“That’s right,” Zey said, kind of rolling her eyes like McNab had wax in his ears or was too old to remember.
“She said it twice?”
“Yeah.”
“And then said, ‘I’m dying’?”
“That’s what I said,” Zey said, looking over at Brady and U’Ren, and McNab caught her eye and moved his bulky bearlike body right in her line of vision. She narrowed her eyes at him like What’s the big idea?
“Do you recall making the statement earlier that the girl had said, ‘He killed me. Arbuckle killed me’?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know what I heard,” she said. She rolled her eyes again, and Roscoe noted she was pretty damn good at it. Maybe even practiced it in the mirror, copying Mabel Normand.
“Your Honor, we’d like to read her earlier testimony into the record,” McNab said. He read every word from her sworn statement but didn’t stop there. With a hell of a flourish, the gruff old man read her testimony into the record and did his best to sound gay and flighty, with every other sentence he read ending with “I sez I don’t remember nothin’. It’s all mixed up, I tell you.” McNab ended with U’Ren asking the girl where she lived and the girl saying, “I don’t want to tell you because I don’t want my mother drawn into this.”
Zey Prevon-Prevost stifled a giggle. Some on the court laughed. Roscoe noticed no one on the jury even cracked a smile.
“Did you sign your name to this statement?” McNab asked.
“Yes.”
“Were you forced?”
The girl tried to look around McNab to the prosecution table, without any luck. McNab let the question hang there, not saying a word, letting the big damn silence of the wood-paneled room suck it from her.
“No.”
“Where have you been for the last month?”
“Calistoga.”
“By yourself?”
“With Alice.”
“Alice Blake?”
“Yes.”
“And did you two decide on this trip yourselves?”
“I don’t know,” Zey said. “I was just sent there.”
“By who?”
“Mr. Brady.”
“Did you have a nice time?”
“I guess.”
“I hear the treatments are quite relaxing,” McNab said. “Especially when it’s on the taxpayer tab.”
U’Ren and Brady stood in unison, Louderback shot down a stare from the bench. McNab just rubbed his craggy face and stretched his neck, and he continued on while Zey looked as if she was sitting on a griddle, turning and readjusting, crossing her leg and showing her black stockings and silk ballerina shoes, her smile plastic.
“Did Mr. U’Ren tell you that you had to sign that statement?”
Zey shook her head.
“Please state your answer.”
“No, sir.”
“But now you’re saying the statement is incorrect.”
Zey’s mouth opened, her pudgy little face dropped, and she put her hands to her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Please answer,” Judge Louderback said.
“It’s just all mixed up,” Zey said. “All of it is all mixed up.”
“Then,” McNab said, pointing to her and then turning to the jury, Roscoe watching him work like a goddamn acrobat, even turning back to Minta and Ma with a look on his face like Look at that bastard go, and Minta winking back at him. “You could have mistaken Miss Rappe’s statement that day?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hadn’t Miss Rappe just been immersed into a cold bath by you and Miss Blake and a Mr. Fishback?”
“Yes,” Zey said, shaking her head, trying to find his meaning.
“Mr. Fishback had hold of her arms?”
“Yes.”
“And even the contact of her clothes hurt her, isn’t that true?”
“Yes.”
“So when Miss Rappe said ‘he,’ she could’ve meant that it was Mr. Fishback and not Mr. Arbuckle that hurt her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if she meant Mr. Fishback, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you don’t know if she meant Mr. Arbuckle, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your Honor, I would ask you to direct the witness to answer my question and remind her that she is under oath and failing to do so amounts to perjury. Punishable by imprisonment.”
Zey smiled and shrugged.
“Objection,” U’Ren said, shouting and jumping up.
“Objection to the crime of perjury?” McNab asked, smiling a bit.
“Sit down, Mr. U’Ren,” Louderback said, before leaning toward Zey.
“Please answer the question yes or no, Miss Prevon.”
“You don’t know if he meant Mr. Arbuckle was the one who hurt her, do you, Miss Prevon?” McNab asked.
Zey glanced at U’Ren, before she said in a small, soft voice, “No.”
“Because it’s quite possible she could have been referring to Mr. Fishback when she said ‘he,’ since you and Mr. Fishback had just roughly handled her and tossed her into a bath of very cold water to cure what you thought was a bad drunk?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your Honor?”
Judge Louderback leaned toward her. “Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, she could have meant Mr. Fishback hurt her and not Mr. Arbuckle?” McNab asked, voice booming.
“Yes.”
“No further questions,” McNab said.
McNab sat back down next to Roscoe and Roscoe smiled at him, giving his lawyer a soft shot on the arm, but the old crotchety bastard just looked at him like he’d just pissed on his shoe and returned to the papers spread out before him.
HEARST DIRECTED GEORGE to drive him to the Embarcadero, having him slow behind a streetcar and wait until it rambled off into the rainy night. The Dark Man was at the curb and spotted the Chandler limousine, hat tilted over his eyes, black umbrella in hand, looking to Hearst like a funeral director. Two more streetcars passed, each going the opposite way, the inside of each great rattling box filled with artificial light as it rambled past the piers and endless fishing boats. Old men sat under lean-tos fixing fishing nets by the light of kerosene lanterns. The Dark Man closed the umbrella and crawled inside with Hearst.
The limousine pulled out onto the roadways hugging the bay and headed up past Market Street and the Ferry Building, more piers flashing by the windows, George now overtaking the streetcars. The big black car seeming to glide on rails. Hearst held his head in his hand as they rolled along and stared out the glass, feeling the Dark Man staring at him but saying nothing. They soon wound around the Cliff House and the Sutro Baths and the terrain grew rocky and ragged, the road narrowing, the headlights cutting a wide path into the rain.
“I read Enchantment was the best picture ever made.”
Hearst stared at the man and took in his black suit, smug grin.
The man flipped open a writing tablet and read. “Her name is Irene Morgan.”
“Is she genuine?”
“I think so.”
“I will not have Miss Rappe’s name besmirched.’ ”
“You want some advice, Mr. Hearst?”
“Did I ask you for any?”
“Sometimes people just die,” the Dark Man said. He removed the hat from his gray head and shook loose some rainwater. The outline of the rocky coast looked like jagged silhouettes. “That wasn’t the plan.”
“They want her to be called a whore.”
“You ever play cards, Mr. Hearst?” The Dark Man’s face was half lit in the lights from the baths, the other split in shadow.
Hearst just looked at him.
“You get out when the gettin’ is good,” the Dark Man said. “And that was some time back.”
Hearst continued to stare. The man stared back. Hearst called for George to circle back downtown. The big, lumbering car found a spot along the cliffs and made a wide, squeaking turn. Rain began to fall harder now and the windows were completely obscured with grays and blacks, the rocky outline and silhouettes gone. The man across from Hearst smelled of heavy cologne and Hearst took him as someone who needed to cover up a strong offensive odor.