by Ciji Ware
Like the reopening of the Fairmont, the evening’s occasion had brought out a bevy of Stanfords, Crockers, Huntingtons, Hopkinses, and Spreckels, along with a new wave of politicians who not only wished to honor the newlyweds from two powerful families, but to celebrate another milestone in San Francisco’s astonishing triumph over unprecedented adversity. And what better way to commemorate such a remarkable achievement than a wedding—an event pregnant with promise for the future.
How shocked these guests will be to learn the identity of the true owner of this legendary hotel site, Amelia thought defiantly. How embarrassed to hear the names of people in their midst who were responsible for unprecedented graft and the deaths of untold nameless women—women who had perished behind the iron bars of brothels, unwilling captives on the day the earth shuddered and the heavens burned. Women whose bodies had never been counted in the official death toll.
Surely, Amelia Hunter Bradshaw was the last person Ezra Kemp or J.D. Thayer expected to make an appearance on this occasion, for she now possessed the proof that could destroy at least one man’s dreams, just as the quake and fire of ’06 had shattered the hopes of so many others.
She noticed reporter James Hopper lounging in one corner of the ballroom talking to a handsome young man furiously writing in a notebook—and she quickly looked away. Then she returned her father’s gold watch to her handbag and nestled the soiled remnants of that long forgotten poker contest next to the cherished timepiece—and her pearl-handled revolver. Next, she removed her velvet cloak and hung it neatly on the balustrade.
For a few more seconds she stood poised at the top of the stairs in her daring Paris finery and scanned the scene below. On the far side of the ballroom, behind a pillar, she spotted Jake Kelly and Joe Kavanaugh also surveying the crowd. Kemp’s henchmen had squeezed into evening clothes and looked like matching, overstuffed sofas. With a start, she spied Dick Spitz posted near the ballroom’s south entrance where gaggles of late-arriving guests joined the long queue for the reception line of civic dignitaries. He was obviously looking for someone.
Then she saw J.D.
He stood near the foot of the grand staircase, nodding and shaking hands with guests who were offering praise for his new hotel and congratulations about his pending marriage. A little Chinese girl stood shyly by his side. On his other side was a woman with a bronze complexion and shining black hair drawn sleekly into a chignon at the nape of her neck. J.D. frequently bent his head to speak to his mother and then leaned down and smiled encouragingly at the little girl.
Amelia steeled herself from thinking well of him for being so kind this night to members of his family that he had previously shunned. Better that her heart went out to the orphan child, she reminded herself, wondering how J.D. explained the identity of Wing Lee to the visitors filing by.
For a moment, Amelia caressed the polished walnut banister, an elegant symbol of a city that had literally risen from cinder and ash. Then, she slowly descended the crimson carpet. Soon a decision would be made and all secrets revealed.
But not yet.
***
Reporters James Hopper and Jack London stood off to the side of the glittering throng, notebooks held loosely in one hand, champagne glasses in the other.
“What do you think the chances are that President Roosevelt will make a surprise appearance?” London asked.
“Zero,” Hopper retorted with the vehemence of a City Room cynic. “The newspaper’s had spotters at the train station all week. It was just that blowhard, Ezra Kemp, trying to drum up guests for his daughter’s wedding.”
“Well, it worked with my editors at Collier’s,” London noted, adding, “here I am, all the way from Sonoma.”
“Is that bride not the ugliest creature you ever laid eyes on?” Hopper said pointing across the room to a massive collection of white tulle lurking at the ballroom’s entrance.
London laughed. “And tell me, please. How are we supposed to describe her in print?”
“Blushing,” Hopper said. “Always safe to call ’em blushing, no matter what they look like.” He glanced in the other direction and noted an attractive woman, gowned in a stunning, low-cut yellow silk dress, pausing half way down the grand staircase. He took another sip of his champagne and gazed at her with admiration.
“Well, well… will you look over there, London.” He gestured with his glass in Amelia Bradshaw’s direction. “I happen to know that there’s a woman whom I would refer to in print as a real looker—and a damn interesting one at that.”
***
Amelia hesitated on the final step, her eyes riveted on J.D. He was attired in starched white tie and tails, surrounded not only by his mother and Wing Lee, but by the reform mayor, Dr. Edward R. Taylor, and a host of city leaders, all of who were offering him their hearty felicitations. Dr. Angus McClure, serving as J.D.’s best man, stood to one side, appearing distinctly uncomfortable in his dress clothes. Shou Shou had just scooped up Wing Lee, undoubtedly on a mission to put the child to bed.
From Amelia’s angle, a pained expression played across J.D.’s features as well-wishers approached, clapped him on the back and shoulders, and joyfully moved on toward the free wine offered, buffet style, on linen-draped tables positioned along the ballroom’s side walls.
Amelia intently watched her erstwhile lover. The scars above his eyebrows had faded and now lent his tanned face character, as if the faint marks remained an outward symbol of the suffering all San Franciscans had endured. She thought of her own scars, which were camouflaged by the few strands of her hair not captured in her upswept Gibson. And then there were other wounds that couldn’t be masked so easily…
She remained rooted to the spot, barely ten feet from J.D., willing him to turn and see her, and within seconds he did. They exchanged glances—his startled; hers, she hoped, expressionless. She threaded the rest of her way down the stairs, the space between them telescoping to less than a foot.
“You came,” he murmured, his gaze never leaving her face. “You haven’t left for France, yet.”
Amelia extended no greeting but reached into her handbag and retrieved five playing cards. She displayed them inches from his starched white shirtfront. First she showed him the backs of the cards where his initials and the words The Bay View Hotel could clearly be read, despite the damaged edges. Then, she turned them over and fanned them across the palm of her kid glove.
“May I speak to you a moment, Mr. Thayer?”
J.D. glanced at the cards and stared at her wordlessly for a few moments. He looked at an astonished Angus McClure and then pointed to a private corner near a cluster of potted palms. “Over there,” he directed.
Amelia didn’t acknowledge any of the dignitaries in their midst; she merely followed the prospective groom to a secluded spot and prepared to deliver the speech that had been taking shape in her mind for several days.
“You may have seen these five cards before, but even if you haven’t, the truth is my father played this royal flush in this hotel on the day of the quake and won back the Bay View property, fair and square.”
J.D. gazed at the cards but made no response.
“Inspect them very carefully, J.D.” She pointed to the ace, queen, and ten of diamonds. “As I told you twice before, these three were still in my father’s hand when I found him pinned under the gaming table.” She displayed the jack and king. “I found these two totally by accident, wedged into the right-side pocket of the dress trousers my father was wearing on the night of the quake when he played five-card stud at your gambling club.”
“Why haven’t you told me this before?”
“I only found the final two cards on the morning I left here.” She pointed again to the ace, queen, and ten of diamonds. “As one might expect, these original three are rather worse for wear, having been in Father’s hand when he fell to the ground in the quake. The other two that he’d managed to stuff into his pocket when the shaking started are in perfect condition, as you can see
.” She gazed directly into his dark eyes. “I wore the trousers for the first time the morning of my final inspection of the property. How else would I have this five-card sequence of diamonds with these distinctive marks and with the Bay View’s name on the back—and your initials—if I weren’t telling the truth?”
“I believe you.”
Startled he didn’t dispute her claim, she searched his face, his features now an expressionless mask.
“Good,” she managed finally, taken off guard by his frank admission, “because what I’m presenting to you is the truth.”
J.D. said, “I saw Henry Bradshaw lay down four sequential diamonds, and just as he was turning over the fifth card—as I told you before—the world turned upside down.”
Amelia allowed her hand to fall by her side to keep him from seeing that it had started to tremble. “J.D., I don’t know whether I believe your version of how much you saw or not. I don’t even expect you to hand me the deed to the hotel.”
“What do you want, then, Amelia?” he asked quietly.
“I want you to do the honorable thing and vest me as an equal, legal partner in this hotel we built together. I want you to pay my mother and me a commensurate, annual portion of your profits from this day forward. As I indicated in my note, I am leaving on the train for New York and thence on to Paris. However, I wish to know now—this very instant, before your marriage, and in writing—that both my mother and I may live in reasonable comfort for the rest of our lives, partaking of the profits earned by this hotel. Certainly, the gambler who was my father owes it to her, and I want that debt to be paid by you.”
“And what will you do if I don’t agree to this plan?”
Amelia gazed at his shuttered eyes, fully prepared for this moment.
“If you chose to fight me on this, I shall instruct my attorney, Mr. Damler, to sue you and put a lien on this hotel, asserting my full ownership by virtue of my inheriting through my late grandfather what my deceased father won back. I will compel Mr. Kemp to testify about that night. I shall also complain to Mr. Spreckels and to the Secret Service about the bribes you paid to get your gambling club built swiftly while I was in France, unable to defend my property, and how you continued to dispense graft with the result that the boilers in your second hotel blew up, endangering all of Nob Hill.”
“And how do you suppose to prove that?”
Ignoring his question, she waved the cards in front of him once again.
“Furthermore, I shall insinuate you continued to bribe city officials through your ongoing relationship with Kemp, your future father-in-law,” she said, feeling a ball of anger in the pit of her chest expand until she thought it might burst through the bodice of her low-cut gown. “Not only that,” she added, swearing to herself should would not allow her voice to waver as tears threatened to well up, “I will grant an interview to Mr. Hopper and Mr. London, who are both here tonight, to tell the story of how you and Kemp attempted to cheat a family of poor, defenseless women out of their inheritance. It should make an especially interesting feature, given that everyone in San Francisco knows that I have designed and supervised the construction of your trophy.”
“You? Defenseless?” A slow smile spread across J.D.’s face. “That’s what I love about you, Amelia. You’re just like me. You just don’t give up.”
“I am not at all like you, Mr. Thayer!”
“Oh yes, you are. You like to win.”
Amelia was sorely tempted to slap the grin off J.D.’s face when Ezra Kemp suddenly elbowed his way through the crowd of curious onlookers. Following in his wake was a towering apparition clad in yards of white tulle and lace that did nothing to soften her athletic shoulders or bony hips. And trailing Matilda, dressed in a frothy pink silk evening gown, her devoted friend Emma Stivers appeared equally astounded to see the groom in a private tête-à-tête with a woman who was not the bride.
Kemp was livid, glaring first at J.D. and then at Amelia. “You said Amelia Bradshaw was on her way to France!” he bellowed, turning more heads.
“I thought she was,” J.D. replied in a low, even voice. “She must enjoy weddings. Show him the royal flush, Amelia.”
With her gloved fingertips, she again spread the cards into a fan.
“What about it, Kemp?” J.D. asked. “Want to provide Amelia the details how you tried to cheat her father and me that night?”
Chapter 35
Jake? Joe?” Kemp called over his shoulder, but the milling crowd slowed the progress of the two burly henchmen. Meanwhile J.D. began to speak to Kemp almost casually.
“You thought you would produce a hand that night that would make the Bay View yours, didn’t you, Kemp? But around five a.m., Miss Bradshaw,” he continued, his voice increasing in volume and now addressing Amelia and the surrounding throng, “I insisted on exchanging the stacked deck Mr. Kemp, here, had been using all night with one from my personal cupboard. See?” he said, seizing Amelia’s gloved hand to turn the cards down, “here are my initials.”
“That’s preposterous!” Kemp thundered. “You had dozens of decks with “JDT” printed on them in the hotel. She has no proof that this hand came from the particular deck you unwrapped at five a.m.”
“You must admit, Ezra, the earthquake and fire that destroyed the hotel that day improves her odds of being right.”
“Prove it!” Kemp challenged her.
“No, you prove it,” Amelia intervened, turning to glare directly at Kemp. “Produce just one other deck like this.” She was so filled with fury she had to clasp her hands together to keep from reaching inside her handbag for her pistol. “There’ve been two fires that swept this hotel, burning everything to a crisp, and one of them was probably engineered by you, Mr. Kemp. So, simply show me a surviving deck of cards that came from the old Bay View. I dare you!”
Kemp pointed a trembling finger at her. “She had the run of the place while you were building the first hotel, J.D. She probably found a cache of old playing cards in a safe, or someone from Oakland kept a deck as a souvenir, and now she’s concocting this larcenous allegation—”
Amelia turned to confront the man who towered over her. “You saw my father’s winning hand,” she practically shouted at Kemp, waving the royal flush inches from his face. “He told me on his deathbed that you definitely knew that he had played these cards because you sat right next to him!”
“Then, why, missy, if you supposedly had these cards, didn’t you tell anyone before tonight?”
“Because, Mr. Kemp,” she said, narrowing her glance to look him straight in the eye, “until a few days ago, as I’d earlier told Mr. Thayer, I had only three cards—the ace, queen, and ten of diamonds. I’d retrieved them from my father’s hand where he lay crushed in the rubble of the old hotel. He’d been abandoned by you when you fled the scene that terrible morning without offering anyone help—even including Mr. Thayer here, who was injured nearly as seriously as Henry Bradshaw!”
She separated out the jack and king of diamonds and held them up for the benefit of the crowd that pressed ever nearer.
“And then, through an astounding turn of events on Friday, last,” she continued loudly, “I happened to put my hand into the pocket of the very trousers my father had been wearing on the night of the quake, and discovered these two cards from the same deck. He’d managed to stuff them into his clothing when he dove under the table that, seconds later, crushed his back when the ceiling caved in on top of it.”
She shoved the cards under Kemp’s nose.
“Take a good look, Mr. Kemp. My father died because of his injuries that night. These cards have returned to haunt you, sir.” She fanned all five cards in her palm once again, displaying them for the rubbernecking throng. Aunt Margaret, Julia Morgan, and Amelia’s other women friends, plus Donaldina Cameron, stood on the grand staircase, watching her in frozen silence.
“A royal flush,” Amelia pronounced, enunciating each consonant for the benefit of reporters Hopper and London. “A rar
e event, by any standard. Drawn by my father, Henry Bradshaw, at Mr. Thayer’s former gambling club on this site in a winner-take-all poker game at five-thirteen in the morning of April eighteenth, 1906!”
Amelia could hear the crowd murmur and J.D. begin to chuckle.
“Isn’t it the perfect irony?” he said to Kemp, who appeared close to having a stroke. “Henry Bradshaw had us both beat, Ezra. Can you feature that? You have to admit it. Amelia here holds the cards that prove—”
Just then, Kemp roughly slapped the cards out of Amelia’s hand. The roomful of people gasped as all five fluttered to the floor.
“Henry Bradshaw was a known drunkard and a liar. Now a dead liar, fortunately.” Kemp jerked his head in the direction of Kelly, Kavanaugh, and Spitz, who, by this time, had burrowed their way to the first tier of people surrounding the principal players in the high drama.
Amelia heard her own involuntary gasp at the close proximity of the men who had rape or murder in mind when the midnight marauders attacked the Chinese laborers months before. The night seven-year-old Foo was beaten to death.
“Jake! Dick!” Kemp ordered. “Take her out of here. Now!”
Rigid with fury, Amelia reached into her handbag and withdrew her pearl-handled weapon. At the same moment, J.D. pulled back his arm and released a tremendous punch to Ezra Kemp’s jaw, toppling him to the floor like a pile of lumber.
Just then, the sound of a gunshot ricocheted through the ballroom. Women screamed and men ducked for cover. The hulking figure of Jake Kelly lunging for Amelia halted in his tracks, unmarked by Amelia’s shot that had lodged harmlessly in the beautifully polished parquet floor. Even so, a terrified Kelly spun in place and hurriedly melted into the crowd, followed by Dick Spitz and Joe Kavanaugh, running in zigzag courses to catch up with him.