by Ace Atkins
Sam had not moved his feet since stepping back on the curb.
He could not move.
He was still yet his heart jackhammered in his chest. He could still feel the cut of wind across his nose. More screams and people yelling came from below and Sam ran downhill to the corner of Green, where a crowd had formed, as black snakes of electric cable jumped and zapped against the street, showering the night in bright sparks. He helped an old woman and the conductor from the heap. Four others had been helped into the street. They had been cut and bruised. One man walked in a circle, still in shock.
Sam walked back up Fillmore to where the car had gone loose. In the street, the cable continued to whirl and flow in the narrow gash, never stopping, never noticing the weight was gone.
THE JURY WAS OUT, the closings wrapped up, and at eight o’clock Roscoe returned to the courtroom with Minta. The big room was empty and quiet. A few newspapermen lay on benches smoking and reading back through their notebooks; other newsmen sat on staircases and occupied phone booths, waiting for the latest. McNab said it would be tomorrow at best. Told the boys from his firm to ring him at home if there was something brewing. Roscoe walked over to the jury box. Minta was restless, not wanting to have to dodge reporters. Half of them were out on the streets covering a visit by Marshal Foch, the French war hero, and that goddamn cat show at the St. Francis. Roscoe was officially banned from the hotel, but a stray tom called Mr. Whiskers and even a little bastard called Charlie Chaplin—on account of a black smudge under its nose—were welcome. A bunch of smelly cats purring and scratching at the furniture, taking dumps in the place, even if they did cost a few thousand like the papers said.
“Let’s go, Roscoe,” Minta said.
The little heads of a few newsboys popped up from where they slept on the benches, looking like gophers back in Kansas. His dad used to shoot at ’em with a .22 when they popped those heads up.
“Would you pay ten grand for a cat?” Roscoe asked.
“What?”
“Didn’t you read about the show at the St. Francis, crazy old women showing off ten-grand cats?”
“I read about Charlie Chaplin,” she said. “He was pretty cute.”
Roscoe opened the swinging door and sat down in the seat of Mrs. Hubbard, thinking that maybe if he warmed her seat he’d send her some positive thoughts. But all he could think about when he closed his eyes was the sharp little remarks made by U’Ren in the closing. U’Ren relished it, using the whole width of the box as his stage, pointing, enunciating, pulling from his whole bag of tricks, while Roscoe had to stay silent again.
“Come on, Roscoe.”
“Another minute.”
“They’re not coming back tonight,” said a newsman. “I got a tip.”
Roscoe ignored him. He leaned back into Mrs. Hubbard’s seat and tossed his big black shoes atop the seat in front of him. He lit a cigarette and looked at the ceiling.
The callous man—the man who laughs in the face of misery, who plays jokes on suffering women—whose only thought is to hurry a dying girl out of his room. Why didn’t Arbuckle tell that story in the first place? Why his silence? Why did he not tell a soul? Why did he not speak when yet in Los Angeles, before he had even seen a lawyer who might silence him? Why remain mute?
Goddamn bastard. Roscoe let out the smoke and watched it trail up to the tin stamped ceiling, a ceiling that looked for all the world like that of any crummy saloon. U’Ren’s words rattled around in his head, between his ears, and settled down in his gut.
And we shall shatter their theory of injury by immersion in cold water or by paroxysms of coughing or of nausea. And we have shattered the theory contained in Arbuckle’s statement to the effect that the girl fell from the bed.
U’Ren painted a picture for them of the fat beast throwing open the hotel door, ushering in the gash, pouring the drinks, turning up the jazz, and setting a trap for Virginia. He must’ve mentioned that Roscoe had worn pajamas and a robe at least thirty times, as if his dress was a crime in itself. Why can’t a man wear a goddamn robe and slippers in his own hotel room? Roscoe smoked some more and narrowed his eyes at where Louderback sat, trying to get a sense of the scene from a different point of view, get to see the whole drama from all angles and which ones worked best to tell the story.
And yet this defendant, who makes his living by acting—who has learned to disguise his thoughts—wants to make you believe that he did not see her go into that room.
U’Ren paused, reciting the testimony of the showgirls, that they saw him follow Virginia into 1219, then, just at the right moment, stopping to let the men and women picture the fat man locking the door behind him. His hand reaching over the poor girl’s as she tried to escape. The silence lasted long enough for all to envision Fatty crawling, sloppy drunk and bloated, on top of the girl, sticking his willy inside her and riding her like a dog until he squished her.
There is no doubt that at that time she was suffering from the injury inflicted by Arbuckle—the injury that caused her death. And Arbuckle cannot explain it. The only things he has seemed to remember in this trial are the things alleged to have occurred when no one else was there to see. Why should this man, famous throughout the world, allow himself to be damned without protest if all that had happened was that Virginia Rappe had become ill and had fallen off a bed?
“Because I was directed.”
“What’s that?” Minta asked.
“Nothing.”
“You said something,” she said. “It’s late. Please?”
Roscoe checked his watch, smoking the cigarette down to a nub. The newspapermen were up now, maybe eight or so of them, and they were watching him, the way children watch a polar bear in a zoo, just waiting for any little movement to bring them joy. But Roscoe’s mind reeled off, and McNab was before them all now, the projector rolling.
He began with a short, solemn prayer for Miss Irene Morgan, the war nurse who had braved the battlefields of Europe beside such men at Marshal Foch, coming to the city only to share her knowledge, and facing such danger.
The prosecution did nothing but try and besmirch her character when she could not appear. Have medical experts not shown—as Miss Morgan’s statement read into the record—that the girl suffered from many acute ailments? Still they want you to picture Miss Rappe as in perfect health, a giantess in strength, if you please. Would it have been possible in that little room for a man to have attacked a woman of that sort without everybody in the neighborhood knowing it or hearing it? And they try to tell you what a monster he was, this man who picked the girl up in his arms and yet could not carry her weight to another room a short distance without being assisted.
McNab walked, clad as always in a black suit with a vest, white shirt, and black tie. His balding gray head always with the same short stubble. He did not smile. He did not yell. He did not show emotion. He walked and talked to the jury as if working on things in his own mind, the way they should be thinking, too. So many questions. So many holes.
Throughout the length and breadth of this trial there has been hawked the name of Bambina Maude Delmont. Why was she not put on the stand? Why has she not been produced, this complaining witness of theirs? Why has the prosecution resorted to the spook evidence of dimly marked doors summoning their spirits of evil out of the woodwork, or through the manipulation of an expert holding a microscope to the floor, instead of producing human beings in flesh and blood who could have shed light upon this case? There has been more processing of witnesses than process of law. The district attorney has maintained his witnesses in private prisons—a thing I had believed to be abolished at the time of Little Dorrit.
Roscoe started to laugh. Minta shushed him.
And I would like to know why a witness who perhaps is believed to be so untruthful that he or she has be to kept in custody is then brought before a jury to imperil the liberty of any man? Miss Prevon was kept in this so-called Hall of Justice all night without food or drink or time for a qui
et smoke. She was harassed and threatened with jail unless she was willing to sign a declaration for the grand jury that Virginia Rappe, moaning upon the bed, had explained, “I am dying. I am dying. He killed me.”
McNab smiled.
All that Zey Prevost heard Virginia Rappe say was “I am dying”—he shouted this to the jury. And they finally compromised with her and let her alone after she signed a statement that Virgina Rappe had explained, “I am dying. He hurt me.”
U’Ren protested that this was not based on a shred of testimony and that by morning he would produce reams showing that . . . McNab let him finish and continued.
I will show you, therefore, why it was that Mr. Arbuckle was wise in not making any statement. They would have processed the witnesses. Mr. Heinrich, the fingerprint expert, would have suddenly discovered that he and Salome had been under the carpet while Mr. Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe were alone in room 1219 and they would have produced a horde of chambermaids, with their eyes at every crack, their ears in every keyhole, to substantiate him.
Roscoe stood. He smiled. He straightened his tie, rubbing his hands together.
“Better?” Minta asked. She placed her black hat, the one with the veil of beads, back on her head, half of her face shielded.
“Yes.”
“Can you sleep now?” Minta asked.
He nodded. “Better.”
“I COULDN’T SLEEP,” Sam said. “I walked. I’ve walked for a while.”
Daisy opened the door to her apartment. Her kimono hung open past her breasts and clear down to her navel. She smiled when she caught his gaze. “Why don’t you come in.”
“Nice flat.”
“It’s cozy, on a gal’s pay.”
“How sure are you that the stash is LaPeer’s?”
“F. Forrest Mitchell doesn’t make mistakes.”
“You make him sound like God.”
“He’s more sure of himself.”
“Can I take a seat?”
“Kick your shoes off.”
Sam found an old leather chair, a craned reading lamp. A window overlooking Turk Street.
“Didn’t mean to ambush you like this.”
“I’m not ambushed,” she said, sitting on top of a coffee table, holding the front of her silk robe. She wore no paint on her face, white blond hair brushed flat back and behind her ears, looking fresh and clean. She smelled like good soap.
“I found it. The money.”
She smiled. “Well, I guess I should be pleased, but I’m not. Just make sure they spell your name right. Did I tell you about that?”
“I didn’t tell ’em.”
“The newsboys?”
“Nobody,” Sam said. “I didn’t tell a soul. I left it where it lay. In the shaft of an engine-room duct, snaked through the guts of the Sonoma in a fire hose.”
Daisy dropped her head into her hands and pushed her hair back over her ears, combing it back, her face hidden in profile. “I need a smoke. You want coffee?”
“We can leave. You can leave.”
“What about the money?”
“We can decide when we’re at sea,” Sam said. “Don’t you understand? It’s a fresh start. And if it’s on LaPeer’s filthy dime, no tears from me. My bum lungs can heal up in Australia. You can get the city grime off you and tell Mr. F. Forrest Mitchell to take a flying leap. You know what I mean?”
“Kinda.”
“Sometimes it’s that way. It can come at you like a sucker punch and it’s all so clear that life’s a sham. It’s a long con and you walk through it like asleep, halfway in a dream, and it takes something big to make you wise up and see the world for what it is. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“What about your family?”
“The girls are better off without me,” he said. “I’ll disappoint them in the end.”
“But you won’t disappoint me?”
“I’ll disappoint you, too. But let’s have some fun first.”
“What time does she sail?”
“Tomorrow. At midnight.”
Daisy raised her head and smiled at him. “Aren’t you gonna kiss me or something?”
“Or something.”
33
Roscoe knew, could feel it, even before the judge assembled all the lawyers and the jurists, what the word was going to be. They’d been in there forty-four hours, taking breaks only to eat and to sleep back at the Hotel Manx, filing past him each time, no one looking him in the eye except for a couple boys, riding off in that little ivory bus and returning for two days straight. It was about noon on Sunday and with the doors to the Hall open you could hear the church bells ringing across the city. Roscoe had been sitting with Minta and Ma in the first row behind the defense table. McNab, who was in the judge’s chambers, looked at Roscoe, crooking his finger at him to come back to the table. The bailiffs spread out, doors were open, the jury being ushered back into the box. McNab leaned in and whispered, “Louderback is shaking them loose.”
“What’d we get?”
“Ten to two,” McNab said. “The second one gave in because they couldn’t stand the pressure anymore.”
“Who was the holdout?”
“Mrs. Hubbard,” McNab said, whispering again. “Hadn’t changed her vote since Friday.”
Roscoe didn’t say a thing, but there was a rock in his stomach, a feeling of being on a long, loose slope, trying to find ground with your feet but only getting mud. He smiled, straightened his tie. He folded his hands across each other, catching Fritze’s eye, the foreman, who Roscoe knew had been a good egg since the start, and Fritze shook his head sadly and opened his palms.
The titian-haired Amazon, Mrs. Hubbard, kept her head dropped, an enormous black hat on her head. Her chin down to her chest, refusing to look at anyone, as Louderback asked Roscoe to rise and explained that the jury was hung and that he saw no other course of action but to let them loose and call a new one.
“Perhaps we should look to the first of the year,” Louderback said, lean and well-oiled in a blue suit. “We would hate to spoil anyone’s Christmas holiday.”
Roscoe shook his head. He turned back to Minta and Minta grabbed his hand and held it very tightly, and then she did something that Roscoe would always remember. She winked at him, holding on tight, and he had such pride that he almost felt like walking right over to Mrs. Hubbard and spitting in her eye.
The gavel sounded.
There was talking and murmuring in the courtroom, like any Sunday service being broken up, and newspapermen and photographers surged forth. McNab caught them all and gruffly said that he would let the facts speak for themselves and he looked forward to getting another jury in there devoid of any prejudices against his client.
Roscoe walked out with Minta and Ma, the dogs trailing him, shouting questions, flashbulbs popping and exploding. Head held high, he walked, Minta’s arm in his, Ma alongside. The great doors to the Hall were open and he followed the stairs down onto the street, looking out to the greenery of Portsmouth Square.
More questions. More of the same.
“I’m very grateful to those who recognized the truth,” Roscoe said. “I’ve only tried to bring joy and laughter to millions and only the Lord himself knows why this has befallen me. I only tried to help that poor woman. That, my friends, is my only sin.”
A little girl toddled over to Roscoe and, in the click and whir of cameras, handed Roscoe a tin cup. She smiled and curtsied and said, “Better luck next time.”
The newsboys roared with laughter, and he saw one of them jangle out some coin into the little girl’s hand. Roscoe lit a smoke and stood there. Most of the newsmen scattered to catch Mrs. Hubbard on the steps, as she was saying that a jury was absolutely no place for a woman and that at one point the men complained of the amount of food she had consumed.
Roscoe watched the large woman brushing away the men with tablets and cameras who followed her down the street. The black-hat Vigilants soon swallowed her in their mass and walked o
ff with her in a dark swarm toward the park.
Roscoe met McNab’s eye and the big man gritted his teeth and nodded, seeing the chorus, before finding Roscoe’s elbow and steering him toward the machine.
The Pierce-Arrow was kept back at the Palace.
They piled into McNab’s touring car. Roscoe doffed his hat for the crowd and they moved away, down the hills and back to the hotel. There was a deep silence in the car, the silence creating some kind of shame in him. Roscoe rested his head on his knuckles, watching the city pass, thinking back to a year ago when he’d stepped off a train in Paris and received nothing short of a hero’s welcome.
