Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

“We have a few-” Tom started.

“Thank you,” Maude said. “My nerves are raw as a side of beef.”

The big fat policewoman tucked the covers up to Maude’s chin and turned off the bedside lamp. She stood and pushed Kennedy and Reagan toward the door.

“I dreamed of her last night,” Kate said.

“Ma’am?”

“Virginia. She wanted people to know what that Fatty had done to her. He’s a monster. A vile, disgusting creature. If I had my way, they’d chop his man bits clean off.”

The boys looked at each other again.

“You fools,” Kate Eisenhart said. “You poor fools.”

“THE CHRONICLE’S BEEN RUNNING this serial ’bout this detective named Craig Kennedy,” Phil Haultain said. “You got to see this thing. This guy ain’t like us. He’s a real gentleman. A Nob Hill type, only he lives in New York, and has a manservant and four speedy cars.”

“Four of ’em?”

“Four of ’em.”

Haultain and Sam walked out back of the Flood Building, heading toward Powell.

“See, this guy’s some big brain who can smell a brand of cigarette on a woman and uses a microscope to match hairs found at a murder. He also wears expensive clothes and knows how to talk to women.”

“Nothing like us. We can’t talk to women.”

“See, Craig Kennedy is some man about town but he wants to right the wrongs of society,” Haultain said. “The paper’s running part four next week, but I think you can catch up. Last time we left Craig he’d been drugged but came out of it to make this big-time raid. But before he could make a raid, the whole goddamn house blew up. Kennedy escaped without a hair out of place, located some underground tunnel, and followed the bad guys just as the chapter ended. I can’t wait to find out what happens next.”

“You mind if we drop by Marquard’s? I’m out of smokes.”

“Thought you rolled your own.”

“Too much work.”

“How’s the lungs?”

“Working.”

“It’s worse in the fog, ain’t it?”

Sam nodded.

Sam bought his cigarettes and they cut back across Powell, waiting for a horse-drawn wagon, bumping along, loaded down with fish and crabs on ice blocks. As they followed O’Farrell, the electric streetlights tripped on one after another like dominoes.

“So what’s the plan?”

“Wait a couple minutes and follow me inside. When you come in, you don’t know me.”

“Sam, what do you think happened to that girl?”

“Ain’t my problem.”

“You just want the truth?”

“I just write reports.”

Inside Tait’s, a man with a face like a skillet cleaned out sundae glasses and dirty spoons in a sudsy bucket of water. Sam leaned into the counter and asked for a drink and the man said, “It’s Prohibition, ain’t you heard?,” and Sam said he thought this place was a speak.

The ice-cream man snorted and pumped out some chocolate in a glass.

“So what are you, a dry agent?”

Sam reached for the leather wallet in his tweeds and opened it to the Pinkerton badge.

“Just looking for a couple girls. One of ’em’s named Alice Blake. The other’s name is Prevon or Prevost. No trouble. Just want to ask them a couple questions.”

“I know Alice.”

“She here?”

The man looked back at the octagon clock on the wall and then at Sam and said, “What’d she do? Break an old man’s heart?”

“Exactly.”

The door opened, a bell jingled overhead, and three girls flitted past the counter and toward a back door. The ice-cream man’s sharp little eyes clicked to the girls, as they disappeared through an unmarked door, and then back to Sam.

The bell jingled again, and Phil stepped up to the bar and asked for a chocolate malt.

“Can you leave her a message?” Sam asked.

The soda jerk shrugged and said something about this being America, and then Sam wrote out a phone number on the back of a business card.

“What’s in this for me?” the soda jerk asked.

“Helping out your fellow man.”

“That’s some racket.”

So you were there?” “Sure,” Alice Blake said. Two minutes after Sam left, Phil had sipped his malt and heard the soda jerk ring up the Woodrow Hotel and ask for a Miss Blake. He didn’t say much, only relayed that some dick was looking for her and that if she had any goddamn sense she wouldn’t come to work tonight. He said the cops had been by, too. Fifteen minutes later, Sam asked a hotel clerk what room his sister Alice Blake was staying in and to please not ring the poor girl because it was a surprise for Ma and all.

“So you dance?” Sam asked, sitting across from the girl in her hotel efficiency, Phil in the lobby, scouting out the stairs and elevators in case she bolted.

“I’m a dancer,” Alice Blake said.

“What’s the show?”

“Tonight we’re doing the powder-puff number, where all the girls come out in their drawers and sing a little song about our sweet little powder puffs, and then we take these big powder puffs, really too big to be real because I guess that’s funny and all, and we whack you goofy bastards in the kisser with some face powder. Only I don’t think it’s face powder, because that would be a damn waste. I think it’s just flour, because later on my hands smell like a cake.”

“I like cake.”

“You gonna see the show?”

Alice Blake was a girl of average height and average build, with a brown bob and big baby-doll eyes. She giggled a lot when she talked, and after she invited Sam into her room her hands shook a bit as she struck a match and lit a little cigarette. A half-packed suitcase sat on a chair below a window looking out onto O’Farrell.

“You want to tell me what happened last Monday?”

“I seen the girl sick.” Alice had finished up the smoke and now worked a thick coat of dark paint to her eyelid with her twitching hands, using a mirror above the bureau. She switched to another brush and arched her eyebrows.

“Did Mr. Arbuckle hurt her?”

“I told you. When that Delmont woman started screaming and carrying on and beating on the door with her shoe and all, that’s what made me come running.”

“Where were you?”

“In the bathroom.”

“Which bathroom?”

“I don’t know. The big room where they had the Victrola.”

“1220?”

“I guess.”

“How long were you in the bathroom?”

“Twenty minutes?”

“You sick or something?”

“I was with a fella. That actor buddy of Roscoe’s with the funny voice.”

“Lowell Sherman?”

“That’s the one. So anyway, I finished up having a real nice conversation with Lowell.”

“In the bathroom?”

“You can talk in the bathroom same as anywhere else,” Alice Blake said. “And so Mrs. Delmont come running into the room, and the way that broad was yelling you’d think the whole St. Francis was on fire or there was an earthquake or some crazy thing. Only she was moaning about Virginia being with Roscoe, and so I sez to Zey-that’s my girlfriend-I say to Zey, What gives if old Fatty gets him some tail? I mean, we all need it. I said, Good on him.”

“And then what?”

“And then the hotel dick comes and ruins the party, and then Virginia is moaning and thrashing and all that on the bed and that ruined the party, too. God rest her soul.” Alice crossed her heart the way Sam’s mother had at mass. “And then Maude Delmont and Zey and me tried to help the poor girl out by putting her in a cold bath. Fatty and that good-looking foreign fella Fishback helped, too. We thought she was just drunk is all.”

“Did the girl say anything?”

Alice was finished with the paint job and turned her head from side to side inspecting what she’d done with her eyes and apple cheeks. Satisfied with it, she gave her bob a nice little comb through and then felt the weight of her breasts in the lace camisole and smiled.