Blood and Oranges, James Goldsborough [spicy books to read txt] 📗

a ten-minute drive, except that with police action everything was slowed to a crawl. People in the streets. It wasn’t a mob, but was getting close. Traffic barely moving. She tried to shut the KHJ reporter out and think for a minute, but was jolted back by the news flash: “KHJ has just learned that Sister Angie has been pronounced dead; I repeat: Sister Angie l’Amoureux, pastor of the Temple of the Angels, is dead.”

She sank back into the worn leather seat and sighed. How ghastly. That poor woman. Why did they let him out? They knew he would try again. Suddenly she thought of Cal. Where was he? Richfield Building? Had he heard? How would he take it? No time for that now, had to focus on the task. The Times would run a murder story, an obituary, interviews, probably a sidebar on Gil. She was to do a full background story, which meant pulling everything into a narrative—everything. She’d worked for McManus long enough to know he’d expect twenty-five hundred words. She’d have to talk to Gil. Ugh. They’d have him downtown by now. No manslaughter this time; this time the gas chamber and he wouldn’t even blink. She’d covered brutes like him before, men always ready to trade death for a good orgasm. She wondered how he had killed her. Strangled, like Uncle Willie? Traffic wasn’t moving. At Glendale, people on the sidewalks had moved into the street and still more flowing out from the side streets as word spread around the city. She’d do better to get out and walk but decided to wait to see if traffic started moving again. She started back over events in her mind, back to the beginning:

Uncle Willie meets Angie in an ice cream parlor in Glendale. Before the war. Gil finds out so they flee to Mexico. Larry sends her and Luis to find them, but too late. Gil is waiting when they come back, kills Willie, rapes Angie. Gil threatens Angie at the trial. Angie steps in for Willie at the temple, becomes a symbol for women. Spousal rape becomes a crime, at least in California. The temple becomes bigger than ever. So does Sister Angie.

How much of it would be in the obituary? Times obituaries, dry, bloodless things done years in advance for important people. This is for your obituary, the reporter says, voice flat, usually on the phone. Really, am I dead? the subject asks. Ha ha. Always gets a nervous laugh. Reporter never joins in. Filed away and forgotten and pulled out when the big day comes. She’d worked on obits herself, the dead beat, it’s called, though not on Angie’s. She wondered why. She knew more about Angie than anyone else at the paper. Maybe that was it: they didn’t think she’d be objective. Then why put her on this story? Because Larry didn’t handle obituaries.

Suddenly she felt nauseous, inhaling fumes, wasting time in a taxi that wasn’t moving. Momentary panic. How to do this? Why am I heading for the temple? What can I learn there? Cabbie staring at her in the rear mirror, waiting for traffic to move again, which it wasn’t doing. Cal . . . the Richfield Building. That’s where I should be. She spied a phone booth, paid the driver with a nice tip, jumped out and made the call. He was watching the news, about to leave for the temple, voice shaky. Roads blocked, she said, you’ll never make it. Wait for me.

“I have to get over there,” were his first words when she walked into his office.

“Impossible,” she said. “I already tried.”

He was disheveled, jacket off, tie loosened, shirt wrinkled, pacing, restless, clearly lost. They stood a moment watching the television reporter. Cameras, reporters, police, a huge crowd pressing in on the closed-up building. They’d have to open doors before long. He turned it off and walked to the window from where he could see the antenna on top of the temple. “I failed her,” he said, simply.

“You didn’t fail her, Cal. You’re not a bodyguard.”

“Why exactly are you here,” he said suddenly, anger in the voice, turning back from the window. “You’re not planning on putting me in this, are you?”

“I’ve got until eight o’clock,” she said, avoiding a direct answer, the old writers’ conflict. “You knew Angie better than anyone.”

“No,” he said, the voice dry, empty, “I can’t talk about any of that.”

“No secrets, remember?”

“This is different. You’re talking about publication.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t . . .”

She headed him off.

“Because, Cal, people won’t let go of a person like Sister Angie, let go as if she were, well, an ordinary person, like you or me. She left her mark. She changed things for women forever.” She was floundering. “Help me, Cal, that’s all I ask. What was it? What did she have? Where did it come from? Was it authentic?”

He stood there with his eyes closed. She was losing him.

“No secrets, you say,” he said, at length, opening his eyes. “You’re asking me, an agnostic, to comment on people of religion. Is that fair? Was it authentic? Are you trying to get me to tell you she was a hypocrite?”

“Cal, please!”

“Sorry, but this is hard.”

Anger in the voice, so unusual. She’d never understood the relationship. Now she did.

She regrouped. “At this very moment there are thousands of people trying to get to the temple, millions watching and listening. Imagine what the funeral will be like! What was it? What was her magic? Why do they refuse to let her die? Help me.”

Just get started, she thought, her mind turning, let it come out. Yes, Cal, it’s hard, only don’t let me down. She hadn’t taken her notebook out. She didn’t want him distracted. He stood framed in the window for some time, beautiful San Gabriel Mountains rising behind him, handsome face grieving, trying to hold it in. First his father, now his lover. What is he thinking? She didn’t know him, not like she knew Maggie. Is