Devil's Garden (42 page)

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

R
oscoe 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.”

“There was a deal,” Zukor said, his eyes finding the floor. “You are doing the industry a great service. Be patient,
mein Kind
. If it wasn’t for the commission, every goddamn picture would be sliced up by every two-bit censor and religious nut.”

“I’ve lost a chunk of change during this mess,” Roscoe said. “They say they could take my home.”

“You’ll be back,” Zukor said. “I just wanted you to hear from me and not those goddamn newspapermen. They should be knocking on your door anytime. I suggest you get out while you can. Ask for a private table. They’ll understand.”

Roscoe felt a palsy in his cheeks. Minta rose from the piano. Roscoe held the edge of the piano. Luke sniffed at Zukor’s leg and began a low growl.

“How can they do this?”

“We voted,” Zukor said. “All of us did. It was best with the trial and all, and a few other things. The average Joe thinks Hollywood is the devil’s garden. See? We have to show them different. Listen, I tried my best to stop Hays, but he was intent that you were taught a lesson.”

“I was acquitted.”

“He said it sends the wrong message, that we can’t be tough enough on our own people. We must show toughness now.” Zukor shrugged. “In a year? Maybe another story.”

Roscoe just stared at him, feeling his heart drop, wanting a drink very badly.

“Maybe we can get a deal for Luke,” Zukor said. “How’d you like that?” Luke continued to growl, Minta walking by Roscoe and grabbing the dog’s collar. Teeth now bared.

Zukor had a fine camel coat laid across his arm and a beaver hat in his fingers that he nearly dropped while trying to shake Roscoe’s hand again. Roscoe took his hand but didn’t hold it. Zukor patted his shoulder and called him his child again, and just walked away, up the little landing and across the great hallway of marble checkerboard.

Roscoe did not move.

“Why has God done this to me?”

Minta didn’t answer, only sat back at the piano and started to play a song that they sang together in all those saloons and mining towns, and he turned to her, resting his hand upon her shoulder, and joined in, taking the time for a solo on the old kazoo.

He sang louder and louder, the windows of the mansion shaking, one song breaking into the next, while the front door chimed and the telephone rang. Minta’s gentle voice warming his heart until tears ran down his face and hit the keys.

He would not star in another picture for a dozen years, the very same year he died.

IT WAS FALL OF 1924 and Hearst decided on a party, quickly settling on the theme, the birthday of his good friend Tom Ince. He cobbled together a group of thirteen, including Miss Davies, and they all sailed from Wilmington on his sturdy little
Oneida
. That first night there was a spectacular dinner party, lobster cocktails and roast turkey and the endless uncorking of champagne for his guests. At sunset, the crew strung red Japanese lanterns along the rigging and the whole yacht took on a mystical glow in the balmy night, the thirteen gathering on deck for song and dessert, coffee, and more champagne. A giant birthday cake was brought out for Ince, baked in the shape of a horse since the man was famous for directing all those westerns—or what Hearst loved to call “horse operas.”

Ince blew out the candles and there was applause, and singing, and Marion announced after drinking more than she’d promised that everyone was to find a costume.

“But we brought no costumes,” Hearst said to the gathering.

“Here lies the challenge,” Marion announced, grasping a champagne bottle from a crewman and pouring another drink. Before long, the deck was filled, with one couple saying they were Indians but really just covering themselves with blankets as shawls, another couple simply exchanging clothing, George dressed himself in an old bathrobe and said he was a monk. But, as always, Chaplin stole the show, borrowing a negligee and parading around, patting his long dark curls and asking everyone in that maddening accent, “Don’t I look pretty?”

Even Hearst had to laugh.

There was a scavenger hunt and more song, and Hearst drank his coffee, speaking to the captain in the wheelhouse. It was there, through the glass, that he saw his guests standing on the bow staring up at the great ship’s mast as Chaplin, still in women’s silks, shimmied up the cables like some kind of ape, finding his footing high above them all, screaming and shouting. Hearst watched his enraptured guests, staring up at the drunken idiot.

Chaplin had found footing high in a crow’s nest and began to recite Shakespeare.

“Marion,” Hearst said. “We must—”

“Shush,” she said.

He stared at her. Her head tilted back, eyes up at the starred sky, hands clutched to her breasts.

“. . . slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing end them? / To die; to sleep; / No more; and by a sleep to say we end / The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation / Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; / To sleep: perchance to dream”—Chaplin stretched out his arm before him in contemplation—“ay, there’s the rub.”

Chaplin finished, thank God, and upended the bottle of Hearst champagne and tossed it deep into the Pacific. In the red glow of the lanterns, there was great applause, yet what mattered to Hearst was that there was also silence. The goddamn silence of awe for the funny little man.

Hearst put his hand on Marion’s shoulder. But she did not feel it.

Hearst, in his great black boots, turned and stormed below, shutting and locking the door. He took two aspirin, filled a glass with fresh water, undressed, and turned out the lights, the party sounds echoing around him as the guests rocked and spun on the ship.

He awoke at three with a tremendous headache, sliding into his silk robe and slippers, unlocking his door and wandering to the galley, where he found two Chinese crewmen playing fan-tan.

They stood at attention, but he paid them no mind, taking the steps up to the deck and searching for Marion. He would ask her to come back to bed, as he felt much better now, the heat and embarrassment of it all cooled away.

The deck of the
Oneida
was empty.

Empty bottles of champagne and half-eaten trays of food sat on linen-covered tables, the cloths flapping in a cold wind, an approaching storm heading east.

Many of the candles in the lanterns had burned out and the gaiety of it all had grown dim. The stars gone.

Hearst went below, checking Marion’s quarters, the quarters she kept during such trips with guests, only to find an unmade bed. Her night garments, laid out by George, untouched.

He walked the hallway. He heard laughter and thumping.

He stopped at a door, having to stoop a bit to get his ear to wood.

A woman’s laughter. A man’s laughter. A horrendous thumping sound.

Hearst reached for the doorknob, his mouth gone dry.

The room was dark, but a single oil candle on a bed table burned brightly enough that Hearst could see Marion’s marbled body riding a man who lay flat on his back. The man’s chest was bony, with a thin path of hair. He was sweating and smiling. Marion turned her head and, even in that moment, Hearst noted the beauty of her shoulder blades, the milk of her skin, the golden curls against the nape of her neck.