“Like what?”

“The cameras, the newspaper boys, the boys on the corner hawking the afternoon edition with your name on it. You can’t let it go, even if it will lead you down the flowered path to prison.”

Maude’s indignant face and fetid manners dropped, much like the first layer of wax burning off a candle. She breathed it out. “You want me. You want us to make love like man and wife. You wish me to wear a bedpost between my legs?”

“You disgust me.”

Maude turned to her in the streaming light and dust, row upon row of boxes holding court cases and reports of criminal acts and faded mug shots. Maude watched her, feeling her breath coming in uneven gasps.

“I find your advances and your false manners repugnant,” Eisenhart said.

“You find the Vigilant women stupid? You think all it takes is a black dress and a large hat and some kind of silliness and you’re one of us? Do you have any idea where I’ve been all night? This silly group of women are the ones who tune the deaf ear of our chief of police. Three weeks ago, a fourteen-year-old girl, a child in ribbons, was brought to this city by an uncle to work at a hotel. I won’t say the name of the hotel because it is of no consequence. But at the height of her employment she was forced into relations with more than forty men in a single afternoon. When the girl complained to us at the Hall, her story was written off by a city detective who believed that only a young girl’s foolishness, naiveté, or lust could have produced it. Dr. Marina Bertola attended to this young girl’s wounds personally and, mark my words, Mrs. Delmont, they were horrifying and deep.”

Maude just stared at her. “What’s your point, sister?”

“I expect this conduct from men, but when a woman sells out her own kind it turns my stomach.”

Kate Eisenhart ripped the big black hat off Maude Delmont and tossed it down the stairwell, the hat pin wheeling on its brim until hitting a wall. The large policewoman picked up the heavy blue dress from her boots, well above the dirty stairs, and made her way back to the first floor, where Maude could hear a crowd beginning to gather.

THEY COULD HAVE BROUGHT the being to him in a box or cage, Hearst decided. The man was so scrawny and scared that he reminded Hearst of a feral animal presented for inspection before being locked in a zoo. He had the eyes of a monkey, nervous and quick, and Hearst half expected the man to leap onto his giant desk and steal an apple. Two hired men had stayed at the Hollywood cemetery all night to find the odd little fellow clutching the pink tiger lilies and Hearst could not wait to get the first interview with this man everyone wanted to know. He was the key to the mystery, the paradox solved-the man who worshipped at Virginia Rappe’s grave daily. He was real but created by Hearst, an international sensation storied in ink and then unmasked for all, and the reason he’d been whisked onto a train north to the city and brought right into the Examiner offices as if he were their own property.

“Your name is truly Crystal Rivers?” Hearst asked.

“Yes, sir,” the odd little man said. “I am.”

The top floor of the Examiner office was brisk with publicity men, and four projectionists, nine florists, and at least one organ player. There had been four, but he’d fired the others for not getting the feel of Enchantment right. Tonight was the premiere.

“And you were acquainted with Miss Rappe?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“How so?”

“She loves me.”

“You?” Hearst said, laughing. He nudged the ribs of the young reporter who was taking dictation, standing by his side at the great desk. The young reporter smiled back but continued to write. A florist held up a handful of roses and Hearst nodded. A publicity man placed a still shot of Marion Davies in his hand and Hearst shook him off. “She loved you? You have proof of this?”

The skinny little man with enormous ears and hands peered down at his long skinny fingers with those great bulging eyes and shook his head. “She smiled at me once.”

“And where was this?” Hearst asked. He opened a top-floor window to let in some air and it smelled of the sea and salt and of ragged adventure stories. He thought about what he would serve to Miss Davies after the premiere. He needed someone to call the Fairmont. Or had that been arranged? There was also the question of getting a massive chandelier to the Grenada Theatre before the doors opened. It had to be moved from the docks and inside with great care.

“In a movie house,” Crystal Rivers said.

“Did you speak to her?”

The silly little man shook his head. “How could I? She was up there.” He pointed to the open windows behind Hearst.

Hearst looked at him, puzzled, and walked behind his great desk, hands behind his back, looking down at the wharves, the ferry buildings, the ferries with the big, frothing wakes heading to and from Oakland. “I’m sorry?” Hearst asked, as if suddenly being reminded of the answer.

“And here,” the man said. He fumbled for a broken, sad little suitcase and got to the floor of Mr. Hearst’s office at the feet of the dozens waiting to be heard and opened it with great pride, pulling out clippings from newspapers and magazines and sheet music. “She’s here. All of her. She was mine.”

Hearst looked to the young reporter and the young reporter to him. Hearst paced the office. “The world wants to know why you did it.”

“I only wished to lay flowers on her grave.”

“You laid wreaths and baskets of pink tiger lilies for days,” Hearst said and chuckled. “When my newspapermen would come to you, you would run from them like some kind of criminal. You became somewhat of a figure, I guess. You know my papers have been writing about you for weeks now? The American people want to know who you are.”

Crystal Rivers, bony and thin in ill-fitting rags and a poor hat he wrung in his hands, turned his bulging eyes back to Hearst. “Am I going to jail?”

“I’m not the police, you silly little man.”

“They told me I had to come to the city.”

“They gave you money, too.”

Crystal Rivers started to gather his clippings together, working on his hands and knees, and placed them all back in neat piles of liturgy and closed the case with a tight click. Hearst spotted something on the floor, the young reporter noticing Hearst’s gaze and reached for a publicity photograph, handing it to his boss. A yellowed, frayed clipping of a girl that could be Virginia Rappe, perhaps not-too portly, too full in the mouth.

“I did nothing wrong,” Crystal Rivers said, wiping his face. “May I please go?”

Hearst nodded, silent and agreeing, meeting the man’s eyes. The man stared. Hearst blinked.

“Why won’t you all just leave her alone?” Crystal Rivers said, starting to sob. “Haven’t you all done enough? Leave Virginia alone!”

Hearst set the photo upon his desk, littered with maybe three hundred or so photographs of Miss Marion Davies.

“I only wanted to touch her,” Rivers said. “But when I touched the light, the light from the projector, I felt nothing at all, not even warmth. Why is that?”

Hearst looked back to the young reporter, a sly smile on the newsman’s face, a slack, humiliating smile for the poor little fellow. Hearst shot the reporter a hateful look and bounded from the room, slamming the door behind him so hard he wondered why the glass didn’t shatter.