by Ace Atkins
“At what time did you hear Mrs. Delmont screaming for Mr. Arbuckle to open the door to room 1219?”
“I didn’t hear her scream.”
“Mr. Semnacher?”
“I don’t recall her screaming.”
“Surely you heard her banging on the door with the heel of her shoe?”
“That’s not what I recall.”
“Are you having memory problems, sir?”
“The mind is a funny thing.”
“Some minds are funnier than others.”
U’Ren paced back and forth in front of Judge Lazarus. Judge Lazarus followed the little lawyer with his eyes, never moving his big jaw from his hand. U’Ren walked back to the prosecutor’s table and exchanged whispers with the district attorney, Judge Brady. Judge Brady stood and walked to the railing, leaned over, and whispered something to the Delmont woman.
Maude Delmont, dressed all in black, nodded her head and wiped her nose with a handkerchief. Roscoe looked to Dominguez and Dominguez raised his eyebrows, hands resting on his large stomach waiting to see what was about to be sprung.
“Is it not true that you left the party with Miss Rappe’s undergarments? Her brassiere, bloomers, and garters?”
“I fished a waistcoat from the trash bin.”
“For what purpose?”
“I planned on joshing her later about her condition.”
“Did you not tell Mrs. Delmont, the very person who accompanied you to the Arbuckle suite, that you needed the clothing to wash your machine? Which was it?”
Women laughed. Lazarus stopped the court and spoke for a while, and U’Ren asked the question again. Al Semnacher leaned forward from the witness stand and cleared his throat, speaking loud enough for the ladies in the balcony.
“Maude Delmont is a known liar,” he said.
MAUDE DELMONT GASPED, closed her eyes, and pretended to faint. Kate Eisenhart caught her and hoisted her into her big lap, tapping Maude’s hand over and over and calling her name. Women craned their necks and whispered, and policewoman Kate Eisenhart told the lot of them to get back as she picked up Maude Delmont, threw her over a shoulder, and walked her from the courtroom like a big-game prize. As she walked, Maude opened one eye and looked back at Semnacher on the stand.
That bastard. That lousy prick.
Big Kate took her down the steps and out the front door of the Hall of Justice and told them newspapermen if they took one snap, she’d kick ’em all in the balls. She yelled for a glass of water, fanning Maude Delmont’s face and unpinning the wide-brimmed black hat. Maude fluttered her eyes open and then closed them again.
“Maude?”
She opened her eyes and righted herself on the granite steps, looking out on Portsmouth Square.
“That horrible man,” Kate said.
“The heat is awful,” Maude said. “All this black.”
Kate had a copy of the Examiner she’d plucked from the hands of a curious newsboy and waved it high up and down, breezing Maude’s face. A cup of water was placed in Maude’s hand and she stood.
“He can’t make up those things,” Kate said. “Not in this town, he can’t.”
“Movie people are all alike,” Maude said. “I’m never returning south. It’s a place without shame or a conscience.”
Kate shared a smile with her. The midday sun was a burning white. “Could you please call me a cab?” Maude asked.
Kate disappeared. Maude waited at the foot of the steps of the Hall of Justice for several minutes until Al Semnacher skipped down them, a mongrel group of newsmen at his heels. He tipped his bowler hat at Maude and there were pictures taken.
“I see you’ve made arrangements,” she said.
“How are things at the Palace? Heard the St. Francis kicked you out.”
Maude turned her head away. “I had my luggage moved to the Palace. The accommodations are much more to my liking.”
Al laughed. “Luggage? The only luggage you ever carry is a fresh set of bloomers in your pocketbook.”
Maude leapt at his throat, black hat rolling from her head, dropping her pocketbook and reaching her fingers around Al Semnacher’s skinny neck, trying to wring it like a chicken. His glasses were knocked off and Al fell to his back, swearing and cussing and calling her a nasty whore, and she kneed him in the balls and slapped him across the face until she felt a big arm reach around her waist and pull her back, the sweet voice of Big Kate telling her that her cab had come.
“Mrs. Delmont, are you okay?”
Maude put her hand to her chest and just breathed. “I have no idea what came over me.”
12
Sam walked with Dominguez up Kearny Street away from the Palace Hotel and toward the Hall of Justice. It was the second Monday since the Arbuckle party and the third day with Judge Lazarus and police court, and Frank Dominguez said he wouldn’t bet heads or tails which way the judge was leaning. The fog had burned off in the early-morning heat and Sam got a nice breath going, trying to pace out his answers so as not to sound winded to the fat attorney. He wore tweed pants and a tweed vest with a white shirt Jose had boiled for him, a cap and laced boots.
“How solid is your information?” Dominguez asked.
“Solid.”
“You want to tell me where you got it?”
“I’d rather not,” Sam said. “If it’s all the same with you.”
“U’Ren and Brady are putting up three docs today,” Dominguez said, not winded a bit, taking the hill, the talk, and a big cigar in easy stride. “All three will testify that the girl’s bladder burst from external force.”
“Rumwell?”
“Not Rumwell,” Dominguez said. “One doc who performed the autopsy with Rumwell at Wakefield, one fella, a Dr. Strange, who performed the second autopsy for the county, and a doctor who treated her at the St. Francis.”
“What does the county man say?”
“I haven’t seen his official report yet,” Dominguez said. “I was told it was still being typed up and I’d have ample time to question the man in court.”
“For some reason, I don’t think Brady is going to bring up the missing parts.”
“And I don’t want to look like a fool for asking unless we’re sure.”
“We’re sure,” Sam said.
Bankers, lawyers, and businessmen of all types flowed down the hill, walking past Dominguez and Sam in their buttoned-up coats and waxed mustaches, heavy leather satchels in hand. Two streetcars passed each other on Kearny, electricity sparking off the wires.
“Think this could be enough to throw out the case?” Sam asked.
Dominguez puffed on his cigar, lengthening his strides, cresting the hill at Portsmouth Square. A crowd had gathered on the front steps of the Halls of Justice. Dominguez clicked open a gold timepiece that hung on his waist.
“I don’t believe we’ll get a murder indictment,” Dominguez said. “I think that Lazarus will rubber-stamp the grand jury decision for manslaughter. Probably tomorrow.”
“And we prepare for real court.”
Dominguez puffed more on the cigar and squinted his eyes in the smoke.
“I’ll need you to go to Los Angeles,” Dominguez said. “Miss Durfee spoke to you about what she learned in Chicago about the girl?”
“Some,” Sam said. “But I can’t leave the city. My wife’s about to burst in a week or two. Really, anytime.”
“I can make sure you’re compensated, Sam. A new family needs money.”
“We have operatives in Los Angeles.”
“And they haven’t found a scrap on that girl.”
Sam put his hands in his pockets.
Dominguez crushed the last bit of his cigar under his shoe. He watched the dark mass of Vigilant women growing in a great black curtain on the steps.
“You understand what we’d need?”
“I do,” Sam said.
“Sam, you’re not looking at me.”
“It’s not my favorite type of work.”
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p; “We wouldn’t have long,” Dominguez said. “Weeks at most. I don’t want any more time for Roscoe to get crucified in the papers.”
Sam watched a woman unload sandwiches and a teakettle from a large wicker basket. Another woman brought her own chair, placing it at the foot of the great steps and knitting away with giant, sharp silver needles.
“When’s the Delmont broad up?”
“She was supposed to go first,” Dominguez said.
“Make any sense that U’Ren would keep the woman who swore out the complaint, their main witness, off the stand?”
“No,” Dominguez said. “No, it does not.”
Dominguez walked toward court, turning back a few steps later, and yelled, “Talk to your wife, Sam.”
MAUDE DELMONT let reporters into her room on the fifth floor of the Palace Hotel earlier that morning and held court all the way through breakfast. She sat on the bed, fully clothed, but rested her head back like an invalid and stared at a ceiling fan while she spun wild stories about Virginia Rappe and their enduring friendship, a friendship Maude said lasted even into death. When the questions became too personal, too detailed, Maude would only have to stretch her forearm across her head and say she’d grown tired and the newspapermen would ease off, taking a few of the scraps she’d fed them.
“We met at the Million Dollar Theater,” Maude said.
They’d met in Al Semnacher’s living room, parceling out a bottle of laudanum and taking disgusting turns with Al.
“I had never seen her touch alcohol until the Arbuckle party.”
In the three weeks Maude had known her, the girl always had a stomach full of gin and an arm full of heroin. She liked cocaine. Sex was as easy as wiping her nose.
“We often went to church,” Maude said. “She was little but had the most lovely, strong voice.”
The girl was ripe, full of curves and solid meat, and couldn’t have found a church in Los Angeles with a road map.
“Will you make her funeral?” a newsman asked.
Maude sadly shook her head, standing from the bed, grabbing the now-trademark black hat and veil, readying for court.
“I can’t,” Maude said. “Her former fiancé, Mr. Lehrman, is taking care of the arrangements. I’m needed here to set the truth straight.”
“Did he kill her?”
“I only know what the poor girl told me only moments after her encounter,” she said. “I can only imagine the horror of what that blubber must have been like. Please, I must be alone. I can’t breathe.”
Maude had scurried the boys out, picking up a pint of whiskey one had left her for her nerves and taking a swig before closing the door. But a big old foot clogged the way. She asked, What gives?, and the door was pushed forward by the bigheaded cop, Reagan, with his partner with the red curly hair behind him, Kennedy.
“Hey, boys.”
“Mrs. Delmont,” Reagan said.
“Take your hats?” she asked. “I’ll be ready in a jiff.”
The boys looked to each other, like a couple steers eyeing the same heifer.
She watched herself in the beveled mirror as she pulled on the hat and slanted it just so. She could see the men standing side by side behind her, in their dark blue suits and serious faces.
“You two have something to say?”
“Captain Matheson would like to talk to you.”
“But I’m due in court,” she said. “Did you talk to Judge Brady about this?”
“He knows,” Griff Kennedy said.
“Does this have something to do with what that fool Al Semnacher said about me?”
“No, ma’am,” Tom said. “We’ll ride down with you. We have a man holding the elevator.”
Maude stood a good two feet below both of the detectives and looked back and forth to each one’s face before launching into a smile. She let her eyes linger on them.
Nothing.
“Oh, well,” she said. “Let’s go.”
A little bald man wearing a red coat across his sagging shoulders held the elevator door and rolled the caged door in front of them. He turned the key and the elevator rumbled to life, floating and bumping, floating and bumping, down the shaft.
“We’re going to be late,” Maude Delmont said. “I hope you two fools know that.”
She watched the floors slide by the door, keeping her eyes on the needle pointing down toward the lobby.
“Mrs. Delmont, have you spent much time in Madera County?” Detective Reagan asked behind her.
Maude Delmont kept her eyes forward, letting the elevator slow to a stop and the gated door open. Without a word, she walked ahead of them.
“SO ARBUCKLE is A FREE MAN?” Mr. Hearst asked.
“Yes, sir,” said the young reporter.
“You saw him walk out of jail?”
“Yes, sir. Bail was five thousand.”
“Did he smile?”
“He grinned.”
“That’s a smile.”
The big black locomotive steamed south from San Francisco to Los Angeles, the young reporter still looking uneasy from when Hearst asked him on the journey, still worried about making the morning edition. The young man sat across from Hearst, afraid to touch the plate of food that George had carried from the kitchen, the roast beef and potatoes growing cold on the gilded china.
“Do you think he deserved to be tried with more than manslaughter?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Hearst sliced into the roast beef, adding a touch of mashed potatoes on the fork. The gravy was creamy and bloody, fresh green beans on the side. He asked George to pour more wine and looked out at the flat, barren northern California countryside as they sped along, the occasional whistle blowing from the engineer.
“When should we expect a trial?”
“In a month or so.”
“What else do we have for the afternoon?”
“The disarmament conference begins in a few weeks. The Tong War continues in Chinatown. Mollie Merrick has a piece on the high rate of college coeds never marrying.”
“I mean on Arbuckle.”
“They bury the girl tomorrow in Hollywood. I’ve brought you the story of her viewing from the wire.”
Hearst set it by his elbow and scanned the story, George refilling his wineglass. The young reporter nervously checked his wristwatch, wanting more than anything to be away from the man the newsboys called The Chief and off his goddamn train.
8,000 AT L.A. VIEW BODY OF VIRGINIA RAPPE. Eight thousand persons—gray-headed matrons with their daughters, men in overalls who stood hat in hand, and schoolgirls with braided hair down their backs—all inspired by love, friendship, or morbid curiosity, viewed the body of Virginia Rappe, beautiful motion picture actress, as it lay in state between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the undertaking establishment of Strother and Drayton in Hollywood today.
Draped in a white satin shroud, with flowers in her hands, the body of the girl, central figure of the tragedy which startled the country last week, looked extremely lifelike and natural. The casket was banked high with flowers, including the 1,000 tiger lilies ordered by Miss Rappe’s fiancé, Henry Lehrman, from New York, and across it was a white satin ribbon and in gold letters this: To my grave sweetheart.—From Henry.
Hearst closed the folder over the story and looked across the table at the young reporter fidgeting.
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
“Sorry. I’m a little nervous.”
“Of what?”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“At least drink your wine,” Hearst said, downing the rest of his. “I never trust a newspaperman who doesn’t drink. Shows me he doesn’t have ink in his blood.”
He smiled, watching the reporter down the glass.
“I want Arbuckle smiling up high. I want you to show his cockiness and aloofness from the judge’s decision. What was the first thing he did when released?”
“Got a shave, sir.”
“A shave. From whom?”
“A neighborhood barber offered him one for free.”
“Set it up with the smile, walking out a free man for now, and then the smugness of getting a shave and a big meal at the Palace Hotel. He did have a big meal, I assume.”
