Devil's Garden Read online

“How was it opened when you removed Miss Rappe?”

  “Boyle walked right up to it and opened it.”

  “Was the window to 1219 open?”

  “Yes. It was always wide-open.”

  “While in 1219, did you hear Miss Rappe say, ‘You hurt me’ or ‘He hurt me’?”

  “No, I did not. She spoke to me several times, but no one could understand just what she said.”

  “On the next day, or at any other time, did you have any conversation with Al Semnacher with regard to the ice on Virginia Rappe’s body?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Did you ever, at any time, in room 1219 on September fifth, 1921, have occasion to place your hand over that of Miss Rappe’s on the door of your room?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you in any way come into contact with that door leading out into the corridor?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you know Fred Fishback?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you ever, on any occasion, have a conversation with him in which you are alleged to have asked him if he had the key to Virginia Rappe’s room and in which he is alleged to have said yes and in which you further are alleged to have said, ‘I’ll give this for it,’ showing him a roll of bills?”

  “No such conversation ever took place.”

  “Now, Mr. Arbuckle, are there any other circumstances that occurred in room 1219 that you can tell this jury?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And you have related to the jury everything that occurred there on that day as you know it?”

  “Yes, sir. Everything.”

  “YOU’RE SAFE.”

  “What time is it?” Sam asked.

  “Noon,” Jose said.

  “I need to get up.”

  “You need to rest.”

  “I feel fine.”

  “You have a fever.”

  “Why’s it so dark?”

  “I pulled the curtains,” she said. “You want me to open them?”

  “Please.”

  Sam found his feet and dropped his head into his hands. The afternoon light was white and harsh and he squinted and looked down at his skinny legs and stocking feet.

  “Where’s the baby?”

  “In the bedroom,” she said. “Asleep.”

  Jose softly shut the door separating the two rooms of the apartment. She walked back to Sam carrying a little bottle and spoon. “You need to take this.”

  “I need a cigarette. Would you mind reaching in my coat?”

  “Sam?”

  He looked at her, blurred in the light behind her, and he closed one eye. “Open up.”

  He did. The balsamea tasted horrible.

  She poured another spoonful.

  “I wired my aunt,” she said. “We can stay there until I get settled in Montana.”

  He nodded. She found his cigarettes and a book of matches.

  “I can arrange to have my checks sent direct to you.”

  “That’s good of you, Sam.”

  “It’s not good of me,” he said. “Don’t ever say that.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The City is nowhere to raise a child. The sooner the both of you get on that train, the better.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “But you don’t understand?”

  “There are other jobs.”

  “Not for me,” he said. “I’m not strong enough to work the docks and not educated enough to work in an office.”

  “You could go back to school. To business college.”

  “And how would we make it?”

  She was quiet.

  “I’ll take care of you,” he said. “You have my word. As long as I can work a job, those checks will keep coming.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I believe you.”

  Sam stared at the window, his eyes adjusting, curtains skittering in a cold wind. By the kitchen table, he noticed his steamer trunk, pulled from the bedroom, open and waiting.

  “Thought you might need to get packed,” Jose said, catching his stare.

  “And I want you to take this for luck.”

  She smiled with her eyes and handed him the little card given to them at Mary Jane’s birth. On the flip side was her hospital number and footprints stamped in ink.

  He didn’t say anything, only tucked the card in his jacket. He did not meet her eye as she continued to talk, only watched the curtains that brought in the cold air and the smell of the sea. The baby started to wail in the next room. Sam lit a cigarette and watched Jose go, closing the door behind her with a soft click.

  “NOW,” MILTON U’REN SAId, pacing, smiling with those sharp teeth, his long bony fingers clasped behind his back, “you stated that you never attempted to borrow a key from Mr. Fishback during August of 1919 in Culver City? Is that correct?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Now, where were you employed during August of 1919?”

  “I had my own company.”

  “You had your own company, yes, but where?”

  “At Culver City.”

  “And you had a studio there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Were you using a studio?”

  “I was renting a studio there.”

  “And from whom were you renting the studio, if from anyone?”

  “Mr. Lehrman.”

  “Yes, then during August of 1919 you did occupy the studio in conjunction with Mr. Henry Lehrman?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you do not recall whether you had a conversation about Miss Rappe with Mr. Fishback?”

  “The conversation never occurred.”

  “Yes or no would be sufficient,” U’Ren said.

  U’Ren was sweating now and the sweating pleased Roscoe a great deal. Roscoe stopped tapping his pencil and leaned back into the hard chair. He crossed his legs, resting his ankle on knee.

  “You knew Miss Rappe before the fifth of September, did you not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long had you known her?”

  “About five or six years.”

  “About five or six years?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Before Miss Rappe came to your rooms on the fifth of September, did you know that she was coming there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Mr. Fishback didn’t say anything to you about her coming there?”

  “He said that he was going to phone her.”

  “Do you know whether or not he did phone her?”

  “I didn’t hear him phone.”

  U’Ren took a breath, his jaw twitching. He stared down at the courtroom floor as if it would provide him some kind of key, some kind of answer, to make Roscoe reverse a story he’d been telling for months and had been playing time and again in his mind.

  “How long a time elapsed from the time you saw Miss Rappe go into room 1221 until you went into room 1219?”

  “Couldn’t tell you.”

  “What did you do when she got up and went into room 1221?”

  “I got up. I don’t know what I did, went to the Victrola or something, or danced. I don’t know. I don’t remember that time.”

  “Well, how long a time would you say elapsed from the time you saw Miss Rappe go into room 1221 until you went into room 1219?”

  “Couldn’t tell you.”

  “Well, was it a half hour?”

  “No, I don’t think it was that long.”

  “Well, fifteen minutes?”

  “I wouldn’t say what time it was. It was—”

  “Isn’t it a fact that when you saw Miss Rappe going into 1221 that within two or three minutes thereafter you went into room 1219?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “No.”

  “And nothing you have heard during this trial refreshes your memory upon that subject?”

>   “When Miss Rappe went into 1221, I fooled around.”

  “It was more than two or three minutes after Miss Rappe went into room 1221 that you went into room 1219?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Well, how much longer than two or three minutes?”

  “Well, probably five or ten minutes.”

  “Probably five or ten minutes,” U’Ren said, parroting it back, throwing up his hand carelessly. “All right, what were you doing in that five or ten minutes?”

  “Just fooling around in that room.”

  “Just tell the jury what you were doing the next five or ten minutes.”

  “All right, I suppose I danced with Miss Blake.”

  “Not that you supposed. Tell the jury what you remember doing.”

  “I don’t remember what I did in the room,” Roscoe said, looking to the jury, wanting to tell them that he’d been drunk out of his mind. He leaned into his left arm, resting on the stenographer’s desk.

  “What time did Miss Rappe go into room 1221?”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “What time did Miss Rappe go into room 1219?”

  “Like I said, I never saw her go into 1219.”

  “What time did Mr. Fishback leave your room?”

  “Between one-thirty and a quarter to two, I guess.”

  “To go motoring and view some seals for a motion picture?”

  “Yes.”

  “Between one-thirty and a quarter to two,” U’Ren said, repeating for the jury. “Did Miss Rappe go into room 1219 before or after Fishback left your room?”

  Roscoe looked to McNab, who sat behind the defense table stifling a yawn.

  “I went into 1219 after Miss Blake had come back from Tait’s Café for rehearsal, sometime between two-thirty and three o’clock. I don’t know when Virginia Rappe entered.”

  “Do you recall doing anything from the time that Miss Rappe went into room 1221 until you went into room 1219?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I put . . . changed a record on the phonograph. I think I danced with Miss Blake. I am not sure what I did.”

  “Then you don’t recall what you did. You don’t recall doing anything?”

  “I was around the room. I don’t just exactly know what I was doing.”

  “As a matter of fact, when you arose on the fifth of September and went into the bathroom to clean up it was your intention then to get ready to go out riding in your Pierce-Arrow limousine with Mrs. Taube?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you did not get dressed at that time?”

  “No, these people kept coming in and I was trying to be sociable.”

  “With whom?”

  “With them.”

  “They were not your guests?”

  “No. I didn’t want to insult them.”

  “You didn’t invite them there, did you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “With the exception of Miss Rappe, you didn’t know anybody that was coming there at that time, any of these young ladies?”

  “No.”

  “You did not invite them?”

  “No.”

  And you didn’t tell anyone else to invite them?”

  “No.”

  “And they were not your guests?”

  “No.”

  “They just appeared as if by magic?”

  “They appeared.”

  “And you don’t know how long a time elapsed from the time that Miss Rappe went into room 1221 until you went into 1219?”

  McNab stood. It was the first time that he’d objected in the two hours of grilling by U’Ren. He smiled at the jury, letting them know he understood this silly weasel-faced little man, and then smiled at Louderback. “If the court pleases, we are supposed to end this trial sometime. I object to the same question being asked more than ten times.”

  The courtroom laughed. Louderback did not.

  “Proceed with the examination,” he said.

  “Very well,” U’Ren said. “Answer the question.”

  Roscoe scratched the back of his neck and looked at the jury. “What was it?”

  Two of the jury, Fritze and Sayre, smiled.

  He had ’em.

  32

  The baby cried for two hours straight. Sam finished his coffee, took a shower, and changed into some fresh clothes, tugging on his cap and walking down to the first floor and out on Eddy Street. Newsboys shouted from corners that the jury was out on the Arbuckle case, yelling, “Will Fatty Fall?” and “Fatty’s Last Stand” and the like. Sam walked with no direction in mind, absently smoking cigarettes and trudging forward, just keeping his feet moving, and suddenly found himself at Powell. A cable car idled in front of him and he got on, winded, taking a seat on an empty bench, listening to his rasping lungs as the bell clanged and the cable caught and the whole damn box made its creaky way up Nob Hill.

  He could still hear the baby. See Jose’s face.

  The cable car passed the St. Francis and limousines and women in long furs, jewelry shops, solid restaurants with waiters and white tablecloths, tobacconists and men’s clothing shops. Sam absently felt at his tweeds, tearing out a loose thread, and sat back on the hard seat, just letting the cable car do all the work on the ascension as he smoked and watched, feeling good about not having to hoof it anymore, not caring where the damn thing ended up.

  The car crested at Nob Hill and, for the hell of it, he got off. He liked being able to do that. He looked at the four corners and spotted the California line that intersected at the top of the hill. He waited a beat and caught the car as it rattled past, full of businessmen and ladies on their way to teas, and held tight to the brass fitting during the rickety descent, the brakemen catching the cable, letting go, and catching the cable again during the jerky ride.

  A few stops and they were at Fillmore, the street opening up to him in early night, iron buttresses arcing the street, lit up with a million small white bulbs, reminding Sam of the midways he worked back east. There were flivvers and trucks parked all along the street. Three- and four-story buildings and jutting turrets and hand-painted signs for fish merchants and pawnshops and Italian barbers.

  He dodged a streetcar and another heading the opposite direction and wandered into a nickelodeon. He popped a coin in a machine and watched the pages flip, showing the devastation of the big Quake, the flattened city, smoke rising from the ashes, the tent city built on the rubble.

  Men boiled crabs on the street. Big wheels of cheese and fresh fruit were displayed from market windows, long dried sausages and peppers. There were dope pushers with dark-ringed eyes and prostitutes with sagging stockings. Sam smoked and caught all of them, starting up the night like the first strings of a symphony.

  He turned and walked backward, heading out from the little district, his eye on a young man in a black hat holding two black satchels, one in each hand, as if they both contained a tremendous weight. The man’s head was down; slump-shouldered, he walked across the tracks.

  There was music from a high window, opera with the soaring voice of Carmen, and a man in a tattered undershirt looked down at Sam, listening to his private songs. The man scratched his chest and his dirty chin and closed the window.

  The steel buttresses of light ended and there was no music. The hard soles of his feet kept Sam company. He saw the Dark Man in his mind, seeing him spin and twirl, caught in the current, heading through the Golden Gate and far out into the ocean.

  He heard the clang of a cable car behind him. He kept walking downhill.

  He stepped off the curb to cross the street. And for some reason he would never understand, he simply stepped back, to check his pockets for change or perhaps a cigarette. He could not recall.

  There was a tremendous pop and the earth rumbled beneath him and for a moment he thought it was a tremor, but then the entire raging, rattling box of a cable car crossed an inch from his nose, a wind crossing his face like a giant
breath, and skittered and screamed downhill toward the bay, roaring with great yells and shrieks from the passengers, until there was a tremendous crash into an electric pole, the pole breaking in two as the cable car finally came to rest in the dead center of a house’s front porch.