Women of the Dark Streets Read online

That day, I’d barely had time to toss my hat on the rack, light up a smoke, and put my size nines up on my desk when she walked through the door. Now the dame hadn’t been waiting when I got there, and I sure as Shinola hadn’t heard anyone on the stairs behind me. But who was I to complain? My first walk-in in weeks, and she was five and a half feet of gorgeous, with shoulders like a general, black hair and eyes, and skin like red desert clay. She held herself straight and proud, and though she was wearing a tailored jacket and skirt, when I looked at her, I saw her barefoot and in buckskin on some high desert plain, that black hair no longer restrained by pins and fedora, but whipping free around her shoulders in the wind.

  “What’s up, Tiger Lily?” I asked.

  She gave me a look that said she’d heard it before, and from better than the likes of me. Then she looked around my empty office as if she’d seen outhouses nicer than this. Or maybe it was the plumbing.

  “My name is Lorena Claw,” she said, turning back to me.

  “Mel Archer.” I stuck out my hand. She frowned at it until I put it away. I’d been trying to change over from “Amy” for months, but it never seemed to catch on.

  “I trust I’m not interrupting anything,” she continued.

  “Sister, nobody comes to me unless they’re desperate.” I ground out my Lucky Strike in the ashtray on the corner of my desk. “You aren’t, by any chance…”

  “Desperate?” She flashed a pained smile. “Hardly. But I do believe that you’re the right person for the job.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  She flipped open the leather portfolio she’d been holding under her arm and began to pace. I craned my neck to get a better look, but she was like a high school principal gloating over my permanent record.

  “Amelia Archer, former WASP ace pilot. On your way to a medal, but—”

  “But my plane went down behind enemy lines and the president decided he’d rather pretend he didn’t know me than answer tough questions about women in combat,” I said as she slapped the portfolio shut. “But enough about me. Why don’t you take a load off and tell your Aunt Amy what brings you here?”

  I watched her pull up the only other piece of furniture in the room—a splintery schoolhouse chair with one leg shorter than the others—perch on the edge, and cross her long, long legs. Legs like that came from using them a lot. Between her muscle tone and her abruptness, it occurred to me that she might be military herself. I took my feet down.

  “You attended cryptography school before applying to the WASP program,” she began.

  “Best in my class until they decided code-breaking was a boys’ game.”

  It surprised me how much that still stung.

  “But you understand codes, and you understand the military mentality.”

  “A little too well.”

  “Miss Archer, I’m a civilian consultant currently overseeing a project involving a new kind of code,” she said. “Everything was going well until I started to pick up some unauthorized transmissions from my group to the officers in charge. These transmissions used our code, but in a way I couldn’t understand. A code within a code. I have the transmissions here. I need you to try to figure out what they’re saying.”

  “Whoa, whoa, sister,” I said. “We’re at war. Loose lips sink ships, and people who pass military secrets end up on the business end of a firing squad.” My heart pounded, and not in a good way. Strictly small time, that was me: cheating spouses, lost kittens. Nobody gets shot over lost kittens. “I’m sorry. You need to leave.”

  “But I have nowhere else to turn!” She suddenly came across more doll than drill sergeant. My heart dropped to my panties. She widened her eyes—deliberate, calculated, but no less devastating. It had been a long time, and I’ve always been dizzy for brunettes. Especially when they were clearly trouble.

  “Not my problem,” I croaked.

  “But you’re the only one who can help me.”

  Oh, she was clever. She was good. She was sitting on the edge of the chair, pushing out her chest in a way that was as irresistible as it was obvious. I wondered if her little dossier had detailed my weakness for dames in distress.

  “Cripes,” I muttered. I dropped back into my chair.

  “Miss Archer, my people were glad to take what I had to offer. Now I believe they’re trying to cut me out without so much as a thank you. I can’t let go of all my work without a fight. Can’t you understand?”

  Understand? Did I ever. That little shit Marlowe had been my right-hand man for a year and a half before turning around and stealing all my clients. My hard-won police contacts had been happy to go skipping off with him as well. It was the same story any time a woman tried to get ahead in a man’s world. All the same, it was one thing to grouse about the world’s unfairness, and something else to put yourself in the line of fire over it. And all I had was this dame’s word for any of it.

  “Of course I can show you my credentials,” she said.

  “I think you’d better.”

  She took a card from her purse and handed it across the desk. If her military I.D. was a fake, then Dr. Lorena Claw, Civilian Consultant, was a master forger as well as a spy. When I handed the card back, the little flutter of her lashes was unnecessary. I’d made up my mind.

  “I’m going to need six hundred big ones up front, plus forty clams a day for expenses,” I said. It was excessive, but I was broke, and if I took her case it’d be my tuchus behind the eight-ball.

  She met my eyes. The clouds cleared from the desert sky. When she spoke again, the California sun seemed to flood through the blinds, chasing away the remaining shadows of doubt.

  “Money, Miss Archer, will be no object.”

  An hour after she left, I was still running my fingers over the bills she’d counted out onto my desk, and fantasizing about what Dr. Lorena Claw might like for breakfast, when someone knocked on my door.

  “Yes?”

  “Miss Archer?” said the man as he stepped into my office—wrench on his belt, smokes rolled into the sleeve above his left shoulder, a plunger slung over his right. “Stanley Clements, Angel City Plumbing. I came to have a look at your u-bend.”

  *

  The delectable Dr. Claw hadn’t told me anything about the code itself. Gave me a list of words and said I could figure it out from there. But the only reason Uncle Sam hires an outsider—especially a dame—is if she’s got something he can’t get anywhere else. During my short, happy stint as a trainee code-breaker, I’d learned that in the first war, we’d gotten around the Jerrys by sending messages in Chocktaw. Between my client’s distinctive appearance, and her telling irritation with my little nickname, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts Uncle Sam was up to something similar this time around.

  Problem was, there were a couple hundred Indian languages between Alaska and Florida. Of course, if Uncle Sam was using my future ex-girlfriend because she was an expert in one of those languages, it would narrow things down a bit. Given her unusual name, and the fact that she signed PhD after it, it didn’t take more than fifteen minutes on the horn to find her: Dr. Lorena Claw, Adjunct Instructor of Navajo Language at USC.

  With this information, plus the shiny new gold pen I’d bought out of my retainer, I went to see a friend.

  *

  Sheridan Eliott ran the only Michelin-starred Italian joint downtown. Normally a place like Eliott’s wouldn’t let the likes of me within two blocks of the front door. But I’d helped him out a while back, and now he sometimes even let me eat there.

  “Where’d you get this?” Eliott asked me as I took my seat at my favorite table. The table was in a little nook between the kitchen and the john. It was invisible from the front door, but an ingenious arrangement of mirrors let me see everyone who came in and out.

  “If I told you I’d have to kill you,” I said.

  He picked up the notes I’d laid out—the three transmissions and Dr. Claw’s little codex—and replaced them with a plate of heaven. I picked up a
fork.

  “What’s this?” I asked, as he looked my notes over.

  “Involtine de vitello. I’m considering it for the dinner menu. What do you think?”

  I cut off a bite from a battered, fried roll of meat and let it melt on my tongue. Veal. Prosciutto. Garlic, cheese, sage, and butter. I washed it down with a mouthful of the cold white wine he had provided. Angels sang.

  “Eliott, if they ever give me the chair, this is what I want for my last meal.”

  The broad, ruddy planes of his face remained impassive, but the edges of his dark eyes crinkled with smug satisfaction.

  Eliott had come to Los Angeles to break into the movies. Westerns were hot again, and this time the Indians weren’t always the bad guys. Unfortunately, Hollywood was only hiring Italians for the roles. So Eliott opened a restaurant. Now he makes money hand over fist serving up overpriced fettuccine to those same directors who didn’t think a full-blooded Navajo was “authentic” enough to play Manuelito in their films.

  He took the seat across from mine and read over my notes while I made sweet love to my dinner. When the food was gone and I’d loosened my belt, I pushed away my empty plate and told him my tale.

  “I haven’t read a lot of Navajo,” he said after a few minutes. Like most of the kids on his reservation, he’d been sent to boarding school, where using his native language had been, shall we say, discouraged. “Some professor came up with an alphabet a few years ago, but it never really caught on.” He handed the papers back to me. “Your client translated the words right, though. Chicken-hawk,” he said, pointing. “Mosquito. This one could be intestine.” He looked at me. “But together the words don’t make any sense. The words are Navajo, but…”

  “The client said it was a code within a code. She thinks her men are using it to pass information they want to keep from her,” I said.

  He looked up.

  “Her men?”

  “Dr. Claw. My client.”

  The heat that spread across my face gave away more than words could have. Eliott regarded me evenly. We did not, as a rule, discuss our personal lives. But after all the years we’d known each other, Eliott had to have figured I wasn’t the fetching-my-husband’s-slippers type. When he spoke again, the skin around his eyes didn’t crinkle, but his forehead did.

  “Be careful,” he said.

  “I always am.”

  Just as quickly as this window had opened onto my pathetic excuse for a love life, he slammed it shut.

  “You’ve checked this woman’s background, I take it.”

  “She was teaching Navajo at USC before going on sabbatical—to consult with the military, I guess.”

  “And the dog?” he asked.

  “The what?”

  “You said something about a dog tricking you out of your breakfast.”

  “It didn’t trick me,” I said. “It was looking at me with those big brown eyes…exactly!” I cried, as he put on an eerily similar expression. “How’s anyone supposed to resist that? Anyway, what does that have to do with—”

  At that moment two men entered the restaurant with a clatter and tinkle as the door jarred the string of bells hanging above it.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. Identical boring haircuts. Bad G-man suits. Dark sunglasses.

  “You know those guys?”

  “Not personally.” I instinctively sank down in my seat. “They’re Feds.”

  “They were in here earlier asking about you.”

  “Shit.”

  Feds were like mobsters. Never a good thing when they know your name. Even worse when they think they have business with you.

  “Do you believe in synchronicity?” Eliott asked.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” He chuckled under his breath. “You sneak out through the kitchen. I’ll see if I can interest them in a five-course FBI special.”

  “I owe you,” I said.

  He waved me off and strode toward the front of the restaurant. While my old friend made nice with the Feds, I slipped a five-spot under my plate, shoved Dr. Claw’s portfolio back under my arm, and scurried for the kitchen.

  *

  The G-Men must have already eaten, because I wasn’t halfway down the alley when I heard the back door of the restaurant slam open with a vengeance and four flat Fed feet beat down the alley behind me.

  “Stop, Miss Archer!” one called. “We just want to talk!”

  And hand me a winning lottery ticket, I supposed. Nothing doing.

  I burst out of the alley and onto a narrow little street—a dark, liquor store–studded canyon between tall walls of buildings. As the Feds rounded the corner behind me, I turned into a botánica, vaulted over the counter—lucky I was wearing slacks that day—and was out the back door while they were still knocking over saint-shaped candles and bottles of prosperity oil. The thought of the bad juju that would follow them made me smile.

  Then my own luck ran out. The alley behind the botánica ended in a brick wall on one side. The other side was closed off by a chain link fence and secured with a sturdy padlock. I took a run at the fence. Didn’t get halfway up before two sets of arms were pulling at my legs.

  “Damn, you’re strong,” one of the Feds muttered.

  He got a kick in the teeth for his troubles. I flailed, but he had me by the waist and seemed to be taking the pop in the kisser personally. He slammed me down on the pavement and put a knee on my sternum. I opened my eyes to daylight stars and the steely glint of a .38 Special half an inch from my nose.

  “What happened to ‘we just want to talk’?” I asked.

  The Fed spat out a couple of teeth and swiped a sleeve across his mouth, leaving a long red streak across his cheek.

  “You rejected that opthon when you chothe to athault a federal offither,” he growled. His face hardened, and he cocked his gun. Fed Number Two put a hand on his shoulder.

  “We’re looking for Dr. Lorena Claw,” said Number Two.

  “Why?”

  “We have reason to believe that she contacted you with an intent to sell military secrets.”

  “What? No,” I stammered. I tried to sit up, but Number One leaned on his knee in a way that meant business. I let out a groan and shot a pleading look at the Fed who hadn’t tasted my loafers.

  “Come on, Edwards, don’t kill the little lady,” Number Two said.

  “But—”

  Number Two, who was clearly in charge, tightened his fingers around his partner’s shoulder. Number One grudgingly leaned back and let me drag myself to a sit against a bank of garbage cans.

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” I explained. “It’s Dr. Claw’s project. She—”

  “There’s no one by that name employed by the military.”

  “But I saw her ID.”

  “Maybe you should have looked a little clother.” Number One sneered and holstered his weapon as if he’d a grudge against it.

  “We saw her enter your offices with a portfolio full of cash,” said Number Two. “When she came out again, the portfolio appeared…substantially lighter.” He narrowed his eyes. “Where are you banking these days, Miss Archer?”

  Wouldn’t take a Fed to figure out I did my business next door. Good thing I’d listened when that little voice had told me to wait to make the drop. That little voice had saved my skin more times than I could count.

  “Doethn’t matter,” Number One said, dabbing at the side of his mouth. “Fifty agenth are crawling up your ath with a microthcope ath we thpeak.”

  “So that’s what that burning sensation is,” I said. “I’ll cancel my proctologist’s appointment. You boys can knock yourselves out. I’ve got nothing to hide. You, on the other hand, might want to do something about that lisp. It’s not very becoming.”

  Have I mentioned how my wise ass sometimes gets me into trouble?

  Before his better half could restrain him, Number One sprang across the refuse and landed on top of me, knocking us both into the garbage cans in an explosion of incense-
scented rubbish. The crash of aluminum filled the alley as we rolled together through the trash, his hands like a steel band around my throat.

  “…teach…you…a…lethon…”

  Not far away, Number Two was tutting about professionalism, but he seemed remarkably unconcerned about his partner’s unprovoked attack on a civilian. Something cut into my back, and stupidly I wondered what my dry cleaner would say. Then, suddenly, everything grew very still. A warning growl rumbled in the air behind the cans. Number One even stopped slugging me long enough to look up in wonder.

  The dog was still scruffy and wild-looking when it stepped out from behind the trash cans. But it was a lot larger than I had remembered—or maybe it was just the angle. With one paw on either side of my head, nose-to-nose with Fed Number One, it looked damned impressive. Another growl rumbled in its throat.

  “…the hell…”

  That close, I could see the white hairs vibrating on the animal’s chest. The brown hairs on its legs were tipped with black. The effect was surprisingly elegant, and I was overcome by the urge to run my fingers through it.

  Still growling, the dog leaned in until its nose almost touched that of the now wide-eyed Number One. His hands slowly slid away from my neck.

  “Your dog have its shots, Miss Archer?” Number Two asked quietly.

  “Not my dog.” When this was all over, though, I’d half a mind to change that. Slowly, quietly, Number One eased himself off me and backed away.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Number Two cocked his gun. The dog launched itself forward just as the weapon discharged. I heard a yelp and a thump, and I was on my feet.

  The dog had gone down, but it sprang up immediately. I rubbed my eyes. Maybe Number One had bashed my melon on the pavement harder than I thought. Feds didn’t muck around with pantywaist firearms. The .38 was a hand cannon. Should have blown the mutt’s leg right off.

  “Rabid beatht,” Number One said.

  I dove into him as he unholstered his weapon. The shot went wide. As the dog turned toward us, an ugly red stain on its left shoulder, I could have sworn it was enjoying itself. We watched as it loped toward the back wall of the alley, graceful and nonchalant, and then at the last moment, faded into the bricks. I turned to the men.