The Secret Life of Anna Blanc (38 page)

Satisfied with her deduction, Anna scooted forward on the rough wool blanket and wrapped her arms around Joe's belly. She closed her eyes, pressed her lips to his shirt, and let them linger, savoring him. The axe would certainly fall, but not yet.

Joe was talking. “Everything happened like you said. The girl wore a wedding veil. She only wore one shoe, but it was too small and her toes were broken. There was a sixpence…”

“But you didn't see the girl. You couldn't have.”

“I didn't see the coroner's wagon. You sent me to the cribs. They found the girl in Echo Park. I saw her in the morgue, with Wolf.”

Anna's body went rigid, like a dead girl's.

He squeezed the arm around his waist. “Sherlock? You OK?”

Her words caught in her throat. “Why did you come for me, then, if you knew Eve was dead?”

His voice lifted in surprise. “You knew?”

“It's all my fault,” she said. “Are you taking me off to shoot me? Because you can. I won't mind.”

“Not on account of Eve, Sherlock. You didn't do it. Maybe for the stunt you pulled in the dressing room.”

Anna fell silent. She laid her cheek against him and let the rhythm of the horse rock her, its hoofs cloppity clopping on the pavement. She knew then that she didn't like Joe Singer intensely. She loved him desperately.

When they reached Joe's apartment house, a thin line of sunshine glowed on the mountaintops. Anna's limbs hung like weights designed to foil her balance. Joe dismounted with a thump onto the dewy cement. She reached out, slid sideways into his arms, and smiled at him. He smiled faintly, propped her on his hip, and draped the horse's lead around a post.

The street was empty, save for a sprinkling cart, spraying water to settle the dust on the street, and a lone newsboy. The boy called out, “Hey Joe!” and tossed him a paper. Joe caught it in one hand. On the cover, in black ink, Anna held Snow at gunpoint. She looked surprised. Bold letters spilled across the page. “Socialite caught in brothel raid.”

“Sherlock, I'm afraid your secret's out,” he said.

Anna made a despairing sound. “But I shot his camera. I thought the picture was dead!”

Anna's arrest was now public property. Heartbreak overlaid heartbreak. In her mind, she said goodbye to Clara.

Joe guided Anna into his basement apartment, trying not to think of Edgar Wright's grand mansion on the hill. He kicked his nightshirt behind the door and blew out a breath. “Welcome to paradise.”

The apartment held a sink, a homemade bench and table, and an upright piano that looked ready for the dump. Two cats slept curled up on a blanket on the floor. Oranges moldered in a bowl with fruit flies.

“It's very nice,” she said.

Joe gave Anna an ironic half-moon smile. “Sit here.” He took her around the waist and lifted her onto the table. She leaned against the wall. Her nose ran. Her kohl ran. Her chin was cut, her knees were skinned, her wig hung like a shaggy little dog. He sighed and shook his head. “Sherlock, you look like hell in its underwear.”

She snorted.

He dipped a towel in cold water and gently washed her face. “You look terrible for you, which is still better than anybody else.”

Joe smiled at her but felt leaden. Anna was in a pickle that made her unmasking at Boyle Heights seem like a cakewalk. He gently lifted off her wig and unpinned her hair. It tumbled down, past her shoulders in a messy mass, the way she would wear it to bed. He remembered Anna in her nightdress, all ruffles and lace. What would she sleep in now? His nightshirt? He closed his eyes and imagined himself in bed
with her wearing no nightshirt, which he shouldn't imagine because she wasn't his girl.

Joe allowed himself to run his hands through Anna's hair once, on the pretense of arranging it. It slipped through his fingers like water, perfuming the room with her flower scent.

He smoothed Anna's hair and let it lie. “There. Now you look like a girl and not a Pekinese. A beautiful girl. A gorgeous girl.” His mouth quirked. “In her underwear.”

Anna's eyes shone, wet and gray like the ocean, her lashes butterfly wings. Her lips parted with an unreleased sob. He pulled his coat tight around her. “Don't you dare cry, Sherlock. You're the bravest man on the force.”

She took his hand and laced her baby soft fingers through his calloused ones. She smelled like roses and whiskey. He wanted to hold her and ease her pain, but he knew better. They'd be back on the dressing room floor, with no Miss Baumgartner to chase him out of the store. She wouldn't remember it in the morning and she didn't love him. She wasn't going to stay.

Joe reclaimed his hand and used it to pick up the cloth. He dabbed at the cut on her chin, careful not to drip on her dress. Anna breathed slow and heavy, watching him. His eyes drifted to hers.

“Kiss me,” she whispered.

He looked away and kept dabbing. “You'd regret it.”

“I wouldn't.”

Joe strode to the sink and wrung out the cloth. “You should find somebody you love.”

When he turned, she stood right behind him, smiling up at him through whiskey tears. “I love
you
. Like a Juliet. I do. So kiss me.”

Anna lifted on tiptoes and tried to kiss him. Joe stepped back against the sink. “You just lost the man you love.”

“No. I planned to love Edgar. Maybe I could have, but I never had the chance because of you. It was always you. I just didn't know it.”

She took his hands, first one, then the other, and placed them on her waist, gazing up at him from beneath heavy lashes. “You make me feel so dizzy, I forget to breathe. Why?”

Joe sighed and looked away. “Anna, you're bent.”

She shook her head vehemently. “No. And I'm not fighting crime. I'm yours now, truly.” She held him with a fierce tenderness. “Forever.”

Joe clenched his jaw and stared up at a stain on the ceiling. Anna didn't love him. He loved her, and she'd always wanted Edgar Wright. So why did she kiss Joe like she desired not only justice but him? Had he ever been in the running? That is, when she wasn't friendless, homeless, destitute, broken-hearted, and drunk. While Anna pressed her body against him, his mind raced through every one of her romantic ambushes in the name of the law, hoping for some sign that he was more than just a means to an end.

Anna pulled at his shirttails and slid her hands onto the skin of his back. “I love you.” She breathed her sweet, spiked breath onto his lips.

Joe held on, stiff and sweating. He thought of Anna smiling shyly at his rhododendron bush in Boyle Heights, trying to hold his hand in the morgue when Snow was no longer looking. His heartbeat quickened. He thought of how her gray eyes had followed him around the station, even when they weren't speaking, and how she looked at him when he held her, like now—like she was falling, and wanting to fall. Wanting him to fall.

Anna's eyebrows drew together in distress and she searched his eyes. “Aren't you going to make love to me?” She demanded. “Tell me I'm honey sweet!”

Joe shook. His heart, which he had hardened against her, was starting to crack. He opened his mouth to protest, but Anna silenced him with a kiss. Her kiss burned with all the intensity of a life in flames and all the passion required to overcome it—her desperation, his mistrust, her notoriety, their poverty, a fifth of whiskey, and a dumpy apartment with a single bed.

Joe fell.

He believed her. She loved him. They were going to have some pretty babies and lots of fun making them. He hoped to God there was a school for wives.

Joe swept Anna up like a bride and carried her into his bedroom, his heart sounding like a timpani. “You're honey sweet.”

Anna lay draped over Joe's arms like a sheaf of offertory grain, the soft, bare skin of her thighs one layer of fabric away from the skin of his arms. She didn't care. She wanted no fabric between them. She wanted Joe to do whatever men liked to do to girls they loved. And why not? She was ruined already, and he was delicious. She let her head fall back.

He dropped her down onto his soft mattress and the unmade sheets that smelled of his deliciousness. She closed her eyes, because the world was spinning, and waited for the mattress to sink under his weight, waited to feel his body next to hers, waited for the sound of him removing his clothes so that she could open her eyes and find out what was underneath his Arrow shirt suit.

Instead, she heard the door click shut, and then silence. Anna opened her eyes to darkness. “Joe?”

“Good night, Sherlock.” He was on the wrong side of the door.

Anna tried to sit up to protest. There was a rushing in her head, a haze of stars, and she fell back onto the bed. Anna slept.

Anna awoke in Joe's bed, holding Joe's pillow, her heart beating love, her head pounding like someone had squished it. Sticks of light from the basement windows poked her sore eyes. She flinched. By the time her father opened his newspaper, Anna would be the most notorious woman on the West Coast. She could abide it because Joe Singer loved her. It wasn't just that he looked better than the Arrow Collar Man, that he sang her songs, that his kisses made her nether parts shout
hallelujah, or that she had nowhere else to go. He was the best man she knew, and the only man she had ever truly loved. She'd always heard that men would spoon any girl, anytime, even scrawny, cross-eyed ones with carbuncles. Even convicts, like Anna. But Joe Singer was too noble to take advantage of her in her vulnerable state, though she had wanted him to, and they were in love.

Anna dragged herself up from the bed and into the one room that served as parlor, dining room, and kitchen, dirt from the floor sticking to her bare feet. “Joe?” The place was too small for him to hide. His coat was on the gritty floor where she had dropped it, but the man himself was gone. It was already late afternoon and her tongue had grown fur. She had a keen desire to water it. She walked to the sink and poured herself a glass of cold water. Joe's toothbrush lay on the counter. She dipped it in salt and used it.

Anna's gun lay on the table next to a note, which read, “Sherlock, I've got to work, maybe very late. Stay here and wait for me. I love you.” Anna's heart fluttered, and she smiled despite her headache. Then she noticed the fateful issue of the
LA Herald
lying on the table. She lowered her ill body onto the bench and studied her image. It stared back in distress, blonde, barelegged. She took a deep breath and read. Tilly had written the article. It said that socialite Anna Blanc, a renegade police matron, had gone undercover in the brothels to catch a killer. That much was true. It reported that Anna was closing in on the killer. Anna groaned. Tilly was a cad rat and a fool. Now the killer would come after her.

The article went on to quote Snow. “Anna Blanc is delusional. There are no murders. There is no killer.” An anonymous man claimed to have had relations with Anna for five hundred dollars. The worst possible line came next: “When asked if this were true, Miss Blanc replied, ‘I have done and will do anything necessary to save these girls.'”

Anna threw down the paper. “Lies, lies, lies.” She ripped it into tiny pieces and threw them hard into the air. They fluttered to the sticky floor.

Her previous life seemed so flimsy and unreal—the life of pink
balls and tennis games. Her life at the station, stalking criminals and spooning Joe—that felt real. She had lost her job, but she still had Joe.

Anna waited in Joe's apartment for five long minutes before she became desperately bored. She considered her options. She could wait for Joe and die of ennui or go back to Canary Cottage and hunt the killer. She decided on the latter course.

Anna's whore outfit wouldn't do for daytime, and she needed a disguise. She rifled through Joe's armoire, perusing all of his delicious smelling clothes, including his lowers. She donned his best suit and an Arrow shirt collar. She rolled her petticoats up around her middle to make her belly seem big and her bosoms less conspicuous. She clipped on an old pair of Joe's suspenders, and rolled up the trouser legs just short enough to cover her stockings and high heeled shoes. The suit hung off her like the skin of a Chinese dog, and she didn't care. She hid her hair under a derby and hoped that if she kept her face to the pavement she could make it to Canary Cottage without anyone recognizing her as a woman, or worse yet as Anna Blanc.

Anna turned out all of Joe's pockets and searched among the dust bunnies under the bed, gleaning pennies for the trolley. She took all his change, her notebook, her holstered pistol, and Cook's paring knife strapped to her garter. She stepped out into a colder world.

That night at Canary Cottage, men spilled out onto the street like seeping tar ready to ignite. As far as the eye could see, cars lined both sides of the street, some double parked. Brand new customers, howling and bent, came hoping to see the socialite turned detective turned prostitute. Men called out, “Anna! Arrest me, Anna!”

Anna watched from a window in a large, second-story closet under the stairs. She thought she saw Theo Breedlove, and it made her feel sick. The space was dark and smelled of moldy things. When men pounded up the stairs with girls, the door rattled.

Anna sat on the rough plank floor and reviewed her list of suspects,
trying to remember if she'd seen any of them at mass. When she found a Catholic, she crossed him out. She crossed out Edgar.

Anna still wore Joe's suit, though there were plenty of tasteless frocks to choose from in the brothel. Amidst all these horrid men, his clothes reminded her of what a man could be.

The door to her hiding place swung open. Anna's rod popped up. Big Cindy stared down the barrel like an owl, her lips pursed in a kiss of surprise. Anna lowered the pistol. “Hi.”

Big Cindy grinned and slipped in. Charlene followed with a cynical smile and closed the door. “Damn you're good for business.”

“Too good.” Big Cindy wiped her brow. “It's hell's kitchen out there.” They plunked themselves down.

Charlene stretched, chandelier earrings grazing her shoulders. “There's a rumor you do things in bed that even whores haven't heard of, and you're good at it.”

Anna's eyes got big. “Oh, cock. Like what?”

Charlene smirked. “Don't you got an imagination?”

Big Cindy batted away the idea. “Never mind them stupid men.” She unwound Anna's silky hair, running her fingers through it. “Lulu says you're in love.” Big Cindy squeezed Anna's shoulders and giggled.

Charlene fumbled in her pocket for a cigarette, lit up, and leaned against the wall. She raised her eyebrows cynically. “I was in love once. Married, even.” She blew out smoke. “Now my daughter's boarding in the country and I'm here.”

“Oh be quiet you hearse driver.” Big Cindy hugged Anna from behind. “I know life seems as black as Hades. But sweetie, we know what you're made of. And not all husbands run around on their women.”

Charlene guffawed. “Just every married man I've ever known.” The smoke curled up to the ceiling and down around the walls, seeking an outlet. It burned Anna's throat. She took a gulp of whiskey, and it stung like acid. Like Charlene's words. Anna went back to studying her list.

The lights went out. The crowd whooped. A man's footsteps pounded up the stairs. Anna heard him pass right outside the closet—three,
four, five heavy strides. A door opened and shut nearby. The lights went on again.

Anna closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “Every man in town is here tooting his horn. Why does this one hide?”

“He's a Baptist?” Big Cindy guessed.

“Or he's the killer,” Anna said.

Charlene plucked at a piece of lint on her garter, her drawers cinched tight on her thighs. “Lulu doesn't think so.”

“If he's here, he's a suspect!” Anna's eyes bored into Charlene with an authority born of sacrifice. “Describe him.”

Charlene threw up her hands. “I don't know! I didn't go with him. Did you Biggy?”

Big Cindy tied Anna's hair in a knot on the top of her head and stuck hairpins in it. “No.” She topped it with Joe's derby.

Anna eyed Charlene. “I only heard one set of footsteps.”

“Lulu will send somebody,” Charlene said.

Anna stood, bending her neck so as not to bump her hat on the ceiling. “I'm going.”

Big Cindy's owl-eyes widened. “Are you crazy?”

“I've lost my reputation. I may as well go down with honor—of a sort.” Anna palmed her gun.

Charlene leaned back and yawned. “She won't do it. She'd go two steps and get tackled.”

Anna smirked. “If you read the papers, you know I'll stop at nothing.”

Charlene threw back her head and laughed. Anna flung opened the closet, took five giant strides on the sticky floor, and slipped through the nearest door. She heard Big Cindy cry, “Aimee! No!”