur to Venice, it had no schools, no local government, no police, only a volunteer fire department and irregular trash collection—people mostly burning trash on the sand, providing occasional work for the firemen. It had one grocery store, Charlie’s Market; one drugstore, Doc Dolson’s; a malt shop, gas station and burger joint called the Dutch Village. The only institution of any class was the Westport Beach Club, which was too costly for most of the denizens, who weren’t clubby sorts anyway. Officially part of Los Angeles, Playa del Rey was ignored by the city, which was fine with everyone. When people from downtown went to the beach they went to Venice, Ocean Park or Santa Monica, glitzy places with piers, shooting galleries and beauty contests.

The only school for Didi Heyward was Florence Nightingale Elementary in Venice, which meant that Maggie or Terry had to drop her off on their way to Hughes Aircraft, which wasn’t on their way, but no school buses ran to Playa del Rey, and they’d recently pulled up the tracks for the spur to Venice. School was reached by driving down Pacific Avenue through the oil derricks, which intrigued Didi as much as they once had her mother. Maggie explained that they’d been built by Grandpa Eddie and now belonged to her and Aunt Lizzie, who didn’t know what to do with them.

Didi didn’t like Nightingale, didn’t like the teachers, didn’t like the other children, many of whom were children of oil roughnecks and beach drifters. Didi, in fact, did not like anything about Playa del Rey or the beach. She was a fastidious little thing who from the beginning disliked dirt, sand or anything gritty, reminding Maggie of her mother. On weekends, when she and Terry took her to the beach club, she’d spend the day alone in a chair in the sitting room with a book. She always wore a dress and would not go near a pool, beach or grill. She hated sand in her pumps and refused to go barefoot. She insisted on having egg salad or chicken salad sandwiches (no tuna, please!) sent to her in the sitting room, crusts removed and cut into four neat little squares with not too much filling to squish out the sides. That was how Granny served sandwiches in Bel Air and the only way Didi would eat them.

She liked collecting things, especially expensive things. When Granny gave her an antique doll (the very doll she’d kept in a trunk for years after discovery that Maggie hated dolls and Lizzie wasn’t interested) Didi wanted more of them. It was a rare German bisque doll from 1900 and hard to find another like it. Nelly, who finally had a girl she could spoil, found a French bisque doll on Rodeo Drive with the same embroidered costume, swivel head, glass eyes and pretty little booties. It cost four hundred dollars but Didi had to have it. Nelly loved taking her meticulous little granddaughter shopping with her. The shop owners loved to see them coming.

After school was a problem until Maggie found an older woman, Mrs. Gertz from up on Rees Street, to stay with her. Didi didn’t like Mrs. Gertz, and the feeling was mutual. Soon Mrs. Gertz decamped and the teenage niece of a friend at the club came by after school, but that didn’t last either. Maggie often flew until dark, which in the summer was eight