Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

The restaurant was a couple doors down from the back of the Flood Building on Ellis Street. They served a solid sandwich, and a mean plate of chops with a baked potato and sliced tomatoes when a man could afford it, and if you were lucky enough to catch a good waiter they’d dish out something a bit warmer in your coffee cup. The floor was honeycombed black and white tile and set with small tables and café chairs. Ceiling fans scattered the cigarette smoke.

The dinner rush hadn’t started yet, and Sam found a place by the open windows. He said hello to the owner, a tough old Greek he knew, and they talked about ball teams and fighters and some of the tong action that had been popping up in Chinatown. They lamented Prohibition and President Harding, and discussed Sam’s becoming a father.

Glennon arrived and the old Greek went back to the kitchen.

Sam offered him a cigarette from his pack of Fatimas.

“I wasn’t trying to muscle you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Glennon said. “The only thing Mr. Boyle knows about detective work is what he reads in the funny papers.”

Sam pulled out his wallet and Glennon shook his head. He tugged it back into his jacket.

“We got a call that afternoon about some girl who’d drunk herself stupid at the Arbuckle party.”

“Everyone knew about the party?”

“Who’d you think arranged to bring in the booze? They had cases of the stuff that Arbuckle had driven up in that rolling steamer of his. Have you seen it? A custom Pierce-Arrow, with a bar and a toilet. Can you imagine driving down the highway and waving to a fella who’s on the crapper? I mean, what does he do? Wave back?”

“Did you see the girl?”

“Sure.”

“And what did you think?”

“I thought she’d gotten stupid and drunk.”

“And everyone else?”

“They was stupid and drunk, too. Arbuckle, his two buddies. Some fella who sold women’s drawers, and then the Delmont woman.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Wow,” he said, “how much time you got?”

Glennon leaned in and turned to look in Sam’s coffee cup. Sam looked back to the Greek and signaled for another round of special coffee.

“Listen to this, I ended up screwin’ that broad that night. I know that’s not professional, but what would you do? She’s crying and putting her tits in my face, and we ended up sitting there in the very room where we moved the girl, 1227. That girl was out stone-cold, and Mrs. Delmont had heisted two bottles of the sweetest Kentucky bourbon from old Fatty. We got drunk in the a.m. and told stories, and she’s telling me how her old man is a creep and all that. And I’m saying how sorry I am, only I’m not that sorry, only looking at her tits. And finally she grabs me by my ears and plants one on me, and we ended up fucking against the wall. You can say what you want about Mrs. Maude Delmont, but I’ll tell you she ain’t no frail.”

“She say how she knew the girl?”

Glennon stopped as the Greek laid down the coffee cup and he thanked him. “I think they knew each other in L.A. through some guy named Al. I think I saw that Al guy at the party, but I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. He was one of those movie types, too. I got the feeling that Delmont had come with him and he’d split and she was drinking and screwing me out of revenge.”

“You look like a wounded bird.”

“I couldn’t walk straight the next day.”

“How long did the girl stay?”

“They moved her out Wednesday.”

“And took her to Wakefield?”

Glennon nodded.

“And Maude Delmont is still a guest of the hotel.”

“A guest? More like a parasite. She’s bought all kinds of stuff, hats and dresses and crap, and charged it to the hotel. She’s hung up on Mr. Boyle at least six times. He had to sic the police on her. They’re getting ready to throw her ass on the street.”

“You two still friendly?”

“She’s ice, brother.”

“My condolences.”

“I wasn’t looking to make pen pals.”

“So what happened in that room?”

“That’s the question. You got two people go into 1219 and one of ’em ends up dying four days later.”

“You trust what Delmont says?”

“I wouldn’t trust that bitch if she said the earth was round and the sky was blue.”

“What did she tell you?”

“I only know what I read in the papers about the dead girl’s confession.

She never said a word of that to me.”

Glennon slugged back some whiskey, lit another cigarette, and stretched his legs out on the black-and-white honeycombed floor. The afternoon light had faded. Some more folks strolled into John’s.

“What happened to the bedclothes?”

“Cops took ’em.”

“You see them?”

He nodded.

“Blood?”

“Nope,” he said. “But someone sure had pissed them good. Both in 1219 and 1227. You know they brought the whole grand jury by the hotel rooms today? Boyle’s ticked ’cause those are his primo suites and he’s told he can’t rent them out.”

“Did you hear anything from any maids, workers, Arbuckle’s crowd?” He shook his head. “The cops asked me this already.”

“What didn’t they ask you?”

Glennon blew his smoke straight up from the side of his mouth, the smoke hitting the fan and scattering across the tin ceiling.

“They didn’t ask me about the doctors.”

“More than one?”

“Three.”

“Who were they?”

“House doctor was out Labor Day, so we had a fill-in. Then the house doctor was back on Tuesday, but Mrs. Delmont didn’t want any of that. She brought in her own doctor.”

“She know him?”

“Called him Rummy.”

“Name?”

“Rumwell,” he said. “This guy was a true nut, all nervous and stuttering. Wore his coat buttoned to the top button even when it’s so hot you can’t breathe. He has a funny-looking eye that goes back and forth and sometimes crosses with the good one. Short little mustache. He’s the one that finally took the girl to Wakefield.”

“Where she died.”

“Where she died.”

“You think Arbuckle did this?”

“I’m saying that Mrs. Maude Delmont ain’t playing a straight game, and I’m not so sure whose interest she’s serving. You ever checked out the connection between Fatty and her?”

“THEY’RE BURNING My FILMS,” Roscoe said.

“That was just one case,” Dominguez said.

“It says it right here a bunch of cowboys rode into a movie house in Wyoming, shooting up the place, and dragged out the projector and the canister for Gasoline Gus and burned it in the street.”

“What do those people know? They probably have sex with cattle.”

“You want to talk about all the cities banning my films? I’ve been called indecent, immoral, and a bloated beast. How do you like that alliteration?”

“Only that idiot director Lehrman called you a beast.”

“And they put the bastard on the front page. He said he couldn’t come to San Francisco to claim the body because he was worried what he might do to me. Pathé? Now, that’s a laugh. The Examiner had a picture of him showing off a pair of cuff links that he sez Virginia bought for him. Hell, he probably had them engraved himself. ‘With Love Always, Virginia,’ ” Roscoe said, tossing the paper near his hat on the jailhouse floor. “That girl was nothing but a receptacle for him.”

“The grand jury is meeting right now, Roscoe.”

Roscoe began to shuffle a deck of cards in his hands, bare feet on concrete. Dominguez leaned against the bars, his neckerchief loosened in the heat.

Roscoe began to absently toss cards into his driving cap.

“What haven’t you told me about the party, Roscoe?”