“Did Madame enjoy her walk?” the concierge asked.
She immediately knew that he had read the article. She could see the collusion in his hard stare and nervous shoulders.
“Is there anything I can do to help make your stay more pleasant?”
She sensed that he was ushering her. On orders to keep her occupied, anything to prevent her from knowing the truth of the situation. And the thought of being in the epicenter of the secret started to infuriate her again. Where the concentric circle of deceit spun out from around her. Everybody she had met since arriving in California had figured her to be too stupid or unaware to know what was going on. A world of nameless gawkers who felt themselves privy to her darkest moment.
She looked the concierge in the eye. Her expression stern and metered, swallowing one last breath as she prepared to expose the whole conspiracy. “Yes, you can help me,” she spoke in a controlled fury. “You can clear that shit of a newspaper from my room, and from the rest of the hotel, for that matter.”
She smiled at the stranger in the dark glasses, then turned and walked toward the bar. Shoulders squared and proud. In full view of the other Sarah.
Purposefully not turning around to see the mask undone.
VINCE BAKER HAD BEEN GIVEN the assignment three days ago. His sonabitch editor at the city desk, Graham Scott, had told him that he had better talk to Bishop Conaty as soon as possible. They had a story to break. He was holding two page-one columns, and another half page for the jump. The rival Los Angeles Examiner had sucker punched them last year on the Vienna Buffet scandal, running a front-page story declaring the lack of morality of the Herald staff. The piece had placed Herald reporters at the Vienna Buffet, a restaurant of doubtful reputation, hunkered down in the underground passage with a bevy of questionable women, some of whom were called actresses, and some the Examiner kindly referred to as “abandoned.” There were tales of booze, the drinks flowing at a modest twenty-five cents a shot, and then moved on to Mumm’s Extra Dry at a hefty three dollars per pint, all billed to the Herald tab in the name of journalism, resulting in charges being filed by the police commissioner for selling illegal liquor. Stories flowed throughout the city newsrooms of broads on laps and under tables. And the Herald just couldn’t get it straightened out. F. T. Seabright, one of their longstanding reporters who had been present at the Vienna Buffet, only dug the hole deeper when he tried to explain that Scott had sent him and another reporter down for an undercover investigative piece on the proffering of illegal booze. But his unnecessary details about the length and feel of the girls’ thighs threw his credibility into doubt. The Examiner was really sticking it to their rival now, recently drawing the religious and community leaders into the drama, as was that reactionary Harrison Gray Otis of the Times. The Herald was taking it from all sides. Threats of boycotts. Letters to the editor. A cry for penance. So when this loudmouth bishop and his cohorts started making noise about the indecency of Sarah Bernhardt and their intended boycott, Graham Scott saw it as a chance to make a righteous gesture to the community at large, but more importantly to finally shut up the bullshit Examiner editorial staff. So he sent his best man. Someone who could make the story sing.
Vince Baker was fairly young by newsroom standards, having just turned thirty in mid-January. The old dogs in the newsroom were okay with him. They thought he had the balls of an old beat hound and they admired the grace with which he could turn nothing into something. He could make anything news. A natural at contorting information into stories where facts hung on the perimeter of truth, with a pinch of sensationalism. They loved that shit at the Herald. Took him off assignments like covering births at the zoo or the largest quilt ever made this side of the Mississippi and gave him the helm as their lead city man. Threw him stories right and left. Told him to chase down the rest. They fucking loved him. Slipped him fifty for a Christmas bonus. Sent him memos all the time saying, “That was great work.” He was going places. He was assigned all the gritty city hall pieces. Every power broker in town knew him by face. Doheny. Harrington. Huntington. G. G. Johnson. They all hated the garbage that his paper put out, but they talked anyway because they knew Baker would write it with or without their quotes. This town was packed tight in his fist. Although he knew he was really nothing other than the modern-day version of the town crier, Baker still managed to keep a sense of integrity and pride—he honestly believed in his role in exposing the ugly underneath. And now he was given the task of salvaging the paper’s reputation by burying the Vienna Buffet once and for all. Playing the pawn in a cheek-to-cheek dance where a grinding pelvis is followed by a knowing wink.
How was that for irony?
Baker did what he did best—he turned oyster shit into a pearl. He interviewed the bishop and one of his flock, Dorothy O’Brien. They snapped the picture. He talked to the theater owners. Drafted the story in a dive named Ralph’s around the corner from the church and edited the commas in a downtown bar that would make the Vienna Buffet look like a family Hof brau. He filed the story. A goddamned hero he was around the newsroom.
After that Tuesday edition ran, Baker tossed the unread paper into a garbage can and then stopped off at a local bar named Willie’s. He threw back a couple shots of some well whiskey that stung like a sonabitch. He gave a nod to the bartender and a few malcontents hugging the corner but didn’t speak a word. He lifted a Lucky Strike from his pocket, tapped the butt against the mahogany once or twice, and then stuck it unlit between his lips. He leaned forward to light the cigarette by candle flame, then pulled back, smoke rising from the amber tip. Takes you right off the stinking earth with the first drag every time. He ordered up another glass. Sucked the cigarette down to the bone. Then rinsed back the whiskey. He wasn’t ready to go home. Being alone in his new apartment on Pico could be dangerous, a man could lose himself in that kind of mess, rot away crazy until the landlord finally has the doors rammed in when the unbearable stench gets too loud. But he also had no intention of pouring on a useless drunk, one that would inevitably find him stupidly waking up with the last broad left standing at closing time.
Baker slapped two bits on the bar to settle and left. The night air was still warm, smelling of Pacific salt and bubbling lard from the Mexican taco stand up the street. It seemed quiet out. A few couples strolled back in secret huddle, followed by an occasional chatty group with one inevitably shrill distaff laugh that hung nearly visible against the concrete and plaster. The oddly loud volume of his shoes against the sidewalk thudded like the trampling of lazy hooves.