Table of Contents
ALSO BY ACE ATKINS
Wicked City
White Shadow
Dirty South
Dark End of the Street
Leavin Trunk Blues
Crossroad Blues
G . P. PUTNAMS SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright 2009 by Ace Atkins
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Atkins, Ace.
Devils garden / Ace Atkins. p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-02198-9
1. Arbuckle, Roscoe, 1887-1933Fiction. 2. Rappe, Virginia, 1895-1921Fiction. 3. Hammett, Dashiell, 1894-1961Fiction. 4. Motion picture actors and actressesFiction. 5. Private investigatorsFiction. 6. Trials (Murder)CaliforniaFiction. I. Title.
PS3551.T49D.54dc22
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To Angel
The American public is ardent in its hero worship and quite as ruthless in destroying its idols in any walk of life. It elevates a man more quickly than any nation in the world, and casts him down more quicklyquite often on surmise or a mere hunch.
ROSCOE ARBUCKLE, 1922
The Arbuckle case was the funniest case I ever worked on. In trying to convict him, everyone framed everybody else.
DASHIELL HAMMETT, New York Herald Tribune , 1933
July 31, 1917
Anaconda, Montana
H ed shadowed Frank Little for weeks, from El Paso to Butte to Bisbee, and for days now along the wooden sidewalks of the old mining town, built at
the base of bleak hills where dusty workers made their way up a crooked path to the foundry and deep down into the earth. Theyd started work on the furnace then, and half of the brick phallus rose from the city, towering above the buildings and hills, and would soon smelt the copper theyd sell for twenty-six cents a pound to make pots and newspaper presses.
The town smelled of acrid metal and burnt meat.
Anaconda was open all night. There were saloons and whorehouses and one good hotel and dozens of bad ones, rooming houses where Sam had taken a bed. In the off-hours, when Little would wobble up the staircase and get an hour or two of sleep, Sam would lay on the narrow bed and read the Butte newspapers about a possible war with Germany and a ragged copy of Dangerous Ground , a novel about a Pinkerton hed had since he was a boy.
It used to be an adventure. Now it was just a reminder.
Hed asked for the room two doors down from Little, where hed loosened a plank by the stairs so hed hear a squeak when the union leader went on his rounds. Sam had heard most of the speeches before, Little talking mainly about the country only having two classes, one exploiting the other, and how International Workers of the World wanted to make the fat cats pay for strong backs.
Little said hed once been arrested for reading the Declaration of Independence on a street corner.
He talked about that mining disaster in Butte in June and how the boys in Anaconda worked under even worse conditions. He called the furnace chimney another ivory tower where the wealthy burned up the common man.
The Pinkertons client was supposed to be kept under wraps, but Sam knew it was the Hearst outfit, which owned a piece of pretty much every mine in the country. He was told to tail Little, make notes on the speeches, type out a neat report, and send it back to Baltimore. It was a basic assignment that didnt need much thought.
The food wasnt bad. Now and then he could sneak a whiskey at the bars. And two nights ago hed found a fine, full redheaded whore named Sally who worked overtime off the clock.
Sam heard a creak, put down the copy of Dangerous Ground , noting the Pinkerton standing on the hill shining a beacon of light down on a hooved red devil leading a virtuous woman away, and he followed Little down the stairs through the narrow lobby and out onto Main Street. There were horses and wagons and an automobile or two, the gas lamps burning all the way past the Montana Hotel, down to City Hall and to the dead end of mountain and mine.
Little was up on some wooden crates, talking again, waving his hands wildly to men in overalls and women holding up hand-painted signs. The women looked determined; the men looked scared.
The light was just going down in Anaconda, the shadows on the hills showing purple and black with bright yellow patches. As Sam jotted down some of what Little said, really just repeating a speech hed heard two weeks ago in Bisbee about those miners shipped off to die in boxcars, he felt a soft hand on his shoulder and turned to see a man dressed in a three-piece black suit holding a gold timepiece in his hand.
Has a lot of wind, doesnt he, friend?
Sam nodded.
The man clicked the gold watch closed and removed a pouch of tobacco from his vest pocket.
Hes gonna keep going. How bout a drink?
Sam thanked him but said no.
Youre the Pinkerton, arent you? One of them anyway.
Sam turned back. The man grinned and spit brown tobacco juice on the ground. Lets have that drink.
They found a saloon called Kates just off Main Street filled with miners and whores and a back table where a sweaty Chinaman cooked T-bone steaks on an open grill. Sam Hammett, just an edge over twenty but nearly white-headed, leaned back in his seat and put a match to a Fatima cigarette.
The man removed the wad of tobacco from his cheek and tossed it below the table.
Men in the front room had gathered around a piano. A whore was singing Buffalo Gals, and the men yelled and thumped their boots on the wooden floors, and in all the action and laughter, Sam and the man were alone.
I wont waste time, he said. I have a deal to make.
Sam nodded.
Ill put up five hundred dollars over your Pinkerton pay to shut Littles mouth.
Sam burned down the cigarette, nearly coughing on the smoke. He watched the man but didnt say a word.
Thats not my job.
The money all comes from the same place.
Hearst? Sam said, smiling, confident he was right.
Im not at liberty.
But you are at liberty to hire me out like a goon.
Not a goon.
Go hire some palooka, Sam said. This isnt my line.
He stood. The man grabbed his arm, trying to stop him, and tried to crush great wide green bills into Sams hand. Im not talking about a beating.
