The Secret Life of Anna Blanc (21 page)

Joe Singer searched up every street and every alley in Boyle Heights, armed only with a rock picked up from the gutter. His trousers were ripped and his knee bled from when he had jumped off the moving trolley after he'd discovered that Anna was no longer on board. He was terrified, afraid that he would find her around the next corner hurt or that he wouldn't find her at all. She had snubbed him, tattled on him, insulted him, led him into corruption, teased him, stolen his gun, and kneed him in the balls. He didn't know what he'd do if anything happened to her.

He checked his watch. It was three a.m. He told himself it was a good sign that he hadn't found Anna stripped and bound and ravaged,
because if the rape fiend had caught her, that's how she'd be. He told himself that by and by dawn would come and he would go to her mansion and find her safe in her bed, furious with him for having violated her sweet lips and worse yet, for showing up on her doorstep and compromising her double life.

He shouldn't have kissed her. If he hadn't, she'd be with him now, holding safely to his arm, singing off-key. But she had been mooning up at him, pressing against him, sending him heat, and telling him to make love to her. He had to kiss her because she wanted to be kissed and she was the most interesting girl he knew; because it was a full moon in Hollenbeck Park; because she was marrying Edgar Wright and he would never get a chance at those honeyed lips again. If it hadn't ended like this, her running off into danger, he wouldn't have taken that kiss back for anything.

In the dust ahead of him, he saw something glimmering in the road. When he got closer, he could see it was a shoe. He picked it up. It was scuffed and dusty, and the heel was missing, but he recognized it. A faint stain marred the finish from where he'd thrown up on Anna her first day at the station. His stomach tightened and he closed his eyes. It didn't bode well. She wouldn't just leave it there. She either lost it running away, or being taken away.

It wasn't just the rape fiend that he worried about. There was more than one kind of danger in LA at night. There were muggers and killers and kidnappers and all this talk about white slavery. He stuck the shoe in his empty holster in the dim hope that she would need it again, and he kept on looking.

Then, he heard a blessed sound. The sweetest of sounds. Anna Blanc was yelling, yelling at the top of her lungs. “Reach for the roof!”

Anna strode forward, gun trained on the rape fiend. He bolted. Anna ran after him. Somewhere, vaguely, she heard Joe calling her name, or sort of her name. “Sherlock!” She was too focused to acknowledge him.
It took all her concentration to keep her gun aloft and her feet slapping the pavement. She had never killed before and, apart from Miss Curlew, never really wanted to. Her plan that night was to catch the rape fiend, not to kill him, but he wasn't stopping, and it certainly wasn't her fault if he took a bullet. “Stop or I'll shoot!”

The villain saw Joe hurtling toward him down the alley with such hot fury, such terrifying menace that the fiend spun around and ran back toward Anna, gun or no gun. Her heart and mind fused. Extraneous thoughts ebbed away, muscled out of place by her solitary purpose—to shoot the rape fiend. She prepared to fire, feet planted, gun arm extended, tracking him as he ran closer, closer, remembering from somewhere that one shouldn't shoot until one saw the whites of the enemy's eyes.

She looked into his face, seeing it for the first time, locking eyes with the villain—bright blue eyes with thick dark lashes. Eyes that had smiled at her when they'd talked about shoes. Anna lost concentration. The strength left her gun arm. She shot wild and hit a coal door in the side of the alley wall. The bullet ricocheted and Joe Singer went down.

Anna charged after the rape fiend, who had fled past her toward the street. She remembered Joe and spun around, rushing past the bound man and the undressed woman.

Anna fell on her knees beside Joe, crossing herself. He was sprawled on his back, chalk white, a hole in his vest over his ribs. Panting, frantic, having shot the man she could have loved if she were stupid enough to do so, she ripped back the vest. There was a bullet hole in his leather holster, and a bullet hole in her holstered François Pinet shoe, and a bullet lodged halfway through the silver shoe buckle. She peeled back the fabric of his ink-stained shirt and found smooth male skin stretched over a muscular breast and a small, rosy nipple like her own. “You're fine. You're fine. You're perfect.” She lightly touched his skin where a welt the size of Texas was growing on his ribcage and a spreading redness that would no doubt turn into a nasty bruise. Anna wondered how many of Joe Singer's ribs she'd cracked.

She looked down the alley toward where the rape fiend had made
his escape. The woman sat in the muck beside the gagged and bound man who had wet himself. Anna bit her knuckle. “What do I do now?”

Joe's eyes were closed, his teeth clenched, his jaw jutting forward in what might have been pain or rage. “Shoot me in the head because I'd rather die than tell my uncle what just happened here.”

At three-thirty in the morning, a patrolman drove Anna back to Bunker Hill. The whole trip, he smiled, and she couldn't help but feel that, inside, he was laughing at her.

She thought about the gentleman from the trolley, how kind he had been to her, how they had talked about shoes. She had the irrational thought that the rape was an act, and the man on the trolley,
he
was the real man.

She had saved a woman's virtue tonight, but she also shot an officer in the ribs and lent her lips to the man who, though he used them well, had no business doing so. She had seen a man's bare chest—a first and a highlight of the evening. She had hunted a rape fiend and let him slip through her fingers because…he was handsome and she liked him.

She didn't want to think of it anymore—the humiliated man, the cowering woman who had to be treated for hysteria in the one-room receiving hospital above the station. She wouldn't be able to sleep. Anna needed a distraction. She needed a good book.

She lied about her address for the sake of discretion, and the patrolman dropped her off several blocks from her house at someone else's mansion. She refused to allow him to see her to the door. Anna limped straight to Clara's. The Breedloves had a library. Not a collection of nursery books like they had at home, but an
uncensored
library. Though Clara herself wasn't much of a reader, Theo collected every book he could get his hands on. He never seemed to miss a book after Anna borrowed and gutted it.

Anna tiptoed to Clara's front door and let herself in with the key Clara had given her when Anna had come to stay. She knew the Breedloves
would be asleep in their respective bedrooms. A light glowed in the kitchen. The cook had begun to bake the morning's bread. Anna padded down the hall in the dark.

The library bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling. A ladder slid on rails from side to side. Moonlight trickled through a stained glass window and cast a red-and-blue glow. It smelled of books and furniture polish. Anna scaled the ladder in her sore bare feet and scanned the shelves, considering, but passing up, Gothic romances, a whole row of men's dime novels, and a slew of medical books on every possible topic.

Her eye settled on two by Sigmund Freud—
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
, which seemed related to crime, and
Studies on Hysteria
, which was pertinent after her experience with the victim tonight. She took them down, slipped out a side door, and lugged them home under her arm.

Anna arrived before the sun rose and limped up the back stairs to her room, spent, but not drowsy. Her mind whirled like an eggbeater. She dumped the heavy books on her bed, selected one, and read for the remaining hour before she had to get up.

The most important thing she learned was that doctors treated hysterical women with bed rest, sensory deprivation, a diet free of Mexican food, and by massaging their nether parts until they were aroused to paroxysm. She was feeling a little hysterical herself after the excitement of the night and thought about the last cure, although one was not supposed to self-treat. She wondered what a woman should do if she found herself in an extreme situation. For example, if she were shipwrecked on a desert island with someone—say, Officer Singer—and their clothes were torn, and all they had were coconuts and one blanket, and she became very hysterical, and she had rested with her eyes closed and eaten no tamales, and she was only getting worse, and she couldn't self-treat. She wondered if it would be permissible for Officer Singer to treat her, as part of first aid. She thought about it for a long, long time.

Anna dropped off the Widow Crisp at the designated bungalow and drove to the station. She arrived slightly embarrassed, but not without her dignity. She had failed by shooting Joe and letting the criminal get away. But if a male officer was kissed by Officer Singer, and made to patrol those diseased streets alone, would he have done better? She didn't think so. She lifted her chin and strode through the station doors.

Joe was still there from the night before, trousers torn, a bullet hole in his shirt. He didn't meet her eyes. Everyone else, however, gave her their full attention. Wolf had reappeared, having just finished questioning the male victim. Matron Clemens had just left the bedside of the female victim, who was recuperating in the receiving hospital.

Mr. Melvin was clicking away, typing up Joe's preliminary report, and while he didn't seem to be paying her any attention, she knew he was. Captain Wells was there, and Snow, and the coroner. A roundsman and several patrolmen were loitering about, both the night shift and the day shift that had arrived to replace them. They should have been home or on the streets already.

Though the station was crowded, it was under a disquieting hush. She saw the men pressing their lips together, holding in laughter that was pushing to get out.

When Captain Wells saw Anna, he spoke, raising his voice so all his men could hear. “Last night, our Matron Holmes chatted with, but didn't apprehend the Boyle Heights Rape Fiend…. But she did manage to shoot Officer Singer in the shoe.” He held up Anna's wounded François Pinet shoe with the vomit stain and a bullet lodged in the silver buckle.

The men were overcome with laughter, except for Mr. Melvin, who never showed emotion, and Joe, who found nothing about the previous night at all funny. Anna's color changed from the pasty green of the sleepless to the Princess Pat pink of the mocked.

“There is a reason they don't give guns to ladies,” Wolf called above the chortles and guffaws.

Snow sneered. “I wonder why he didn't take you, Matron Holmes.” She knew he said it to wound her, but the question was one she had asked herself.

Joe winced as he lowered his backside into a chair. “I guess she's not his cup of tea.”

Wolf winked. “Don't worry Matron Holmes, you're my cup of tea!”

Anna's blush deepened, but she cleared her throat and raised her voice. “He won't attack single women. Don't you see? He doesn't care about the women. He wants to humiliate the men.”

The laughter waned as the men puzzled over this.

Wolf strolled up to Anna and said, by way of explanation, “Matron Holmes can read minds. Can't you, honeybun? So, what am I thinking?” He leered at her and the station roared again.

Anna put a desk between herself and Wolf. She set her jaw and persisted. “He complimented my shoes…”

This was met with a new surge of laughter. The men doubled over, gasping for air. Anna pressed on as if under compulsion, practically shouting now to make herself heard above the din.

“He knew ladies' fashion. He could be a cobbler or a milliner—but a successful one. He wore…”

Captain Wells interrupted her with a voice that transcended the crowd without shouting. “That's quite enough, Matron Holmes. You have work to do.”

Anna's mouth was open and ready, but something in Captain Wells's tone made her shut it. With her chin lifted, she wove her way back to her desk and sat.

She had not been congratulated on saving the woman from dishonor. She was not acknowledged for discovering clues. She was teased for being unwomanly in her career aspirations and womanly in her incompetency. She reinforced everyone's expectations of her—that she would cock things up. She made their victory even sweeter by presuming to handle a gun and shooting Officer Singer.

The officers ambled off to their duties yuck-yucking and complimenting
each other's shoes, returning to beats that they had abandoned to witness Matron Holmes's ignominy.

Joe Singer fled for the door like the place was on fire. He grabbed his helmet from the rack. Captain Wells's Scottish brogue stopped him in his tracks. “Officer Singer, there's a big pile of manure that needs shoveling.”

Joe turned and threw his palms up. “It wasn't my fault.”

“Go! Before I ask Matron Holmes how she got your gun.”

Joe tossed his helmet back on the hook. “She'll tell you anyway.”

He slunk out the back door to the stables, striding right past Anna without looking at her. Her stomach flipped like an acrobat on a very high trapeze. Although he was fresh, she didn't want him to hate her. He had told her she was beautiful, clever, interesting, and honey sweet. She reminded herself that he had also said she was a conceited, useless, deceitful tattletale. She closed her eyes and tried to sort it out, but couldn't.

Joe had said that Peaches Payton's death was not being investigated. Was the father lying, or the son? She should find out for certain. Wolf would know if the investigation had been re-opened.

A girl with clementine hair loitered in the public seating area near Mr. Melvin's desk. She fluttered and mooned at Wolf, who threw her encouraging smiles from the back of the station. Anna thought she looked desperate. As Wolf sauntered past Anna's desk, she stopped him. “Detective Wolf, did Chief Singer speak to you about the diphthongs?”

He grinned. “No, honeybun. Have they been stolen?”

Anna tried again. “But, you are re-investigating Peaches Payton's death?”

Wolf's smile vanished. “I told you to drop that, Matron Holmes.”

He turned and walked off toward the lovesick red-haired girl. Anna sank into her chair and ground her teeth. Chief Singer had not ordered a new investigation. No one at the station believed in the killings. Regardless of what Joe Singer or any of them thought of her abilities, at least she didn't turn her back on murdered girls. It was a sin.

Matron Clemens sidled over to Anna's desk, her worn face arranged
in a professional mask, as cool and efficient as a typewriter. “Matron Holmes, how is your filing project proceeding?”

“Very well,” Anna lied.

“Good. The patrolmen can't do this work. Half of them can barely read.”

Matron Clemens almost smiled for the first time. Anna wondered if this was a backhanded affirmation.

The older woman put two new files down on Anna's desk. “I hope you'll be finished by the end of next week, Matron Holmes. I have other things for you to do.”

Anna swallowed. In the last two weeks, she had reviewed 170 juvenile files. Two thirds contained reports naming more than one child and required her to cross-check files and, when necessary, create new files with duplicate reports. With two fingers she could duplicate three files per night on Theo's Remington, if she didn't sleep. There were one hundred juvenile files yet to be reviewed. Of one thing she was certain; she would never finish by the end of next week. She wouldn't finish by the end of next month. And Anna was grouchy, had dark circles under her eyes, and was losing her bloom. If she wanted to cultivate Edgar Wright's love, she would need to sleep at night.

Anna picked up a file from the top of her stack and opened it. Maria Rodriguez. At age nine, her father had broken her arm with a shovel. Seven years later, the girl had been fined for vagrancy outside the Bucket of Blood saloon. Later that year, she was run over by a truck.

Anna's chest felt tight. Another dead brothel girl. She rubbed her forehead with the palms of both hands. No one was investigating. She didn't have time to investigate. She needed every moment to type so she could finish her own work. Except she couldn't. Even if she did nothing but type, she still wouldn't finish the work in time. She was going to fail Matron Clemens and be fired, no matter how hard she tried.