After a while, Sam fell asleep. When he came to, the picture still rolling and organ pumping, he looked over to Alice Blake and she was gone.
He left the darkness and pushed open into the light, the new world seeming almost unreal against the desert, and looked for the girl, twice checking her seat and the washroom, then walked out into the Castro. A half hour later, he returned to his machine to ride back to the Sunset District and sit on the house. He bought a loaf of bread and more cigarettes and a Photoplay magazine to read up on this woman he’d seen in The Sheik because somehow the woman seemed like someone he now knew.
When he moved up the landing to the vacant house, he heard a shift and found someone already sitting on the apple crate. The Prohibition agent from the Old Poodle Dog looked over at him, dropping his field glasses by her side, and pulled on a cigarette. She looked at Sam but didn’t smile. The street-light shone off the white blond hair peeking out from under a silk turban.
She turned, cocking a dark brow at him. “Sit down. I won’t bite.”
MAUDE DIDN’T SEE Al Semnacher, didn’t know he was following her, until he plopped down next to her on the cable car just before it started its jerky ride up Powell Street, past the St. Francis and Union Square and slowly up Nob Hill. Maude had to do a double take to make sure it was Al because the dumb son of a bitch didn’t say anything, just stared at the people climbing the hill as they glided by in the car, and even casually waved to an old Chinese woman selling persimmons from a corner. Maude shook her head and checked her watch, already ten minutes late.
In the narrow slit in the street, Maude could see the tension of the cable hoisting them all up the hill, the straining of tons of metal and flesh being brought to the top.
“I’m ready to negotiate,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw your picture in the paper. Cute, really. You with the Vigilant Committee and Harry Carey.”
“It was Broncho Billy.”
The cable car stopped and three different newsboys from the Examiner, The Call, and Chronicle climbed on like little monkeys scrambling down the row and hawking the latest news of Fatty. The boy from the Examiner shouted an exclusive: “Nurse Says Fatty Dragged Girl into Hotel Room.”
Maude paid the boy a nickel and looked at the ugly face of that woman who had attended to Virginia at Wakefield. She read the first few lines and shook her head.
“I told the police about the ice and about Fatty threatening to throw Virginia out the window,” Al whispered.
“He wanted to throw me out the window.”
Two old women down the long wooden bench were craning forward to look at Maude Delmont. She pulled her black hat down deeper into her eyes and gave Al Semnacher a sharp one in the ribs.
“I want a piece,” he said.
“A piece of what? I just slipped out of the St. Francis with my bags.”
“You mean your purse.”
“My things.”
“I got you the girl just like you asked for.”
“And you stole her underwear and bolted. Why on earth would I trust you?”
“I didn’t sign on for this,” Al said, whispering. The cable car jerked and strained to the top of Nob Hill, cresting for a moment, the old women getting off at the Fairmont, and then the brake was slowly let go by the conductor onto a turn heading west, and then the car cut hard, flowing down the hill and catching a straightaway on Hyde.
“Then get off.”
“You signed a deal in blood,” Al said.
“I never signed a deal.”
“I want half of what you’re getting or next week I’ll walk right into that police court and tell them everything I know.”
“That you were Virginia’s pimp?”
“She was an angel.”
“Are you getting a conscience on me?”
“I loved her.”
“You didn’t even know her, you dumb yegg.”
“I’ll find you tomorrow.”
“It’s your stop, Al.”
Al leaned in, his musky, sweaty scent of talcum powder and cologne making Maude sick. “You tell your people I’m a part of this.”
“Good-bye, Al.”
Al stood, pulled the cable car’s cord, and stepped down, tipping his hat at a little girl in a sailor suit who took his spot beside Maude.
“Good day,” Al said, grinning with his sharp little teeth, “Mrs. Delmont.”
“WHY DOES A dry AGENT care about the Arbuckle party?” Sam asked.
“Besides making us look good in the papers?”
“Besides that.”
“Arbuckle broke the Volstead,” the girl said.
“A few bottles of gin seems beneath you people.”
“We’re more interested in where he got it.”
Sam nodded and smoked a bit as he stood in the window turret. The girl agent sat on the apple crate, legs crossed, turban perfectly cocked on her head. Light from the blinds fingered out on the wooden floor.
She lit a cigarette, too, and stood and walked to the window, using his field glasses to look down at Alice Blake’s place. “How was the movie?”
“Slept through most of it.”
“What was it about?”
“This sheik kidnaps this English socialite. He wants her, but she doesn’t want him. Then she runs away. Some bandits steal her and the sheik comes to the rescue.”
“That’s it?”
“There’s some kissing, too. The kissing takes a lot of time.”
The girl fingered open the window blinds, the arc lamps brightening the streets, the window looking like a framed, slatted picture. Sam could see the Blake house and a Ford parked outside and a man and a woman pushing a stroller across the road.
The girl let the field glasses dangle from the leather strap against her leg and set her head back, smoking.
“Since I saw you at the Old Poodle Dog, I’ve wanted to ask you something.”
“Does it start with ‘How does a nice girl…’?”
“Something like that.”
“I was in a secretary pool when Prohibition broke,” she said. “They needed someone to slip into speakeasies unnoticed.”
“I wouldn’t say you go unnoticed.”
She looked at him and brought her lips together, looking down at her velvet shoes with bows, blew smoke up into the ceiling and then crushed the cigarette underfoot.
Sam shrugged and switched to the apple crate. “You after LaPeer?” “What do you think?”
“I read he was out of jail so fast the ink wasn’t dry on his thumbs. You don’t have a clue where he gets the stuff.”
“We know he has this Australian fella who works for him and we know that same fella was at the St. Francis bringing in cases through the back door.”
“But you don’t know his name.”
“And here we are looking for Miss Blake.”
“Seems like a lot of work just for a dumb skirt.”
“Maybe she knew the bootlegger.”
“Or maybe you think some knucklehead Pinkerton will point you in the right direction?”
The woman walked over to Sam and placed a velvet shoe on top of the crate, hitching up her black skirt just a bit, showing off a nice long stretch of stocking and garter before plucking out a silver flask and handing it to Sam.
“Will you arrest me?” Sam asked.
“Only if you do something bad.”
“You have a name?”
“I do.”
“Wanna tell me?”
“Let’s drink first,” the girl said. “Wait till I know you better.”
MAUDE MADE THE CALL at nightfall from the back of a mom-and-pop place on Columbus, the kind with red-and-white tablecloths, salami hanging from the ceiling, and dago red sold out of the basement. She had a couple glasses of the red before lifting the handset, giving the operator the number, and hearing the man’s voice. Thirty minutes later, she was out on Columbus walking toward Washington Square when a long green touring car pulled up to the curb and a man hung out the driver’s side and said, “Sister, you look like you could use a ride.”
She got in the passenger side and closed the door and he sped off, rounding the square by the big church, and headed up and over a hill down by the wharf.