Men boiled crabs on the street. Big wheels of cheese and fresh fruit were displayed from market windows, long dried sausages and peppers. There were dope pushers with dark-ringed eyes and prostitutes with sagging stockings. Sam smoked and caught all of them, starting up the night like the first strings of a symphony.
He turned and walked backward, heading out from the little district, his eye on a young man in a black hat holding two black satchels, one in each hand, as if they both contained a tremendous weight. The man’s head was down; slump-shouldered, he walked across the tracks.
There was music from a high window, opera with the soaring voice of Carmen, and a man in a tattered undershirt looked down at Sam, listening to his private songs. The man scratched his chest and his dirty chin and closed the window.
The steel buttresses of light ended and there was no music. The hard soles of his feet kept Sam company. He saw the Dark Man in his mind, seeing him spin and twirl, caught in the current, heading through the Golden Gate and far out into the ocean.
He heard the clang of a cable car behind him. He kept walking downhill.
He stepped off the curb to cross the street. And for some reason he would never understand, he simply stepped back, to check his pockets for change or perhaps a cigarette. He could not recall.
There was a tremendous pop and the earth rumbled beneath him and for a moment he thought it was a tremor, but then the entire raging, rattling box of a cable car crossed an inch from his nose, a wind crossing his face like a giant breath, and skittered and screamed downhill toward the bay, roaring with great yells and shrieks from the passengers, until there was a tremendous crash into an electric pole, the pole breaking in two as the cable car finally came to rest in the dead center of a house’s front porch.
Sam had not moved his feet since stepping back on the curb.
He could not move.
He was still yet his heart jackhammered in his chest. He could still feel the cut of wind across his nose. More screams and people yelling came from below and Sam ran downhill to the corner of Green, where a crowd had formed, as black snakes of electric cable jumped and zapped against the street, showering the night in bright sparks. He helped an old woman and the conductor from the heap. Four others had been helped into the street. They had been cut and bruised. One man walked in a circle, still in shock.
Sam walked back up Fillmore to where the car had gone loose. In the street, the cable continued to whirl and flow in the narrow gash, never stopping, never noticing the weight was gone.
THE JURY WAS OUT, the closings wrapped up, and at eight o’clock Roscoe returned to the courtroom with Minta. The big room was empty and quiet. A few newspapermen lay on benches smoking and reading back through their notebooks; other newsmen sat on staircases and occupied phone booths, waiting for the latest. McNab said it would be tomorrow at best. Told the boys from his firm to ring him at home if there was something brewing. Roscoe walked over to the jury box. Minta was restless, not wanting to have to dodge reporters. Half of them were out on the streets covering a visit by Marshal Foch, the French war hero, and that goddamn cat show at the St. Francis. Roscoe was officially banned from the hotel, but a stray tom called Mr. Whiskers and even a little bastard called Charlie Chaplin-on account of a black smudge under its nose-were welcome. A bunch of smelly cats purring and scratching at the furniture, taking dumps in the place, even if they did cost a few thousand like the papers said.
“Let’s go, Roscoe,” Minta said.
The little heads of a few newsboys popped up from where they slept on the benches, looking like gophers back in Kansas. His dad used to shoot at ’em with a.22 when they popped those heads up.
“Would you pay ten grand for a cat?” Roscoe asked.
“What?”
“Didn’t you read about the show at the St. Francis, crazy old women showing off ten-grand cats?”
“I read about Charlie Chaplin,” she said. “He was pretty cute.”
Roscoe opened the swinging door and sat down in the seat of Mrs. Hubbard, thinking that maybe if he warmed her seat he’d send her some positive thoughts. But all he could think about when he closed his eyes was the sharp little remarks made by U’Ren in the closing. U’Ren relished it, using the whole width of the box as his stage, pointing, enunciating, pulling from his whole bag of tricks, while Roscoe had to stay silent again.
“Come on, Roscoe.”
“Another minute.”
“They’re not coming back tonight,” said a newsman. “I got a tip.”
Roscoe ignored him. He leaned back into Mrs. Hubbard’s seat and tossed his big black shoes atop the seat in front of him. He lit a cigarette and looked at the ceiling.
The callous man-the man who laughs in the face of misery, who plays jokes on suffering women-whose only thought is to hurry a dying girl out of his room. Why didn’t Arbuckle tell that story in the first place? Why his silence? Why did he not tell a soul? Why did he not speak when yet in Los Angeles, before he had even seen a lawyer who might silence him? Why remain mute?
Goddamn bastard. Roscoe let out the smoke and watched it trail up to the tin stamped ceiling, a ceiling that looked for all the world like that of any crummy saloon. U’Ren’s words rattled around in his head, between his ears, and settled down in his gut.
And we shall shatter their theory of injury by immersion in cold water or by paroxysms of coughing or of nausea. And we have shattered the theory contained in Arbuckle’s statement to the effect that the girl fell from the bed.
U’Ren painted a picture for them of the fat beast throwing open the hotel door, ushering in the gash, pouring the drinks, turning up the jazz, and setting a trap for Virginia. He must’ve mentioned that Roscoe had worn pajamas and a robe at least thirty times, as if his dress was a crime in itself. Why can’t a man wear a goddamn robe and slippers in his own hotel room? Roscoe smoked some more and narrowed his eyes at where Louderback sat, trying to get a sense of the scene from a different point of view, get to see the whole drama from all angles and which ones worked best to tell the story.
And yet this defendant, who makes his living by acting-who has learned to disguise his thoughts-wants to make you believe that he did not see her go into that room.
U’Ren paused, reciting the testimony of the showgirls, that they saw him follow Virginia into 1219, then, just at the right moment, stopping to let the men and women picture the fat man locking the door behind him. His hand reaching over the poor girl’s as she tried to escape. The silence lasted long enough for all to envision Fatty crawling, sloppy drunk and bloated, on top of the girl, sticking his willy inside her and riding her like a dog until he squished her.
There is no doubt that at that time she was suffering from the injury inflicted by Arbuckle-the injury that caused her death. And Arbuckle cannot explain it. The only things he has seemed to remember in this trial are the things alleged to have occurred when no one else was there to see. Why should this man, famous throughout the world, allow himself to be damned without protest if all that had happened was that Virginia Rappe had become ill and had fallen off a bed?
“Because I was directed.”
“What’s that?” Minta asked.
“Nothing.”
“You said something,” she said. “It’s late. Please?”
Roscoe checked his watch, smoking the cigarette down to a nub. The newspapermen were up now, maybe eight or so of them, and they were watching him, the way children watch a polar bear in a zoo, just waiting for any little movement to bring them joy. But Roscoe’s mind reeled off, and McNab was before them all now, the projector rolling.
He began with a short, solemn prayer for Miss Irene Morgan, the war nurse who had braved the battlefields of Europe beside such men at Marshal Foch, coming to the city only to share her knowledge, and facing such danger.