“About five or six years.”
“About five or six years?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Before Miss Rappe came to your rooms on the fifth of September, did you know that she was coming there?”
“No, sir.”
“Mr. Fishback didn’t say anything to you about her coming there?”
“He said that he was going to phone her.”
“Do you know whether or not he did phone her?”
“I didn’t hear him phone.”
U’Ren took a breath, his jaw twitching. He stared down at the courtroom floor as if it would provide him some kind of key, some kind of answer, to make Roscoe reverse a story he’d been telling for months and had been playing time and again in his mind.
“How long a time elapsed from the time you saw Miss Rappe go into room 1221 until you went into room 1219?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“What did you do when she got up and went into room 1221?”
“I got up. I don’t know what I did, went to the Victrola or something, or danced. I don’t know. I don’t remember that time.”
“Well, how long a time would you say elapsed from the time you saw Miss Rappe go into room 1221 until you went into room 1219?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“Well, was it a half hour?”
“No, I don’t think it was that long.”
“Well, fifteen minutes?”
“I wouldn’t say what time it was. It was-”
“Isn’t it a fact that when you saw Miss Rappe going into 1221 that within two or three minutes thereafter you went into room 1219?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No.”
“And nothing you have heard during this trial refreshes your memory upon that subject?”
“When Miss Rappe went into 1221, I fooled around.”
“It was more than two or three minutes after Miss Rappe went into room 1221 that you went into room 1219?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, how much longer than two or three minutes?”
“Well, probably five or ten minutes.”
“Probably five or ten minutes,” U’Ren said, parroting it back, throwing up his hand carelessly. “All right, what were you doing in that five or ten minutes?”
“Just fooling around in that room.”
“Just tell the jury what you were doing the next five or ten minutes.”
“All right, I suppose I danced with Miss Blake.”
“Not that you supposed. Tell the jury what you remember doing.”
“I don’t remember what I did in the room,” Roscoe said, looking to the jury, wanting to tell them that he’d been drunk out of his mind. He leaned into his left arm, resting on the stenographer’s desk.
“What time did Miss Rappe go into room 1221?”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
“What time did Miss Rappe go into room 1219?”
“Like I said, I never saw her go into 1219.”
“What time did Mr. Fishback leave your room?”
“Between one-thirty and a quarter to two, I guess.”
“To go motoring and view some seals for a motion picture?”
“Yes.”
“Between one-thirty and a quarter to two,” U’Ren said, repeating for the jury. “Did Miss Rappe go into room 1219 before or after Fishback left your room?”
Roscoe looked to McNab, who sat behind the defense table stifling a yawn.
“I went into 1219 after Miss Blake had come back from Tait’s Café for rehearsal, sometime between two-thirty and three o’clock. I don’t know when Virginia Rappe entered.”
“Do you recall doing anything from the time that Miss Rappe went into room 1221 until you went into room 1219?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“What did you do?”
“I put… changed a record on the phonograph. I think I danced with Miss Blake. I am not sure what I did.”
“Then you don’t recall what you did. You don’t recall doing anything?”
“I was around the room. I don’t just exactly know what I was doing.”
“As a matter of fact, when you arose on the fifth of September and went into the bathroom to clean up it was your intention then to get ready to go out riding in your Pierce-Arrow limousine with Mrs. Taube?”
“Yes.”
“But you did not get dressed at that time?”
“No, these people kept coming in and I was trying to be sociable.”
“With whom?”
“With them.”
“They were not your guests?”
“No. I didn’t want to insult them.”
“You didn’t invite them there, did you?”
“No, sir.”
“With the exception of Miss Rappe, you didn’t know anybody that was coming there at that time, any of these young ladies?”
“No.”
“You did not invite them?”
“No.”
And you didn’t tell anyone else to invite them?”
“No.”
“And they were not your guests?”
“No.”
“They just appeared as if by magic?”
“They appeared.”
“And you don’t know how long a time elapsed from the time that Miss Rappe went into room 1221 until you went into 1219?”
McNab stood. It was the first time that he’d objected in the two hours of grilling by U’Ren. He smiled at the jury, letting them know he understood this silly weasel-faced little man, and then smiled at Louderback. “If the court pleases, we are supposed to end this trial sometime. I object to the same question being asked more than ten times.”
The courtroom laughed. Louderback did not.
“Proceed with the examination,” he said.
“Very well,” U’Ren said. “Answer the question.”
Roscoe scratched the back of his neck and looked at the jury. “What was it?”
Two of the jury, Fritze and Sayre, smiled.
He had ’em.
32
The baby cried for two hours straight. Sam finished his coffee, took a shower, and changed into some fresh clothes, tugging on his cap and walking down to the first floor and out on Eddy Street. Newsboys shouted from corners that the jury was out on the Arbuckle case, yelling, “Will Fatty Fall?” and “Fatty’s Last Stand” and the like. Sam walked with no direction in mind, absently smoking cigarettes and trudging forward, just keeping his feet moving, and suddenly found himself at Powell. A cable car idled in front of him and he got on, winded, taking a seat on an empty bench, listening to his rasping lungs as the bell clanged and the cable caught and the whole damn box made its creaky way up Nob Hill.
He could still hear the baby. See Jose’s face.
The cable car passed the St. Francis and limousines and women in long furs, jewelry shops, solid restaurants with waiters and white tablecloths, tobacconists and men’s clothing shops. Sam absently felt at his tweeds, tearing out a loose thread, and sat back on the hard seat, just letting the cable car do all the work on the ascension as he smoked and watched, feeling good about not having to hoof it anymore, not caring where the damn thing ended up.
The car crested at Nob Hill and, for the hell of it, he got off. He liked being able to do that. He looked at the four corners and spotted the California line that intersected at the top of the hill. He waited a beat and caught the car as it rattled past, full of businessmen and ladies on their way to teas, and held tight to the brass fitting during the rickety descent, the brakemen catching the cable, letting go, and catching the cable again during the jerky ride.
A few stops and they were at Fillmore, the street opening up to him in early night, iron buttresses arcing the street, lit up with a million small white bulbs, reminding Sam of the midways he worked back east. There were flivvers and trucks parked all along the street. Three- and four-story buildings and jutting turrets and hand-painted signs for fish merchants and pawnshops and Italian barbers.
He dodged a streetcar and another heading the opposite direction and wandered into a nickelodeon. He popped a coin in a machine and watched the pages flip, showing the devastation of the big Quake, the flattened city, smoke rising from the ashes, the tent city built on the rubble.