The beach was dark, the loping hills nothing but rough-cut shadows, and the only warmth on the shore coming from the kaleidoscope of lights from the carousel and the little fires clicking along the beach where the Chinese would cook the fish and sweets in a giant party Hearst had organized to see 1922 meet its first dawn.
Hearst watched the Englishman, finding nothing attractive or charming or funny about him, wondering why the world would so adore a man like Charlie Chaplin.
Chaplin held on to the golden rod of the horse, pumping up and down, Marion laughing, and made his way onto Marion’s great white horse, the one Hearst had picked out especially for her. He shrugged and smiled with so much vanity, tipping the end of a delicate champagne glass to her mouth, drinking it, spilling on the dress, a great, horrendous laugh to follow.
Hearst walked into the turn of the carousel, hands upon his back, to much laughter and praise and thanks from his guests. Men dressed as women and women as men. There were harlequins and harlots and tigers and knights. He smiled and pleasantly told them all they were welcome and returned to his great black horse, hugging its neck, the carousel pumping and twirling twice until it slowed, the calliope music gently stopping to a single note.
“You s-silly man,” Marion said.
Hearst looked up from the horse’s neck. She took off his hat and kissed him on the head. She cocked her hip in a sexy way and tipped a bottle of champagne by the neck into her mouth and throat. She kissed him again.
“H-how ’bout another turn, W.R.?”
“Whatever the lady wishes.”
“You silly man.”
He smiled at her, tasting the champagne on her lips and smelling another man’s cologne on the nape of her flowered dress.
She smiled back.
THE SECOND TRIAL was well under way in January when Sam shadowed Fred Fishback to a Chinatown opium den, Fishback having been called by McNab but not showing up to the Hall. The joint was a Hip Sing Tong place, the tongs finally settling their latest turf battle in the colony, and the owner of the place offered a little cup of ny ka pa before taking Sam into the back room, where whites and Chinese had settled themselves along bunks and relaxed against silk cushions. A little Chinese boy with a pigtail worked to attach scrolls in the cracks of the hovel, a brisk January wind snaking through the cracks and dimming the candles in the room. The owner pointed to Fishback, who rested in a lower bunk with two women clutched to his chest, his own loose hand on his forehead, a great smile on his face when he saw Sam. One woman turned her head, awaking from her dream, and clawed her hand up at the wavering image of Sam.
It was Alice Blake, her face a mess of paint, a sloppy red smile on her lips.
The other woman, the girl from the Manchu, settled into Fishback’s chest.
“Boom, chisel, chisel,” Sam said. “Boom, chisel.”
The girl said, “Yes, of course.”
Fishback’s face looked as if it were made of parched paper, dark circles under his eyes, a lazy, go-to-hell look. He’d grown a clipped mustache, the rest of his face stubbled and unshaven.
On the top bunk, a Chinese man in traditional silk getup stroked a white cat as he sucked on a pipe.
“Have you ever danced on a table?” Fishback asked, disheveled but still handsome.
Sam didn’t say anything.
“We all danced,” Fishback said, as if the words called for great effort.
“For two days straight. With my beauties.” He kissed them and looked to Sam. “And now I’m no longer afraid of death. I’m so rude. Would you like a smoke?”
“I’ll stick to Scotch.”
“You show ’em.”
Fishback laughed and rocked back into the bed. The girls snuggled into him.
“I just finished a film,” Fishback said. “And I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted and my mind was still going. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”
“I have something for you,” Sam said, pulling the subpoena from his coat.
“I like to do something I fear,” Fishback said. “I like to set up obstacles and defeat them. I like to be afraid of the project. I always am. When I get into something, really into something, I always believe I shouldn’t have the job. But you know what? I fooled them again. I can’t do it. I don’t know how to do it. The anxiety works for me.”
“You’re wanted in court tomorrow.”
“You can’t save him.”
“Tomorrow,” Sam said, tossing the subpoena into his lap.
Alice Blake picked it from his chest and opened it with thick fingers. She squinted one eye at Sam and made a gun from a thumb and forefinger and just said, “Kennedy,” before leaning over and kissing the Oriental gal and resting her head on Fishback’s chest.
“Doesn’t he look like Wallace Reid?” Fishback asked.
Two days later, Fishback testified. McNab slung arrows. Fishback repeated the same tale from the first trial.
Five days later, a masseuse showed up at his hotel room. She found him naked, cold, and dead on the floor. His body was shipped back to Los Angeles on the same train that had brought Virginia and buried not ten paces from her.
34
Roscoe stood trial for killing Virginia Rappe three times. The third jury acquitted him after deliberating for five minutes, calling the case an insult to their intelligence and even posing for pictures with him after the whole thing wrapped. They wrote him a letter of apology that all the newspapers ran, except the Hearst papers, Roscoe noted, and by April the movie houses had dusted off their reels of Crazy to Marry and Gasoline Gus. He could now drive down to the airfields and picnic as the zeppelins would take off and land and was welcomed on picture sets with his old buddy Buster, who asked him if he’d like to direct a couple comedies he’d written during all this mess. Minta stayed on with him, Ma taking a room downstairs by the bowling alley, and all through those first days in April he’d join his ex-wife at the piano and they’d remember old songs from when they were teenagers performing at the Byde-A-While, and sometimes Roscoe would accompany her on kazoo, bringing Luke to his feet with a great howl.
It was two days after Easter, not even a week since returning home, that Al Zukor showed up at the West Adams house, refusing to hand over his coat to the butler, saying he didn’t want to interrupt, only to offer the congratulations of everyone at the picture company.
Roscoe offered him a tea, coffee, a cigar perhaps? But Zukor said he really must be going.
“I have some ideas,” Roscoe said. “Some of the pictures we had set, I think I like Thirty Days best. A rich playboy who can only escape his woman’s rival by ducking into prison. I make fun of the situation, that’s the only way.”
Zukor nodded.
“Would you like to hear a song?” Roscoe asked.
“I really must be going.”
“Dine with us, Musso and Frank’s. Like the old days.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Roscoe looked at him.
“The Hays Commission, Will Hays, has banned you.”
“Banned me?” Roscoe said, laughing. “From what?”
“Making pictures.”
“I was acquitted.”