These women were the worst, a black-clad army of grim-faced suffragists, the kind Maude remembered in Kansas who’d march the town streets on a Saturday banging the old drum and causing the whole goddamn country to go dry. The leader of the group was a stout lady physician named Marina Bertola, who stood first and last after Broncho Billy finished up his prayer and promised the group to amass a posse if Arbuckle wasn’t brought to justice. As she spoke, the chandelier light refracted in her lenses, making her eyes disappear behind the glass, her eyes twin pools of ice.

“We have let our ardor cool down,” Dr. Bertola said. “And for that reason we are all responsible in some measure for the conditions that bring about such outrageous affairs as the Arbuckle party. Our purpose is to secure enforcement of the law. We must be faithful to that purpose, not only in regard to the Arbuckle case but for the sake of the future.”

THE OLD MAN listened with great interest to Sam’s story about shadowing Dr. Rumwell into the Barbary the night before. He left out the part about getting blind drunk, stopping short of the payoff with the big negro and Haultain tailing Rumwell out of the bar.

“He got on a streetcar and headed back to his place on Lombard,” Haultain said.

“How long did you sit on the house?”

“Till this morning,” Haultain said. “He left the house for Wakefield. That’s where the boy came for me and I broke off the tail.”

“Get some sleep,” the Old Man said. “Roll back on the job tonight.”

“I’ll take him,” Sam said.

“You find that Blake girl.”

“Checked out of the Woodrow on Tuesday.”

“Just find her.”

“What do you make of this Rumwell making house calls to whores?”

“I’d say he’s a true philanthropist.”

Sam smiled. “He performed an illegal autopsy on the Rappe girl and may have disposed of some of her organs.”

The Old Man took off his gold spectacles, folded them, and tucked them into the pocket of his dress shirt. He wore a pin high and tight at his collar, and leaned onto the desk with his forearms. “That may be. But one problem at a time. Alice Blake is scared. The other little tart is under lock and key by the state. Alice is the only one who can set the story straight about that party. Did you see the afternoon papers? The Delmont woman is on a goddamn speaking tour.”

“Does Los Angeles have anything on her?”

“Nope. Someone’s on that.”

“The Blake girl,” Sam said.

“The Blake girl.”

“I’ll check back with the hotel and run down some people at Tait’s.”

“You feeling all right?” the Old Man asked.

“Peaches and cream.”

“You look like shit warmed over.”

“Thanks.”

“You need a break?”

“No.”

The Old Man looked at Sam a long while and then put his glasses back on and nodded. He didn’t add a good-bye or give a speech, only went back to his paperwork, sleeves rolled well above the ink, and expected Sam and Phil to find their way out.

9

Sam found Alice Blake two days later, on a Friday, living in a Sunset District row house with her mother. He’d spent a five spot on a phone number from a dancer at Tait’s and used a city directory at the office to find the address, borrowed a machine from a nearby garage, and had been sitting on the house since yesterday. There was a corner grocery up on Irving where he’d buy cigarettes and a sandwich with coffee and use the toilet and pay phone. Most of the houses on the street were brand-new, narrow, two-story jobs with stucco and tile roofs. He’d spotted a nice empty one, directly across from the mother’s house, where he slipped through a window and could make himself comfortable on an apple crate with field glasses. It was late afternoon when he saw a yellow cab pull up to the address and saw Alice Blake skip out to the street and get in back.

Five minutes later, Sam was behind the cab in his machine and trailing across the southern part of Golden Gate Park and then dipping down into the Castro, thinking she was headed back downtown but instead watching the cab slow in front of a theater. She got out, paid the cabbie, bought a ticket at the window, and slipped inside. Sam parked and followed.

The picture had already started and Sam had to adjust his eyes in the darkness. The theater was a fantasy palace filled with gilded Oriental and Moroccan designs, the latter being appropriate since the moving images were of sheiks and the desert and far-off places with camels. The ceiling was a night sky, complete with moving clouds and winking stars. The screen was fifty feet high, bordered by balconies and plush red curtains. The effect made you feel as if you were at an outdoor play.

Sam took a seat in a side row where he had a good view of Alice Blake’s profile while she ate popcorn and stared, openmouthed, at the moving images. A man sat in front of a great organ, as if he were playing liturgy instead of accompaning a woman outside a sheik’s tent, nervous but accepting the invitation to come inside. The flap to the tent was held open and Alice stopped eating. Her big brown eyes remained wide at the sight of the woman removing her pith helmet and belt and the sheik’s servants doing the same for him. Caston, the French valet in service of the sheik since his school days, closing the curtain.

Why have you brought me here?

The sheik, with a great smile, saying, Are you not woman enough to know?

Sam turned to the others staring at the huge screen, watching the man Valentino strut in his tent, standing twenty feet tall in the darkness, hands on his hips, robes flowing behind him. Sam leaned back into his seat. The women in the seats around him breathing so loud that it sounded like one great gasp of a chorus. The sheik pointed to his big bed and the woman tried to run. He caught her in his arms and made his eyes real big. The bigger he made his eyes, the more the women in the crowd gasped.

Sam lit a cigarette and settled in.

Alice Blake resumed with her popcorn.

I am not accustomed to having my order disobeyed.

And I’m not accustomed to obeying orders.

You will learn! said the sheik, banishing her from his tent.

It was almost as if you could put your hands up in front of you and touch them or perhaps walk into the screen and be a part of it all. The light of the screen brought a white sheen to the faces of the women, some holding a single red rose.

After a while, Sam fell asleep. When he came to, the picture still rolling and organ pumping, he looked over to Alice Blake and she was gone.

He left the darkness and pushed open into the light, the new world seeming almost unreal against the desert, and looked for the girl, twice checking her seat and the washroom, then walked out into the Castro. A half hour later, he returned to his machine to ride back to the Sunset District and sit on the house. He bought a loaf of bread and more cigarettes and a Photoplay magazine to read up on this woman he’d seen in The Sheik because somehow the woman seemed like someone he now knew.

When he moved up the landing to the vacant house, he heard a shift and found someone already sitting on the apple crate. The Prohibition agent from the Old Poodle Dog looked over at him, dropping his field glasses by her side, and pulled on a cigarette. She looked at Sam but didn’t smile. The street-light shone off the white blond hair peeking out from under a silk turban.

She turned, cocking a dark brow at him. “Sit down. I won’t bite.”

MAUDE DIDN’T SEE Al Semnacher, didn’t know he was following her, until he plopped down next to her on the cable car just before it started its jerky ride up Powell Street, past the St. Francis and Union Square and slowly up Nob Hill. Maude had to do a double take to make sure it was Al because the dumb son of a bitch didn’t say anything, just stared at the people climbing the hill as they glided by in the car, and even casually waved to an old Chinese woman selling persimmons from a corner. Maude shook her head and checked her watch, already ten minutes late.