by Ace Atkins
Sam whistled to him from the gate.
The man didn’t hear him. Or pretended he didn’t.
Sam whistled again and the man stuck the brush back in a suds bucket and wandered down to the gate.
“Like to see Mr. Lehrman.”
“He ain’t here.”
“Tell him I’m a detective from San Francisco.”
“I don’t care if you’re the Emperor of Japan, he still ain’t here.”
“When will he be back?”
“Next week,” the man said. “Leave a card.”
Sam left a card and walked back down to the cab and told the cabbie to wait. On foot, he followed the wall of shrubs until there was a break and he found a wrought-iron gate.
The gate was unlocked.
Sam let himself inside and walked down a winding path through some exotic trees and bushes. There was hibiscus and lime. Lemon trees and palm. Flowers planted along a spindled alabaster wall and up a little staircase to behind the mansion.
Sam found three people sitting by a little round pool with a fountain in the center. Two men and a woman.
All were very naked.
Sam smiled and took off his hat.
“I guess I’m a bit overdressed.”
A man with tight slicked hair and a tiny mustache got to his feet. He was tall and bony and hairless and made no attempt to cover himself. He just wanted to know how the hell Sam had gotten into the garden.
“Let myself in,” Sam said. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Lehrman.”
“Please leave.”
“I came all the way from San Francisco.”
“Are you with the police?”
“I’m a detective,” Sam said.
“Please sit,” Henry Lehrman said, sweeping his hand to a small lacquered table bordered by four silk pillows. “Would you like some tea?”
“Sure.”
“I hope our nudity does not shock you,” Lehrman said. “We find it to be quite natural and nothing to be ashamed of. This is my home and we have our own customs.”
“I heard I was born that way.”
The woman remained seated by the pool, eating an apple. She was young, maybe not twenty, redheaded and freckled, her skin flushed with sun. Sam made a note of her form as she was introduced as Miss Leigh. She smiled at Sam and Sam smiled back, liking the smile and shape.
Henry introduced the man as his spiritual adviser, Dr. Bagwa. The man wore a jeweled headdress and it jingled as he bowed. Sam couldn’t hide his smile, which wasn’t lost on “Dr. Bagwa,” who returned back to his spot by the pool with Miss Leigh.
“Dr. Bagwa is an expert in soul painting,” Lehrman said. “Have you heard of it?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“He can see the colors of man’s soul without the flesh and bone.”
“That a fact.”
“He’s quite wise, you know.”
Lehrman rang a little bell and a maid appeared and he asked for two cups of flower tea.
“I’m sorry about Miss Rappe,” Sam said.
“She was my fiancée.”
“What about Miss Leigh?”
“She’s my secretary.”
“I see.”
Lehrman looked off for a long moment, seeming to study the hills, and turned back to Sam. “She was my muse. My love. My friend. I don’t know if I can work without her. She was to be the star of my next film.”
Sam set fire to a Fatima and laid the pack and matches on the table. “What was it going to be about?”
“The film? Does it matter now? It’s all lost.”
“How long did you know her?”
“I’ve already answered these questions for Judge Brady.”
“Just a few more, if you don’t mind.”
The tea came. The maid thankfully brought a robe, an Oriental affair, that Lehrman slipped into and belted at the waist. He sat cross-legged on the pillow and lit a jade opium pipe.
“She was just an extra,” he said. “But she had a quality. You know they say she was born from royalty?”
“I read that. Is it true?”
“Virginia never knew her father,” he said. “I suppose it could be true.”
Lehrman pulled on the pipe and closed his eyes. He looked quite content on the little pillow.
“She lived with you?”
“She lived in the wing of the house with my aunt.”
“All very proper.”
“Well, of course.”
“And you loved her.”
“I did.”
“And how did she know Mr. Semnacher and Mrs. Delmont?”
“I don’t know.”
“But she was with them?”
“I’ve met Mr. Semnacher and find him to be quite distasteful. I know nothing of this Delmont woman.”
“You didn’t care that she’d gone to San Francisco?”
“We were free to live our own lives.”
“But she was your fiancée?”
Lehrman set down the pipe. He made a show of smoothing down the little black mustache. The wind blew off the shadowed hills, smelling of orange blossoms and tropical flowers. He made a sad face, looking more comical than sad. Sam watched him and fished for another Fatima.
He stole a side glance of Miss Leigh, laughing and talking with Dr. Bagwa.
“When did you meet Miss Rappe?”
“Two years ago.”
“She was in one of your pictures?”
“Yes.”
“And you fell in love?”
“Madly.”
“And she moved in here?”
“Yes. What does it matter?”
“Did you know any of her people in Chicago?”
“We decided not to speak of her past or who we were before we met.”
“I see.”
“Did she have many friends?”
“Of course.”
“Who were they?”
“I’m finding this tiresome, Mr. . . . ?” Lehrman raised an eyebrow.
Sam introduced himself and laid out his hand. Lehrman looked to his hand and stood, holding on to the jade pipe and excusing himself. “This all has been quite a troubling ordeal. If it wasn’t for the good doctor, I don’t know what I would have done.”
Lehrman took a crooked path back to the house. The glass doors rattled with a sharp slam.
Sam sniffed the tea and then took a small sip. It tasted like chopped flowers and sugar. He stood and stretched his legs, smiling over at Miss Leigh. She smiled back and crossed her shapely long legs. She wore her hair loose and it fell softly against the fine shoulders and the tips of her full breasts with small pink nipples.
Her eyes were wide set and an innocent green without a trace of paint. Somewhere a farmer was missing his daughter.
So intent on the girl, Sam missed the good Dr. Bagwa as he took a seat at the table, pulling loose a Fatima.
“Whatta you say, Pete?” Sam said, turning his eyes back to the girl.
“Thanks for not blowing it, Sam.”
“Man’s got to make an honest living.”
“You ain’t kidding, brother.”
“How long you been with this four-flusher?”
“A month.”
“Dr. Bagwa,” Sam said, laughing. “That tops your minister act in Port-land. Or the English duke in Cleveland.”
“I try.”
“You know where I can get a decent plate of ham and eggs?”
Pete the Fink told him. Sam said he’d meet him there in an hour.
“And Pete?”
“Yeah?”
“Make sure you wear some goddamn pants.”
14
They met at a little place called Philippe, a short walk from the train yards near the Mex district on Aliso Street. Sam finished up three cigarettes and two cups of coffee before Pete showed up in a dark suit with a red tie. He’d switched out the turban for a beaver hat he laid on a hook by the front door and slid into a booth across from Sam, folding his hands together like he
was about to pray, with a devilish smile on his lips.
“Thanks for losing the getup.”
“You should see this robe I got,” Pete said. “It’s made of Chinese silk and little emeralds. They look like stars.”
“Nice.”
Pete was medium height, medium weight, with brown hair and brown eyes. He could be a million men, if judged by Bertillon. No scars, no marks. Even if you’d never seen him, you’d think he was someone who used to date your sister.
“You’ll like this place,” Pete said. “They make roast beef sandwiches on thick rolls like they do back east.”
“I just ordered some hash and eggs.”
“You’re a hash-and-egg kind of guy, Sam.”
“So tell me about Lehrman.”
“Hey, aren’t you gonna give me the stroke? Ask me about the boys in San Quentin or whores we’ve known. Butter me up a bit before you stick it to me like that.”
“You want coffee?”
“Sure.”
“So tell me about Lehrman.”
“I mean, he is what he is. He’s a guy who needs a guy like Dr. Bagwa. I came up with the idea when I was on the train from Chicago, I read up on this guy in New York, some Oriental, who did these soul paintings. I didn’t make it a night before I had these movie people lined up around the block for me to smear some colors on the canvas. That’s the beauty, Sam. I can’t even draw a fucking cat.”
Sam scratched his face. He needed to find a cheap hotel and a shave. He hadn’t slept the whole way on the train, thinking about Arbuckle and the Vigilant women, and Jose about to burst and what he was going to do with a kid without two nickels to rub together.
“Breakfast on you?”
“I’ll expense it.”
“How much for the goods on Lehrman?”
Sam smiled and scratched his face again. He drank some coffee. He looked at the time on a big clock over the lunch counter where workers in overalls had come in from the train yards. They carried lunch pails and punched time clocks and worked with their hands in the same place every day, getting a regular check from the bossman.
“Go ahead and tell Lehrman about me,” Pete said. “The son of a bitch is broke.”
“Living in that ole shack?”
“Place belongs to some fella in Boston who backs his pictures. It’s his family’s place and he lets Lehrman stay there. The guy is a big fucking phony.”
“Coming from Pete the Fink.”
“I know who I am, Sam. I don’t confuse myself. Lehrman believes he’s some kind of artist ’cause he makes moving pictures. He calls himself an artist with a capital A at least a hundred times a day. Oh, and he’s a fucking psychic, too. The other day he tried for half an hour to move a saltshaker across the table. Finally when he’d closed his eyes, I moved the fucking thing and then clapped for him. I thought he was going to cry while I started telling him again about the eight principles of peace. That’s what ‘Bagwa means’—I read up on it at the library. You can find out all kinds of things at a library. Books make you smarter. It’s true.”
Pete the Fink fished into his coat pocket for a matchbook. When he opened the cover, it read BETTER YOURSELF IN TEN MINUTES A DAY.
“It’s no joke,” he said.
The waitress brought the hash and eggs. Pete ordered something called a French sandwich and a seltzer.
“He mention Virginia Rappe?”
“Are you putting me on? That’s all he’s been talking about since the girl went and got herself squished in Frisco. He’s called every newspaper in the country, reversing the charges, making me send telegrams to William Randolph Hearst himself.”
“About what?”
“About the dead girl. It’s all bullshit about these cuff links saying ‘To My Love, Henry’ and all that. He doesn’t even have cuff links. The bastard doesn’t wear clothes except when he leaves the house. He’s a nut. I mean, you get used to it, wandering around with your schlong waving around. I think he likes the breezes down there or something because I never seen him with a boner even when his girlfriend, Miss Leigh, is naked. I got to sit down and kind of cross my legs, think about things that aren’t sexy like baseball, or this one time I walked into the crapper and saw my grandma in the tub. God, she had tits like flapjacks.”
Pete winced with the memory.
“He knows Hearst?”
“He’s fishing for money. I took the telegram to Western Union for him and thought, Good luck. But it wasn’t two hours later that he got a goddamn telegram back from Hearst himself. Can you believe that? William Randolph Fucking Hearst. He answered back with two hundred dollars.”
“I had a run-in with some of Hearst’s people once.”
“What were you doing?”
“Strike busting.”
“And they call me the fink.”
“So Lehrman lied about knowing the girl?”
“He talks about her too plain to make it all up in his head. Because he ain’t that kind of crazy to make up things that never happened and repeat them back like they really did. I think, at the heart of it, he knows he’s a phony bird. That’s halfway between crazy and a con man, and that’s the middle of the road, brother.”
“Tell me about the girl.”
“She lived with him at the mansion for maybe a year or more. He was punching her ticket but wasn’t trying to make her a star. Lehrman’s a doper and so I guess she probably was a doper, too. I heard from the help that she’d become a real mess and finally he threw her out. She kept on coming back, yelling at him from over the fence like some kind of cat in heat about how much she loved him. But he was done with her, moved on to Miss Leigh, and that was that.”
“She ever in his pictures?”
“How should I know?” Pete asked. “I don’t go see pictures. It’s a fad.
People will come to their senses and realize they’re just looking at a big flip-book. Remember when the Jew street peddlers used to hustle those in New York? I had one with a silhouette ice-skating. The world has gone nuts. Women wanting to marry that Valentino fella after seeing his picture. Folks chasing down Charlie Chaplin in London, ripping off pieces of his clothes and trying to sell them. I mean, these people are just making pictures of what I’ve been doing all my life, and that makes their shit not stink. They ain’t princesses or sheiks or little tramps or any of that. I remember when they used to bring actors to town in stages, like circus animals.”
“What happened to the girl? After Lehrman?”
Pete looked down the counter at a waitress carrying his French sandwich. He tucked a napkin into his shirt collar over the red tie and thanked the woman, calling her sweetheart.
“I don’t know.”
“Can you find out for me?”
“For a price.”
“I’m buying that goddamn sandwich.”
“You’re a smooth talker, Sam.”
“Hey, Pete, I went and got myself married.”
“Come on.”
“It’s true.”
“Well, congratulations.”
“A baby on the way.”
“Well, there’s hope for all of us.”
“Amen,” Sam said.
“Amen,” Pete said.
“I THOUGHT I told you never to come here.”
“You told me not to come to your house,” the Dark Man said. “This isn’t your house.”
They were on the beach, and the Dark Man and Hearst followed the shoreline, salt water retreating and then breaking over Hearst’s bare feet. His trousers were rolled to his knees and he carried his shoes and socks in his hands, a little dachshund trying its best to keep up with its little legs.
“What if someone saw you?” Hearst asked.
“No one saw me besides your driver.”
“That’s George. He’s not my driver.”
“Quite a spread.”
“It belongs to a quite talented and beautiful lady.”
