Devil's Garden (32 page)

“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.”

“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

T
hey 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 perked 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.

Kennedy looked back at Maude. “I didn’t hear what you just said, and I hope for your sake you never repeat it.”

“You don’t want it,” Maude said, laughing. “I serve the truth to you on a silver platter, but you’re so far gone with it you don’t want it. How wonderful. How pious.”

Kate choked up on the bat, the cop Reagan trying to get away from Kennedy when the fat policewoman took the first swing into Maude’s stomach, knocking out all the air, the second blow knocking out her legs, and then two hard blows against the back, pushing her in the dirt. The beating was savage and quick and dull and hard, until the screaming and profanities from Kate become gibberish, her fat ass pulled from Maude’s back. The big Dodge started and pulled off, moving away from the sun and into the shadow, and above and over a hill, until they were gone.

Maude spit out sand and blood. Her dress torn, ribs cracked, body battered. She wavered to her feet and tried to find the road south.

SAM WAS ON THE DECK of the
Sonoma
all of ten minutes before he was introduced by the captain, a man named Trask, to Daisy Simpkins. Daisy smiled at Sam and shook his hand as the captain explained she was a federal dry agent snooping for any alcohol that may have made it to Pier 35 unchecked. He kind of smiled about it, like it was such a big joke, as the morning sun shone over Oakland, the wind harsh in his ears. Behind Daisy, the light made her hair seem more gold than white, a lock covering up one of her silver eyes, red mouth pursed into a wry smile.

Sam walked beside her on the long, endless deck of the ocean liner, other Pinkertons interviewing hundreds of passengers and checking their trunks and suitcases before they could head down the gangplank. City cops prowled the guts of the big ship, Sam spotting Chief of Detectives Matheson and Tom Reagan; Reagan caught Sam’s eye but turned back to interviewing the purser.

“I heard it’s not a half mil,” Daisy said. “They carried a half mil, but the robbers only got a hundred and a quarter.”

“Still, a nice haul.”

“Would set me up for a while.”

“You check every boat that comes in?”

“We had a tip about LaPeer,” Daisy said, walking beside Sam, strolling the top deck like an average couple taking in the sights, through the backed-up passengers and out onto the aft deck loaded down with bunches of green bananas. Daisy wore a cape with a blue jumper dress, and the wind blew the cape up off her shoulders while they walked. “But I figure they already dumped the hooch at the three-mile limit.”

“You miss me?”

“I ached,” she said. “In the gut.”

“Funny girl.”

“How ’bout you? How’s that baby?”

“A girl. Very pretty.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mary Jane.”

“Wife okay?”

“Dandy.”

“I like the tie.”

Sam looked down to see which one he put on with the tweeds that morning. Red with blue dots. He readjusted the cap on his head to block out the morning sun, finding the end of the boat and then turning around the bow and heading back around.

“So what happened, after you were south?”

“You shoulda seen Jack Lawrence after the bit with the lion. He was scared to death of me, practically begged to work for us. I think it was the lion balls in his face that did it, emasculated him. So, I set up a little meeting in Frisco with my boss, F. Forrest Mitchell, and he thought Lawrence was on the square, too. And we turned the son of a bitch loose.”