Roscoe looked up to the judge on the bench. Judge Louderback looked at his watch and stifled a yawn. “I will take this under advisement. Shall we begin?”
Roscoe just stood there staring at the bored judge, curious and incredulous, but felt McNab’s big paw on his arm leading him back to their table. Roscoe opened his mouth, too confused to speak, Louderback tilting his head and knitting his brow.
IT WAS DINNERTIME at the Calistoga Hotel and Phil and Sam sat at a corner table not far from a stone hearth with thick logs blazing, red wine in their glasses and hot rolls between them. Sam helped himself to another glass as an old woman set down a plate of pork chops with mashed potatoes. The hotel, a big, ramshackle wooden number, reminded him of some places he’d been in Montana, places left over from another century, a world away from streetcars and movie houses and airplanes. The wine was good and felt warm in his chest. He wondered if the baths and all that mud didn’t have some kind of effect on his condition. He felt better than he had since before the war.
“Don’t worry,” Phil said. “They’ll be here. Would you pass the butter?”
“Maybe Zey met someone else.”
“You wanna bet? She’s crazy about me. After we take care of matters at hand, I let her wear the hat.”
“You’re kidding.”
“She loves it,” Phil said. “Sometimes she wears it while we’re taking care of the business, riding me like I’m a horse.”
“Yee-haw.”
“You think I’m crazy ’cause I said these girls are trouble. You don’t know about women trouble. Look at you. You’re married and have a kid. It’s easier that way. You know what to expect every day. You got a beautiful wife, Sam. That counts for a lot. I’d love to have something like that. A man knows where he stands. When did you know it was good with Jose? You know, for keeps?”
“I had to make a choice.”
“How’d you know?”
“It was the right thing.”
“Do you ever stop thinking about women? That’d be the hardest part for me.”
Sam cut into his pork chops and took a bite. He took a sip of wine and just looked over at Phil. The younger, larger man smiled back, a slight grin on his face. His eyes then cut over to the tall front doors and watched as the two now-famous showgirls entered. They handed their coats to a crinkle-faced old woman who hobbled after them. They passed by the table, Phil smiling up at Zey and Zey smiling back at Phil, and they found a spot by the warm fire. It was all dark and very cozy in the room. Hearth fire, kerosene lamps on the tables.
“You met that Blake girl once, right?”
“I did.”
“Kinda screwy.”
“Kinda.”
Sam finished off half the plate and pushed it away. Phil finished his and asked for some more potatoes. They were already onto a thick slab of apple pie topped with melted cheese with a pot of coffee between them when the girls joined them. Zey was all smiles and giggles and huddled up close to Phil. Alice sat down next to Sam, who drank his coffee and smiled over at her as she said, “Craig Kennedy.”
Phil looked to Sam and Sam shrugged.
The old woman was chatting away with the two cops who’d joined her. They were Irish lunkheads, beat cops, who would squint over at the table and then back to Ma Murphy. Probably jealous the girls were talking to some other men. Zey swung her arm over Phil’s shoulder.
“How’d you shake loose?” Phil asked.
“We said you were a couple salesmen we met at the springs,” Alice said.
“They can’t say no to us. I said we were getting bored. They don’t like it when we’re bored.”
“Good to see you, Zey,” Sam said from across the table.
She acted like she didn’t remember him and played with Phil Haultain’s ear.
Alice smiled over at Sam and Sam pulled two cigarettes from the Fatima pack and offered one to Alice. Alice said, “Thank God,” telling him that Ma Murphy wouldn’t let them smoke or drink and the whole thing had been murder on her nerves. She wore a black dress with a fur collar, maybe rabbit but not mink. Her makeup was lighter than he remembered it, and she was prettier without all the red paint on her lips and cheeks.
“You know, my real name isn’t Kennedy,” Sam said.
“You don’t say.”
She grabbed the matches and lit her own and then handed the pack to Sam. Sam lit a cigarette and pushed away the pie, keeping the cigarette going on the coffee saucer. Phil whispered something to Zey and she cackled so loud that people across the room turned their heads. She put her hand over her mouth but kept on laughing.
Ma Murphy screwed up her face when she noted the cigarette in Alice’s hand. Alice looked over at the prune-faced woman and stuck out her tongue.
“We’ve been drinking all day,” Alice said. “That’s all there is to do around here, drink. We go for treatments and a swim. I’m tired of all that goddamn mud. You got to take ten showers to get it out of all your cracks. I want to go back to Frisco.”
“That can be arranged.”
“How?” she asked. “Those boys sleep outside our door. Did I tell you that Ma Murphy tried to get both of us to start wearing a corset? Can you imagine? This is 1921!”
Alice breathed in a long drag from her cigarette and turned her head to the ceiling, blowing out the smoke. Zey said they needed to get back, meeting the eyes of the nervous cops and Ma Murphy up by the hearth.
Alice leaned in, her eyes brown and sleepy, and felt for Sam’s fingers under the table. She moved his hand over to her knee and slid it up her dress, his hand crossing over her stockings and deep up her thigh, and he could feel the warmth of the sun on her skin. The higher she moved his hand, the warmer it got.
Sam just kept smoking and nodding and talking across the table to Zey and Phil. Zey talking about going horseback riding tomorrow. His hand reached the end of her leg, fingers delicately moved across a warm patch of silk between her thighs. Sam took the cigarette from his mouth with his free hand, met Alice’s eyes, and shook his head.
She leaned in and with hot breath said, “Come for me tonight.”
And with that, she pushed his hand away from under her skirt and back to his own knee and very pleasantly stood and said good-bye to Phil. The girls returned back to Ma Murphy and their guards.
“You were right, Phil.”
“About what?”
“It ain’t easy,” Sam said.
“Told you.”
“Fill up the machine?”
“Yep.”
“You can get by the guards?”
“Cake.”
“We go tonight.”
20
The girls stayed in a small white cottage fitted among a half dozen along a dirt road called Palm Row. The little cottages had little front porches with rocking chairs, picket fences, and small chimneys, some blowing smoke up into the cold night. A full moon shone silver on the endless patchwork of brown-and-green hills and across acres of grapes dying on the vine, toppled trellises broken apart by dry agents. Sam took in the scene beside the little flivver they’d taken from the Pinkerton motor pool and in the darkness smoked and checked his watch. They’d made arrangements with the girls to make the move at midnight when the guards would change. But here it was, eleven minutes after, and Phil walked back to the Ford to tell him that the fat Irish kid was still sitting on the girls’ cottage porch with a shotgun and reading a goddamn copy of the Saturday Evening Post.
“Can we get ’em out back?”
“Back leads to the springs. Sometimes the other fella’s out there.”
Sam checked his watch. “Aw, hell.”
Phil and Sam climbed the wall and circled the hot springs, now throwing off a mess of steam since the temperature dropped. The springs bubbled up in a little grotto surrounded by the chest-high wall of stone, and the men followed the circular path by moonlight, leaving the guns in the car in case they got caught, and trailed a row of shrubs to the back window of the cottage.