The Secret Life of Anna Blanc (13 page)

When the little black maid saw Georgie, she ran over and took him, squeezing him and kissing his plump lips. “My Georgie.” She turned to Anna. “Miss, won't you go back and wait in the parlor? There's lemonade.”

Anna thanked her, but preferred not to sit alone in Satan's parlor, which was likely as tasteless as the Christmas colored exterior. Though she could have waited at the gate, Anna followed the procession up a hill covered in bright orange poppies to the potter's field—the burial place for suicides and the other damned who could not rest in sacred ground.

Not knowing anyone else, Anna crept over and stood by Madam Lulu. The woman squinted. “What the hell are you doing here?” If Lulu had attended charm school, she'd surely been expelled.

“I…don't know,” Anna whispered.

“Why doesn't that surprise me?”

After a moment of bowed heads and silence, Anna crossed herself and said generously, “I hope Miss Payton had time to confess her sins before she died.”

“What sins would those be?”

Anna looked confused. “Why, her life of sin, of course.”

“Feeding your baby's not a sin. You know what sin is, princess? It's when you turn your back on injustice.”

The implicit accusation stung Anna, and she flushed with anger. How was she turning her back on injustice? She'd asked the detectives and the captain to investigate Peaches' death, and they'd called it a suicide. For all Anna knew, Peaches had killed herself, leaving Georgie alone by choice. She left Madam Lulu and skulked back to the street to wait.

When the burial was over, Anna carried a stoic Georgie to the scrawny arms of the Widow Crisp.

On Tuesday, Anna slunk downstairs to the Breedlove's breakfast room like a woman in mourning. Purple moons hung under her eyes. Monday had passed without a word from Edgar or her father. She had suffered three full days. It could mean only one thing—Edgar wouldn't marry her. He had fled without a word, just like Louis Taylor.

While the Widow Crisp still snored upstairs, Anna ate her breakfast kippers with Clara and Clara's husband of one year—Theo Breedlove. He was young, with soulful eyes, and seemed very serious, until he smiled. Anna liked him. His library was her main window to the outside world, and he pretended not to notice when Anna pinched a bottle of his sour mash bourbon. He was an aspiring writer and, occasionally, the
Herald
printed his pieces on medicine, foreign policy, ping-pong, Arctic exploration, child rearing, the harmonica, and any number of other topics.

On Sunday night, Clara had reassured Anna, petting her and cooing that Edgar loved her, whether Anna's father gave his blessing or not. On Monday, she told Anna that she ought to pack a bag, because Edgar would arrive any moment to sweep her away for a secret wedding and honeymoon in Paris. But Clara and Theo didn't mention Edgar at all during Tuesday's breakfast. They didn't hold hands under the table, as they usually did, or comment on her haggard appearance.

Anna loved them for it. They were the dandiest friends in the world, but staying with them had a downside. They paid attention to Anna.

Clara forced a smile. “What shall we do after breakfast, dearest? Flag football?”

Theo nodded his head vigorously. “Yes. We'll conscript the servants. And I was thinking that later I'd like to buy a motorcycle. I've
been meaning to. Anna, you could try it out. Clara can sit on back, and I'll…Well, we'll have to get a side car.”

Clara clapped her hands. “We'll drive to the tailor's and Anna can design matching motoring ensembles for the three of us.”

Theo choked, and orange juice sprayed out of his nose. Anna just stared at her plate. “No. I'm going to early mass today. In fact, I think I'll go to early mass every day.”

Theo and Clara exchanged a concerned look. Clara giggled. “Someone has to do it.”

“I have a lot of penance to do,” Anna said.

Theo grinned. “We know.”

Anna bit the head off a kipper and chewed. “And then, I'm going to spend the day doing charity work.”

“Now, don't get carried away,” Theo said. “You wouldn't look good in a habit.” Anna paled. Clara kicked him under the table.

Anna knew she would have to tell Clara and Theo soon—if not the truth, at least some palatable facsimile to explain her absences during the day and her typing at night. The thought made her stomach cramp. Clara would never condone anything that put Anna's future wedded bliss in jeopardy. As sparkling and light as Clara usually was, her disapproval would be proportionately leaden. Anna didn't think she could bear it. Not now. Clara was her one support—the only person in the world who Anna felt really truly loved her.

Theo puffed out his chest, stretched his arms toward the ceiling, and began flipping through the
Herald
. “My article on Sigmund Freud should have come out today.” He searched page by page and did a double take in the society section. His eyebrow arched up and he slid the paper over to his wife, pointing at an article. He bit down on a smile.

Clara's merry mouth popped open. “Anna.” She handed her the paper. “Best wishes.” She leaned over and kissed Anna's cheek.

When Anna arrived at work that morning, her lips flipped between smiles and frowns like a jump rope. She was happy to be engaged. Of
course she was. And irate to have found out about it in the newspaper. She had yet to hear from either Edgar or her father.

In revenge, Anna didn't quit her job, despite her betrothal. Why should she when they treated her thus? Besides, she had just given the Widow Crisp her prized stamp collection in exchange for sewing a new matron's uniform. Anna could still work at the station, as long as Edgar and her father were paying her no attention whatsoever. When she got married, then she would quit.

The station bustled. The tomato pickers were on strike, protesting low wages, and two-dozen had been arrested for…something. Anna wasn't sure. No one noticed her, except Mr. Melvin, who acknowledged Anna by looking the other way. She plopped down at her desk and began to review files on girls who were still girls, and girls who were now women. She made a pile of documents she would need to smuggle back to Clara's in her ugly russet carrying bag to copy at night. Periodically, she typed a load of gibberish on her typewriter.

Anna decided to keep a separate record of her own. Madam Lulu claimed that brothel girls were being murdered. The detective and the coroner didn't agree. But if Anna was going to be accused of turning her back on injustice, she wanted the facts. For example, how many girls were dead? She would note the names of girls who were both associated with brothels and who had suffered untimely ends within the last five years.

Prostitution wasn't illegal in LA, but girls were sometimes arrested for vagrancy if they wandered out of the brothels to lure men from the street. Also, the police might raid cribs and parlor houses for other ordinance violations. Most brothel girls had been hauled into the station at one time or another. This she had gleaned from Mr. Melvin.

Anna heard the click of boots on tile and glanced up. Matron Clemens was approaching with a broom. Afraid she wanted Anna to sweep, Anna sprung up from her seat, and slipped into the kitchen.

When Anna left work, she saw the creepy little man. He stood on the steps of the station holding a fistful of drooping yellow dandelions.
Anna could see his shoes and skinny ankles below too-small trousers, which was doubly shocking as he wore no socks. His bruises had faded to yellow, but he had a new gash over his left eye and it dripped with pus. “Miss Blanc,” he said. “Oh, Miss Blanc.”

Anna's insides wound tight. With the bruises gone, and the swelling abated, she knew him. He had been the groundskeeper at the tennis club, fired months ago for cutting a spy hole in the ladies' dressing room. When they'd caught him, they'd walloped him with the shovel he'd been using to plant geraniums.

A groundskeeper knew how to kill grass.

Anna backed up against the wall and prayed to Saint Dymphna, patron saint of the crazy, that no one would come through the station doors and hear the little man say her name. It would expose her, and the news would certainly get back to her father.

“Miss Blanc,” he moaned. He came toward her with his arms sticking out, grizzly bear style. Apparently, Saint Dymphna had left her post. Anna could not cry for help, not with him using her real name. She wished she'd been allowed to box or study wrestling instead of ballet. He was an arm's length away, his wormy lips puckered for a kiss. She lifted her leg in a
grand battement
and connected with his groin. He tumbled backward down the stairs like a boulder. Anna rushed forward to see. The little man lay still on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps, eyes closed, his wormy lips curved into a smile.

She was considering his crumpled form and where she might relocate the body when the station door opened and Matron Clemens strode crisply onto the landing. Anna straightened up, slowed her breathing, and assumed a casual pose, as if there was no half-dead man at the bottom of the steps. “Have a good evening, Matron Clemens.”

Matron Clemens glanced down at the crumpled pervert. “Douglas Doogan! Away with you or I'll have you locked in a cell all by yourself.”

He began to crawl away. Anna's heart rose in thanksgiving. She apologized to Saint Dymphna.

“Good evening, Matron Holmes,” Matron Clemens said. She clipped down the stairs with her skirt swishing, as if crumpled perverts were as common as pigeon droppings.

When Anna and the Widow Crisp arrived at the Breedloves' that night, there was no message from Edgar. She grabbed her chaperone and marched back out the door wearing her engagement ring. Douglas Doogan or no, she was going home. She found her father sitting at the dining table with his paper, his eyes puffy and red. In front of him, a spoon soaked in a bowl of purple wine and tapioca soup. Anna glared at him. “Where's Edgar?”

“I put him on a train to San Diego. Didn't you get his telegram?” He paused and looked sheepish. “Oh. It's in the foyer.”

Edgar
had
written to her. Anna blinked a tear from her lashes and strode out into the hall. Her father summoned her back with a shout. “Anna!”

When she reentered the dining room, her father frowned. “You're not supposed to be here. It's not safe.” He patted the table. “Sit down.”

Anna lowered herself onto a chair. Cook appeared and set a bowl in front of her. Mr. Blanc leaned forward. “Anna, you are going to be married.”

She tossed her head. “I know. I saw the announcement.”

“How do you feel?”

“Deeply insulted.” She frowned. “And pleased.”

“
Bon
.” He smiled. “I'll miss you—your beauty, your
excitation
. But now you'll be Edgar's
excitation
.” He chuckled, opened his paper, and disappeared into the print.

Her father had allowed her to suffer for three full days not knowing her fate. And now, he had nothing to say but “
bon
?” Anna clenched her teeth. “Is that all?”

Mr. Blanc lowered the paper. “It had to happen, Anna, but you've
done well.” He smiled. He looked past Anna's shoulder and spoke to someone behind her. “We'll need a guard at the engagement ball.”

Anna swiveled. Mrs. Morales stood in the doorway, smiling like a fairy godmother. “And when will that be?” She didn't look surprised by the news. Of course not. She had probably put the notice in the paper.

“Edgar will be back Saturday morning,” he said. “Saturday night. Eight o'clock.
D'accord
?”

Now Anna was puzzled. Her father seemed awfully eager to make the engagement public. Was he afraid that Edgar would back out?

Mrs. Morales had seemed delighted for Anna a moment ago, or at least pleased that Anna would be leaving the house. Now she looked like she'd been sucking on lemons. She had three and a half days to plan a ball. Mrs. Morales cleared her throat. “Miss Anna, if we start now, and Cook, your attendant, and the parlor maids help us, we can work through the night and have the invitations written by morning, if we don't run out of stationery. I'll ask the butler to hire couriers. The gardener and the stable boy can help. I'll go downtown to engage musicians, valets, and a caterer. You find a florist and…”

“I can't help you with the ball,” Anna said. “I have obligations at the Orphans' Asylum.” She did want to help with the ball, at least the decoration parts, but she had no spare time. “It should be a color-themed ball, though, like they have in New York, with colored food, colored dishes, colored clothes…Pink would be nice. We'll have pink cream soup with marrow balls.”

“
Bon
,” Mr. Blanc said.

Mrs. Morales glared.

Anna slid out of her chair. “I have to go back to Clara's now. For my safety.
Bonsoir
.” Anna kissed her father's cheek, smiled at Mrs. Morales's lowered lids, and made her exit.

Anna didn't return to Clara's. She went banging on the door of her dressmaker's residence—a tiny apartment above the shop. Anna would
not leave the gown to Mrs. Morales, no matter how many juvenile records she had to type. She brought a picture for the seamstress to copy—a Parisian gown two years ahead of what women were wearing in LA. She had clipped it from
La Mode Illustrée
, a French magazine that a cousin sent from Paris each month. The gown's décolletage swept low in the front. The bodice fit tight and the shoulders were bare. If her father had seen it, he would have squelched the design immediately. Anna gave the Widow Crisp a tortoiseshell shoehorn in exchange for her silence.

As the dressmaker made the irrevocable cut in the fabric, Anna prayed a silent prayer to Saint Anne, patron saint of seamstresses, that her father would be too busy at the ball to notice her décolletage. Surely Saint Anne could appreciate a Parisian neckline.

It was eleven before Anna finished with the dressmaker and returned to the Breedloves. Happily, they were already in bed. She trudged into Theo's study, her arms piled high with files, and dumped them on his desk next to a Remington typewriter. They spilled across the ink blotter.

Anna helped herself to one of Theo's Rudolf Valentino cigars and crawled into his man-sized leather chair, sitting on her feet for height. She selected a report to copy. With a cigar smoldering between her teeth, she picked out the keys, one finger at a time.

The next morning, Anna left before Clara and Theo awoke, scribbling a note about guilt and purgatory. When she arrived at the station, boxes of police records were waiting for her. Anna reviewed all juvenile files up through the letter C. Besides Daisy Tombs and Carry Morgan, the broken blossoms from the Esmeralda Club, she found no other girls who had worked in a brothel and who had disappeared or committed suicide between January 1902 and July 1907. There was one girl, a
June Baker, whose body was found in a field with a needle stuck in her arm. The coroner called it an accidental overdose. It was a ridiculous place to administer medical treatment and highly suspicious. M. M. Martinez had slipped drugs into girls' drinks for nefarious purposes. A killer could give an unwilling girl too much medicine. Anna decided to include girls who had overdosed on morphine, cocaine, or other medicines. Her total rose from two to three.

Every day that week, Anna waded through files. By Saturday afternoon, Anna was halfway through the alphabet. She'd read one hundred files, containing references to some three hundred juveniles. Though she had a good system, she'd only processed nine. Unless magic typing elves appeared, Anna's pace was not likely to improve.

Her count of dead or missing brothel girls had risen to seven. In and of itself, this figure meant nothing. A certain number of brothel girls would likely run away or die from suicide or even drugs. The fact that brothel girls were dying didn't prove that someone was killing them, as Madam Lulu claimed. Still, Anna planned to keep counting, because it made her feel like a detective. It was as close to a murder investigation as she would ever get.

The illiterate officer had investigated most of the petty thefts and all of the deaths and disappearances among brothel girls. Though his incident reports were short, they were hard to read, making the work slow. She preferred to read reports by other officers, because they provided interesting details.

She learned a tremendous lot about the world—about children injured or killed in factories, kids with bruises and snapped bones, girls ruined, boys who supported their hungry siblings as pool sharks or thieves, and people doing shameful things she didn't understand.