Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

“He offered me candy,” she said in The Call. “He said it was homemade.” Didn’t her mother tell her better? Candy? Jesus.

She didn’t know she was only a few blocks away from the Golden West. For all she knew, she could’ve been on the other side of the city. But the man kept them moving around in circles, up a street, down a street, a long ride along the Embarcadero, and then a long march up Market and back again, circling Union Square four times. She told the man she was beginning to feel a bit odd, a little queer, and he recommended she try some orange juice, slowing at the first drugstore, maybe the Owl. Miss Morgan ran inside, had a small glass, and then stumbled back to the car. She had the back of her hand against her forehead, as they drove some more, the very motion of the machine making her ill, and finally pleaded for the man to take her back to the hotel that very instant. He said some more candy would settle the stomach.

“And so I ate several pieces,” she said.

At the Golden West, she got out fast, knowing the man would want to walk her to the door. But he stayed in the machine, only letting down the driver’s window of the long green automobile and smiling at her. The smile was what struck her as odd and she wandered to him, cocking her head, and waiting for him to say what he had to say.

He smiled more.

“What?”

He looked her dead in the eye and said, “Go to hell.”

Irene covered her mouth with her hand, stumbling into the lobby, but never made the elevator. The last thing she recalled was collapsing in a heap and the bellman calling for a doctor.

How is she?

Docs gave her oxygen. Whatever was in that candy didn’t sit too well with her. We got an office pool going. You want in?

“THEY’RE CALLING FOR another witness,” McNab said, leaning over the table to talk to Roscoe. Roscoe was seated but turned around to tell Minta and Ma. Minta had on a blue dress and fringed hat. He’d never noticed that much about what she wore, but it sure was reported every day in the papers. Everyone wanted to know what the famous Minta Durfee wore to court as she stood beside her man. Roscoe decided he liked the blue, while watching Minta whispering in Ma’s ear. She had to whisper twice because Ma was deaf as a post.

“Who’s up?” Roscoe said, folding his hands over his stomach.

“Your pal,” McNab said, “Fishback or Hibbard, or whatever he calls himself.”

“Thought that wasn’t till later this week?”

McNab shrugged.

“That sick nurse gonna be okay?” Roscoe asked.

McNab shrugged again. “Do I look like a goddamn doctor?”

McNab approached the bench, and Louderback nodded and answered a few questions. McNab said hello to Brady and Brady just eyed him and turned on his heel. McNab laughed at that, walked back, and took a seat beside Roscoe, the jury trailing in as chipper as a funeral dirge.

“Do they always have to look so solemn?” Roscoe asked in McNab’s ear.

“Quiet,” McNab said and began a fresh sheet of paper for notes. “I didn’t call this son of a bitch.”

There were more whispers and loud talking. Jurors sat up straighter and notebooks appeared in their laps. Freddie was brought in from a side door and placed on the stand, where he stood and raised his hand. He was dressed to the nines-blue aviator jacket, crisp pleated trousers, and polished riding boots. His black hair had been oiled just so, and, as he turned, his profile looked like a silhouette from Photoplay.

Roscoe stared right at him. Fishback caught the stare and kept his eyes on Brady, who got the jury up to speed on who Fishback was, what he did, that he did indeed drive up to the city with Roscoe in September, all that business.

“And you directed Mr. Arbuckle in several moving pictures?”

“No.”

“But he is a friend of yours?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve known him for how long?”

“Since ’16, somewhere around there.”

“Where were you born, sir?”

“Romania.”

“And you took the name Fishback why?”

“I thought it was funny. It makes you think of the bones of a fish.”

The court laughed. Mainly women. Roscoe always kept Freddie around because his dark looks and athletic shoulders could pull some tail. Roscoe wrote on a piece of paper, “Why was he called?” He passed the paper over to McNab, who wrote back, “I am not of the psychic arts.”

Roscoe leaned back in his seat.

“Did you see Miss Rappe ill?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you think when you saw her?”

“I thought she’d had too much to drink.”

“So you tried to help her?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do?”

“I placed her in a cold bath.”

“Were you rough with her?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Did you bruise her?”

“No, sir.”

McNab stood. “A person hardly knows when they’ve inflicted a bruise.”

Roscoe leaned into the table. His heart raced a bit. Ole Freddie wouldn’t look at him. If he’d just give him a quick glance, Roscoe could tell if he was still with him. But he was sitting there, erect, stiff, answering yes or no, like they’d never met, never shared a drink, a song at a piano.

“But this was not the first time you’d met Miss Rappe?”

“No. I had met her some years ago.”

“When you worked at the same studio with Mr. Arbuckle?”

“Mack Sennett’s.”

“The master of comedy?”

“That’s what Mr. Sennett says.”

The court erupted in laughter again, the crowd loving handsome Freddie.

Roscoe looked up at the ceiling at the fan breaking and spreading apart the heat and wind in the room. There was a strong odor of bad breath and old stale sweat around him. He folded his arms in front of him and straightened his navy vest.

“Did Mr. Arbuckle know Miss Rappe?”

Roscoe’s eyes shot back to the stand and then back to McNab.

Freddie was still, composed, reading off his lines, not moving his eyes except to punctuate his words with the jurors and knowing goddamn well how to perform, direct the play, move the herd.

“He did.”

“Were they friendly?”

“They had met,” Freddie said. “The film colony is quite small.”

“There was a time when Roscoe asked for some help getting to know Miss Rappe?”

“Yes.”

Roscoe took the slip of paper and scrawled in all-capital letters,

BULLSHIT.

“He said he wanted to play a joke on her?”

McNab got his ass halfway out of his chair, Brady catching the move and saying, “How was the introduction to be made?”

“He wanted a key to her dressing room.”

Roscoe underlined BULLSHIT four times. McNab’s big hand enveloped Roscoe’s and gripped his fingers to the point of pain, no expression on the hard old man’s face.

“A joke?”

“He wanted to sneak in her dressing room.”

“Did you get him the key?”

“No.”

“Was he angered?”

“Very.”

“I told him this is where the girls, the Bathing Beauties, shower and such things. It was not proper. But he was insistent.”

The son of a bitch shrugged. Freddie shrugged. A move of “What can you do?”

And he performed it so well for the jury.

If only he would look at him. But Freddie just trailed away as McNab took a stab at him, asking him questions that Roscoe could not hear with the hot blood wooshing through his ears. The final insult was McNab asking Freddie if he was sure that it was Roscoe Arbuckle who asked him for the key, couldn’t he have been mistaken for another person on a very crowded lot, another portly man?

Freddie calmly caught Roscoe’s eye then and Roscoe stared back at Freddie, time seeming to stop as Freddie pointed his long index finger-never being asked to-and shot it straight at Roscoe.