by John Jakes
Next, Le Consommé de Hôte Palace: clear chicken stock and abalone broth, placed in individual cups, napped with lightly salted whipped cream, dusted with nutmeg, and lightly glazed before serving.
Then, Le Filet de Sole Sautée: sand dabs, California’s best fish, filleted, sauteed simply, and served with lemon wedges.
The quail followed, with Mack’s own stuffing of brown rice, nuts, and dried apricots, the whole glazed with his marinade of orange juice and Sonoma Creek wine.
In the European style, the salad came after these entrees. La Salade de Saison: The Pasadena salad was a composition of greens, sections of grapefruit and orange—the oranges were Calgolds—and wedges of avocado. A slightly sweet vinaigrette flavored it.
Following Le Plateau de Fromages Assortis—Mack told guests seated nearby that very good French-style cheese had been made in Sonoma County for years—the waiters marched in with a triumph for dessert, La Poire Conde: whole cored pears from one of his Valley farms, poached in a sweetened wine collation and served on a bed of creamy sauce anglaise, the whole dripping with a dark-chocolate sauce and sprinkled with crushed almond macaroons.
To conclude—Le Café Noir, Demi-tasse.
At eleven-thirty, Mr. Joe Snell of the Bohemian Club proposed a toast of appreciation to their host.
Instead, someone started clapping. Astonished, Mack saw that it was the sob sister for de Young’s Chronicle. He hadn’t noticed her before, undoubtedly because he hadn’t expected her to show up. He’d sent the invitation because de Young’s paper was too important to ignore.
She jumped to her feet, breathy, tearful, and slightly drunk.
She led the standing ovation.
They remembered that night long afterward in San Francisco. It was the start of a legend: the Chance banquets. Nothing like them in America, said those privileged to be invited, who didn’t fail to brag pointedly to those who were not. Among the latter was Walter Fairbanks.
At half past three in the morning, Mack danced the last waltz with Margaret.
She was pliant and warm in his arms, and her small round breasts smelled of powder and perfume. She patted his shoulder gently as they danced on a floor strewn with confetti and pieces of streamer.
“A triumph. An absolute triumph, Mack.”
“Yes, I think so—you helped immensely.”
She squeezed him and risked criticism by resting her cheek on his. “I’d be happy to stay the night, if you’d like that,” she said softly.
He thought of Nellie. Was she asleep now? Where? And with anyone?
“Thank you, but I’m tired. I’m sure you are too. Alex will drive you home.”
She did her best to hide her disappointment.
46
HELLBURNER JOHNSON SWUNG DOWN from the cable car. It clanged on down California Street while he paused on the corner, inhaling the spring breeze, which, faintly fishy, blew from the Bay.
The sight of the Texan standing there turned heads in passing carriages. A big muskrat cap with the earflaps tied up perched on his head at a rakish tilt and he carried his arctic coat over his arm. From a bulging canvas pack strapped to his back jutted a pair of snowshoes. In the pack, he’d stored his gun belt, wrapped around a cash roll amounting to $4,500—the sum received for the gold he’d panned standing in the sea off the beach at Nome.
Johnson had never visited San Francisco, only seen it pass to starboard as a coastal steamer bore him to Alaska. He had strong memories of the last eighteen months: the onion-dome churches of Sitka, the cold glassy gleam of Muir Glacier and the caress of its icy breath as he walked on it. From Skagway he’d trekked up to the Chilkoot Pass. He became part of a human ascent chain fourteen miles long, sweating through his red flannels one day, clinging to handholds in icy rock the next. “Damnedest land in creation,” he swore afterward. “Mosquitoes big as bullets, and mush ice in the creeks in August.”
Dawson City was a dismal boomtown on a swamp, flooded most of the time. He chewed onions from a carefully hoarded sack to avoid scurvy, but he saw hundreds of victims, men with joints swollen, teeth loosened, cheeks softened till a finger could poke through the skin as if it were wet newsprint. On the pier at Dawson, hundreds of new arrivals were soon lining up to rush out again—all the way down the long snaky Yukon River to the Bering Sea, and the new strike at Nome.
That was his last stop, Nome—a rowdy city of white tents on a black sand beach. He’d survived two robbery attempts there, and come back with more memories stored up. Also, for once, he’d come back a little richer.
All that he’d seen tended to fade away as he walked up Nob Hill. San Francisco was a mighty handsome town, with pretty row houses decorating the hills, and her Bay shining blue out yonder. But he was most impressed by the mansions of the millionaires. When he turned right, then left again on Sacramento Street, consulting an address on a paper, he found a house whose size and ornamentation overshadowed the rest.
Great pillars flanked the entrance, a foot-high cartouche of concrete adorning each. J. M. Chance had his brand on display. Johnson shook his head in amazement. He plucked his emerald-green bandanna out of his shirt to whisk away a tobacco fleck in the corner of his mouth, then opened the iron gate and went up the steps.
“Mr. Chance is occupied at the moment,” said the stiff-necked butler. Johnson couldn’t stop gawking at the sun-flooded Tiffany skylight, three stories above. “Please call again. In the rear. Tradesmen’s entrance.”
“You jackass, I’m his partner. Show me to his office, and right now, or I’ll show you the business end of the Colt stashed in this here pack.”
The alarmed butler led him up, and up, and up again, through a wonderland of carved banisters, potted greenery, sunlit carpet, to a double door on the top landing—again, the cartouche adorned each, hand-carved in a medallion of cherry wood—and these opened on a spectacular suite of rooms. Johnson walked through several, including one fitted out with twelve chairs around a long table. The last room was the largest, bigger and grander than the office in Riverside. Here Mack held forth at a mammoth desk. Behind him, a triptych of leaded windows spread the panorama of Russian Hill, the Bay, and Marin.
Mack was shaking a pencil at a tall, skinny chap with the sort of face Johnson considered suitable for an undertaker. Nearby hovered a young squirt with funny eyeglasses and the gray mane of a grandpa.
“…and I won’t go higher than sixty-five thousand on those blocks out by the Presidio—”
Johnson slung his pack to the carpet to make noise.
“Hellburner! My God. I thought you were going to stay in Alaska forever.”
“Nearly did. Mighty beautiful place. Didn’t mean to interrupt…”
Mack ran forward and embraced him. “No, no. We’re almost finished for the morning. Sit down, sit down.”
Mack was all smiles and energy, bounding back to his desk and rapidly shuffling papers.
He looked thinner, Johnson thought. Plenty of gray showing around the ears. How was he getting along without a woman? he wondered. How was that sprout getting along without a mama?
Mack introduced him to the tall drink of water, Haverstick, a lawyer; and the funny little foreign dude, Alex Muller, who bustled around jerking open cabinets and consulting files from the desk like he owned the place. Haverstick, legs crossed, sat in a chair angled to provide a view of the entrance. All at once Haverstick nodded in that direction.
“Visitor, Mack.”
Mack looked up and saw Little Jim. Mack’s son was outfitted in a Norfolk jacket and tweed knickerbockers. His black stockings matched his shoes and his child’s four-in-hand was perfectly tied. By someone else, Johnson figured. A perfect little dude. Was he ever allowed to get dirty?
The boy bore an unmistakable resemblance to Carla. He’d shed his baby fat, and he stood there observing his father with dark-blue eyes, earnest and maybe a bit scared. Or did Johnson just imagine that?
“There’s my boy.” Mack jumped up and hurried to him. “Two years ol
d now, going on three,” he said to the Texan. He swept his son off the floor and hugged him. “Jim, it’s half past twelve. Time for dinner. Go find Angelina in the kitchen.”
“You come, Pa.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Pa, come on.”
“I can’t,” Mack said in a harder voice. He set the boy down and patted the seat of his pants. “I’ll see you later today.”
Little Jim’s mouth turned down, but he said nothing. With a last look at his father—Mack was already striding back to the desk—he walked out past the conference table and through the vast rooms beyond. Young as he was, there was definitely a sad air about him, Johnson decided. A lonely, abandoned air.
Like a dutiful little soldier, Mack’s son marched straight through to the staircase, and Johnson watched his blond head sink from sight below the line of the floor.
Quickly Mack scanned the agenda Alex had prepared for the morning. “We’re finished. The Presidio property was the last item—”
The wall telephone rang and Alex grabbed it. “Mr. Potter in Los Angeles,” he said to Mack after a moment.
“Yes, Enrique,” Mack said. He listened. “Absolutely not. No extension. We close on that Long Beach tract in thirty days or no deal. Tell them.”
He hung up and scribbled a note on a pad. Looks damn prosperous, Johnson thought. A gold watch chain decorated the front of Mack’s vest, and there was a gleam of the same metal inside his mouth. Nothing but the finest.
“That’s it, gentlemen. Thanks to you both.”
Rhett Haverstick closed the clasp on his legal case. “Mr. Johnson, welcome. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”
“There’s a huge guest suite waiting for you on the second floor,” Mack said.
Alex Muller snapped his pocket watch open. “Sir, you are due at the Olympic Club in fifteen minutes.”
“Bankers,” Mack said, giving his friend an apologetic smile and snatching his coat from a rack. “Call the carriage.” Alex darted to the speaking tube in the wall.
Johnson licked a cigarette paper and pasted it shut. He stuck the cigarette in his lip and lit a match on his boot. “Olympic Club. Sounds pretty high-toned.” He was beginning to feel out of place, about as comfortable as a minnow in the sea with a typhoon blowing.
“The best in the City, you’d have to say.” Mack slipped into his coat. “Alex, what about the figures on the ranches in the Valley?”
The foreign squirt peered through his thick pince-nez. “On your desk, sir. Together with an estimate of the harvest at the winery.”
“I’ll go over them tonight.”
Johnson’s jaw dropped. “Winery?”
“Something else I picked up,” Mack said with a grin. “In the country a few miles above Sonoma. I’ve started to throw supper parties. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper if I serve my own vintages.”
“I guess that’s how the rich get richer,” Johnson muttered. He slid lower in his chair and squinted through curling smoke while Mack whispered something to the squirt.
Then Mack waved to his friend. “Walk downstairs with me.”
Johnson did, but he was feeling sour and didn’t hide it. “This here all the time you can spare for conversation?”
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re back, but it’s a busy day. They’re all busy now. We’ll eat supper tonight, catch up on things.”
“This here’s a palace, Mack.”
“Too big for me. But it creates an impression. Helps with business.” They clattered down the wide stairs and crossed the second-floor landing, which was big enough to park a covered wagon.
“What do you hear from Carla?”
“Nothing since the divorce.”
“Your boy sure looks like her.”
Colored lights from the Tiffany window patterned the marble floor of the foyer. The butler glided up in a spooky way and handed Mack his hat, gloves, and stick.
“Jim’s a quiet one. I can’t seem to talk to him very well.”
“Takes time to raise a youngster.” Mack shot him a look. Shit, he can’t stand criticism, Johnson thought. He quickly added, “So I been told.”
That mollified Mack. “Lord, I’ve missed your company. What have you been up to for so blasted long?”
“Chasin’ after gold in the by-God frozen north. Some places, it’s so cold even this damn cork foot got the frostbite. I met a young fella up there I think you’d like. Matter of fact, he’s an Oakland boy. Your sort, in a way. A parlor socialist, don’t y’know…”
Mack accepted that with a tolerant smile. The butler opened the front door, his expression indicating that Johnson was interfering with the orderly affairs of the house.
“He writes stories too—like Nellie. Name’s Jack London. I got his address. I’ll introduce you.”
“Fair enough.” Mack dashed down the steps to the waiting carriage, a double-suspension brougham with a shiny dark-green body and green morocco interior. The driver snapped the lacquered door shut after Mack. Sun flashed from the enameled JMC emblem. The driver scooted up the wheel to his seat and Mack leaned out. “And I’ll introduce you to my new automobile.”
“Your what?”
“Automobile. That’s the name they’ve settled on for the horseless carriage. I bought a steamer. Eight hundred and fifty dollars.”
The brougham pulled away. Johnson had a fleeting look at Mack leaning back and lighting a cigar. Johnson had seen him smoke cigars before—cheap stubby ones—but this monstrosity was green, and fully as long as the barrel of Johnson’s Peacemaker.
The Texan tossed up his hands in dismay. That’s all; that’s the end, he thought. An airy wake of smoke followed the brougham as it left Nob Hill.
On Saturday, Mack, Johnson, and Jack London ate lunch in the tiny kitchen at the Sonoma Creek Winery. London was eight years younger than Mack, a garrulous, hard-talking towhead with thick knuckles and a burly build. Full of himself, he hardly gave the others time to speak. He informed them he knew everything important about the writings of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer. Karl Marx too.
“Don’t know any of them boys,” Johnson remarked. “I figure I get all the lies I need from the papers and ten-cent novels about Buffla Bill.”
London’s eyes flashed. “Those boys tell the truth. Like I do.”
“Sure, Jack, Eat your lunch.”
Halfway through, Mack jumped up and pulled on heavy driving gauntlets. He ran to the stove with a pair of tongs and gingerly opened the lower door, lifting out a U-shaped, glowing red steel pipe.
“What the devil’s that?” London asked.
“The firing iron. To start the burner. Can’t stop to talk. Have to keep it hot.”
He ran out.
“He didn’t answer my question,” London said.
“The Locomobile don’t run on gasoline. He has to get the steam up ’fore we drive. Takes about a half hour. That firing iron starts the burner.”
“If I ever sell enough fiction to become a rotten capitalist, damned if I’ll buy an auto that complicated.”
“Me neither. Four legs an’ a tail suits me.”
In the yard they heard purple oaths. A moment later Mack walked in. The firing iron had turned gray.
“Not hot enough. Have to start over.”
A thin fog settled in the afternoon. They didn’t leave the winery till after three. But when they did, Johnson had to admit it was a sensational experience.
“Steam’s up,” Mack cried. “The water supply’s good for twenty miles. Let’s go.”
The Locomobile Steam Runabout was a beauty, the best steam car offered by the factory in Watertown, Massachusetts. She carried a single wide passenger seat and a shining coat of red lacquer. On the front side of the dash panel Johnson discovered the JMC. Looking for it was getting to be tiresome, because you always found it.
Mack buttoned his tan duster, togged down his goggles, and settled his stiff-billed canvas cap. He’d provided similar gear for his passengers. They squeezed into t
he seat and away they went, rolling down the hard dirt lane from me adobe-brick winery, past the arbors to the main road. The Locomobile didn’t sputter, shake, knock, or generate any noise except a low hiss of escaping steam. Johnson and London hung on tight to the seat, while Mack handled the steering tiller. He was like a boy with a toy.
A ribbon of steam unfurled in the mist behind them as Mack steered expertly around a fanner’s cart full of melons. The farmer cursed the steam car and calmed his frightened nag. They whisked through a cathedral arch of tall eucalyptus, Mack shouting, “I don’t have to fool with a spark advance or gears. There’s a lot to recommend steam.”
“You’re a demon driver,” Johnson laughed. He enjoyed the reckless rush down the country road, and temporarily forgot his dislike of Mack’s obsession with material things.
“I’m going to race one of these days,” Mack promised,
Suddenly they found themselves in a flock of frightened doves, which flew in their faces and beat their wings against the tan dusters and the moving vehicle. Mack steered away from the birds, hit some weeds alongside a fence, jerked the tiller over, and brought them back to the road. Steaming and hissing, the Locomobile sped up a thirty-degree rise without a hesitation.
“She’s a marvel climbing hills. No effort, notice?”
They drove on to the rugged terrain above Sonoma, the Valley of the Moon. “I’ll have a house on one of those hilltops someday,” London shouted.
“My friend Nellie Ross is making a lot of money from her book. No reason you can’t,” Mack shouted.
“She’s a hell of a good writer,” London shouted. “They call her the female Zola.”
“I know,” Mack shouted.
“Say, Mack,” Johnson shouted, “what happens if something blows out the fire in this tin can?”
“We walk back.”
Fifteen minutes later, they did.
Late one afternoon in May, Mack and Haverstick met for a drink at the Bank Exchange, a favorite watering spot of the City’s rich and powerful. Haverstick ordered a martini, the gin-and-vermouth cocktail invented by the legendary bartender “Professor” Thomas of the Occidental Hotel, and Mack ordered a Blue Blazer. When Haverstick excused himself and squeezed through the crowd to speak to Hunter Vann, the trial attorney, Mack occupied himself watching Jerry mix the Scotch and a dash of sugar syrup, add boiling water, and touch a match to it. As the blue flame flickered, someone poked Mack’s elbow.