Devil's Garden (28 page)

T
HEY PICKED Up FREDDIE FISHBACK as soon as the gold elevator doors parted at the Palace Hotel and he wandered over to the tobacco stand to pick up a pack of Tuxedos. He was tall and well dressed, with the posture of an athlete but the rough, loping walk of a teenager, and for a moment Sam thought the man was surely drunk. Phil fell in stride beside Sam as Fishback followed Market Street, turning off immediately on Kearny and heading north. The men didn’t talk and there were enough people, even after nine, coming and going from the hotel and restaurant trade, that Fishback wouldn’t notice. Sam didn’t think the man would notice if they’d been hiking through the Salt Flats. The worst was when you had some fella window-shopping and taking in the sites, keen to new things, new people, maybe catching a glance of you in a store window.

He was taking long strides, lean and determined, and headed somewhere specific, maybe even a little late. Fishback checked his watch at least four times since leaving the Palace.

The fog was something terrible, wet clouds that hit Sam like a fist, and as he walked he cloaked his mouth with a bleached handkerchief. Fishback sped up, Sam slowed down. He felt like someone was squeezing him dry. Breaths came in sharp little spurts, ragged and small. A breath caught in his throat and wouldn’t spread. He felt light-headed, knees weak. It was a cold night, but Sam’s shirt had grown damp.

“You take him.”

“You okay?”

“I’ll try and catch up.”

Sam caught the firm edge of a brick town house. He tried to fill his bum lungs with cigarette smoke, the way pearl divers do with air before disappearing down into the depths. The smoke made him feel better, eased the breathing. He could hear the lungs, scarred and cracked, a wheezing in his throat. As he steadied himself, he could see inside the town house, where a man and a woman sat at a silver-set, linen-covered table. A negress appeared in the room, setting a large bowl of soup before a child, and the young boy clapped and clapped, his parents laughing, as the negress tucked a comically large napkin around his skinny neck and a silver spoon in his hand. The heat from the soup floated over the boy’s face like a phantom.

Sam found his feet and kept walking uphill, catching the top of Haultain’s hat as it crossed California, the men separated for seconds by a cable car. But then the cable car was gone, ringing off back down Nob Hill, and there was that big Stetson turning up on Grant and into Chinatown. Phil never looked back, kept an easy tail, and it was several blocks up Grant, all the way into the colony, that he found his partner under an Oriental lamp, a gold dragon wrapping the post, hat down in his eyes and a sly nod down the street. Sam overtook Phil now and they passed grocers with dead chickens hung by their feet and huge sacks of rice and long strands of dried peppers. Street hawkers yelled to the white men with silks; tiny yellow women called to Sam from the second and third floors of flophouses where laundry ran in tattered lines across black-holed alleys.

One woman called to Sam and threw down a key.

He kept walking, Phil keeping the pace on the opposite side of Grant, a little too close. Fishback was there, stiff-shouldered and athletic, perfectly oiled hair, tailored tweeds, and then he was gone. Sam kept on, picked it up a little. He could hear the paper lanterns strung over Grant beating in the wind. But the closer he walked, he heard music.
Jazz
. Fishback had dipped into a back-alley speak. Sam pointed to Phil, and Phil heard the music and smiled.

The door to the joint was a garish red with a long vertical sign overhead saying THE MANCHU. The door was opened, music and laughter grew louder, and Phil disappeared. Ten minutes later, Sam followed.

22

B
oom, chisel, chisel!” sang the Oriental gal on stage, dressed in a long silk getup, with an embroidered gold dragon crawling from ankle to bosom. She wore long gold gloves, her raven black hair twisted atop her head with chopsticks. “Boom, chisel, chisel!” the girl sang again, and the jazz band stopped and then started again, and a fat Oriental man with the pleasing round face of a Buddha asked Sam where he’d like to sit and, not seeing too many tables or Haultain or Fishback, Sam just shrugged. The fat man brought him to a far corner, and it was a good spot to watch the little tables scattered across the floor, but the light would be tough, nothing but red lanterns spread across the ceiling, drapes covering second-floor windows, with a single spotlight on the girl and her all-Oriental band. The fat man was behind him again, neat and spiffy in a freshly laundered dinner jacket, and asking Sam would he “like setup?”

“Sure. Rye.”

“Ice. Ginga-rale?”

“Sure thing.”

The man snapped his fingers and more Orientals appeared and laid down a bowl of cracked ice and a single glass with a pint of brown alcohol. The man proudly displayed the cap sealed with wax.

“Five dollar.”

“What?”

“Five dollar.”

“You got to be kidding?”

“The ‘Dragon Show.’ The ‘Dragon Show,’ ” he said, pointing to the stage as if any of that made a lick of sense. The fat man looked confused.

Sam poured the whiskey but didn’t add ice. He drank and pointed to the girl on stage. The man smiled a big row of crooked teeth and said, “No, no, no,” before walking away. Sam shrugged, feeling good to sit down, and poured another. Phil Haultain, hat in hand, walked by, leaned in and whispered, “At the bar,” and moved across from Sam. Sam pointed to one of the boys for another round and another glass. He poured one for Phil and left him at the table with all that beautiful booze, cracked ice, and ginger ale.

The bar was a long black-lacquered affair, with two skinny Orientals in white coats pouring. Fishback was turned toward Sam and talking to the woman who’d been on stage, and she seemed friendly and at ease with him as he touched the chopsticks in her hair and did a twirling motion with his fingers to make her turn around. The girl gave an easy laugh. Sam still couldn’t see Fishback’s face, only the long red nails of the woman clutching the Hollywood director’s shoulder and laughing. She held a cigarette in a long holder and spilled smoke from the corner of her mouth as if she were uptown. Fishback’s hand twisted around the girl and placed it flat on her fanny and the girl leaned in and whispered.

Fishback kissed the girl on the cheek.

He left the bar.

Phil picked him up by the door.

Sam waited a beat, pushed his way through a long, confusing red curtain and walked out onto a short balcony, into the night, looking down on Grant. He spotted Phil, who’d stalled under the awning of a grocer and then turned to the alley running alongside the Manchu. Rows and rows of laundry hung over the narrow shot, obscuring his view, and Sam saw Fishback only in breaks until he stopped and spoke to someone. Fishback turned and looked up at the Manchu, seeming to look right at Sam, but turned back and started talking to a man Sam couldn’t see.

Sam saw hands shake. There was a fat envelope. The director accepted it and walked away.

Fishback headed back out the alley. Phil followed.

Sam bounded down the steps to the first floor, made it to the corner, and then saw a man emerge from the mouth of the alley and turn the opposite way onto Grant. He was short and in a gray suit, gray hat. His hair silver and clipped close on a swarthy neck.

Sam made his way to the opposite side of the street, the man passing over Washington, Jackson, but turning west at Pacific and then looping south again on Stockton. Sam stopped and smoked a cigarette and looked into the window of an import/exporter, surely made. He started to cough again, the sweats on him rough. He felt feverish and sick, knowing the body had turned again and knowing the work was too much. He coughed more into the rag and there was blood.

The man in gray did not look back but continued to walk through Chinatown, back to Clay. Sam took a ragged breath, looked behind him, and nearly vomited.

He saw darkness and lights and then rows and rows of headlights coming from a concrete mouth. Sam reached into the pocket of his tweeds, wiped his lips with the back of his fist, and followed the dark man into the darkness and cold wind of the Stockton Tunnel.

T
HE CHANDELIER COST sixty thousand and weighed nearly a ton, and one hour before
Enchantment
was set to roll at the Granada the workers couldn’t hoist it. Hearst was furious beyond words, watching a dozen men with ropes and pullies working like mules up the gentle slope of the theater, muddying the red carpet and trying to get the damn thing up into the gilded ceiling. The architect was making apologies for the foreman, the foreman was blaming his workers, and the workers didn’t speak English. As ten employees surrounded Hearst, in tails and holding his top hat, he simply held up his hand and walked away, trailing up the stage and behind the screen and nodding past two guards as he entered Miss Davies’s dressing room.

Marion sat in a chair, looking like a discarded doll. She wore the same chiffon frock and beaver hat from when he’d seen her that morning. The gown he’d ordered from Paris hung from a hook. The jewels still in their velvet cases.

“What’s the matter?”

Marion just looked up at him with those enormous sad eyes and bowed little mouth. The mouth quivered a bit.

“I f-f-feel like I’m gonna be sick.”

“Don’t you worry.”

“What if they don’t like it?”

“They’ll love it. Besides, you know what I say.”

“Only r-read the good reviews.”

“Right.”

“But it seems the only good r-reviews come from Hearst papers.”

“Now, that’s a lie, Marion. Everyone is in love with you.”

“I don’t need this, W.R. We c-can live without all this.”

“You are the most naturally talented little woman I ever met.”

“Little woman?” she smiled, her little bowed mouth pursed like a flower.

He leaned down from his heights and kissed her on the forehead. “Now, get on with it. Smiles. All big smiles.”

Hearst returned out onto the stage and watched the men, now double in strength, pulling and straining with the chandelier. The wooden roof creaked, but the joists were built of redwood beams, large enough for a clipper ship. He stared out at all those empty red velvet seats and into the balconies where they would watch the premiere. Thousands of roses would be brought in just moments before the film started, letting those in the theater live the experience, that soft sweet smell blending in their mind with the picture on the screen. Marion, soft-focused, so lovely, forty feet tall, and so modern.

Enchantment
, the perfect vehicle for Marion, Hearst so proud to have directed the writer. The story centers on a girl, Ethel Hoyt, a modern girl in every way, spirited, beautiful, and lively, with numerous suitors. The girl spends her time dining and dancing, going to parties with different men, with her father back home worrying about her and knowing the only thing he can do is find a proper suitor for her, and it’s on the night of her birthday—how very proper—that he takes her to a performance of
Taming of the Shrew
. There he finds the man who can tame Ethel, a man named Edison—Hearst’s idea because of the connotations of inventiveness—and from there Edison suggests Ethel for the lead in his next play,
Sleeping Beauty
—again, Hearst’s suggestion to the writer—and as Edison falls for Ethel, so will the audience, to see Marion as Sleeping Beauty—in ringlets, with her moist lips parted—as one of the most fantastic, erotic images ever put on film.

“Mr. Hearst?”

“Hmm?”

A little newsboy held up a copy of the afternoon edition of the
Examiner
and Hearst reached down from the stage to grab the copy. The boy tipped his cap at Mr. Hearst and Mr. Hearst reached into his pocket and flipped him a silver dollar off his thumb. The boy caught it in midair with such a natural gusto that it brought a smile to Hearst’s face, and he unfurled the paper and saw the banner headline: ENCHANTED SAN FRANCISCO. He flipped below the fold to see a photo of the fat man at the defense table, his new attorney, McNab, held in conference, the fat man looking confused and worried, starting straight into the camera as if a startled animal.

He’d brought it all on himself.

Hearst looked up from the pages to watch the chandelier finally rise off the ground, tinkling, crystal winking in the light, the men grunting and straining and marching down the aisles up to the waiting doors through which fans of Miss Davies would soon pour. He looked back at the photo and stared at the face of the fat man, so dumb and confused, a sick animal, with animal virtues and animal desires. How drunk would a woman have to be to see something in that soft, doughy face and stupid eyes? How drunk and confused would a woman have to be to let herself be bedded by a millionaire brought into this world in a Kansas mud shack who lived his days cleaning out saloon spittoons before becoming a buffoon to millions?

Hearst had sat in darkness for days when the detective had come to him about the party. He had told him about the actors and Hollywood types who had filled the beach house with their gay laughter and alcohol and jazz music from a Victrola brought out onto the sand. They had danced away the last night of 1919 with cases of the last legal alcohol in this country and the fat man had been the king there, twirling around small, fresh Miss Davies, plying her with drink until even his doughy face could be attractive. All his tailored suits and manicured nails and twenty-dollar haircuts couldn’t hide what he’d been. And the thought of him sleeping under the roof that Hearst had built for Miss Davies made him want to vomit, but how could he be angry at Marion? How could he ever fault Marion for the appetites of a fat man? A buffoon.

The fat man had simply walked away that first day of 1920 without a moral headache of consequence—maybe the bright sunlight had brought him some discomfort or perhaps he could not gorge himself on cakes or pies that day. But he had escaped without a bit of gentleman’s remorse, the tainted, now-illegal liquor in his blood, driving in his ridiculous automobile like a circus oddity. Hearst rubbed his head and his eyes. He must gather himself. Someone called to him, but he waved him away. Someone called to him again.