He listened for feet and heard none.
A flash of headlights crossed over the open mountain ground and Daisy skidded to a stop and hopped out of the little automobile. She followed Sam on foot up a hill and into the elbow of an embankment. There were poured foundations and clearing machines. Fat, gnarled trees had been left naked in the cleared land and they looked prehistoric and skeletal in the moonlight.
They heard an engine crank and saw headlight beams flash from the back of a hill, and then the car was up and over the hill and coming straight for them. Sam pulled Daisy into him and around the back of a brick pile, and the car left dust and smoke and taillights as it disappeared over the lip of the mountain and down into the curving roads leading back to the city.
Daisy ran to the Hupmobile and circled back for Sam, soon catching the glow of taillights appearing and disappearing around curves and more straightaways, and then she headed west down a fire road, the bounce of the car nearly throwing Sam from his seat. Daisy smiled, grinning with her big white teeth, and leaned forward into the wheel, mashing the accelerator for all it was worth, skidding and spinning down through the dust and gravel, the beams catching the fender of the machine they followed. She drove through a tunnel of tree branches and across more cleared land, up the mountain and down again, and looping back on another fire road, coming out this time into a narrow entrance where the road just stopped.
There were giant earthmoving machines with large bucket scoops and heavy tracks as wide as a car. The car they followed had stopped cold at the mountain wall but then doubled back and idled.
The earth around them carved out like a huge bowl.
Sam told Daisy to switch off the lights and the two piled out of the car, moving for the rear and glancing around corners, waiting for the dark man to make his next move.
A few seconds later, the man fired. It was a big goddamn gun, something like a.44 that a man could feel hard into his elbow and shoulder and which could deafen an ear a bit, too.
Sam responded with a couple shots from the.32 that sounded tinny and small but clacked and echoed in the big earthen bowl. They squatted down behind a rear tire, and the man fired again, Sam and Daisy both covering their heads, the solid blam, blam, blam from the.44 like a drum all around them.
The bowl felt damn-near Roman to Sam, as he waited for the dark man to either speed forward his machine or keep trading bullets with them.
“I can’t see the bastard.”
“I hope he can’t see us.”
Sam squeezed off another few rounds from the edge of the Hupmobile. Blam, blam, blam.
The radiator cap blew off Daisy’s machine and steam shot out. “Goddamnit,” she said.
Another big shot from the.44 and a tire was out.
Sam reached into his coat pocket and reloaded some more bullets. The .44 answered before he could even aim.
“I think you pissed him off,” Sam said.
“Me?”
The big black car of unknown make or model, just a big goddamn closed-cab machine, built up speed, heading straight for Daisy’s little two-seater, as Sam squeezed off all six, aiming straight between the headlights and up for the driver. But it just kept coming, sounding like a choir out of hell.
17
You’re lucky you weren’t killed,” Minta Durfee said. It was early afternoon the next day and Minta and Sam walked the ringed path of Echo Lake, not far from the Mack Sennett Stage. Men rowed boats with their honeys relaxing, the men trying to not break a sweat with their suits busting at the seams. There were flower gardens and park benches, tall palm trees and drooping, tired willows dangling their branches into the water. Swans shuffled their way through the tall grass and into the lake, making it seem so damn easy, all the action going on below the surface.
“You drew your weapon on him,” Minta said. “You stood strong while his machine raced toward you.”
“I squeezed off a few rounds so he’d know I was armed,” Sam said. “He could’ve killed us if he’d wanted.”
“But you protected that dry agent. That’s what matters.”
Sam scratched his cheek and they kept going around the lake, this the second pass on the loop.
“She tackled me out of the way,” Sam said. “The son of a bitch in the car kept going and sideswiped her Hupmobile. Nearly knocked the damn thing over.”
“And then you shot the man.”
“He got away.”
“And how did you get back?”
“We walked.”
“And Miss Simpkins?”
“She’s fine,” Sam said. “She headed back to deal with the busted machine.
She waited till it was daylight ’cause she didn’t care for all the coyotes.”
“Did you see many?”
Sam smiled. “I told her I saw hundreds. All of ’em with mean red eyes.”
“Did she really lock that bootlegger in a cage with lions?”
“She enjoyed it.”
“You’re quite the storyteller, Sam.”
Minta and Sam left the loop and walked across an arced bridge to a small island in the center of the lake. Minta wore a wide-brimmed straw hat with a big-flowered dress that hugged her full frame. Sam offered her a cigarette but she declined, landing on the island and pointing out a small bench.
“So, tell me more about your sleuthing in Chicago.”
“I found the woman who’d raised the girl, a Mrs. J. Hardebach. By the way, the girl’s name is just plain ole Rapp. She added the e and accenting after she’d returned from a trip to Paris.”
“What else?”
“I told Mr. Dominguez most of this.”
Sam smoked and thought, a brief pause. “Let me hear it again, if you don’t mind.”
Minta took a deep breath.
“The girl was born in 1894 to woman named Mabel Rapp who worked as a chorus girl and perhaps a prostitute. The father was either a big Chicago banker or British nobility. No one seems to buy that one. Mabel died when Virginia was eleven and Virginia went to live with her grandmother. Before she was sixteen, the girl was pulling up her skirt for the asking. She had a total of five abortions and gave birth to one child. A daughter.”
“You’re good,” Sam said. “So, where’s the daughter?”
“Given to an orphanage.”
“Is there record of that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Go on.”
“Virginia’s grandmother died ten years ago and that’s when she went to live with Mrs. Hardebach. This was after she’d had the child. Apparently Mrs. Hardebach provided more structure for the girl. She said she was the one who taught Virginia to be a lady and pull up her bloomers for a while. She also gained her employment as a model and as a salesgirl at Marshall Field’s. Virginia became a style expert of sorts and a shopper for society ladies. This led to a trip to Paris where Virginia caused a big scandal by dancing in her nightie with another woman. Apparently she kissed the woman full on the mouth.”
“How’d she come west?”
“She came to San Francisco for the Exhibition.”
“In ’15.”
“And from there, she moved to Los Angeles.”
“Where she met Henry Lehrman, who got her into pictures.”
“Mabel will know more about that than me,” Minta said. “I’d already left for New York by that time.”
“You’d make quite a sleuth, Minta.”
“I just want to help Roscoe.”
“So when do I meet Miss Normand?”
CAPTAIN OF DETECTIVES Duncan Matheson checked the time on the wall clock and then flicked open his gold timepiece. Satisfied they matched and all was right in San Francisco, he clicked it closed and hung it back in his vest pocket. He took a seat across from Maude Delmont and smiled at her. He offered her coffee. He offered her a cigarette.