Devil's Garden

by Ace Atkins

  “Your mistress.”

  Hearst stopped walking. The surf came up high above his ankles as he stared at the man. “I was told you’re good at your job.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Then please do not speak unless spoken to. Do not arrive anywhere unannounced. Am I understood?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Hearst.”

  “I note a tone of sarcasm.”

  “No, sir.”

  “I suppose here is as good as anywhere.”

  “You wanna know if Fatty killed her?”

  “Well, did he?”

  The Dark Man shrugged. He still had on his dress shoes but had removed his hat and his black hair whipped down across the ragged half ear. His wool suit and jacket were too warm for the climate, but the man didn’t seem to notice or to perspire.

  “That’s a question I can’t answer,” the Dark Man said. “It seems Miss Rappe and Mr. Arbuckle are the only two who know. The door was closed.”

  “What about your man?” Hearst said. “The one who arranged the party?”

  “What about him?”

  “Does he know?”

  “No.”

  “This whole affair has been quite troubling,” Hearst said, picking up the little brown dachshund and rubbing the dog’s ears. He smelled the dog’s fur and the scent reminded him of Bavaria and the wonderful food and people. How he loved Germany.

  “I didn’t come for money,” the Dark Man said.

  “I would hope not.”

  “The police know about Mrs. Delmont,” he said. “They know about the cons. They probably know about her string of husbands, too. I don’t expect the district attorney in San Francisco to keep the same level of interest.”

  Hearst nodded and looked down at the much shorter man. He kissed the little brown dog on her head and smelled the sweet scent. He just simply smiled at the dark, very troubling man. The man was compact and muscular, giving the impression of a loaded spring about to snap.

  “The case may fall apart,” said the Dark Man, adding, “Mr. Hearst.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Mr. Arbuckle’s trial is already over.”

  Hearst whistled for the dog and walked briskly away from the man, leaving him to chew on the idea.

  “HOW ’BOUT A RIDE?”

  “No thanks,” Sam said.

  “It’s me, Daisy. Remember the Old Poodle Dog? I was the girl with the shotgun.”

  “I remember.”

  The Hupmobile trailed Sam along Aliso Street, the engine clicking and whirring, some faceless dry agent at the wheel. The girl rested her head across her forearm on the open window, trying to play it blue and lonesome. Sam kept walking and checking his watch.

  “Where you headed?” she asked.

  “I’m gonna hop a streetcar over to Echo Park.”

  “What’s in Echo Park?”

  “Mabel Normand.”

  “Mabel and Fatty,” she said. “What a team.”

  “You’ve been following me since I stepped off the Owl.”

  “You bet.”

  “Why?”

  “Looking for a bootlegger.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Does the name Hibbard mean anything to you?” she asked.

  The Hupmobile drifted on at about five miles per hour. A machine behind them honked its horn twice before speeding by.

  “What about Jack Lawrence?”

  “Nope.”

  “You without a machine and us without a lead,” she said.

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “A rest for your feet.”

  “I like your hat,” Sam said.

  Still resting her head across her forearm, she rolled her eyes upward at the little velvet hat cocked just so.

  “Nice angle.”

  “Yeah? I thought so, too.”

  Sam stopped walking. He checked the time. He steadied his breath. “Get in,” said Daisy Simpkins, famous female dry agent.

  THEY DROVE BACK into the downtown, to a building called the Bradbury, a big, old hulking brick structure built before the turn of the century. The roof was made of glass and the inside had been designed like the exposed guts of a machine. Scrolled iron balconies boxed the open atrium, with two caged elevators zipping up and down, large iron wheels turning whirring cables. The light inside seemed almost to be magnified, more real than it was on the street, and Sam followed the girl and the other agent across the big, wide lobby and to a staircase they mounted and followed, and Sam looked at the elevators zipping up and down and stopped to rest on the second floor, his hand on an iron banister as he caught his breath.

  “You okay?” Daisy asked.

  “Dandy.”

  They followed the balcony ledge on the third floor to an office advertising U.S. GOVERNMENT on the frosted glass. Inside, it bustled with the activity of a dozen or so men working in their shirtsleeves and ties, talking into telephones and typing out reports. One woman waited at a front desk and led them to a back office, where Sam was introduced to a delicate young man named Earl Lynn and a toadlike older man who didn’t get out of his chair to shake hands.

  He grunted at Daisy.

  He was Lynn’s father.

  Earl Lynn was in his early twenties and handsome in a girlish way, with perfect slick hair, a flawless shave, and long thick eyelashes that seemed to flutter nervously. He took a seat by an open window and crossed his legs at the knee. He wore silk socks with small gold designs and a vest that matched his pin-striped suit. He had a rose on his lapel and smelled of flowers.

  The flower smell was soon covered by the scent of Old Dad’s wet stogie that he relit with fat-thumbed flourish. His son tried to get a cigarette in an ivory holder going but failed at least three times.

  “Mr. Lynn is an actor,” Daisy said. “He contacted us yesterday about the Arbuckle party.”

  “You were there?”

  “My God, no,” Earl Lynn said. He pulled the cigarette from the holder and broke it in two as if somehow it was the cigarette’s fault for failing to catch fire.

  “Mr. Lynn had a run-in with one of the party guests,” Daisy said. She found a spot on the end of the desk, sat down, and crossed her thin arms across her bosom. They were nice bosoms, high and tight, and Sam had to redirect his attention back to the young man.

  “Maude Delmont claimed she got the high hard one from my son and carried his seed,” said the father.

  “Father,” Earl Lynn said.

  “Six months ago, I paid that woman five thousand dollars to peddle that story somewhere else.”

  “You and Maude?” Sam asked.

  Earl Lynn tucked his tongue into a cheek and rolled his eyes. “No. Absolutely not.”

  “But you did know her?” Sam asked.

  “We went to the same parties. Knew the same people.”

  “What people?”

  Lynn named some and they meant nothing to Sam, Hollywood people, but he wrote them down anyway.

  “But you two weren’t . . . ?”

  “My Lord, she’s an older woman!”

  “So you got roped.”

  He nodded.

  “Why’d your old man pay if the baby wasn’t yours?”

  “There was no baby,” Lynn said. “But I have an image, characters known to women in the world, and to think that I had impregnated a married woman . . . Well, it’s that simple.”

  Sam took a seat beside Daisy. Even from the back office, you could hear the giant iron wheels turning and moving and groaning and stopping the elevators. An elevator stopped near the floor and he could hear the gate slide open and then slam shut, the wheels turning again. Sam felt like he was on the inside of a clock.

  “What do you do, Mr. Lynn?”

  “Me?” the old man grunted. His head looked to be the size of a melon, with a nice slab of fat hanging from his insignificant chin. He resembled a contented hog.

  “Oil.”

  Sam nodded.


  “Why’d you call the dry agents?”

  Earl Lynn tried with a second cigarette in the ivory holder and finally got the smoke going and watched it trail up to the ceiling and then stared back at Daisy and Sam. “I thought the government should know what kind of people were at this party. Mrs. Delmont surely had something to do with that liquor. She’s a lush. A hophead, too.”

  “You think she conned Mr. Arbuckle?”

  Earl Lynn sucked on the ivory and held the holder loose in his long fingers. “I would not be surprised by the depths of her evil. She once got me drunk and tried to unbuckle my trousers.”

  “The horror,” Sam said.

  “Can we go?” the old man barked. “This man is a tiresome smart aleck.”

  “Did you recognize the others?” Daisy asked. “At the party?”

  “I know Lowell Sherman, of course. We play tennis. But he’d never be mixed up with a woman like Mrs. Delmont. That was my own error in judgment.”

  “The other women?” Sam asked.

  “I met Virginia Rappe once. She didn’t impress me. A little tart. A leech.”

  “Fishback? Semnacher?”

  “Al Semnacher is the one who introduced me to Mrs. Delmont,” Earl

  Lynn said. The tip of his cigarette had grown long and fell off with a plop in his lap. He brushed off the ash with lots of busied annoyance.

  “How did you know him?” Sam asked.

  “He’s in the business. Haven’t you read the papers? He books acts for Mr. Grauman at the Million Dollar.”

  Sam smiled at Earl Lynn and then back at the fat father, who’d rested his thick hands across the top of his stomach. The old fat man looked like he might doze off in the thick leather chair, the cigar smoldering in the corner of his mouth.

  Sam tucked a Pinkerton’s card in the man’s stubby fingers. He jostled awake with a snort.

  “We’d like to see you at the trial,” Sam said.

  Earl Lynn said it would be his pleasure.

  “Does the name Jack Lawrence mean anything to you?” Daisy asked.

  “Should it?” Lynn asked.

  “He supplied the liquor, and maybe the girls, too,” Daisy said. “Mr. Lawrence may be the source of the biggest bootlegging ring in California.”

  Lynn repeated again that he didn’t know the fella. His father seemed to grow awake very quickly, fast enough to stand and relight the cigar before walking out. “Okay? All right? Are we done here?”

  Sam took the fat man’s seat. He could still smell Earl Lynn’s perfume. “He’s a pretty one,” Daisy said as the door closed.

  She sat behind the desk that displayed a brass marker reading DIRECTOR and lit a cigarette. She placed her feet up on the desk, and finally said, “Why won’t Arbuckle name the man who brought the liquor?”

  A small fan on the table whirred and spun.

  “Besides the confession leading to a federal indictment?”

  “Besides that.”

  “Maybe he’s a standup guy,” Sam said. “That’s what I’d call a fella who doesn’t rat on his friends.”

  “You know what I’d call a fella who buttons up with his ass in a sling?”

  “Please tell me.”

  “A fool.”

  15

  The Arbuckle mansion door was wide-open and Sam followed the hall to a great room with wide, buffed plank floors, a big bank of windows, and not a stick of furniture. Roscoe sat on the floor in a square of sunlight shining in from high windows and watched as his dog Luke walked from bush to bush, marking his territory. He sat like a sullen child on his butt, with his legs spread, holding a cigarette in his fingers and barely noting the two entering the room. He wore fine tweed trousers and shoes with silk socks.

  His red suspenders hung over his bare, meaty torso.

  “Mr. Arbuckle?”

  He turned.

  “I work for Mr. Dominguez.”

  “I guess you haven’t heard.”

  “Heard what?”

  “You’ll hear it.”

  “I’d like a second.”

  “Who’s the skirt?”

  “This is Miss Simpkins. She’s a dry agent.”

  “And you brought her here?”

  “She’s not interested in you,” Sam said.

  “That’s a switch,” Roscoe said.

  “She’s looking for a man named Jack Lawrence who delivered liquor to the party.”

  “Don’t know him.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows and Daisy opened a pair of French doors out onto a large patio. She tugged away a baseball from Luke and pitched it far off into a blanket of freshly cut green grass.

  “She’s okay,” Sam said.

  “I’ll say.”

  “I’m having a tough time running down folks who knew the Rappe girl,” Sam said. “I understand you knew her when she worked at Sennett’s. But the only person I can find who knew her is Henry Lehrman. I guess you worked with him?”

  “He used to direct some of my pictures,” Roscoe said, still sitting in the same childlike pose. “We used to call him Pathé. Like the French picture company. The rumor was that he’d told DeMille that he’d worked for them in Paris. It was all a bunch of hooey, but the name stuck. He’s an arrogant bastard. Have you read the letter he wrote about me? He called me a goddamn beast and said he wanted to kill me. He knew I didn’t do a thing to Virginia. He knows I’m not that kind of fella.”

  “Tell me about the girl.”

  “Listen,” Roscoe said, pointing the end of a half-smoked cigarette for emphasis, “I’ve been over this ten thousand times with Frank. I met her a few times, knew her when she was with Lehrman. She was cute. A lot of fun. When she showed up at the St. Francis, I hadn’t seen her for years. I barely remembered her name. I was in the shower, and when I came out—”

  Sam held up his hand and shook his head. “I don’t need that part. Just who would know the girl?”

  Roscoe smoked some more and thought. He wobbled as he tried to get to his feet and then wandered out of the room, and Sam heard water running and then a commode flush and for a second thought about showing himself out. But soon Roscoe was back and asked if Sam would like some coffee because the coffeepot was about the only thing he had left.

  “That and a skillet.”

  “What about friends outside Lehrman?”

  “Hold on,” Roscoe said and walked to the foot of an endless oak banister to the second floor and yelled up for Minty. Minta Durfee appeared at the top of the landing and asked what he wanted, and he told her about Sam, and she said she’d be down in a minute.

  “Can you believe she came all the way from New York for me? Have you met her ma? She’s a peach.”

  Sam sat at a small, wobbly table that was dwarfed by the size of the kitchen. The four chairs that surrounded it were crude and mismatched and looked as if they’d been picked up at a rummage sale.

  Minta came into the kitchen wearing a flowing red robe and a kerchief on her head. She smiled at Sam and said it was nice to see a familiar face and then poured him a cup of coffee to go with his cigarette. All of them sat at the little table.

  Outside the window, they could see Daisy playing with Luke.

  “Who’s the skirt?” Minta asked.

  Roscoe laughed. They drank their coffee and made idle talk for a while, and then the subject rolled back to Virginia Rappe.

  “I was gone by then,” Minta said. “Have you talked to Mabel?”

  “Minta and Mabel,” Roscoe said. “My girls.”

  “I was headed there this afternoon,” Sam said. “Are you sure she’ll talk to me?”

  “Sure thing,” Minta said. “She’ll like you. You’re a handsome fella, Sam.” Sam smiled at her.

  Roscoe smoked and made a puzzled smile. He snapped his fingers and leaned into the table. “Say, I know you from somewhere. You ever spent time in Bisbee?”

  “Nope.”

  “But I know you. I’m not crazy. Sometimes it comes to me, people I’ve met. I may not have eve
n spoken to them, but I remember a face.”