San Diego Noir

“Gosh, I’m not sure. I did hear Mrs. Smith talk about going out to pick some avocados today, maybe he’ll go with her.” Nancy glanced at her watch. “I gotta run, shift starts in fifteen minutes! See ya!” I saw her cross Horton Plaza in the bright sunshine, startled pigeons wheeling overhead.

I went to the office and changed clothes—a wide-brimmed hat and quiet brown dress seemed less conspicuous than my bright shirt and bandanna—and made my way back to the boarding house. I positioned myself to the side of a hedge of jade plant and peeked around it now and then to keep an eye on the house.

After a long two hours, while I repeatedly looked at my watch and sighed to give the impression of waiting for someone who was late, I saw the Smiths get into their car and slowly drive away. Everyone drove slowly those days, when they drove at all. Between the gas rationing and the impossibility of finding new tires, cars were used very cautiously. I missed being able to race down the Coast Highway from Del Mar, just for the joy of it. With Bill at the wheel of the Ford roadster, we’d laughed like maniacs and come home windburned and happy.

I quickly crossed the street and let myself into the too large, too quiet house. The Smiths had kept the back parlor for themselves and used part of the adjoining old-fashioned kitchen for an office. I started there, rifling through the letters and files in the rolltop desk. Nothing unusual there. I picked open the center drawer and found the ledger book where Mrs. Smith had recorded my deposit and first week’s rent. The records began in 1942, after the Smiths bought the property and converted it to a rooming house. Her careful Spencerian script noted dates, amounts, and names. Each week, each girl’s payment would be recorded, and the room number she was paying for noted. Now and then a box in a separate column would be filled in with the word moved, and then that room number would show up with a new name, usually in the next week. Sometimes moved was written in red. I flipped to the previous month. Mary Przybilski was there— five-dollar deposit, five dollars for the first week, then the notation moved. In red.

I felt a chill. I found the other girls’ names with the red final entry and jotted them down. Then I put the ledger back in the drawer and locked it again. My heart was pounding. Red entries in a ledger didn’t mean anything—did they? I pulled open a bulky file drawer and found the folder of rental applications with mine on top, as the newest resident. There was a tiny notation in pencil at the bottom, a Y. Did that mean, Yes, rent a room to her? The next application was for Betty Andrews, a leggy blonde I’d said hi to on the stairs that morning. At the bottom of her application, a tiny N. Betty’s application listed her parents as references and they lived in nearby Lemon Grove. Then, Mary’s application. Her parents were listed as references, but they were in Iowa, and there was a Y on the bottom of her form. I thumbed through more of the file, finding N after N, then about six months back another Y. It was for Bessie Jones, originally from Oklahoma—and her name in the ledger had ended with a red moved.

I paged back through the rental applications looking for the other girls on my list. Three … four … So far all of them had no local ties and Ys on their forms. My hand trembled as I searched for the sixth.

Just as I found her application I heard a car door slam and then Mrs. Smith’s grating voice: “Just wait there. I’ll go through and open the back door so you can bring in that box direct to the kitchen.”

Her firm tread on the front steps sounded like pistol shots. Bam! Bam! I gulped and stuffed the folder back in the drawer. Bam! I gave the drawer a good shove and got it mostly closed. Bam! I ran for the back door, and peeked out its small window. I could see the nose of the Smiths’ car. Bam! I slipped outside and frantically searched for someplace to hide. There was a huge gardenia bush by the back steps and I scrambled behind it. The heady smell of the flowers was overwhelming.

Mrs. Smith popped out of the back door like a giant cuckoo. “Would you believe it? Unlocked! One of those stupid girls must have stuck her nose out for some fresh air.” Mr. Smith, biceps bulging, carried a wooden box piled high with avocados into the kitchen. The door closed.

I stayed frozen in place for just a couple of minutes to make sure neither of them came out again. I crept out the side garden gate and walked briskly away down 19th Street.

I pulled the bourbon out of Bill’s desk drawer at the office and poured two fingers into a tumbler. Then I added a third. The bite of the tan fire on my dry tongue was bracing. I had chided Bill for his now-and-then habit of a drink during working hours, but now I completely understood.

What next? So far I knew that Mary had left her clothes and other items behind and had gone without saying goodbye to anyone. Mrs. Smith had been awfully fast on the mark to get rid of her stuff, cleaning out her room shortly after she left. The red notations in the ledger matched up with girls who seemed to have no local ties and had also moved away from the house. The town was full of workers from the Midwest who’d left small-town life for good jobs at the aircraft factories.

Like Mary.

I pulled the list of names from my handbag and started making phone calls. After working my way through the personnel departments of all the factories with my story of checking employment references on a group of girls who wanted to rent a house together, I learned that they had all left their jobs with no notice, just didn’t show up one day.

Just like Mary.

Then I called the coroner’s office. Ten minutes later, saying goodbye and promising a home-cooked meal for Bill’s buddy there, I hung up and looked at the list again. None of them had shown up as bodies. It was as if they’d vanished into thin air.

Just like Mary.

I had a pretty fair idea that something was afoot in that old place, but I had no proof. All the girls with Ys on their paperwork had disappeared. Except for me. Was I next on this filthy list? Was I slated to die just because I seemed to be alone in a strange town? I slammed the glass down so hard that the pencils lifted and resettled in their holder, and the phone jumped off the hook.

That’s it, I decided, and reached for the phone to call Mike McGowan at the police station. I knew the number by heart—Franklin 1101. Bill had had me commit it to memory before he left. “If you’re ever in over your head, doll,” he’d said with a clownish half-grimace, “you call Mike, got that?” I’d laughed, shaking my head, and quivered my bare shoulders in mock fear. He’d just looked at me and given me a big kiss hot enough to melt the North Pole.

We were in love, and he was going away. The next morning he took a cab to the navy base, got on his ship, and I hadn’t seen him or heard from him since.