Midnight Rain: A Detective Jack Dunning Novel (2 page)

“Years ago I begged him to bring his family to America, but he didn’t vant to valk avay from his successful gallery. He had a Van Gogh, a Kandinsky and a von Werefkin among other fine paintings. Now, da SS is quartered in his home and da gallery seized.”

“Have you heard from them since this happened?”

“No von knows vat’s become of dem. My cousin Moisha, a vell-respected urologist, has lost hospital privileges. My nephew, Schmueli, ousted from University. All Jewish students gone, gone, gone and Schmueli has fled to Paris.”

“I’m so sorry. Isn’t a pogrom some kind of riot?”

“It’s da organized massacre of an ethnic group. It’s vat da Turks did to da Armenians and vat da Germans do to us. It’s dere method of confiscating property vithout compensation and viping us from da face of da earth so ve can’t tell.”

Angel sits quietly for a moment, trying to take it all in. “Come up to my room, Cantor. Let me make you a cup of tea.”

He smooths his long white beard and rises shakily onto his cane.

“No tank you, dear. I tink I’ll lie down avile. Dese old knees predict rain better den da veaderman.” Angel rides with him up the elevator and sees him safely to his room. When she returns to the lobby Hank is behind the desk sorting mail.

“You heard what Forsythe said. Is there going to be another war?” she asks.

“There’s
always
going to be another war, but this time Jack and I won’t be in it. We beat them s.o.b’s once already. If they’re smart, they won’t make us do it again.”

CHAPTER 2

Officer Jim Tunney is my partner. He was my first friend when I hit town. He’s red-Irish with a touch of the old Viking blood. His blue
eyes are as pale as drinking water and he has the kind of fair, freckled skin you don’t parade in the noonday sun.

Soon after we met, he said S.P.P.D. had never had a bona fide, big city detective on the Force, and after checking me out, Chief Garvey was all for it. I considered telling a whopper about my inglorious departure from B.P.D. but decided to play it on the square.

“They forced me out in Boston,” I said. “I couldn’t crawl out of the bottle back then. I’m doing better now.” The Chief joked that as long as I don’t fall off the floor, I haven’t reached my limit. I was in like Flynn.

Jim and I streak to the site, where Ted “Curley” McDaniel is sprawled on the highway near Sparkey’s Roadhouse. Only one road can be considered a highway in these parts. Everything else is a street, a dirt road or a cow path. The highway runs from the Tehachapi Mountains in southern California, through the Central Valley and on to points north. When we arrive on the accident scene, the ambulance attendants are splinting Curley’s leg for transport to Santa Paulina General, a spacious three story house that was turned into a rehab center for wounded soldiers of the Great War.

“The s.o.b plowed right into me,” moans Curley. “Busted me up pretty bad.”

“I can see that,” says Jim.

The road rash on Curley’s face looks like he tried shaving with a road grader. Serpentine tire tracks zigzag across the center line. There’s a tread mark on Curley’s pants leg and one cowboy boot is missing. It’s evident no brakes were applied either before or after the accident. Then again, maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe someone has it in for him. Who knows, maybe someone is out to get any cop who makes himself an easy target.

“What were you doing outside of your car?” I ask.

“Waving my arms to get the attention of that crazy driver,” ‘crazy’ being the operative word here. “A truck from Cooley’s was almost forced into the ditch.”

“Get a description of the vehicle?”

“Green sedan, driver so short only tufts of orangy hair were visible through the steering wheel. Could have been an adult or minor, male or female, a clown or an Irish setter for that matter.”

“After he hit you, which way did he go?”

“Don’t know. I was busy spitting gravel out of my teeth.”

“You think you can finish this conversation at the hospital?” says the attendant, strapping Curley into the stretcher.

Jim turns to me. “How about I follow them in and get a formal statement?” he says.

“Good idea. I’ll bring Curley’s car in.”

I climb behind the wheel of McDaniel’s black and white. There’s a pack of bubble gum, a candy bar and a comic book on the dash. I can’t help smiling. It looks like Curley has a little growing up to do. I spend the next hour scouring the highway and the back roads for the green car, but it was probably in the next county by now.

You don’t have to look twice to see that the Central Valley is not the California of movie stars, swimming pools and gingerbread tans. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a few rich folk driving fancy cars. You just count them on one hand. Outside the feed store and local watering holes are battered pickup trucks, horse trailers and geriatric Model T’s driven by men with creased leather faces and dusty or mucky cowboy boots, depending on the season. We have the same stores and services you’ll find in any small town, a right side of the tracks, a wrong side of the tracks, a crumbling Chinatown and a Hooverville along the riverbank.

In summer the valley is a red hot frying pan, in winter the cold freezes the snot to your face, but it’s still beautiful country that takes your breath away, with its fields of fat cattle, lion-brown hills and rocky outcroppings. In spring the valley blooms like the Garden of Eden and in autumn the season collapses with a sigh into a few short days of idyllic weather before the cold drops its relentless hammer.

Our claim to fame is growing things and we grow them like nobody else. You name it, we grow it: grapes and olives, peaches, cherries, apples, almonds, oranges, apricots and plums. On the coast it’s lettuce, berries, artichokes and Brussels sprouts. If you grow it, someone has to pick it. Before the Dust Bowl migration it was the Mexicans. Now, it’s dog eat dog, Okies, Hispanics and a few Blacks escaping Jim Crow, all elbowing for a place at a table with too few plates.

Since the cold weather hit, things have been slow at the station. In the last week I’ve gone out on a urinating in public, use of profanity in the presence of women and children, a housewife cracking her husband on the head with a turkey platter, a cockfight on Gonzales Road and a big dog in a red sweater humping a poodle on the courthouse steps. It doesn’t take a detective with 15 years in law enforcement to resolve these issues.

I drive by the levy where a group of men are filling sandbags, make one more sweep of the highway as far as the Kingsolver’s apple sheds, then turn around and bounce back over the bridge into town. As I pass the auction barn, two men on ladders are hanging a banner over the door, another man on the ground shouting orders. In big red letters it reads:

DEUTSCHLANDER SOCIAL CLUB

Membership by Invitation Only.

Lectures. Brats. Beer on tap.

I look at my watch. As soon as I hit town I pull into the Tammany Hall Bar. It’s lunch time. I can use a beer myself.

* * * *

Angel steps through the double glass doors onto the sidewalk as the first tentative drops of rain tap the canopy of her umbrella. Across the street, a light burns in the window of the Bookworm, the green and white awning snapping in a rising wind. She walks to the corner and crosses at the intersection of Cork and Avalon. When she exits the store with Margaret Mitchell’s new novel, carefully double bagged, the temperature has fallen and the rain comes down more steadily.

The air smells fresh and clean, wind fluttering her scarf and tugging at her umbrella. When she reaches the corner a big O’Hara delivery truck is parked in the crosswalk, the driver wheeling a few cases of whiskey into the Leprechaun Lounge.

A man steps from the bar, takes a final drag from his cigarette and flicks the butt in the gutter where it dies with a hiss. Something familiar in his bearing causes ice to form in the pit of Angel’s stomach. She faces away from him as he walks in her direction. She squeezes her eyes shut. Please, please, please, God, make me invisible!

“It
is
you, isn’t it?” he says, with a big friendly smile. “It’s been what, two maybe three years?” His hair is center-parted, white-blond, his eyes ice blue. He’d be a photographer’s dream if a black splotch in the iris of his left eye didn’t stand out like a horse fly on a blueberry tart. She ignores him until she feels his leather-gloved hand on her elbow. She shrugs him away. “Don’t touch me.”

A stranger would look at this man and see wealth, education and elegant manners. Men would emulate him and women give up their virtue before noticing the unspeakable sins that crawl like tropical parasites beneath his skin. He raises an eyebrow, his smile revealing a row of straight white teeth. “Come on Angel, no use pretending you don’t know me.”

“Please, go away. I don’t want to talk to you.”

He looks surprised, perhaps a bit offended. “Why the cold shoulder? You were a lot friendlier when you hooked for Axel Teague.”

“Not by choice,” she says, their eyes locking.

He finds that amusing. “You were his lucky ticket back then, all blonde and delicious like a piece of candy in gold foil.” He licks his lips and she turns away. The delivery man gets back in his truck and pulls out of the crosswalk. As Angel steps from the curb his hand closes like a vice on her upper arm, his face an inch from hers. His cologne triggers memories that return with nauseating clarity.

“Don’t rush off now that we’ve found one another again,” he says. “How about an encore for old time’s sake?”

“That’s never going to happen.”

“I bet you didn’t know that Teague was into me for fifteen big ones back then. I would have put a bullet in his head if he hadn’t handed you over that night. I almost believed him when he said it was your first time, but they all say that don’t they?” He laughs, unpleasantly.

“I was thirteen years old. I don’t know how you can live with yourself.”

“Oh, come on. It couldn’t have been that bad. It was sure good for me.” He smiles to himself, remembering. “If I could take one memory to my grave, that would be it.”

“That day cannot come soon enough to please me.”

He digs his fingers into her arm. “You’ve got one sharp tongue on you, kid. You better be careful how you use it.” She tries to pull free but he only tightens his grip.

“Don’t underestimate me,” she says, but she trembles as she says it. “I’m not that helpless little girl anymore.”

He laughs out loud and releases his grip. The light turns from green to red and there are too many cars to make a safe getaway. “What are you, a hundred pounds? I guess I should be shaking in my shoes. Since we’re on the subject, what ever happened to Teague? I haven’t seen him around lately.”

“You can visit him in Oakwood Cemetery.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I shot him in the throat two years ago. He tried to swallow the bullet, but he didn’t have a chaser. Like you, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

He backs off a step or two. “You can’t be serious.”

“But, I am, Mr. Dietrich. You could go to prison for what you did to me. Maybe it’s not too late to put you there.”

“What did you call me?”

“It doesn’t matter what phony name you used back then. You’re Leland Dietrich. If you wanted to keep your identity secret, you should have kept your face off the society page. If Mrs. Dietrich doesn’t know who she married, maybe it’s time she finds out.”

His hand shoots out and grabs her by the back of the neck, dragging her down the sidewalk toward a fancy yellow car with red leather upholstery. She struggles and cries out, but her cries are lost in the wind. She stumbles. Her book drops to the sidewalk and her umbrella somersaults down the sidewalk. With a squeal of tires, a green cab swings to the curb. It’s young Tom Kelly from the cab stand, punching the horn until people in the street take notice. He’s a strong-shouldered, handsome fellow with rusty auburn curls poking from beneath his driver’s cap.

“Help me, Tom!” she cries, as he jumps from the cab.

After a moment’s indecision, Dietrich pushes her roughly to the sidewalk. Tom helps her to her feet and retrieves her book. He pushes her safely inside the cab and slams the door shut.

Dietrich jumps behind the wheel of his car and peels away from the curb as Tom scrambles for something to write on. Before the fancy car turns down the next side street, Tom has the license plate number written inside a matchbook cover. He puts it in his pocket and gets back behind the wheel.

“Are you okay?” he says, checking his side view mirror and pulling into traffic.

She covers a skinned knee with her hand.

“Yes, just a bit shaken up.

“Do you want me to call Jack?”

“No, please don’t. Don’t call anybody.”

“Who was that?” he asks.

“Just some drunk,” she says. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along.”

* * * *

Frances Dietrich, watches the drama from her parked Mercedes down the block. She’s dressed in jodhpurs and the raincoat she bought in London where she met Leland, a German teaching something-or-other at an English university. Frances is what’s called a handsome woman, meaning forceful and unpretty. She’s cut from the same durable fabric as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, both of whom she admires.

She watches Leland drive away, sets her opera glasses on the dash and thoughtfully taps a smoke from a pack of Old Golds. His secret life isn’t as secret as he thinks it is. When he goes into Little Ireland or Chinatown it’s not for corned beef or chop suey.

On the seat beside her, a 1910 Police Positive .38 special sits beside a silver whiskey flask, both gifts from her father on her sixteenth birthday, a time when her girlfriends were fluttering over hope chests and bridal magazines. Not Frances. She’s always been a no nonsense girl.

Fran is the only offspring of infamous bootlegger, Red O’Hara. When he was shot in the back off-loading contraband liquor in Monterey Bay, she inherited his fortune, his steel backbone and his serious cigarette cough. Now that Prohibition has ended, the fleet of brown and yellow O’Hara trucks continues to supply every liquor store and bar in the county.

She smokes aggressively and watches the cab deposit the girl in front of the Rexford Hotel. The kid was clearly terrified when Leland accosted her, almost as if they’d crossed paths before. The cold irritates her raw lungs and triggers a coughing jag that leaves her eyes watering. When she finally catches her breath, she spits bright red blood into her pristine handkerchief. She blames the damp weather and lights a fresh cigarette off the cinder of the last.

* * * *

“Let me help you into the lobby?” says Tom.

“No please. I don’t want to make a fuss.” Tom walks reluctantly back to the cab stand. He wants to ask her out to dinner or a movie, but the opportunity always slips away.

Angel runs into the recessed entry, umbrella gone, a shoe damaged, but her book intact. She still has nightmares about that long ago night with Dietrich. People can sometimes reclaim things that have been stolen from them, but the innocence of childhood isn’t one of them.

A movement in the corner of the sheltered entry catches her eye. She hears a whine, and two big brown eyes look up from a pugged dog-face with big bat ears. With his serious under bite and squat body, this little fellow is ugly in the most adorable way. She slips the book inside her coat and kneels down.

“Bo, what are you doing out here? You’re soaking wet.” Seventy-eight year old Lulu Barker doesn’t go anywhere without her dog. Angel looks through the double doors and sees Albie reading a comic next to the cigarette machine. He hurries outside when Angel raps on the glass.

“What’s Bo doing out here?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” she says, gathering the trembling little creature in her arms. “Let’s go to my room and get him dried off.”

“Where’s Lulu?”