It’s a real shame. It really is. Gosh, I feel bad about what I said about poor Virginia ruining the party. She seemed like a nice lamb. Screwy. But a real lamb. Did you know she was the model for the sheet music to ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’?”
“Nope.”
“She sure was. I like it when you meet somebody who’s somebody.”
“Everybody is somebody.”
“Who are you kidding?” Alice Blake smiled. She had a dynamite smile. “You’re only somebody if you get your picture made and people pay a nickel to take a look. The rest of us are just deadbeats.”
“Where can I find Zey?”
Alice shrugged and smiled over at Sam.
He mouthed the word spectacular .
“Keep talkin’, Craig Kennedy.”
THE COPS LOCKED ROSCOE in a cell by himself, checking on him twice in the first four hours, and he’d made jokes with them, trying to make them feel at ease, but they’d only answer with curt replies about supper, toilet paper, or a tin cup for water and walk back down the hall. He’d laid back into his narrow bunk, the newsboys already noting his bunk was made for a man half his size, and he’d wriggle his toes in his silk socks and look at the ceiling. Roscoe knew what disappointed reporters most was the fact that he’d weighed in at only two hundred sixty on the Bertillon charts, not the three-fifty he’d told the press men in Hollywood. He loved making up stories for the publicity folks at Paramount about how he ate a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs every morning with a pot of coffee.
The cell was six by six. One of the walls decorated with some nice prison art, stick figures of Gloom and Joy shaking hands, Mary’s Little Lamb, and the simple inscription HELL above his head.
But it wasn’t so bad. Roscoe had fashioned a coat hanger from a strand of wire from the springs of his bunk. He’d hung the Norfolk jacket he’d had fitted at Hart Schaffner Marx neatly from a single hook and knocked off his shoes by the bed.
He had paper and a pouch of tobacco Dominguez had brought him along with a safety razor and some soap.
When he was a boy, this little place would’ve seemed like a palace. Sometimes he’d awake from a drunk or a dream and think he was still living in that sod house in Smith Center, Kansas, with dust storms and tornadoes and gully washers that would turn half the kitchen into a pile of mud. Other times he’d be in that dead, dazed time in Santa Clara after his mother had died and he was sent north to live with a father he hadn’t seen in years only to find his father had split town and started over again. He remembered the shame of sitting in the train station overnight and waiting for ole Will Arbuckle to show up and finally finding pity from the man who’d bought his family’s hotel and offered him a job.
When the old man finally came to claim him, those wild, drunken beatings had returned like some half-remembered dream, and so did the comments about his fattened face and blubbery belly, and, once in a bath-house, his father lay drunk in a tub and pointed out his son’s genitalia with the tip of a burning cigar, calling it a tiny worm. Sometimes Roscoe liked the beatings better than the insults. When the old man took to drink and held the power of the whip in his hand, at least the bastard would shut up.
You fashioned your own way, carried your own water.
Roscoe had always been good at that. When people stare and point and smile, you just do a little dance and make them smile more. It was a hell of a trick he learned.
He heard the guard walking the length of the hall and the splatter of a man pissing in the cell next to him, calling out to Fatty to do some tricks for him. Roscoe turned over and felt for the shaving mirror Dominguez had brought.
He stared at himself for a long time, looking at his pale blue eyes and the odd way God had left his face to resemble an infant’s. He smiled at himself and then stopped, and then just looked into his eyes.
He just wished he
“Nope.”
“She sure was. I like it when you meet somebody who’s somebody.”
“Everybody is somebody.”
“Who are you kidding?” Alice Blake smiled. She had a dynamite smile. “You’re only somebody if you get your picture made and people pay a nickel to take a look. The rest of us are just deadbeats.”
“Where can I find Zey?”
Alice shrugged and smiled over at Sam.
He mouthed the word spectacular .
“Keep talkin’, Craig Kennedy.”
THE COPS LOCKED ROSCOE in a cell by himself, checking on him twice in the first four hours, and he’d made jokes with them, trying to make them feel at ease, but they’d only answer with curt replies about supper, toilet paper, or a tin cup for water and walk back down the hall. He’d laid back into his narrow bunk, the newsboys already noting his bunk was made for a man half his size, and he’d wriggle his toes in his silk socks and look at the ceiling. Roscoe knew what disappointed reporters most was the fact that he’d weighed in at only two hundred sixty on the Bertillon charts, not the three-fifty he’d told the press men in Hollywood. He loved making up stories for the publicity folks at Paramount about how he ate a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs every morning with a pot of coffee.
The cell was six by six. One of the walls decorated with some nice prison art, stick figures of Gloom and Joy shaking hands, Mary’s Little Lamb, and the simple inscription HELL above his head.
But it wasn’t so bad. Roscoe had fashioned a coat hanger from a strand of wire from the springs of his bunk. He’d hung the Norfolk jacket he’d had fitted at Hart Schaffner Marx neatly from a single hook and knocked off his shoes by the bed.
He had paper and a pouch of tobacco Dominguez had brought him along with a safety razor and some soap.
When he was a boy, this little place would’ve seemed like a palace. Sometimes he’d awake from a drunk or a dream and think he was still living in that sod house in Smith Center, Kansas, with dust storms and tornadoes and gully washers that would turn half the kitchen into a pile of mud. Other times he’d be in that dead, dazed time in Santa Clara after his mother had died and he was sent north to live with a father he hadn’t seen in years only to find his father had split town and started over again. He remembered the shame of sitting in the train station overnight and waiting for ole Will Arbuckle to show up and finally finding pity from the man who’d bought his family’s hotel and offered him a job.
When the old man finally came to claim him, those wild, drunken beatings had returned like some half-remembered dream, and so did the comments about his fattened face and blubbery belly, and, once in a bath-house, his father lay drunk in a tub and pointed out his son’s genitalia with the tip of a burning cigar, calling it a tiny worm. Sometimes Roscoe liked the beatings better than the insults. When the old man took to drink and held the power of the whip in his hand, at least the bastard would shut up.
You fashioned your own way, carried your own water.
Roscoe had always been good at that. When people stare and point and smile, you just do a little dance and make them smile more. It was a hell of a trick he learned.
He heard the guard walking the length of the hall and the splatter of a man pissing in the cell next to him, calling out to Fatty to do some tricks for him. Roscoe turned over and felt for the shaving mirror Dominguez had brought.
He stared at himself for a long time, looking at his pale blue eyes and the odd way God had left his face to resemble an infant’s. He smiled at himself and then stopped, and then just looked into his eyes.
He just wished he
Similar Books
The Billionaire’s Secret Heart (A 'Scandals of the Bad Boy Billionaires' Romance)
Alexa Wilder, Ivy Layne
