“It’s scary,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“The city.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“It killed Miss Virginia.”

“I don’t know what happened to Virginia,” Sam said. “But it wasn’t the city.”

“That poor girl,” Irene said, shaking her head. “And with child, too.”

Sam turned his head, cigarette hanging loose from his lower lip. “Come again?”

“Of course you know she was pregnant with Mr. Lehrman’s baby?”

24

The rains came that Monday, and Roscoe felt strangely comfortable inside the Hall of Justice, listening to the tapping on glass, water running down the high windows, and mainly just falling into the routine of sitting behind the desk, a water pitcher in front of McNab, Minta and Ma sitting behind them. They’d eat lunch together at good restaurants during the breaks, and sometimes Minta would fall asleep during the medical testimony because pretty much all of it was the same only repeated by different doctors who saw Virginia before she died. But not a bit of it made Roscoe tired-they were off, the trial had started, and the twelve folks, five women and seven men, sitting up there in the box, spectators taking notes on the little details that Roscoe was beginning to know by heart. He just sat there and listened, McNab having told him earlier to stop playing with those goddamn elastics and his hat. He said juries didn’t like men on trial who didn’t pay attention, it showed they didn’t give a shit.

The room changed a great deal after lunch, Roscoe knowing the feel and energy of a room better than anyone. This room was electric. The word was that the showgirls were going to take the stand, and you could hear the whispers about Alice and Zey throughout the hall and along the corridors and down the steps and even out onto Portsmouth Square.

Zey was first, the girl all smiles as she was led into the courtroom, dressed in blue broadcloth with a fur hat, black stockings, and silk ballerina shoes. She smiled at the judge. She smiled at the jury. She smiled at U’Ren and Brady but didn’t look once at Roscoe. U’ren led her through it, just as he had at the coroner’s inquest and police court, and she sat there with an idiot grin on that doughy face, nodding and repeating things, finely trained and parroted, and looking to Roscoe like a thousand girls who’d read lines. Roscoe closed his eyes and leaned into the desk, rubbing his forehead.

“And what did Miss Rappe say?” U’Ren asked.

“She said, ‘He hurt me. He hurt me. I’m dying.’ ”

Roscoe opened his eyes. He turned to McNab. McNab looked back to the girl, thumping a pencil on the desk, thinking, changing strategy, restless energy ready to pounce on her. The girl continued on about how Virginia had entered room 1219 first and then moments later Roscoe walked in behind her, and she wasn’t sure of the time but at some point later Mrs. Delmont-that goddamn woman-started banging on the door with her fist and the heel of a shoe. That’s when they found the girl writhing in pain and tearing her clothes off.

U’Ren cleaned his glasses, placed them back on his feral little face, mouth puckered like he’d sucked a lemon, and looked as if he was inspecting his creation for anything he might have missed. But he was finished with her and McNab was on his feet, brushing by U’Ren, nudging the man’s shoulder ever so lightly, but seeming to do it all in a rush by accident. He began to speak almost immediately, the words in his throat for the last twenty minutes. “The girl said, ‘He hurt me. He hurt me’?”

“That’s right,” Zey said, kind of rolling her eyes like McNab had wax in his ears or was too old to remember.

“She said it twice?”

“Yeah.”

“And then said, ‘I’m dying’?”

“That’s what I said,” Zey said, looking over at Brady and U’Ren, and McNab caught her eye and moved his bulky bearlike body right in her line of vision. She narrowed her eyes at him like What’s the big idea?

“Do you recall making the statement earlier that the girl had said, ‘He killed me. Arbuckle killed me’?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I know what I heard,” she said. She rolled her eyes again, and Roscoe noted she was pretty damn good at it. Maybe even practiced it in the mirror, copying Mabel Normand.

“Your Honor, we’d like to read her earlier testimony into the record,” McNab said. He read every word from her sworn statement but didn’t stop there. With a hell of a flourish, the gruff old man read her testimony into the record and did his best to sound gay and flighty, with every other sentence he read ending with “I sez I don’t remember nothin’. It’s all mixed up, I tell you.” McNab ended with U’Ren asking the girl where she lived and the girl saying, “I don’t want to tell you because I don’t want my mother drawn into this.”

Zey Prevon-Prevost stifled a giggle. Some on the court laughed. Roscoe noticed no one on the jury even cracked a smile.

“Did you sign your name to this statement?” McNab asked.

“Yes.”

“Were you forced?”

The girl tried to look around McNab to the prosecution table, without any luck. McNab let the question hang there, not saying a word, letting the big damn silence of the wood-paneled room suck it from her.

“No.”

“Where have you been for the last month?”

“Calistoga.”

“By yourself?”

“With Alice.”

“Alice Blake?”

“Yes.”

“And did you two decide on this trip yourselves?”

“I don’t know,” Zey said. “I was just sent there.”

“By who?”

“Mr. Brady.”

“Did you have a nice time?”

“I guess.”

“I hear the treatments are quite relaxing,” McNab said. “Especially when it’s on the taxpayer tab.”

U’Ren and Brady stood in unison, Louderback shot down a stare from the bench. McNab just rubbed his craggy face and stretched his neck, and he continued on while Zey looked as if she was sitting on a griddle, turning and readjusting, crossing her leg and showing her black stockings and silk ballerina shoes, her smile plastic.

“Did Mr. U’Ren tell you that you had to sign that statement?”

Zey shook her head.

“Please state your answer.”

“No, sir.”

“But now you’re saying the statement is incorrect.”

Zey’s mouth opened, her pudgy little face dropped, and she put her hands to her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Please answer,” Judge Louderback said.

“It’s just all mixed up,” Zey said. “All of it is all mixed up.”

“Then,” McNab said, pointing to her and then turning to the jury, Roscoe watching him work like a goddamn acrobat, even turning back to Minta and Ma with a look on his face like Look at that bastard go, and Minta winking back at him. “You could have mistaken Miss Rappe’s statement that day?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hadn’t Miss Rappe just been immersed into a cold bath by you and Miss Blake and a Mr. Fishback?”

“Yes,” Zey said, shaking her head, trying to find his meaning.

“Mr. Fishback had hold of her arms?”

“Yes.”

“And even the contact of her clothes hurt her, isn’t that true?”

“Yes.”

“So when Miss Rappe said ‘he,’ she could’ve meant that it was Mr. Fishback and not Mr. Arbuckle that hurt her?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if she meant Mr. Fishback, do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you don’t know if she meant Mr. Arbuckle, do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your Honor, I would ask you to direct the witness to answer my question and remind her that she is under oath and failing to do so amounts to perjury. Punishable by imprisonment.”

Zey smiled and shrugged.

“Objection,” U’Ren said, shouting and jumping up.

“Objection to the crime of perjury?” McNab asked, smiling a bit.

“Sit down, Mr. U’Ren,” Louderback said, before leaning toward Zey.

“Please answer the question yes or no, Miss Prevon.”