Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

Miss Davies bounced up and bumped her behind to his and handed him another cup of the ny ka pa and said, “What’s the h-haps, Daddy?”

And Hearst smiled at that. The chief and the D.A. looked uncomfortable with the informality of the exchange. Hearst bowed, formally and very Orientally, and took Miss Davies’s arm and led her into the deeper red-and-green light and the smell of sweet jasmine. He slid his large hand onto her lower back, the spread of his fingers encompassing the base of her spine, and whispered into her ear, “I wish I could take you here in front of everyone.”

She squealed and said, “W.R.!”

The feeling of her so close, even in the silliness of a costume ball where they could be anyone and no one, made his heart race. He remembered only days ago standing with her alone at the beaches of San Simeon and taking pictures with his big box camera as she would emerge from the sea, a Venus with golden locks, covered in sand. Her beautiful, healthy body glowing from sun and sand and vitality and life.

He made love to her there in a cove along the shores and in the gentle sound of the surf, the cool night creeping in from the Pacific, and he could feel the rage drumming in his blood and in his ears until he thought his entire body would ignite in flame.

“Are you okay?” she asked. Her breath a sweetness, a cooling mint in his face.

“Just fine,” Hearst smiled. “Let’s dance.”

THE TRAIN WAS LATE.

Eight hours late from the east, coming in on the Overland Limited, some trouble with another train’s wreck in Iowa, and now the big Southern Pacific clock on the wall of the station terminal read two in the morning. Sam went back to the paper, sitting on the large bench drinking a cup of coffee he’d bought from a blind man at the newsstand. He massaged his temples, reading up on five men busted in Bakersfield for trying to organize oil workers on strike in Kern County. The Examiner called them “card-carrying reds” and agitators with the International Workers of the World. The sheriff rounded them up, drove them out of the city, and turned them loose to walk south toward Los Angeles. The paper said if the owners of the oil rigs couldn’t handle their men, they’d take over the job.

Sam folded the paper and leaned back into his seat, his cap sliding down in his eyes, as a conductor walked into the giant cathedral in Oakland and announced that the Overland Limited would arrive in ten minutes.

Sam checked his watch and made his way to the platform, watching that giant eye of the locomotive grow closer in the dark, chugging and steaming. He yawned and rested a hand against a metal support beam and then noticed all the men crowding behind him carrying writing tablets and pencils and box cameras and flashes. The Old Man had told him there was to be some sort of announcement at the station and that one of Dominguez’s men, a fella named Brennan, would handle it. But after Arbuckle’s wife said a few words, to take her and her mother back to the city by ferry, making sure they weren’t hassled by any newsmen.

The giant engine shook the platform and steamed and hissed as it slowed to a stop, metal on metal, brakes screaming, wheels slowly circling to a stop. As cabled, Minta Durfee, vaudeville songstress, film comedienne, and the estranged wife of Roscoe Arbuckle, waited for a little negro porter to mount the steps before her and she walked down, hungry newspapermen shouting and taking photos, and she smiled glibly-as one would expect the wife of the accused to act-showing more attention to helping a little gray-headed woman with a sunken-in toothless smile and round black hat onto the platform.

Sam introduced himself to a man in a suit who carried two hatboxes. The man, Brennan, introduced Sam to Minta and “Ma.”

Minta told them the terminal would be quite fine for a short meeting with the newsboys. But Sam could tell she was quite tired, as she stood under the big clock, now at two thirty-two, and read off neatly folded sheets of paper.

“Upon my arrival here I have only one request to make of all the fair-minded people of this city. I simply ask them to be fair to Mr. A. I ask them to give him only that to which he is entitled in all fairness, and for which San Francisco is noted around the world-a square deal. I know and his friends all know that he is innocent. He is entitled to a trial by a jury made up of men and women whose minds will be receptive alone to the truth. Only one side of this story has been told, and I know that the people of this good city will wait until the other side comes out in the proper, orderly fashion of the court. I believe everyone will agree with me that first impressions gained from rumor and report are most times found, on closer investigation, to be false, and that when the truth is heard in this matter-when the entire story has been unfolded-that my husband will be completely exonerated, and his good name will be thoroughly cleared, and that he again will take his place in the hearts of the American…”

But as she continued to speak, the newspapermen and photographers broke away, filing back out to the platform, leaving Minta alone to look at Ma and Ma just to shrug her bony shoulders. Brennan had already made arrangements with the porter to bring their trunks to the waiting car, and from there they would take the ferry back to the city.

Sam left the attorney and filed back out to the platform, watching the newspaper men standing in a great huddle, not at the Overland Limited coming in but at the Owl making ready to head south to Los Angeles.

The strobes of the big flashes looked like pockets of lightning in the early dark as Sam walked toward the openmouthed crowd and watched as four negro porters carried a white coffin onto the last car and two negro boys hoisted armloads of pink lilies onto the train.

Sam could smell the fresh-cut flowers from where he stood.

“Read us the note,” a newsman called out.

The porter shook his head and pulled the sliding door shut with a giant clank.

An hour later, a faint gray dawn broke over the city, as the ferry made its way over the bay to San Francisco. Sam sat with Minta and Ma in their stateroom and waited for more knocks and to make more threats, sending the newsboys away. The ferry rolled and bobbed, and Ma’s head was slumped with a snore, her hat fallen onto the seat beside her.

Sam caught Minta’s eye and smiled.

They were alone.

“You see the coffin?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“He’s innocent.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I spent two days in Chicago looking for people who knew that little tramp.”

Sam leaned forward. “It was awfully nice of you to come.”

“Of course.” Minta looked at Sam, confused. “I love Roscoe with all my heart.”

AL SEMNACHER never cared to be on stage. He was just fine being a bit player in Hollywood, standing in the shadows helping along a career or two, having lunch at Musso & Frank’s, putting together a deal, maybe working a con or two on the side. The conning didn’t start until he met up with Maude, and she’d kept him busy as a jackrabbit in the spring. Back then it was just plain old Maude Parker from Wichita and she’d needed some cash, so he’d introduced her around, and Hollywood had been a real gas. Soon she’d set her sights on a couple of actors and they’d pull a rape, or set them up with a man-one director was particularly into that type of thing-and they’d get a statement or take a photo and the money would soon be turned over to Maude. They’d live in high style for a few months till the tank was empty.

But now here was Al sitting in the lobby of the Palace Hotel, ten o’clock or so at night, waiting for Maude to show up and make good on their deal. He paced the lobby until he drew stares from the doorman and hotel manager and he told them he was a good friend of Mrs. Delmont’s. But by midnight, he knew she was there but wasn’t going to take his calls or come down to the lobby till hell froze over, and so he said to hell with it, retiring to the hotel’s Rose Room, a little back-corner restaurant where they’d moved the hotel bar since the dry laws were on.