Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

Sam saw hands shake. There was a fat envelope. The director accepted it and walked away.

Fishback headed back out the alley. Phil followed.

Sam bounded down the steps to the first floor, made it to the corner, and then saw a man emerge from the mouth of the alley and turn the opposite way onto Grant. He was short and in a gray suit, gray hat. His hair silver and clipped close on a swarthy neck.

Sam made his way to the opposite side of the street, the man passing over Washington, Jackson, but turning west at Pacific and then looping south again on Stockton. Sam stopped and smoked a cigarette and looked into the window of an import/exporter, surely made. He started to cough again, the sweats on him rough. He felt feverish and sick, knowing the body had turned again and knowing the work was too much. He coughed more into the rag and there was blood.

The man in gray did not look back but continued to walk through Chinatown, back to Clay. Sam took a ragged breath, looked behind him, and nearly vomited.

He saw darkness and lights and then rows and rows of headlights coming from a concrete mouth. Sam reached into the pocket of his tweeds, wiped his lips with the back of his fist, and followed the dark man into the darkness and cold wind of the Stockton Tunnel.

THE CHANDELIER COST sixty thousand and weighed nearly a ton, and one hour before Enchantment was set to roll at the Granada the workers couldn’t hoist it. Hearst was furious beyond words, watching a dozen men with ropes and pullies working like mules up the gentle slope of the theater, muddying the red carpet and trying to get the damn thing up into the gilded ceiling. The architect was making apologies for the foreman, the foreman was blaming his workers, and the workers didn’t speak English. As ten employees surrounded Hearst, in tails and holding his top hat, he simply held up his hand and walked away, trailing up the stage and behind the screen and nodding past two guards as he entered Miss Davies’s dressing room.

Marion sat in a chair, looking like a discarded doll. She wore the same chiffon frock and beaver hat from when he’d seen her that morning. The gown he’d ordered from Paris hung from a hook. The jewels still in their velvet cases.

“What’s the matter?”

Marion just looked up at him with those enormous sad eyes and bowed little mouth. The mouth quivered a bit.

“I f-f-feel like I’m gonna be sick.”

“Don’t you worry.”

“What if they don’t like it?”

“They’ll love it. Besides, you know what I say.”

“Only r-read the good reviews.”

“Right.”

“But it seems the only good r-reviews come from Hearst papers.”

“Now, that’s a lie, Marion. Everyone is in love with you.”

“I don’t need this, W.R. We c-can live without all this.”

“You are the most naturally talented little woman I ever met.”

“Little woman?” she smiled, her little bowed mouth pursed like a flower.

He leaned down from his heights and kissed her on the forehead. “Now, get on with it. Smiles. All big smiles.”

Hearst returned out onto the stage and watched the men, now double in strength, pulling and straining with the chandelier. The wooden roof creaked, but the joists were built of redwood beams, large enough for a clipper ship. He stared out at all those empty red velvet seats and into the balconies where they would watch the premiere. Thousands of roses would be brought in just moments before the film started, letting those in the theater live the experience, that soft sweet smell blending in their mind with the picture on the screen. Marion, soft-focused, so lovely, forty feet tall, and so modern.

Enchantment, the perfect vehicle for Marion, Hearst so proud to have directed the writer. The story centers on a girl, Ethel Hoyt, a modern girl in every way, spirited, beautiful, and lively, with numerous suitors. The girl spends her time dining and dancing, going to parties with different men, with her father back home worrying about her and knowing the only thing he can do is find a proper suitor for her, and it’s on the night of her birthday-how very proper-that he takes her to a performance of Taming of the Shrew. There he finds the man who can tame Ethel, a man named Edison-Hearst’s idea because of the connotations of inventiveness-and from there Edison suggests Ethel for the lead in his next play, Sleeping Beauty-again, Hearst’s suggestion to the writer-and as Edison falls for Ethel, so will the audience, to see Marion as Sleeping Beauty-in ringlets, with her moist lips parted-as one of the most fantastic, erotic images ever put on film.

“Mr. Hearst?”

“Hmm?”

A little newsboy held up a copy of the afternoon edition of the Examiner and Hearst reached down from the stage to grab the copy. The boy tipped his cap at Mr. Hearst and Mr. Hearst reached into his pocket and flipped him a silver dollar off his thumb. The boy caught it in midair with such a natural gusto that it brought a smile to Hearst’s face, and he unfurled the paper and saw the banner headline: ENCHANTED SAN FRANCISCO. He flipped below the fold to see a photo of the fat man at the defense table, his new attorney, McNab, held in conference, the fat man looking confused and worried, starting straight into the camera as if a startled animal.

He’d brought it all on himself.

Hearst looked up from the pages to watch the chandelier finally rise off the ground, tinkling, crystal winking in the light, the men grunting and straining and marching down the aisles up to the waiting doors through which fans of Miss Davies would soon pour. He looked back at the photo and stared at the face of the fat man, so dumb and confused, a sick animal, with animal virtues and animal desires. How drunk would a woman have to be to see something in that soft, doughy face and stupid eyes? How drunk and confused would a woman have to be to let herself be bedded by a millionaire brought into this world in a Kansas mud shack who lived his days cleaning out saloon spittoons before becoming a buffoon to millions?

Hearst had sat in darkness for days when the detective had come to him about the party. He had told him about the actors and Hollywood types who had filled the beach house with their gay laughter and alcohol and jazz music from a Victrola brought out onto the sand. They had danced away the last night of 1919 with cases of the last legal alcohol in this country and the fat man had been the king there, twirling around small, fresh Miss Davies, plying her with drink until even his doughy face could be attractive. All his tailored suits and manicured nails and twenty-dollar haircuts couldn’t hide what he’d been. And the thought of him sleeping under the roof that Hearst had built for Miss Davies made him want to vomit, but how could he be angry at Marion? How could he ever fault Marion for the appetites of a fat man? A buffoon.

The fat man had simply walked away that first day of 1920 without a moral headache of consequence-maybe the bright sunlight had brought him some discomfort or perhaps he could not gorge himself on cakes or pies that day. But he had escaped without a bit of gentleman’s remorse, the tainted, now-illegal liquor in his blood, driving in his ridiculous automobile like a circus oddity. Hearst rubbed his head and his eyes. He must gather himself. Someone called to him, but he waved him away. Someone called to him again.

He had not a bit of remorse for what he had done. He had only wanted Fatty caught, pants around his ankles, his appetites and vileness and poor breeding known to those who sat in the darkness and giggled at his antics. And now that that had happened, he was finished with the man. He had nothing to do with the death of that girl, absolutely not a thing. That girl was an extra, a supporting player, in a perfectly designed drama written and produced by Hearst with direction from that odd Hungarian fellow, Fishback, although Fishback hadn’t the slightest idea who’d given him the script. The Dark Man handled it all for Hearst, finished it off for Hearst, and now the justice for the fat man was in the blind woman’s hands.