Devil’s garden

25

Does this goddamn rain ever stop?” Roscoe asked. “How do you people live here?”

“You lived here,” McNab said. “You tell me.”

They sat in a private booth, along with Minta and Ma, at the Tadich Grill off Washington. The Tadich was all dark paneled wood and soft yellow lights. The floors were honeycombed black and white and the waiters wore stiff bleached linen. Roscoe felt human in a good restaurant again, straightening his tie and relaxing into the booth. The waiters called him “sir” and brushed away bread crumbs.

“Before the Quake,” Roscoe said, “Sid Grauman hired me to work for seventeen bucks a week. I sang to illustrated slides, songs like ‘Tell Mother You Saw Me,’ crapola like that. Remember that stuff, Minta? Just like Long Beach. Good money back then. But then there was the goddamn Quake and I was out in the street, hauling rocks into oxcarts. Ma, you shoulda seen the city back then, everything was on fire, any able man was given a shovel or faced the point of a gun. I never seen anything like it, and hope I never do again.”

“Roscoe?” McNab said.

“Yeah?”

“I was here, too. The Quake was tough on all of us, but we dusted ourselves off, buried the dead, and built a brand-spanking-new city. Let’s skip over memory lane and to the shitstorm at hand. ’Scuse me, ladies.”

Roscoe adjusted his silver cuff links, put his hand on Minta’s knee, and winked across the table at Ma. Ma winked back. He loved Ma.

“We’re not so different, me and you,” Roscoe said, pointing the nubbed end of his cigarette at McNab. “We’re both performers with our own set of talents. We both know how to work a room, feel a crowd.”

McNab looked uneasy and shook his head.

“You know the secret of working a room?”

“Tell me.”

“You have to be quick on your feet. If a joke bores ’em, head off into a dance. If they don’t like dancing, try a little physical stuff on stage. A crowd isn’t just a bunch of people, it’s a single thing, and that single thing reacts as one person. You just have to find that vein and tap into it.”

“Why risk it?” McNab said. “You talk too much and people think you’re a liar. You talk too little and they think you have something to hide. Hell, Roscoe, you’re a fat man. You sweat. The jury will think you’re nervous.”

“That’s not what I was saying.”

“Sure it was.”

“That’s Zukor talking.”

“Did I say a goddamn thing about Al Zukor?”

“You don’t have to,” Roscoe said, plugging a fresh cigarette into his mouth and striking a match. “Zukor doesn’t think I’m able to take the stand. He thinks I’m a kid no matter how much money I’ve made that bastard.”

“Roscoe,” Minta said.

Ma broke off a piece of bread and chewed with her toothless mouth.

“Zukor is a Jew bastard,” Roscoe said, breaking a match and starting a new one. “I said it. Have I heard from him once since I left Los Angeles? He’s waiting to see how this plays out. I think he wants me locked in San Quentin. That way he can wiggle out of that contract.”

A waiter opened the curtain to the back booth and brought the table a bottle of white wine and three bowls of soup, a loaf of sourdough. Roscoe poured wine for Minta and McNab. Ma didn’t drink. The soup was hot and steaming and perfect on a cold, foggy day. He could stay here all afternoon, enjoy lunch, enjoy dessert and coffee, smoke a bit, tell a few jokes, sing a few songs. Every time he walked into the hall, he felt like a goddamn circus elephant paraded down Main Street.

“Who do you work for?” Roscoe said, pointing the end of his spoon at McNab.

McNab leaned back in the booth and took in Roscoe, as if seeing him for the first time. His craggy old face split into a smile, “I work for myself.”

“You work for Paramount.”

“I do what’s best for the client,” McNab said. The waiter came over and tucked a towel around McNab’s neck, setting a big bowl of steaming mussels and sea creatures in front of him. The crusty old lawyer ate with beautiful manners, dipping the spoon away from him, very little splattered on the linen.

“Well?” Roscoe said.

“A jury isn’t vaudeville, Roscoe,” he said. “It can be a mob.”

“I can make ’em love me,” Roscoe said. “They haven’t taken that away from me, have they?”

McNab looked up from the soup and over at Minta and then over to toothless Ma and there was a steady silence in the booth, the sounds of the restaurant carrying on, until they’d finished eating and made their way back to court. Roscoe wasn’t two steps outside when someone tapped him on the shoulder and called his name. At first he didn’t place the rail-thin man, maybe the thinnest man he’d ever seen, but then he knew it was the Pinkerton he’d met down south.

McNab stood beside Roscoe and stared at the young detective.

“He’s all right,” Minta said, waiting for her mother to get in the limousine and then following her. “He’s with the Pinkertons.”

McNab looked at his gold timepiece and crawled into the limousine and slammed the door. “Hurry up with it.”

Roscoe buttoned his jacket and pulled his hands into some leather gloves. “What a shit day.”

“What’s your connection to William Randolph Hearst?” the Pinkerton asked.

Roscoe shook his head.

“You know him?”

“I met the man once,” Roscoe said. “He’s been giving me a hell of a trashing in the papers, but that’s no secret.”

“He have a reason?”

“He’s an asshole. You need much else?”

“He works with Paramount?”

“He gets Paramount distribution.”

“And they get Hearst press?”

“Something like that.”

“Then why’s he laying into you, Roscoe?”

Roscoe shook his head again but felt himself sweat underneath the coat.

He tried to keep a light smile and shook the detective’s hand warmly. “I got to go, Pinkerton. Judge Louderback doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

The detective just stood there, watching him, waiting for an answer.

But instead, Roscoe gave him an old pat on the back and climbed in the limousine, the door barely closing before the big machine rolled up the hill and toward Portsmouth Square. Roscoe took a deep breath, feeling more trapped than ever, thinking of what it must be like to be swimming under a sheet of ice.

WHEN Dr. RUMWELL saw Maude sitting in his parlor having tea with his wife, he looked as if he’d just shit his drawers. His little mustache, the one that looked like he dyed it with boot polish, twitched under his nose and his eyelids fluttered as he removed his hat and black overcoat, leaving his well-worn medical bag by the door.

“Mrs. Delmont is such good company,” his wife said, laughing. “So charming.”

Rumwell just stood in the doorframe staring down at Maude, who crossed her legs and took another cookie his wife had offered. She sipped some tea and smiled up at Rumwell from the lip of the cup.

“Won’t you sit down?” Maude asked him.

He shook his head. He’d begun to perspire at the brow.

“Darling,” his wife said, “Mrs. Delmont has been waiting on you for more than an hour.”

“She may see me during office hours.”

“But I tried to call the clinic,” Maude said. “They told me you wouldn’t see me.”

“Quite right.”

Rummy’s wife looked shocked and put down her tea. She was the kind of frail woman who wore going-out clothes around the house, got the vapors, and would invite some complete stranger into her little velvet parlor and serve cookies and tea. Her husband’s manners were making her physically ill.

“But, Doctor,” Maude said, “you remember that itch I have? You’ve treated it before.”

She smiled at him and took another bite of cookie. The frail wife left the room, the kitchen door swinging back and forth behind her, the woman muttering something about dinner burning on the stove. Rumwell looked as if he’d swallowed a turd.

“You must be going,” Rumwell said.

Maude stood and walked to him. He held out a hand as if she was some kind of leper and all that unease was making Maude pretty damn happy. She smiled at him, walking slow and swatting her giant hat from side to side and against her buttocks. “Come on, Rummy.”

“Not here.”

“I don’t believe you’d see me anywhere.”

“I will if you’d please leave.”

Maude turned from him to a little wooden cabinet and opened a glass door. She pulled out a little porcelain curio of a kitten and held it in the palm of her hand, staring at it, appraising it. “Darling.”

“I will ring you at the Palace.”

“I’m not at the Palace.”

“I thought you were getting the royal treatment.” He said it snotty. “It was in all the newspapers.”

“Yeah, I was getting the treatment all right, out on my ass.”

“What do you want?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“You must be joking.”

Maude shook her head and said, “Nope.” She reached back into the glass cabinet and found another little figure, this one of a little girl holding a basket of flowers. She twirled it up in the failing light coming from the front door and smiled. “Doesn’t this look like Virginia?”

Rumwell grabbed her arm and his fingers were tight and strong, but he couldn’t budge her. She smiled at him. “Do you remember Mrs. Spreckles’s party? You took me from behind in the garden. Like some kind of animal. We’ve had so many adventures. I’ve brought you so much business.”

“I won’t pay you.”

“I have nowhere to go.”

“That’s not of issue.”

“Rummy,” she said. “Be a gentleman.”

The wife returned, now composed but flushed, and worked her best smile. She asked her husband if Mrs. Delmont would like to join them for dinner. She was baking a chicken and… But Rumwell stopped her, saying that Mrs. Delmont had to be returning south, kind of giving the wife the old brush-off, the frail getting his meaning and disappearing back to the kitchen.

Maude held the figurine up to Rumwell’s face and twisted it there. “Does it hurt when you fill them with air?”

“This instant,” he said, raising his voice, spit flying a bit.

“You hear it doesn’t hurt,” she said, “but I would feel like a balloon inside while you worked. And hands-you must have very steady hands.”

“I will call the police.”

“And I will tell them about your delicate work,” Maude said. “Your specialties.”

“So be it,” he said, disappearing into the kitchen.

Maude returned the figurine to the cabinet and took a seat back on the little settee. She sipped from the delicate china and watched the pendulum swing on a large grandfather clock. A large gray cat stumbled into the room and found a spot in Maude’s lap, settling in, and she stroked the animal and played with its tiny paws.

Rumwell came back, minutes later.

“It’s done.”

“Don’t be foolish.”

“They’re coming for you now,” he said.

“Who?”

“The police,” he said. “They have warrants for your arrest.”

“On what?”

“Bigamy,” he said. “They called me this morning at the hospital and I was given instructions to ring them if I saw you.”

“You must think I’m a fool,” Maude said, smiling. “This is a wonderful little home, Rummy. The rugs alone must’ve cost you a fortune. That big clock, all this mahogany. Very strong and solid. Do you have children? I can’t believe I never asked.”

“You may wait here if you wish,” Rumwell said. His wife, high-collared and sweating, returned, locking her arm with her husband’s. She swallowed but would not make eye contact with Maude.

Maude could hear the pendulum of the great clock, the gears whirling inside making the hands move. She finished her tea, stood, and walked toward the receiving area of the home. She brushed straight past the two of them, placed her hat on her head, and adjusted it in the mirror of a hall tree.

“Two hundred woulda saved you some heartache, kids,” Maude said.

“I can’t be bribed or bought,” he said.

“Good man,” Maude said. “And you’d be a hell of a doctor if your hands didn’t shake.”

“YOU WANTED TO SEE ME, SIR?” Sam asked.

“Close the door,” the Old Man said.

Sam closed the door. He took a seat in a hard wooden chair and waited. “I hear you’ve been making inquiries about an op from back east.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why didn’t you ask me?”

“I figured this fella was off the books.”

“Did you find anything?”

Sam nodded. He pulled out his cigarettes and struck a match, settling into the chair. The Old Man had a cigar that had expired in a full ashtray on his desk. His shirtsleeves were rolled above the elbows and he stood and stretched and opened up a shade on the window.

“You got a name?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what else?”

“The fella is on retainer to Hearst Corporation. He’s been assigned to them for years.”

“What’s he have to do with all this?”

“I saw him making a payment to Arbuckle’s buddy, Fred Fishback.”

The Old Man looked back at Sam from the window. “I’ll make sure McNab knows. He called over here earlier today mad at hell. Said you gave the bum’s rush to Arbuckle outside the Tadich Grill.”

“No, sir,” Sam said. “I asked Mr. Arbuckle what he had to do with Hearst.”

“You know it’s just the Examiner trying to dig up some dirt, sell some lousy newspapers.”

“Maybe.”

“They were probably paying off that Fishback fella to tell his story. Inside the St. Francis party and bullshit like that.”

“Why hold a meeting at a Chinatown speak?”

“Privacy.”

“I’ve seen this op before,” Sam said. “Before the war, I was assigned to bust up some labor in Montana. This fella approached me in a bar, bought me a drink, and offered me a respectable payday if I’d take out the fella making all the trouble. Next day, the guy winds up dead.”

The Old Man reached across the desk, grabbed the dead cigar, and tried to light it with three or four matches, finally getting the stinking thing going, a giant plug of orange growing red-hot.

“The mines were owned by Hearst.”

The Old Man settled back into his creaking chair, smoking and thinking. He shrugged. “So?”

“So this ain’t the kind of fella doing a nosy newsman’s work. He’s still on the tab for Hearst.”

The Old Man nodded and let out some smoke. His shoes, ragged-soled old jobs, twittered on the desk. “Let’s let this one lie, Sam.”

Sam watched him.

“Those two showgirls are done with their act, and Phil’s keeping watch on that big Swedish gal you found down south,” the Old Man said. “Really nice job on that one. She may be the real ace in the hole.”

Sam watched the Old Man and the Old Man gave him a soft, weathered smile. He had twinkling old eyes that saw everything in the room while keeping good contact, trying to pass along something without saying it.

“I need you on another job,” he said. “A ship called the Sonoma comes in early tomorrow. We just got cabled that somewhere between Honolulu and Frisco, she got robbed.”

“How much?”

“Half a mil in gold,” the Old Man said. “We think it may still be on board.”