A Race to Splendor

by Ciji Ware

  “About?”

  “That we must be extremely careful not to let anyone else know you and I—”

  “I absolutely agree,” she cut in.

  But I hate it…

  “There are a number of dangerous forces lined up against us,” he said.

  “Against us? What forces?”

  “Let’s just say there are people who are not my champions—nor yours—and who’d prefer someone else be in control of the Bay View Hotel.”

  “Which people? Kemp? Who else?”

  J.D. shook his head. “It would only be a guess on my part.”

  He knows, but he’s not telling me…

  “Well, as a first step, “ she proposed, “let’s agree—no more champagne.”

  He strode to the door, leaned forward, and kissed her on the cheek. “Sadly, Miss Bradshaw, no more champagne.” Then, he kissed her again, although this time, the tip of his tongue invaded her lips just long enough to remind them both of the intoxicating night they’d spent together. At length, he pulled back and gave her a steady look. “And, unfortunately, I agree with you about something else.” He placed a fingertip on her lips and she had to steel herself not to take it into her mouth. “No more of these delights. At least, until I can officially disengage from any association with the Kemps—father and daughter.”

  She gave him a brief nod of agreement and walked swiftly away from his bedroom toward the kitchen, hoping to discover that she was the first in the household to be up and dressed. Julia had been right to dismiss her, she thought. She was impulsive and willful and occasionally did not understand herself at all.

  ***

  Amelia forced herself to ignore all thoughts of the previous night and turned her complete attention to the difficult job of completing the roof. By midday, the Pigati cousins and their fellow workers swarmed over the top floor to cut to her specifications the last of the massive timbers and joists. Franco Pigati led the rest of the “Italian contingent” in the risky task of fastening the cross beams to the vertical concrete walls, open to the sky.

  Meanwhile, Amelia sat at the table in the kitchen hunched over plans for the exterior landscaping. Further distracting her concentration and aggravating her persistent headache was the staccato sound of hammers hitting nails, although she took comfort that the steady din overhead meant progress was being made.

  About forty minutes later, the site suddenly went quiet. J.D. had driven off on a mission to search for a source of wooden roof shingles since the slate ones they planned had never arrived by boat from Europe. She didn’t ask where he planned to obtain this scarce commodity, as the less she was involved with the Kemps—the better.

  He’s courting Miss Kemp… how insane can this get?

  Franco Pigati poked his head in through the doorway. “Miss Bradshaw?”

  His worried expression hinted there was trouble.

  “What is it?”

  “A bunch of men are here to see Mr. Thayer. They say they’re from the hiring hall.”

  A sense of alarm shot through her. “I’ll speak with them.”

  Pigati looked at Amelia uncertainly, but then turned and led the way outside.

  “Good morning, gentlemen, or is it nearly noon?” A cluster of four burly men in ill-fitting business suits and porkpie hats greeted her with nods. Across the street she recognized Dick Spitz, Jake Kelly, and Joe Kavanaugh lounging against a tree. “What can I do for you?”

  “You the missus?”

  “No, I’m the architect and construction supervisor. And who might you be?”

  “Mark Desso,” replied the spokesman for the quartet, staring at her skeptically. “Down at the carpenters’ hiring hall, we got a report you’re using Chinks on this site.”

  She met Desso’s malevolent gaze. “I can tell you without hesitation there are no Chinese laborers being employed as carpenters here.” She pointed to Joe Kavanaugh, who immediately pushed away from the tree and slunk around the corner. “I think you should know, sir, that Mr. Kavanaugh was discharged recently for unacceptable work habits and insubordination. Kelly and Spitz were not rehired after a fire destroyed the rebuilding of this hotel due to their incompetence. If any of them brought this accusation regarding Chinese carpenters at this hotel, it is simply untrue and offered in spite.” She gestured to the Pigatis. “You must know Franco Pigati? And his cousins, Nico, Aldo, Dominic, and Roman?” She pointed to the circle of men standing behind her, all of them wearing uneasy expressions.

  “You work for her?” Mark Desso asked Franco.

  “Her and Mr. Thayer. Yeah. They pay fair and on time, Mr. Desso. The only Chinese I’ve seen around here are the houseboy, his wife, and a little kid.”

  Franco Pigati was speaking the truth, as far as he knew it. Amelia was grateful that his crew had never laid eyes on the night shift. True, Loy Chen’s men were not employed as carpenters, but she was just as glad the day workers had no idea there was a night crew being paid ten cents an hour to dig the cisterns and clear the remaining wreckage on the fenced-off back lot and cart it down to the landfill along the waterfront. She wasn’t actually lying, she told herself. Just misleading a bunch of bullies.

  “May I offer you men some refreshment?” Amelia volunteered. “Lemonade, perhaps?”

  Mark Desso looked as if a beverage as mild as lemonade might poison him.

  “Don’t have time,” he said gruffly. He turned to Franco Pigati. “Tell Mr. Thayer that if we hear he’s violatin’ the rules, here, he’ll be brought to task, right and proper.” He gazed belligerently at Amelia. “Never heard of no woman doin’ this kinda work.”

  “Some of your members are working on the restoration of the Fairmont Hotel,” she informed him coolly. “Julia Morgan is in charge there and I was formerly a member of her team.”

  “Last I heard, they had some fancy architect from New York on that job,” Desso countered.

  “Stanford White was shot dead by his mistress’s husband,” Amelia parried. She enjoyed the startled look on Desso’s face in reaction to her blunt language. “Didn’t you read about it in the paper?” she asked with an innocent air, of a man she was certain was illiterate. “The Morgan firm took over from McKim, Mead, & White and are doing the entire job now—on time and on budget. Now if you’ll excuse me, my men aren’t being paid to stand around.”

  She stared unblinkingly at the foursome until they retreated down the street. Suddenly, she doubted that the quartet had been the official representatives of San Francisco’s carpenters at all.

  Chapter 28

  It was after ten o’clock before J.D. returned to the Bay View that evening, following a day of wrestling with suppliers who were low on everything he needed to buy. By the time he walked into the basement kitchen, Shou Shou and Loy had already served dinner, washed up afterwards, and, with the help of little Foo, set the lanterns out in the back lot for the Chinese crew who were due to arrive soon to excavate the last foot of the cistern on the old lady’s lot.

  As for Amelia, she didn’t trust either J.D. or herself to remain alone together without giving into temptation. She’d left a note for him in the kitchen with a cryptic description of Mark Desso’s unwelcome visit and had already retired to her room. Then she swiftly blew out her kerosene lamp so no light would shine under her door to signal she was still awake. By the time she slipped into bed, she was more convinced than ever that the visit from the “carpenters representatives” earlier that day had, indeed, been prompted by the machinations of Ezra Kemp.

  Exhausted after her hard day’s work and a night of virtually no sleep in J.D.’s private quarters, she turned over in her narrow bed and ordered herself to relax. As she had all day, she stoically put aside all thoughts of the previous evening spent in J.D.’s big brass bed by mentally revisiting her multiplication tables. Before long, the fatigue of her efforts sucked her down in an undertow of dreamless sleep.

  ***

  A child’s voice cried out, the sound high and shrill. Other shouts and gr
oans and violent noises pierced the silence of Amelia’s bedroom. Her door suddenly slammed open, its inadequate lock broken, and the cries and screams burst upon her even more loudly, rousing her to instant wakefulness, her heart pounding.

  A huge form loomed in the doorway. Shadowy light from a lamp in the kitchen outlined a man, but his silhouette was far too stout to belong to J.D. or Loy Chen.

  Another figure appeared behind the first.

  “Think this is her room?” queried a voice in a hoarse whisper.

  Amelia tensed, drawing her knees closer to her chest. When the assault came, she jammed the soles of her feet, covered by the bed’s blanket, into her attacker’s lower midsection, aiming for his groin.

  “Oompf! Owwww!” The man howled and stumbled backward, crashing into his confederate.

  Amelia frantically felt beneath her mattress and pulled out the loaded pearl handled revolver that she had placed there only days earlier.

  “If either of you takes one step closer I will shoot! Now, get out!”

  “Ain’t no pistol I ever seen around here,” croaked a familiar voice.

  “Kavanaugh, you’re a dead man,” shrieked Amelia, pulling the trigger without waiting to take aim. A blast of light flashed from the end of her gun.

  “Christ Almighty!” roared the hulking figure that had led the way into Amelia’s concrete boudoir.

  “Are you hit, Joe?”

  “I dunno. Are you? Hey Spitz, Kelly… where are you?”

  The invaders scrambled to their feet and backed out of the chamber, taking off down the corridor in the direction from whence they’d come. Without considering the danger, or thinking coherently at all, Amelia dashed after them, fury coursing through her veins as she pursued them down the hallway and into the kitchen. She reached the threshold just as an iron skillet sailed by, landing with a thud in the chest of Joe Kavanaugh’s companion, Jake Kelly.

  “Uhhhhh!”

  Loy Chen then tossed a second weapon from his arsenal of pots and pans, a missile that glanced off the right ear of Joe himself. Dick Spitz stood at the door, looking skinny and scared.

  An avalanche of curses spilled from the victims’ lips as they tumbled to the ground. Joe Kavanaugh was curled up on the floor, holding his head. Jake Kelly obviously had the wind knocked out of him and turned to stare dumbly at Amelia. She raised her revolver and squeezed the trigger a second time.

  The weapon exploded with a bang.

  Again, she missed. Kelly turned tail and ran.

  “Jesus!” Dick Spitz grabbed Joe Kavanaugh by the shirt collar and dragged him to his feet. The two men bolted for the door and disappeared into the night just as J.D. thundered down the corridor and burst into the hotel kitchen. Meanwhile, the cries outside continued, a frightening sound of mortal combat.

  “What’s going on?” J.D. demanded. He was dressed, but his shirt collar was open, as if he’d been about to retire to bed. He stared at Amelia in her nightclothes, holding her pistol loosely in her hand while she attempted to control the trembling that shook her entire body. “Are you all right?” he asked, stepping to her side.

  “Round-eyes come!” Loy said, practically shouting. He brandished another frying pan over his head. “Beat up Chinese. Very bad this time. Very bad!”

  J.D. grabbed Amelia’s revolver and charged the kitchen door.

  “No, J.D.!” she cried. “There must be hordes of them!”

  He ignored her and ran through the door to the outside, shooting the pistol once in the air. He raced across the rear of his property and dashed through the gate that led to the old woman’s lot next door. Amelia and Loy armed themselves with kitchen knives and cautiously peered outside. By this time, only low moans could be heard coming from the direction of the unfinished cistern.

  “Follow me, Loy,” Amelia ordered.

  Warily, they approached the back lot where the night crew had been at its tasks. Shadows from the kerosene lanterns cast macabre images of men rolling on the ground in pain, or sitting, dazed, on the edge of the open pit they’d been digging. Some of the injured leaned against the wooden fence that had been built to protect them from prying eyes. By this time, the hooligans had done their dirty work and disappeared into the night.

  Amelia stood next to J.D., aghast at the carnage everywhere.

  “Thugs. Here to intimidate and maim,” he pronounced.

  “Joe Kavanaugh, Dick Spitz, and Jake Kelly broke into my room just now,” Amelia said. She tried to catch her breath and inhaled deep gulps of cold night air.

  “Are you all right? You mean the fellows who worked on the first hotel?

  “Yes… Kemp’s men, and Kavanaugh must be one of them.” Amelia felt J.D.’s steadying hand on her arm. “They tried… well, they tried to attack me, but I fought them off. I shot at them, but—”

  “Christ Almighty, Amelia, you could have—I’ll kill those sons-of-bitches!”

  “Didn’t you see my note?”

  “What note?”

  “Jesú, I should have stayed up to warn you! Warn these poor men,” she cried. “Those same thugs came by with a man from the hiring hall… Mark Desso, he said he was. He said he’d gotten complaints we’d hired Chinese workers and if he ever had proof, he said he’d close us down. That’s what I wrote in my note to you earlier.”

  Just then one of the injured men shrieked in pain.

  “Good God,” said J.D., “we’ve got to do something to help these poor people.”

  “Oh, J.D., this is all my fault! I should have—”

  “It’s not your doing. I went to Mill Valley today, among my other stops. I told Kemp this morning I wouldn’t marry Matilda. This was his response. He’s trying to show me who’s boss.”

  A soft voice cried out. “Oh no! Oh NO!”

  Shou Shou had run from the kitchen in her nightclothes and knelt nearby.

  “Shou Shou, what is it?” J.D. asked, turning toward the sound of muffled crying.

  “Foo! Little Foo.”

  Amelia and J.D. raced to her side where she cradled the small boy in her lap, rocking him gently.

  “They hurt Foo!” Shou Shou wailed. “He just light lamps, not dig, like others. Why they do that? Why?”

  “I’ll help her get him inside and try to assist the others,” J.D.’s voice was calm and steely. “Will you be all right driving to the Presidio to fetch Angus?”

  A glance at little Foo’s bruised face was all Amelia needed to fortify her resolve.

  “I go with Missy,” Loy declared fiercely. “I hold pistol for her. She safe with Loy Chen.” He bowed politely, adding, “She very good driver.”

  Amelia didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she retreated toward the back door of the hotel, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll dress quickly, and we’ll be off.”

  ***

  “One dead, five broken arms, a cracked pelvis, a skull fracture, and three sets of broken ribs,” Angus reported, rolling down his sleeves as he appeared at the kitchen door. “Lots of cuts and abrasions, of course.”

  “And Foo?” Amelia asked. “He just lay there when I bathed him.”

  Angus’s shoulders slumped with the fatigue of serving as a one-man infirmary for the previous four hours. “He’s the skull fracture. You two will have to relieve Loy and Shou Shou in an hour or so, to let them get some sleep.”

  “Yes, of course,” murmured Amelia.

  “I’ll see to the burial,” J.D. said wearily.

  “Better wait a bit. A few more may not make it.”

  Amelia felt another wave of guilt wash over her like a cold winter tide. If only she’d stayed awake to warn J.D. as soon as he returned last night instead of being such a ninny, worrying about propriety and her “moral weaknesses.”

  “I never dreamed something so horrible as this would happen—”

  She yearned to throw herself into J.D.’s arms for comfort, but stiffened when it was Angus who squeezed her shoulders in sympathy.

  “J.D.’s run-in with Kemp today mu
st have triggered this, but it’s nasty business, to be sure,” Angus said. “It’s bound to get out that you two employed Chinese laborers here at night. Then what will your day workers do?”

  “Let’s hope the Pigatis like the wages we pay them enough to stay on the job.” J.D. turned to Amelia. “What do you think they’ll do?”

  “Let’s just pray they don’t hear about what happened.” She blew the steam off her fourth cup of coffee. “I agree with you, J.D., that those men yesterday who came to the site couldn’t be officials from the carpenter’s hall. Even so, the Pigatis knew them—and feared them.”

  J.D. said, “They were probably just the advance troops, sent by Kemp to get the lay of the land. Joe Kavanaugh obviously came back with reinforcements.”

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and everything’ll remain hush-hush,” Angus said, rubbing his eyes. “If Kemp is behind this, he doesn’t dare brag about what he’s ordered done here.”

  “He won’t stop at this little dust-up,” J.D. predicted. He shook his head, admitting defeat. “This is bound to set us back recruiting workers and maybe even supplies. It’s time we faced facts. There’s no way we’ll be ready for the April eighteenth anniversary.” He reached for Amelia’s hand. “At least you, Loy, and Shou Shou came through this in one piece.”

  Amelia gave J.D.’s hand a sympathetic squeeze. Angus regarded the pair for a moment and said, “Here’s one scrap of good news. Loy Chen has already arranged for a Chinese benevolent society to house and nurse the men who’ve been hurt. A few of their members will come tonight, after dark, and move them, now that I’ve set the broken bones and stitched everyone up. You might get away with this if you don’t let any of the day workers come near the ballroom where I’ve got ’em all laid out.”

  “Well, that is good news,” J.D. said, staring off into space. “I couldn’t even think that far ahead.”