Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

“Any clues?” Captain Trask asked.

“Your lock is brass, not steel like the others,” Sam said. “The thief or thieves changed out the captain’s lock before the trip and made impressions of the other two keys.”

The purser and first officer exchanged looks.

“It’s an inside job by someone who could get close enough to you two,” Sam said. “Now, let’s start with a list of the crew.”

The captain said he’d get a list, and they walked back through the mail room and out to a stairwell, and Sam told the men he’d like to snoop around a bit. He wound his way around the guts of the ship, through hallways of staterooms and offices. There was a barbershop and a shoeshine stand. An empty restaurant with tables changed out with fresh linen and crystal and silverware laid out for the cruise back to the Pacific. Daisy Simpkins was back by the kitchen with another dry agent. When she saw Sam, she said something to the agent and he bounded around Sam and headed up the stairs to the top deck.

“Your booze is gone,” Sam said.

“Half Moon Bay?”

Sam shrugged and Daisy followed him out to the dining room. “You know which way is up?”

She smiled. “You lost?”

He nodded.

They followed a long hall through the guts of the ship and then up a ladder to a level with passenger cabins. Everyone was up on deck, clamoring and pissed off at the search, doors wide-open into the little rooms with unmade beds and piles of linen. You could hear the feet above and the wind around the ship, portholes open, a biting cold coming through the halls in all that desolate space. As they walked, Sam was aware of Daisy grabbing his hand and pulling him into the next empty cabin, closing the door, leaving the light off, and kissing him full on the mouth.

“If they don’t find the gold, the office wants me to take this tub back to Australia.”

“How long?”

Sam shrugged. She kissed him again.

“What about Arbuckle?”

“Like I said, they pulled me off it. ’Sides, he’s too far gone anyway.”

“He’s gettin’ what he deserves.”

“It’s not that simple.”

They kissed for a while in the dark room. She smelled wonderful.

“The girl came up to The City with something,” Sam said. “She got hurt when it was taken from her. She was dying before she stepped foot in that party.”

“You want to talk straight?”

“I can’t, angel,” Sam said. “How ’bout you?”

“Shut up,” she said. “I hate talk. It’s all in what you do.”

Roscoe stood outside the courtroom in a little corner by the big staircase made of mottled marble. Reporters gathered by the doors as spectators already started to fill the seats. Word had spread about the masseuse from down south who was going to testify about Virginia’s condition, about her having fits whenever she took a drink. Roscoe leaned against the wall, the newsboys sensing a black mood, knowing he wasn’t going to bullshit with them like most days. Roscoe started a smoke, saying, “The way I figure it, it’s damned if we accept those prints as mine. They’re trying to say I screwed that poor girl against a door.”

“He’s a fraud,” McNab said. “The professor. That chambermaid woulda been out on the street if she didn’t clean that suite properly. That room was cleaned time and again.”

All of a sudden the newsboys were on their feet and chattering with each other, a gaggle of them running out of the courthouse, a few running upstairs to the police offices. Roscoe followed McNab to court, getting into the rhythm of the days there, not much different than being on-set, only he wasn’t called to do a damn thing but watch.

“Where’s the fire?” Roscoe said to a couple fellas from The Call.

“You don’t know?”

“I give up.”

McNab held the great door open for Roscoe, trying to move him along.

“Your witness, the Swedish broad, is in the hospital,” the newsboy said.

“Someone went and poisoned her.”

SAM PATCHED TOGETHER what happened to Irene Morgan from a stack of reports from the op who interviewed her and from reading the tale in the afternoon editions of both The Call and the Examiner, no one really knowing if the girl would live or not. The whole series of events piecemeal from fact and fiction, headlines from the newsboys and statements from Morgan, rumor and fact. But apparently the girl had grown bored that first night and snuck out of the Golden West Hotel with another Arbuckle witness, a woman named Leushay. The pair made their way to Geary on foot, hopped the streetcar to Pierce, and then walked two blocks up to the Winter Garden Hall, where single girls could always find a dance and men could take their pick from ’em clustered on long rows of church pews. The unattached would sit and wait, hand-painted slides projected against a cracked wall as an all-darkie band played love songs from the South. The last little bit of information came from Phil Haultain, who sat across from Sam at a partners desk, reading the same report, smoking and laughing and peppering the facts with little insightful and sometimes off-color comments.

Irene never had to sit that night. As soon as the big blond Swede-or, as Phil called her, “the woman with incredible tits”-walked through the doors, she was accosted by at least a dozen men and chose two and then chose another two and so on. Her dance card was filled for hours, while the Leushay woman sat on a hard seat and drank bottles of Coca-Cola and chain-smoked cigarettes and gave wan smiles to the blonde as she made her way across the dance floor as large as four basketball courts. By the time Irene was tuckered out, maybe two hours later, she’d convinced some nervous, sputtering gent to give Miss Leushay a solid try while she was cooling her heels. And that was about the time that Miss Leushay’s side of the story ended and the op’s interview of Irene Morgan took over.

Irene had just come back from the ladies’ room and was making her way back to the floor, refreshed and ready for more songs, another twirl, a broad shoulder on which to lay her head, bootleg booze from a flask passed underhand to her. But this odd fellow tapped on her shoulder, much too old for her tastes, maybe about fifty or so. Dark skin and gray hair. She found it odd that the man wore a hat indoors. He asked for a dance and she politely refused, but the man pretended not to understand her accent and grabbed her rough by the elbow and took her for a twirl anyway. She recalled his breath smelling of cigarettes and mint, part of an ear missing, and him not talking much, being a horrible dancer, and finally landing her back where she started, where a much younger man with neatly oiled hair bowed to her and kissed her hand.

Say, didn’t that fella who jumped you in the tunnel have part of an ear missing?

Sam nodded and kept reading.

Irene was halfway through another song when she realized she’d seen the older man before at the Hall of Justice. He’d asked her for the time. Irene put off the whole affair, until it was midnight and Miss Leushay was bored again and worried the girls could get into some kind of trouble with Judge Louderback. Irene said her good-byes to the men, getting a purseful of business cards, finding it strange how many American men, especially shorter ones, had no problem dancing close, head upon her bosom like a child.

She’s kidding, right? I bet they were like soft pillows.

She was a bit drunk and tired when the older, dark man pulled to the curb in a new machine, a long green touring car, and asked the girls if they’d like a ride back to the hotel. She couldn’t even reply before Miss Leushay hopped in the backseat of the car and motioned for Irene to come on, Irene staggering from the curb and crawling inside, the car moving down Geary, heading down to O’Farrell, and dropping Miss Leushay at the Manx. Miss Morgan said she thought she was on the way back to the hotel when the man did something very kind.