whiz, they’re tiny, Bob, just like kids. Fuck you, too, lady. How’s that for kid talk?
She walked down the fairway, leaned against the wall of Ripley’s Odditorium and lit another Chesterfield, staring down at the line waiting for Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch. Sally’s girls needed protection as much as the midgets, and the only kind they’d get from the cops came with a price. Miranda just charged money.
Women were clutching their hats against the cold Bay wind, and some Spanish flamenco dancers from the Alta California exhibit huddled, laughing, in front of the fortune teller. Miranda pressed herself against the stucco wall, closing her eyes. No fortunes left, not for Spain. Not for Miranda. Fortunes meant future, and she didn’t think about the future anymore, not since ’37. Johnny wasn’t in it.
Poor, tired Spain, poor tired world, tired, so tired of war, and yet more coming, more fucking wars, more corpses, white flesh bloated and ruptured, rotting in farm house wells, mangled bodies on the streets of Madrid. No future, no fortune. No Johnny. Just the carnival. Listen to the calliope and it’ll all go away.
Step right up, folks, one thin dime, neon and fishnets, girls in G-strings, babies in incubators. Welcome to the Gayway, Leland Cutler’s Pageant of the Pacific, pride of 1939, and who gives a fuck if New York has a world’s fair, too.
She blinked, watching the cigarette ash burn closer, Laughing Sal’s mechanical cackle drifting on the wind. No treasure on Treasure Island. Just another world’s fair. Another goddamn calliope.
She walked back again toward Midget Village. The line at the refreshment stand was shorter. The clown and the kid, still in sight, headed toward Heather Row. But the clown was pulling the kid’s arm, the girl crying, upset. Fat lady in green nowhere to be seen.
Miranda gulped the cigarette, nicotine hitting her lungs. Burnett hadn’t taught her much. Wiggle when you walk, Miranda, you know how to be an escort. Fuck being a detective. Wrong again, Burnett, you bastard, rest in fucking peace.
They all needed help, midgets and Sally’s girls and sideshow freaks and monkeys in race cars. She dodged two sailors and a marine, and hurried toward the clown.
You pays your money and you takes your choice.
Couple of fraternity boys pushed an elderly couple by in the fifty-cent chairs, almost running down Miranda. The clown pulled the kid toward La Plaza Avenue, rounding the corner by the Owl Drug Store and Ghirardelli Chocolate.
A sharpie in a cheap suit pried himself away from a souvenir booth, eyes on Miranda’s snug navy jacket, as if looking would make it go away. She tried to side-step him, but he jumped in front, blocking her.
“Lady, why the hurry? A looker like you-”
“Get out of my way-”
He stroked his thin mustache with one hand, and put his other one on her left shoulder, straight arm, sliding up and down, out and in.
“Sally’s that way, girlie-you could make a bund-” Miranda shoved his hand off her breast with her right, backhand-ing him hard in the face with her left. He tumbled, off balance, and hit the dirt.
By the time she heard the angry “Fucking bitch!” the clown and the girl had disappeared.
Ghirardelli Building, sign of the giant parrot. It perched above the door, hawking chocolate malts and candy. Cafe sat one hundred, about twenty people were waiting for seats. No clowns. A lot of children.
A blonde in a hat and brown jumper was leaning over the candy belt, watching the chocolate bonbons. Miranda pushed her way through. Not her.
Eight people, understaffed, handing out samples to quiet the kids. Five-year-olds all looked alike.
Miranda’s stomach tightened, started to hurt. She headed for the Owl, checked the lunch counter, toy department, searched the aisles.
Too late.
The White Star Tuna Restaurant was quiet, almost empty. Found a table by one of the windows, stared out at the enormous sparkling walls of Vacationland until the tuna-tomato salad and coffee arrived.
It was too early for tuna, too early for the Chicken of the Sea star on top of the bright round building, too early for the “Romance of Tuna” story that hung on the walls and filled a page in the takeaway souvenir menu.
Early didn’t mean much to Miranda. Late night at Sally’s, boyfriend trouble for one of the girls. Now she’d lost the clown. Tuna romance was just the fucking ticket.
Back and forth, back and forth across the knots of people. She looked down at her cup. Kaleidoscope of black. Maybe she was wrong.
Around and around, spinning, shiny, colors too dark. Five years old, first encounter with fingers in wrong places. Hard fingers, hard laps, per sis tent. Little girl, bouncing on an old professor’s lap, friend of her father. Bouncing hard.
Around again to ten. Old Hatchett asleep, father away, drunk or at an academic conference or both. Escape the dungeon, get out, get out to the streets. Muddy San Francisco, horse shit on Market Street, ten years after the quake. Man in a dirty suit, sudden smile, all in the eyes. Eyes that scared her, hands that scared her, come on, little girl, I’ll give you a present. Don’t you want to play?
Fourteen and she learned how to fight, how to bite a finger, how to squirm out of a grasp, learned where to look and what to look for, curious, but not enough to return to the professor’s lap, or the Santa Claus with his own bag of toys. Around and around she goes, and where she stops…
The kaleidoscope dissolved, carousel no longer turning. No farther, not today.
Miranda drained her coffee, shoved the tuna away untouched, and left half a dollar on the yellow Formica table top. Walked back to the Plaza and lit a Chesterfield, still scanning the crowds. Maybe she’d been wrong.
A uniformed cop was walking up from the Court of Pacifica, heading toward the Gayway, nodded when he saw Miranda.
“You busy, Corbie?”
She inhaled the cigarette, blew a stream of smoke behind her. “It’s my day off. Why?”
His brown eyes were somber. “Lady says her daughter’s been kidnapped. We’re looking for a clown.”
Silk dress from Magnin’s under a shoulder-length fur, head of a dead animal dangling from the back. Gloved hands. Whiff of My Sin when she sobbed.
She was a little older than Miranda, about thirty-five. Brown hair, more than a touch of henna.
Grogan looked at her, his mouth curled around a cigar, then back over at Miranda.
“You here to add the woman’s touch, Corbie, or because you got something?”
She blew a smoke ring, watched it float behind his left ear. “How about the human touch, Grogan-or is that beyond you?”
He shrugged, eyes on the victim. One of the uniforms coughed.
“Says she turned her back to buy her kid some cotton candy at the Gayway, and next thing she knew the kid was gone. The kid’s name is Susie. I thought Donlevy gave you the low-down.”
“What he knew of it.” She pulled Grogan’s chair from his desk and sat next to the woman.
“Any enemies, Mrs. Hampton? Demands for money, threats?”
The face that jerked toward Miranda was sharp, still pretty. “N-no. Not that I know-and please, don’t tell my husband. He’ll-Geoff is so impetuous, I’m afraid he’ll-don’t tell him!” She gasped, the sable quivering.
Miranda ground the Chesterfield into the arm of Grogan’s chair. Waited for Mrs. Hampton to breathe again.
“Did Susie ever run away-or get lost?”
“No. Please, please, just find her. I don’t even care if you find that-the monster who took her, just find my little girl.”
Miranda leaned forward. “Exactly what happened?”
“I-I told them already. Sergeant, why do I have to-”
“-you don’t have to do nothing, Mrs. Hampton. This here’s Miranda Corbie. She’s what they call a private eye in them fairy tales people read.”
The woman held the handkerchief up to her face.
“Are you going to help get my Susie back?”
“I need the truth, Mrs. Hampton-in your own words.”
The woman took a deep, rattling breath, closed her eyes for a moment. “Cotton candy. Susie likes it. She just turned five last week, I-I was looking for a smaller bill-the man at the counter didn’t have change for a
