Devil’s garden

30

I know them,” Roscoe said. It was late and he sat in his hotel room over a bottle of bourbon with Gavin McNab. “I don’t follow,” McNab said, rubbing his eyes, still buttoned tight in his boiled-and-pressed shirt and tie, black coat slung over the back of his chair.

“You know your audience.”

“They’re not an audience,” McNab said. “They’re a jury.”

“What do you think an audience is?”

“They watch you sing and dance and do a little comedy. We’ve spoken of this before.”

Roscoe shrugged and took a sip of the bourbon. Minta had packed along a few bottles for him in her suitcase, knowing they couldn’t be tipping a bellboy during the trial, risking some kind of side scandal.

“What about Mrs. Nelson?”

“What about her?” McNab asked.

“She called her occupation that of a housewife.”

“So?”

“She said it forcefully-like, take it or leave it. She’s no-nonsense. Doesn’t get wrapped up in emotion or bullshit.”

“Did you see her hat?” McNab said.

“Of course,” Roscoe said. “Enormous. Reminded me of something a pirate would wear. I like her. Rock-solid old broad.”

“Who else do you like?” McNab said, a smug grin creeping into one cheek, indulging the fat man.

“Mr. Sayre? C.C.?”

“Clarence,” McNab said. “Cement contractor.”

“He smiles. Big smiles, rosy cheeks. That’s a man who knows what it’s like to drink a few whiskeys, do a little dance. He knows there’s no harm in that. No Satan creeping in the bottle.”

McNab finished off his whiskey. He leaned back into his seat. “Roscoe?” “Hold on,” Roscoe said. “Hold on. Kitty McDonald.”

McNab’s face was fogged out by the smoke coming from his lips, squinting across the table, genuinely intrigued now. The whole indulgence thing passed. “Go on.”

“Rich woman,” Roscoe said. “A fine-looking woman. Did you see her furs?”

McNab nodded.

“She doesn’t want to be there. She wants this whole business to wrap up.

She’ll swing with the rest of ’em. Okay, who’s next? Miss Whosit? The old broad?”

“Mrs. Winterburn.”

“Fantastic name. Isn’t it? Winterburn. Don’t you love saying it? She’s the prim-faced schoolteacher, the woman who’d whack your knuckles with a ruler. Sour old kisser. Didn’t she say she was in one of those women’s clubs?”

“She’s not a Vigilant, if that’s what you’re asking. Do you think I’m an idiot, Roscoe? Her club is literary. She’s part of the Jack London Society.”

“Ha!” Roscoe said, pounding his fist on the table, the whiskey glass trembling. “A woman of the arts. And what am I?”

“You make movie pictures.”

“The arts.”

“If you say so.”

“Okay. Okay. I’m running them down in my mind. I watch them. Not directly but slyly out of the corner of my eye. I don’t want them to think I’m trying to make contact, as if I am a desperate man.”

“God forbid,” McNab said, waving the smoke away with his hand. His eyes squinting more at Roscoe, maybe a little less curious now. He checked his timepiece again.

“It’s two minutes past.”

“Past what?”

“Last time you checked,” Roscoe said.

“Christ Almighty.”

“August Fritze.”

“Solid fellow. Brokers cotton.”

“That’s not why I like him,” Roscoe said, pointing his index finger at McNab.

“Do tell.”

“He wears spats. Spats! What kind of man wears spats in San Francisco?”

“A man who likes spats.”

“A man who likes women, drinking, song,” Roscoe said. “Dierks is obvious. How on earth did you get a former liquor salesman on the jury?”

“Because I can outthink and outmaneuver Brady and U’Ren in my sleep.”

“What’s the explosives expert’s name?”

“Crane.”

“I don’t get a read on him. He’s kind of a mystery. Same with that Reef fellow. Both poker-faced bastards.”

“And we all know you like Mrs. O’Dea.”

“She smiled at me.”

“Stop the earth.”

“And who is the big man? The one with the hangdog face?”

“Mr. Torpey.”

“And Kilkenny,” Roscoe said. “Candy manufacturer. I know you found him kinda grim. But he can be won. I can make a case to him.”

“When is that?”

“When I testify.”

“And you’ve decided?”

“Yes.”

McNab stubbed out the cigarette. He stood and slipped into his big black coat and buttoned up the front. He checked the timepiece again before he got the final buttons, and Roscoe knew it was an effort to unnerve him.

It worked.

“Just what did Zukor say to you?”

McNab looked Roscoe in the eye. He bit a cheek and rocked back on his heels, hands in pockets. He kept the same dead-eyed stare and said, “He said you weren’t quick-witted enough to keep up with those jackals.”

“Brady and U’Ren.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Zukor is a fool.”

“I find him quite shrewd.”

“But you know me better.”

“Perhaps,” McNab said. “Good night, Roscoe.”

“That’s it?”

“We’ll speak on this tomorrow. It’s quite late. Thank you for the drink.”

“I’ll see you out.”

Roscoe walked down the long hall of the Palace to the elevator, where McNab pressed the button to ring the boy. He held his fattened leather satchel in his left hand and kept quiet as the elevator groaned into motion, the pulleys taking on the great weight of it all.

“You forgot one,” McNab said, the boy rolling back the cage.

“Who?”

“Mrs. Hubbard.”

Roscoe snapped his fingers.

“The woman in the feathered hat. Old and pinched face. Very sour.”

“She worries me, Roscoe,” McNab said. “Very much.”

“Give me five minutes.”

“U’Ren will ring you dry.”

“You ever performed before silver miners in Arizona while wearing a dress?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Give me a shot.”

“If they make you bleed, it could ruin my career. Make me look foolish.”

“I’ve sat there and listened to lies about me for two weeks,” Roscoe said.

McNab looked at him, up and down, from slippers up to the top of his neatly oiled hair. He slipped into the cage, placing a hat on his head and tipping the brim at Roscoe just before the cage door rolled back and the elevator disappeared below.

THE FOG WAS WET As RAIN.

Sam moved out onto the ferry’s deck to have a smoke, most of the passengers inside, nothing visible beyond the running lights cutting through the night and the thick banks of clouds. Sam lit a cigarette and clung to the railing.

A wide swath of lights shot from the military base on Alcatraz and from the north tip of the city at the Ferry Building, crossing each other every minute or so. From the city, great horns blared across the darkness, helping the seamen find their balance, their place in the black. Sam finished his cigarette. Started a new one.

He would go to the Flood Building and file a report using his Pinkerton number and not his name. You never used your name. The system didn’t work that way.

He would skip coffee and some hash and go straight home. Jose would be waiting up, rocking the baby and looking down on Eddy Street, ready for him before he put the key in the door. She’d have something warm for him already, the Murphy bed laid out with clean linens, bleached white and fresh smelling.

Jose.

His face heated with shame.

Shoes clacked on the wooden deck through the fog.

Tacoma seemed years ago. She was the prettiest nurse by far, with those soft blue eyes and a hell of a body. She’d laugh at his jokes and let him follow her through her rounds at the sanitarium, helping her wheel out terminal patients onto that giant front porch on sunny days. And while the old soldiers would stare at the yellow-gray horizon with gaping mouths, they’d trade stories about Montana or about her time in London during the war. She convinced him he wasn’t terminal, that he’d be fixed up before he knew it, and it’d taken him a full two weeks before she met him in town for a plate of spaghetti and to catch a moving picture. They saw Pollyanna with Mary Pickford, and for weeks after that that had been his nickname for Jose every time she’d talk to him about his cure, sitting outside in that same spot watching those openmouthed, shell-shocked bedraggled men staring at the skyline. Pollyanna.

She had a warmth about her, a heat. And the films grew into the rental of a little downtown flat where the passing streetcars would clang past and rumble the building, he and Jose not seeming to notice, the little metal bed they shared rocking so hard it would skip across the beaten-wood floor, traveling from wall to wall, the pair joined at the hip.

Sam flicked the cigarette into the lapping waves.

The beams crossed over each other, one from the shore, one from the island, nearly connecting but passing, and it was night and blackness again. The horns sounded. Sam lifted the collar on his suit and tucked his hands into his jacket, moving toward the front of the ferry, whistling.

A solid fist knocked him square in the gut, dropping him to the deck, him crawling.

A big black shoe came for his face and split his lip.

Another hard kick in the gut. Sam rolled to his back, trying to find just a pocket of air for his squeezed lungs. He stared up at the man and saw the face, the dark man smiling down at him and offering a hand. Sam found an inch of breath and crawled backward, trying his feet but only getting his knees, wiping his lip, a boxer just trying to make it to round’s end.

The man kept his hands in a large black overcoat. A wide-brimmed black hat sat on his gray head. He just kept smiling at Sam, quickly glancing around him through the thick blankets of fog misting their faces. He kicked at Sam hard once more, and Sam landed with a giant thwack on the deck, his mouth reaching for air, nothing coming into him, and he blacked out for a moment but never lost sight, trying just to right himself, the beams crossing overhead, cutting across the man’s dark skin and misshapen ear. He toed at Sam as if he were a dead fish found on the shore.

Sam tried to breathe. The bovine horns called through the fog, dueling from the islands and shore. Sam’s vision scattered, rolling to his hands, the deck a patchwork of wooden planks, blindly searching, cold and wet. More horns. They were close to the Ferry Building now. Four more kicks.

No questions.

The Dark Man reached for Sam, finding the back of his suit and belt and hoisting him to his feet and pushing him to the railing, forcing him to look at the churning water, light cutting across and through the fog and darkness, and whispering something in his ear about the way of the world, repeating “the way of the world” at least twice, but Sam not getting much, his mind turned back to ’17 and the wooden sidewalks of Anaconda, the cold sprays of fog and bay tasting like copper smelting in his bloodied mouth, moving into the heart of the little mining town, the beaten floor-boards in a rooming house and Frank Little’s empty bed. As his feet were hoisted from the creaking deck, Sam’s body halved across the ferry’s railing and he grabbed and reached for something to hold, finding only slick metal, the man pushing with all his weight, pushing Sam farther off the ferry and into the blackness and fog. Sam saw Little twirl from the trestle, that first light cutting across the barren, raped hills and over the sack that covered the labor leader’s head, and he let go, the horns sounding loud and close, reaching into his tweed jacket and leaning back with a little heft to his legs and aiming his boots for the deck, collapsing in a crushed heap.

The Dark Man pressed against him again.

Sam turned.

He shot straight into the Dark Man’s heart with his.32.

The man held his chest, a look of surprise on his lips, as Sam flat-handed him backward and lifted with everything he had, toppling the man over into the darkness and foam, catching a glimpse of an air pocket in his black coat, the rough, strong currents of the bay flushing him out toward midnight and the Golden Gate and into the great sea-the Pacific-and nothingness.

Sam dropped to his knees, pressing his back to the steel of the ship, shaking and gasping for breath. The front of his shirt was damp with sweat and sea mist. He closed his eyes and just thought about breathing.

A big, booming bovine horn called him home.

SHE MET HIM at the lunch counter of the Owl drugstore. It was midnight. A guy in a paper hat behind the counter cleaned out coffee mugs and shined forks with a dirty rag.

“You look like shit,” Daisy said.

“Shucks. You’re just sayin’ that.”

She smiled and asked the guy in the paper hat for more coffee. She lit a cigarette and blew it from the corner of her mouth. In the bright light, her eyes looked very silver.

“We busted up LaPeer’s stills last night,” she said. “Out toward Palo Alto, place called Logan’s Roadhouse. One of our boys, De Spain, got wind of automobiles and trucks loaded up with barrels and demijohns and the like.”

“How much?”

“Four thousand of mash, one-fifty of jackass brandy, and truckloads of his bonded stuff brought in on the Sonoma-Scotch, Old Crow, you name it. But the big thing was the stills. Two of ’em. The latest design, all electric, new, and ready to crank out thousands of gallons.”

“How’d it taste?”

“Not bad,” Daisy said. “Little rough. But, get this-when we got warrants for LaPeer and found him at the Somerton Hotel, he claimed-”

“He didn’t own the place.”

“No, better,” she said, grinning. “Said the gallons of mash were actually hair tonic and he had big plans to get the stuff in the hand of every bald man in the States.”

“A true innovator,” Sam said. “He make a fight of it?’

“Nope,” she said. “Kinda sad. I brought my twelve-gauge and dressed for the newsboys. We had boys all in the lobby of the Somerton and along the stairwell and holding the elevator. Me and De Spain knocked on his door.”

“And he just walked out with you?”

“In a robe and slippers. Meek as a kitten. He smiled for the cameras. It’s all a big laugh to him.”

“What’s gonna happen when his suppliers don’t get his dough?”

“Cry me a river,” she said. “They got most of it back. The Seamen’s Bank has it. Makes me sick. I just hope they spell my name right. It’s Simpkins. With an s. Sometimes they spell it without the s and it annoys the folks back home.”

“They still haven’t found the rest of it.”

“They will.”

“It’s long gone.”

Sam didn’t say anything for a while, catching Daisy’s profile as she tipped her head and let out some smoke. They were the only two at the counter, a dozen or so empty stools down the line.

“Was that true what you said down in Los Angeles?” he asked. “About LaPeer killing your man?”

She shrugged.

“Did I tell you LaPeer had ratted out his two partners back in September, Jack Wise and a Jap named Kukaviza?” she asked. “He went straight into Mr. F. Forrest Mitchell’s office, gave him what we needed, and then took over their turf. That’s some balls.”

“You look shook-up.”

“You need glasses.” She pulled her hand away and fiddled with another cigarette. “Why are you asking me so many questions about LaPeer’s dough? He’s in the life. He paid out a half mil, got the booze, and now lost it all. Cry me a river.”

“You said that.”

“So why do you care?”

“What would you do if you had a chance to keep his coin?”

“I’d be on a slow boat to China.”

“I’m serious.”

“Are you gonna eat?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I want to eat.”

“Then eat.”

“Are you going to Australia?”

“I haven’t decided,” Sam said.

“It ain’t up to you. I thought it was up to the Pinkertons.”

“I’m not a number.”

“Why so touchy?”