Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

Mr. Hearst paced.

His feet made cavernous clicking noises, and he moved back and forth and back and forth, and then forward, toward the big set for tomorrow’s scene at the Tower of London. He leaned into the fake brick wall-just plaster-and felt for the shackles that hung there, thinking of what George had told him, and he whistled for George, and George, knowing what a whistle meant, came running with a writing tablet in hand, ready to cable the Examiner offices. The story would be fed to the Hearst wires, cabling from coast to coast and around the globe.

“A virgin. A star of tomorrow. A waif.”

George wrote down the words.

“And Arbuckle. A bloated beast. Three hundred and fifty pounds and lecherous and thirsty. An absolute animal.”

“The girl?”

“A simple insect drawn into the spider’s web.”

“Do you want a drawing of that, sir?”

“George, you are a smart one,” Mr. Hearst said. “You should be the one running the newspapers.”

“I do my best.”

“Make sure the spider has the bloated face of the man and that they have plenty of booze bottles in the web.”

“Yes, sir.”

The air was thin and cold, and the only sound came from electric fans blowing away the heat from the stage lights. But there was a feel to the set, the props became real in shadow, and, in the camera’s eye, everything came into focus.

The newspapermen were at the Hall of Justice when Roscoe pulled up in a cab with his manager, Lou Anger, and his attorney, Frank Dominguez. Anger wandered off to talk to the desk sergeant about bail while two cops in stiff blue walked Roscoe and Dominguez up to the second floor and through a big, silent desk pool of plainclothes cops and into a back room where a door of frosted glass clicked shut. Roscoe heard a couple of the cops snicker about him wanting to join the force, and it was all a bunch of laughs because of all those Keystone shorts that made him famous. But the cops sitting across the big schoolhouse table didn’t look anything like Al St. John or any of the other Keystone boys. They didn’t look like they’d jump at the sound of a gunshot or slip on a banana peel or allow some felon to steal the keys on their hip. These were big, beefy Irishmen. One of them, a cop called Tom Reagan, had a head like a bullet and a thick chest and muscles. He had blond hair and a boyish face, and stood and shook Frank Dominguez’s hand but opted not to address Roscoe except to nod over to another big Irishman named Griff Kennedy, with pomaded red hair and pale blue eyes, who just nodded to Roscoe and blew smoke from his nose.

“And this is Assistant District Attorney U’Ren,” Reagan said. “Judge Brady is out of town, but he’ll be back tomorrow. Mr. U’Ren will be handling the case.”

“Not much to handle,” Dominguez said. “Is there?”

Dominguez was as big as any of the men in the room. Not as muscled as the cops but not as fat as Roscoe. Just a well-fed Spaniard on retainer for Paramount who wore a two-hundred-dollar suit with a silk neckerchief and a solid gold wristwatch that looked sharp against his dark skin.

“A young woman swore out a complaint on ole Fatty here,” Griff Kennedy said, poking his thumb sideways. “She sez she was at the party and Miss Rappe told her she’d been assaulted.”

“Roscoe,” Roscoe said from the seat, looking down at his hands and then glancing up at the beefy detectives. “My name is Roscoe.”

Kennedy looked to Reagan and Reagan looked to U’Ren. U’Ren, the only small guy in the room, glanced down at the files in front of him and then peered up through his pince-nez glasses slid high on a weasely nose and said, “You’ve been charged with murder. These men will take you into custody as soon as we finish up.”

Dominguez stood. “Could someone get me some coffee? This is going to be a long night.”

U’Ren stood, too, and began to pace, with hands behind his back, head tilted up in thought, and it was all very theatrical. He stopped after a while, placing little knuckles on the table and leaning into where Roscoe sat across from Frank Dominguez and said, “Let’s be practical, Señor Dominguez.”

Roscoe narrowed his eyes at Dominguez. Dominguez leaned back in his chair.

“Judge Brady offers a reasonable sentence.”

“Any type of sentence isn’t reasonable to me.”

“Mr. Arbuckle pleads guilty,” U’Ren said. “And we can perhaps spare the hangman’s noose.”

“You don’t have a scrap of evidence against my client. And please let me remind you that Mr. Arbuckle here is beloved the world over.”

Milton U’Ren grinned, his teeth crooked and sharp in the long, lean face.

“I know of Mr. Arbuckle’s reputation in those silly films,” U’Ren said. “And I also know he came to our city for his alcohol-fueled jazz orgy at our best hotel. This is gutter-trash morals that we will not tolerate. If you think that’s acceptable, perhaps you should have both remained in Los Angeles.”

“We’re through,” Dominguez said. “Either charge us or let us go.”

U’Ren raised off his knuckles and wiped his brow with a handkerchief from his tight-fitting coat. He cleaned his glasses and plunked them back on his weasely face. “As you wish. Detectives?”

Griff Kennedy and Tom Reagan took a big arm each and moved Roscoe from his chair and out of the back office and into a hallway, where they prodded him up a large spiral staircase to the highest floor of the Hall of Justice. There they strung a board around his neck with the porcelain number 32052 and told him to turn to the left.

Roscoe looked over at Dominguez and Dominguez shook his head with disgust. Roscoe smiled weakly at him and gave him a little wink.

In a loud, booming voice, Roscoe told the camera man-loud enough for the reporters to overhear-“You don’t need to tell me what to do in front of the camera. How’s that profile looking?”

The newsboys laughed and wrote it all down.

SAM WENT INTO THE OFFICE on that Monday to pick up his weekly check of twenty-one bucks and to see if anything had come across the wire from the Baltimore office. Usually they’d get some tips on some fugitives from the east or a wandering daughter from New York headed their way. Wandering-daughter jobs were constant. Nine times out of ten, the poor girl split because she was engaged to some lunkhead banker’s son and the thought of going through with the act made her physically ill.

The Pinkerton San Francisco branch office was in room 314 of the Flood Building. It was a small office, without the need for an anteroom or a secretary, and Sam rapped on the door before finding old Phil Geauque with his feet up on his desk, dressed in high trousers and suspenders over a crisp white shirt and short red tie. He was smoking a cigar and was in midconversation with a fat Latin man, who stood and was pacing and cursing and didn’t stop as Sam closed the door behind him.

Geauque remained seated but introduced the Spaniard as Frank Dominguez, a defense attorney from down south.

“I’ll be down at Clinton’s for coffee.”

“Stay, Sam,” the old man said. “We may have something for you.”

Sam stood but Dominguez sat. He was a neat dresser, even wearing a red silk scarf tied at the throat. And it was odd for a man to wear a scarf, but somehow on Dominguez it looked regal.

“Mr. Dominguez represents Mr. Arbuckle. I imagine you know all about that mess.”

“I’ve heard a thing or two.”

Geauque lowered his big feet to the ground and leaned in to tap a three-inch ash off his cigar. He plunked the cigar back in his mouth and asked Dominguez, “What about witnesses?”

“Roscoe drove up with a couple of his buddies, Lowell Sherman and Freddie Fishback.”