A knock sounded at the door. “Police. Open up.” The voice sounded stiff and determined. It was Joe, come to toss Georges back in the hoosegow. Joe was right, it had been a mistake for Georges to leave town to convalesce. Now they thought he was a flight risk. Joe would haul him off to the bull ring and his lawyer would not be able to get him out. Not this time when the charge was murder.
Anna buried her face again. “Don’t open it. Tell Thomas not to open it.”
“Thomas is off tonight. I have to open it, ma chère. He’ll break down the door.” Georges stood and left her bedroom.
Anna could hear his footsteps cross the hotel suite and the front door latch click open. This time, it was Wolf’s voice she heard. “Georges Devereaux. I hate to trouble you. But you are under arrest for the murder of Samuel Grayson.”
CHAPTER 45
Anna rose, her eyes puffy and swollen, and followed Georges into the living room, wearing her flowing, lacy robe de nuit. Joe was cuffing him. He had puffy eyes too. He looked bereft. Wolf stood by looking pained. He wandered over to Anna. “Hello, honeybun.”
Anna tried to speak, but only made a sad little squeaking sound.
Joe wouldn’t look at her at all.
Georges said, “Good night Anna. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t you worry. I’ll be all right.”
Anna’s jaw trembled. “Where were you four weeks ago on Tuesday? The day Samuel Grayson was killed?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Honeybun, you might want to get dressed first.”
Anna looked down at her robe de nuit. “Oh.”
Wolf said, “I’ll take Mr. Devereaux. Joe, you stay and wait for honeybun to get dressed. She’ll need an escort to the station.”
“I won’t go with him.”
“We’ll all wait,” said Joe.
Anna strode back into her bedroom and began to undress. She cursed her buttons, her hands trembling. It took her half an hour to don her frillies and change into a clean matron’s uniform. When she reemerged and saw Georges seated on the butterfly settee with his hands in cuffs, she ran to the bathroom and leaned over the sink. She thought she might vomit.
Joe came to the bathroom door. “Anna. Are you all right? Sweetheart, I’m sorry.”
She was horrified that he might hear her throw up, and she was horrified in general. Her words dripped with Gila monster venom. “Go away.”
He did.
Her stomach settled a little. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and steeled herself. She retrieved Georges’s medicine from the medicine cabinet, because if anything would give him a fit, this would. Then, she strode into the living room with her head held high. “I’m ready.”
Joe put his hand softly on Georges’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”
Anna slept sitting upright in a chair outside Georges’s felony cell—that is to say, she didn’t sleep at all. Georges tossed and turned in his hammock, accompanied by three foul-smelling, criminal louts who swung in a row like worms in their cocoons. A fourth slept on a mat on the floor beneath the hammocks. They weren’t mere hoisters and hoodlums. They were murderers. Anna wanted to talk with Georges, but she didn’t know what to say and they had no privacy.
The following morning, the newspaper circus began. Georges’s picture and details of his arrest were plastered on the front page of both the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Herald. Anna wasn’t sure which patrolman had leaked the information to the press, but she said a silent prayer to Saint Roch, patron saint of the accused, that their lives would be forever devoid of love—like Anna’s would be if Georges were to hang.
The Herald especially was cruel in an article written by Mr. Tilly.
Would we really be surprised if the Blanc line proved to have criminal blood? Scores of Angelinos lost their savings when Blanc Bank failed. Why, then, is Georges Devereaux so rich? From prostitution? Or did Christopher Blanc hide assets with his son? Daughter Anna has certainly lived a dubious life, and it’s taken its toll. Many agree, she is losing her bloom . . .
It continued to excoriate for half a page. Worst of all, it included an unflattering picture of Anna dressed in her ugly matron’s uniform, her face still not fully recovered from her Gila monster bite. Her father would be livid.
The next week was a blur. Everyone at the station stayed hushed around Anna, who spent her days at the station learning to sew pillowcases with Matilda. Anna also sewed hers shut. She went downstairs to sit outside Georges’s cell and to make sure he took his medicine; but men were constantly having to use the chamber pots, driving Anna away. Thomas had meals delivered from the hotel, as well as clean clothes for Anna, who now slept upstairs in the matron’s quarters. Thomas took her dirty clothes away to be laundered.
Though Georges smiled and thanked Anna when she brought him his food, he wouldn’t eat or otherwise speak to anyone except his attorneys. His lead attorney, Earl Rogers, had brought in reinforcements in the form of seven more attorneys—Davis and Rush, Dunn and Crutcher, Norman Sterry, Oscar Lawler, and Samuel Hawkins. Mr. Rogers came daily, alone or with all or some of Georges’s counsel. They had private conversations with Georges in one of the station’s interview rooms. Anna wanted to be part of their conspiring, but Georges said no.
It didn’t matter. She couldn’t help. Her brilliant brain felt numb. If Georges were innocent, she couldn’t find the logical path to that conclusion. Neither could she believe him capable of first-degree murder.
She closed her eyes and tried to visualize what had happened that day in Griffith Park—what she had seen. She and Joe had gone there to make love, he with the pretense of hunting bank robbers, she with the pretense of hunting a truant.
He later did hunt bank robbers—bank robbers who had killed a bank teller. Murderers.
Anna took the defense attorney aside. “Mr. Rogers, the day Samuel Grayson was killed, Detective Singer was hunting for some bank robbers who were camping there. Later, he caught the bank robbers. They were in Griffith Park. Perhaps Samuel Grayson stumbled upon their encampment. Maybe he saw them counting money or heard them talking about robbing banks, so they shot him. At least one of them is a known killer.”
Earl Rogers raised his eyebrows with interest. “Really? Thank you, Miss Blanc. I’ll look into it.”
While Georges waited for his own hearing, Mrs. Rosenberg was indicted by the Grand Jury. Some thirty girls and women, ladies rounded up by LAPD patrolmen, testified against her. She pled guilty to having led girls astray, was sentenced to twelve months in county jail, and was fined a thousand dollars. The district attorney decided not to allow her to testify against any of the implicated men, as it would have given her immunity. He wanted her to pay for her crimes. Clearly punishing bad women was more important than punishing bad men.
The wealthy, weakly architect, Octavius Morgan, managed to elude indictment altogether when the Henry twins, the prosecution’s star witnesses against him, slipped out of the station one afternoon and were never seen or heard from again. In fact, the entire Jonquil Apartments had emptied. The girls—those who had testified against Mrs. Rosenberg—had scattered to other cities without a trace. W.H. Stevens was in Mexico and could not be reached to testify that he had paid Samuel Grayson on Morgan’s behalf. In a final blow to Georges, Joe verified that Morgan had indeed been in Fresno at the time of Samuel Grayson’s murder.
Georges went before the Grand Jury. Though no girls testified, he was indicted and would stand trial on three counts—kidnapping, degenerate practices with minor girls, and murder in the first degree. Earl Rogers assured Anna that Georges could escape the Black Pearl rap with the twins gone and the Jonquil empty, providing Allie Sutton didn’t crawl back out of the woodwork. Thus far, Joe had been unable to find her. Matilda was the only one to place Georges at the Jonquil Café, and she was not right in the head. She would never be allowed on the stand, and even if she were, she could only say she saw him there, and that was not a crime.
The mayor hated Georges because Anna’s father had lost the mayor’s money. He found the meanest judge in Los Angeles to preside over the trial, and the most cunning prosecutor. Deputy District Attorney Keyes was to prosecute Georges’s case. Anna knew Keyes by reputation. The detectives rejoiced whenever the district attorney assigned Keyes a case they had investigated. He almost always won. This time, the detective did not rejoice. In fact, the detective—Joe Singer—had lost weight. He never smiled or swapped stories with the other men, which wasn’t like him at all. A cloud hung over everyone at Central Station. All the men looked at Anna with pity in their eyes, except for Detective Snow, who sneered. Matron Clemens left cupcakes on Anna’s desk, possibly baked by one of her overabundant children. Anna ate only four, then selflessly gave the rest to the ladies in the cow ring.
Weeks passed, and Anna suffered. She returned to the street that was full of tailor shops and canvassed again with a photograph. “Please, do you know this man or why anyone would want to kill him?”
No one did.
She visited the Cock in the Walk, armed of course, and hung about the ladies’ lounge with the charity girls, hoping to hear something, some clue, that could lead to Georges’s exoneration.
She returned to the scene of the crime searching for some piece of evidence she had overlooked, but spring rains had washed the scene clean. Anna was out of ideas. She simply wished the trial would happen and be done with.
The evening before his trial, Anna sat outside Georges’s cell, simply turning her head and covering her ears when the men used the chamber pot. She stayed with him into the night, though Georges had little to say. He just sat, unshaven, in the dark, on the edge of his hammock in his striped jailbird clothes and rocked. The other men in the cell whispered stories about crimes their friends had committed and gotten away with—a bank robbery, a counterfeiting operation, a revenge killing. Anna suspected they were telling their own stories, thinly veiled for her benefit. They were men without conscience. Georges did not belong among them. Finally, the jailer came and ordered the men to be quiet.
At midnight, Georges stood. “Go to bed. You’ll need your sleep.”
She had become bored in their silent sorrow and agreed. She rose. He took her hand through the bars and squeezed it. “I’ve left everything to you, of course. All father’s wealth will be yours.” He smiled weakly. “He will be at your mercy. You won’t be too hard on him, will you?”
“You didn’t do it, did you, Georges?”
Georges face turned red and his voice betrayed anger. “Not you, too, Anna. Of course I didn’t kill Samuel Grayson.”
“Then father will never be at my mercy because you won’t hang!” Anna spoke with desperation. She pictured the man in Yuma swinging from the gallows, the crowd jeering. Her memory mated with fear, and then the man wore Georges’s face. He was Georges, now swinging, struggling at the end of a rope.
CHAPTER 46
The morning of the trial, Wolf snuck Anna a bottle of good whiskey, as Anna’s bottle from Georges had long been drained. It wasn’t the same quality, but it had the same effect, and Anna was grateful.
Wolf sat with Anna in her closet with the door closed. He clinked her glass. “To Georges.”
“To Georges.” Anna tossed back two glasses in succession.
“Captain Wells gave you unpaid leave for the trial?”
“Yes.”
“You need to borrow some money?”
“No. I have Georges. It’s not fair that Octavius Morgan doesn’t have to stand trial and Georges does. So what if he has an alibi for the murder. He’s obviously contributed to the twins’ downfall. I saw him eating with them.”
Wolf said, “Eating with twins is not illegal.”
“They as good as told me he ruined them. It was understood. One can’t speak explicitly about these things although I’d like to.”
“It’s hearsay.”
“Octavius Morgan, with his manly weakness. He disgusts me.”
“Matron Blanc, I’m speechless.”
“It’s true. He must have given the twins money and spirited them away to who knows where. They would never have just left on their own. They had nothing.” She sighed. “I’m worried about them. They’ll kill each other.”
“We’ll watch him. We’ll get him on something else.”
“I’m sure he’s cozying up to the mayor right now, to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“There’s uh, something you should know.”
“What is it?”
“The mayor sent private detectives to look for Jonquil girls, especially Allie Sutton. I’m afraid he hasn’t forgiven your father. Joe sent them up to a movie studio in Santa Barbara with a subpoena.”
The news hit Anna like a wrecking ball. “Of course he did.”
“Honeybun, have another drink.”
The Los Angeles County Courthouse sat up on a rise above the corner of New High Street and Temple. It reigned majestic in red stone with a jutting clock tower and giant palm trees standing guard in relief against the blue sky.
At the top of the steps, a woman stood delivering a speech through a megaphone. Anna recognized her as the elderly speaker from the Friday Morning Club. The lady called out, “Years have taught us that men will not assume the work of being our sisters’ keepers. Women, it is up to us. So long as there is an ‘unprotected’ woman in the world there are no truly protected women.”
It occurred to Anna that for once, the Friday Morning Club was not on her side. The lady was here to support any girls testifying against Georges. Anna doubted herself. And then she kicked herself for disloyalty.
Wolf escorted Anna up the crowded stone steps, which stretched up the side of the hill. Inside the marble atrium, Anna was elbow to elbow with men pushing to get into the courtroom to see the trial of the fallen millionaire, Georges Devereaux. She was blinded by flashbulbs, her ears assaulted by their deafening reports as Mr. Tilly and other newsmen snapped her picture. She held a hand up to block her face. Wolf wore his badge and his authoritative face. “Police. Let us pass.” He ushered Anna through the crowd to the elevator, pushing to the front. When the doors opened, he led Anna inside the wrought iron cage and blocked anyone else from joining them. As the doors closed, the reporters ran for the stairs.
Anna felt untethered, like she was floating above her own nightmare looking down at her beleaguered self and this tragedy. Wolf’s boots looked very shiny. She could almost see her face in them. She wondered how he got his boots so shiny, if he did them himself or had a boy do it. She looked at her own less shiny shoes. She should have given them to the maid.
When the doors opened on the fourth floor, Wolf escorted her to the courtroom where the trial would soon begin. She heard the reporters’ footfalls as they charged down the hall after her. She did not turn but glided on Wolf’s arm into the courtroom. The photographers followed, flashing away.
The judge’s grand mahogany bench rose above the room like the throne of God. The jury was seated below in their box. There were tables for the defense and the prosecution. Spectators, like Anna, were relegated to pews set behind a wooden railing.
Jeanne Devereaux already sat in the back in a sea of men. Her eyes were closed, her mouth moving in prayer. Anna tensed, hoping she remained discreet. If Jeanne Devereaux were revealed to be Georges mother, he was doomed. On the wall above her, the motto of the superior court was painted in black, “Gently to hear, kindly to judge.” Anna hoped it were true. She hoped the judge was more merciful than God.
The woman from the Friday Morning Club entered the courtroom carrying a sign that read “Fair play.” She would not meet Anna’s eyes.
The pews were filling up. Wolf flashed his badge and made two men move to give Anna a seat near the front. He sat beside her and stayed with her, leaning close to whis
per in her ear, “Don’t you worry, honeybun.” His breath smelled like whiskey. She must, too. She wondered if that sordid detail would make the papers.
Everything about the courtroom felt ominous. The jury of twelve men were clearly in a sour mood. The judge looked dyspeptic. The prosecution looked cheerful. The great Earl Rogers appeared nervous and kept sweeping back the cowlick that threatened to escape his straight, brilliantined hair. The seven other members of Georges’s legal defense couldn’t all fit at the table and had to form a ridiculous second row of chairs, crammed too close to the first wooden pew. Two of the men were whispering to each other. They began to laugh.
Anna wanted to scream, “This is my brother’s life and you’re toying with it!”
An officer led Georges into the courtroom in handcuffs, setting off another frenzy of noisy flashbulbs. He squinted at the brightness of the cameras, bringing his arm up to block the glare. He wore his finest suit and stood tall, like a Blanc. Anna prayed he wouldn’t have a fit.
The dyspeptic judge, the meanest in Los Angeles, banged the gavel and called the courtroom to order. Anna’s head spun. She was only vaguely aware as the charges were read and the judge admonished the jury to be impartial. The deputy district attorney made his opening statements. “The Jonquil Café, Resort, and Apartments, where many young girls gathered from department stores, restaurants, and other places of employment were alleged to have been lured to meet wealthy men, plied with alcohol, and ruined . . .”
Etcetera. Etcetera.
Joe took the stand for the prosecution. He told about finding Samuel Grayson’s body in Griffith Park. For the first time, Anna was glad she hadn’t been officially on the case. She would have to testify. The prosecution gave the jury pictures of Samuel’s body, covered with ants, just as they had found him, with the gun lying in his open hand. They passed them around.
The Body in Griffith Park Page 28