The giant engine shook the platform and steamed and hissed as it slowed to a stop, metal on metal, brakes screaming, wheels slowly circling to a stop. As cabled, Minta Durfee, vaudeville songstress, film comedienne, and the estranged wife of Roscoe Arbuckle, waited for a little negro porter to mount the steps before her and she walked down, hungry newspapermen shouting and taking photos, and she smiled glibly-as one would expect the wife of the accused to act-showing more attention to helping a little gray-headed woman with a sunken-in toothless smile and round black hat onto the platform.
Sam introduced himself to a man in a suit who carried two hatboxes. The man, Brennan, introduced Sam to Minta and “Ma.”
Minta told them the terminal would be quite fine for a short meeting with the newsboys. But Sam could tell she was quite tired, as she stood under the big clock, now at two thirty-two, and read off neatly folded sheets of paper.
“Upon my arrival here I have only one request to make of all the fair-minded people of this city. I simply ask them to be fair to Mr. A. I ask them to give him only that to which he is entitled in all fairness, and for which San Francisco is noted around the world-a square deal. I know and his friends all know that he is innocent. He is entitled to a trial by a jury made up of men and women whose minds will be receptive alone to the truth. Only one side of this story has been told, and I know that the people of this good city will wait until the other side comes out in the proper, orderly fashion of the court. I believe everyone will agree with me that first impressions gained from rumor and report are most times found, on closer investigation, to be false, and that when the truth is heard in this matter-when the entire story has been unfolded-that my husband will be completely exonerated, and his good name will be thoroughly cleared, and that he again will take his place in the hearts of the American…”
But as she continued to speak, the newspapermen and photographers broke away, filing back out to the platform, leaving Minta alone to look at Ma and Ma just to shrug her bony shoulders. Brennan had already made arrangements with the porter to bring their trunks to the waiting car, and from there they would take the ferry back to the city.
Sam left the attorney and filed back out to the platform, watching the newspaper men standing in a great huddle, not at the Overland Limited coming in but at the Owl making ready to head south to Los Angeles.
The strobes of the big flashes looked like pockets of lightning in the early dark as Sam walked toward the openmouthed crowd and watched as four negro porters carried a white coffin onto the last car and two negro boys hoisted armloads of pink lilies onto the train.
Sam could smell the fresh-cut flowers from where he stood.
“Read us the note,” a newsman called out.
The porter shook his head and pulled the sliding door shut with a giant clank.
An hour later, a faint gray dawn broke over the city, as the ferry made its way over the bay to San Francisco. Sam sat with Minta and Ma in their stateroom and waited for more knocks and to make more threats, sending the newsboys away. The ferry rolled and bobbed, and Ma’s head was slumped with a snore, her hat fallen onto the seat beside her.
Sam caught Minta’s eye and smiled.
They were alone.
“You see the coffin?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He’s innocent.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I spent two days in Chicago looking for people who knew that little tramp.”
Sam leaned forward. “It was awfully nice of you to come.”
“Of course.” Minta looked at Sam, confused. “I love Roscoe with all my heart.”
AL SEMNACHER never cared to be on stage. He was just fine being a bit player in Hollywood, standing in the shadows helping along a career or two, having lunch at Musso & Frank’s, putting together a deal, maybe working a con or two on the side. The conning didn’t start until he met up with Maude, and she’d kept him busy as a jackrabbit in the spring. Back then it was just plain old Maude Parker from Wichita and she’d needed some cash, so he’d introduced her around, and Hollywood had been a real gas. Soon she’d set her sights on a couple of actors and they’d pull a rape, or set them up with a man-one director was particularly into that type of thing-and they’d get a statement or take a photo and the money would soon be turned over to Maude. They’d live in high style for a few months till the tank was empty.
But now here was Al sitting in the lobby of the Palace Hotel, ten o’clock or so at night, waiting for Maude to show up and make good on their deal. He paced the lobby until he drew stares from the doorman and hotel manager and he told them he was a good friend of Mrs. Delmont’s. But by midnight, he knew she was there but wasn’t going to take his calls or come down to the lobby till hell froze over, and so he said to hell with it, retiring to the hotel’s Rose Room, a little back-corner restaurant where they’d moved the hotel bar since the dry laws were on.
He ordered a Scotch and sat at a corner table. The rest of the Rose Room empty.
The walls were stained paneled wood, with a lot of low light and brass, and a large mural against the far wall that the waiter had said once hung over the bar before they broke it up.
The painting was of a strange-looking old man dressed in a harlequin checkerboard getup leading children away from a village by playing a flute. The little children raced with determination to catch up while others walked along bored or sat under great twisted trees the way you find trees in California, corrupted by the salt air from the Pacific.
Al had another Scotch and stared so long at the mural that it became real to him. The rough boulders, the failing light of day, and a giant stone castle on the hill. One boy in particular seemed so strange and foreign but known to him. He seemed the most important of the bunch, racing in jutting determination with the Pied Piper, mirroring the older man, trailing in the failing yellow California light and going somewhere over the rough little hills and boulders whittled away with time. The boy and the Piper the same, walking with the same stride, the same face, only the man much, much larger, towering over them all, but walking with a youthful stride, seeming to know exactly where he was headed.
Al finished his drink, knowing he couldn’t pay for it.
He decided to put it on Maude’s tab and had a laugh at that.
About that time, he watched a fat man enter the bar in a silk bathrobe and slippers and recognized him instantly as Frank Dominguez. He’d never met Dominguez officially but had seen him plenty on the Paramount lot and knew he was a regular at Jesse Lasky’s poker games.
Dominguez took a seat under the mural.
Al smiled at his luck.
With a self-confidence that only a strong drink can give, he pulled up a chair and sat down.
“Can’t sleep.”
Dominguez shook his head.
“Lots to worry about with the police court and all.”
“We’re not talking to the press.”
“I’m not the press.”
“Then who the hell are you?” Dominguez said, putting fist to mouth in a giant yawn.
“Your new best friend.”
Dominguez signaled the waiter, slumped against a back wall, for another round.
11
When Minta arrived at the Hall of Justice it was early morning and Roscoe had been asleep on his bunk, dreaming of the dusty town where he’d lived as a boy in a little hotel closet alone, scrubbing floors and cleaning spittoons and falling in love with this nineteen-year-old singer who smelled of lilac and taught him to harmonize and dance. The meeting of their voices on a tinny old piano had made him smile and feel warm as he slept until he heard the clank and turn of the key and he imagined he was driving a wagonload of meat, reins in one hand, some little girl’s knee in the other, and the wagon suddenly buckled and tilted on a wide dusty road and the whole thing tipped and fell and he awoke on a stone pillow looking up into the face of Minta.