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

in his words or his demeanor. She believed everything he said, just as she had in the courtroom. It would all be in her book.

Milstein laid his hand on Callender’s arm. “First there must be an understanding,” the lawyer said. “My client has a record of good behavior at Folsom. If he helps you solve the vicious murder of Pat Murphy, it must be recognized.”

“No, no,” cried Callender, loud enough to attract attention of the guards circulating in the yard. “A thousand times, no! I seek no favor, no deal. I do what any righteous citizen would do. The Reverend Willie Mull expects no less.”

Chapter 28

A string quartet played Bach. A pretty cellist in white satin, golden locks cascading down over bare shoulders and soft undulating breasts, lost herself in the arco movement of the bow. She’d played wedding receptions before, though never in the Embassy Ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel, sometime home to Freddy Martin’s orchestra, which most evenings played down the hallway in the Coconut Grove. Howard Hughes had come and brought some aircraft friends and a few more from Hollywood. Since Sister Angie was officiating, Miss Adelaide Nevin had led her Sunday column with the wedding, and Angie’s presence at the reception meant that the broad lawns reaching to Wilshire Boulevard would be teeming with Soldiers for God, though only a select few had any chance of making it to the ballroom. The chapel wedding had been intimate, but 225 invitations went out for the Ambassador reception, which meant twice that many would show up. Freddy Martin didn’t do weddings anymore, but the string quartet would be replaced by Lester Lanin for dancing. Forty tables surrounded the dance floor, the main tables with name cards carefully placed by Maggie herself.

The ceremony had been perfect, though through it all she found herself thinking of her first one. Was it Paris, or do all brides do that the second time? She thanked Cal once again for walking beside her. She seated him next to Angie at the main table. She didn’t know much about them, Cal was too much the gentleman for that, but knew there was something. She saw it in his eyes. Angie had taken his hand at the chapel and held onto it. How odd it must be, she thought, with the ghost of Willie hovering. The main table also included her and Terry, her new husband; Nelly and a samba specialist named Marco; Howard and a ravishing Latin thing named Gabriela who smelled of coconuts and wore pink plumeria in her hair. The fifth couple was Lizzie and Joe.

Cal had been initially puzzled by Maggie’s interest in Terry Heyward, an amiable, red-haired flier in the Hughes mold who at first seemed totally outclassed by his bride. Thinking more on it, he realized that all the men in Maggie’s life, at least the ones he’d known, had been similar types: dashing, dominant, high-risk fliers. Maggie was cut from the same mold, though softened by her femininity and sad first marriage. Hughes was the most interesting of her beaux, but she’d been smart enough to end their wartime affair. Paired, type A’s reduce their chances of survival exponentially, something to do with the multiplication theorem of probability. Terry would be smart to stay out of planes with her. You could see the respect Howard had for him. Howard held all the speed records, but had never shot down a Jap Zero.

Cal had not seen Angie for a while, had not desired to return to the temple. She was in the news more than ever, adding to her notoriety by taking the Church of the New Gospel on the road each year. She’d played the Cow Palace in San Francisco and gone into the Central Valley to preach to farm immigrants who didn’t have a radio to hear her and wouldn’t have understood if they had. She moved from place to place with truckloads of equipment, setting up her tent like a traveling circus. In Salinas the tent went up in the Spreckels’ fields, which once had been Tesoro. The New York Times put her on page one when she preached at Madison Square Garden during the war. She’d met Eleanor Roosevelt on that trip.

Before the wedding, Angie took him on a tour of the temple, which was showing some wear since his days on the second floor. She was also showing some wear, but it only added to her allure. She could have had the facial scars removed, but preferred wearing them as her badge of honor, as a duelist wears his. She’d kept her figure, as he saw when she emerged from the vestry after changing from white robes into in a clingy black frock for the reception. He remembered their first time alone together, at the Brown Derby, when he realized there were two Angies. He wondered if there were men in her life, which would not be easy given her celebrity. She was never far from his mind, but was he ready to compete with Jesus? Or with his father? They’d chatted on the ride over. She lived in Los Feliz, in the foothills above Sunset, invited him to come over some time. He told her about visiting Folsom. Gil had come up once for parole, and she’d written to oppose it, reminding the board of his courtroom threats.

In setting up the main table, Maggie consulted no one. Of course, she included Howard, not thinking that he and Joe Morton might already be acquainted. Hughes’s Hollywood career was long on big hits and big flops, but two constants were his insistence on total control of his movies and his rejection of anything left wing. He would not employ union workers, which was a problem because postwar Hollywood was heavily unionized. For his part, Joe had marched in a few picket lines and never crossed one. His sympathies were hard to miss in his latest film, The Brotherhood of Man, panned by