Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

“You okay?” Daisy asked.

“Dandy.”

They followed the balcony ledge on the third floor to an office advertising U.S. GOVERNMENT on the frosted glass. Inside, it bustled with the activity of a dozen or so men working in their shirtsleeves and ties, talking into telephones and typing out reports. One woman waited at a front desk and led them to a back office, where Sam was introduced to a delicate young man named Earl Lynn and a toadlike older man who didn’t get out of his chair to shake hands.

He grunted at Daisy.

He was Lynn’s father.

Earl Lynn was in his early twenties and handsome in a girlish way, with perfect slick hair, a flawless shave, and long thick eyelashes that seemed to flutter nervously. He took a seat by an open window and crossed his legs at the knee. He wore silk socks with small gold designs and a vest that matched his pin-striped suit. He had a rose on his lapel and smelled of flowers.

The flower smell was soon covered by the scent of Old Dad’s wet stogie that he relit with fat-thumbed flourish. His son tried to get a cigarette in an ivory holder going but failed at least three times.

“Mr. Lynn is an actor,” Daisy said. “He contacted us yesterday about the Arbuckle party.”

“You were there?”

“My God, no,” Earl Lynn said. He pulled the cigarette from the holder and broke it in two as if somehow it was the cigarette’s fault for failing to catch fire.

“Mr. Lynn had a run-in with one of the party guests,” Daisy said. She found a spot on the end of the desk, sat down, and crossed her thin arms across her bosom. They were nice bosoms, high and tight, and Sam had to redirect his attention back to the young man.

“Maude Delmont claimed she got the high hard one from my son and carried his seed,” said the father.

“Father,” Earl Lynn said.

“Six months ago, I paid that woman five thousand dollars to peddle that story somewhere else.”

“You and Maude?” Sam asked.

Earl Lynn tucked his tongue into a cheek and rolled his eyes. “No. Absolutely not.”

“But you did know her?” Sam asked.

“We went to the same parties. Knew the same people.”

“What people?”

Lynn named some and they meant nothing to Sam, Hollywood people, but he wrote them down anyway.

“But you two weren’t…?”

“My Lord, she’s an older woman!”

“So you got roped.”

He nodded.

“Why’d your old man pay if the baby wasn’t yours?”

“There was no baby,” Lynn said. “But I have an image, characters known to women in the world, and to think that I had impregnated a married woman… Well, it’s that simple.”

Sam took a seat beside Daisy. Even from the back office, you could hear the giant iron wheels turning and moving and groaning and stopping the elevators. An elevator stopped near the floor and he could hear the gate slide open and then slam shut, the wheels turning again. Sam felt like he was on the inside of a clock.

“What do you do, Mr. Lynn?”

“Me?” the old man grunted. His head looked to be the size of a melon, with a nice slab of fat hanging from his insignificant chin. He resembled a contented hog.

“Oil.”

Sam nodded.

“Why’d you call the dry agents?”

Earl Lynn tried with a second cigarette in the ivory holder and finally got the smoke going and watched it trail up to the ceiling and then stared back at Daisy and Sam. “I thought the government should know what kind of people were at this party. Mrs. Delmont surely had something to do with that liquor. She’s a lush. A hophead, too.”

“You think she conned Mr. Arbuckle?”

Earl Lynn sucked on the ivory and held the holder loose in his long fingers. “I would not be surprised by the depths of her evil. She once got me drunk and tried to unbuckle my trousers.”

“The horror,” Sam said.

“Can we go?” the old man barked. “This man is a tiresome smart aleck.”

“Did you recognize the others?” Daisy asked. “At the party?”

“I know Lowell Sherman, of course. We play tennis. But he’d never be mixed up with a woman like Mrs. Delmont. That was my own error in judgment.”

“The other women?” Sam asked.

“I met Virginia Rappe once. She didn’t impress me. A little tart. A leech.”

“Fishback? Semnacher?”

“Al Semnacher is the one who introduced me to Mrs. Delmont,” Earl

Lynn said. The tip of his cigarette had grown long and fell off with a plop in his lap. He brushed off the ash with lots of busied annoyance.

“How did you know him?” Sam asked.

“He’s in the business. Haven’t you read the papers? He books acts for Mr. Grauman at the Million Dollar.”

Sam smiled at Earl Lynn and then back at the fat father, who’d rested his thick hands across the top of his stomach. The old fat man looked like he might doze off in the thick leather chair, the cigar smoldering in the corner of his mouth.

Sam tucked a Pinkerton’s card in the man’s stubby fingers. He jostled awake with a snort.

“We’d like to see you at the trial,” Sam said.

Earl Lynn said it would be his pleasure.

“Does the name Jack Lawrence mean anything to you?” Daisy asked.

“Should it?” Lynn asked.

“He supplied the liquor, and maybe the girls, too,” Daisy said. “Mr. Lawrence may be the source of the biggest bootlegging ring in California.”

Lynn repeated again that he didn’t know the fella. His father seemed to grow awake very quickly, fast enough to stand and relight the cigar before walking out. “Okay? All right? Are we done here?”

Sam took the fat man’s seat. He could still smell Earl Lynn’s perfume. “He’s a pretty one,” Daisy said as the door closed.

She sat behind the desk that displayed a brass marker reading DIRECTOR and lit a cigarette. She placed her feet up on the desk, and finally said, “Why won’t Arbuckle name the man who brought the liquor?”

A small fan on the table whirred and spun.

“Besides the confession leading to a federal indictment?”

“Besides that.”

“Maybe he’s a standup guy,” Sam said. “That’s what I’d call a fella who doesn’t rat on his friends.”

“You know what I’d call a fella who buttons up with his ass in a sling?”

“Please tell me.”

“A fool.”

The Arbuckle mansion door was wide-open and Sam followed the hall to a great room with wide, buffed plank floors, a big bank of windows, and not a stick of furniture. Roscoe sat on the floor in a square of sunlight shining in from high windows and watched as his dog Luke walked from bush to bush, marking his territory. He sat like a sullen child on his butt, with his legs spread, holding a cigarette in his fingers and barely noting the two entering the room. He wore fine tweed trousers and shoes with silk socks.

His red suspenders hung over his bare, meaty torso.

“Mr. Arbuckle?”

He turned.

“I work for Mr. Dominguez.”

“I guess you haven’t heard.”

“Heard what?”

“You’ll hear it.”

“I’d like a second.”

“Who’s the skirt?”

“This is Miss Simpkins. She’s a dry agent.”

“And you brought her here?”

“She’s not interested in you,” Sam said.

“That’s a switch,” Roscoe said.

“She’s looking for a man named Jack Lawrence who delivered liquor to the party.”

“Don’t know him.”

Sam raised his eyebrows and Daisy opened a pair of French doors out onto a large patio. She tugged away a baseball from Luke and pitched it far off into a blanket of freshly cut green grass.

“She’s okay,” Sam said.

“I’ll say.”

“I’m having a tough time running down folks who knew the Rappe girl,” Sam said. “I understand you knew her when she worked at Sennett’s. But the only person I can find who knew her is Henry Lehrman. I guess you worked with him?”