Black Fire (15 page)

SAN FRANCISCO AFTER THE FIRE OF MAY 4, 1850

 Broderick’s Rogues

D
avey Scannell, a ferociously gluttonous “toss-pot of homeric capacity,” performed some of his most Olympian gastronomic feats at the Parker House next door to the United States Restaurant. Obviously, though, Broderick’s rogue reserved his greatest marathon eating sessions for the fashionable Occidental Hotel on Washington Street. The ground-floor restaurant faced Jones Alley and the Bank Exchange. Because Scannell’s meals were so voluminous and time-consuming, Proprietor Sam Hall permanently reserved a huge round table in the front window for him to better showcase the spectacle. Huge crowds gathered on the street to applaud him and his trusted lieutenants, all of enormous physique, who always accompanied him.

Foremost among Scannell’s gang of voracious eaters and fighters was Charles P. “Dutch Charley” Duane, a former gunfighter, bare-knuckle boxer, and wagonmaker who, after Ira Cole, became Broderick’s closest friend. Broderick and Duane first met on April 14 when he was at Long Wharf to greet an old friend, Chris Lilly, arriving on the steamer
Tennessee
. Eight years earlier Lilly, a fight promoter and notorious pugilist, had killed Tom McCoy during a 119-round bout. Broderick noticed the big blond, cold-eyed, twenty-three-year-old New Yorker standing at Lilly’s side. The man’s superb physique was fashionably clad. He kept his trousers half tucked into high wrinkled boots and cinched at the waist by a belt bristling with an assortment of knives and pistols. Dutch Charley claimed to be a passenger but was really a stowaway.

Charles P. “Dutch Charley” Duane

Next to arrive at Scannell’s table were the Parker House’s own Sam
Hall, a heavyset man with huge shoulders; then heavily mustached Judge John W. Dwinelle, who weighed more than 250 pounds. Wheezing, Dwinelle squeezed his enormous paunch between the table and chair. Attorney William Patterson, who weighed nearly as much, slid into his seat more gracefully. Also seated was John Felton, a great civil lawyer who suffered from gout and who had a lunch of three dozen oysters (in season) and a quart bottle of champagne messengered to him at the Bank Exchange each noon. Alexander Campbell, a rail-thin man who favored English fashions, rushed in and took the last chair. He ate as much as the others but never gained an ounce.

On holidays, when court was not in session, Scannell and his cronies assembled by 10:00
A.M.
and ate until early afternoon. If court happened to be in session, and Patterson or Felton had cases before Judge Dwinelle, they met at the Occidental around 4:00 or 5:00
P.M.
On those days, the moment Judge Dwinelle joined them they began a four- to five-hour feast that ended in a drinking marathon at 10:00
P.M.
In early morning Scannell and Hall had made the rounds of the Washington Street markets running up through Merchant Street and picked out the choicest cuts of beef from beer-fed steers. Toward the pier they ferreted out delicacies like cockscomb oysters (for six bits), sweetbreads, and very small shad (five dollars each) and had them trucked to the Occidental for preparation by their chefs. The menu listed every variety of local bounty. Scannell licked his lips; his finger moved slowly along the menu, caressing the items—ham, curried sausages, lamb and green peas, venison in wine sauce, cheese and prunes, and stewed kidney in champagne sauce. He came to Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, brandied peaches, rum omelets, and canned tins of exotic foods from back east. He made his choices. So did Dutch Charley. So did all the rest. They wouldn’t necessarily finish it all, but it was great sport between fires because then they had all the time in the world.

That afternoon a gang of torch boys pressed their noses against the front window to watch. For the first hour, Scannell, napkin tucked under his chin, ate fowl—a partridge, a little quail, squab, wild goose, some snipe, a little curlew, and plover. His favorite was canvasback duck (fifty cents a brace). He was very particular about its preparation. The duck must be roasted exactly thirteen minutes and served underdone with blood oozing. He was as particular about his special punch, a conglomeration of sparkling burgundy, champagne, white and red wines in equal parts, and a quart of the finest cognac. Waiters with spotless
white napkins over each arm hefted armloads of silver trays and covered dishes from the kitchen and ferried away dirty plates and glasses. Heated metal plates held quarter-inch-thick steaks; elaborate tankards contained beer and wine. Fruit and roasted nuts—filberts, chestnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, and black walnuts from Mount Tamalpais—showered onto the table. They exchanged fire stories as they ate. “Remember when Mrs. Wallace’s kitchen stove set fire to the wall behind? She grabbed up her child and also snatched up a leg of lamb. She ran out of the house with the baby held by one leg and the leg of lamb cradled in her arm.” The second hour Scannell and his men reserved for mutton. The masticating and grinding of jaws went on—faces flushed, beads of sweat dotting their foreheads, cheeks as rosy as uncooked sirloin. Their features held benign expressions, like cows, though they bickered throughout the courses. The third hour was crowded with dozens of oysters, smoked eels, and Point Reyes shellfish. Hall swayed in his seat. Patterson gripped the arms of his chair. The chewing and popping of corks was audible through the glass window. Dutch Charley’s face grew redder. Perspiration clung to his upper lip. Even his gunsight eyes had lost their lethal coldness, but when he gazed at the muddy street outside, they flamed to malevolence again. He wiped his lips with the side of his hand, pushed back his chair, and heaved himself up. He had recognized a man tying up his horse outside who had turned in a false alarm. Charley shoved through the crowd on the street and advanced on the “false alarmer.” Catching sight of a bull-like juggernaut rolling his way, the man tried to remount his horse, but Dutch Charley grasped his arm, broke it like a twig, shot a booted foot into his ribs, and ground his face into the mud. Spectators stood fixed in horror as Dutch Charley reentered the Occidental, coolly sat back down, and began eating with increased vigor. He had worked up an appetite.

A fourth hour saw the appearance of pork dishes—loin chops, curried sausages, more cured meats, and country-style ribs. Dutch Charley’s cheeks were distended. The eating had slowed considerably. Some things he ate only a bite or two. The conversation had grown torpid. Heavy breathing filled in the gaps. No one was bickering now. During the fifth hour the crowd outside pressed against the steamy glass in expectation. The last of the dishes had gone, all but Scannell and Dutch Charley’s plates. Scannell ate on, the only man who had not unbuttoned his vest or loosened his belt. Could he stuff much more into his belly than Duane without bursting? He could. When Scannell finished, the
waiters were lighting the lanterns against the evening. Over the years he was never known to have faltered in any of the marathon sessions that took up so many hours of his day. Only the clang of a fire alarm could dislodge him. Then he kicked over his chair and hurried through the streets to his firehouse. Dutch Charley, having gotten his second wind, was eating again. Scannell found him the most interesting of Broderick’s rogues. He had greatness inside him—if he could stay out of prison.

Born in Tipperary, Ireland, Dutch Charley as a boy had been called German Charley until he bested a Dutch boy in a fisticuffs match. The ladies had another nickname for him: “Handsome Charley.” He captivated women of every age and station. The press labeled him and the rest of Broderick’s rogues hired bullies, but Broderick’s “forty-niners” (forty-nine shoulder strikers) were fanatically devoted to him and, according to Dutch Charley, “more like lovers than friends.”

The waiting period between the great fires affected the most violent of Broderick’s rogues most violently, especially the diminutive gunfighter Billy Mulligan, another New York crony of Broderick’s. Lightning tempered, he was a fierce fighter, fiercer when drunk, and he was almost always drunk and spoiling for a showdown. When there was none, he seemed about to boil over. Troublesome, bandy-legged Mulligan was the quintessential gunfighter. His hands were scarred from fighting fire and his knuckles walnut size from fighting men. Yet those tortured, muscular hands could draw and fire a revolver with remarkable speed and deadly accuracy to protect the political interests and person of Broderick. Mulligan’s voice was a deadly whisper, razor edged as wind hissing through an Iowa four-pointed barbed-steel fence. Like fast guns Ty Hardin and Billy the Kid, his deep-set eyes were a neutral, meditative gray. Slender and small, he weighed scarcely more than his huge twin guns. He claimed to weigh 140 pounds and stand five and a half feet tall. Broderick had never known him to weigh more than 120 or stand any higher than five feet. His stovepipe hat added to his stature, and for that reason and because of his sparse hair, he was never without it. Trim, of good form, wiry and sinewy, quick as a cat in his movements, Mulligan had the pluck of a bull terrier and boundless energy. He staged prizefights, gambled, claim-jumped in Tuolumne County, got into gun battles, and once sold the office of mayor for $28,000. He had boxed and won his share of barroom brawls, but was more famous for the dozens of notches on his pistol grip.

Though Irish born, like most of Broderick’s men, Mulligan spent his youth in New York as an apprentice barrel maker, ward heeler, and gunman. When he was jailed in 1846, Warden Sutton of the Tombs, practically spitting in his fury and disgust, categorized Mulligan as “a professional blackleg” and “as desperate a character as could be found among the hoods of New York.” The
New York Times
called Billy “the wild, tremendous, roaring, tearing, fighting Mulligan.” He escaped to New Orleans, enlisted in the Louisiana Mounted Volunteers, and saw action in the Mexican War, where he earned the title of colonel for bravery. He arrived in San Francisco in 1848 and quickly became known as “a philosophic villain.” On February 9, he had gotten into a shoot-out at a dance with young Billy Anderson. Both gunhawks unleashed a fusillade of eighteen slugs. The first dozen killed an old man in the street. The last six wounded a Mexican girl in the next room and shattered Anderson’s knee. The seemingly minor injury turned out to be a fatal wound. Anderson died three weeks later. The first time an
Alta
reporter laid eyes on Mulligan was at the Bella Union when Billy confronted a much taller man, Bingham the actor, and said, “Stand straight up and take it, sir, or blast your soul to blazes I’ll make a hole through you.” Bingham took it. Like everyone else, he feared Mulligan too much to disobey him.

When Mulligan was wounded in the shoulder at Coyote Hill while dueling gunfighter Jimmy Douglass, he hobbled to the bar and raised his glass to the man who had just plugged him with a Colt Pocket Navy five-shooter at twelve paces. He called it a scratch shot. Mulligan had bet several adobes, fifty-dollar gold pieces, that neither of them would be hit, and he lost them. Douglass gave a blowout and the two enemies shook hands and toasted each other. “You mustn’t think Jimmy can’t shoot good because he shot so poor today,” he said. “We’d both like to have done better, but somehow we couldn’t, I’m sorry to say. We’ll do better some other time, when we’re in a better fix. Don’t you think we will, Jimmy?” “We will that, Billy!” Jimmy replied and raised his glass.

Billy Mulligan was fiercely protective of Broderick. One Independence Day, they were at the Union Hotel bar celebrating when a local bully, Big Jim Campbell, began insulting Broderick. Mulligan, though elegantly attired for a fireman’s ball, grasped Campbell’s head with both hands, head-butted him into near unconsciousness, downed his drink and, covered in blood, returned home to fetch a fresh white shirt.

If Mulligan always was on edge, Dutch Charley was edgier. The
blinding rages that came upon him frequently caused him to be jailed. Each time his friend Broderick used his political connections as a new state senator to bail him out. He needed such a tough battler. Though Dutch Charley had Whig tendencies, he had immediately attached himself to Broderick’s Democratic political camp as a shoulder striker. Always up for a little “fist duty,” he could deliver a thousand votes any election day by having Broderick’s adherents vote three times in different sections of the town, a feat accomplished by herding voters from precinct to precinct and chasing away the opposition. He got into his most serious trouble when he attended a ball at the French Theater with a few members of the Lafayette Volunteer Company. He entered without a ticket, battering the attendant who stopped him. During the evening Amedee Fayolle, an actor and manager of the troupe, nudged Dutch Charley while he was dancing. When he tried to apologize, Dutch Charley went for him, but the Lafayette volunteers restrained him. At the end of the night Fayolle approached Dutch Charley again, but because he did not speak English only gestured instead. Dutch Charley took it the wrong way, jabbed him twice, knocked down his two friends when they intervened, and turned back to Fayolle to stomp his head. As Fayolle crawled to the door, he reached out for the knob. “The sonavbitch’s got a pistol!” Dutch Charley cried and shot him in the back. The bullet lodged in the actor’s abdomen and they rushed him to the French Hospital.