Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

“Let’s go, Roscoe,” Minta said.

The little heads of a few newsboys popped up from where they slept on the benches, looking like gophers back in Kansas. His dad used to shoot at ’em with a.22 when they popped those heads up.

“Would you pay ten grand for a cat?” Roscoe asked.

“What?”

“Didn’t you read about the show at the St. Francis, crazy old women showing off ten-grand cats?”

“I read about Charlie Chaplin,” she said. “He was pretty cute.”

Roscoe opened the swinging door and sat down in the seat of Mrs. Hubbard, thinking that maybe if he warmed her seat he’d send her some positive thoughts. But all he could think about when he closed his eyes was the sharp little remarks made by U’Ren in the closing. U’Ren relished it, using the whole width of the box as his stage, pointing, enunciating, pulling from his whole bag of tricks, while Roscoe had to stay silent again.

“Come on, Roscoe.”

“Another minute.”

“They’re not coming back tonight,” said a newsman. “I got a tip.”

Roscoe ignored him. He leaned back into Mrs. Hubbard’s seat and tossed his big black shoes atop the seat in front of him. He lit a cigarette and looked at the ceiling.

The callous man-the man who laughs in the face of misery, who plays jokes on suffering women-whose only thought is to hurry a dying girl out of his room. Why didn’t Arbuckle tell that story in the first place? Why his silence? Why did he not tell a soul? Why did he not speak when yet in Los Angeles, before he had even seen a lawyer who might silence him? Why remain mute?

Goddamn bastard. Roscoe let out the smoke and watched it trail up to the tin stamped ceiling, a ceiling that looked for all the world like that of any crummy saloon. U’Ren’s words rattled around in his head, between his ears, and settled down in his gut.

And we shall shatter their theory of injury by immersion in cold water or by paroxysms of coughing or of nausea. And we have shattered the theory contained in Arbuckle’s statement to the effect that the girl fell from the bed.

U’Ren painted a picture for them of the fat beast throwing open the hotel door, ushering in the gash, pouring the drinks, turning up the jazz, and setting a trap for Virginia. He must’ve mentioned that Roscoe had worn pajamas and a robe at least thirty times, as if his dress was a crime in itself. Why can’t a man wear a goddamn robe and slippers in his own hotel room? Roscoe smoked some more and narrowed his eyes at where Louderback sat, trying to get a sense of the scene from a different point of view, get to see the whole drama from all angles and which ones worked best to tell the story.

And yet this defendant, who makes his living by acting-who has learned to disguise his thoughts-wants to make you believe that he did not see her go into that room.

U’Ren paused, reciting the testimony of the showgirls, that they saw him follow Virginia into 1219, then, just at the right moment, stopping to let the men and women picture the fat man locking the door behind him. His hand reaching over the poor girl’s as she tried to escape. The silence lasted long enough for all to envision Fatty crawling, sloppy drunk and bloated, on top of the girl, sticking his willy inside her and riding her like a dog until he squished her.

There is no doubt that at that time she was suffering from the injury inflicted by Arbuckle-the injury that caused her death. And Arbuckle cannot explain it. The only things he has seemed to remember in this trial are the things alleged to have occurred when no one else was there to see. Why should this man, famous throughout the world, allow himself to be damned without protest if all that had happened was that Virginia Rappe had become ill and had fallen off a bed?

“Because I was directed.”

“What’s that?” Minta asked.

“Nothing.”

“You said something,” she said. “It’s late. Please?”

Roscoe checked his watch, smoking the cigarette down to a nub. The newspapermen were up now, maybe eight or so of them, and they were watching him, the way children watch a polar bear in a zoo, just waiting for any little movement to bring them joy. But Roscoe’s mind reeled off, and McNab was before them all now, the projector rolling.

He began with a short, solemn prayer for Miss Irene Morgan, the war nurse who had braved the battlefields of Europe beside such men at Marshal Foch, coming to the city only to share her knowledge, and facing such danger.

The prosecution did nothing but try and besmirch her character when she could not appear. Have medical experts not shown-as Miss Morgan’s statement read into the record-that the girl suffered from many acute ailments? Still they want you to picture Miss Rappe as in perfect health, a giantess in strength, if you please. Would it have been possible in that little room for a man to have attacked a woman of that sort without everybody in the neighborhood knowing it or hearing it? And they try to tell you what a monster he was, this man who picked the girl up in his arms and yet could not carry her weight to another room a short distance without being assisted.

McNab walked, clad as always in a black suit with a vest, white shirt, and black tie. His balding gray head always with the same short stubble. He did not smile. He did not yell. He did not show emotion. He walked and talked to the jury as if working on things in his own mind, the way they should be thinking, too. So many questions. So many holes.

Throughout the length and breadth of this trial there has been hawked the name of Bambina Maude Delmont. Why was she not put on the stand? Why has she not been produced, this complaining witness of theirs? Why has the prosecution resorted to the spook evidence of dimly marked doors summoning their spirits of evil out of the woodwork, or through the manipulation of an expert holding a microscope to the floor, instead of producing human beings in flesh and blood who could have shed light upon this case? There has been more processing of witnesses than process of law. The district attorney has maintained his witnesses in private prisons-a thing I had believed to be abolished at the time of Little Dorrit.

Roscoe started to laugh. Minta shushed him.

And I would like to know why a witness who perhaps is believed to be so untruthful that he or she has be to kept in custody is then brought before a jury to imperil the liberty of any man? Miss Prevon was kept in this so-called Hall of Justice all night without food or drink or time for a quiet smoke. She was harassed and threatened with jail unless she was willing to sign a declaration for the grand jury that Virginia Rappe, moaning upon the bed, had explained, “I am dying. I am dying. He killed me.”

McNab smiled.

All that Zey Prevost heard Virginia Rappe say was “I am dying”-he shouted this to the jury. And they finally compromised with her and let her alone after she signed a statement that Virgina Rappe had explained, “I am dying. He hurt me.”

U’Ren protested that this was not based on a shred of testimony and that by morning he would produce reams showing that… McNab let him finish and continued.

I will show you, therefore, why it was that Mr. Arbuckle was wise in not making any statement. They would have processed the witnesses. Mr. Heinrich, the fingerprint expert, would have suddenly discovered that he and Salome had been under the carpet while Mr. Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe were alone in room 1219 and they would have produced a horde of chambermaids, with their eyes at every crack, their ears in every keyhole, to substantiate him.

Roscoe stood. He smiled. He straightened his tie, rubbing his hands together.

“Better?” Minta asked. She placed her black hat, the one with the veil of beads, back on her head, half of her face shielded.