Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

“Yes.”

“Can you sleep now?” Minta asked.

He nodded. “Better.”

“I COULDN’T SLEEP,” Sam said. “I walked. I’ve walked for a while.”

Daisy opened the door to her apartment. Her kimono hung open past her breasts and clear down to her navel. She smiled when she caught his gaze. “Why don’t you come in.”

“Nice flat.”

“It’s cozy, on a gal’s pay.”

“How sure are you that the stash is LaPeer’s?”

“F. Forrest Mitchell doesn’t make mistakes.”

“You make him sound like God.”

“He’s more sure of himself.”

“Can I take a seat?”

“Kick your shoes off.”

Sam found an old leather chair, a craned reading lamp. A window overlooking Turk Street.

“Didn’t mean to ambush you like this.”

“I’m not ambushed,” she said, sitting on top of a coffee table, holding the front of her silk robe. She wore no paint on her face, white blond hair brushed flat back and behind her ears, looking fresh and clean. She smelled like good soap.

“I found it. The money.”

She smiled. “Well, I guess I should be pleased, but I’m not. Just make sure they spell your name right. Did I tell you about that?”

“I didn’t tell ’em.”

“The newsboys?”

“Nobody,” Sam said. “I didn’t tell a soul. I left it where it lay. In the shaft of an engine-room duct, snaked through the guts of the Sonoma in a fire hose.”

Daisy dropped her head into her hands and pushed her hair back over her ears, combing it back, her face hidden in profile. “I need a smoke. You want coffee?”

“We can leave. You can leave.”

“What about the money?”

“We can decide when we’re at sea,” Sam said. “Don’t you understand? It’s a fresh start. And if it’s on LaPeer’s filthy dime, no tears from me. My bum lungs can heal up in Australia. You can get the city grime off you and tell Mr. F. Forrest Mitchell to take a flying leap. You know what I mean?”

“Kinda.”

“Sometimes it’s that way. It can come at you like a sucker punch and it’s all so clear that life’s a sham. It’s a long con and you walk through it like asleep, halfway in a dream, and it takes something big to make you wise up and see the world for what it is. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“What about your family?”

“The girls are better off without me,” he said. “I’ll disappoint them in the end.”

“But you won’t disappoint me?”

“I’ll disappoint you, too. But let’s have some fun first.”

“What time does she sail?”

“Tomorrow. At midnight.”

Daisy raised her head and smiled at him. “Aren’t you gonna kiss me or something?”

“Or something.”

Roscoe knew, could feel it, even before the judge assembled all the lawyers and the jurists, what the word was going to be. They’d been in there forty-four hours, taking breaks only to eat and to sleep back at the Hotel Manx, filing past him each time, no one looking him in the eye except for a couple boys, riding off in that little ivory bus and returning for two days straight. It was about noon on Sunday and with the doors to the Hall open you could hear the church bells ringing across the city. Roscoe had been sitting with Minta and Ma in the first row behind the defense table. McNab, who was in the judge’s chambers, looked at Roscoe, crooking his finger at him to come back to the table. The bailiffs spread out, doors were open, the jury being ushered back into the box. McNab leaned in and whispered, “Louderback is shaking them loose.”

“What’d we get?”

“Ten to two,” McNab said. “The second one gave in because they couldn’t stand the pressure anymore.”

“Who was the holdout?”

“Mrs. Hubbard,” McNab said, whispering again. “Hadn’t changed her vote since Friday.”

Roscoe didn’t say a thing, but there was a rock in his stomach, a feeling of being on a long, loose slope, trying to find ground with your feet but only getting mud. He smiled, straightened his tie. He folded his hands across each other, catching Fritze’s eye, the foreman, who Roscoe knew had been a good egg since the start, and Fritze shook his head sadly and opened his palms.

The titian-haired Amazon, Mrs. Hubbard, kept her head dropped, an enormous black hat on her head. Her chin down to her chest, refusing to look at anyone, as Louderback asked Roscoe to rise and explained that the jury was hung and that he saw no other course of action but to let them loose and call a new one.

“Perhaps we should look to the first of the year,” Louderback said, lean and well-oiled in a blue suit. “We would hate to spoil anyone’s Christmas holiday.”

Roscoe shook his head. He turned back to Minta and Minta grabbed his hand and held it very tightly, and then she did something that Roscoe would always remember. She winked at him, holding on tight, and he had such pride that he almost felt like walking right over to Mrs. Hubbard and spitting in her eye.

The gavel sounded.

There was talking and murmuring in the courtroom, like any Sunday service being broken up, and newspapermen and photographers surged forth. McNab caught them all and gruffly said that he would let the facts speak for themselves and he looked forward to getting another jury in there devoid of any prejudices against his client.

Roscoe walked out with Minta and Ma, the dogs trailing him, shouting questions, flashbulbs popping and exploding. Head held high, he walked, Minta’s arm in his, Ma alongside. The great doors to the Hall were open and he followed the stairs down onto the street, looking out to the greenery of Portsmouth Square.

More questions. More of the same.

“I’m very grateful to those who recognized the truth,” Roscoe said. “I’ve only tried to bring joy and laughter to millions and only the Lord himself knows why this has befallen me. I only tried to help that poor woman. That, my friends, is my only sin.”

A little girl toddled over to Roscoe and, in the click and whir of cameras, handed Roscoe a tin cup. She smiled and curtsied and said, “Better luck next time.”

The newsboys roared with laughter, and he saw one of them jangle out some coin into the little girl’s hand. Roscoe lit a smoke and stood there. Most of the newsmen scattered to catch Mrs. Hubbard on the steps, as she was saying that a jury was absolutely no place for a woman and that at one point the men complained of the amount of food she had consumed.

Roscoe watched the large woman brushing away the men with tablets and cameras who followed her down the street. The black-hat Vigilants soon swallowed her in their mass and walked off with her in a dark swarm toward the park.

Roscoe met McNab’s eye and the big man gritted his teeth and nodded, seeing the chorus, before finding Roscoe’s elbow and steering him toward the machine.

The Pierce-Arrow was kept back at the Palace.

They piled into McNab’s touring car. Roscoe doffed his hat for the crowd and they moved away, down the hills and back to the hotel. There was a deep silence in the car, the silence creating some kind of shame in him. Roscoe rested his head on his knuckles, watching the city pass, thinking back to a year ago when he’d stepped off a train in Paris and received nothing short of a hero’s welcome.

He wondered where they’d all gone.

SAM FOUND His STATEROOM, steamer trunk arriving soon after, a negro porter unloading it from his back. Sam tipped the man and sat on the small bunk, wishing for a pint of Scotch but settling for a glass of water, watching the clock on the wall, knowing the ship would sail at midnight, hearing the lot of people coming and going, screaming and yelling, excited for the big send-off.