Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

“How much is this goddamn thing gonna cost?”

“Do you Jews only think about money?”

“Yes,” Zukor said.

“Let me show you something,” Hearst said, steering into a brightly lit tent, larger than the others, pulling the canvas door aside. He took Zukor to a table littered with drawings of great fountains with spitting lions and a mammoth swimming pool copied from a Roman bath, of fireplaces large enough to burn a forest, and of a cleared strip to land his airplane atop the mountain instead of having to be jostled all the way up the hill like poor Zukor.

“How’s that Arabian picture coming along?” Hearst asked.

“It’s in the can.”

“That’s the one with the Italian fella.”

“Valentino.”

“And he’s playing a sheik.”

“Like a girl from Brooklyn playing a queen. We all like to pretend, Willie.”

Hearst grinned at him with his big teeth and breathed, and then smiled a bit more.

“I came for Roscoe.”

“I didn’t crush that poor girl.”

“You’re not just crucifying this fat boy in your goddamn papers, you’re making the whole goddamn picture industry look like devils. That’s bad business. Very bad business.”

“I don’t tell my men what to write.”

“And you don’t start wars with Spain either. You must lay off Arbuckle, see? What’s with your paper showing him as a drunken spider? The Examiner printed that crazy letter from Henry Lehrman. Have you gone nutso?”

Hearst narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms.

“Let’s have a drink.”

“Don’t screw me, Willie, okay? We got a nice thing going with Cosmopolitan and we have a nice run ahead of us with those pictures with Miss Davies, okay? I just can’t figure out why you’re doing this. Those stories get read in small papers everywhere. In two days you’ve turned my biggest star into a three-hundred-pound gorilla with bloodlust for snatchola.”

“Come now.”

“Don’t fuck me, Willie. We have such a nice thing going.”

“You don’t understand journalism.”

“I understand when a fella is being fucked in his tokhes.”

The Chinese had busted apart more wooden crates and they’d started a big fire near the edge of the cliff, the smell of burning pine and salt in the air. Hearst dug his hands into the pockets of his ranch coat and kicked at a stray stone with his big boots. He stole a look from the corner of his eye at dusty Al Zukor, traveling all damn day just to have a second of his time, dusty and hungry and refusing a drink, on this magnificent hill.

“Let’s watch the sunrise,” Hearst said. “We’ll eat our breakfast from an iron skillet like cowboys.”

“I know why you’re doing this. But I don’t know how you did it.”

Hearst smiled a bit and took in the expanse of statues brought out from crate and shadow and storage to catch the moonlight on the hill. He recalled being here as a boy with his dad-old rough-talking George Hearst-and the way the chewing tobacco would stain that gray beard and the stories he would tell about Missouri and how he was born to talk to the earth. Hearst would stay awake all night, after the old man collapsed from exhaustion and whiskey, and he’d cling to the rock until morning light and imagine himself a king.

“Who do you think you are?” Zukor asked.

“Would you like a drink, Mr. Zukor?”

“No, I would not.”

“Then I have work to do,” Hearst said, giving him a hard pat on the back and using the little man’s shoulder for purchase as he pushed and moved off to view a new statue he’d purchased of Zeus’ three daughters locked in an erotic embrace.

It had always taken his breath away.

TWO HOURS EARLIER, Sam sat with his wife on the roof of their apartment in the Tenderloin District and smoked a cigarette atop a little stack of brick by the narrow chimneys. Jose sat in a ship’s deck chair and finished up a piece of cold chicken Sam had brought from town. She wore a big, loose-fitting dress and smiled back at him when she noticed him watching her. He wore an old Army sweater and a little cap, striking a match on the sole of his boot.

He’d showered and was clean-shaven and wanted a drink very badly, something Jose would not agree to since it wasn’t part of the cure.

“Did you take your balsamea?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And your breathing exercises?”

“Done.”

“No more than ten cigarettes.”

“Done.”

“And no drinking.”

“Not a drop.”

“You want to feel it?”

Sam stood and walked to her, reaching down to feel the hard wedge on his wife’s stomach.

“That’s a foot.”

“Already kicking Ma around.”

“I’m worried we’re not going to make it,” she said. “I still have an offer from my aunt. I can go back to Montana until the baby comes. We could take care of the rest later.”

“This is working.”

“For now,” she said. “Sam, you still haven’t unpacked your steamer trunk.”

“I don’t own much.”

“You did what I asked,” Jose said. “For the child. But you don’t have to take care of us later. You’re not the kind to settle.”

“Says who?”

“The nurse who you dallied.”

Sam reached into his tweed trousers and pulled out a wad of cash in his money clip. “The old man gave me an advance.”

“New case?”

“Big case.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Sure. They got me working on Fatty Arbuckle’s train wreck.”

“That is big. What do they have you doing?”

“Running down a couple girls who were at the party.”

“Did he really do it?”

“I don’t know and I don’t really care. Have you ever seen one of his films?”

“I used to see him when I was still in Montana. He made a lot of films with Mabel Normand. I remember one where they went to the World’s Fair.

They had these little motorized cars you could rent and go from exhibit to exhibit, and it always seemed like so much fun to me.”

“I liked his dog.”

“Luke?”

“Yep.”

“How do they say he killed her?”

“He’s being accused of smothering her during rape.”

“But she didn’t die till four days later. Did he break some ribs?”

“I don’t know.”

Sam smoked down some more of his cigarette and stood up, stretching up his stick-thin frame and peering down onto Eddy Street and a Model T parking down across from the Elk Hotel, a man strolling across the street to the corner market.

He looked back to Jose.

“You still hungry? I can run to the market.”

She shook her head. “How’d he crush her? Did she suffocate?”

“He is a big fella.”

“The paper says he weighs two-sixty. Was her vagina badly torn?”

“I love when you talk dirty.”

“I’m talking like a nurse.”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you were a detective.”

“I’m paid to interview a couple showgirls, not solve the case.”

“And that got your attention. The showgirls.”

“I like showgirls.”

“Help me up,” Jose said.

Sam reached down his hand and pulled her to her feet. Jose waddled to the edge of the apartment building roof and borrowed his cigarette for a puff and then handed it back.

“I’ve treated girls who’ve been beaten and raped. That happens a lot in soldier towns.”

Sam nodded.

“Can you bring me the autopsy file?”

“What ever happened to flowers?”

The stairwell door opened and an old crinkly woman in a flowered dress walked out. She lived right below their apartment and made moonshine with her old crinkly husband in their bathtub. Sam had tasted better gasoline.

“You got a call,” the old woman said.