Midnight Rain: A Detective Jack Dunning Novel Read Free

in Banning, where her father worked as a mining engineer for a drilling company. She got good grades and took ballet lessons in a little white tutu. The day after her parent’s funeral, a man posing as a distant relative showed up at her door. His name was Axel Teague. Angel was thirteen, just a kid. It never occurred to her to ask for credentials or question his veracity.
    By the time she was missed, she was hundreds of miles away in Santa Paulina. By then, she knew Teague’s plan for her future, which differed greatly from the one she and her parents had aspired to. An escape attempt ended in a concussion and broken arm. Teague said he’d kill her if she tried to escape again.
    Angel is happy at the Rexford with Jack. They belong together, two complex people with complicated histories. She can’t imagine being with anyone else…ever. The last cigarette in the pack is broken. As she tries piecing it together, there’s a knock at the door and she crumbles the tobacco into the ashtray.
    “Come on in, Albie,” she says, tightening the sash of her robe and setting her coffee cup on the table next to the chair.
    “Mornin’ Miss Angel.”
    “Morning, Albie.”
    Albie delivers the Santa Paulina Morning Sun, three cents a copy, a nickel on Sunday. He’s an enterprising little squirt with an engaging personality and ready smile. He’s smaller than most ten year olds, wears saggy overalls and a red cap with the bill turned sideways. He gives Angel the paper. She hands him an extra dime to bring her cigarettes from the machine.
    Albie is the closest thing the hotel has to room service. He can hustle up almost anything you need…a magazine…cigarettes…complimentary coffee from the lobby or take-out from the Memory Lights Café. He can steam a suit, press a shirt, shine shoes…anything except run numbers for Toots McGee out of the back room of the Tammany Hall Bar, although the offer is still on the table.
    Albie’s father, Jake Sherman, is head of the hotel janitorial and housekeeping staff. On Saturday nights he blows a mean sax at Smokey’s Barbecue Pit by the river. There was once a Mrs. Sherman, but she left town with a fancy-man in a sharkskin suit and an ace of diamonds in his hatband.
    Jake and Albie live in the furnace room, which isn’t as bad as it sounds. They have cots in an alcove beneath the ductwork, a bathroom and shower at one end of the basement and a communal laundry with clotheslines stretched across the ceiling. It’s warm in winter, cool in summer and it’s free. Those poor folks in the Hooverville on River Road would give anything to have it so good.
    Albie returns with cigarettes and Angel gives him a nickel tip to jingle in his pocket with the rest of his morning take.
    “Thank you, Miss Angel.”
    “You must be rich as Rockefeller,” she says, leaning down to straighten the collar of his shirt.
    “I got fifteen dollars in my coffee can.”
    “That’s a lot of money, Albie. Be sure you keep it in a safe place.”
    “Mr. Reese in 320 says if I loan him ten dollars, he’ll give me twelve when his ship comes in.”
    “Don’t you listen to that man, Albie. Mr. Reese’s ship went to the bottom in ’29. He gets any wise ideas about your money, he’ll have Jack to deal with.”
    “Yes, Ma’am. Jake wants me to bring all them flashlights up from the basement in case we lose power. You think it’s really going to get that bad?”
    “Better to be safe than sorry. Run along now so I can get dressed.”
    * * * *
    Around noon Angel goes downstairs wearing a beige raincoat and carrying her blue umbrella. In the lounge, men sit around the radio drinking their morning coffee, ashes growing long on their cigarettes as they lean close to the speaker.
    Cantor Nemschoff, with his long white beard, is looking more solemn than usual. “Shhh! Just listen,” he says, when Angel approaches. She takes a seat beside him. The voice on the radio belongs to Nathaniel Forsythe, the anchor of the daily