Devil’s garden

12

Sam walked with Dominguez up Kearny Street away from the Palace Hotel and toward the Hall of Justice. It was the second Monday since the Arbuckle party and the third day with Judge Lazarus and police court, and Frank Dominguez said he wouldn’t bet heads or tails which way the judge was leaning. The fog had burned off in the early-morning heat and Sam got a nice breath going, trying to pace out his answers so as not to sound winded to the fat attorney. He wore tweed pants and a tweed vest with a white shirt Jose had boiled for him, a cap and laced boots.

“How solid is your information?” Dominguez asked.

“Solid.”

“You want to tell me where you got it?”

“I’d rather not,” Sam said. “If it’s all the same with you.”

“U’Ren and Brady are putting up three docs today,” Dominguez said, not winded a bit, taking the hill, the talk, and a big cigar in easy stride. “All three will testify that the girl’s bladder burst from external force.”

“Rumwell?”

“Not Rumwell,” Dominguez said. “One doc who performed the autopsy with Rumwell at Wakefield, one fella, a Dr. Strange, who performed the second autopsy for the county, and a doctor who treated her at the St. Francis.”

“What does the county man say?”

“I haven’t seen his official report yet,” Dominguez said. “I was told it was still being typed up and I’d have ample time to question the man in court.”

“For some reason, I don’t think Brady is going to bring up the missing parts.”

“And I don’t want to look like a fool for asking unless we’re sure.”

“We’re sure,” Sam said.

Bankers, lawyers, and businessmen of all types flowed down the hill, walking past Dominguez and Sam in their buttoned-up coats and waxed mustaches, heavy leather satchels in hand. Two streetcars passed each other on Kearny, electricity sparking off the wires.

“Think this could be enough to throw out the case?” Sam asked.

Dominguez puffed on his cigar, lengthening his strides, cresting the hill at Portsmouth Square. A crowd had gathered on the front steps of the Halls of Justice. Dominguez clicked open a gold timepiece that hung on his waist.

“I don’t believe we’ll get a murder indictment,” Dominguez said. “I think that Lazarus will rubber-stamp the grand jury decision for manslaughter. Probably tomorrow.”

“And we prepare for real court.”

Dominguez puffed more on the cigar and squinted his eyes in the smoke.

“I’ll need you to go to Los Angeles,” Dominguez said. “Miss Durfee spoke to you about what she learned in Chicago about the girl?”

“Some,” Sam said. “But I can’t leave the city. My wife’s about to burst in a week or two. Really, anytime.”

“I can make sure you’re compensated, Sam. A new family needs money.”

“We have operatives in Los Angeles.”

“And they haven’t found a scrap on that girl.”

Sam put his hands in his pockets.

Dominguez crushed the last bit of his cigar under his shoe. He watched the dark mass of Vigilant women growing in a great black curtain on the steps.

“You understand what we’d need?”

“I do,” Sam said.

“Sam, you’re not looking at me.”

“It’s not my favorite type of work.”

“We wouldn’t have long,” Dominguez said. “Weeks at most. I don’t want any more time for Roscoe to get crucified in the papers.”

Sam watched a woman unload sandwiches and a teakettle from a large wicker basket. Another woman brought her own chair, placing it at the foot of the great steps and knitting away with giant, sharp silver needles.

“When’s the Delmont broad up?”

“She was supposed to go first,” Dominguez said.

“Make any sense that U’Ren would keep the woman who swore out the complaint, their main witness, off the stand?”

“No,” Dominguez said. “No, it does not.”

Dominguez walked toward court, turning back a few steps later, and yelled, “Talk to your wife, Sam.”

MAUDE DELMONT let reporters into her room on the fifth floor of the Palace Hotel earlier that morning and held court all the way through breakfast. She sat on the bed, fully clothed, but rested her head back like an invalid and stared at a ceiling fan while she spun wild stories about Virginia Rappe and their enduring friendship, a friendship Maude said lasted even into death. When the questions became too personal, too detailed, Maude would only have to stretch her forearm across her head and say she’d grown tired and the newspapermen would ease off, taking a few of the scraps she’d fed them.

“We met at the Million Dollar Theater,” Maude said.

They’d met in Al Semnacher’s living room, parceling out a bottle of laudanum and taking disgusting turns with Al.

“I had never seen her touch alcohol until the Arbuckle party.”

In the three weeks Maude had known her, the girl always had a stomach full of gin and an arm full of heroin. She liked cocaine. Sex was as easy as wiping her nose.

“We often went to church,” Maude said. “She was little but had the most lovely, strong voice.”

The girl was ripe, full of curves and solid meat, and couldn’t have found a church in Los Angeles with a road map.

“Will you make her funeral?” a newsman asked.

Maude sadly shook her head, standing from the bed, grabbing the now-trademark black hat and veil, readying for court.

“I can’t,” Maude said. “Her former fiancé, Mr. Lehrman, is taking care of the arrangements. I’m needed here to set the truth straight.”

“Did he kill her?”

“I only know what the poor girl told me only moments after her encounter,” she said. “I can only imagine the horror of what that blubber must have been like. Please, I must be alone. I can’t breathe.”

Maude had scurried the boys out, picking up a pint of whiskey one had left her for her nerves and taking a swig before closing the door. But a big old foot clogged the way. She asked, What gives?, and the door was pushed forward by the bigheaded cop, Reagan, with his partner with the red curly hair behind him, Kennedy.

“Hey, boys.”

“Mrs. Delmont,” Reagan said.

“Take your hats?” she asked. “I’ll be ready in a jiff.”

The boys looked to each other, like a couple steers eyeing the same heifer.

She watched herself in the beveled mirror as she pulled on the hat and slanted it just so. She could see the men standing side by side behind her, in their dark blue suits and serious faces.

“You two have something to say?”

“Captain Matheson would like to talk to you.”

“But I’m due in court,” she said. “Did you talk to Judge Brady about this?”

“He knows,” Griff Kennedy said.

“Does this have something to do with what that fool Al Semnacher said about me?”

“No, ma’am,” Tom said. “We’ll ride down with you. We have a man holding the elevator.”

Maude stood a good two feet below both of the detectives and looked back and forth to each one’s face before launching into a smile. She let her eyes linger on them.

Nothing.

“Oh, well,” she said. “Let’s go.”

A little bald man wearing a red coat across his sagging shoulders held the elevator door and rolled the caged door in front of them. He turned the key and the elevator rumbled to life, floating and bumping, floating and bumping, down the shaft.

“We’re going to be late,” Maude Delmont said. “I hope you two fools know that.”

She watched the floors slide by the door, keeping her eyes on the needle pointing down toward the lobby.

“Mrs. Delmont, have you spent much time in Madera County?” Detective Reagan asked behind her.

Maude Delmont kept her eyes forward, letting the elevator slow to a stop and the gated door open. Without a word, she walked ahead of them.

“SO ARBUCKLE is A FREE MAN?” Mr. Hearst asked.

“Yes, sir,” said the young reporter.

“You saw him walk out of jail?”

“Yes, sir. Bail was five thousand.”

“Did he smile?”

“He grinned.”

“That’s a smile.”

The big black locomotive steamed south from San Francisco to Los Angeles, the young reporter still looking uneasy from when Hearst asked him on the journey, still worried about making the morning edition. The young man sat across from Hearst, afraid to touch the plate of food that George had carried from the kitchen, the roast beef and potatoes growing cold on the gilded china.

“Do you think he deserved to be tried with more than manslaughter?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Hearst sliced into the roast beef, adding a touch of mashed potatoes on the fork. The gravy was creamy and bloody, fresh green beans on the side. He asked George to pour more wine and looked out at the flat, barren northern California countryside as they sped along, the occasional whistle blowing from the engineer.

“When should we expect a trial?”

“In a month or so.”

“What else do we have for the afternoon?”

“The disarmament conference begins in a few weeks. The Tong War continues in Chinatown. Mollie Merrick has a piece on the high rate of college coeds never marrying.”

“I mean on Arbuckle.”

“They bury the girl tomorrow in Hollywood. I’ve brought you the story of her viewing from the wire.”

Hearst set it by his elbow and scanned the story, George refilling his wineglass. The young reporter nervously checked his wristwatch, wanting more than anything to be away from the man the newsboys called The Chief and off his goddamn train.

8,000 AT L.A. VIEW BODY OF VIRGINIA RAPPE. Eight thousand persons-gray-headed matrons with their daughters, men in overalls who stood hat in hand, and schoolgirls with braided hair down their backs-all inspired by love, friendship, or morbid curiosity, viewed the body of Virginia Rappe, beautiful motion picture actress, as it lay in state between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the undertaking establishment of Strother and Drayton in Hollywood today.

Draped in a white satin shroud, with flowers in her hands, the body of the girl, central figure of the tragedy which startled the country last week, looked extremely lifelike and natural. The casket was banked high with flowers, including the 1,000 tiger lilies ordered by Miss Rappe’s fiancé, Henry Lehrman, from New York, and across it was a white satin ribbon and in gold letters this: To my grave sweetheart.-From Henry.

Hearst closed the folder over the story and looked across the table at the young reporter fidgeting.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Sorry. I’m a little nervous.”

“Of what?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“At least drink your wine,” Hearst said, downing the rest of his. “I never trust a newspaperman who doesn’t drink. Shows me he doesn’t have ink in his blood.”

He smiled, watching the reporter down the glass.

“I want Arbuckle smiling up high. I want you to show his cockiness and aloofness from the judge’s decision. What was the first thing he did when released?”

“Got a shave, sir.”

“A shave. From whom?”

“A neighborhood barber offered him one for free.”

“Set it up with the smile, walking out a free man for now, and then the smugness of getting a shave and a big meal at the Palace Hotel. He did have a big meal, I assume.”

“I can find out.”

“He’s not concerned about the girl at all. She’s dead, lying cold in a mortuary with her adoring fans swarming over her, and Arbuckle just wants to stuff himself to satisfy his mammoth appetites.”

The engineer blew the locomotive’s whistle again, and soon hovels slapped together from scrap wood and tin showed in the long coach windows. A fat Mexican woman cooked meat on an open stove, dirty children playing by her feet, a skinny baby on her bosom. Coolies hefted boxes from the backs of wagons and trucks to the train platform, and soon the locomotive slowed and drew to a long, steady stop.

The only sound in the cabin came from the hissing of the engine as the train took on more water and wood.

“You can go,” Hearst said. “Take the story on the girl.”

“Here?”

“Another train will come through,” Hearst said. “If not, just write your story and have it cabled to the office.”

The reporter stood and grabbed his coat and hat and nervously shook The Chief’s hand and walked back through the coach, George already holding the door open and then shutting it with a tight pop.

“Odd little fellow,” George said.

“They all are.”

“Are you okay, Mr. Hearst?”

“I’m fine. I’m fine.”

Hearst stood and watched as George cleared the china plates from the table. The coolies and Mexes looked up from their work at the strange black train pulling only two coaches. Hearst waved at them, and made his way back to the bath, shutting the door and locking it behind him, splashing water on his face and trying to steady himself from the nausea.

There had been a picture attached to the wire story on the girl’s burial. He had decided it was too much, the Rappe girl, with her insides cleaned out and sewn back whole, photographed in her Sunday best and covered with that goddamn white veil, a sweet smile upon her dead lips. Hearst ran cold water and wiped his giant eyes with a moist towel.

But his legs gave out and soon the big man was on his knees, hands wrapped around the brass commode and vomiting out the roast beef and potatoes, George knocking on the door.

Hearst yelled back that he was fine and to fetch some ice water.

Hearst, still on his knees, steadied himself. The image of the girl would not shake free of his mind. When he saw the girl’s face, it wasn’t the Rappe girl but Marion, pennies covering her eyes.

He felt feverish as he stood and tried to calm himself.

THE CAPTAIN OF DETECTIVES, Duncan Matheson, was an odd-looking duck, thought Maude Delmont. Odd because he looked so much like a policemen that she figured him to be a stock player in Hollywood. He wore one of those thick, waxed mustaches and smoked a pipe while he interviewed her in his little partitioned office made of pebbled glass and oak. His eyes were as black as coal, and he would ask questions as if they were statements and Maude didn’t know whether to answer, nod her head, or call him a liar.

“You’ve been married for a year or so.”

She decided to nod.

“To a Mr. Woods of Madera.”

She nodded again.

“Are you aware that Mr. Woods has been searching for you for months now and only knew you were in the city when he picked up a newspaper?”

She shook her head. It called for a shake.

“Are you in the process of divorce?”

“No, sir.”

“Mr. Woods has complained you left him without explanation.”

Maude’s throat felt dry and cracked. She had started to sweat. She never sweated. She almost closed her eyes, waiting for Captain Matheson to ask her all about the bonds and cash she stole from Cassius Clay Woods’s safe.

She held her breath and dropped her head into her waiting fingertips.

“I can explain,” she said. “Please. This has all been so traumatic.”

Captain Matheson stood. He was a great deal shorter than he looked sitting behind the desk and appeared downright minuscule as he passed Detectives Kennedy and Reagan, who stood against a brick wall lined with photos and fancy inked documents.

“I don’t want to meddle in your affairs,” Matheson said. “I was just asked to pass on this news and ask you to call your husband. I think he’ll understand the trauma you have been through. And no matter what else, a woman needs a husband to make sense of things.”

Maude nodded and said, “Of course.”

She stood. But Captain Matheson held up his hand, asking her to sit back down. He refilled his pipe and sat on the edge of his desk. He got the pipe going with a set of matches and stared at her, evaluating her for several moments before blowing out a big mouthful of cherry-scented smoke and nodding to himself as if arriving at a decision.

“You drove up here with Mr. Semnacher.”

“Yes.”

“Are you and Semnacher intimate?”

Maude put her hand to her mouth.

Matheson waved away the worry on her face. “Do I look like a goddamn minister? I just said you need your husband now because I think that Semnacher fellow is a menace.”

“He is.”

“You don’t care for him anymore.”

“We were friends. Not now.”

Matheson looked back to Reagan and Kennedy and then back at Maude. “We understand that you and Mr. Semnacher had adjoining rooms at the Palace Hotel before this Arbuckle fiasco.”

“I stayed in the room with Miss Rappe.”

“You never opened the door that separated you.”

Maude took a breath, took off her hat, and floated it onto a free chair. She stood up and pressed out the wrinkles in her dress, feeling the cool air coming off the desk fan. She smiled and looked at the little man. “Put it this way, Semnacher stuck me with the bill.”

Maude made a big show of plunging her thumb back to her breastbone.

“So you wouldn’t try and hide his whereabouts.”

“He took off?”

“He was due back in court yesterday. That’s why police court broke up early.”

Maude laughed, a little giggle at first but spilling over into a gut buster, then she sat back down and asked Griff-really calling Detective Kennedy “Griff ”-for a cup of joe and a cigarette.

“I wouldn’t hide that sorry ape if he was my own brother.”

“He hadn’t checked out of the hotel.”

“Come again?”

“He left his possessions,” Matheson said, drawing on the pipe and then speaking with smoke coming out from his mouth. “The front desk said he checked messages two days ago, tipped a doorman, and walked away. His Stutz is still parked at the tunnel garage.”