Devil’s garden

2

Sam had knocked over the chair and was working the ropes on a rusty pipe when the door opened and rough hands gripped him by the arms and jerked him into a room where the gang played poker. Gloomy Gus glanced over at Sam as he counted out some cash, tossing a wad to the center of the table, and said to one of his boys, “Thought I told you to kill the bastard.”

“Thought we’d wait ’cause of the mess.”

“Are you trying to say something?” Gus asked. One of the gang stooped down and pulled the handkerchief from Sam’s mouth.

“I came with an offer.”

“You came to us as a copper or a bank dick. Look at you, the way you’re dressed, you look like a copper from a mile away.”

“Can I explain my offer?”

“Explain, my ass.”

The boys laughed, Gus laughed, chomping down on an unlit cigar. His right incisor made of gold.

Sam was jerked to his feet by two men. His legs felt strange, tingling and light.

“I can give you five grand for it all.”

“Who sent you?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

One of the boys punched him hard in the stomach. He doubled over and, as the wind came back to him, spat blood.

“Five grand. Is this a joke?”

“How ’bout I sit in for a hand?” Sam asked. “Then you can get to killing me.”

Gus looked up from the cards that he’d begun to deal. He glanced over at the boys and shrugged, one of ’em just a kid, with jet-black hair parted down hard with drugstore grease.

Gus picked the cards off the table. He shuffled. He relit the old cigar, the tip glowing red-hot.

He stomped his feet in time with the music below them.

Sam wandered to the table, took a chair, and said, “Stud?”

“I call the fucking game,” Gus said. “So, Mr. Big Shot, you got ten dollars for the pot?”

Sam reached into his coat pocket and, having left his wallet with Haultain, smiled and said, “You stake me, Gus?”

Gus cut his eyes up from the deck in hand, and then just as slow and lazy, began to deal around the table.

They played until dawn, and Sam’s stomach felt hollowed out from the cheap gin they drank from fruit jars. Someone brought in some coffee and he drank that and smoked two more Fatima cigarettes and played two more hands and was feeling pretty good with the situation and was just about to bring up the diamonds again until one of Gus’s boys thundered up the steps, threw open the door, and yelled that someone had just set fire to their cars.

Gus’s dark eyes turned right toward Sam.

LABOR DAY MORNING.

Virginia was in the hotel bathroom, naked as a jaybird, door wide-open, powdering her face and big fat boobs before checking her red lips and pulling herself into a slip. Still no panties, mind you, just the slip, as she played and combed her mousy brown hair and danced a little fox-trot before flushing the commode and adding makeup under her eyes.

Maude Delmont watched from the edge of the bed, legs crossed, dressed in a cute little black dress and smoking a thin brown cigarette. She studied herself in the mirror on back of the door. Her black hair was bobbed, as every girl who read a magazine knew to do, and she’d painted her eyes up like some kind of Oriental.

She liked it. She didn’t look half bad.

Virginia must’ve been a hell of a looker based on those photographs of Al’s. But somewhere down the line, she’d developed an ass the size of a zeppelin and looked just plain tuckered-out. She’d been sleeping pretty much since they’d gotten to San Francisco.

Virginia Rappe. She pronounced it Rap-pay, telling people she’d learned that in France. But from the boring stories Maude heard on the drive, the only thing Virginia had learned in France was how to pick pockets of rich, dumb Americans and dance in her underwear.

Al was a lousy con man.

Virginia was a lousy whore.

But Al wanted to believe she was an actress, a star of tomorrow, and had told Maude a half dozen times about how six years ago Virginia’s face appeared on the sheet music to “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” And Al would say it all serious, like a man in love, and that would make Maude laugh even more. “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” She couldn’t believe he didn’t see the humor in talking about a tired broad like Virginia as if the girl was some kind of kid virgin.

Virginia walked through the shabby little hotel room drinking some gin, still wearing a slip up top but no dress. When she turned to Maude, Maude noticed a sizable patch of fur between her white thighs, like a French poodle being strangled, and she motioned to it with the burning end of her cigarette and coughed.

“Oh, shit,” Virginia said.

“You sure you’re up for this?”

“You asked me that ten times.”

“So, how do you know ole Fatty?”

“I worked for Sennett when he was there.”

“You really in the pictures?”

“I was in a restaurant scene. Fatty was throwing pies.”

“Did you get a pie?”

“Not a crumb.”

“I always wanted to be in pictures,” Maude said and recrossed her legs. “You sure you’re okay? You look a little peaked.”

“Just nerves.”

Maude watched the girl’s hand’s shake as she combed her hair some more and tugged on her stockings and dress. Her face looked drained, and even with the makeup black circles rimmed her eyes as she turned back from the dressing table.

“After this is done, can I have dinner?” Virginia asked.

“Sure, sweetie.”

“With dessert?”

“With dessert.”

“Please excuse me.”

Virginia went back to the bathroom, where Maude heard gagging and vomiting and then the toilet flush. When she returned, Virginia asked, “Isn’t this the cutest little hat?”

It was a straw panama with a blue bow.

Maude ticked off the ash of her cigarette. “You might want to take off the price tag, honey.”

SAM FELT A LOAD of bricks against his neck and tumbled to his knees. There were fists and feet and cursing and spit, and a lot of blood after that. He heard a thud on the floor-half of an old brick had landed beside his head-and he tried to make his way on all fours as another gleaming shoe knocked him in the stomach and against the wall, and soon it felt like he was underwater trying to find the right way up, searching for air. He covered his face the way he’d seen fighters do and curled up into a ball, as there was more shouting but then less kicking, and for a few seconds he was left alone, until a final blow came to the ribs like an exclamation point to it all.

He could not breathe.

It felt like minutes passed until a sliver of air worked into his diseased lungs and he saw some light flat across the wooden floor and heard feet up and down the staircase, stumbling and bumbling like the Keystone Kops. He tried to sit but only fell flat to the ground.

Someone called his name and he opened the only eye he could.

The hands were more gentle this time but no less strong, and Sam felt himself standing through no fault of his own. His arm was draped around a man, maybe a head taller than him, and they were walking across the room in a crazy, jumbled dance, down the stairs and out to the back of the roadhouse, where the early-morning light split Sam’s skull.

He was flopped into a rumble seat and the ignition was pressed and they were off down the bumpy, curving road without a word.

“How you doin’ back there, buddy?”

Sam crossed a forearm over his eyes. “Why’d you have to go and do that?”

“What?”

“Distract ’em,” Sam said. “Don’t you know I had that son of a bitch right where I wanted him?”

“You think Gus will be more upset about his Fords or the hooch I used to start the fire?”

“Good question, Phil. Ask it to me again when we reach The City.”

ROSCOE WOKE Up Monday morning on the couch, a watery glass of Scotch in his lap, hearing the sounds of Powell Street below. He glanced over at Freddie, tall, dark, athletic Freddie, who’d snuggled up with the singer he’d met at Tait’s Café last night as Lowell walked into the bedroom shaved and showered, a fresh drink in his hand, wanting to know what everyone wanted for breakfast. His girl, a skinny redhead who wore knickers like a boy, appeared from one of the two adjoining bedrooms, trying to straighten the flower in her hat. And Roscoe said he’d love some eggs and toast and coffee. And then he told Lowell, who was on the telephone to room service, to skip that coffee and have another case of gin sent up. He was feeling like gin blossoms this morning.

“Don’t you want to go out?” Freddie asked, slipping his broad shoulders into a navy blazer. He futzed with his thick Romanian eyebrows in a window’s reflection. “See the city?”

“Why’d I want to do a fool thing like that?”

Roscoe walked over to the window facing Powell Street and looked down at the rooftops of cars lined up for the valet. Freddie’s gal joined him and pinched his waist.

“You aren’t so fat, Mr. Arbuckle.”

“Thanks, girlie,” he said. “Hey, you wanna jump? I will if you will. You think any of ’em would care?”

She narrowed her eyes a bit but then caught his smile. She smiled back.

“You mind signing something for my kid sis?”

He turned and smiled at her. “You’re not leaving, are you? The party’s just started. Go ahead and crank up that Victrola.”

The girl found the “Wang Wang Blues” and “On the ’Gin ’Gin ’Ginny Shore,” and she and Roscoe were making a beautiful duet as the boys wheeled in the breakfast, Freddie on the phone to some showgirls he’d met at Tait’s last night.

About the time they’d finished eating, the mixing of gin blossoms in fine form now, the telephone rang, the telephone having rung nonstop since they’d all arrived, and Freddie said, “Come on up.”

“Who’s that?” Roscoe asked.

“You remember that big-eyed girl of Henry Lehrman’s? She was at Keystone a few years back.”

“Sure, sure. She comin’ up?”

“She’s here.”

“What’s her name?”

“Virginia Rappe.”

“A virgin what?”

By the time Virginia walked into the party, Roscoe was on his third blossom of the morning and greeted the woman with a slight bow. “I do know you.”

She winked at him.

She was indeed a big-eyed girl with a scandalous little bob and good arms and shoulders. She cocked her hip as she talked, a bit meatier in the bust and butt since he’d known her but still looking luscious and sensual. Dynamite smile. A sharp dresser, with clothes that looked straight out of a French fashion magazine. Smelled just like a plucked rose.

“I like your hat,” he said.

“Knew you would,” she said.

She smiled and stuck it on the fat man’s head-way too small-and Roscoe made a straight face, walking back to the bathroom for another gin blossom, in pajamas and robe and that ridiculous little hat.

“You mind if I invite a friend up?” Virginia Rappe asked.

“Send her up. Send them all up. All girls welcome. Didn’t you see our sign?”

He pressed a gin blossom in Virginia’s hand as she sat in a green chair, crossed her legs, and dialed the house phone. The Victrola played “Second Hand Rose,” one of Roscoe’s favorites, and he clutched old Freddie near and sang to him as if he were a fine ole gal under a paper moon.

PHIL HAULTAIN DROVE to Eddy Street and helped Sam up to the third floor and the one-bedroom apartment he shared with his new wife, Jose. She pronounced her name like Joe with an s on the end. Sam knew she’d be waiting up for him, probably walking the floor with worry, and that perhaps would be worse than the beating.

“What happened?” she asked, unlatching the door chain and helping Phil get Sam into the room and then to the bedroom, where they set Sam down.

“I tried to kiss a tiger,” Sam said.

“Who are you?” she asked Phil.

“The new Pinkerton man,” he said. “Your husband is training me.”

“Lesson four,” Sam said. “Remove head from oncoming bricks.”

“Someone hit him with a brick?” Jose asked. She had a rosary in her hand.

“He took a pretty beatin’ this morning, ma’am. But he didn’t want to go to no hospital, only wanted me to stop by a speak and then drop him here. I seen him cough up a pool of blood, though.”

Jose shook her head and told the young partner that was another matter. She tucked a pillow up under Sam’s head, now feeling the same way as he had up at Cushman’s sanitarium in Tacoma, and she went to the bath, returned with a cool towel, wiped his face, and made him turn his head. He felt those goose eggs right quick and let out a few choice words.

“Be still. I’m just trying to help.”

“Are you trying to play nurse again?” Sam said. “Phil, my wife’s crazy. She loves blood.”

“Apparently you do, too,” Jose said.

“I’ll be goin’, ma’am.”

“What your name?”

“Phil. Phil Haultain. I see you’re expecting, too. You mind me asking when?”

Out the good eye, Sam watched Jose smile at the big fella.

Jose was a woman of healthy proportions with bright blue eyes and brown hair and nice little sprinkling of freckles across her nose. She’d been so damn cute back at Cushman’s that he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off of her. And she didn’t seem to mind him being a lunger.

A few months after a long rainy day at a little hotel, he’d gotten a letter down in San Diego. Apparently, he’d left something with her.

He heard Phil and Jose talking in the main room of the apartment and then the door closing. She returned to the room and closed the drapes.

“I was worried.”

“I figured.”

“But I knew you’d be back.”

“Like a bad penny.”

“That’s my man.”

Sam winked at her.

It hurt to wink when only one eye worked.

THE SHOWGIRLS ARRIVED at the St. Francis a short time later. One was an absolute doll, with brown eyes and soft lips, and the other had bulging blue eyes and crooked teeth. But she had big tits, and nice legs, too, and Roscoe wasn’t in a picky mood, opening the door wide. Freddie took an instant liking to the pretty one, Alice, while the other one, calling herself Zey, wanted to sit on the love seat next to Roscoe and run down all the tunes she could sing. She had very cute knees.

But her singing wasn’t much better than her face, and Luke howled when she hit the high notes. How he loved that dog.

“Do you sing, Mr. Arbuckle?” she asked.

“Caruso once called me a beautiful songbird.”

“Who’s that?”

“He sings. Well, he sang. He just passed.”

Roscoe studied her to make sure she wasn’t joking and caught the eye of Virginia, who was now standing next to the window, the curtains flowing in the hot afternoon air, most of the folks in the room now sweating, and he smiled.

She smiled back, and he noticed the dark circles and the sad black eyes.

Roscoe went back into the bathroom, where they’d set up the bar, and found more ice in the sink and a fresh bottle of Scotch. The gin blossoms were starting to hurt his throat a little and he thought the Scotch would calm it all down.

He looked at himself in the mirror, adjusting the collar of his silk robe along his sizable neck. He plugged a cigar in the corner of his mouth, bit off the end, and winked back at his own reflection.

And then he thought more about it, straightened his pajama collar, and blew himself a kiss. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin a bright pink.

In room 1220, Virginia’s friend Maude was dancing on the fireplace hearth. She was wearing Roscoe’s pajamas, the striped material swallowing her body, this weird-looking fella who claimed he was in the movie biz egging her on as she went through a whole routine, sweating in the tent of clothes, her black hair matted to her face, not once losing a drop of the alcohol from her glass.

She was a fine little gal, too. And Roscoe was glad to add her to the collection.

He watched her, standing back from a small crowd, and as the song ended Maude took a polite bow. The big record needle caught on the sea of dead space and swam and swam, all eyes turning back to Roscoe. He narrowed his eyes at Maude, friend of that bit-part chippie from Los Angeles. His pajama top loose and raggedly buttoned on her, split nearly down to her navel.

That straight face slowly cracked into a grin and then into an all-out laugh, and everyone laughed with him, and the Victrola was reloaded and Roscoe guzzled down the Scotch, now thinking of Kentucky bourbon, and he rocked and danced, the space between the ice in the bathroom and the big chair where he held court seeming to stretch and spin and grow with life.

He wiped his face and took off his robe. The breath and laughter and people in the room had brought in so much heat, and Lowell came by and introduced a pretty green-eyed girl with a pert nose and Roscoe was thinking, This was the one. Yes, Daddy, this was the one. Her name was Mae, and he’d promised to take her for a ride in the Pierce. He remembered.

“Want to get married?” Roscoe asked.

Lowell laughed at his drunken leer and said the girl was already married and to keep his paws off, and, on top of it all, Roscoe would never guess in a million years who her father-in-law was.

“Kaiser Wilhelm.”

“Billy Sunday.”

Roscoe laughed and laughed.

“No, I’m serious.”

“What would Reverend Sunday say about this party?” Roscoe asked the girl.

“He’d say his little sweetie would like another drink,” she said.

“I knew I liked that guy.”

“You’ll take me for a ride?”

“I’ll let you drive.”

Up on the hearth, Maude tossed her sweaty black hair from side to side and swung around, doing high kicks with that Semnacher fella until she couldn’t breathe, and then she told everyone to step back and they did. And the dark girl with the nice build removed the pajama top and showed off her fine, sweating breasts.

Roscoe licked his lips and stood and shuffled over to her, moving Semnacher away and trying to dance with this girl Maude, tugging at the pajama bottoms she had tied into a knot.

And Maude pushed him away and played like she was going to slap his face. One of the new girls-the showgirls-joined her up on the hearth stage, removing her top, saying her figure was much better, Maude saying she didn’t stand a chance.

Maude tried to bump the girl from the hearth with her hips and butt.

The girl got down to her brassiere, the jazz and the room so damn hot. Everyone dancing and carrying on, and there was knock at the door from the hotel dick and Lowell sent him away with a twenty-dollar bill before he could peep into the room.

Roscoe joined the showgirls-Alice and Zey, that was their names-and they took to singing every other chorus of a new record called “I Found a Rose in the Devil’s Garden.” And that ugly Zey girl could really sing now, Roscoe telling her that after they’d sung the record five times, him nearly tripping over a couple rolling around the floor in an impromptu petting party.

Maude tore at the brassiere of the showgirl and ripped it from her chest and the girl gave a pleasant little shriek, modestly covering her breasts, but then breaking away and opening her arms wide in display. The girl so proud that her breasts were twice the size of Maude’s. Her nipples so long and rubbery that Roscoe licked his lips again.

They shook and shimmied together, both showing off in fine form. Roscoe changed records and danced with Alice Blake. He kept dancing with her, her nude back hot and wet and wonderful, and then stumbled toward the bathroom.

“Aren’t we going for a ride?” asked Mae.

“Freddie’s got the car,” he said. “He’s taking Miss Whosit to Tait’s. I need to freshen up, my daisy. Get dressed.”

“You promised,” she said. “Who is that girl?”

Roscoe winked back at her.

When he walked back into the adjoining room, room 1219, he found Virginia splayed out on his bed, eyes glassy and face as white as a boiled shirt. Roscoe looked at the girl and tilted his head. He got to his knee and smoothed back the bobbed hair from her big black eyes and she turned a big look up at him.

The stare startled him.

“Hello there, snuggle pup,” she said.

Roscoe walked back to the door and closed it with a light click. The music was muffled and the laughter coming from a million miles away.

He wet his lips, hearing the girls still singing and men egging them on.

Sometime later, Roscoe would be jostled awake, hearing hard banging on the door and that girl Maude screaming for him to open the door. More pounding and that Maude woman yelling, wanting to know why the girl had screamed.

“Is someone hurt?”

Roscoe got to his feet and ran his hand over his sweaty face. He opened and shut his eyes, adjusting to the thin light coming through the breaking white curtains. His pajamas were soaked.

Another voice yelled, a man’s voice, after the pounding, this time announcing it was the hotel detective and to open the goddamn door.