Devil’s garden

1

San Francisco

September 1921

With his two best buddies and his movie star dog, Roscoe Arbuckle drove north in a twenty-five-thousand-dollar Pierce-Arrow that came equipped with a cocktail bar and a backseat toilet. Roscoe was a big man, not as fat as he appeared in those two-reel comedies that had made him famous in which he wore pants twice his size, but portly nonetheless. His eyes were a pale light blue, the transparent color of a newborn, and his soft, hairless face often reminded moviegoers of a child. A two-hundred-and-sixty-pound child stuck in all kinds of bad situations where “Fatty” Arbuckle, as he was known to America, would dress up like a woman, nearly drown, or sometimes get shot in the ass.

As they hugged the rocky, sunny coast of northern California, Roscoe had sweet thoughts of his new three-million-dollar Paramount contract and a weekend with ever-flowing Scotch and endless warm pussy.

His dog, Luke, who now earned three hundred a week, hung his head out the window and soon sniffed the fetid air off San Francisco Bay, while in back, Roscoe’s buddies Lowell and Freddie smoked cigars, played cards, and poured more whiskey for the chauffeur, who hadn’t touched the wheel since Los Angeles. And soon that big Pierce-Arrow glided down Market Street, passing cable cars on the way up the hill, and toward the Ferry Building, before curving with a light touch of the brakes into Union Square and the St. Francis Hotel.

Roscoe pulled up under a portico, honking the horn and tossing the keys to the doorman, and heard whispers of “Fatty” and “Fatty Arbuckle,” and he smiled and winked and took a few pictures with Luke for the newspapers before doffing his chauffeur’s cap and checking into the twelfth floor.

“Luke’s hungry,” Roscoe said, relaxing with a plop into a red velvet sofa. “Order up a steak.”

“For a dog?” Fred asked.

“For me and the dog. Make it two.”

“What about gin?”

“Use the telephone, have ’em send up whatever you like. And a Victrola. We got to have a Victrola.”

Crates and crates of bootleg gin and Scotch whiskey appeared in the suite as if by magic, carried in on the strong backs of bellhops, and Roscoe peeled off great gobs of money and placed it into their palms. The men ordered ice and table fans and opened up the windows as pitchers of fresh-squeezed orange juice arrived for gin blossoms. The Victrola was wheeled in on a dolly with a crate of 78s and Fatty selected James Reese Europe and the 369th U.S. Infantry “Hell Fighters” Band playing “St. Louis Blues.” And the music came out tinny and loud and patriotic and festive at the same time and Roscoe sweated a bit as he moved with it. He cracked open another window looking down upon Union Square, feeling a breeze off the San Francisco Bay, hearing the sounds of the cable cars clanging, and spotting a crowd gathered down on Geary.

They were looking up at the perfect blue sky, hands shielding their eyes from the sun, and for a moment Roscoe thought the word must’ve spread he’d come to town. But he heard a noise from a roof, a motor, and one of the bellhops, now wheeling in a cart filled with silver platters of steaks-Luke licking his chops as he sat in a velvet chair-said there was a circus man about to ride his motorcycle over a tightrope.

Roscoe smiled and took his drink up to the roof just as the man, dressed in leather, with helmet and goggles, a woman beside him in a sidecar, revved off on a line of ridiculously narrow wire crossing over the people on the street, the paper hawkers and the newsboys and the dishwashers and the cooks, and the crowd whistled and clapped and yelled, their hearts about to explode from the excitement.

And Roscoe took a big swig of Scotch and clapped and applauded and yelled down to the crowd, the newsboys taking a shot of the famous film star cheering on the acrobat.

Roscoe walked to the hotel’s ledge and peered down, pretending to test the line and pantomiming a test walk, and then waved his hands off from the wire, and everyone yelled. All the dishwashers and maids and raggedy kids on the street. And that made Roscoe Arbuckle feel good, as he returned to room 1220 and asked his friend Fred to fetch up some women.

He twisted himself into a pair of striped pajamas and put on a silk robe and knew this was going to be a fine vacation, not planning on leaving the room till they carried him out. He cranked up the Victrola as far as it would go, playing his new favorite, Marion Harris singing “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”

As he waited for the party to come to him, Roscoe cut up Luke’s steak and placed the silver tray on the floor, rubbing the nubbed ears of his old friend.

SAM HAMMETT HAD CASED the old slump-backed roadhouse for two nights, following up on a forty-dollar payoff to a San Quentin snitch named Pinto about the whereabouts of “Gloomy” Gus Schaefer. A few weeks back, Schaefer’s boys had knocked off a jewelry store in St. Paul, and the Old Man had sent him out to this beaten, nowhere crossroads just outside Vallejo to make sure the information they got was good. It was night, a full moon, and from the protective shadow of a eucalyptus tree Sam watched the sequined girls with painted lips and their rich daddies in double-breasted suits. They stumbled out onto the old porch and to their Model Ts and Cadillacs, while poor men in overalls would wander back down the crooked road.

Two of the Schaefers’ black Fords sat close to the rear porch, his gang upstairs laughing and playing cards, their images wobbly through the glass panes. Schaefer himself had appeared twenty minutes ago, Sam knowing instantly it was him, with the hangdog face and droopy eyes, leaning out an upstairs window, checking out the moon and stars, before taking off his jacket and resuming his place at the card table.

Sam craned his head up to the window and shook his head.

He found a foothold under the second-story porch and climbed, careful not to rip a suit he couldn’t afford in a month’s pay, and shimmied up a drainpipe, finding purchase on the rail, and hoisted himself over the banister with a thud.

He breathed slow, trying to catch his breath and feeling that wet cough deep in his throat. He tried to silence the hacking with a bloodied handkerchief.

Lying close to the windowsill, he could see the figures and hear them now, every word, as they talked about everything but the heist. Mainly about a batch of hooch loaded up in one of the Fords for a delivery to a tong in Chinatown named Mickey Wu.

One of the boys had a girl in a short skirt on his knee and bounced her up and down like a child. She clapped and laughed as the boy wiggled a poker chip over his knuckles.

Sam coughed again and bit into the handkerchief to silence himself. His hands shook as he righted himself on the railing, sitting there for ages, maybe an hour, before the conversation turned to another meeting, somewhere in Oakland, and a trade with Gloomy Gus’s wife.

Sam leaned in and listened, thinking about who the hell would’ve married a fella like Gloomy Gus, and then there was a small crack. The slightest splitting of wood that sounded like warming ice.

Sam held his breath, unsure what had happened, and reached for the railing.

Then he heard a larger crack, and within seconds the entire porch fell away from the roadhouse. Sam tried to hold on to the drainpipe, keeping the entire rickety affair up in the air for a few moments, enough that he steadied himself and got some air back in his lungs, but then the porch leaned far away and crumbled like a tired fighter into a solid, violent mess.

The Schaefer gang was on him before he could get to his feet. They extended their revolvers down as he lay on his back. The air had gone out of him like a burst balloon.

Four of them, including Gus, stared down at him. He tried to catch a breath.

“Hello, Gus.”

“Shut up,” Gus said.

“Sure thing.”

“You the cops?”

“I have some business.”

“What business?”

“Diamonds,” Sam said, two men pulling him to his feet as he dusted off the pin-striped suit. He tried to look annoyed at the dirt on his elbows while two of the boys poked guns into his ribs, another frisking him and finding the little.32.

Someone had hit the headlights on a Model T and Sam turned his head and squinted. Schaefer nodded thoughtfully, checking out Sam, with the shock of white hair and the young face and the wiry, rail-thin frame.

“In times like these,” Sam said, coughing, “a man can’t be too careful.”

Schaefer’s droopy eyes lightened. He smiled.

Sam smiled back. A crowd started to form on the roadhouse’s porch. The tinny sounds of the piano player started again.

“Somebody shoot this bastard,” Schaefer said.

“Now, Gus.”

“Don’t make a mess,” Schaefer said. “Put down a blanket or something first. We’ll dump him in the bay.”

They brought Sam upstairs, tied him to a ladder-back chair, stuck a handkerchief in his mouth, and locked him in a broom closet. He heard the men walk away and waited until he heard laughter and poker chips again to try to work his hands from the knots.

HER NAME WAS Bambina Del Monte.

Her name was Maude Delmont.

Her name was Bambina Maude Delmont Montgomery. Hopper-Woods, if you count the last two.

Her last husband, Cassius Clay Woods, was a real screw. He hadn’t known she was still married to the Hopper fella and was still sending her sap letters about eternal love and even little poems he’d written, really horrible ones about her eyes being like the sky and her skin the color of milk. Her eyes were black, her hair was black, and she had her father’s dark Italian skin. Who was this guy trying to fool? But that’s what happened to a man who’d slipped a vise on your finger and still didn’t get into your drawers.

It was after hours at Tait’s Café, a speakeasy on O’Farrell, and as usual Al was late. Paddle fans worked away the smoke that rose from marble-topped tables where couples sat in little wiry chairs. There was a big stage, but the stage was bare except for a placard announcing A SPRIGHTLY AND DIVERTING ENTERTAINMENT INTERSPERSED WITH GUEST DANCING.

She ate ice cream and drank bourbon, mixing the two a bit, and hadn’t a clue on how she was going to be paying if Al didn’t show up with some cash. He was the one who drove her from Los Angeles along with the girl, the whole way bragging how they’d soon be dining in Paris on a king’s budget.

But Al Semnacher didn’t look much like a king when he walked through the alley door of the speakeasy. He looked more like a goddamn rube, with his graying hair, low hairline, and horn-rimmed glasses. A guy who’d stutter if his hand touched your tit.

“Anyone ever tell you that you look like a rube?” she asked. “Why don’t you clean your glasses now and again?”

“He’s here.”

“Who?”

“The mark.”

Maude rolled her eyes. “Just pay the tab and let’s fly. ‘The mark’? You never worked a con in your life.”

“What’s that?”

“Bourbon and ice cream.”

He wrinkled his nose, making him look like a spoiled-rotten kid smelling something he didn’t like.

“It’s good. Want some?”

“It’s gone.”

“So it is,” said Maude. “Say, your girl doesn’t exactly look like her pictures.”

“The nightie shots or the one from Punch of the Irish?”

“Both,” Maude said. “She’s gotten fat.”

Al Semnacher leaned back into the chair and drummed his little fingers. He readjusted his thick, dirty glasses and leaned in, speaking in his little voice: “She needs money and we need her.”

“And she’ll stick with the script?”

“A variation on the Engineer’s Daughter. But it’s a long con.”

“I’m glad you listen,” Maude said, thumping her fist on the table. “But, Al?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me do the thinkin’ in this relationship.”

Al fiddled with the long spoon, dabbing out just a teaspoon of the melted ice cream. He winked before he slipped the spoon into his mouth and said, “I like your hair.”

“Do you, now? You don’t think I look like a boy?”

“With those knockers that’d be kind of tough.”

Maude reached down and hefted those big boobs on her skinny frame and asked, “She’ll get us in?”

“She’s been knowin’ ole Fatty for years now. His pecker will get hard just hearin’ her name. Trust me.”

Maude met Al’s eyes and she smiled, keeping the contact.

“You have balls, Al. No brains. But a big set of ’em.”