by Karen Wills
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ignorant of either Michael’s existence, or Nora and Jim’s whereabouts, Bat Moriarty and Lou left Clancy in 1890, traveling for the next fourteen years by stage and rail, retracing journeys with stays that lasted months or sometimes as long as a year in Billings, Bismarck, Deadwood, and Denver. Best of all, several times they hit San Francisco. That harbor city never lost its gleam as a gambler’s utopia. From the wide-open Barbary Coast, to the opium dens and cribs of Chinatown, to the French restaurants with private rooms, the city never failed as a jewel-bedecked haven for vice. They spent more time there than the other western cities and towns, but Bat would never settle down. Restless and hunting, he always returned to his search for Jim Li.
A cool detachment belied Bat’s intense determination to win. He joined or organized all-night rounds in saloons and hotels. In spite of never seeming to sleep, he won often. Lou, frowzy and voluptuous in red satin or velvet, stood at his shoulder when he played. She always carried a large red handbag that matched her dress. Lou stored laudanum in that red purse, enough to keep Bat calm.
“She’s my luck,” he told those who wondered out loud.
Bat Moriarty intrigued others, a detached, steady man with scarred hands and preternatural skill with cards. When the games finished early, he wandered alone through Chinatowns of cities that included them. His eyes glittered in the glow of streetlights, focusing on any tall Asians, ignoring the birdlike calls of caged prostitutes.
Although Bat’s face had escaped the fire unscarred, suffering left his skin drawn and lined. His black hair turned white. His one overt concession to the inferno’s ravages was that he wore fingerless gloves of gray kid leather. He became known for them and for the vulgar, deep-voiced woman in red who hovered over his games, leaving only when he signaled her to go.
Lou settled for her nurse-lover role. She purchased and measured out doses. If Bat sometimes disappeared for a night, she neither questioned nor complained. When his black moods exploded into blows, she endured them. His success at cards made it unnecessary to go back to her old profession, and she gained a certain status in western saloons and bawdy houses as Bat Moriarty’s good luck charm.
Only one thing troubled Lou. More than the nights when he didn’t lie next to her, it bothered her that Bat asked everywhere about the Chinaman Jim Li. Lou remembered Jim, and she knew something else. She knew he’d befriended Nora Larkin. If anyone would know about Li, it would be Nora. She remembered how the pregnant housekeeper went into labor the night of the fire and called for Jim Li, but Lou never told Bat. Who knew where the woman had gone? She’d heard that all but Lillie’s favorites had scattered to less accident-prone establishments.
On the evening of April 17, 1906, at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, as Bat and Lou passed the front desk, a dark-haired woman with gold nugget earrings registered. Her unblinking hazel eyes scanned the room like a raptor’s hunting for prey.
Once in her rooms, Clementine Dasher luxuriated in a long bath. She’d just returned from London, the affair with Smith-Gordon over for good. Ever the aristocrat, he’d been generous at their parting. Now Clementine prowled for a new life, a new patron.
She dressed in a low-cut black velvet gown with a three-inch black choker and long black gloves. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror and saw a face still arresting. Satisfied, Clementine left her suite and made her way toward charming sounds of violins and tinkling crystal floating from under the grand dining room’s chandelier.
She noticed the dashing gambler and the big blonde he escorted. He looked languid and bored. His heavy-lidded eyes met Clementine’s, and he inclined his head almost imperceptibly. She smiled. He abandoned the ample-bosomed lady at his table, approached Clementine, and bowed. “Excuse my intrusion, but I should know you. Did we meet in Chicago some years ago?”
“Please sit down—Mr. Moriarty.” The name leapt out of hiding. Bat Moriarty. Older. Carefree no more. That much she intimated from the lines around his eyes and in the tightness of his mouth. He reminded her of resentful men she’d known, those capable of rationalizing cruelty. Something had happened to the gambler who used to make her sisters at the bawdyhouse surrender to fits of hilarity . . . or swoon.
“I can’t abandon my companion, but would you join us, Miss—?”
“Clementine Dasher. We met ages ago in Chicago at dear Ma Touchwood’s establishment.”
“Ah. The lady is frank.” Bat pulled out her chair. She noted the fingerless gloves and fingers branched in scars. She hoped he noted the long line of her slender back and fragrant slope of her bare shoulders. However, he remained unmoved to investigate further.
Lou received Clementine with guarded courtesy, but chatted at ease enough when Clementine let her know she shared a past similar to her own, albeit a rung or more up the whores’ ladder by the look of her. In a few moments, Lou grew uneasy all over again when Clementine touched the fourth finger of Bat’s right hand.
“Bat, you sometimes used to wear a ring, a memorable diamond. Don’t tell me you lost that gorgeous thing in a wager.”
Bat flexed his hand. “No wager—in a fire. A damned Chinaman named Jim Li stole it off my hand while I lay helpless. I’d give a year of my life to find him.”
“But isn’t this lucky? I met this man while on a hunting trip through the North Fork of the Flathead River in Montana. He was with an Irish woman . . . a Nora Larkin.”
Lou jumped, emitting a startled hiccup.
“Nora Larkin?” Bat swung his head to Lou then back to Clementine like an angry bull. “Nora Larkin?”
“That’s right,” Clementine said. “Your thief lived with her. He cost my companion, Lord Smith-Gordon, a tidy sum when they played poker.”
“By god, little Nora Larkin,” Bat muttered. “Lou, what do you know about this?”
Lou chewed the inside of her cheek while fiddling with her napkin. “She worked at Lillie’s as the housekeeper. It was Jim Li brought her to Lillie. She went into labor the night of the fire. After that they must have partnered up. I swear I didn’t know anything about it.”
Bat blinked. “Did Nora and Li take a baby to the North Fork? What was it, anyway?” he tried to sound casual, but Lou wasn’t fooled.
In a belated attempt to save her place at least as a tarnished good luck charm, she forced a shaky laugh. “No. I heard from one of the girls who came through Clancy that Nora Larkin sent her baby boy off to live with folks she knew somewhere.”
“There was no little boy on the place when we stayed there,” Clementine added. “No, wait. Before I left, the Larkin woman rode in with a baby girl, an Indian orphan she’d taken to raise.”
Bat closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and pushed his plate away. “Lou,” he ordered, “time to go upstairs.”
Lou cast a triumphant glance at Clementine. Bat still meant to keep her with him. One suspected act of disloyalty wouldn’t change anything. She rose unsteadily, pulling the tablecloth sideways with her. Clementine slapped her hands on it in a startled attempt to save her wine. Lou sniggered, staggering into a surprised waiter.
Bat gripped Lou’s upper arm. She winced, and they proceeded up the stairs, one of Lou’s shoulders higher than the other where Bat kept her soft white flesh billowing out between his scarred fingers. At their door he pushed her through, slammed, then locked it. He struck her a blow to the side of the head with his fist, another to her stomach. She fell to her hands and knees, retching.
“Bitch. You held out on me. You knew where they were.”
Lou gained enough breath to struggle to her feet. “No, just that they knew each other. What difference did it make? I didn’t know you knew Nora Larkin. Don’t I always try to help you, honey? Remember who saved you from the fire?”
Bat stood breathing in harsh intakes like sobs. Reason returned to his eyes. “Yes. You saved me from the fire. You did. Get me a dose, Lou.”
Lou limped warily to her handbag and measured out the medi
cine as though for a child or invalid. She recapped and dropped the bottle back in her purse, poured water onto a cloth, and wiped off the spoon. She sighed at her reflection in the wall mirror. “Your good luck charm can’t go downstairs tonight. You gave it a shiner.”
Bat’s head tipped against the back of his chair and he sighed. “Stay here then. I don’t give a damn. I can win without you. I’ll audition the tall blackbird—what’s her name? Clementine, Clementine, won’t you please be mine, Clementine . . .” His voice trailed into drugged sleep and he dozed, sighing at intervals.
Lou studied him. He meant it. This time he’d leave her. She slipped the laudanum supply out of her bag and lifted the window to cool night air, setting the bottles on the fire escape landing.
Two stories below, a man cursed, trying to calm his distraught horse. The animal reared, frantic. The struggling rider looked up and saw her. “Sorry for the language,” he called up. “He’s usually so calm. Something’s got him spooked.”
Lou shrugged and closed the window. She held a wet cloth to her swelling eye. After two hours, she shook Bat’s shoulder. “Wake up, honey. Time to win.”
Bat awoke feeling sluggish, splashed water on his face, and put on a clean shirt and vest. He walked out the door without speaking.
Clementine had moved to a table in the saloon until he beckoned her. During the game she stood like a raven at his shoulder, but he lost. He threw down the cards in disgust at 4:45 a.m.
As they walked to their rooms, Bat asked about the North Fork. Where exactly was the Li family? Clementine described the route of her journey with Smith-Gordon and Pete Dumont. “I’d like to see that Celestial humbled. He humiliated Smith-Gordon at the game, and it was a lot of work for me to make that fool aristocrat feel proud again.” She fingered Bat’s lapel and raised her eyes. “Why are you with that awful woman? You could think about moving up.” Then she sighed.
“Good night, Clementine. Good to see you. You’ve been useful.” Bat Moriarty wasn’t thinking about moving up. Something else consumed him.
Bat walked toward his room, relieved to be rid of Clementine. His instinct for luck still untouched by laudanum addiction, he’d felt a prickle on the back of his neck when Clementine stood behind him like a perfectly formed, malevolent shadow. He’d known such women before, and they weren’t always prostitutes. Deirdre had a bit of it in her, women who appeared all soft and desirable and then drained you until they left a void only bad luck could fill. And usually, a woman like Clementine passed bad luck coming in as she slipped out, her skirts brushing against the grotesque shape of it as she made her escape.
As he progressed down the dim, quiet hallway, thin anger invaded Bat and fattened with each footfall on the red carpet. His tired saunter became a furious stride. By God, Lou hadn’t seen the end of this. It was her fault he’d lost.
A great tearing jolted the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The San Andreas Fault had awakened. One of its walls slipped one way, another thrust the opposite, and that parting opened the ocean floor with a tremor that shot toward land like a bullet. The tremor, about to devastate a great city, raced toward it, tearing open the earth’s surface as if it were thin cloth.
Bat turned his key in the door to the room where Lou had fallen into fitful sleep. He yanked her out of bed, wrenching her arm as the tremor wrenched, twisted, and snapped everything in its advance. Lou cried out as Bat backhanded her. She fell against the heavy armoire, cracking her head hard against its corner before slumping to the floor, her eyes, one bruised, gazing expressionless into Bat’s.
He nudged her with his boot. Her glassy stare might have belonged to a china-headed, cloth-bodied doll. He dropped to his knees and shook her. “Lou? Lou, wake up. I need a dose. Lou!” He slapped her, and the doll’s head swung to the side, still painted into a vacant gaze.
Bat growled, more afraid this time than angry. Then he heard a rumble from something vast and deeper than his own chest. A demonic force flung him away from Lou’s body. He rolled against the bed just as the heavy armoire crashed over her. Its opened doors spilled red satin and velvet around her body. The water pitcher tottered, then shattered on the floor. The bed danced across the room while the mirror and pictures jigged off their fastenings to drop beside overturned lamps and chairs.
Bat alternately pressed against the floor, rolled against walls, or tossed up to land with a grunting thud. The roar stopped—the cacophony of walls, roofs, cornices, and glass breaking and jangling, crumpling and juddering stuffed his ears. All movement ceased. Bat sprawled amid the wreckage, testing his limbs for obedience. He turned to Lou.
“I need it, Lou.” He sat up and reached for her handbag. The laudanum wasn’t there. He screamed in fear and rage just as the second shock hit. Sounds of wrenching, smashing, spattering, and thumping drowned out his voice. The delicate tinkling as laudanum bottles danced to the edge, then off the wrought iron landing was too slight for him to hear.
Silence. Bat stared at Lou and swore. How had he been so stupid? It was Li’s fault. Li had started the whole chain that brought them to this. He’d gone over it a million times. If the Chinaman had only pulled him away from the fire—the pain of the burns. Now Lou lay dead.
Bat forced the trauma-warped window open. Dust rose outside to nearly two stories. At first there was nothing. He might be alone, a sole survivor. Then he heard sounds of human misery, groans and cries of pain and fear.
He stepped around the fallen armoire. The door to the hallway opened partway on sprung hinges. Among white-faced guests, a maid, cap askew, hurried toward him. “It’s an earthquake, sir. Manager says all the guests must come downstairs. There’s danger of another shock, and it’s safer under arches. The place might collapse around our ears.”
“I’ll just grab a few things.”
Bat stepped back into the room. Only the distracted maid had seen him. Trembling, he righted a fallen chair, and sat, forcing his thoughts to order. In minutes, he slipped out. Let them find Lou alone, killed by a fallen armoire.
Pale, bloodied, disheveled survivors, many still in nightclothes, crowded the lobby. Bat heard one ask a waiter where a doctor could be found. “There’s a temporary infirmary in the saloon,” the man answered in a foreign accent. “One of the hotel guests, a doctor, has set up there.”
Clementine lay in the infirmary, her arm in a sling. The overwhelmed physician, a bloodstained bandage covering his own ear, didn’t notice Bat’s starved look as Clementine took a small dose of laudanum.
“She’ll need more of that, won’t she?” Bat asked.
“It would ease the pain later, but I can’t give her any more. There’s but one bottle left in my bag and others need it.”
“Of course, I’ll sit with Miss Dasher.”
When the doctor turned to answer another patient’s question, Bat slipped his hand in the bag. His fingers closed around a bottle. Clementine whimpered in uneasy sleep as Bat strode out, pocketing the laudanum.
He walked through the full lobby into the street, tipped back the bottle, and drank. Dazed hordes milled around him, caked by dust, some with torn and stained clothes, some carrying bundles, pets, living and dead children.
“I finally made it to hell,” Bat muttered. Another shock threw him off balance. A store crumpled nearby. Falling beams and mortar mixed with breaking glass. Bat swallowed more laudanum.
“Fire!” He heard the cry and grimaced. It was true. He was in hell. He’d been there before and remembered. Heat and flames licking, crackling, popping, orange arms thrust skyward. And the pain. There would be cataclysmic fires after this. Still, the Fire Department would handle it.
He staggered a little. The aftershocks terrified those shuffling past. Bat decided to blend in with them, like parading with ghosts. Bat overheard that the firefighters’ hoses were rendered nearly useless. Damaged pipes—empty cisterns—little for the firemen to do but make firebreaks. He also heard talk of looters, rings, and other jewelry stripped from corpses, stores and saloons
plundered.
He looked for a hospital. A hospital would have drugs, and he would need laudanum again soon. Amid downed wires and the bodies of humans and horses, living people, dogs, and cats rushed past him, postures contorted in horror.
He found a hospital where the injured were being bandaged, but medicine seemed in short supply. Bat walked outside. Smoke burned his lungs and eyes. Fire raced toward him only this time he didn’t lie helpless. This time he could move. That is, nothing physical prevented him, but he seemed stuck as Lot’s wife, only turned to dread in human form instead of a figure of salt.
His anguished eyes found the street sign: Larkin. “Ah. Nora. Nora Larkin. Had my son, have my diamond. I’m going to follow Nora. Nora Larkin, I’ll follow you. Find my prey . . . make him sorry . . . make you weep.” He slouched up Larkin Street toward Nob Hill, following the signs reading Larkin until guided away from the fire.
Near Nob Hill, Bat turned to look back at the city. Smoke rose nearly two miles into the air and he heard a new sound added to the din from below, a kind of thumping. “It’s dynamite,” a voice behind him announced. “The crazy sons-of-bitches are blowing up intact homes to make firebreaks.”
Bat hesitated, then turned toward the group who’d gathered to watch the destruction of their city. “I need laudanum,” he said. “Is Chinatown still standing?”
“Yes,” a jaded-looking man answered. “A man can get anything in Chinatown. That won’t change.”
Bat headed east at a staggering trot. Some buildings lay in rubble, but others stood. Almost involuntarily he noted the men, measuring their height. Silly when he’d just learned his man dwelt in Montana’s wilderness. Bat reached an herb shop as the proprietor was locking the door. He convinced the merchant to transact quick business. The owner analyzed Bat’s ravaged face and sold him two bottles at an inflated price.
Bat stepped outside. Dynamite had brought about more conflagrations. Terrified people raced ahead of flames whose searing heat blasted his skin. Cursing, Bat ran. Just another one of the panicked crowd, he stopped, panting for air, leaning his hands against his knees, head down.