CHAPTER 13

Anna took the stairs to the ladies’ receiving hospital two at a time, as if the extra few seconds saved would make up for her three-hour absence. She found Matilda sitting serenely by the bedside of the shackled Mrs. Michaelchek. The old woman smelled a whole lot better than she had that morning, not worse as Anna had expected. Rivers of blue veins ran across the lady’s newly shorn head. She appeared to be sleeping. Matilda seemed to be doing better despite her traumatic experience with the Martian, and it relieved Anna greatly.

Anna put on her crisp, authoritative voice. “Good day, Matilda. How is our patient?”

“Better, I think. I found some clothes in the cupboard and changed her gown. It was soiled. I put it in the incinerator out back along with her hair.” Matilda looked tentative, crumpling her forehead. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“No. You’ve done well.” Anna kept her back straight, her manner efficient and smileless, like a matron’s demeanor should be. “You uncuffed her?”

“Briefly. The doctor gave me the key. Other than that, I haven’t left her side. Except I did change her sheets.” Matilda winced as if waiting for a reprimand. “It had to be done, I’m afraid.”

Anna’s demeanor softened. She couldn’t help it. “Matilda, I think you are a gifted nurse.” Anna meant it. Matilda seemed to give of herself effortlessly, and it suited her. Anna liked to give too, but she didn’t have the stomach for this particular type of giving. For example, she was always happy to give fashion advice to strangers, solicited or no. Also, she freely gave directions.

Anna felt her face getting hot. Anna wasn’t giving at all. She pinched herself beneath her cuff. She pinched herself harder. Then she took Matilda’s hand. “Maybe we could talk a little later about what happened at the Jonquil Apartments. It’s not just your experience. I’m sure there’s something sketchy going on. But to prosecute, we’ll need a witness. Matilda, you’d have to testify.”

“Testify against a Martian? They can control your thoughts.”

“How about against a landlady who sells girls to spacemen?” Anna said, her voice gentle. “But perhaps leave out the spaceman part.”

Matilda bit her lip thoughtfully. “Is a girl ruined if she’s ruined by a Martian? Does it count?”

“No. Of course not. Martians don’t count.”

Anna snuck into the prisoners’ kitchen and brought a cold bowl of illicit mush to Matilda, who didn’t qualify to eat jail food. She brought a licit one for bald Mrs. Michaelchek, too, in case she woke up.

Anna set the mush down by Matilda. “Matilda, please tell me again about the man who hurt you? Could it be he wasn’t from Mars?”

Matilda started to rock and she wrung her pale hands. Her nails were bitten to nubs.

“I’m a detective and I’m going to catch him, but I must know all the details. For example, what did he look like?”

“His eyes were yellow and his skin was sort of green, like an olive. I don’t think Martians bathe. He made the room smell like rotten eggs.” She wrinkled up her face. “Afterward, I smelled of him.”

The girl’s obvious pain and illness shook Anna. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “I see. But you don’t smell of him now. You should know that.” “Good.”

“What else can you tell me about this . . . man?”

Matilda drew her legs up onto the chair and hugged herself. “Please, don’t make me think of him. I don’t remember anything else. I never want to speak of him again.”

Anna took Matilda’s hand and squeezed it. “All right. It’s going to be all right.”

Then she left Matilda alone with the patient, feeling determined to find this odorous Martian man and bring him to justice. She had no idea where to start, or whether, if she did catch him, Matilda would be up to taking the witness stand.

Anna looked in on the ladies in the cow ring and the other prisoners in the women’s department. They sewed or slept or sang jailbird songs. The cells were colorless, poorly lit, and even more poorly ventilated. The walls were marred with the graffiti of incarcerated women scratched into the steel. It smelled sharply of bodies and despair. But the bed sheets had been changed. Clean, wet ones, no doubt, hung in the basement to dry. The jailer would come and take the criminal ladies to supper at six.

Other than filing; hunting for little, bad Eliel Villalobos; capturing a Martian; reforming the delinquent children of Los Angeles; and finding jobs for hundreds of prostitutes, Anna had nothing pressing to do. And so, she did what she liked best.

Detective work.

Anna snuck into the coroner’s office to search for photographs of the Griffith Park Executioner’s victim—the kneeling deado. Happily, the coroner was out. She rifled through the files on his desk and found the one belonging to their John Doe. Joe’s photographs from the investigation had turned out well in that they represented the crime scene clearly and accurately. The victim’s clothes appeared distinctly ugly—this could help when identifying the victim. But the face was blurred with insects. It would be hard for a witness to tell one ant-covered corpse from the next. There were plenty of photographs, so Anna palmed a picture that featured the man’s bad suit.

She left the morgue and knocked at the darkroom. No one answered. Light filtered in from beneath the door, and so she opened it. Pictures hung on a line from clothes pins. They must be done, or the light wouldn’t be on. She tested them for dryness, and they seemed fixed. She could wait and get them from Joe, who would have to get them first from the coroner, who seemed in no hurry, or she could lift one now and make today’s mail.

The choice was clear. Anna pinched a close-up of the victim’s poor, dead face.

Back in her storage room, she wrote a letter to the police department in Oklahoma City and enclosed it with the photograph of John Doe. The coroner had washed the ants out of his hair and cleaned him up so that he looked more like he must have before the bullet and the bugs—too young and too handsome to die. She included a list of interview questions for the Oklahoma detectives to ask any family or known associates of the man, should he be identified.

Anna would give him justice. She swore she would. Not only would it make her giving and perhaps reduce her time in purgatory, her future as a detective depended on it.

As Joe wasn’t at the station where he belonged, and because justice was urgent, Anna signed Joe’s name. She had enough experience with the police to know that if a woman signed a letter, no one would take it seriously. Out of habit, she spritzed it with perfume. Then she sealed the envelope and gave it to Mr. Melvin to send.

“How long will it take?” asked Anna.

“Maybe two weeks.” He spoke into his necktie.

Anna ducked her head to look into his face. “Thank you, Mr. Melvin.”

Anna noticed Joe hanging up his derby hat on a peg on the wall near the door. He seemed slightly out of breath and bougainvillea trailed from his pants. “Assistant Matron Blanc, when you have a moment, I’ve got news.” He held up a copy of the Los Angeles Herald, his eyebrows arched high.

His very presence made her glow from the middle. “I’m available now.”

Joe looked around, probably for Detective Snow, and then nodded his head in the direction of the officers’ kitchen. Anna arrived first. She twinkled when he entered, ecstatic to be in his manly presence. Ecstatic to be solving crimes. “I have news, too. I’ve taken the liberty of writing the police in Oklahoma City to ask about our John Doe. Sooner is so much better than later when it comes to murder investigations.”

“You should have let me do it. They’d pay more attention to a cop.”

“Not to worry. I signed your name.”

“Impersonating an officer is a felony.”

“I mean, I . . .” Anna bit her lip.

Joe kissed her. “Anna, look at this article.” He tilted his head and grinned. “You’re gonna like it.” He tapped his finger on the society pages.

Anna grabbed the paper and read. “‘Miss Anna Blanc, socialite . . .’ Socialite, hah!” Renowned beauty, perhaps, or former socialite, but no one in society invited Anna to parties now. Not since her undercover work in the brothels. Just her best friends Clara and Theo Breedlove, who had just left on a European tour. It was a sore point.

“Keep reading.”

“‘Anna Blanc, socialite and estranged daughter of prominent banker, Christopher Blanc, has been united with her illegitimate half-brother, Georges Devereaux. Mr. Devereaux is the product of an illicit union between Christopher Blanc and a French dancer.”

Anna squealed, realized she might be overheard, and swallowed a second happy noise. “Oh, Joe. That’s very good news. Oh, Joe.” She trembled with the joy of it, pressed her hands together as if in prayer. “My father will be horrified.”

Then her smile collapsed. She put fingers to her lips. “Oh, no. What if it isn’t true? The paper prints all kinds of lies about me.”

Joe took her hands and squeezed. “It’s true. I spoke with your father.”

“He agreed to speak with you?”

“Not exactly. But I asked him point-blank. He more or less confessed to being Georges Devereaux’s father.”

“And then what?”

“He threw me out.”

“Jupiter. I’m dingswizzled he agreed to speak with you.”

“He didn’t. I climbed through the window.”

“Oh, my love,” she said too loudly given the thinness of the door.

“Shhh.” Joe lowered his voice. “He said Georges wasn’t a threat. And Anna, I told him we’re getting married.”

“What did he say? Did he pull a gun? Does he want me to leave you?”

Joe’s smile faltered. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks of me. What matters is that you have a brother and that makes you happy.”

“Yes,” said Anna. “And look here. The article says Georges is—and I quote—‘a successful businessman in his own right, winning respect despite the circumstances of his birth. He is the opposite of his sister who, despite her privileged birth, has managed to disgrace herself.’” She looked up from the paper and smiled a wide, splendid, heartfelt smile. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

“I . . . Um. Nobody reads the Herald, baby.”

“Mr. Tilly wrote the article. I’m sure of it. He must have seen us with Georges at the hotel.”

“Georges probably gave him the story. I’m just glad he didn’t say anything about you and me.”

“But what could he say? There’s nothing scandalous about me being with you in the company of . . .” She lingered on the last two words. “My brother.”

“Let’s call on Georges tonight and I’ll apologize for doubting him.”

Anna’s eyebrow rose like a burning sun. “Yes, you should.”

“Oh, come on, Anna. You’re not mad, are you? I was just looking out for you. I’m happy for you. Really, I am. As long as he treats you well.”

“He does!”