California Gold (98 page)

Like thousands of others, Flintman had migrated to California from the Midwest. After his heart attack he had retired as vice chairman of the Merchants and Farmers Bank of Xenia, Ohio. Because of his heavy brows and big fan beard, he bore a strong physical resemblance to Charles Dickens, especially those stiff frontispiece portraits. Spiritually he was kin to Mr. Scrooge.

A visitor’s buggy was tied outside the octagonal house. Flintman pulled in beside it and noted, as usual, the platoon of gardeners busy on the grounds. Flintman despised the Tabernacle of the Sun Universal, particularly because of its extravagances and pretenses, including the abundance of white flowers and shrubs and the cheery yellow and white paint adorning its headquarters.

Flintman’s wife, Winona, worshiped the place, however. She worshiped the founder, whom Flintman considered no better than a crook, and perhaps a lunatic. Elihu Flintman yielded to the authority of no man, but with Winona it was different; he did what she told him, sometimes resentfully, but he did it. He’d volunteered to keep the tabernacle’s books because she wanted him involved.

Flintman was the tabernacle’s first trained bookkeeper. Brother Paul didn’t want him, but the elected board of elders decided it was a good idea, and insisted. Previously, the founder kept the books. Flintman’s exposure to the grossly inexact records, full of smudges, blots, and strikeovers, led him to launch a kind of secret crusade. Certain the founder stole a lot of the money the communicants paid into the tabernacle, Flintman was searching for hard evidence he could present to the elders, and particularly to Winona.

He crossed the airy veranda to the frosted-glass front door. The pie-wedge rooms of the octagonal house were all connected to a central foyer, which you reached by walking straight back from the entrance. The tabernacle was decorated in typical late-Victorian style, with heavy furniture, palms in pots, and every spare inch filled with something. For the walls the founder had commissioned some unknown hack to paint a series of sunlit California landscapes. These cheap works hung everywhere, along with small versions of the tabernacle’s metal sunburst.

The door of a counseling room off the foyer stood ajar, and through the opening Flintman saw buxom Deacon Rowena at her desk. She had prospects: two retirees, dressed in their shabby best, their hope-filled faces craggy with age. Flintman pitied them, for Deacon Rowena, young and sun-browned, was spreading before them a segmented belt of canvas about five inches high.

“This is the solar longevity belt. The founder himself developed and approved it. You’ll note the eight segments, corresponding to the octagon shape, of the tabernacle. Each segment collects and stores the healing energy of the sun in special honeycomb cells. The cells disperse the energy into the body gradually and pleasantly. I think you’ll agree that the price we ask—three hundred dollars—is remarkably low when I tell you this: Combined with Brother Paul’s principles of good health and sunlight therapy, the belt is effective against many forms of malignant tumor. We’ve printed this little brochure with testimonials of Californians who have been completely cured.”

Old veined hands reached eagerly for the pamphlet. Deacon Rowena’s eyes flicked to the door, sensing someone there, and Flintman hurried on. He was no scientist, but he presumed the belt was worthless, and the testimonials fraudulent.

The bookkeeper opened the door of his office. His occasional assistant was seated at the left half of a partner’s desk. Sunlight falling through a window lit his hair like a great nugget of gold. He was a handsome lad, and tall. In front of him lay invoices, ledgers, his Chinese abacus with its lacquered dragons racing around the edge.

“Good morning, Jim David.”

“Good morning, Mr. Flintman.”

The bookkeeper hung his fedora on a peg. Suddenly he spied something peeping from beneath an account book. Jim blushed, discovered. Flintman pulled out three dime novels with lurid covers, issues of
Pluck and Luck
and
Work and Win
, and one of
Motor Stories.

“Not in this office, Jim David,” Flintman said, throwing the dime novels into a waste can.

“Those are good stories—” the boy began.

“They are trash. Especially those ridiculous tales of boys who earn millions after a stranger’s plug hat is blown off on Fifth Avenue and they retrieve it and discover he’s the richest man in New York, childless, and possessed of a completely unmotivated urge to share his moneymaking secrets with an adolescent. Trash,” Flintman repeated, and sat down. “What have you been doing this morning?”

“Checking the bank deposits. I found another mistake.”

“Show me, show me.”

Jim gave him the open ledger. “An extra zero on the weekly deposit to Brother Paul’s account. Instead of eighteen hundred dollars, it’s eighteen thousand.”

“That’s the second such error in as many months.” Flintman snapped the ledger shut. “I’ll call it to his attention. Is he here?”

“No, sir. He went to the horse races. He’ll be back late in the afternoon, Deacon Beatrice said. You could wait and visit him upstairs.”

“Can’t do it this evening. Busy. Besides, I never go upstairs. I am his bookkeeper, not his crony.” The tabernacle seethed with gossip about the activities up in the founder’s rooms. Flintman had never ventured there, but now he thought perhaps he should. Perhaps he ought to search for evidence to confirm the rumors. Especially with Winona babbling about rewriting their wills to include a large bequest to the tabernacle.

“I’ll confront him in due course, my boy. But it won’t do any good. He’ll laugh and say it’s an oversight, just another oversight. A lot of honest and sincere people in this tabernacle are getting mighty tired of Brother Paul’s oversights.” He set his lips primly. “You’re smart with figures, Jim David. A good worker too. I’m glad I was able to steal you from Mr. Sprue once a week.”

“Yes, sir.”

The bookkeeper’s righteous face softened a little. “Is Sprue your stepfather?”

“No, he just looks after me.”

“Have you no family in California? No mother?”

“I never knew her.”

“A father?”

Jim’s eye quickly shifted to the trashed dime novels. He stared at them, struggling to hide his pain.

“Once. But not anymore.”

He bent his head and went back to work.

At four-thirty on the afternoon of October 1, a long curtained touring sedan drove through the tabernacle gate. As the black auto glided up the hill, a pearl-gray glove drew aside one of the rear curtains.

Walter Fairbanks leaned near the window, studying the yellow-and-white octagonal house on the terraced hill. He’d heard a lot about the place, and the sight of it sent a guilty thrill chasing through him.

The chauffeur halted the car. “I don’t know how long I’ll be, Sanchez. Pull over there and wait.”

The chauffeur said, “Yes, sir,” and opened the door for his passenger. After a quick, nervous look around—he saw a few gardeners, many plantings, some distant bungalows—Fairbanks darted up the steps and inside.

He expected exotic furnishings; he found conventional ones. But the young woman who took his card was anything but conventional—muscular and deeply browned, with huge round breasts. She carried the card upstairs. Within minutes, Wyatt Paul came down.

His linen suit and clerical dickey shone with a snowy brilliance, and the hand he extended to Fairbanks was brown and manicured. The white streaks in his hair were dominant, sweeping back from his temples like horns on a Viking helmet. His clear blue eyes looked feverish.

“Mr. Fairbanks. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Good of you to come all the way out to Pasadena.”

“On the telephone, Mr. Paul, you insisted.”

“It’s a substantial donation. I thought I was entitled to hand it personally to the top man in the campaign.”

“Yes, perfectly reasonable,” Fairbanks said quickly. He didn’t dare lose a donation so large.

“By the way. Communicants here call me Brother, not Mister.” Wyatt caressed the arm of the buxom girl. “Thank you, Deacon Helen. I’ll call you if our guest needs anything.”

Fairbanks was put off by the smoky glance the young woman gave him as she left. It seemed to say, however briefly, that if the guest wanted her favors, she would readily oblige.

“Come along and see our sanctuary. I must say, Mr. Fairbanks, you look like you’ve had a difficult day.”

“I was meeting with the M and M at breakfast—the Merchants and Manufacturers Association—when we got word of the disaster.”

“Disaster?”

“You don’t know? The
Times
building was dynamited early this morning. Sixty or seventy sticks were planted in an alley on the Broadway side. They’ve no idea how many are dead. At least twenty. Blown up—burned alive—”

“Terrible. Who did it?”

“General Otis has accused the striking metalworkers.”

“I didn’t realize there was a strike.”

“Largest in the city’s history. Fifteen hundred men have been out since June.”

“I’m afraid I’m not good about keeping track of mundane matters.”

“It isn’t mundane to those of us in commerce,” Fairbanks said a bit testily. “It’s life and death for the open shop here. The San Francisco trade locals poured in money and professional agitators. This is the result—anarchy and murder. Otis calls it the crime of the century. He swears he’ll have the culprits in front of a firing squad.”

“I certainly hope he’s successful. This way, please.”

Soothed by Wyatt’s charm, Fairbanks followed him across the round central foyer. Wyatt slid back carved doors and they walked out on a dais to a pulpit that faced semicircular rows of pews. Fairbanks glanced around, noting another great metal sunburst suspended on wires above him.

“This is where I lecture on the principles of solar medicine, physical and emotional health. By the way, you’ll stay the night, won’t you? I have a spacious guest room in my quarters upstairs.”

“No, I’m afraid I can’t, Mr.—Brother Paul.”

“You’re turning me down?” Wyatt’s clear blue eyes showed a curious opal blaze. “It’s late in the day, and a long drive back to the city—”

“But there’s a rally for Hiram Johnson downtown. Nell Ross, the radical writer, is speaking. I must listen to her. Find out what sort of lies she’s spreading about Bell and his slate, so we can counter them. I’m sorry—it’s a duty I can’t avoid.”

Obviously irked, Wyatt said, “Pity. My evening—ah— socials with some of the deacons are quite special.” A pause. “Quite private too, if that’s a concern.”

Fairbanks understood what Brother Paul was suggesting, and it weakened his knees. He could certainly use a little discreet companionship after all these weeks of riding the SP from town to town, meeting with grubby merchants and farmers, speaking to groups, and begging money until he was glassy-eyed. But he couldn’t rest or let down until it was over. Until they won.

“Thank you, Brother Paul. I really must go back. Miss Ross is scheduled for half past eight.”

“The check won’t be ready until nine.” Wyatt said it sharply; Fairbanks had overstepped. “If you want it, call Los Angeles and get someone else to spy on the woman.”

“Certainly. Of course.”

Brother Paul was pleased again. He draped his white sleeve over Fairbanks’s shoulder a little too intimately for the lawyer’s taste. “Good. We can at least have a drink in my rooms. Perhaps you’d like a rest and brushup first?”

Fairbanks felt dizzy. What if he’d lost the donation and the board had found out? He felt like a man on a precipice these days. That was why he drove himself through the tank towns, repeated the same dreary speech at local chamber-of-commerce dinners, survived on three or four hours’ sleep a night and meals of hard rolls and acidic black coffee that destroyed the stomach. He had to win. You either made a perfect mark, or you didn’t. There was no middle ground. There had seldom been any in his life, and there was absolutely none this time.

Brother Paul was staring again. Fairbanks fumbled out his reply.

“I’m sorry—yes—kind of you. I’ll make the telephone call. Then I’ll rest. It has been a trying day.”

To his astonishment, Fairbanks napped, for a long while. When he woke, fully dressed, on the large bed in the Victorian bedroom on the second floor, he checked his watch hastily. Five minutes past nine. His eye leaped to the windows. It was dark.

In front of the mirror he smoothed his hair and straightened his cravat. He heard distant music, a woman singing in a slightly tinny voice, as though she sang inside some huge resounding sewer pipe.

The tabernacle rooms were equipped with old gas mantles as well as newer electrics, and the gas had been lit and trimmed low. Fairbanks followed the music to double doors at the back of the house, directly above the sanctuary, and knocked. Wyatt’s cheerful voice bade him walk in.

Fairbanks felt the hot guilty thrill again. His palms were perspiring. He slid the doors open and tried not to let his eyes bug.

Wyatt’s quarters were spacious, but crowded with dark furniture. He was relaxing on a leather lounge, wearing only his white trousers. His hairless chest was hard, flat, sun-browned. Beside him sat Deacon Helen, a peculiar dreamy look in her eyes. She’d changed her dress for a white dressing gown, and Wyatt had his hand inserted under one lapel, idly teasing and pinching her great sagging breast.

“Good evening, Fairbanks.” Wyatt had to speak loudly to be heard. On a stand, an enormous Victrola poured music out of its fluted horn. The needle scratched on the Red Seal disc and the singer reached for the sweet aching high notes of
“Un bel dí.”
Fairbanks counted four dark-green wine bottles on a white rug, two of them empty. “Do come in and have a drink,” Wyatt went on. “Is it nine o’clock already?”

“Just past.” Fairbanks stepped onto the white rug and started. His foot had come down on the stuffed head of a polar bear, its huge ranged jaws open and glass eyes shining.

Wyatt laughed over his discomfort. “You’re still tense. I don’t think you relaxed properly. Some of this wine will help.”

Fairbanks noted other details: the butts of fat green cigars in a cut-glass tray, the remains of a meal on a taboret, gnawed beefsteak bones strewn on a platter of bloody juice. He was cynically amused; before napping, he’d skimmed a copy of
A California Sunshine Diet
in the guest room.