Devil’s garden

21

The Old Man poured Sam a drink, glasses were raised, and a toast was proposed for bringing Alice Blake back to the city. The drink was bad stuff, poor imitation Scotch, but, despite the taste, the stuff did its business and Sam gladly accepted a refill. Phil Haultain sat on his desk, a goofy drunk grin on his face, the kid just learning to hold his liquor while he told stories to the office boys about the sounds old Zey Prevon-Prevost could make. The office boys, just kids like when Sam started out in Baltimore, laughed and egged him on for more, and he was setting into a story about the mole on her ass. There was something about that mole, Phil said.

“McNab wired a bonus,” the Old Man said. “The girl says she was forced to change her statement. Mr. Pinkerton called personally.”

“Will it matter?”

“Brady won’t put up the Delmont woman, too risky. These goddamn showgirls were all he had.”

“So what will Alice say?”

“She sez Virginia Rappe said, ‘He hurt me,’ without identifying the he.

Brady tried to force the girl into saying, ‘Arbuckle hurt me.’”

“The he could have been Fishback when he threw her into the bath.”

“Exactly what McNab will argue.”

“They got nothin’.”

“But they got this far.”

Sam raised his drink and finished the glass of bad Scotch, a cigarette burning between his fingers. The Teletype was clicking in the adjoining room, while some other ops were pounding on typewriter keys with their fists. Or elbows. There were con men to nab, jewels stolen from hotels, runaway daughters joining cults. Nobody slept.

“Fishback or Hibbard or whatever the bastard’s name is is back in the city for the trial,” Sam said. “The Palace.”

“You need help?”

“I wouldn’t slough off, Phil.”

Phil walked back to the Old Man’s desk on cue and told Sam there was a call for him. Sam took the call, thinking it was Jose, but was greeted with the excited voice of Pete the Fink.

“Thought you’d lost me.”

“I’d never lose you, Fink.”

“I got it. I got it, brother.”

“How ’bout a hint?”

“I got something that will blow the lid right off ole Fatty’s case.”

“I’m dying with anticipation.”

“How’d you Pinks like to have the broad who was Virginia Rappe’s personal nursemaid for two years?”

“How would I?”

“She’d be happy to talk about some sort of spells where the woman cried out in pain and ripped her clothes off. What you call that?”

“A con.”

“Straight up.”

“Don’t screw me, Pete.”

“The word of a grifter.”

“What’s it to you?”

“It’ll cost. But it’s on the level. Gold.”

“How much?”

“Five hundred.”

“You’re kidding.”

“A free man.”

“Who is she? Your sister?”

“Name’s Irene Morgan. Swedish. Blue eyes. Blond hair. Big tits.”

“I like her already.”

“We need you to wire the money.”

“Come off it.”

“For the Owl. Two seats.”

“Why do we need you?”

“I’m her agent.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“You pay when you meet her.”

“You’re that sure?”

“Does Dr. Bagwa lie?”

“Frequently.”

Sam rang off and replaced the earpiece on the telephone cradle. He propped his feet up, smoking and looking out the window to Market Street, seeing nothing but night. It was getting late and Fred Fishback awaited. Walking to the rack, he grabbed Phil Haultain’s Stetson and tossed it to the big man still telling his stories and said, “Ready?”

WHILE MCNAB AND MILTON U’REN interviewed potential jurors,

Roscoe played with his hat. He used his fingers to lightly knock off the dust, twirled the band on his fingers, and when he got really bored he reached for an elastic band on top of McNab’s papers. He stretched the band between his fingers, made it fit over his thumb and forefinger like a gun, and even sighted down U’Ren as he paced and asked a prospective juror if he had the goddamn sense-not saying “goddamn” but implying it-to tell the difference between Roscoe Arbuckle the man and Fatty Arbuckle the sweet, stupid face on the movie screen. Roscoe was about to let the elastic fly on that last remark but Brennan closed his hand around Roscoe’s fingers and silently shook his head.

“What do you mean?” asked the potential juror, a white man in a blue suit.

“Have you seen Mr. Arbuckle’s films?”

“Yes.”

“Did you enjoy them?”

“I guess,” said the man.

Roscoe rolled his eyes.

“Can you tell the difference between the man who sits at that table and the character you saw on screen?”

“I should say so.”

“Do you believe Roscoe Arbuckle is just a funny, sloppy buffoon wandering his way into trouble but meaning no harm?”

“I only seen one picture, it was him at Coney Island, and he got hit in the head with a mallet.”

“Did you think it was funny?”

McNab walked toward the judge and held up his hand in a wait-a-minute motion. And Judge Louderback said, soft and bored, “Get on with it please, Mr. U’Ren.”

“I guess so,” the man said. “But I don’t think he’s anywhere as good as Charlie Chaplin.”

All the newspaper boys and Vigilant women had a real laugh at that, and even McNab had to smile. Roscoe reached for his hat and began to twirl. He raised his eyes up to watch McNab, who took over and walked that lawyerly walk, back and forth, pacing and thinking. Roscoe knocked out some indentions in his hat.

“I don’t know why we’re wasting your time, sir,” McNab said to the possible juror. “We have a self-constituted judge and jury already.”

Louderback looked down at McNab who looked out in the courtroom filled with newsboys and Vigilants. McNab looked back to the judge with an expression of Do I lie? He continued to walk and think, a man thrown from the proceedings trying to find which way was up. But it was all theatrical and done for show, and the gray ole dog had something to spring. Roscoe quit twirling the hat, his eyes now on McNab.

“Who is that man over there?” McNab said, pointing to Roscoe.

“Fatty Arbuckle.”

“Is he real?”

“Sir?”

“Is he real or a projection?’

“I don’t understand.”

“Answer the question,” McNab said. “Is he flesh and blood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That will be all,” McNab said. He stood there before the judge, crossed his arms over his black suit. His craggy face and gray bristled head looking as if they were chiseled from granite. When two doors shut behind the juror, McNab turned to Judge Louderback and said in an easygoing tone, “Judge, I’d like to stop this foolishness and go ahead and make a motion to dismiss.”

“Motion denied.” Louderback didn’t even look up from his paperwork.

“Judge, it seems that the prosecution has so graciously consented to eliminate both the Golden Rule and Pontius Pilate from the proceedings.”

The newsboys snickered. The Vigilant women gasped and muttered.

U’Ren was a jackrabbit on his feet, pointing his long, crooked finger at McNab and saying, “If you think you can spit polish this once-successful motion picture star-”

“This whole thing is a frame-up, boy,” McNab said. “You put those showgirls in cold storage until they read a script you wrote.”

“He is a liar,” U’Ren said. “Judge, this is all a lot of poisonous gas for the benefit of the press.”

“Go ahead and proceed,” McNab said, standing firm. “And I’ll prove this city’s prosecutor intimidated witnesses.”

“And if you do,” U’Ren said, “I’ll resign.”

“Stop this,” Louderback said. “Bring in the next one.”

A deputy walked in a scrawny young man who held a cheap hat in his hand. His face was reddened and chapped from a poor shave. He nodded and smiled a lot, agreeable and friendly and, in some crazy way, wanting to be part of the circus. Roscoe watched him and liked him. He smiled over at the man. The man smiled back. The bastard U’Ren was still fuming over the exchange with McNab and didn’t even see it.

“Have you read much about this case?” U’Ren asked.

“Not much.”

“Has it been on your mind at all?”

“Not really. I work too much.”

“Has it been on your wife’s mind?”

“Sir, I don’t know my wife’s mind.”

And this brought another chorus of laughter from black-hatted Vigilants and newsboys alike. Roscoe clenched his jaw and looked over at Brennan, shaking his head. He was so glad he could still provide laughter for the goddamn masses.

THEY PICKED Up FREDDIE FISHBACK as soon as the gold elevator doors parted at the Palace Hotel and he wandered over to the tobacco stand to pick up a pack of Tuxedos. He was tall and well dressed, with the posture of an athlete but the rough, loping walk of a teenager, and for a moment Sam thought the man was surely drunk. Phil fell in stride beside Sam as Fishback followed Market Street, turning off immediately on Kearny and heading north. The men didn’t talk and there were enough people, even after nine, coming and going from the hotel and restaurant trade, that Fishback wouldn’t notice. Sam didn’t think the man would notice if they’d been hiking through the Salt Flats. The worst was when you had some fella window-shopping and taking in the sites, keen to new things, new people, maybe catching a glance of you in a store window.

He was taking long strides, lean and determined, and headed somewhere specific, maybe even a little late. Fishback checked his watch at least four times since leaving the Palace.

The fog was something terrible, wet clouds that hit Sam like a fist, and as he walked he cloaked his mouth with a bleached handkerchief. Fishback sped up, Sam slowed down. He felt like someone was squeezing him dry. Breaths came in sharp little spurts, ragged and small. A breath caught in his throat and wouldn’t spread. He felt light-headed, knees weak. It was a cold night, but Sam’s shirt had grown damp.

“You take him.”

“You okay?”

“I’ll try and catch up.”

Sam caught the firm edge of a brick town house. He tried to fill his bum lungs with cigarette smoke, the way pearl divers do with air before disappearing down into the depths. The smoke made him feel better, eased the breathing. He could hear the lungs, scarred and cracked, a wheezing in his throat. As he steadied himself, he could see inside the town house, where a man and a woman sat at a silver-set, linen-covered table. A negress appeared in the room, setting a large bowl of soup before a child, and the young boy clapped and clapped, his parents laughing, as the negress tucked a comically large napkin around his skinny neck and a silver spoon in his hand. The heat from the soup floated over the boy’s face like a phantom.

Sam found his feet and kept walking uphill, catching the top of Haultain’s hat as it crossed California, the men separated for seconds by a cable car. But then the cable car was gone, ringing off back down Nob Hill, and there was that big Stetson turning up on Grant and into Chinatown. Phil never looked back, kept an easy tail, and it was several blocks up Grant, all the way into the colony, that he found his partner under an Oriental lamp, a gold dragon wrapping the post, hat down in his eyes and a sly nod down the street. Sam overtook Phil now and they passed grocers with dead chickens hung by their feet and huge sacks of rice and long strands of dried peppers. Street hawkers yelled to the white men with silks; tiny yellow women called to Sam from the second and third floors of flophouses where laundry ran in tattered lines across black-holed alleys.

One woman called to Sam and threw down a key.

He kept walking, Phil keeping the pace on the opposite side of Grant, a little too close. Fishback was there, stiff-shouldered and athletic, perfectly oiled hair, tailored tweeds, and then he was gone. Sam kept on, picked it up a little. He could hear the paper lanterns strung over Grant beating in the wind. But the closer he walked, he heard music. Jazz. Fishback had dipped into a back-alley speak. Sam pointed to Phil, and Phil heard the music and smiled.

The door to the joint was a garish red with a long vertical sign overhead saying THE MANCHU. The door was opened, music and laughter grew louder, and Phil disappeared. Ten minutes later, Sam followed.