Chapter 34
It was not a date. Or at least Miranda did not think it was; it was only the second time she had met Dwayne John alone outside of work. That was all. Today’s meeting had been at his suggestion when he learned she was staying over with her Aunt and Uncle that weekend and that day she planned to take her first day’s paid leave since joining the Office of the Governor of California in Sacramento nearly three months ago.
The big man had been waiting on the kerb at Geary and Fillmore; he grinned broadly as he opened the door of the cab. Today he was hatless but otherwise immaculately suited and booted, handsomely preened and for the first time, almost but not quite relaxed in Miranda’s presence.
“There’s this diner on Sutter,” he suggested. “It’s not far…”
“That sounds fine,” Miranda smiled. They had shaken hands without thinking and now — perhaps, recollecting their first drug-befuddled encounter on the night of the October War — they exchanged self-conscious, mutually self-deprecatory grimaces and stifled uncomfortable spasms of amusement. “Are you staying in the city over the weekend?” She asked as they settled into an unhurried walking pace down Fillmore Street.
“I’ve become a member of the Third Baptist Church’s communion,” the man explained. “I still don’t know too many folks hereabouts. Reckon I ought to get to know the brothers and sisters better. There’s an NAACP rally in Union Square tomorrow afternoon.”
The man was several inches taller than Miranda, six feet four if he was an inch. She knew that a willowy blond and a towering young black man would attract a lot of odd glances, even here in the Fillmore District. Strangely, she did not care.
At the diner they sat in a window alcove, and gazed at the traffic and passersby on Sutter Street. Outside it had been a cold, bright day. In the diner it was warm, quietly noisy with the background of voices, the clatter of crockery and orders being called.
Dwayne John had very brown eyes she noticed. Brown eyes, the inch-long nick of an old scar half-in, half-out of his left eyebrow and hands with fingers that seemed far too long and delicate given that the rest of his physique was custom made for a career as a heavyweight boxer. Idly, she wondered what little things the man was beginning to notice about her?
“I can’t face Darlene,” her companion confessed softly.
Miranda had only met Dwayne John’s former girlfriend three times; once when they were both on drugs at Johnny Seiffert’s house on Haight Street on the night of the October War, once at the FBI safe house in Berkeley, and earlier that week after the first meeting of the nascent California Civil Rights Forum at the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco.
That encounter with Darlene Lefebure had been a horribly uncomfortable affair mediated by her Aunt Molly; a classic case of the road to perdition often being paved with good intentions. Darlene had been painfully uncommunicative, torn. Although she was grateful for being taken in by Miranda’s aunt and uncle, and aware that Miranda had done what little she could to help her when she was under FBI supervision, Miranda remained the person she still — at some level — held accountable for ‘stealing her boyfriend’. Miranda had done no such thing of course, but she saw exactly where the slightly younger woman was coming from.
Miranda planned to give her brother Gregory a ring that evening, perhaps he could put her up in his apartment in Sausalito tonight; she would have to make a flying stop at Nob Hill to collect a few of the things from her room at her aunt and uncle’s house — that would be awkward — but nowhere near as awkward as sleeping under the same roof of Darlene Lefebure.
“Have you actually spoken to Darlene, Dwayne?”
The man stared into his coffee cup.
“No. I know I ought to but,” he shrugged his massive shoulders, “heck, what would I say?”
Miranda thought about it.
“Sorry works for most girls?”
The man’s teeth flashed white for a moment as he smiled. He could not help himself smiling.
“Darlene looked really good,” Miranda said aimlessly. “I think Aunt Molly is mothering her to death.”
There was a faraway look in the black man’s eyes.
“What?” Miranda demanded.
“Nothing.”
The woman inclined her face and gave him a quizzical look which knifed through his composure.
“Honestly and truly,” he explained, “every time I come out to the West Coast it’s like coming to another country. It’s hard to explain but it makes me giddy sometimes and I don’t know who I am anymore.” He raised his cup to his lips, decided not to drink, put it down again. “Some places back in Alabama and Mississippi I could get lynched for sitting down in a public place and passing the time with a white woman. Here, well, people look at you sometimes, black and white, but heck, out here at least a man knows most everybody else thinks he’s a human being!”
“Most everybody,” she agreed.
The first time they had met she had had long windblown hair, dressed in kaftans and sandals and she had been to all intents, somebody else. Today her hair was clipped short, almost like a man’s, and she was dressed soberly in dark slacks, and a plain blouse beneath a tailored jacket. Although her outfit had not been designed to minimise her bust and her curves that was exactly the effect it had. Sex kitten to ultra-respectable nine-to-five working woman in a little over a year. Neither of them was the person they were before the war; it was precisely the thing they recognized in the other and possibly, the thing that was drawing them together.
“You and Darlene should sort things out,” Miranda decided, steering the conversation back onto its previous course. It was hopeless and she was tired of the pretence. She had to level with the man. “Look,” she explained, her face suddenly full of the sort of trouble she normally hid from everybody except her Aunt Molly. “After you rang me in Sacramento yesterday and we agreed to meet up again, I got a visit from an attorney.”
Dwayne John had no idea where this was going except that he instinctively knew it was not going towards a good place.
“Yeah…”
“A guy I used to know is in jail in San Bernardino on a murder rap.”
“Okay…”
Miranda launched into the whole story.
How she had fallen out with Sam Brenckmann and talked Johnny Seiffert into signing him up to tour the North West in the middle of winter; out of pure undiluted spite. How she had thought Sam was dead until recently; only to discover he was making a name for himself in the clubs of Los Angeles and his girlfriend was pregnant, the deadly fire at The Troubadour and the way the LAPD had framed him and the owner of the club at the instigation of none other than Johnny Seiffert.
She was breathless by the time she finished and she knew she had garbled parts of the story, totally baffling Dwayne John who badly wanted to know how he could help her.
“You found out about Sam being alive because of the Navy?”
Miranda realized she had missed out huge chunks of the narrative.
“Yes. When Admiral Braithwaite and his wife were murdered in Oakland the local PD screwed up and the Navy wanted to know what was going on. I was the one who got to liaise with the Navy at Alameda; and the guy on their side turned out to be Sam’s brother. Which was weird because when I met him he didn’t look at all like Sam. But anyway, the guy at Alameda really was Sam’s brother and that’s how I found out he was still alive and about the girlfriend in Laurel Canyon and the baby. Walter, Sam’s brother is called Walter. A regular guy, actually. He was hardly fazed at all when we got to the FBI safe house in Berkeley and Darlene and I recognized each other!”