A Race to Splendor

by Ciji Ware

  “I wouldn’t attempt to run away just now,” J.D. intervened.

  “But—”

  “My advice is that you remain quiet and stay clear of him as much as you can. I promise you, I’ll think of something.”

  Emma looked from her friend to J.D. Then she blurted, “What if you actually married Tilly?”

  “What!” screeched Matilda.

  “No! Hear me out,” Emma said excitedly. “What if you, Mr. Thayer, wed Matilda on the Fourth of July, as the newspaper says you will, and then Tilly and I have a Boston Marriage—and you’ll be free to do as you pleased.”

  “Pray tell me, Emma,” J.D. asked with the first glimmer of amusement he’d experienced all evening, “what is a ‘Boston Marriage’?”

  “Two respectable women who love each other live together as ‘friends’ in the eyes of the world.” Her pretty features were alight with excitement. “It’s done all the time in Massachusetts. You, of course, as Tilly’s supposed husband, could live your life as you wished—with Miss Bradshaw, if you wished—and Matilda and I could stay in your hotel, shielded from Mr. Kemp, and eventually we two could travel and—”

  J.D. shook his head. “Ezra would still do his best to make my life miserable, and Miss Bradshaw would remain in danger as well.”

  Crestfallen, both women said, “Oh.”

  “But I will take it under advisement as a possible interim solution,” J.D. said, turning an idea over in his mind. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  He rose from his chair and made his farewells, his mind brimming with thoughts of the day’s amazing turn of events. He had only a few cards of his own left to play and not much time to play them.

  Marrying Matilda just might have to be one of them.

  ***

  The next morning, just after five-thirty, Amelia lay in her narrow bed and concentrated on her list of remaining chores scheduled that day. The newspaper headline announcing J.D.’s engagement and the photographs of him in China Alley clicked through her brain like pictures in a stereopticon.

  Her plan was to simply take J.D. aside this morning and ask him about the newspaper article and demand to know what on God’s green earth was going on. She would discover, once and for all, why he continually found himself in a tangled web of intrigue and conflict, a way of life that unnerved and repelled her.

  A man with J.D.’s sordid history was not some rakish figure in a romantic novel, she reminded herself. She’d known that fact full well the night she’d allowed him to take her to bed. Until just recently, he’d seemed a trustworthy collaborator during the long, hard months they’d built the hotel together. Yet, in actual fact, whose word could be counted on—other than her own?

  After all, he and Kemp had maneuvered her father into betting his supposed stake in the hotel. Before she’d seen the engagement announcement, she’d allowed the briefest fantasy to flit through her mind of a continuing association with J.D. in the management of a hotel they both prized unashamedly. She’d never daydreamed about marriage—given her unhappy experience with Etienne—but she’d gone so far as to imagine she and J.D. might truly become lovers and working partners.

  But in reality, there had always been a part of the equation with J.D. Thayer she didn’t understand. He’d told her quite directly he was not used to sharing his thoughts or decisions with anyone. What if he’d kept things from her that would make her detest him? What then?

  The clanging of the first cable cars coming out of the restored brick barn lower on Jackson Street jolted Amelia into awareness that she mustn’t tarry. Her mind was a blackboard with a hundred conflicting calculations scrawled all over it. Even if J.D. didn’t want to wed Matilda, the fact remained that Kemp’s men had killed Foo and tried to rape Amelia in her bed—or worse. So why would a decent man have anything to do with such a repulsive sort of person as Ezra Kemp—let alone go into business with him in the first place or even consider marrying his daughter?

  As Grandfather Hunter used to say, “Look at a man’s deeds, lass, not his stated intentions.” But when it came to J.D., he’d neither stated his intentions toward her—honorable or otherwise—and rarely had his deeds revealed his true intentions.

  Amelia leaned her head against the wall behind her bed and closed her eyes. The day had barely begun and she already felt exhausted from her mental gymnastics. She should just face facts, she told herself. Lust and too much champagne had been the potent combination that propelled J.D. Thayer to take her to bed that amazing night. She’d been sorely mistaken to think, even for an instant, that it meant much more.

  Mistaken and a damnable fool.

  She was no swooning female and she cursed herself on this cold, dank morning for acting like one. She was an architect who had made her way in a man’s world and that was what mattered in the end.

  Galvanized by the need to complete a few important details prior to the Bay View’s grand opening Thursday, she rummaged in the trunk at the foot of her bed, looking for a clean pair of men’s trousers. She dug down past several soiled garments until her hand rested on the pants Angus had returned to her in a bundle tied with string. More than once Amelia had avoided donning this particular pair among a collection she’d used as part of her work gear. The mere sight of the expensive black wool that her father had worn on the night of the quake raised too many painful memories.

  Today, however—her last as the supervisor on the hotel site—it seemed almost fitting she should wear Henry Bradshaw’s dress trousers in his honor. She swiftly buttoned the fastenings, used a belt to adjust the waist, and rolled each pant leg several times until her boot tips showed. As she often did lately, she didn’t bother to wear a skirt over them, but strode into the chilly kitchen to make the coffee while everyone else still slept. Until J.D. rose for the day, the only thing she had immediate control over, she concluded, was work.

  A mug of coffee warming her hand, she wandered outside into the characteristically cool July morn, strolling down the new slate path toward the gardens. It struck her that, by next week, she would be without her regular stipend from her current employer. Sooner, rather than later, she would have to set about getting another commission to keep up with her obligations. Perhaps Julia, in her current frame of mind, would be willing to refer some business her way for projects she didn’t want or have the time to take on. Amelia clung to whatever shred of hope she could find this foggy morn.

  At this early hour, more cable cars filed out of the car barn, their clanging bells a blatant signal along Jackson Street that the neighborhood would soon greet the day.

  Amelia gazed at the new hotel that rose above her head, wrapped in a gauzy veil of mist bound to burn off by noon. Her eyes roved from window to window while she critically surveyed the series of arching terra-cotta mullions, graceful eyebrows that gave the three-story facade its elegance and solid appearance. The slate roof bestowed an even statelier mien on the building, as did the statuary that dotted the grounds. That week, a story in the Call with James Hopper’s byline had blared:

  A GRAND DESIGN BY A GRAND ARCHITECT

  Already, people were describing the Bay View as a “mini Fairmont”—with luxury and elegance on a smaller, more intimate scale than the beautiful hostelry down the block. In just a few days, guests would begin to take up residence in the lovely new rooms with their silk drapery and gold faucets and their magnificent views of the water. The article had concluded:

  And so, from the Fourth of July onwards, two luxurious hotels on Nob Hill will greet visitors from all over the world. Our recovering City will benefit mightily from this race to splendor in which San Francisco’s only two women architects have been so ardently engaged.

  Amelia had learned yesterday from Loy Chen that J.D. had already bestowed his belongings in the owner’s apartments on the top floor. The hourglass had nearly run out of sand. Soon, Amelia’s connection to the Bay View would be officially severed.

  How she would have loved to live in the owner’s apart
ments with J.D.—or even alone, she thought, with a flash of anger. If only she had five playing cards and the truth!

  Increasingly disturbed by the unhappy realities confronting her, she wandered farther down the path toward the rear of the hotel’s original property line to inspect a row of flower beds that had been prepared the previous day. Gamboling stone cherubs—ordered from France despite J.D.’s reservations—as well as a series of garden benches that the Pigati cousins had fashioned out of poured concrete were embedded in the earth at intervals along the path. Now that the cistern was operational, the rest of the grounds would be completed that very day in the area where the old woman’s clapboard house had stood before the great fire had reduced it to cinders.

  “Lucky Dog” had duly been buried under a newly planted pine tree, awaiting his stone marker and a second would be installed there too, commemorating her grandfather’s dog Barbary who had taken such a shine to J.D.

  Her mind filled with a jumble of memories, Amelia sipped her lukewarm coffee and gazed at a smallish pile of refuse that remained to be carted away from the Pacific Street side of the old gambling club site. The Pigatis and sundry daily workers were due to arrive momentarily to remove this eyesore, and then plant eighteen additional rose bushes in its place.

  A gust of wind whipped Amelia’s hair and sent a chill down her spine. Wishing she’d donned a coat before commencing her inspection tour, she clutched her mug in her left hand and sank the icy fingers of her right deep into the pocket of her trousers for warmth.

  As she did, her fingers grazed something thin and papery. She halted in place, then slowly pulled two objects into the soft morning light. She stared down at her palm as shock and amazement turned into disbelief.

  A pair of playing cards, stuck together at odd angles—one face up and one face down—lay cupped in her trembling hand. She made out the words “Bay View Hotel” etched on the top card, along with the initials “JDT.”

  “Oh… my… God,” she whispered. After all this time, she finally knew for sure who’d won the notorious poker game on the night her world turned upside down.

  Amelia sank onto a concrete bench and set her coffee cup aside. Slowly, delicately, she pulled the cards, one from another, and carefully placed them side-by-side on thighs covered by her father’s twill trousers. There, outlined against the dark fabric, the jack and king of diamonds stared back at her.

  Henry Bradshaw, notorious drunkard, perpetrator of lies, spinner of fantastic yarns made up of whole cloth, had been telling his daughter the truth.

  Incredibly, Amelia knew without a doubt that—just as he’d insisted—he’d drawn a rare royal flush in a hand of five-card stud in an all-night, winner-take-all poker game with J.D. Thayer and Ezra Kemp. He had won back Charlie Hunter’s Bay View Hotel seconds before the cataclysm struck.

  Even more incredibly, these two thin cards had been lodged for nearly fifteen months deep inside the pocket of her father’s dress trousers, where he had attempted to stuff all five as the first shock hit. Amelia remembered gently dislodging the ace, queen, and ten of diamonds from the tips of Henry’s crushed fingers. Then, at her father’s insistence, she’d fruitlessly searched amid the rubble for the jack and king of diamonds that he’d managed to stuff in his trouser pocket—and that now peered up at her.

  Her father had been sedated with laudanum until he’d died, and thus had no clear recollection of the immediate aftermath of the quake. He may not even have been aware that he’d succeeded in sequestering some of the playing cards in his pocket as he dove futilely for cover.

  As for the trousers themselves, Amelia recalled her aunt sponging off the dust and grime with a cloth soaked in lemon water and baking soda. Obviously Margaret had been too upset by this painful chore to check the deep pockets for any personal items its late owner had left behind. Once the clothing had been cleaned, Amelia had stowed the trousers at the very bottom of her trunk, never having the heart to appropriate as part of her work uniform the last item of clothing her father had ever worn.

  Until today.

  It took her breath away.

  She stared vacantly into space, a thousand images flitting through her mind. Horrible visions came back to haunt her—of her father’s spats peeking from beneath the gaming table that had crushed his spine. Of J.D., slumped against the shattered doorway of the gambling club, bleeding from his forehead and half-dead. Of Barbary, whining softly by his side. Of the heat, smoke, fire, and death she’d witnessed that terrible morning, along with the infuriating image of Ezra Kemp pushing aside women and children to escape on board the ferry to save himself, while two hundred and fifty thousand wretched quake refugees scrambled for safety all over the city.

  Despite the morning’s chill, Amelia’s shirtwaist clung to her back, soaked with perspiration. She trembled uncontrollably. Would these horrid apparitions never cease, grisly reminiscences that lurked just below the surface of her conscious thoughts?

  In her mind’s eye, she could picture the other three cards she’d stored in the top drawer of the chest at Aunt Margaret’s. A small voice whispered that even though she now had in her possession all five diamonds in a royal flush, there once must have been at least three-dozen decks of engraved playing cards stored in the gambling club’s cupboards on the day of the quake. Would the color of the ink, or perhaps J.D.’s initials on all five cards, help her establish the link between these two cards and the other three—and most importantly—prove that all five cards came from the same deck?

  And even if she could confirm this, would anyone accept her evidence?

  But what were the odds that the last two cards missing from Henry Bradshaw’s royal flush would have surfaced in her father’s dress pants pocket—the same garment he’d worn on the night of the temblor? Would either of the two surviving players in that infamous contest admit, now, to having seen her father spread the ace, king, queen, jack, and ten of diamonds on the gaming table in the wee hours of April 18, 1906?

  If she showed J.D. these cards, whom would he declare—a year later—to be the true and legal owner of the hotel looming behind her?

  And who had been lying to her all this time?

  Chapter 32

  At the opposite end of the Bay View property in a newly painted penthouse bedroom, J.D. dressed quickly, took the elevator to the mezzanine, and descended the stairs to the main floor, striding swiftly through the silent lobby. He glanced at the clock installed the day before in the oak paneling that surrounded the regal front desk. He had returned to the Bay View at 2 a.m. and now it was just under five hours later and he felt like hell. He hadn’t even stopped in the kitchen for a cup of coffee after spending a sleepless night weighing the best course to take in the next twenty-four hours. By dawn’s light, he had made up his mind.

  He was certain that by now Amelia must have seen or been told about the engagement announcement in the Call, but he would have to deal with the repercussions of that later. His most important mission was to prevent Kemp from wreaking any more havoc in his or her life.

  He stepped through the front entrance that opened onto Taylor Street and headed for the Winton, parked where he’d left it late the previous night. The motorcar started up without hesitation, and soon he was wheeling toward the Western Addition, the early morning air streaming past as he drove toward Russian Hill and Pacific Heights.

  When the parlor maid opened the front door to his parents’ house on Octavia Street, the Thayer’s servant appeared startled by the unusual hour of his call, but she politely ushered her employer’s son into the foyer.

  “Your father’s at his breakfast, sir,” she said. “Shall I announce you?”

  “No, I’ll just show myself in. Thank you, Sophia.”

  James Thayer was alone, seated at the head of a long, mahogany dining table where remarkably few family meals had ever been served. He looked up from his eggs and toast, and immediately threw his morning paper aside in a gesture of contempt.

  “What are you doing h
ere? If you seek my blessing for this preposterous engagement of yours to Kemp’s—”

  “On the contrary, Father,” J.D. interrupted, “I seek your help extracting me from it.” He sat in a dining chair to his father’s right.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, J.D.!” He pointed to the newspaper. “The ink on the public announcement is barely dry and now you come to your senses?”

  “Kemp put it in the papers without my knowledge or permission. I’ve spent the last few months telling him I wouldn’t marry his daughter.”

  “What? Why, the impertinence of that pushy, overreaching—”

  “He’s far worse than that, Father. He’s a murderer. He hired a bunch of hooligans to attack my workers. Several are dead, including a seven-year-old boy.”

  “We’ve had this sort of discussion before, J.D. When you involve yourself with those filthy Chinese—”

  “Wait a minute,” J.D. interrupted for a second time, “let’s not forget your own involvement with a few Chinese in the not-so-distant past.”

  Big Jim Thayer slammed both fists on the dining room table, rattling the chinaware so forcefully that a small bread plate flew off and crashed onto the hardwood floor.

  “Will you get to the point and then get out?” he demanded furiously.

  It was time now, after many years of waiting, to play the Ling Lee card. J.D. had wondered when the moment would come, and now it finally had.

  “I merely employed Chinese women,” J.D. said conversationally, taking a seat to Big Jim’s right at the dining table and lifting his father’s cup of coffee to his lips. “They worked for me as clerks, restaurant staff, and chambermaids and, in the case of Ling Lee, as an accountant.” He leaned toward his father. “I paid them a salary. I didn’t abuse them. I didn’t force myself on them. Like you did.”

  His father’s fork was midway to his mouth. He set it down with a clang.

  “You’re talking rubbish. You lived with the harlot. Everybody knows that.”