California Gold (74 page)

“In we go,” he said with a smirk that hid his state of nerves.

The little bell rang over the door. Margaret broke off her conversation with guests at a rear table and glided to the front, menus in hand. Only three tables were filled on this rather foul night; she was happy to see more customers, and showed it with her brilliant smile.

“Gentlemen, good evening. Table for two?”

The first man snatched off his derby. He was burly, with the sort of round face she associated with butchers or brewers. His dark eyes shone as brightly as his waxed mustache.

“We can take care of our business right here, Miss Emerson.”

Margaret’s palm prickled. The second man kept glancing at the front door. Fearful of interruption?

“You have the advantage of me, gentlemen. Would you be kind enough to tell me your names?”

The mustached man stepped close enough to brush the arm of her white shirtwaist. The touch felt unclean somehow, though the man’s breath was heavily sweet from gin.

“Let’s just say we represent the police commission.”

Her heart raced. A waiter came from the kitchen with two dinners on a tray. Though she tried to warn him with her eyes, he devoted himself to his customers, bowing and smiling as he served the plates.

“May I see some credentials?”

“That isn’t necessary,” said the mustached man. “We want to inspect your liquor permit.”

“You know I don’t have one that’s current. I told the last boodler who came in here that I’m not paying five hundred or a thousand dollars for a license.”

“You can’t operate without one.”

“You mean I can’t operate without kicking into a slush fund for Ruef. I work too hard for my money to throw it away on bribes.”

“Bribe is a nasty word.” He grabbed her wrist. “You used a lot of nasty words in that letter in the paper.”

She wrenched away, and a couple seated nearby glanced up from their plates with worried looks. Softly, Margaret said, “Get out of my restaurant.”

“You mean your whorehouse? You better pay what’s asked, Miss Emerson, and you damn well better stop signing your name to letters full of lies.”

Margaret felt a strange terrified flutter in her throat. The byplay about the license was a sham. These two had come for another purpose, and nothing she said or did would divert them. Panicky, she called to the waiter, now hurrying to the kitchen.

“Red, please step in the back and telephone—”

She stopped.
Telephone the police?
They’d never respond. Not in time. “No, never mind.” The waiter hesitated, puzzled.

“I’m sorry about this, Miss Emerson; it’s just orders,” the mustached man said with a smarmy piety. He waved; she noticed for the first time that he wore tight gray leather gloves. “Bruno, go to work.”

The other man pulled his right hand-from his overcoat, and Margaret saw a flash of blue gun metal. “Be careful, everyone,” she cried to the patrons.

The first man caught her arm and whipped it like a rope, throwing her into the wall. Josephine’s framed portrait fell off and the glass broke. Then he pounded a fist in the small of her back, and Margaret dropped to her knees, gasping.

Bruno leveled his blue revolver. The waiter dropped his tray with an anvil clang while diners flung themselves from chairs, shouting and exclaiming. Holding his pistol in both hands, Bruno began to shoot out the lights over the tables.

Margaret’s cheek scraped the wall, her head spinning. The pain from the blow to her back was brutal. She heard the little bell ring, then the mustached man’s shout, “Give me that ax and get to work next door.”

Next door…?

Margaret bit her lip and pushed away from the wall, then fell back again dizzily. Bruno kept shooting. Glass showered the tables and the diners trying to crouch underneath. Someone passed a fire ax through the front door. The mustached man hacked the door until it splintered. Then, with a looping blow, he struck Napoleon from his pedestal, bursting the bust into hundreds of small pieces.

The waiter had darted into the kitchen, leaving the door ajar. There was plenty of light for the two men to do their work. Bruno reloaded and shot at the ceiling. A girl upstairs screamed. The mustached man attacked empty tables, shattering china and goblets and tabletops with the fire ax.

Next door
, Margaret’s mind cried out. She crawled toward the door, struggled to her feet, and pulled it open. The tiny bell rang again. Cold foggy air swept over her.

“The bitch ran out,” Bruno shouted.

Panting, slipping, railing, and lurching up again, she managed to reach the little covered porch outside her flat. Electric light streamed through the open door. She heard them breaking things inside.

Earlier, anticipating a cozy end to the evening, Margaret had lit a small fire in her hearth, then carefully placed a screen in front of it. There were two other men in her flat, men wearing identical overcoats and derbies. They had flung the screen aside and one of them had a baseball bat.

She ran into the parlor just as he swung the bat and demolished her gold-plated mantel clock. Springs uncoiled with pinging sounds, parts flying everywhere.

“You bastard, leave my things alone.” With both hands she grabbed the man’s collar. He struck backward with the bat, hard. She clutched her knee through her skirt and fell in a chair, hair undone, tears of fury streaming from her eyes.

She was most conscious of the noise and their huge nightmare shadows. In the dining room, the second man overturned the table and then levered a leg back and forth until it loosened. He snapped it off, took a stance, made sure she saw, and used the leg to hit the fake Tiffany shade.

The electric bulbs survived the blow but pieces of colored glass fell, flicking specks of colored light across the walls. Twisted strands of lead hung from the fixture. A few more pieces of glass dropped,
plink, plunk.

Looking for something else to destroy, the man reached under the table and pulled out the fine lace cloth, then ripped it in half like a rag.

Margaret’s mind sank into incoherence. She struggled from the chair, hand raised. “Please, don’t damage that, it was my mother’s, I can sew it back together, just please don’t—”

She sensed, heard, movement to her left. The man at the mantel swung the bat, the thick end smashing into her stomach. There was no corset beneath her skirt to protect her, and the pain was sudden, huge, felling. She flailed backward against her breakfront, her wildly swinging arms shattering the glass, spilling china. Glass cut her wrists as she went down again and blood ran over the buttoned white cuffs of her shirtwaist.

“Something special?” said the man in the dining room. He came into the parlor with the torn tablecloth in his fist. “Not no more.”

He tossed it in the fireplace. Margaret screamed.

They finished quickly. Everything important or valuable in the parlor and dining room was ruined. She heard shoes scrape on the walk as they hurried away, then a chugging of autos.

In the hearth, the tablecloth caught fire.

On hands and knees, she crawled toward it. Glass littered the carpet. She was dizzy, disheveled, close to fainting, but kept crawling. She bit down on her lip and kept crawling, heedless of gashing her palms on glass.

It seemed a mile to the hearth. Glass tore her shirt and lacerated her knees. She left a bloody trail on the carpet, but at last she felt heat on her face. Closing her eyes, she wept against the coming pain, then plunged her hands into the grate, stifling a cry. She pulled out the burning tablecloth, smothered it against her filthy bloody shirtwaist, and fell on it to put out the flames.

She was found that way, unconscious.

At the hospital they treated and bandaged her. She had a broken kneecap. A great livid bruise marked her flat belly. The two physicians on call agreed that there might be serious internal injuries, but they couldn’t tell as yet.

When she could speak, she asked for Mack. He rushed to her bedside and stayed twelve hours, leaving only to use the washroom or telephone the police department.

He telephoned nine times. Of course the detectives couldn’t locate or even identify the perpetrators.

On a Saturday in March 1905,
California Chance
steamed out through Golden Gate. Following the owner’s instructions, Captain Norheim set a course for ten miles offshore, and there cruised in a long continuous oval.

Under a white awning on the stem deck—an awning marked with the
JMC
cartouche—Mack’s three Chinese stewards set out a buffet luncheon of oysters, paté, and other delicacies. It was a bright, invigorating day, a splendid day to cruise the ocean. None of the guests really cared.

Mack had invited three: Fremont Older, the former mayor Jim Phelan, and Rudolph Spreckels, four years younger than Mack himself. Rudolph was a tall, sturdy chap with a high forehead, the handsomest of the brothers. And he knew he was handsome; he bore himself with the unconscious arrogance of a prince, lounging in his canvas chair with his white flannel trouser legs crossed. Mack socialized with Rudolph but didn’t especially care for him. He did respect Rudolph’s wealth and his family name—and he could overlook almost any character flaw if the bearer hated the Ruef machine sufficiently.

“They wrecked everything,” Mack said when the discussion began after lunch.
California Chance
left only a slight purling wake in the smooth sea. Shadows of gulls chased back and forth on the awning.

Older chewed his cigar. “I know that. I printed the story.”

“You didn’t print anything about her mother’s tablecloth. Torn, burned—ruined.”

“I’d say she was lucky to escape with her life and minor injuries,” Rudolph remarked.

“Minor injuries?” Mack lit a cigar and snapped the match overside. “People are injured in different ways, Rudy. That piece of Irish lace meant more to Margaret than her own life nearly. I can help her rebuild her place; I will. But money won’t restore that heirloom. Money won’t erase her memories of what they did to her. We sit here fuming and arguing and meantime the machine hooligans do anything they damn please. They extort money from businessmen. They attack a decent woman—”

“Oh come, Mack,” Rudolph Spreckels said. “A lot of people would question your use of the word
decent.
”

“By God she is a decent person. They brutalized her. Don’t be a fucking hypocrite. Have you never visited a prostitute?”

Rudolph turned away to study the sea.

“Now, now,” Jim Phelan said. “We’re not adversaries, we’re in agreement. Seeking remedies here, in privacy.”

“That’s right—I’m sorry,” Mack said.

“Yes,” Rudolph muttered.

“The issue is, how do we get rid of this crowd?” Mack said. “There’s hardly a thing they haven’t touched or corrupted. The water situation, business permits—now the trolley mess—”

“It’s a mess, all right,” Rudolph said. “I’m told the Boss informed United Railroads that the regular monthly retainer of a thousand dollars was not enough to guarantee a favorable decision on the overhead lines. Pat Calhoun has to come up with a bonus.”

Older bit on his cigar. “How much?”

“A quarter of a million. Cash.”

“Christ,” Phelan said. He stood up and gripped the stern rail. “Never had that sort of rot when I was mayor. I knew of small bribes, certainly. Ten dollars here and there under the table. But not this kind of cancer.”

Older said, “I remind you, gentlemen: If you want to remove a cancer, you must handle sharp knives.”

There was silence. The steam yacht slipped on through the water, trailing a thin plume from her big stack. The stewards refilled glasses, as soundless in their slippers as the gull shadows on the awning.

Mack leaned forward, hands spread. He’d let his beard grow again, though he kept it trimmed close. It was as white as his hair, which to his dismay was now starting to thin. “We’ve talked and talked about a reform movement. Talk must get it started, but we’re long past that stage.”

“At what stage are we, men?” Rudolph asked.

“We need a committed reform
organization.
”

“We have the core of that here,” Older said.

“Yes,” Mack said. “So we have to address this question. Suppose we want to start gathering evidence on a serious and methodical basis. How do we do it? I’m not a professional detective and neither are any of you. We need one or two investigators who know what they’re doing, and can’t be bought. We need enough money to hire men like that.”

He leaned back and sipped from his glass of steam beer. “We need a war chest.”

Rudolph Spreckels studied Mack a moment, then languidly beckoned a steward to refill his glass. “I’ll personally pledge two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Jim Phelan almost dropped an oyster over the side while Older clapped Rudolph on the back boisterously.

Then Mack spoke. “I’ll go in for the same amount.”

They were excited for just about a minute. Then Older finished his cigar and threw it in the ocean with a scowl. “All right, we’ve got money. With it we can probably hire investigators who can’t be bribed. But we also need honest prosecutors, and judges. You won’t get those in San Francisco unless you bring in the federal government.”

“Then that’s what we have to do,” Mack said.

In the evening,
California Chance
bore east again toward the blue chalk smudge of the coast. The gentlemen had donned yacht caps provided by their host. All of them had drunk their share of champagne and wine, beer, or whiskey, but they were still relatively coherent about their purpose.

“I know one man we might enlist,” Older said as they stood together companionably in the dusk. Even Rudolph’s cloak of arrogant charm seemed happily misplaced. “Fran Heney. Francis Joseph. Born right south of the Slot. Hastings law degree. He’s in Washington as assistant attorney general and special federal prosecutor. He’s only about this tall, and he parts his hair in the middle. He looks dull and harmless, but he bites in and hangs on and he gets convictions.”

“I know him well,” Jim Phelan said. “An incorruptible man.”

“Then he must have left town long ago,” Rudolph said.