Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

“Mrs. Delmont, are you okay?”

Maude put her hand to her chest and just breathed. “I have no idea what came over me.”

Sam walked with Dominguez up Kearny Street away from the Palace Hotel and toward the Hall of Justice. It was the second Monday since the Arbuckle party and the third day with Judge Lazarus and police court, and Frank Dominguez said he wouldn’t bet heads or tails which way the judge was leaning. The fog had burned off in the early-morning heat and Sam got a nice breath going, trying to pace out his answers so as not to sound winded to the fat attorney. He wore tweed pants and a tweed vest with a white shirt Jose had boiled for him, a cap and laced boots.

“How solid is your information?” Dominguez asked.

“Solid.”

“You want to tell me where you got it?”

“I’d rather not,” Sam said. “If it’s all the same with you.”

“U’Ren and Brady are putting up three docs today,” Dominguez said, not winded a bit, taking the hill, the talk, and a big cigar in easy stride. “All three will testify that the girl’s bladder burst from external force.”

“Rumwell?”

“Not Rumwell,” Dominguez said. “One doc who performed the autopsy with Rumwell at Wakefield, one fella, a Dr. Strange, who performed the second autopsy for the county, and a doctor who treated her at the St. Francis.”

“What does the county man say?”

“I haven’t seen his official report yet,” Dominguez said. “I was told it was still being typed up and I’d have ample time to question the man in court.”

“For some reason, I don’t think Brady is going to bring up the missing parts.”

“And I don’t want to look like a fool for asking unless we’re sure.”

“We’re sure,” Sam said.

Bankers, lawyers, and businessmen of all types flowed down the hill, walking past Dominguez and Sam in their buttoned-up coats and waxed mustaches, heavy leather satchels in hand. Two streetcars passed each other on Kearny, electricity sparking off the wires.

“Think this could be enough to throw out the case?” Sam asked.

Dominguez puffed on his cigar, lengthening his strides, cresting the hill at Portsmouth Square. A crowd had gathered on the front steps of the Halls of Justice. Dominguez clicked open a gold timepiece that hung on his waist.

“I don’t believe we’ll get a murder indictment,” Dominguez said. “I think that Lazarus will rubber-stamp the grand jury decision for manslaughter. Probably tomorrow.”

“And we prepare for real court.”

Dominguez puffed more on the cigar and squinted his eyes in the smoke.

“I’ll need you to go to Los Angeles,” Dominguez said. “Miss Durfee spoke to you about what she learned in Chicago about the girl?”

“Some,” Sam said. “But I can’t leave the city. My wife’s about to burst in a week or two. Really, anytime.”

“I can make sure you’re compensated, Sam. A new family needs money.”

“We have operatives in Los Angeles.”

“And they haven’t found a scrap on that girl.”

Sam put his hands in his pockets.

Dominguez crushed the last bit of his cigar under his shoe. He watched the dark mass of Vigilant women growing in a great black curtain on the steps.

“You understand what we’d need?”

“I do,” Sam said.

“Sam, you’re not looking at me.”

“It’s not my favorite type of work.”

“We wouldn’t have long,” Dominguez said. “Weeks at most. I don’t want any more time for Roscoe to get crucified in the papers.”

Sam watched a woman unload sandwiches and a teakettle from a large wicker basket. Another woman brought her own chair, placing it at the foot of the great steps and knitting away with giant, sharp silver needles.

“When’s the Delmont broad up?”

“She was supposed to go first,” Dominguez said.

“Make any sense that U’Ren would keep the woman who swore out the complaint, their main witness, off the stand?”

“No,” Dominguez said. “No, it does not.”

Dominguez walked toward court, turning back a few steps later, and yelled, “Talk to your wife, Sam.”

MAUDE DELMONT let reporters into her room on the fifth floor of the Palace Hotel earlier that morning and held court all the way through breakfast. She sat on the bed, fully clothed, but rested her head back like an invalid and stared at a ceiling fan while she spun wild stories about Virginia Rappe and their enduring friendship, a friendship Maude said lasted even into death. When the questions became too personal, too detailed, Maude would only have to stretch her forearm across her head and say she’d grown tired and the newspapermen would ease off, taking a few of the scraps she’d fed them.

“We met at the Million Dollar Theater,” Maude said.

They’d met in Al Semnacher’s living room, parceling out a bottle of laudanum and taking disgusting turns with Al.

“I had never seen her touch alcohol until the Arbuckle party.”

In the three weeks Maude had known her, the girl always had a stomach full of gin and an arm full of heroin. She liked cocaine. Sex was as easy as wiping her nose.

“We often went to church,” Maude said. “She was little but had the most lovely, strong voice.”

The girl was ripe, full of curves and solid meat, and couldn’t have found a church in Los Angeles with a road map.

“Will you make her funeral?” a newsman asked.

Maude sadly shook her head, standing from the bed, grabbing the now-trademark black hat and veil, readying for court.

“I can’t,” Maude said. “Her former fiancé, Mr. Lehrman, is taking care of the arrangements. I’m needed here to set the truth straight.”

“Did he kill her?”

“I only know what the poor girl told me only moments after her encounter,” she said. “I can only imagine the horror of what that blubber must have been like. Please, I must be alone. I can’t breathe.”

Maude had scurried the boys out, picking up a pint of whiskey one had left her for her nerves and taking a swig before closing the door. But a big old foot clogged the way. She asked, What gives?, and the door was pushed forward by the bigheaded cop, Reagan, with his partner with the red curly hair behind him, Kennedy.

“Hey, boys.”

“Mrs. Delmont,” Reagan said.

“Take your hats?” she asked. “I’ll be ready in a jiff.”

The boys looked to each other, like a couple steers eyeing the same heifer.

She watched herself in the beveled mirror as she pulled on the hat and slanted it just so. She could see the men standing side by side behind her, in their dark blue suits and serious faces.

“You two have something to say?”

“Captain Matheson would like to talk to you.”

“But I’m due in court,” she said. “Did you talk to Judge Brady about this?”

“He knows,” Griff Kennedy said.

“Does this have something to do with what that fool Al Semnacher said about me?”

“No, ma’am,” Tom said. “We’ll ride down with you. We have a man holding the elevator.”

Maude stood a good two feet below both of the detectives and looked back and forth to each one’s face before launching into a smile. She let her eyes linger on them.

Nothing.

“Oh, well,” she said. “Let’s go.”

A little bald man wearing a red coat across his sagging shoulders held the elevator door and rolled the caged door in front of them. He turned the key and the elevator rumbled to life, floating and bumping, floating and bumping, down the shaft.

“We’re going to be late,” Maude Delmont said. “I hope you two fools know that.”

She watched the floors slide by the door, keeping her eyes on the needle pointing down toward the lobby.