“It’s the lighting.”
“You need to see a doctor.”
Sam looked at his watch. “I need to go.”
“Please come home. Lay down.”
“Just this one thing,” Sam said, winking at her. “I have to meet with an old friend.”
PETE THE FINK SPOTTED SAM just as soon as he stepped into the Ferry Building terminal, waving with a free hand and dragging a big leather suitcase with the other. A woman a good head taller walked beside him, carrying a small pink hatbox and wearing a hat and snug black dress trimmed around the neck and sleeves with white fur. She was a true blonde, with blue eyes and red lips and a beauty mark just beside her mouth. She looked nervous as she waddled behind the Fink and didn’t stop glancing all around the big Ferry Building even as she was introduced to Sam, Sam noting they stood at the same height as she said “How do you do” with a noticeable accent. She smelled like powder and perfume, and although a large woman, she wasn’t fat, just big and healthy.
Sam grabbed her hatbox, letting Pete continue to drag the big suitcase, and they walked through the main terminal, as large as a couple of football fields, a glass ceiling letting in the bright afternoon light. Pete nudged Sam in the ribs as they watched the big Swedish girl move ahead of them, her muscular and healthy buttocks swaying from side to side. The girl attracted attention from every man she passed, all of them craning their necks, just about tripping over their feet, mouths wide-open, watching the girl show a nice set of calves below the hem.
“Where you fellas puttin’ us up?” Pete asked.
“Are we supposed to put you up?”
“Sam, if you screw me, me and Miss Morgan here will get right back on that ferry to Oakland and be back in Los Angeles by midnight.”
“We got a place. The Golden West.”
“Sounds like a flophouse.”
“It’s where I had my honeymoon.”
“Don’t I feel much better,” Pete said. “Say, can I have some help with this? Irene, honey, what’d you pack, some rocks?”
Sam walked beside Irene and she was aware of him but kept glancing around the terminal at the shoeshine men and porters and bustling masses visiting the city for the weekend. Many men smiled at her. She smiled back. They tipped their hats. She smiled. Chinese men bowed. It was all so universal, Sam thought.
“First time in the city?”
“Yes.”
“So, you’re from Sweden.”
“Gutenberg.”
“Like the Bible.”
“Sweden isn’t in the Bible.”
“I see.”
They kept walking, Sam’s detective eye noting her breasts of the appropriate and recommended size for a nice Swedish girl.
“Pete tells me you knew Miss Rappe.”
“I work for her for two years.”
“As a nurse?”
“I go with her to gymnasiums to keep with exercises. I make sure she take steam. I give her massage two times a day. All like Mr. Lehrman say.”
“And you saw her get sick?”
“Many times,” Irene Morgan said. She stopped and grasped the dress at her large bosoms and started to pull the material down. “Like this. When she drink alcohol, her clothes are gone. Woosh.”
She pulled down so that Sam could see her brassiere. He put a hand on her hand to stop her from going further and said, “Does Mr. Lehrman know you’re here?”
“He fired me.”
“When?”
“When Miss Rappe leaved.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, long time,” she said. “Months.”
“Why’d she tear at her clothes?”
“She would get sick when she drank.”
“Did Pete tell you to say that?”
“No. No, I tell him,” she said. “I don’t want to get in trouble, okay? I don’t want people to think I’m bad of character.”
“Why would they do that?”
“A policeman come to see me and said if I say these things about Miss Rappe that it would ruin me. He said the government could even send me back to Sweden. I told Pete these things and he said you were a good policemen. Is that right?”
“Absolutely,” Sam said. “I’m a great policeman.”
“That man told me I could be hurt.”
“No chance,” Sam said. “We’ll look out for you. We got our best man on it.”
“Who?”
Sam smiled. “Me.”
Pete walked beside them now, a black porter pulling the big suitcase, and Pete, hearing that last comment, winked over at Sam. “Don’t be modest, Sam. Tell her the way it is.”
The three moved outside the Ferry Building, waiting for a yellow taxi to take them back toward Union Square. Sam readjusted the cap on his head and offered a cigarette to Irene. Pete the Fink sat on the big piece of luggage, legs on each side, like he was riding a horse.
“It’s scary,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“The city.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“It killed Miss Virginia.”
“I don’t know what happened to Virginia,” Sam said. “But it wasn’t the city.”
“That poor girl,” Irene said, shaking her head. “And with child, too.”
Sam turned his head, cigarette hanging loose from his lower lip. “Come again?”
“Of course you know she was pregnant with Mr. Lehrman’s baby?”
24
The rains came that Monday, and Roscoe felt strangely comfortable inside the Hall of Justice, listening to the tapping on glass, water running down the high windows, and mainly just falling into the routine of sitting behind the desk, a water pitcher in front of McNab, Minta and Ma sitting behind them. They’d eat lunch together at good restaurants during the breaks, and sometimes Minta would fall asleep during the medical testimony because pretty much all of it was the same only repeated by different doctors who saw Virginia before she died. But not a bit of it made Roscoe tired-they were off, the trial had started, and the twelve folks, five women and seven men, sitting up there in the box, spectators taking notes on the little details that Roscoe was beginning to know by heart. He just sat there and listened, McNab having told him earlier to stop playing with those goddamn elastics and his hat. He said juries didn’t like men on trial who didn’t pay attention, it showed they didn’t give a shit.
The room changed a great deal after lunch, Roscoe knowing the feel and energy of a room better than anyone. This room was electric. The word was that the showgirls were going to take the stand, and you could hear the whispers about Alice and Zey throughout the hall and along the corridors and down the steps and even out onto Portsmouth Square.
Zey was first, the girl all smiles as she was led into the courtroom, dressed in blue broadcloth with a fur hat, black stockings, and silk ballerina shoes. She smiled at the judge. She smiled at the jury. She smiled at U’Ren and Brady but didn’t look once at Roscoe. U’ren led her through it, just as he had at the coroner’s inquest and police court, and she sat there with an idiot grin on that doughy face, nodding and repeating things, finely trained and parroted, and looking to Roscoe like a thousand girls who’d read lines. Roscoe closed his eyes and leaned into the desk, rubbing his forehead.
“And what did Miss Rappe say?” U’Ren asked.
“She said, ‘He hurt me. He hurt me. I’m dying.’ ”
Roscoe opened his eyes. He turned to McNab. McNab looked back to the girl, thumping a pencil on the desk, thinking, changing strategy, restless energy ready to pounce on her. The girl continued on about how Virginia had entered room 1219 first and then moments later Roscoe walked in behind her, and she wasn’t sure of the time but at some point later Mrs. Delmont-that goddamn woman-started banging on the door with her fist and the heel of a shoe. That’s when they found the girl writhing in pain and tearing her clothes off.
U’Ren cleaned his glasses, placed them back on his feral little face, mouth puckered like he’d sucked a lemon, and looked as if he was inspecting his creation for anything he might have missed. But he was finished with her and McNab was on his feet, brushing by U’Ren, nudging the man’s shoulder ever so lightly, but seeming to do it all in a rush by accident. He began to speak almost immediately, the words in his throat for the last twenty minutes. “The girl said, ‘He hurt me. He hurt me’?”