8
Sam had learned to shadow from his old boss in
Baltimore, Jimmy Wright. Jimmy had worked for the Pinks most his
life, and when he wasn’t sending out Sam for sandwiches or
cigarettes or running messages to the office boys he’d teach him
how to follow a person. Wright wasn’t a thing like the detectives
in the dime-store novels Sam had read growing up. He didn’t have a
handlebar mustache or wear tweeds and a bowler. Jimmy Wright was a
thick, squat fella, a fireplug, who wore raincoats even when it was
warm and had a taste for Fatima cigarettes. He had scar tissue
around his eyes and his knuckles, and told young Sam that detective
work was a nasty, brutal profession and not a place for a boy who
had other options. He told Sam to be a lousy lawyer or a
stockbroker or, hell, even a goddamn grocery clerk. But Sam would
run those roast beef sandwiches and packs of Fatimas to street
corners and back alleys and safe houses where Wright would wait out
some con man and bank robber just for a simple word from a man who,
although short, towered over his father.
Rumwell headed down
California from Portsmouth Square in a lope, probably heading to
the Embarcadero to catch a streetcar. But at the Ferry Building,
the doctor turned south, not north, and continued walking past an
empty streetcar, the off-duty driver reading a newspaper, feet up
on the controls. Sam followed him past pier after pier, and endless
warehouses that smelled of fish oil and machine parts, and men
playing dice next to barrel fires and prostitutes who’d gone long
past their day dishing out fifty-cent blow jobs and hand jobs for a
quarter.
Sam walked past them
all, careful to keep that sacred space, the good doctor never
looking over his shoulder as he followed the Embarcadero deeper
inside the Barbary, a collection of shanties and clapboard bars
that had been open to sailors ever since San Francisco had been a
city. It had burned down during the Quake and had been shut down by
moral crusaders more than anyone cared to remember. But there was
always the sailor’s trade for booze and women, and, for the most
part, the Barbary became a no-man’s-land.
Rumwell turned east up
a narrow little alley paved with smooth cobblestones and ballast
from cutter ships. Barkers in top hats spit out carnival spiels
about harems and belly dancers and shows with Shetland ponies.
There were gas lamps and red lamps in bay windows where sad-eyed
girls in saggy slips and torn stockings would press their bodies
against the warped glass or crook a finger at you. The doctor
ducked into another alley and curved again, but Sam did not rush,
as he looked both ways, and heard the tinny piano music of a little
bar called Purcell’s that advertised itself with a wooden sign that
swung and creaked in the breeze off the Pacific. A fat man in a
little hat banged out the keys to a song about a girl from Kansas
City who wore gumdrops on her titties.
Sam wandered in and
found the bar mostly empty except for the piano player and another
negro, a gigantic man with a shining bald head. The man switched a
toothpick from the other side of his cheek as Sam entered and sat
down.
“Rye.”
The gigantic negro
said nothing but uncorked an unlabeled bottle and poured out a
generous measure of thin-looking stuff. Despite the taste of
gasoline and leather tannins, the burning sensation was quite
pleasant on Sam’s stomach and deep into his lungs, spreading out a
burning warmth and giving him a bit of relief. The bartender’s skin
shone the color of the deepest black, the whites of his eyes the
color of an egg. His hulking form cast a shadow against the brick,
with twin notches above his smooth head.
The negro was about to
cork the bottle but saw the glass was empty and motioned to Sam,
who nodded. He did this several times until the feeling held right
and Sam waved him off.
Soon a whore came to
Sam, and he smelled her before he saw her, a scent of dried flowers
and spawning fish. She wrapped an arm around Sam’s neck and
whispered in his ear a price. She wore a terrible wig, almost
looking as if it were made of straw, and had painted a beauty mark
or what most people called a mole at the bottom of her chin.
Another look at her told him she couldn’t have been more than
thirteen.
“I’ll suck it for two
bits,” she said. The bar was dark and filled with red light and the
smell of gasoline and urine.
Sam shook her away. In
the long mirror, he watched as Phil Haultain walked into the room
and took off his hat, as if this was the kind of place that
demanded hat removal. Another girl approached Phil, and Sam smiled
as he watched Phil’s eyes grow big at the offer. Sam was pretty
sure he read the boy’s mouth saying, “Ma’am?”
The boy took a seat at
a table near the piano player. The girl stayed and took purchase on
his knee.
Sam rested his head
into his hands. It was past one o’clock in the morning and for a
moment he lost his place in time. Sometimes his mind played tricks
like that when he drank. He could be in Baltimore or Philly or a
mining camp in Montana or on the wharves in Seattle or on his
grandfather’s farm, knee-deep in tobacco, walking endless rows as a
summer sun stood red and strong to the west.
He asked for another
drink, and in his mind he stood on a dock holding a shotgun in his
arms as raggedy men tried to reach for him through fence posts,
spitting at him and threatening to rip out his throat. The men wore
torn rags, their bodies like skeletons. And then he broke away,
hearing calliope music at the edge of a county fair, crushing a
cigarette with the edge of his boot and staring up at the brightly
lit Ferris wheel that had been boosted from back east.
And then he was back
looking at the circle of the glass in his hand.
Sam knew he couldn’t
return home by morning or else he’d risk Jose knowing he had it on
him and what he was doing to his lungs and going against the cure
he’d learned from her at Cushman.
The giant black man
poured another shot of rye and Sam dished out another quarter, and
he sat and he waited and exchanged a quick glance with Haultain,
who now had another girl on his knee, and he watched as the girls
worked him and bargained. Haultain was young but good at playing
the rube.
They played around
like that until two, when Rumwell came out from a back room. Even
slightly drunk, Sam noticed the man was still put together just so
in that boiled shirt and suit and bowler hat. He walked to the bar
and moved against Sam, never glancing across at him, and Sam kept
his head down and his eyes down as the gigantic negro reached down
into his breast and pulled out a thick wad of cash and laid it down
on the bar across from Rumwell, and Rumwell, not so much as looking
at the black man, counted out the money in his hand and then tucked
it into a fat wallet in his breast pocket, and, carrying his brown
medical bag, walked briskly out of the bar and onto the
cobblestones. Sam turned but found Phil already gone. Following, he
clicked open his pocket watch, knowing he had hours to kill before
daylight and getting home to Jose and acting like he gave a damn if
he lived or didn’t.
But he knew he
probably wouldn’t reach another six months, and the filthy trade
he’d been taught by Jimmy Wright might just let him give a few
bucks to Jose and the child and, by the grace of God, in a few
years they’d forget him like smoke in the wind. Sam had thoughts
like these as he wandered in and out of the bars of the Barbary,
his lungs feeling squeezed and wrung out, before collapsing into a
coughing fit in the great arms of a heiferlike woman with big
painted blue eyes who thought he was the most humorous man she’d
ever met.
Her breasts felt like
great pillows.
“SO THE GIRL CHANGED
HER STORY? ” Mr. Hearst asked the next morning.
“She said that was
never her story.”
“But the assistant
D.A.—what’s his name, Pisser?”
“U’ren,
sir.”
“So ole U-rine is
saying the girl was bribed.”
“I don’t know what Mr.
U’ren is saying, but it looks like the girl was coerced into giving
the statement. Miss Prevon-Prevost was arrested the other night at
that dry raid at the Old Poodle Dog.”
“I read the
story.”
“Yes,
sir.”
The reporter, whatever
his name was, seemed to be having a hard time standing there with
his tablet in his hand and ink on his fingers, waiting for Mr.
Hearst to spell out the story for him. Or maybe it was because
Hearst was wearing war paint and an actual Indian headdress that
had belonged to Sitting Bull.
Hearst took off the
headdress, much to the disappointment of his six-year-old twin
boys, who shot another arrow from the top floor of the Hearst
Building out onto Market Street.
Hearst leaned into his
desk and jotted out some notes. “Randolph, Elbert:
Settle.”
The boys, dressed in
identical blue Eton suits with knickers, looked at each other and
sat down on a short couch, arms crossed over their chests and not
saying a word.
“Can we get to the
girl?”
“No one can find her.
U’ren and Judge Brady put her somewhere. That other showgirl, Miss
Blake, has disappeared all together.”
“What about this
Delmont woman?”
“She’s sticking with
the story that Virginia Rappe told her that Arbuckle had crushed
her.”
“Wasn’t enough to get
murder with the grand jury. What’s Judge Brady saying about
manslaughter?”
“He says he’s looking
for a second opinion in police court.”
“Will that
work?”
The reporter shrugged.
“If the police judge agrees, he can still try Fatty for
murder.”
“What about this other
woman?”
“She’s waiting
outside, sir. That’s who I wanted you to meet.”
“Would you like a
turkey leg?” Hearst said, pulling a big drumstick off a china plate
and holding it out to the skinny young man. The young reporter
shook his head and walked from the room, returning seconds later
with the homeliest woman Hearst had ever seen. She looked like
Buster Brown as an old unkempt man.
“This is Nurse
Cumberland.”
“Good God,” Hearst
said, and looked to his sons with wide eyes. Randolph whispered to
Elbert, and the boys giggled from the little couch.
Hearst said,
“Settle.”
“Miss Cumberland
attended Miss Rappe at the St. Francis.”
“And at Wakefield,
too,” the woman said.
Hearst nodded and
tried not to laugh at the woman’s haircut, recalling the lawsuit he
had with the cartoonist who’d created Buster Brown and now wishing
he could ring up the man. The boys continued to whisper and giggle,
and Hearst lumbered out of his chair and plucked the bow and a few
arrows from their hands. “Boys.”
“Miss Cumberland, tell
us your story,” he said, walking to the window and taking in Market
Street and the final rolling slope down to the bay.
The woman looked to
the young reporter and the young reporter looked to
Hearst.
“Oh, of course,”
Hearst said. “How much?”
“I don’t want to tell
nothin’ but the truth, mind you.”
“And I assure you I’ll
tell you my price when I know what your truth is
worth.”
“Miss . . . Nurse
Cumberland says that before Virginia Rappe died at Wakefield, she
told her that she’d been dragged by Arbuckle, by the arm, into the
back bedroom.”
“Is that
true?”
“God’s truth,
sir.”
“Have you been
summoned by District Attorney Brady?”
“Yes,
sir.”
“Have you given your
story yet?”
“No,
sir.”
Hearst set an arrow
into the tiny wooden bow, war paint still on his face, and sighted
a big boat pulling away from the Ferry Building, switching his
sights to the tiny shape of a man hanging from the Ferry Building’s
clock. A cleaner of some sort.
He let the arrow go
and watched it sail until out of sight.
“Tear up the front
page.”
“A TALLY WHACKER,”
Maude Delmont said. “A man’s manhood.”
The women whispered to
each other, dropping their spoons on the china plates and stopping
that chattering altogether.
“And that is where the
parrot landed?” asked Mrs. W. B. Hamilton, vice president of San
Francisco’s Vigilant Committee.
“Yes, ma’am,” Maude
Delmont said, ever so delicately stirring her tea in the great room
of the Fairmont Hotel on the Wednesday after the girl had died. She
took a little sip and a small bit of sugar cookie.
The two hundred or so
women remained silent.
“Were these orgies
common?” Mrs. Hamilton used a big voice, loud enough for all the
women to hear. There was a stray cough, the light tinkling of a
spoon, the shift of the chair, but in it all Maude Delmont had her
audience.
“Yes,” she said. “A
decent moral woman has no place in the film colony. I worked to
sell magazine subscriptions to Ladies’ Home
Journal. By the way, I will have subscription cards after I
speak. But these parties were no places for a lady.”
“And they were nude at
these orgies?”
“Completely,” Maude
Delmont said. “At the party in question, that beast Arbuckle had
taken offense with the parrot. The bird called him ‘Fatty,’ and
nothing makes Arbuckle madder than to hear that. He sat there, mind
you, in a very drunken state, arguing with the bird and calling it
all kinds of foul names, words that would only be uttered in pool
halls and houses of ill repute.”
My God. How awful.
“It was after he’d
disrobed and slathered his whalelike hide with buckets of hot oil,
to better lubricate himself and such orifices, when the bird took
its revenge and swooped through the party, through the maze of
nudity and sea of alcohol, to affix its talons on his man
snake.”
Oh, my.
Two women fainted.
Another woman choked on a delicate slice of coconut cake. A
gigantic fat woman screamed.
“I don’t quite know
how to say this . . .”
The Vigilant Committee
members, the dozens of them all dressed in black with great round
hats banded with trailing feathers, leaned in, making their folding
chairs creak and groan. The room at the Fairmont was all brass and
gold and crystal and china.
“. . . Arbuckle was
making his man snake perform a rare Arabian dance as a man played a
flute, as if charming the throb of his anatomy.”
More
shrieks.
Police Chief Daniel
O’Brien, the group’s special guest at the Fairmont, finally stood
and asked Maude Delmont to take her seat, and said he had heard
many stories about the film people down south. But he also said
that he’d been assured by many high-ranking, moral, upstanding
people that the Arbuckle types accounted for only a sliver of the
artists who lived there.
“And in that spirit, I
would like to introduce a man who has made grown-ups and children
smile the world over,” Police Chief O’Brien said, sweeping his hand
to a short man with a blunt cut of brown hair who wore a western
shirt, leather chaps, and boots, “Broncho Billy.”
Maude Delmont rolled
her eyes and asked the waiter for more cake. Big Kate Eisenhart
leaned in close to her ear and whispered, “The nerve.”
Maude wiped her lips
of icing.
Broncho Billy hitched
a thumb in his chaps and hand-tooled belt and removed the big
buckaroo hat from his head and held it to his heart. “May I lead
you all in prayer?”
These women were the
worst, a black-clad army of grim-faced suffragists, the kind Maude
remembered in Kansas who’d march the town streets on a Saturday
banging the old drum and causing the whole goddamn country to go
dry. The leader of the group was a stout lady physician named
Marina Bertola, who stood first and last after Broncho Billy
finished up his prayer and promised the group to amass a posse if
Arbuckle wasn’t brought to justice. As she spoke, the chandelier
light refracted in her lenses, making her eyes disappear behind the
glass, her eyes twin pools of ice.
“We have let our ardor cool down,” Dr. Bertola
said. “And for that reason we are all responsible in some measure
for the conditions that bring about such outrageous affairs as the
Arbuckle party. Our purpose is to secure enforcement of the law. We
must be faithful to that purpose, not only in regard to the
Arbuckle case but for the sake of the future.”
THE OLD MAN listened
with great interest to Sam’s story about shadowing Dr. Rumwell into
the Barbary the night before. He left out the part about getting
blind drunk, stopping short of the payoff with the big negro and
Haultain tailing Rumwell out of the bar.
“He got on a streetcar
and headed back to his place on Lombard,” Haultain
said.
“How long did you sit
on the house?”
“Till this morning,”
Haultain said. “He left the house for Wakefield. That’s where the
boy came for me and I broke off the tail.”
“Get some sleep,” the
Old Man said. “Roll back on the job tonight.”
“I’ll take him,” Sam
said.
“You find that Blake
girl.”
“Checked out of the
Woodrow on Tuesday.”
“Just find
her.”
“What do you make of
this Rumwell making house calls to whores?”
“I’d say he’s a true
philanthropist.”
Sam smiled. “He
performed an illegal autopsy on the Rappe girl and may have
disposed of some of her organs.”
The Old Man took off
his gold spectacles, folded them, and tucked them into the pocket
of his dress shirt. He wore a pin high and tight at his collar, and
leaned onto the desk with his forearms. “That may be. But one
problem at a time. Alice Blake is scared. The other little tart is
under lock and key by the state. Alice is the only one who can set
the story straight about that party. Did you see the afternoon
papers? The Delmont woman is on a goddamn speaking
tour.”
“Does Los Angeles have
anything on her?”
“Nope. Someone’s on
that.”
“The Blake girl,” Sam
said.
“The Blake
girl.”
“I’ll check back with
the hotel and run down some people at Tait’s.”
“You feeling all
right?” the Old Man asked.
“Peaches and
cream.”
“You look like shit
warmed over.”
“Thanks.”
“You need a
break?”
“No.”
The Old Man looked at
Sam a long while and then put his glasses back on and nodded. He
didn’t add a good-bye or give a speech, only went back to his
paperwork, sleeves rolled well above the ink, and expected Sam and
Phil to find their way out.