“Hello there, honey dear,” she said.
He smiled.
“How’s my boy?” Ma Durfee said.
The door jangled closed and the lock clicked.
Roscoe found his feet and fisted the sleep from his eyes. He stood and hugged Ma first and then Minta, still feeling inside a dream. He held Minta close and saw her angelic face, the soft reddish brown hair peeking out from a silken turban, beads of gold dangling from one side of her face like a veil.
Ma smiled a toothless smile and pinched his cheek.
“How ’bout a family shot for the boys?” asked a man with a camera.
Roscoe picked up the bunk rail with one hand and twisted it to run lengthways with the wired wall of the cell. He gathered Minta to sit on his right and Ma on the left, their backs turned to the dozens of newspapermen who the jailer had let in. The newsboys called to them and muttered but never moved, standing close to the wire wall, listening and scribbling down every breath and gesture.
Roscoe placed a meaty paw around Minta and Ma and whispered, “My best friends in all the world. How was the trip?”
“There was a train wreck in Iowa,” Ma said. “They served minestrone soup and cheese biscuits. Twice.”
“We stayed an extra day in Chicago,” Minta said in a whisper. “I met people who knew the Rappe girl.”
“Later,” Roscoe said. “Have you a hotel?”
“Mr. Dominguez got us a room at the Palace.”
“You’ll love the Palace. Say, Ma, they have this wide-open space in the middle of the hotel called the Garden Court. The ceiling is made of glass, and it’s so big that sometimes birds live their whole lives inside, hopping back and forth on the fig trees.”
“Do you like minestrone?” Ma asked.
“Better than this jail grub.”
“I spoke to Mr. Dominguez’s partner, Mr. Brennan,” Minta said, pulling off her gloves and placing them in her neat little jeweled purse. “He met us in Sacramento and rode with us to Oakland. He’s going to cable men in Chicago. This girl had a very low start, Roscoe. She was an orphan who turned to men for money. She has a child and was known to be quite loose.”
Roscoe walked to his homemade coat hanger and slipped into a fresh dress shirt, pulling suspenders over his large shoulders. He washed his face in a small bowl and stared at his ruddy cheeks in a rust-flecked mirror.
“I have to be in court today,” Roscoe said, toweling off. “I wish I could show you the city, Ma. I’d take you down to the wharf and we’d eat steamed crabs and motor down to this wonderful garden in the park. You’d just love it. You could get lost there for days.”
Roscoe felt Minta’s eyes on them.
“Come now, Minty,” he said, “Mr. Dominguez will straighten all this out. You know I didn’t touch that girl.”
“Roscoe!” Minta said.
“I’m sorry,” Roscoe said, looking down at the beaten-wood floor and the silk socks on his feet.
“Why would you say such a thing to me?” Minta asked.
“You look thin,” Ma said. “I’m sending out for food. How ’bout a big plate of spaghetti?”
Roscoe hugged them, pulling them both in close, their backs silhouettes and questions to the newsmen. He heard the men grumble and groan, big flashes exploding and popping in the long hall. One reporter complained to the jailor that the big gorilla wouldn’t even turn around and that he wanted his dollar back. And finally Roscoe had enough, releasing his weight from the bunk and stepping toward the mesh-screen wall, an open frame looking back through the little wire squares at the newspapermen, and he asked who’d called him a gorilla.
The men scribbled and grinned, one more than the others, and he smiled even more as he mashed a cigarette under his heel. Roscoe put his hand to the mesh, running his hand over the wire, and looked at the man, saying, “How ’bout five minutes alone in here, bub? Anytime you like.”
The flashes snapped so quickly they blinded Roscoe and he hit his hand hard against the cell frame, rattling the cage, not eliciting fear but excitement, the questions coming at a furious pace.
Why’d you do it?
Did she scream when you squished her, Fatty?
How’s the dryin’ out taking you?
He bashed the wall with the flat of his hand until Minta grabbed his wrist and led him back to the bunk, where he rested the weight of his head in his large hands. Ma stood and walked over to Roscoe’s suit of clothes and shifted them on the hanger, straightening out the wrinkles, and pulling a scarf from her purse to buff out his shoes.
The newsboys were still calling out questions as the jailor ushered them out.
“How long has it been?” Roscoe asked, kissing the side of Minta’s face. She smelled of French perfume and the cleanness of powder.
“Five years.”
“How’s the money?”
“Check comes every month as promised.”
“This business won’t affect any of that,” he said, running his hands over his profile and through his hair. “Jeez, I’m sorry about all that. I feel like an animal in here.”
“You remember what I told you when we first met?”
“You said, ‘I don’t like fat men and I don’t like blondes.’ ”
“After that.”
“In Long Beach? At the Byde-A-While?”
“Backstage at the theater.”
Roscoe shook his head, feeling something wet running down his cheek.
“I told you to quit apologizing. I know who you are.”
IN MANY WAYS, the girls from the Arbuckle party had been getting more ink than Roscoe himself. Alice Blake’s pretty mug was on the front page of the three papers almost every day, with police looking for their LOST WITNESS, while little personal tidbits about her affairs and those of Zey Prevon got to be regular fixtures in the news. The world learned that Zey was from Alabama and that Alice had grown up in the city. Alice’s repertoire of songs and dance numbers were cataloged, as were her dreams of making it to the screen. Some even wondered if Zey Prevon was using the name Prevost because maybe she was related to the Prevost sisters, who’d made it big down in Hollywood.
Sam rolled a cigarette and sat back down on the apple crate.
Since dropping off Minta and Ma, he’d been watching the house owned by Alice Blake’s mother and logging entries in a little notebook. Back at the Flood Building, he’d type it all up in a neat report for the Old Man, who’d then make his own report and cable it on to the home office in Baltimore.
It was six a.m. Sam picked up the Examiner.
He read yet another story about a girl he hadn’t even known had been at the St. Francis. Her name was Betty Campbell, and it turned out that Betty was the true virgin at the party. Or so she said. Despite the big front-page spread, with a photo of Betty and Lowell Sherman wrapped in a heart, she admitted she barely met Arbuckle, let alone Virginia Rappe, who’d already taken sick and been moved to a room down the hall. But the boys sure got this Miss Campbell to call what she witnessed a “gay alcohol orgy” and to share how Lowell Sherman had tried to trick her into going to a back bedroom with him.
Sam wondered if Lowell Sherman ever got tired, because this would’ve been after his in-depth conversation with Alice in the bathroom.
He finished the cigarette and put down the paper, wiping the fresh ink on his pants.
It was early morning on the street, and men in suits and ties were starting their machines and driving into the city. Negro women with large baskets of cleaning supplies knocked on doors to start their days. Wives emerged from doorways with baby carriages or children in hand, heading to the market.