He wanted to know more about Cassius Clay Woods in Madera. She said it had been a misunderstanding. She said he’d beaten her.
And then he asked about Earl Lynn in Los Angeles.
“Come again?”
“Surely you know Mr. Lynn?”
“I may have met someone by that name.”
Griff Kennedy coughed behind her and the cough was so sudden and sharp that it made her jump a little. “According to Mr. Lynn, you bragged about carrying his child last year. Musta been a quick meeting.”
“That is a personal matter.”
Kennedy coughed again. Maude couldn’t see him, and his talking and coughing and general harrumphing was starting to piss her off. She turned in her chair to glower at him a bit.
“I have a speaking engagement at two,” Maude said.
“It can wait,” Kennedy said.
“Where’s your partner?” she asked.
“Tom? He’s in Los Angeles.”
“I see.”
“With Mr. Lynn.”
“Does the San Francisco Police Department normally poke into the affairs of taxpaying citizens? I find poking into the private life of a woman to be quite unsavory.”
“Un-what?” Kennedy asked.
“Unsavory.”
Harrumph.
Matheson walked. He twirled the end of his mustaches like a one-reel villain. He looked out from his glass wall into the pool of detectives smoking and talking with stoolies, con men, rapists, and robbers.
Maude straightened her hat and readjusted the black parasol in her hand. All her wardrobe was black now. She’s become known for it, her signature. She planned on buying a little black dog perhaps, a little dog that would attend the trials with her, and she thought about naming the little pooch Virginia after her poor, dear dead friend.
“Mr. Lynn claims you wanted five thousand dollars to make the baby go away,” Matheson said.
“That’s a fool’s talk…”
“Mr. Lynn has agreed to be a character witness in the trial.”
“He’s a liar.”
“He says he has documentation that you asked for money,” Matheson said.
“He told Detective Reagan that he was not or could not be intimate with you,” fathead Kennedy said. “That ring any bells?”
Maude remembered an old grifter adage, one she’d learned long before California from an old-timer in Wichita, but the rule was simple and everlasting. When they’re on to you, you brass the son of a bitch out.
Maude stood.
“I find this talk to be gutter talk and unfitting to a woman. While you two should be out finding women who have been ill-treated by that beastly Arbuckle, you are here questioning my character with lies and rumors. From what I recall, Mr. Lynn is a mixed-up little man who has no interest in women whatsoever. He is what is called in polite society a ‘sissy.’ Why would I have anything to do with a soul like that? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a speaking engagement with the fine women of this city. Apparently Chief O’Brien will be there to discuss the orphans’ fund that I’m now heading. You both must know that the chief found his own little lost bundle on his very doorstep last week. The matter of orphans is very dear to him, and I’m sure he’ll find it quite interesting to see how I, a respected woman in this city, was treated.”
“Take a breath, sister,” Kennedy said.
Maude turned to him. He had a cigarette bobbing out the side of his big bullet head.
“Slow down when you talk,” Kennedy said. “Makes it easier to breathe.” She snarled at him. She gave a short bow to Matheson. Kennedy opened the door wide. He used the hand gesture of a doorman, a smirk on his face as he pretended to tip his hat.
The bastard didn’t even have a hat on his fat Irish head.
“HOW WAS I TO KNOW?” MABEL Normand asked. “I thought it was some kind of fever. All I knew is that Mack didn’t want that girl on the lot. He was afraid it would infect the whole crew.”
“You know what it was?”
“Mack would know,” Mabel said. “He’s had all those social diseases. Isn’t it funny that they call them that, ‘social diseases’? Makes it almost seem dignified, as if you got ’em from shaking hands or doing the waltz.”
Mabel Normand reminded Sam of a child’s doll, with her milk-colored skin and saucer black eyes. Her hair in ringlets. She looked even more like a toy as she perched on top of a cracker barrel, her feet drumming on the wood while she talked about the good ole days with Fatty and Minta and the craziness on the lot at Keystone.
“Minta’s a good egg,” Mabel said. “I don’t know if I’d stand by Roscoe in all this.”
“She says she loves him.”
“That’s another kind of sickness. I got the same sickness and it’s terminal, brother. Say, do you have a smoke?”
Sam fished out a cigarette and handed it to her.
She remained in her stage costume, that of a turn-of-the-century washerwoman, complete with a frumpy dress and slouch hat. When Minta introduced them on the back lot at Sennett Studios, Mabel showed off the pruning of her hands from all the wash she had to do for the part in Molly O’.
“I swore to myself I wouldn’t step foot back on this lot without killing Mack, but, here I am, crawling back to the son of a bitch. I shoulda stayed with Goldwyn. He’s an all right fella, if he’d just keep his hands off my ass.”
“I heard that Roscoe had a thing for Virginia.”
“A thing? He had a hard-on like a divining rod for that piece. Every man on the lot did. She showed up here from somewhere back east, with her polite smile and those gorgeous clothes, and every boy knew they had some pie fresh from the oven. Little did they know she gave it away for free.”
“Was she ever with Roscoe?”
“She wouldn’t,” Mabel said. “Said he was too fat. She said she didn’t like fat men. But he sent her flowers and candies and took his hat off when she walked by. Even when she was with Lehrman, he tried.”
“You know this?”
“I saw this. He acted like a fool.”
“You know, I saw you once in a nickelodeon in Baltimore,” Sam said.
“I never been to Baltimore.”
“I saw you in one of those things you crank and the photos flip.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you look like Wallace Reid?” Mabel asked.
She smiled at him and Sam decided she had a very nice smile.
“All the time.”
“Well, you do. If the detective thing doesn’t work out, you could make a fine living as his double.”
“I don’t think I could live here.”
“How come?”
“Too spread out. I like a city where you can walk and get to know the neighborhoods and back alleys. A real city you can know on your feet. I’d get lost here.”
“This is no city,” Mabel said, looking down the row of wooden barns and façades of a city set. “Sometimes I think I live in purgatory. I had the craziest dream the other night. I dreamed I was bleeding from my mouth and couldn’t breathe or see. Say, you wanna get a drink, Sam?”
“I’m catching the three o’clock back to Frisco.”
“Too bad,” Mabel said, finishing the cigarette and flicking it into the dusty streets of the lot. “Next time you’re here, give me a ring.”
“Does the name Hibbard mean anything to you?”
Mabel Normand, the old little girl in makeup and ringlets, looked to Sam like he was some kind of rube.
“Don’t you read the papers?”
“Mainly the comics,” Sam said. “I love Mutt and Jeff. ”
“That’s Roscoe’s buddy.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Fred Hibbard. The Romanian. He calls himself Fishback now. He thinks it’s pretty goddamn funny because he directs comedies.”
“I LOVE YOU.”
“I love you, too, W.R.”