“Why would they care?”
“People feel bad for her. Say, what kind of work do you do?”
“I work for the Fuller Brush Company.”
“I’m bald, so no need to work your spiel on me.”
“We also sell many items for the ladies.”
“I read this morning that Arbuckle was smiling when they let him out of jail. That made me sick to my stomach. They say he walked right out of jail not feeling bad for nothing he did, only going down to see some barber and getting a free shave. You think the bastard would at least pay for it, him driving a thirty-thousand-dollar machine.”
“Why should he feel bad if he didn’t do it?”
“Come on. Where you been? The guy’s an animal.”
The little taxi painted canary yellow turned onto Melrose, two cars honking at the driver from the crossroad and him waving them off with disgust, turning so hard to the left that Sam thought the machine would lift up on two wheels. But all was steady as the driver headed east, passing the big barn buildings marked with signs for different studios, all of them surrounded by high fences and shut with gates.
“I pick up girls like that at the station all the time,” the cabbie said. “They come in with their little suitcases, all big-eyed and bragging about winning Miss Corn Queen or the like, everything they own brought in from Bumfuck, Iowa, and wanting to be the next Mary Pickford.”
“I think we might give a fella a break till his day in court.”
The cabbie turned around in his seat, the cab rolling into oncoming traffic, and said, “Didn’t you hear the bastard stuck a Coca-Cola bottle in her pussy? Where I’m from, you find a rope and the tallest tree.”
Sam didn’t say anything as they passed a long fence and a corner grocery and finally turned into a little neighborhood of bungalows. Most of them freshly built, the kind they advertise in the papers for veterans to start families. These were California specials, with stucco and red tile roofs and a dwarf orange tree in every front yard.
“Hey, you got a friend with you?”
“Come again?”
“That little Hupmobile has been following us since the station.”
Sam turned and noted the shadows of two figures in the coupe. He reached down to his ankle and slipped the.32 in his hand. His arm rested on the backseat, the gun in his lap, and he told the driver to keep circling.
“That’s the house right there.”
“Keep going,” Sam said. “Don’t circle back till I say.”
ROSCOE WAS bowling to opera.
Minta and Ma watched, eating ice cream from the little parlor he’d had built in the basement of his mansion on West Adams. It felt so damn good to be back home that the last weeks felt like a feverish nightmare, something from one of his pictures where he’d been locked up and whistled for Luke the pooch to come running with keys.
Luke, who was really Minta’s dog, sat at her feet under the wire parlor chair and waited for her to finish her sundae to lick up all the ice cream and pineapple sauce.
Roscoe let out all his breath and closed his eyes, taking a few steps down the lane and watching the ball glide and float to the pins, taking out all but two. A little negro at the end of the lane cleared off the downed pins as Roscoe hunted for another ball out of the dozens shining and gleaming on a brass rack.
“Ma, how ’bout another sundae?”
She shook her head, the spoon still in her mouth.
He smiled over at the pair, finally ditching the depressing black they’d worn in the police court and now dressed like normal folks. Minta in a green-and-white print dress and Ma still in her housecoat she’d worn since running the servants from the kitchen and cooking a skilletful of bacon and eggs.
Roscoe chose a red ball, eyeing the two pins, and stood at the line. Holding the ball up, he took a single step before hearing the warning bark from Luke, and he stopped to see Frank Dominguez coming down the curved wrought-iron staircase into the basement.
He was alone, still dressed in his black suit and red scarf, a fat leather satchel at his side.
Luke continued to bark and jut in and out at Dominguez’s feet without ever really taking a bite. Dominguez coolly smiled and threw down a biscuit the butler had given him, and Luke wandered off to a corner.
Dominguez said hello to Minta and Ma and then took a seat at the parlor bar.
Roscoe put down the ball and walked behind the bar and started to make Dominguez a sundae without him asking. He made a hell of a one with three different scoops of ice cream and three different sauces with chopped nuts and fresh whipping cream. A few cherries to boot.
“When did you put this in?”
“Last year,” Roscoe said. “You want to bowl a game?”
He slid the sundae before Dominguez at the bar. Dominguez rested his satchel on the barstool next to him. He smiled to Roscoe, a really tired, worn-out-looking smile, as Roscoe cleaned out a couple dirty glasses in some sudsy water, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.
“Any word from Fishback or Sherman?”
Roscoe shook his head.
“You’ve called them?”
“A million times,” Roscoe said. “Lowell’s still in New York. God knows what happened to Freddie. I even wrote the son of a bitch a letter when I was in jail.”
“The Pinkertons can’t find him either. They believe he skipped Los Angeles right after you were arrested.”
“Some friends.”
“We need ’em.”
“They’ll come around,” Roscoe said. “Hey, how’s that sundae?”
It remained untouched.
“Freddie Fishback was in that room right after the girl took ill. He could testify that the girl was too far gone to be making any dying accusation. He also moved her into the bath and could account for those bruises on her arms and legs.”
“People think I got the leprosy.”
“You’ll be back on the lot before the year’s out.”
“All my pictures have been yanked, Zukor has stopped paying me till further notice, and when I got back from Frisco I found most of my furniture had been repossessed. Did you see upstairs? We don’t have a place to sit. Lucky the bastards didn’t come down here or they woulda taken every last pin.”
“Let me handle Zukor,” Dominguez said. “We have a contract.”
“A million a year only if I work. How am I supposed to work if they won’t let me on the lot? They pulled Gasoline Gus and it had only been out five days. No wonder the picture didn’t show a profit. Those goddamn bastards.”
Dominguez looked down at his sundae and then up at Roscoe.
“You got anything stronger?”
“What’s eating you?”
Roscoe dipped his hand into the cooler and came out with a bottle of jackass brandy. He poured a generous amount into a coffee mug.
“They want to replace me.”
Roscoe laughed. “Who?”
“Zukor. Lasky. Paramount wants you to go with a bigger name. I think they’ve been going behind my back with that big swinging dick in Frisco. He’s the one who took on the Jack Dempsey mess.”
“’ Cause of that shimmy girl, Bee Whosis, who shacked up with him?”
“Yeah.”
“That was just a dumb case,” Roscoe said. “The girl’s beau sued Dempsey for theft of love.”
“But the newsboys like him and he’s local. Might make a difference with the jury.”
“You still sore at how that son of a bitch U’Ren kept calling you Señor Dominguez?”
“I’m just saying this fella, McNab, is local. You should do some thinking on this, Roscoe. Don’t get all loyal and stupid on me.”
Dominguez finished the brandy, picked up his satchel, and told Minta and Ma good day.
Roscoe followed Dominguez with his eyes as he twirled around the iron staircase and disappeared up into the mansion. Roscoe set Dominguez’s untouched sundae on the floor and whistled for Luke.
“Roscoe, you’re going to make him fatter than he already is,” Minta said.
Roscoe took a seat on the steps down to the bowling lane, eyeing those last two pins, and rolled a cigarette. He massaged Luke’s nub ears as the dog licked the glass clean and asked him, “What about you, boy? Can you see the future?”