Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (top 50 books to read .TXT) 📕

Line. He was suddenly discouraged. He’d planned it perfectly and said his prayers. He’d written a note and left it on the Nyx’s chair, where the police would find it, by the half-finished chess match, where Willie was up a bishop and likely to win. He’d steeled for what had to be done, and now it was off. He sat thinking about it a while before getting up. He perked himself up. There would be other Sundays.

He walked out to the deck and sighted the launch speeding across open water toward him, spreading its foamy wake behind like a peacock spreading its tail. He looked toward Catalina Island and brought his eyes back over Palos Verdes Peninsula down the coast to Santa Monica. The launch was still a mile off, and he walked aft a few steps to gaze up the coast toward Point Dume. There were days when fog lay so low you couldn’t see your feet, others when smog hovered and your eyes burned so you had to step inside. This was not one of them. It was a beautiful day, the sky and ocean blue, the winds calm, and you could see forever.

He came back as the launch pulled up. Lines were thrown, the gangway lowered and a new group of gamblers started up. Henry was at the front of those waiting behind the rope for the boat to empty so they could board for the trip back. He watched stylish men and beautiful women coming up, people clapping to the sound of the music from the restaurant, bubbling in anticipation of good times. On the Sabbath! He turned around to look at the people behind him, mostly silent, not so much bubbling. If there were winners among them, they weren’t showing it. Act like it’s not the first time. Losers, too, tried not to show it.

And then there he was.

Eddie Mull, the man who had broken every law and stolen everything—the oil, the temple, Willie’s life, Henry’s life and now from honest working people. Murderer? Something Willie once said about their mother’s death. Fatter now, always gross-mannered, the Mull good looks turned to sallow corruption. He was shaking hands with the launch captain and starting up the gangway, the last man off. He had no bodyguard. The bodyguard was on the ship ready to escort him back. Henry moved under the rope and started down.

“Hey you, there!” a deckhand shouted, pointing at him. “No boarding until everyone has left the launch!”

Eddie was halfway up and looked up and saw Henry blocking his way. He was not five feet away, and Henry held the Remington Derringer aimed straight at his heart.

“Henry, for God’s sake . . .”

“I wish I had a gun to give you, Eddie; make this fair and square. But when did you ever play fair and square?”

Two barrels right into the heart. Eddie Mull fell at his feet.

With a boot that needed polishing, Henry pushed the body under the ropes, kicked it into the sea.

“Think of the water, Eddie,” the voice outside Security Trust had told him years before. The water brought Eddie to Los Angeles, and the water carried him away.

Part Three

Chapter 25

There was no better place in the world than postwar Los Angeles. Water had brought the first wave of people, and the Depression brought the second. The third wave was made up of hundreds of thousands of troops who’d passed through on their way to the Pacific, liked what they saw and decided that if they made it back, home would be Los Angeles. Maybe life wasn’t all that bad in the Eastern cities where they were brought up, at least not compared to what they had seen overseas, and it had been good enough on the farms of the Midwest, but there was nothing like Los Angeles. Once you saw it you wouldn’t settle for anything else, and the G.I. Bill made everything possible.

A county of one million people in 1920 would have four million by 1950, totally unanticipated growth for a dusty bowl cut off from civilization by desert, mountains, and ocean, without enough indigenous water to support robust life. During those thirty years, as the Klan advertised, Los Angeles was a “white” city, an “Anglo” city. However, if the Klan had looked deeper it would have noticed that not all immigration was “Anglo.” The Asians, the blacks, the Mexicans, the Jews, came quietly and settled into their enclaves without fuss. Charlie Watts gave his name to a handsome ranchland south of downtown where tens of thousands of blacks escaping Southern segregation settled. At some point, they would outgrow Charlie Watts’s ranchland and want out, though that was still a few years away.

Postwar Los Angeles had everything: industry, agriculture, water, mountains, beaches, a climate that meant no more freezing in winter and slushing in spring. Postwar Detroit hadn’t yet started to make cars again, but Los Angeles had a transportation system called the best in the world, a modern trolley network spidering the city from San Pedro to San Fernando, from the beaches of Redondo and Santa Monica to the mansions of Pasadena and San Marino. And let’s not forget Hollywood, which cast its glamorous aura over everything. The movie industry settled in Los Angeles for the land and the weather. So did millions of postwar Americans.

If there was plenty for the citizenry to like, so was it for newspapers, which hit their stride as millions of new readers arrived in town. Like movies, newspapers need action and excitement to thrive. Unlike movies, they don’t make it up, but depend on the city to provide its own, preferably daily. Newspapers come in sections so there is something at breakfast for everyone. Page one is for the important news, stories about wars, catastrophes, murders. violence—things involving death. Over the years, District Attorney Barton Pitts had been a reliable source for page one stories, but Pitts had gone to prison. Elected with financial support from people he’d