Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

“You gonna arrest her?”

“Does this have a damn thing to do with you?”

Kennedy struck his two fattened fingers in Sam’s sternum, moving him a foot back. Sam just smiled at him but didn’t turn, only held the gaze, till about the time LaPeer joined the little group again and told them if they had business with Miss Prevon that was their business but they were making his customers nervous.

“You want us to bust open this whole place?” Tom Reagan said.

“Chief O’Brien sends me Christmas cards.”

“Har,” Griff Kennedy said.

Zey seemed to shrink a little bit as she unstrapped herself from the cigarette box and sat down in a nearby booth, lighting a cigarette she’d taken from the case, and she smoked it, exhausted and bored, her great bulging eyes flashing back and forth between LaPeer and the two detectives.

Sam sat down across from her.

“How’d you like to come with me?”

“I don’t think you’re any better than those two.”

“I’d disagree.”

“You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

“I’m a Pinkerton. I work for the attorneys representing Mr. Arbuckle. You’d like to help out Mr. Arbuckle, wouldn’t you?”

She shrugged and laughed, the cops and LaPeer starting to yell and point now but being drowned out by the trumpet player barking out the lyrics to “Bow Wow Blues” and the smart set at the tables and on the dance floor screaming.

Sam turned back to the bar and noticed it was all men now, all dressed in that identical black, the blond woman with the nice shape and the fox gone.

“I don’t know a thing,” Zey said.

Sam spotted the woman by a door near the stage, pushing away that piece of hair from her eye and readjusting the fox as if it carried a great weight. She had the most wonderful shoulders.

“Alice said you heard Virginia say she’d been hurt?”

“How many times have I got to be asked this? I wish I’d never even gone to that stupid party, but Alice dragged me there because she wanted to meet Lowell Sherman ever since she saw him in that picture where he played a king. You know he’s not even English?”

From across the bar, the tall girl with the legs and the snow blond hair scanned the room and nodded. Sam looked over the dance floor that resembled a chessboard and saw a man in a long raincoat and flop hat nod back to the woman and then nod again to another fella dressed just like him by another door. Sam put his hand across the table and held Zey’s long fingers.

“What’s the idea?”

“We need to go.”

“Why?”

“Now.”

Just then, the fox coat dropped to the floor at the feet of the long-legged woman and a 12-gauge shotgun appeared in her delicate hands, which slammed out two cartridges into the plaster ceiling, killing the music and cuing the screams.

The girl brushed back the hair from her face again. The face was lovely, heart-shaped, with full red lips and silver eyes that jumped out at you from all that white skin and hair.

Sam found himself smiling with admiration at the girl with the gun.

“Nobody better shimmy a goddamn inch,” yelled the girl. “I’m a federal agent and this is a raid.”

“Did SHE REALLY shoot into the ceiling?” Frank Dominguez asked.

“She did,” Sam said.

“And was she a real beaut?”

“She had a hell of a shape. I don’t know if I’d call her a beauty. When the houselights turned on, you could see maybe her nose had been busted at one time. But she had a quality about her. Sleepy bedroom eyes. You know the type.”

“And they just let you go?”

Sam nodded and stifled a cough with a handkerchief and his fist.

“And the girl?”

“She went with Reagan and Kennedy.”

“You know ’em?”

“I know Reagan. I know Kennedy by reputation.”

“And you don’t like him?”

“I heard stories.”

The two men sat in the center of the Palace Hotel’s Garden Court. It was early and a negro woman worked an electric vacuum machine on the carpet. The first light showed through the glass-paneled ceiling that domed the Garden Court, filled with potted palms and fresh-cut flowers, chandeliers that winked with prisms of color. A bird was caught in the ceiling and flew from side to side, slamming and fluttering against the glass.

“You’re not going to eat?”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s on me,” Dominguez said.

“Nice place.”

“The man who built it killed himself. Jumped into the bay right before his bank went bust.”

Sam ordered ham and eggs with hash, but the waiter said they didn’t serve hash at the Palace and so Sam ordered toast. It wasn’t quite six a.m.

“Coffee?” the waiter asked.

“Sure.”

Sam lit a cigarette and settled in. “I talked to the Blake girl. She said she didn’t hear anything but Virginia Rappe saying she was going to die. Before she got pinched, Zey Prevon told me she’d heard Virginia saying the same thing.”

“And we have Maude Delmont saying Virginia accused Mr. Arbuckle before she died.”

“Can you use that?”

“Conversations with someone killed in a crime are completely admissible.”

“Did the cops turn over the autopsy records to you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m just wondering how she died. I know the papers say she was crushed. But how? Were her bones broken?”

“Ruptured bladder.”

Sam nodded.

“During the rape?”

“There was no rape.”

Sam nodded.

“It’s a medical impossibility.”

“She was hurt in another way?”

“This is a very delicate matter, Mr. Hammett.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam said. “But I do work for you.”

Dominguez nodded and crossed his legs, showing off a pair of bedroom slippers that didn’t quite match his pin-striped suit. He tried lighting a cigarette with a lighter out of juice. Sam passed him a pack of matches.

“This goes no further.”

“Of course.”

Dominguez let out smoke from the side of his mouth and shrugged, leaning into the table. “Mr. Arbuckle’s pencil isn’t as sharp as it used to be.”

Sam sat still.

“In fact, it hasn’t written for some time.”

“I’d like to see the coroner’s report.”

“I’d like that, too,” Dominguez said. “This whole thing stinks. I just learned last night that the autopsy was conducted immediately after the girl died on Friday at the hospital.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“The county coroner wasn’t present and wasn’t notified. Somebody called the coroner’s office Saturday about the dead girl and rang off. After that the coroner called the police and it was the police who talked to Maude Delmont. The autopsy was completely illegal.”

“YOU GODDAMN SON OF A BITCH,” Maude Delmont said. “Where’d you go?”

“If I got pinched, all our work woulda been out the window.”

On the staticky telephone line down to Los Angeles, Al Semnacher’s voice sounded as squeaky and annoying as ever.

“Do you know the flaming pile of shit you left me with?” Maude said.

“How was I supposed to know he was gonna kill her? That wasn’t exactly the plan.”

“But you sure as hell waltzed off with her slip and bloomers. What were you going to do with those, Al?”

“That’s why I’m calling.”

“Well, fuck you. You can take your apology and shove it up your ass.”

“They have them.”

“Who?”

“The cops. They came down to L.A. yesterday and they knew all about the slip and the bloomers and they took them from me.”

“How’d they know?”

“Those two girls Lowell Sherman brought. They told the cops they’d seen me take the torn clothes.”

“Are you in jail?”