Devil’s garden

15

The Arbuckle mansion door was wide-open and Sam followed the hall to a great room with wide, buffed plank floors, a big bank of windows, and not a stick of furniture. Roscoe sat on the floor in a square of sunlight shining in from high windows and watched as his dog Luke walked from bush to bush, marking his territory. He sat like a sullen child on his butt, with his legs spread, holding a cigarette in his fingers and barely noting the two entering the room. He wore fine tweed trousers and shoes with silk socks.

His red suspenders hung over his bare, meaty torso.

“Mr. Arbuckle?”

He turned.

“I work for Mr. Dominguez.”

“I guess you haven’t heard.”

“Heard what?”

“You’ll hear it.”

“I’d like a second.”

“Who’s the skirt?”

“This is Miss Simpkins. She’s a dry agent.”

“And you brought her here?”

“She’s not interested in you,” Sam said.

“That’s a switch,” Roscoe said.

“She’s looking for a man named Jack Lawrence who delivered liquor to the party.”

“Don’t know him.”

Sam raised his eyebrows and Daisy opened a pair of French doors out onto a large patio. She tugged away a baseball from Luke and pitched it far off into a blanket of freshly cut green grass.

“She’s okay,” Sam said.

“I’ll say.”

“I’m having a tough time running down folks who knew the Rappe girl,” Sam said. “I understand you knew her when she worked at Sennett’s. But the only person I can find who knew her is Henry Lehrman. I guess you worked with him?”

“He used to direct some of my pictures,” Roscoe said, still sitting in the same childlike pose. “We used to call him Pathé. Like the French picture company. The rumor was that he’d told DeMille that he’d worked for them in Paris. It was all a bunch of hooey, but the name stuck. He’s an arrogant bastard. Have you read the letter he wrote about me? He called me a goddamn beast and said he wanted to kill me. He knew I didn’t do a thing to Virginia. He knows I’m not that kind of fella.”

“Tell me about the girl.”

“Listen,” Roscoe said, pointing the end of a half-smoked cigarette for emphasis, “I’ve been over this ten thousand times with Frank. I met her a few times, knew her when she was with Lehrman. She was cute. A lot of fun. When she showed up at the St. Francis, I hadn’t seen her for years. I barely remembered her name. I was in the shower, and when I came out-”

Sam held up his hand and shook his head. “I don’t need that part. Just who would know the girl?”

Roscoe smoked some more and thought. He wobbled as he tried to get to his feet and then wandered out of the room, and Sam heard water running and then a commode flush and for a second thought about showing himself out. But soon Roscoe was back and asked if Sam would like some coffee because the coffeepot was about the only thing he had left.

“That and a skillet.”

“What about friends outside Lehrman?”

“Hold on,” Roscoe said and walked to the foot of an endless oak banister to the second floor and yelled up for Minty. Minta Durfee appeared at the top of the landing and asked what he wanted, and he told her about Sam, and she said she’d be down in a minute.

“Can you believe she came all the way from New York for me? Have you met her ma? She’s a peach.”

Sam sat at a small, wobbly table that was dwarfed by the size of the kitchen. The four chairs that surrounded it were crude and mismatched and looked as if they’d been picked up at a rummage sale.

Minta came into the kitchen wearing a flowing red robe and a kerchief on her head. She smiled at Sam and said it was nice to see a familiar face and then poured him a cup of coffee to go with his cigarette. All of them sat at the little table.

Outside the window, they could see Daisy playing with Luke.

“Who’s the skirt?” Minta asked.

Roscoe laughed. They drank their coffee and made idle talk for a while, and then the subject rolled back to Virginia Rappe.

“I was gone by then,” Minta said. “Have you talked to Mabel?”

“Minta and Mabel,” Roscoe said. “My girls.”

“I was headed there this afternoon,” Sam said. “Are you sure she’ll talk to me?”

“Sure thing,” Minta said. “She’ll like you. You’re a handsome fella, Sam.” Sam smiled at her.

Roscoe smoked and made a puzzled smile. He snapped his fingers and leaned into the table. “Say, I know you from somewhere. You ever spent time in Bisbee?”

“Nope.”

“But I know you. I’m not crazy. Sometimes it comes to me, people I’ve met. I may not have even spoken to them, but I remember a face.”

“The Palace Hotel,” Sam said. “Last week.”

Roscoe looked at him.

“You should really put on a shirt, Roscoe,” Minta said.

“Did Frank introduce us?”

“I was sitting in the lobby in a chair reading a paper. You stepped off the elevators and spotted me right off.”

“Did I say something?”

“No, but you gave me a look that coulda melted paint.”

“I suppose I took you for a newsboy. You look like a writer.”

“No such luck,” Sam said. “I only made it to eighth grade.”

“Self-made man,” Roscoe said. “How ’bout a drink?”

“Are you kidding?” Sam asked. “That’s the toughest, meanest dry agent in the state of California out there playing with your dog.”

“She’s got a hell of a figure,” Minta said. “She with you?”

Sam felt his face heat but he managed a smile. “I suppose one drink. You wouldn’t happen to have Scotch?”

ROSCOE WAS DRUNK and two hours late for his meeting with Al Zukor. But he was clean-shaven and showered and smelling sweet as he stepped into the dimly lit room at Musso & Frank’s and straightened his tie. The bourbon had given him kind of a loose, resolved dignity, as it seemed to him-maybe he only imagined-that all voices fell silent, forks stopped scraping on plates, and the clink of glasses had all but ceased. In his standard corner was little Mr. Zukor in a high red leather booth, and the little white-headed man stood and smiled and waved Roscoe over. Roscoe knew that being seen in public with an outcast truly pained Al, but it was all show business, and being given a good handshake by Al Zukor in Musso & Frank’s was rock-solid.

He made his way through the maze of tables following the same little maître d’ that was always there but whose name Roscoe could never remember. And he’d about made it to that back booth when he spotted Broncho Billy at a side table over candlelight, guffawing it up with a couple tarts in sequins and hats that looked as if they were made with dead squirrels, and so Roscoe waved over to Mr. Zukor and stumbled up to Broncho Billy and asked him with great sincerity, as he-Roscoe-straightened his diamond cuff links, where the two broads killed that squirrel.

Broncho Billy stopped the guffawing and stood, slipped his pearl Stetson back on his head, and shifted his gunless belt on his waist. He stood toe to toe with Roscoe, and Roscoe looked at the little man with the big nose and bigger ears. Billy sucked a tooth, trying to figure out what to say.

“You have a good time in Frisco?” Roscoe asked.

“Someone has to make the picture business clean.”

“If you keep hanging out with broads like that, your pecker is gonna turn green.”

Little Mr. Zukor inserted himself between Billy and Roscoe and smiled, sweet and calming, but tough, too. Because even though Mr. Zukor was a pint-sized little bastard who used to sell furs on street corners, he was a hard-edged son of a bitch that no one in their right mind wanted to cross if they ever wanted to step foot on a picture lot again.

“Our table.”

Roscoe followed and squeezed into the booth. Every bastard and bitch in the restaurant craned their necks to get a good look at the zoo animal. Roscoe rubbed his face and straightened the cuffs of his shirt under his pressed suit jacket. He took a deep breath as a waiter laid a napkin in his lap and handed him the menu.

“How ’bout a fucking drink?” Roscoe said.

Mr. Zukor made a face, as if Roscoe had just dropped a turd on the table, and sent away the waiter with a flick of the hand.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“I’d like a drink.”

“Not here,” Mr. Zukor said. “Not like this.”

Roscoe shrugged. “I’m plastered anyway. So what’s the difference?” “That’s a spiffy suit you got there, Roscoe.”

“Bought it in Frisco,” Roscoe said. “Labor Day. You might’ve heard about a little party I threw. I crushed some woman while I was giving her a solid lay.”

“Please keep your voice down.”

“These people are cannibals,” Roscoe said. “They’ll eat your flesh from your bone.”

“It’s a tough business.”

Roscoe leaned back into the comfort of the leather booth and lit a cigarette with a gold tip. He removed a spot of tobacco from his tongue and met the stare of a beautiful woman across the way. When she matched eyes with him, she turned her head.

“Let’s talk about Frank Dominguez,” Zukor said.

“What’s to talk about? You fired him.”

“I didn’t fire him. I discussed your trial with him. We’ll need the best.”

“Frank is the best.”

“Frank is your drinking buddy, the guy you play poker with when you’re feeling lonesome. Not the best, Roscoe. Maybe down here, but not up there.”

“So you want this McNab fella? Who’s he?”

“The best defense attorney we can buy.”

“I didn’t do this, Al. I did not touch that girl and they got no one to say I did.”

“Sometimes men become a target for hate. When I was a kid, people used to say they were cursed. You’re a cursed fella right now. But a fella I got a lot of dough wrapped up in.”

“The checks have stopped.”

“They’ll resume after the trial. I have investors worried.”

“What if I’m guilty?”

“I don’t think it will come to that.”

“How many cities have banned my pictures? How many?”

“Let’s eat, Roscoe. Just like we used to. Let’s laugh and remember old songs. Okay, friend?”

“I’d like to walk right over to that Broncho Billy and piss in his drink.”

“I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”

“I don’t want you to fire Frank,” Roscoe said. The words sounded slurred, but he goddamn well meant them. “Okay?”

“He’s not fired,” Al said, spreading his hands wide, pleading. “He served you well during all that preliminary mumbo jumbo.”

“I need him.”

“You’ll be fine,” Al said. “McNab is just a little, um, insurance.”

Roscoe looked across the room at all the laughing and talking starting up again. The people had stopped staring. In fact they weren’t looking at Roscoe at all. Even when his eyes would meet another’s, it was as if he was invisible, or, worse, just another Joe.

Roscoe pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to breathe. His face felt hot and moist, and he just stared at the blue of the linen-covered table. Tears dropped one after another and he wiped them away before looking up again.

He felt Al’s small hand rubbing circles on his back and again sending away the waiter, telling him to just give them a minute.

“Mein Kind,” Mr. Zukor said.

“Why does everyone leave me?” Roscoe said, saying it as a question for himself. “Why do they do that?”

IT WAS MIDNIGHT, and Sam rode with Daisy way the hell out of town on Wilshire to the Ambassador Hotel and the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. Long after she’d killed the machine’s engine, they sat there in the front seat of the open cab and watched a long line of Kissels and Kings and Nashes and Hayneses wheeling up to those carved wooden doors where the crowd walked up the red carpet and was swallowed into the great mouth of the pulsing shell, jazz floating out on the warm wind.

“So how do we know who’s Lawrence?” Sam asked.

“I know a fella who knows a fella.”

“And that fella’s gonna give you the nod.”

“Right.”

“Shouldn’t we go inside?”

“You’re a puzzle, Pinkerton.”

“How so?”

“You’re a lunger, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“Still running down dank alleys and climbing fire escapes and beating the truth out of stoolies.”

“I don’t run so much.”

“And you wear a ring.”

“I do.”

“And you have a wife.”

“She goes with the ring.”

“Children?”

“One on the way.”

Daisy nodded, both hands placed on the wooden steering wheel, watching the line of cars move in a slow, delicate dance like the mechanical turn of a carousel. There was the opening of the car door, a hand for the lady, and the slick greasing of the palm. Sam rubbed his jaw, finding himself thirsty, and balanced his hat on his knee. He looked over at Daisy, in her silk dress and soft turban, clenching that tight little jaw. She’d changed into a dress with a fur collar and the warm wind made the fur ruffle as if it were alive.

“How ’bout you?” Sam asked.

Daisy kept watching the door and the carousel movement, and Sam noted that she saw it all in the exact same way. “How ’bout let’s have a drink?”

“Don’t you find that hypocritical?” he asked.

“I call it an agent’s job to not make themselves known. Hell, it’s in the manual.”

“Dry agents come with a manual?”

“On some things.”

“And the rest?”

“The rest is all intuition, Pinkerton. Don’t you ever find yourself in a situation that ain’t according to Hoyle and you have to just use the noodle?”

The Cocoanut Grove was a big bubble of jazz and smoke and cocktails and laughter. Stars twinkled in a plaster-domed sky. There were twenty-foot palm trees that looked so real, Sam had to reach out and touch them to check his eyes-a woman at the bar said they’d been brought straight from the set of The Sheik. Fat paper lanterns hung from the drooping fronds and brightly colored tents had been set up all over the nightclub, where people smoked and laughed, walking in and out of silky floating curtains like a hazy, smoky dream. Women lounged on large pillows and danced on tables, a paper moon going down over a painted lake far on the wall, a horizon that made you feel unsteady, almost as if you could drown yourself in it if you stared long enough. And there was Daisy at a bar with a bartender dressed as a sultan, and Sam watched the drape of her hair down the reach of her long neck and the elegant placement of her thin arms across the bar, and she turned to Sam and smiled with that red mouth.

And Sam smiled back.

A mass of people separated them, but Sam could see through them to Daisy, the way your eyes can make out shapes and patterns of trees and roads through the fog. There was laughter and dancing and jazz and the sound of a trumpet.

He walked toward her.

Daisy put her finger to her nose and sloughed it off, turning to a skinny fella in a black suit bopping his way though the party. Sam could not see the man’s face but noted the way his shoulder blades cut up into the material of his jacket and the long droop of the neck. He walked with speed-deliberate yet loose and disjointed.

Sam followed him out onto the hill and then lost him in the mass of a hundred machines, finding him again as he piled into a Studebaker Big Six, Sam knowing it was a Studebaker by the insignia as it shot past close enough to feel the engine’s heat on his face.

When he turned, there was the Hupmobile idling next to him.

“Do I need to spell it out for you?” Daisy asked.