California Gold (89 page)

As the gavel fell and people left their seats, Mack heard snoring. Hellman’s round dimpled chin rested on his shirt front. His yellow-and-brown plaid suit, an offense to taste, was spotted with red clam sauce from their noon meal. Better take him home soon, Mack thought as he stood up.

A small man bumped him. Mack had seen him before but couldn’t recall where. The man was visibly agitated and pushed through the crowd toward the attorneys’ tables.

A hubbub of conversation filled the court. Anxious for some air, Mack shoved his way toward doors at the back. Suddenly his neck prickled. He remembered that the man who’d bumped him had a bad eye. A wall eye—

“What’s he doing? What is that man doing? Oh my God, he’s got a pistol!”

The woman’s voice escalated to a shriek. Mack spun around with a feeling of dread. It had all been there on the face of the wall-eyed man. Hatred—and the intent. He just hadn’t paid attention.

More outcries. Then a shot.

Mack jumped up on a chair. Forever afterward, he could recall the scene exactly. Francis Heney fallen facedown on the prosecution table, blood running from a wound in front of his right ear. The juror in his dirty overcoat standing with the small blue pistol smoking in his hand.

In the second row, Hellman woke up and wobbled to his feet. Except for the screaming woman, the courtroom was dead silent. Then everyone yelled at once.

A deputy sheriff and Foley, Heney’s bodyguard, rushed Morris Haas, and Haas retreated. Excited and confused, Hellman stumbled into the aisle four feet behind Haas.

It was Hellman’s style to bellow when he didn’t understand something. He bellowed now, at Haas.

“What’s going on, mister? What the hell’s that gun for?”

“Stay away from me,” Haas cried, though Hellman wasn’t moving, and then fired two more shots. Huge clam-sauce splotches appeared on Hellman’s gaudy jacket, and he fell forward in the aisle.

“Swampy,” Mack shouted, jumping down. He flung people out of his way while the deputy snatched the pistol and beat Haas to the floor.

“How is he?” Bill Burns said on the telephone the next night around eleven o’clock.

“Bad,” Mack said.

“In the hospital?”

“No. He wanted his own bed. I’ve been sitting with him all evening. How’s Heney?”

“Damnedest thing. He’s going to live. The docs think he had his mouth open, maybe laughing, when the bullet hit. The slug went into the jaw muscle under his left ear. Another quarter-inch and he’d be gone. He’ll be down a long while—that’s a setback—but he’ll recover, and they don’t think he’ll lose his voice.”

“Well, good,” Mack said in a tired way.

“Actually, I called with news about Haas. He’s dead.”

“How?”

“Suicide.”

“In jail?”

“Right. They found a derringer in his hand. He did it lying on his cot, under a blanket. That gun wasn’t on him when they locked him up, that’s certain. Someone smuggled it in.”

A chilly shiver worked down Mack’s back. “Bill, I don’t like to see conspiracies all over the place. But this makes me wonder. Haas was clearly a nerve case. Maybe someone banked on that.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Someone who set him up to kill Heney.”

“You think he was set up?”

“It’s a possibility. They used dynamite, why not an assassin? Maybe they figured Haas was crazy enough to do them a favor afterward. I mean do away with himself, out of fear or despondency. Provided he had a gun.”

After a silence Burns said, “Interesting theory. We’ll never know, will we?”

He broke the connection.

H
EADLIGHTS PIERCED THE DARK
of Lombard Street. The long gleaming Pope-Toledo parked and the chauffeur opened the passenger door. At the front window, drawn by the sound of the motor, Mack watched Carla stumble out.

Her evening wrap brushed the dusty sidewalk. It was mauve velvet, ornamented with a black velvet collar and an excess of passementerie—golden gimps, cords, and tassels.

He opened the door. He was in shirtsleeves, old trousers, and suspenders. His face was grim. “About time. I’ve left messages at your house in Burlingame for three days.”

Carla regarded him with bleary nervousness. How round, white, and matronly her face had become. It was caked with powder and rouge tonight, and smears of lash blacking stained the hollows under her eyes.

“Walter’s in Washington. I was in Carmel. The servants didn’t know where to reach me.”

Shutting the door behind her; he detected a stronger, sweeter odor beneath her perfume.

She dropped her wrap on the parlor rug. She’d come from a party, and was in a gold satin evening gown. Its bertha of black lace was sheer enough to show her ballooning cleavage. She wore a wide dog-collar choker, solid with diamonds all the way around that splashed the walls and ceiling with sparkling reflections of the dim electric lights. “Don’t you read the papers, Carla?”

“Not in Carmel. There was a weekend party—”

“Where did they hold it, the bottom of a barrel of gin?”

She raised a fist. “You bastard. You’re so unkind.”

He pushed her hand aside. “I’m feeling unkind. They took out one bullet but they can’t reach the other. He’s dying. You should have been here sooner.”

They walked the long hall. It was black as a mine shaft, with only a slim band of light showing under the door at the end. Mack opened it a few inches, and Carla clutched him. “Oh my God.”

The electric lights were off in Hellman’s bedroom. But there was a glow, the glow of an altar. On tables and taborets crowded on both sides of the headboard, votive candles burned—perhaps a hundred, flickering and smoking in small red and blue glasses.

Hellman lay with his eyes shut, his cheek resting on the round bolster. He wore a nightshirt of gray flannel and his hands clasped a rough wood crucifix.

A broad-shouldered nurse sat on a chair near the bed.

Mack said, “He asked for the candles and the cross the first time he regained consciousness. I never knew he was Catholic.”

“Papa was born Catholic. He was unruly growing up, and he said the German nuns beat him unmercifully for it. He abandoned the church when he was sixteen. He always told people we were Protestants.”

Mack opened the door fully. Carla searched his face. No sympathy there. She drew a breath and stepped inside. Her ankle wobbled, her foot coming out of her beaded slipper. Mack jumped and saved her from a fall. “For God’s sake, stand up.”

The nurse gave them an angry look. The noise roused Hellman. “Who is it?” His eyes opened. Filmy eyes, seeing little but moving shadows at first. Then they fixed on the shimmer of gold at the bedside. “Carla? My baby. Carla.”

Mack shut the door and leaned against it. The room needed airing. There were smells of stale bandages and the chamber pot. Smells of death.

“Papa.” Carla uttered it in a broken voice, dropping to her knees at the bedside and putting her face down on the blanket. Her shoulders heaved. “Papa. Oh, Papa.”

Hellman’s nose looked like a radish. Someone—the nurse?—had center-parted and combed his thin white hair. He looked waxy and neat as a corpse just attended by morticians. His hand groped and found his daughter’s head, then stroked the spun-gold hair.

“My little Carla. God above. You smell like a saloon.” He said it lovingly, stroking.

“You’ll be all right, Papa.” She sounded like a child. “We’ll get you the best care we can.”

“I got the best. The finest doctors in—” A wheezy cough shook him. “In California.” He pressed the crucifix against the bosom of the nightshirt. Obviously it cost him effort to talk, effort and pain.

He kept stroking Carla’s bowed head. “I got my son-in-law taking care of me. Your new husband, what’s his name? The stuffed shirt. Maybe he’s a go-getter. But Mack now, he—”

More coughing. Sudden sweat glistened all over his face. The nurse stepped in to pat his brow with a hand towel, dab away a bit of green phlegm from his lip. Hellman looked at her like she was a viper, and she retreated.

“Mack’s the best man who ever loved you. You didn’t pay any attention. You had everything and you just threw it away. You were a damn fool.” He was drowsy, mumbling. “A damn fool to leave him.”

Carla raised her head. Lights from the votive candles shone in her eyes. Her mascara ran, streaking her powder. She looked at Mack.

“I know, Papa.”

“Such a fool…but a beautiful girl.
Schönes Mädchen.
Just like your mama—she was beautiful too…” Hellman sighed. He closed his eyes.

“Papa?”

The nurse felt Hellman’s pulse, then his brow. “Nothing to be alarmed about, Mrs. Fairbanks. He’s asleep again, that’s all. Please let him rest.”

Carla stumbled to the hallway. Mack closed the door on an image of Hellman sleeping with the crucifix and the nurse holding his wrist.

She slumped against the wall. “I thought he was—”

“Not yet. The doctors say it’s a matter of a day, maybe two, at the most. There’s bleeding internally. They can’t stop it.”

“Oh, Mack.” She fell forward against him, shuddering, then stole one arm around his neck. Mack smelled her perfumed hair, felt the warmth and bulk of her body. Over her shoulder he stared at the wallpaper, examining the pattern. She said, “I need a drink. Please don’t criticize, just give it to me.”

“A little brandy. That’s all. In the parlor.”

He pried her arm off and walked down the black hall.

In the parlor he shut the drapes on the street side. No need for the chauffeur to watch Mrs. Fairbanks and her former husband.

He put a measured half-inch of Napoleon brandy in a snifter. She consumed it in two swallows, then held the snifter out. He shook his head.

“Swampy and I talked about his will,” Mack told her. “You inherit half of everything. The other half’s in trust for our son when he’s found.”

She gave him a peculiar coquettish smile. It startled and sickened him. Was she blind drunk already? They did say that some drunkards needed only a sip to lose control.

“Papa was right, I was crazy to think I’d ever find someone better. You were the best in every way. In bed you were the best, too.”

“This isn’t a very appropriate time to talk about that.”

“Why not? We were married—there’s no pretense between us.” She slid the bolt on the hall door, then caressed the gleaming wood in a slow, sensual way, smiling.

His stomach turned over.

She ran her hand over the black bertha, rubbing the curve of her bosom. “You were the best. Sometimes I forget.” She took a lurching step. “I’d like to remember. I’d like to be reminded—”

“Carla, for Christ’s sake—”

She snatched his hand and rubbed his palm with her thumb. He stepped back but she followed, arm sliding around his neck again. Her tongue licked his cheek, then his ear. The round breasts mashed his chest. He felt stays.

“Do you know what I’m wearing underneath this? A corset from Paris. Brocaded satin and lace. Ribbon garters. Wouldn’t you like to see?”

He threw her arm down. “Stop it.”

“I love you, Mack. I’ve always been in love with you. I ran away because I couldn’t control you, make you do what I wanted. I didn’t like that. But I didn’t stop loving you.”

“As I recall, you didn’t want the responsibility for Jim, either.”

“That was a mistake. Leaving was a mistake. We were good lovers.” She reached for his waist. “Remind me.”

He caught her wrist and held her hand away.

“No thanks. The only time I was entitled to that was when we were married. I despise your husband but I’ll be damned if I’ll cuckold him.”

“Mack—why not?” She held out her arms, begging, swaying back and forth, weaving, starting to simper at him. “Why not, lover? Why not?”

“You’d better go. I’ll telephone Burlingame when there’s a change in your father’s—”

“Mack—”

“Leave.”

The rebuff was quiet, hard, final. She lowered her arms, trembling.

“You prig. You arrogant self-righteous son of a bitch. I’ve had better than you dozens of times. Bigger and better. Even when we were married, you weren’t good enough. I had lovers. More than one.”

He walked away, supremely tired. “It doesn’t surprise me. I think you’re drunk, Carla. Drunk, or unhinged by all this. Go sleep it off.” He picked up her evening wrap to lay it around her shoulders.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” She threw the tasseled wrap halfway across the parlor. “You think you’re so superior. Always in charge. I’ll tell you one time you weren’t in charge. New Year’s Day, 1898. You were in New York seeing that bitch who writes books. Do you remember where I was?”

A cold rock of dread fell to the bottom of his belly. “Pasadena.”

“That’s right. But I wasn’t alone. Walter was there. I had Walter in Pasadena. I had him in here, Mack. Right in here, are you looking? He got in me New Year’s Day, and more than once. He loved getting back at you that way. So did I.”

She was leaning toward him, so overwrought that she could smile while tears streamed from her eyes.

Mack flung the evening wrap at her. “Get out.”

But she had the knife in him. “Not till I tell you something else. You thought Jim was a month early. No. I was full term when he was born. I was already pregnant when you came back from New York. Jim isn’t your son; Jim is Walter’s son.”

“You’re a liar.”

Carla flung her head back and laughed at him. “Hurts, doesn’t it. Good. Good! There’s no mistake. Walter was my lover when you were away. You raised his son. And Papa called me the fool.”

“You goddamn liar.” He backhanded her mouth.

Carla cried out and spilled sideways, hitting the sofa with her head. Mack stared at his right hand as though it belonged to someone else—a leper, a Jack the Ripper. He’d struck Jim, and now he’d struck a woman—

“You cowardly bastard,” she said as he circled, hand outstretched to help her rise. “Don’t touch me, don’t you touch me or I’ll have the police on you, you fucking woman-beating
monster
.”

He reached again. “Carla, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

Carla shoved him and ran past to the foyer door. She breathed hard, yellow hair coming undone and tumbling to her shoulders. The diamond dog collar studded Mack’s face with light points as she gripped the edge of the door.