by Ace Atkins
“He’s all right,” Minta said, waiting for her mother to get in the limousine and then following her. “He’s with the Pinkertons.”
McNab looked at his gold timepiece and crawled into the limousine and slammed the door. “Hurry up with it.”
Roscoe buttoned his jacket and pulled his hands into some leather gloves. “What a shit day.”
“What’s your connection to William Randolph Hearst?” the Pinkerton asked.
Roscoe shook his head.
“You know him?”
“I met the man once,” Roscoe said. “He’s been giving me a hell of a trashing in the papers, but that’s no secret.”
“He have a reason?”
“He’s an asshole. You need much else?”
“He works with Paramount?”
“He gets Paramount distribution.”
“And they get Hearst press?”
“Something like that.”
“Then why’s he laying into you, Roscoe?”
Roscoe shook his head again but felt himself sweat underneath the coat.
He tried to keep a light smile and shook the detective’s hand warmly. “I got to go, Pinkerton. Judge Louderback doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
The detective just stood there, watching him, waiting for an answer.
But instead, Roscoe gave him an old pat on the back and climbed in the limousine, the door barely closing before the big machine rolled up the hill and toward Portsmouth Square. Roscoe took a deep breath, feeling more trapped than ever, thinking of what it must be like to be swimming under a sheet of ice.
WHEN Dr. RUMWELL saw Maude sitting in his parlor having tea with his wife, he looked as if he’d just shit his drawers. His little mustache, the one that looked like he dyed it with boot polish, twitched under his nose and his eyelids fluttered as he removed his hat and black overcoat, leaving his well-worn medical bag by the door.
“Mrs. Delmont is such good company,” his wife said, laughing. “So charming.”
Rumwell just stood in the doorframe staring down at Maude, who crossed her legs and took another cookie his wife had offered. She sipped some tea and smiled up at Rumwell from the lip of the cup.
“Won’t you sit down?” Maude asked him.
He shook his head. He’d begun to perspire at the brow.
“Darling,” his wife said, “Mrs. Delmont has been waiting on you for more than an hour.”
“She may see me during office hours.”
“But I tried to call the clinic,” Maude said. “They told me you wouldn’t see me.”
“Quite right.”
Rummy’s wife looked shocked and put down her tea. She was the kind of frail woman who wore going-out clothes around the house, got the vapors, and would invite some complete stranger into her little velvet parlor and serve cookies and tea. Her husband’s manners were making her physically ill.
“But, Doctor,” Maude said, “you remember that itch I have? You’ve treated it before.”
She smiled at him and took another bite of cookie. The frail wife left the room, the kitchen door swinging back and forth behind her, the woman muttering something about dinner burning on the stove. Rumwell looked as if he’d swallowed a turd.
“You must be going,” Rumwell said.
Maude stood and walked to him. He held out a hand as if she was some kind of leper and all that unease was making Maude pretty damn happy. She smiled at him, walking slow and swatting her giant hat from side to side and against her buttocks. “Come on, Rummy.”
“Not here.”
“I don’t believe you’d see me anywhere.”
“I will if you’d please leave.”
Maude turned from him to a little wooden cabinet and opened a glass door. She pulled out a little porcelain curio of a kitten and held it in the palm of her hand, staring at it, appraising it. “Darling.”
“I will ring you at the Palace.”
“I’m not at the Palace.”
“I thought you were getting the royal treatment.” He said it snotty. “It was in all the newspapers.”
“Yeah, I was getting the treatment all right, out on my ass.”
“What do you want?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“You must be joking.”
Maude shook her head and said, “Nope.” She reached back into the glass cabinet and found another little figure, this one of a little girl holding a basket of flowers. She twirled it up in the failing light coming from the front door and smiled. “Doesn’t this look like Virginia?”
Rumwell grabbed her arm and his fingers were tight and strong, but he couldn’t budge her. She smiled at him. “Do you remember Mrs. Spreckles’s party? You took me from behind in the garden. Like some kind of animal. We’ve had so many adventures. I’ve brought you so much business.”
“I won’t pay you.”
“I have nowhere to go.”
“That’s not of issue.”
“Rummy,” she said. “Be a gentleman.”
The wife returned, now composed but flushed, and worked her best smile. She asked her husband if Mrs. Delmont would like to join them for dinner. She was baking a chicken and . . . But Rumwell stopped her, saying that Mrs. Delmont had to be returning south, kind of giving the wife the old brush-off, the frail getting his meaning and disappearing back to the kitchen.
Maude held the figurine up to Rumwell’s face and twisted it there. “Does it hurt when you fill them with air?”
“This instant,” he said, raising his voice, spit flying a bit.
“You hear it doesn’t hurt,” she said, “but I would feel like a balloon inside while you worked. And hands—you must have very steady hands.”
“I will call the police.”
“And I will tell them about your delicate work,” Maude said. “Your specialties.”
“So be it,” he said, disappearing into the kitchen.
Maude returned the figurine to the cabinet and took a seat back on the little settee. She sipped from the delicate china and watched the pendulum swing on a large grandfather clock. A large gray cat stumbled into the room and found a spot in Maude’s lap, settling in, and she stroked the animal and played with its tiny paws.
Rumwell came back, minutes later.
“It’s done.”
“Don’t be foolish.”
“They’re coming for you now,” he said.
“Who?”
“The police,” he said. “They have warrants for your arrest.”
“On what?”
“Bigamy,” he said. “They called me this morning at the hospital and I was given instructions to ring them if I saw you.”
“You must think I’m a fool,” Maude said, smiling. “This is a wonderful little home, Rummy. The rugs alone must’ve cost you a fortune. That big clock, all this mahogany. Very strong and solid. Do you have children? I can’t believe I never asked.”
“You may wait here if you wish,” Rumwell said. His wife, high-collared and sweating, returned, locking her arm with her husband’s. She swallowed but would not make eye contact with Maude.
Maude could hear the pendulum of the great clock, the gears whirling inside making the hands move. She finished her tea, stood, and walked toward the receiving area of the home. She brushed straight past the two of them, placed her hat on her head, and adjusted it in the mirror of a hall tree.
“Two hundred woulda saved you some heartache, kids,” Maude said.
“I can’t be bribed or bought,” he said.
“Good man,” Maude said. “And you’d be a hell of a doctor if your hands didn’t shake.”
“YOU WANTED TO SEE ME, SIR ?” Sam asked.
“Close the door,” the Old Man said.
Sam closed the door. He took a seat in a hard wooden chair and waited. “I hear you’ve been making inquiries about an op from back east.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
“I figured this fella was off the books.”<
br />
“Did you find anything?”
Sam nodded. He pulled out his cigarettes and struck a match, settling into the chair. The Old Man had a cigar that had expired in a full ashtray on his desk. His shirtsleeves were rolled above the elbows and he stood and stretched and opened up a shade on the window.
“You got a name?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what else?”
“The fella is on retainer to Hearst Corporation. He’s been assigned to them for years.”
“What’s he have to do with all this?”
“I saw him making a payment to Arbuckle’s buddy, Fred Fishback.”
The Old Man looked back at Sam from the window. “I’ll make sure McNab knows. He called over here earlier today mad at hell. Said you gave the bum’s rush to Arbuckle outside the Tadich Grill.”
“No, sir,” Sam said. “I asked Mr. Arbuckle what he had to do with Hearst.”
“You know it’s just the Examiner trying to dig up some dirt, sell some lousy newspapers.”
“Maybe.”
“They were probably paying off that Fishback fella to tell his story. Inside the St. Francis party and bullshit like that.”
“Why hold a meeting at a Chinatown speak?”
“Privacy.”
“I’ve seen this op before,” Sam said. “Before the war, I was assigned to bust up some labor in Montana. This fella approached me in a bar, bought me a drink, and offered me a respectable payday if I’d take out the fella making all the trouble. Next day, the guy winds up dead.”
The Old Man reached across the desk, grabbed the dead cigar, and tried to light it with three or four matches, finally getting the stinking thing going, a giant plug of orange growing red-hot.
“The mines were owned by Hearst.”
The Old Man settled back into his creaking chair, smoking and thinking. He shrugged. “So?”
“So this ain’t the kind of fella doing a nosy newsman’s work. He’s still on the tab for Hearst.”
The Old Man nodded and let out some smoke. His shoes, ragged-soled old jobs, twittered on the desk. “Let’s let this one lie, Sam.”
Sam watched him.
“Those two showgirls are done with their act, and Phil’s keeping watch on that big Swedish gal you found down south,” the Old Man said. “Really nice job on that one. She may be the real ace in the hole.”
Sam watched the Old Man and the Old Man gave him a soft, weathered smile. He had twinkling old eyes that saw everything in the room while keeping good contact, trying to pass along something without saying it.
“I need you on another job,” he said. “A ship called the Sonoma comes in early tomorrow. We just got cabled that somewhere between Honolulu and Frisco, she got robbed.”
“How much?”
“Half a mil in gold,” the Old Man said. “We think it may still be on board.”
26
They didn’t speak to Maude the entire way out of the city, rumbling along in a black Dodge Brothers, the kind with the steel-frame construction and hard top. All business, the only action coming from the fatheaded cop, Kennedy, when he cracked open the windshield as they drove over the county line. They headed out onto a bumpy road, hugging the coast-line south, hardscrabble vegetation clinging to the rocky edge, the roadway growing thin and narrow. The cops didn’t have to say it, but she figured she was headed back to Madera to face the last one, Cassius Clay Woods, in court and then finally all the way back to Wichita to face Mr. Delmont. Or would they get it all over at once? Maude hoped it was the latter, she thought, as the road wound and curved, snaking more and more the farther south they got, breezing through wide, rolling green pastureland, cows impossibly perched on the vertical hills, grazing, Maude not sure she knew how they found their footing.
She lit a cigarette and offered one to Big Kate, but Big Kate didn’t even acknowledge the question as the smoke flitted out the side window, a cool breeze shooting through the open cab and between the two lunkhead detectives dressed identically in black suits. Just as Maude settled in, flicked the cigarette from the window, and laid her head against the window, the car slowed.
Nothing around but the dirt road, a long fence, and those goddamn crazy cows making their way up the steep cliff.
“We outta gas?”
“Out,” said Griff, the lunkhead driver.
“I’m not squatting before you men.”
“Out,” Kate Eisenhart said, nudging her in the ribs with an elbow, pushing her toward the door being opened by Tom Reagan. She stood in the roadway, the sun high and golden. Maude pulled her hat down to shield her eyes.
“You are not to step foot back in San Francisco,” said Reagan, his head shaped like a bullet. Big head. Good teeth.
“Am I to walk back to Los Angeles?”
“Up to you,” said Griff Kennedy. He lit a smoke and leaned back against the Dodge Brothers business model, arms across his chest.
“What about the charges you mentioned?”
Detective Reagan shrugged. “It’s all up to you now, Mrs. Delmont.”
“Hopper-Woods,” Kate added.
“You’re a laugh riot,” Maude said.
Kate stood wide-legged in a big black dress, black coat, and matador hat.
Her double chin bunched under her disapproving mouth.
“Is that it?” Maude said. “You can spare the lecture.”
“I don’t think she heard us, boys,” Kate said.
“Kate,” said Reagan, grabbing her arm, “c’mon, let’s go.”
“I’m not through with the twist.”
“Kate,” Reagan said again.
Kate shook his beefy hand off her. She walked toward Maude and Maude looked at her and shook her head with pity, gathering her black dress from her feet and starting for the road. Kate grabbed hold of her dress and spun her around. “You are to never return. Not under any name.”
“I heard you.”
“Good.”
“Please remove your hand,” Maude said.
Kate slowly let go, still staring right at Maude, but before Maude turned she gathered a good deal of spit in her mouth and let it fly into Kate’s chubby face. Kate hauled back with the palms of her hands and pushed Maude to the ground and, red-faced and angry, marched back to the machine.
Maude found her hands, looking for her feet.
“You people,” Maude said. “You don’t want to know what happened.”
“What happened?” Tom Reagan said, offering her hand.
She stood on her own and dusted herself off. “You’ll never know. You idiots.”
Big Kate returned from the Dodge, coat flying behind her, matador hat hanging crazy on her head, clutching a baseball bat. Her face heated, breathing excited, she looked as if her body would swell and explode like a balloon. Tom blocked her path.
“Outta my way, Detective Reagan. This saucy bitch needs a talkin’ to.”
“Not like that,” Reagan said.
Griff Kennedy remained leaned back on the machine, flicking the butt of his cigarette and coolly lighting a new one, watching the action play out through the smoke.
Kate hoisted the baseball bat in her hands. Tom stood in her way.
“Don’t you care?” Maude said, screaming. “Don’t you care? Rumwell is a liar.”
“Dr. Rumwell is respected,” Kate said, getting a better grip. “You are gutter trash.”
“Dr. Rumwell is an abortionist. A killer of children.”
“Liar,” Kate said, howling. “Black liar.”
Tom made a move for the bat, but Kate eluded him, circling Maude Delmont in all that open, hilly green space. The wind cold and salty off the Pacific. Overhead, a hawk circled.
“He killed her,” Maude said. “There you have it.”
“Black liar.”
“He removed the child from her the day before the party,” she said. “She was ill. I don’t care if you crucify the fat bastard, but there you have it. Take it.”
Griff Kennedy p
erked up at her words and moved in beside Tom, Tom slacking his shoulders as if the other Irishman could talk down the dyke. Instead, he handed Tom a cigarette, the bullet-headed man looking over at his partner, the partner slipping his arms around his big shoulders and leading him away.
