But as she continued to speak, the newspapermen and photographers broke away, filing back out to the platform, leaving Minta alone to look at Ma and Ma just to shrug her bony shoulders. Brennan had already made arrangements with the porter to bring their trunks to the waiting car, and from there they would take the ferry back to the city.
Sam left the attorney and filed back out to the platform, watching the newspaper men standing in a great huddle, not at the Overland Limited coming in but at the Owl making ready to head south to Los Angeles.
The strobes of the big flashes looked like pockets of lightning in the early dark as Sam walked toward the openmouthed crowd and watched as four negro porters carried a white coffin onto the last car and two negro boys hoisted armloads of pink lilies onto the train.
Sam could smell the fresh-cut flowers from where he stood.
“Read us the note,” a newsman called out.
The porter shook his head and pulled the sliding door shut with a giant clank.
An hour later, a faint gray dawn broke over the city, as the ferry made its way over the bay to San Francisco. Sam sat with Minta and Ma in their stateroom and waited for more knocks and to make more threats, sending the newsboys away. The ferry rolled and bobbed, and Ma’s head was slumped with a snore, her hat fallen onto the seat beside her.
Sam caught Minta’s eye and smiled.
They were alone.
“You see the coffin?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He’s innocent.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I spent two days in Chicago looking for people who knew that little tramp.”
Sam leaned forward. “It was awfully nice of you to come.”
“Of course.” Minta looked at Sam, confused. “I love Roscoe with all my heart.”
AL SEMNACHER never cared to be on stage. He was just fine being a bit player in Hollywood, standing in the shadows helping along a career or two, having lunch at Musso & Frank’s, putting together a deal, maybe working a con or two on the side. The conning didn’t start until he met up with Maude, and she’d kept him busy as a jackrabbit in the spring. Back then it was just plain old Maude Parker from Wichita and she’d needed some cash, so he’d introduced her around, and Hollywood had been a real gas. Soon she’d set her sights on a couple of actors and they’d pull a rape, or set them up with a man-one director was particularly into that type of thing-and they’d get a statement or take a photo and the money would soon be turned over to Maude. They’d live in high style for a few months till the tank was empty.
But now here was Al sitting in the lobby of the Palace Hotel, ten o’clock or so at night, waiting for Maude to show up and make good on their deal. He paced the lobby until he drew stares from the doorman and hotel manager and he told them he was a good friend of Mrs. Delmont’s. But by midnight, he knew she was there but wasn’t going to take his calls or come down to the lobby till hell froze over, and so he said to hell with it, retiring to the hotel’s Rose Room, a little back-corner restaurant where they’d moved the hotel bar since the dry laws were on.
He ordered a Scotch and sat at a corner table. The rest of the Rose Room empty.
The walls were stained paneled wood, with a lot of low light and brass, and a large mural against the far wall that the waiter had said once hung over the bar before they broke it up.
The painting was of a strange-looking old man dressed in a harlequin checkerboard getup leading children away from a village by playing a flute. The little children raced with determination to catch up while others walked along bored or sat under great twisted trees the way you find trees in California, corrupted by the salt air from the Pacific.
Al had another Scotch and stared so long at the mural that it became real to him. The rough boulders, the failing light of day, and a giant stone castle on the hill. One boy in particular seemed so strange and foreign but known to him. He seemed the most important of the bunch, racing in jutting determination with the Pied Piper, mirroring the older man, trailing in the failing yellow California light and going somewhere over the rough little hills and boulders whittled away with time. The boy and the Piper the same, walking with the same stride, the same face, only the man much, much larger, towering over them all, but walking with a youthful stride, seeming to know exactly where he was headed.
Al finished his drink, knowing he couldn’t pay for it.
He decided to put it on Maude’s tab and had a laugh at that.
About that time, he watched a fat man enter the bar in a silk bathrobe and slippers and recognized him instantly as Frank Dominguez. He’d never met Dominguez officially but had seen him plenty on the Paramount lot and knew he was a regular at Jesse Lasky’s poker games.
Dominguez took a seat under the mural.
Al smiled at his luck.
With a self-confidence that only a strong drink can give, he pulled up a chair and sat down.
“Can’t sleep.”
Dominguez shook his head.
“Lots to worry about with the police court and all.”
“We’re not talking to the press.”
“I’m not the press.”
“Then who the hell are you?” Dominguez said, putting fist to mouth in a giant yawn.
“Your new best friend.”
Dominguez signaled the waiter, slumped against a back wall, for another round.
11
When Minta arrived at the Hall of Justice it was early morning and Roscoe had been asleep on his bunk, dreaming of the dusty town where he’d lived as a boy in a little hotel closet alone, scrubbing floors and cleaning spittoons and falling in love with this nineteen-year-old singer who smelled of lilac and taught him to harmonize and dance. The meeting of their voices on a tinny old piano had made him smile and feel warm as he slept until he heard the clank and turn of the key and he imagined he was driving a wagonload of meat, reins in one hand, some little girl’s knee in the other, and the wagon suddenly buckled and tilted on a wide dusty road and the whole thing tipped and fell and he awoke on a stone pillow looking up into the face of Minta.
“Hello there, honey dear,” she said.
He smiled.
“How’s my boy?” Ma Durfee said.
The door jangled closed and the lock clicked.
Roscoe found his feet and fisted the sleep from his eyes. He stood and hugged Ma first and then Minta, still feeling inside a dream. He held Minta close and saw her angelic face, the soft reddish brown hair peeking out from a silken turban, beads of gold dangling from one side of her face like a veil.
Ma smiled a toothless smile and pinched his cheek.
“How ’bout a family shot for the boys?” asked a man with a camera.
Roscoe picked up the bunk rail with one hand and twisted it to run lengthways with the wired wall of the cell. He gathered Minta to sit on his right and Ma on the left, their backs turned to the dozens of newspapermen who the jailer had let in. The newsboys called to them and muttered but never moved, standing close to the wire wall, listening and scribbling down every breath and gesture.
Roscoe placed a meaty paw around Minta and Ma and whispered, “My best friends in all the world. How was the trip?”
“There was a train wreck in Iowa,” Ma said. “They served minestrone soup and cheese biscuits. Twice.”
“We stayed an extra day in Chicago,” Minta said in a whisper. “I met people who knew the Rappe girl.”
“Later,” Roscoe said. “Have you a hotel?”
“Mr. Dominguez got us a room at the Palace.”
“You’ll love the Palace. Say, Ma, they have this wide-open space in the middle of the hotel called the Garden Court. The ceiling is made of glass, and it’s so big that sometimes birds live their whole lives inside, hopping back and forth on the fig trees.”