by John Jakes
“Hellburner?”
“Yes, Señor. The same.”
“Warm the coffeepot. I’ll throw some water on my face and be right down.”
He vanished in the hall leading to rooms in the back. Angelina Olivar took note of his step. For once her employer was not moving like a tortoise. Ah, but behind his hazel eyes-there, she saw no change. Behind his eyes, he was dead.
The parlor on the floor below had been converted into Mack’s office. It was dark and rusty as the rooms above, but crowded with cabinets and work tables.
Mack came shuffling in. Johnson stood next to his valise, turning his wide-brimmed hat in his hands. He wore a sheepman’s coat and the inevitable bandanna, this one black. His fingers constricted on the hat brim.
“Lord God. I heard you wasn’t doin’ so well. Looks like that ain’t the half of it.”
“Hello, Hugh. Welcome back.”
Mack moved slowly to his desk, flattening his uncombed hair with his palm. Angelina Olivar served mugs of coffee on a tray and quickly retired. Mack sat and eyed his partner.
“If you’re really back,” he added.
“Yep.” Johnson sailed the tall white hat onto a black horsehair sofa. The muffling drapes were black too. Johnson shucked off his coat and dropped it, then dropped himself into a chair and reached for coffee. “Back for a spell, anyway.”
“I live upstairs. There are three empty bedrooms. You can take your pick.”
Johnson nodded to acknowledge the offer. “I sure don’t recognize the town after what happened.” He blew steam off the coffee. “You know I’m not so good with words. But I want to tell you how sorry—”
“Don’t bother. Jim’s alive—somewhere.”
Mack left his desk and drifted across the room to a closet. “There’s whiskey in here if you want to lace that.”
Johnson covered the mug with his other hand. “My Lord, never this early.”
“You don’t mind if I do.”
He opened the closet. Johnson saw decanters and bottles and bottles of Sonoma Creek Vineyard wine. Mack rummaged a glass from a shelf and filled it with red wine from an open bottle. Then he knocked it back like a couple of swallows of water.
“What about the place on Nob Hill?” Johnson asked. “I didn’t go by there—”
“Burned to the ground.”
“Gonna rebuild, aren’t you?”
Mack refilled his glass and shut the closet. He picked up a roll of plans from a bookshelf. “Starr, the original architect, thinks I should. Margaret thinks I should. Everyone thinks I should.” He threw the plans back on the shelf. “Except me.”
He drank a second glass of wine in quick gulps, then shuffled back for more. Johnson sipped coffee and unhappily watched his friend pour his third drink. He didn’t know how to help Mack. Maybe no one could help him in this state.
64
ON A TUESDAY IN early November, Mack returned to the apartment on Greenwich Street at half past three in the afternoon. Three men on scaffolds were brushing gray paint on the frame of the bay window next door, and someone was hammering in the tobacco shop on the corner. Hammers could be heard all over San Francisco.
Mack wore a brown derby, a suit with a brown stripe, and a short, solid-brown topcoat. The suit and outer coat were London-made, but it was a conventional, not to say drab outfit. It discouraged attention rather than inviting it.
Mack hooked his cane on his arm and unlocked the front door. Alex sprang out of the parlor, red-cheeked and eager; he still had not come down from his romantic cloud. He touched a stack of folders on a marble-topped table. “A messenger from the Haverstick office brought these. Mr. Haverstick himself telephoned five minutes ago to remind you that the oil leases require attention immediately.”
Mack dropped his cane into a ceramic stand. “They’ll wait.”
Alex stepped back, thwarted by his employer’s curt, almost defiant answer. He indicated the office door. “You also have a caller—Mr. Marquez.”
Mack’s stoic face suddenly became animated. Stepping inside, he found Diego Marquez sitting with Johnson. Although the heavy drapes on the bay windows were open and tied back, it was fall, and afternoon, and the parlor seemed dimmer than usual. Dusty too.
Marquez heaved up from the horsehair sofa. He was almost grossly fat, and shabbier than ever. His beard hung to the middle of his chest, gray and patriarchal. He walked to Mack with an odd rocking gait, like a man hurting. Piles, Mack suspected. Piles or some other malady of age.
“Diego.” Mack held out his hand. “Welcome. Is Felicia with you?”
“No, Felicia left me. Pregnant by a rancher’s son. That’s an irony, eh?” A sad little shrug. Then he said, “It was inevitable, I decided. To be poor all the time, despised, constantly threatened—it’s no life for a young girl. And idealism melts in the acid juices of an empty belly. No need to discuss it further. Let me instead express my profound regret about the loss of your son.”
“Temporary. Just temporary, Diego. We quarreled—he ran away—he’ll be back. I’ve hired Pinkerton’s to find him. Sit down. Do you want some whiskey? Some wine?”
He didn’t. Mack helped himself. “What can I do for you?”
Marquez ordered his thoughts before speaking. “I have been working in the Central Valley. Quite near your ranch below Fresno.”
“Working with the stoop labor?”
“Yes. They must be helped constantly. They must be educated so they can speak up for their rights. Not only a fair wage—adequate food, decent quarters. Do you know that some of the owners will not provide even one toilet for a hundred men and their women and babies? That is not the case on your property, I’m happy to say.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
Johnson crossed his legs and scowled over the abruptness of Mack’s question. Marquez frowned too. It wasn’t going well.
“I am here to speak for a certain group of workers no one will hire—just as the ranch owners once refused to hire my people, or the Japanese and Chinese. There are several hundred of these men presently in the vicinity of Fresno—”
“Who are you talking about?”
“The Hindustani.”
“Ah, the Indians. I’ve seen them.”
“They come principally from the Punjab, in India’s northwest. They are expert agriculturists, skilled in the cultivation of cotton, melons, figs, corn. But they can’t find work—not even at the meanest, lowest wage.”
“Why not, if they’re so good?” Johnson asked.
“Because they are too dark. Very different. We like to boast that California is a golden door of opportunity standing open for all. Unfortunately, if you don’t have white skin, that is usually untrue.”
Mack regarded him with lifeless eyes. Marquez leaned forward. “I personally know of seven Hindustani who are starving. If you would lead the way—hire some of them, if only for a trial period—”
“I’m a businessman, not a social pioneer. Hiring is my foreman’s responsibility.”
“Mack—I am asking you in the name of friendship.”
Mack grabbed the upright telephone. He seemed put upon, annoyed. “I’ll speak to the foreman, but it’s his decision.”
In the Valley, it was still 87 degrees, and hot harsh light flooded Jesse Tarbox’s office. Outside his dusty windows bright fans of water rained on the low short-pruned arbors of raisin grapes.
Tarbox was a lean, pale man who tended to redden with sunburn. For clothes, he preferred what he was wearing—tan jodhpurs, brown cavalry boots, a khaki shirt. He sweated heavily and changed shirts two or three times a day. His wife sometimes complained, but one or two strokes of the cane shut her up.
A Hoosier, Tarbox had been run out of a private academy after teaching for sixteen years. His abusive disposition undid him; he caned one pupil too many, and the young man’s broken forearm didn’t set properly. After that, he drifted through Kansas and Colorado, learning farm work, gaining experience. Finally, at fifty-seven, he had
a position he liked. Here he could cane with impunity.
The wall telephone rang and Tarbox sprang to answer. Fresno central connected him with San Francisco. “Tarbox speaking,” he said nervously. His employer was a hard man—moody these days, and unpredictable.
Tarbox listened. “All right, sir, you want my opinion, here it is. Don’t hire rag-heads. Absolutely not. They look like niggers—in town, just walking around, they scare the womenfolk half to death. Some ranchers claim they’re good workers, but I don’t believe it. I say they’re not worth the trouble.”
“Thanks, Jesse. Everything all right?”
“Fine, sir.”
Mack said good-bye and rang off. Tarbox hung the earpiece on the prongs. Out in the arbors, the pumps hissed and clicked, brushing the air with the great golden fans of water that sprinkled the Alexandria muscat vines and left them gleaming.
The foreman stared at the telephone in a fixed way. Macklin Chance paid well, but Jesse Tarbox didn’t like him. Tarbox hated all those he perceived as his betters, and he loathed his inferiors. Which left damn few worthy white men on his own level.
The door flew open and a runty Mexican rushed in, clasping his straw hat to his sweat-soaked blouse. “Señor, la tubería de la estación de bombeo se rompió y se està inundando.”
A burst line in the pump house was a problem. But Tarbox perceived a bigger one. In Spanish, he said, “Aguilar, I’ve told you and told you, never come in here without knocking first. I’ll have to remind you in some way you’ll remember.”
Smiling, he reached for his cane.
Mack pushed the phone back to its corner of the desk.
“My foreman says no. The local people don’t like the Hindus.”
Abruptly, wrathfully, Marquez rose. “That’s your answer?”
“That’s right.”
“I think the man I met some years ago would have answered differently. He would have decided for himself. I heard it said that the loss of your son changed you. I did not understand how completely.”
“Diego, I don’t need your moralizing.”
“I’m sorry, Mack. If you’re the enemy of those I help, you are my enemy also.”
Mack shrugged. “Whatever you say.” He turned away, as if interested in the dusty heaps of correspondence around him.
Johnson and the burly man exchanged sympathetic looks. Then Marquez picked up a battered straw hat like those worn by his migrants, and without a backward glance, left.
The moment the door shut, Johnson whistled.
“You’re pretty rough on an old friend.”
“That’s your opinion.”
“No opinion. Fact.” Johnson shook his hand-rolled cigarette at Mack. “Time was, you’d of jumped to help any underdog in sight.”
“Christ, you sound like Diego. Is he giving you lessons for the priesthood?”
“Don’t you get snotty with me. If Nellie was here, that’d be three of us tellin’ you to head in.”
“Well, Nellie’s on her way back to Europe to write a new novel. You probably passed her on the cattle boat coming home. Stand on your own feet.”
Johnson planted them in front of the desk. “I surely will. I got somethin’ to say.”
“As usual. I don’t want to hear it.” He opened a folder of sales and construction reports from San Solaro. The summary sheet said permanent population had reached 1,003.
Johnson snatched the folder and flung it, spilling paper. “Listen here, Mack. I know you’re hurtin’ bad inside. I’m sorry about that. But it don’t give you leave to act like a son of a bitch.”
Mack hurled out of the chair and began picking up the papers as if they were treasures. “I think we’ve had this conversation before. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. If you object to the way things are, Hugh, the door’s right there. Always open.”
The Texan drew a long soft breath. “I think I’ll take advantage. Pack my valise and light out for good. Reckon I was a damn fool to come back at all. You can stay here with the curtains shut—pityin’ yourself—pickin’ at your own misery and swillin’ wine and snarlin’ like a rabid dog, but I don’t have to sit around like I think it’s a whole lot of fun. Like I approve.”
He walked out and shut the door so hard a picture fell off the wall, a framed photograph of the iron gateway arch at San Solaro. The glass cracked and the photo leaned crazily against the baseboard. Mack left it there.
Ten minutes later he heard the irregular rhythm of Johnson’s boots on the stairs. Bang, went his crippled right foot, and a couple of moments later, bang again. He listened to the street door close, then the crown of Johnson’s tall hat sailed past the bay window.
Mack rubbed his flushed face. He hated the self-righteous Texan. He hated him for his arrogance, and he hated him even more because Johnson knew the truth—that his rich shiny world was falling apart.
He tried to forget that by opening another Sonoma Creek red.
Out in the Valley, Hellman tripped on the stair at the boardinghouse and wrenched his leg. His landlady said he fell because he was old, couldn’t see, yet was too vain to wear glasses. Mack heard that and laughed in a chilly way; he understood perfectly.
He drove to Sacramento and found his father-in-law confined to bed for a month. The sight of the old man saddened Mack. Hellman swore he was as hale and vigorous as ever, then fell asleep with a sentence unfinished, dribbling out the last words as slowly as the drool in the corner of his mouth.
“He’s too old to live alone,” Mack said to Alex when he returned to the City. “Find him a place. I’ll move him bodily if need be.”
Mission Street smelled of mud and new lumber. Mack and Margaret stood on the corner of a vacant lot on the south side. Two muddy men worked on a broken main in a deep ditch bisecting the lot. A donkey engine chugged, pumping water out of the ditch.
Mack and Margaret were watching the lot across the street. There, carpenters were hammering in the first-floor framing of a new building. The sunshine flattered Margaret, accentuating the red in her auburn hair. She was elegant in wine velvet, lace gloves, an immense picture hat. In the shadow of its brim, her marvelous smile shone out. She was as delighted as a child.
Mack smoked a cigar with scarcely a change of expression.
She took his arm and they resumed their walk. “I’ll be open by March. The contractor told me yesterday.”
“Good,” he said. His hazel eyes got lost somewhere above a windowless brick wall, somewhere up in the fat breeze-driven clouds.
She stopped and touched his chin. “When will you ever get out of this misery?”
“When the police or the Pinkertons find my son.”
“Is there anything…?”
“Nothing.”
They walked on, alternately in sun and shadow as the autumn clouds sailed over. At the corner, two dray horses lay stiffly in a lake of congealed blood. Horses dropped in their tracks every day, worked so hard in the cleanup that their hearts burst. Crews hauled them away at night.
Margaret choked at the odor, then apologized selfconsciously. “Pigs smell worse. Now you know why I ran away from the farm.”
They went up toward Market Street. A wrecker’s ball crashed against a wall somewhere. In the middle of Market, a small SP switch engine pulled three gondolas piled with rubble. The temporary railroad tracks were new, for the cleanup.
A newsboy’s shrill cry sounded before me wrecking ball crashed again. “Something about Ruef,” Mack said, livelier suddenly. “I can’t quite hear—”
They hurried and found a small crowd around a boy hawking early editions of the Examiner. Hearst had ordered new presses for a new building, but even so, the paper would have to be made up and printed in Oakland for months yet.
“Paper here, latest paper. Abe Ruef and Mayor Schmitz charged with crime.”
Mack pushed through. He and a sallow man reached for the last paper. Mack was faster. He showed Margaret the twenty-four-point screamer: RUEF, SCHIMITZ INDICTED!<
br />
It was the news the reform group had awaited from the grand jury for weeks. “Five counts of extortion,” Margaret exclaimed, scanning quickly. “The Poodle Dog—Delmonico’s—Marchand’s—Mack, they’ve got the evidence. Amounts, dates paid—”
“Burns and his detectives are doing a fine job. The French restaurant case is just the start.”
She clapped her hands. “Oh, my. At last. Isn’t this something?”
Something, he thought. But not enough.
Bitter Bierce sent him a note from Washington.
Nellie’s earthquake tale is published in The S. E. Post. Envy rages in my ink-stained bosom. She continues to achieve, while I hack on for the Great Wm. R. Hooey, whose cheap yellow journalism I hate, but whose pay checks somehow retain their power to enthrall.
On December 6, Fremont Older arranged press credentials for Mack, and the two squeezed into the crowd at the Ruef-Schmitz arraignment. Courtroom space was still limited because of the destruction. Mack thought it a fine irony that this proceeding was held in a room customarily used for Sabbath school at Temple Israel.
During the reading of the first indictment, Handsome Gene Schmitz stood before the bench, fidgeting. The Boss remained seated, legs crossed, gazing at the ceiling with affable unconcern.
It was too much for Judge Dunne. “Defendants will stand for arraignment. No one receives special treatment in this court. The clerk will start over.”
Ruef snapped to his feet, genuinely shaken.
Wild Bill Flyshack visited Greenwich Street a week before Christmas. Darkness was settling outside. His report was succinct.
“Still no sign of him.”
“Have the flyers produced anything?”
“Five more leads, all bad.”
Mack hit the desk. “Flyshack, I’m not paying you to take the train up here and recite your failures. Put more men on the case.”
“Mr. Chance, just a minute. We’re already using every available—”
“Then find him. Pinkerton’s is supposed to be the best bureau in the country.”
Flyshack jammed his cigar into a glass tray, splitting the cigar and ruining it. “I’ll stake my personal reputation on Pinkerton’s any day of the week. You’re just not facing certain facts.”