“Roscoe,” Minta said.
Ma broke off a piece of bread and chewed with her toothless mouth.
“Zukor is a Jew bastard,” Roscoe said, breaking a match and starting a new one. “I said it. Have I heard from him once since I left Los Angeles? He’s waiting to see how this plays out. I think he wants me locked in San Quentin. That way he can wiggle out of that contract.”
A waiter opened the curtain to the back booth and brought the table a bottle of white wine and three bowls of soup, a loaf of sourdough. Roscoe poured wine for Minta and McNab. Ma didn’t drink. The soup was hot and steaming and perfect on a cold, foggy day. He could stay here all afternoon, enjoy lunch, enjoy dessert and coffee, smoke a bit, tell a few jokes, sing a few songs. Every time he walked into the hall, he felt like a goddamn circus elephant paraded down Main Street.
“Who do you work for?” Roscoe said, pointing the end of his spoon at McNab.
McNab leaned back in the booth and took in Roscoe, as if seeing him for the first time. His craggy old face split into a smile, “I work for myself.”
“You work for Paramount.”
“I do what’s best for the client,” McNab said. The waiter came over and tucked a towel around McNab’s neck, setting a big bowl of steaming mussels and sea creatures in front of him. The crusty old lawyer ate with beautiful manners, dipping the spoon away from him, very little splattered on the linen.
“Well?” Roscoe said.
“A jury isn’t vaudeville, Roscoe,” he said. “It can be a mob.”
“I can make ’em love me,” Roscoe said. “They haven’t taken that away from me, have they?”
McNab looked up from the soup and over at Minta and then over to toothless Ma and there was a steady silence in the booth, the sounds of the restaurant carrying on, until they’d finished eating and made their way back to court. Roscoe wasn’t two steps outside when someone tapped him on the shoulder and called his name. At first he didn’t place the rail-thin man, maybe the thinnest man he’d ever seen, but then he knew it was the Pinkerton he’d met down south.
McNab stood beside Roscoe and stared at the young detective.
“He’s all right,” Minta said, waiting for her mother to get in the limousine and then following her. “He’s with the Pinkertons.”
McNab looked at his gold timepiece and crawled into the limousine and slammed the door. “Hurry up with it.”
Roscoe buttoned his jacket and pulled his hands into some leather gloves. “What a shit day.”
“What’s your connection to William Randolph Hearst?” the Pinkerton asked.
Roscoe shook his head.
“You know him?”
“I met the man once,” Roscoe said. “He’s been giving me a hell of a trashing in the papers, but that’s no secret.”
“He have a reason?”
“He’s an asshole. You need much else?”
“He works with Paramount?”
“He gets Paramount distribution.”
“And they get Hearst press?”
“Something like that.”
“Then why’s he laying into you, Roscoe?”
Roscoe shook his head again but felt himself sweat underneath the coat.
He tried to keep a light smile and shook the detective’s hand warmly. “I got to go, Pinkerton. Judge Louderback doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
The detective just stood there, watching him, waiting for an answer.
But instead, Roscoe gave him an old pat on the back and climbed in the limousine, the door barely closing before the big machine rolled up the hill and toward Portsmouth Square. Roscoe took a deep breath, feeling more trapped than ever, thinking of what it must be like to be swimming under a sheet of ice.
WHEN Dr. RUMWELL saw Maude sitting in his parlor having tea with his wife, he looked as if he’d just shit his drawers. His little mustache, the one that looked like he dyed it with boot polish, twitched under his nose and his eyelids fluttered as he removed his hat and black overcoat, leaving his well-worn medical bag by the door.
“Mrs. Delmont is such good company,” his wife said, laughing. “So charming.”
Rumwell just stood in the doorframe staring down at Maude, who crossed her legs and took another cookie his wife had offered. She sipped some tea and smiled up at Rumwell from the lip of the cup.
“Won’t you sit down?” Maude asked him.
He shook his head. He’d begun to perspire at the brow.
“Darling,” his wife said, “Mrs. Delmont has been waiting on you for more than an hour.”
“She may see me during office hours.”
“But I tried to call the clinic,” Maude said. “They told me you wouldn’t see me.”
“Quite right.”
Rummy’s wife looked shocked and put down her tea. She was the kind of frail woman who wore going-out clothes around the house, got the vapors, and would invite some complete stranger into her little velvet parlor and serve cookies and tea. Her husband’s manners were making her physically ill.
“But, Doctor,” Maude said, “you remember that itch I have? You’ve treated it before.”
She smiled at him and took another bite of cookie. The frail wife left the room, the kitchen door swinging back and forth behind her, the woman muttering something about dinner burning on the stove. Rumwell looked as if he’d swallowed a turd.
“You must be going,” Rumwell said.
Maude stood and walked to him. He held out a hand as if she was some kind of leper and all that unease was making Maude pretty damn happy. She smiled at him, walking slow and swatting her giant hat from side to side and against her buttocks. “Come on, Rummy.”
“Not here.”
“I don’t believe you’d see me anywhere.”
“I will if you’d please leave.”
Maude turned from him to a little wooden cabinet and opened a glass door. She pulled out a little porcelain curio of a kitten and held it in the palm of her hand, staring at it, appraising it. “Darling.”
“I will ring you at the Palace.”
“I’m not at the Palace.”
“I thought you were getting the royal treatment.” He said it snotty. “It was in all the newspapers.”
“Yeah, I was getting the treatment all right, out on my ass.”
“What do you want?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“You must be joking.”
Maude shook her head and said, “Nope.” She reached back into the glass cabinet and found another little figure, this one of a little girl holding a basket of flowers. She twirled it up in the failing light coming from the front door and smiled. “Doesn’t this look like Virginia?”
Rumwell grabbed her arm and his fingers were tight and strong, but he couldn’t budge her. She smiled at him. “Do you remember Mrs. Spreckles’s party? You took me from behind in the garden. Like some kind of animal. We’ve had so many adventures. I’ve brought you so much business.”
“I won’t pay you.”
“I have nowhere to go.”
“That’s not of issue.”
“Rummy,” she said. “Be a gentleman.”
The wife returned, now composed but flushed, and worked her best smile. She asked her husband if Mrs. Delmont would like to join them for dinner. She was baking a chicken and… But Rumwell stopped her, saying that Mrs. Delmont had to be returning south, kind of giving the wife the old brush-off, the frail getting his meaning and disappearing back to the kitchen.
Maude held the figurine up to Rumwell’s face and twisted it there. “Does it hurt when you fill them with air?”
“This instant,” he said, raising his voice, spit flying a bit.
“You hear it doesn’t hurt,” she said, “but I would feel like a balloon inside while you worked. And hands-you must have very steady hands.”
“I will call the police.”
“And I will tell them about your delicate work,” Maude said. “Your specialties.”
“So be it,” he said, disappearing into the kitchen.
Maude returned the figurine to the cabinet and took a seat back on the little settee. She sipped from the delicate china and watched the pendulum swing on a large grandfather clock. A large gray cat stumbled into the room and found a spot in Maude’s lap, settling in, and she stroked the animal and played with its tiny paws.