by Ciji Ware
“Not that he would care,” Consuela interjected with more petulance than bravado.
Without further comment, Ellers closed the door with just enough force to indicate that the son of his long-time patient had irritated him to no end.
“That was horribly rude,” Consuela declared sotto voce.
“Good, the pill-pushing quack.” J.D. spoke his last words directly at the door, hoping Ellers heard.
“We didn’t have a word from you after the fire. For the longest while, I feared you were dead.” Consuela took in his disreputable clothes and scuffed boots. “Are you all right? What of your hotel? Why have you come here after all this time?”
J.D. realized only too well that for years his mother had been as isolated in this soft, pink boudoir as if she’d been incarcerated in a garrison on Alcatraz Island. Little wonder she knew nothing of the fate of the Bay View Hotel. Ellers and her husband controlled whom she saw, what papers she read, what medicines were prescribed, and what withdrawals were made from her considerable bank accounts.
“My hotel burned to the ground,” said J.D., taking the seat that had been vacated by Dr. Ellers and reached for her hand.
“Oh, how terrible! I am so sorry, son,” replied his mother, ever his champion, and most likely unaware that he’d won the Bay View in a poker game.
“It’s good to see you again, Mother. You’re still beautiful as ever.”
“Oh nonsense,” she scoffed, but he could tell she was pleased. She tightened her grip on his hand like a drowning sailor. “I was so worried about you. Does your father know you’ve come upstairs to see me?” she asked anxiously.
“He sent me. I plan to rebuild the Bay View and came to get Father’s approval of the project so that the Committee of Fifty would vote me funds for it.”
“Are you also rebuilding that dreadful gambling club on Nob Hill? Don’t tell me he’d help you do that? All our friends were outraged a place like that was built in such a fine neighborhood.”
J.D. could clearly see his mother was allowed only negative news about her only child. He wasn’t shocked or surprised to see that she opposed the building of gambling establishments—wherever they might be. San Franciscans still joked about the way in which her grandfather, Eduardo Diaz, gambled away the sizeable acreage comprising Rancho Diaz in the Sacramento Delta—along with the hand of his daughter, Antonia, Consuela’s mother. Both the original Diaz Spanish land grant and J.D.’s maternal grandmother had been won in an impromptu shooting contest in Nevada City between the hot-tempered, hard-drinking Eduardo and the equally boisterous Archibald Reims when both men were silver miners. Such reckless gambling had sealed the fate of the Diaz clan in California. Antonia Diaz was wed to Archibald Reims and their “honeymoon baby” Consuela Diaz-Reims—now Connie Thayer—appeared nine months to the day of Archie Reim’s sharp-shooting triumph.
For a split second, J.D. allowed himself to consider the plight of Amelia and her mother, Victoria Hunter, helpless to halt the wagering of their assets by that other inebriate, Henry Bradshaw, which resulted in the loss of their family legacy.
Then, just as quickly, he pushed from his mind the stark truth that heiresses like the Bradshaw women—and his mother—had virtually no freedom to decide their own matrimonial or financial fate.
Recalling now the infamous story of Archie Reim’s dead-eyed destruction of five glass whiskey bottles perched atop a hitching post outside a saloon, J.D. could only remind himself that the win brought about the marriage of the youthful German immigrant and the lovely Antonia that, in turn, resulted in the birth of J.D.’s mother, Consuela.
I suppose I should be profoundly grateful for old Archie’s penchant for gambling and his skill with a pistol.
The noteworthy event in the previous century also marked the beginning of his grandfather’s string of good fortune in land speculation and mining in California and Nevada. Unfortunately, the lucky streak ended one foggy day aboard a San Francisco ferryboat, four decades later, when the elder Reims—said at the time to be morose over sudden financial reversals—mysteriously pitched overboard and drowned.
When tragedy struck, Archie and Antonia’s only child—Consuela Diaz-Reims Thayer—was still a beauty of thirty-four and by then the wife of James Thayer, a Harvard-trained lawyer and prominent San Francisco businessman. His son, J.D., saw Grandfather Reims die in the waters of San Francisco Bay. Merely a gangly youth in his teens, Archie Reims’s grieving grandson had been helpless then, to stop his father’s confiscation of his mother’s fortune or the subsequent campaign to portray her as a highly strung woman, emotionally unstable like her father. In an act of self-preservation, the underage J.D. eventually had joined Teddy Roosevelt’s brigade as the swiftest way to escape from home.
And now, in the prolonged aftermath of so many family dramas, he watched his mother nervously pluck at the coverlet covering her legs, wishing he could abandon his shield of wry indifference to assure her of his love and concern for her welfare.
But he dared not.
Truth was, he’d learned long ago that any action he took on her behalf often resulted in devious retaliation by his father. Big Jim had married Consuela for purely mercenary reasons when the senior Thayer’s own coffers were depleted at one juncture from foolhardy land speculations in San Francisco’s boom-and-bust economy.
J.D. had fought this triangulated battle for more than two decades. Now it was rendered even more deadly by Consuela’s increasing dependence on the tinctures dispensed so liberally by Dr. Ellers at Big Jim’s direction. The methods of controlling the fairer sex could be subtle, indeed.
“Son, please,” Consuela complained, interrupting his reverie. “I asked you a perfectly civil question. Are you rebuilding that awful gambling den or not?”
“Not. I’m reconstructing the hotel only, at this point. And in return, Father has promised not to set those City Hall rowdies on the rebuilding project or blackball me with the Committee of Fifty.”
“He wouldn’t do that!” his mother exclaimed. “Not to his own son!”
J.D. was touched by the expression of horror that flooded her still handsome features. For an instant, he saw a glimmer of the fiery temperament Consuela Diaz-Reims had once been known to exhibit against her husband’s wishes.
“Surely, Mother,” he replied gently, “you of all people should know by now that Big Jim Thayer will do whatever damn well suits him.”
“James! Your language!”
For a moment, in the midst of her distress, J.D. detected a trace of the Spanish accent his mother had worked so diligently to eradicate. When he was a small boy, she’d urged him privately to correct her every mispronunciation. It was part of her defensive campaign to gain acceptance from the lofty wives of her husband’s friends and acquaintances. These were mostly Protestant, east coast Americans whose hatred for people of color included olive-complexioned Spanish Catholics.
Even so, as time went on, she’d desired the good opinion of the nobs as much as she’d come to yearn for the potions Dr. Ellers so freely prescribed to calm her nerves. Exterminating her Spanish heritage had taken nearly thirty years to accomplish, but James Thayer Sr.’s, exotic, dark-haired wife was known now, to friends and relations alike, as simply “Connie Thayer.”
“Well, I must be off,” he announced abruptly and rose from his chair.
“But you’ve only just arrived,” she protested. “Stay for tea, won’t you?”
J.D.’s saw the look of panic and pleading she cast at him. He steeled himself from offering outright succor and support. He could only help her in the long run if he kept up the fiction of playing the wayward son.
Well, it’s not a complete fiction, is it, J.D.?
“It’s been good to see you, Mother.” He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. Then he took her hand and gave it a soft squeeze. “It’s hard to believe, but I’ve just been ordered by Father to pay you a visit at least once a month.”
“Truly? Oh, J.D., I’ve missed you
so.”
He’d missed her too, and her look of joy made him suddenly want to lower his head to her lap and weep like a child. Shocked by this infantile reaction, he merely bowed with exaggerated formality.
“Hasta luego, Señora.”
Chapter 14
Piles of lumber, heaps of gravel and sand, and lengths of newly forged steel girders littered the grounds of the burnt-out Fairmont Hotel. As was typical for June, marine moisture poured through the straits of the Golden Gate, sucked in by another scorching day in California’s Central Valley, fifty miles to the east. Amelia tried to remember the name of the wag who said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco.”
He wasn’t joking.
With a scarf wrapped tightly around her neck, she peered through the morning’s mist at workers putting the finishing touches on seven levels of scaffolding—six stories, plus a seventh tier for access to the roof, which this day was shrouded in fog. The Fairmont’s sooty granite and terra-cotta shell was nearly all that remained of the monument to the beaux-arts style.
For days now, Amelia, Ira Hoover, and Julia Morgan spent hours in a drafty shed erected on a corner of the property, plotting their plan of action for both hotels. They poured over the drawings created by the Fairmont’s original architect, James Reid, and his businessman-brother, Merritt. Word around town was that the pair weren’t interested in rebuilding a hotel they had so recently completed. The truth was, they had many other lucrative and challenging projects in post-quake San Francisco.
When the Fairmont’s current owners—another set of brothers, Herbert and Hartland Law—learned that their second-choice architect, the famed Stanford White, had been murdered, they’d turned to the Morgan firm as their third choice for the restoration job.
Now duly anointed by her employers as both architect and construction site supervisor on the Fairmont job, Morgan outlined what came next.
“Thirty-seven columns in this building have buckled and a number of floors have dropped at least seven feet. As we excavate the debris, we must shore up each section of the remaining walls in turn, to prevent the building’s collapse.” She wagged her finger sternly at her entire staff, adding, “Safety for the workers is as important as speed. We have an enormous job ahead of us, everyone.”
Amelia wondered if Dick Spitz, the construction supervisor J.D. Thayer had hired to oversee construction at the Bay View Hotel, was as conscientious about the welfare of his workers. Thayer had employed someone who generally wore a scowl, whatever the weather. Despite J.D.’s sleeping at the Fairmont most nights, the de facto owner of the smaller hotel was rarely seen. At dawn’s light, he departed from his borrowed basement room, located a few doors down the corridor from Amelia’s, and went straight to the Bay View construction site, exhorting the workers to speedily erect the hotel’s framing. His evenings were a mystery to Amelia and he apparently returned in the wee hours to grab a few hours’ sleep long after everyone else had retired.
Julia instructed Amelia to divide her time between the two projects. On a Monday, the younger architect arrived at Taylor and Jackson with a revised set of drawings for the Bay View’s roofline. Immediately, something caught her attention on the ground floor of the construction site where workers appeared ready to begin pounding nails into two-by-fours to raise the framing for the second floor.
“That framing crew you hired isn’t mitering the corners properly!” she announced to J.D.
She insisted that he climb the scaffolding encasing the project so she could show him the flaws first hand.
“Just look at this!” she exclaimed, a breeze ruffling her hair. “The southeast corner is dangerously out of plumb. You must make the site supervisor tell them to rip it out and do it correctly, or your building will pitch down Jackson Street—with or without another earthquake!”
J.D. squinted in the direction she was pointing. “Can’t be off by much,” he said doubtfully.
“Just wait until they reach the top floor! I promise you that you’ll notice it then.”
It disturbed her to discover that J.D. appeared willing to overlook such mistakes in order to get a task accomplished, while Amelia, an echo of her employer Miss Morgan, constantly argued that nothing was accomplished if it wasn’t done right.
“Look, Mr. Thayer, these problems of shoddy work will only get worse as construction progresses.” She pointed toward a gigantic load of redwood delivered by four horse-drawn carts marked KEMP LUMBER, MILL VALLEY. “I thought you said you wanted nothing to do with Ezra Kemp.”
“Unfortunately, he’s the only source in the Bay Area capable of delivering the amount of lumber I need,” he said, adding, “and he knows it.”
“Well, be that as it may, the people you have working for you—whom I’m probably correct in assuming you hired through Ezra Kemp—aren’t following our instructions properly or watched over in the way they should be by either the site supervisor or the foreman.” In an effort to staff both projects quickly, Morgan had acquiesced to her client’s hiring decisions. Amelia added, “Can’t you at least order that there be no drinking of spirits during working hours? I think that alone would help the situation.”
J.D. acknowledged he’d hired his crew through Kemp, nodding wearily. “I’ve told Dick Spitz to tell the men I’ve forbidden spirits on the site—and I’ll say it again—but a bigger problem is that the chaps are stealing lumber and nails from here as they leave work every day, and then reselling their booty down the street!”
Amelia stared at him, appalled. “Then, why don’t you just discharge this whole lot?” she demanded. “There’re scores of people whose businesses were lost who are now desperately looking for work.”
J.D. arched an eyebrow. “Were there carpenters’ unions in France, Miss Bradshaw? Were there bullyboys who could shut down a construction site with a wink from the mayor of Paris?”
“I was attending architecture school there, not working at construction sites,” she replied.
“Ah… well, then… you may be adept at drawing pretty pictures, but I venture to say you learned little in France about the way buildings get built in America.”
“And I venture to say that you and Ezra Kemp learned very little from the disaster we three barely survived last April eighteenth!” she shot back, stung by Thayer’s attempt to belittle her observations of his building crew’s shoddy work. “And now you blithely condone the same substandard workmanship. I just don’t understand how you could allow such a thing to happen again!”
J.D.’s faintly mocking expression sobered instantly.
“I know there are problems, Miss Bradshaw, and I will try, in future—”
But Amelia was unable to rein in a sense of frustration and anger that had started to boil in her veins. “If your club had been properly built in the first place, it wouldn’t have collapsed and brought the rest of the Bay View Hotel down with it. At least then my father and Ling Lee might not have—”
Their glances locked and Amelia’s unfinished sentence ballooned between them: they might not have died.
J.D.’s gaze took on a closed, shuttered look.
“Oh never mind!” Amelia muttered, wishing she could risk climbing down from the rickety scaffolding without waiting for a hand from her employer. Instead, she turned her head and gazed at the panorama of the bay and continued to fume.
Obviously, Ezra Kemp was more deeply involved in the reconstruction of the Bay View than Amelia had ever suspected—which could only mean trouble ahead.
And to think that she’d been tempted to feel sorry for J.D., she thought, annoyed by her previous empathy for the man.
Thayer had indicated earlier that he intended to avoid doing business with Kemp at all costs to prevent becoming more deeply in debt to the Mill Valley lumber baron than he already was. Now it would seem they were practically partners once again! Today’s exchange with her employer was a timely reminder never to believe—or sympathize with—someone who consorted with the likes of Ke
mp and his cronies.
J.D. had remained silent while she lowered her gaze from their vantage point atop the scaffolding encasing the Bay View. She could see that wagering establishments were springing up among the charred ruins of Chinatown and along the notorious Barbary Coast. Most likely, that was where Thayer could be found most evenings when he absented himself from the Morgan team housed at the Fairmont.
“Well, enough lecturing on my part, Mr. Thayer,” she announced suddenly to J.D., steeling herself for a solo descent backwards down the ladder that led from the second floor construction to the first. “I expect you’ll build this hotel however you please. I will notify my employer of these deviations from our specified plans. Could you please write a note saying you absolve Julia Morgan’s firm from any and all liability that may result?”
J.D. hesitated, and then nodded. Much to her surprise, his next words even sounded conciliatory. “I understand and share your concerns, Miss Bradshaw. I’ll do my best to demand corrections from Kemp’s men.”
Startled, Amelia looked up from the top rung of the ladder to meet Thayer’s gaze.
“Well… ah… thank you,” she murmured, the wind suddenly taken out of her sails.
“And certainly I’m willing to put in writing that I will not hold you or the Morgan firm responsible for any subsequent problems.”
“That’s good of you, Mr. Thayer. I appreciate it.”
“And please let me descend the ladder ahead of you so I can give you a hand,” he offered.
Amelia stepped back onto the second story platform to allow J.D. to precede her down from the scaffolding.
“Thank you, sir,” she echoed faintly, baffled once again by her employer’s unpredictable response to her speaking her mind.
***
Meanwhile, over at the Fairmont, Julia Morgan’s troops dutifully followed in the architect’s wake, clambering through the hotel’s scorched remains with the insurance adjustors to inventory the destruction in greater detail. In addition to the damaged support columns and sagging floors, many ceilings had collapsed. Plaster walls had been pulverized into heaps of powdered limestone and sand. Struts and wiring were twisted into macabre shapes.