California Gold

by John Jakes

  Mack’s hazel eyes challenged him. “What work?”

  “For one thing, the ’lections this fall. That lawyer Hiram Johnson—fine name—he looks like the one the reform crowd’s gonna run for governor.”

  “Not exactly news.”

  “No, but what I seen in today’s Examiner may be. The SP says it’s goin’ all out to stop these here Progressives from elect-in’ Johnson. The railroad’s puttin’ its whole damn machine to work, and today they announced the name of the man headin’ up the effort.” He pursed his lips and let smoke trickle from his nose. “Your pal Walter.”

  “He’s in charge?”

  “Yes, sir.” Johnson chuckled. “Thought that’d stir you some. It’s gonna be a mean, raw fight, you ask me. The state of California’s suffered with that blasted railroad near onto forty years, and a lot of folks are plain sick of it. The Examiner said the railroad’ll be fightin’ for its life. Everything on the line.”

  Now the red light had leached from the sky. Mack walked out to the ruined gate pillars and stared off toward the bright windows of the hotel. Cold wind blew his hair and Johnson’s cowboy scarf about. Mack felt a curious stirring, as though he’d just awakened from heavy sleep.

  “Maybe you’re right, Hugh. Maybe I should crawl out of the cellar and do what I can to nail Walter and those bastards he works for.”

  “Thought you might see it like that.” Johnson stepped up beside Mack and rested an arm on his shoulder. “Nothin’ like good clean hate to stir a man’s blood.”

  At Greenwich Street, Mack took a hot bath, put on his dressing gown, and turned on a light beside his favorite chair in the room he used for a library. At half past three in the morning, he finished reading Nellie’s novel for the second time.

  Huntworthy’s Millions, or, an Honest Dollar was a raucous, outrageous tale, cruelly unforgiving in its portrait of Clemons Parsifal Huntworthy, founder and chief thief of an unnamed railroad in an unnamed western state bordering the Pacific.

  Nellie had divided her picaresque story in two. In the first section, in order to build his line, Huntworthy lied, stole, and swindled everyone from his trusting partner to President Lincoln. Established as a power in his state, he then bought himself a United States Senate seat. The night before leaving for Washington, he had another of his poisonous and profane arguments with his wife, Asphodel.

  Asphodel Huntworthy was an illiterate shrew, a Mother Lode laundress who’d washed Huntworthy’s long underwear when he was too poor to pay a Chinese to do it. The quarrel was monumental, which Nellie suggested by using dashes for omitted obscenities, and it built over two and a half pages, with the last half-page little more than quote marks around dashes. At the end, severely tried, Huntworthy dropped dead of a heart spasm.

  The second half of the novel dealt with vain and conceited Asphodel, her pretensions to social eminence in San Francisco, and her marriage to a slim, cultivated young decorator from New York City. Wallis Flummerfelt was twenty-eight years younger than Asphodel. At her invitation, he traveled west to refurbish her palatial residence. A Dartmouth man, he was charming and affectionate—until he got the ring on Asphodel’s finger. Then he showed himself to be fully as dishonest as her first husband, maneuvering behind her back, and ended up owning the railroad. She ended up as she began, arms in harsh hot water in a laundry tub in the failed mining town of Try Again, California.

  Ed Huntington loathed the novel, and wrote Mack a boiling letter to say so. It was likewise hated by anyone with a fond memory of Uncle Mark Hopkins, whose widow had married her antique dealer.

  Mack loved it, absolutely awed by Nellie’s savage wit. He badly wanted to see her and tell her.

  He wanted to tell her how he really felt about his son, down underneath the show of hope he still maintained for others: Jim was alive somewhere, but almost surely lost to him now. He wanted to tell her he was taking a first step back into the world in spite of everything. And he wanted to tell her he loved her. That, of all his wants, was somehow the hardest to satisfy.

  74

  IN A PRIVATE ROOM at the Olympic Club, the four men dined one Thursday in April: Mack, Rudolph Spreckels, Fremont Older, and Dorian Stimson, who had traveled up from Los Angeles. Stimson nearly spilled his soup when Mack told him why he’d invited them.

  “Mr. Chance—Mack—that’s wonderful news. I’m pleased beyond words that you’ll join us. We’re going to put forward a splendid slate of candidates with Hiram Johnson at the top. The Progressive platform is simple and unequivocal. Kick the railroad out of politics.”

  Spreckels applauded. Mack said, “I certainly agree with a program like that. I’ll give you as much money as I can.”

  “How about your personal involvement?” Older asked.

  “That too.”

  “Best news of all,” the editor declared. “We need you. We need every hand. The campaign will be rough. The railroad knows what we’re up to…”

  “The railroad is desperate,” Dorian Stimson said.

  The Southern Pacific boardroom was sequestered on the third floor of the temporary general offices at Market and Powell. There were plans for an entirely new and opulent headquarters building, but construction had not yet begun.

  A life-sized portrait of Collis Huntington dominated the room. The old bandit’s painted eyes stared down at dusty sunbeams playing on the burnished wood paneling of the long table. Eighteen men sat around the table, eighteen proper, sober company men. All of them, including the executive at the head, concentrated on the man seated by himself at the other end: Walter Fairbanks.

  The meeting’s chairman was William Herrin, the only attorney in the Southern Pacific with more authority than Fairbanks. Herrin was a bland sort, deceptively innocent. He didn’t smile, but neither was he unfriendly—merely direct and a bit formal.

  “Walter, I speak for the entire board when I say that we respect you as a colleague and treasure you as a friend. You’ve directed and coordinated the state and local efforts of our political bureau almost since you joined the company. Your level of effort and accomplishment is high. But I’m afraid that does not and cannot carry weight in this situation. We are plunged into a desperate struggle for leadership in our state. The SP has been good for California—good for industry, good for agriculture, good for the common citizen in a thousand hamlets that might have moldered and vanished had we not favored them with our right-of-way. But there is a certain element—foreigners, Jews, jackleg journalists, rich men who are traitors to their class—a certain crazed element dedicated to ignoring the facts. Dedicated to pushing us out of the counsels of power and shutting the door. We are faced with a fight for our political survival. So, then, by extension, are you.”

  Fairbanks’s gray-metal eyes blinked twice. He was not a man easily disturbed, but this disturbed him. Deep in his gut, he felt a sudden stab of pain.

  “I understand, Bill.”

  “Let’s hope so. The executive committee can’t and won’t excuse failure in this crisis. But we have enormous confidence in you.”

  Enormous confidence. Unless I fail, in which case you’ll spit me and roast me alive. I know how this company works.

  “You are challenged to attack and rout Hiram Johnson and the whole pack of lying Progressives. Johnson is an evil man. He represented the dregs of the trade unionists, the San Francisco teamsters, for eight years. He convicted Ruef. He’s a ruthless opportunist, and his backers are waiting at the door with a portfolio of socialistic legislation. You’re familiar with the man the Democrats are putting up, Theodore Bell of Napa. He says he’s a Woodrow Wilson Democrat and a reformer in his own right. We don’t like him, but we’ll back him in preference to Johnson. That, in essence, is our program. We want you to implement it as if your job and future depended on it. Which, in fact, Walter, they do.”

  “Bill, are you saying—”

  “Johnson and his crowd must lose in November. Must. Nothing else is acceptable.”

  75

  A PROCESS
ION OF LIMOUSINES rolled into the court entrance of the rebuilt Palace Hotel. Press hounds with cameras and flashlight powder photographed the notables arriving for the ball. It was September.

  Mack drove in at half past eight. He didn’t want to attend but the cause was too worthy to be ignored. As he alighted from his hired chauffeured car, he scowled at the photographers. It didn’t stop them.

  He was turned out in a formal evening suit of black worsted with silk braid down the sides of the trousers, his waistcoat and cravat a fine white pique. Pearl studs gleamed on his cuffs and starched shirt bosom, and his black patent-leather pumps and tall opera hat shone. He carried a cane and white kid gloves and wore a white silk scarf draped over his shoulders. With his white hair and round spectacles he cut a striking figure. He felt like a fool.

  “Be here at eleven. I’ll be ready,” he said to me chauffeur, and the car rolled off.

  Behind him a middle-aged man and his wife stepped out of their limousine. It was Mike de Young, the publisher of the Chronicle. He was a capable, feisty man of Dutch-Jewish extraction, a power in the City, though still not one of Mack’s intimates. These days the publisher treated Mack more cordially than he had in the past. Although Willie Hearst’s paper was still very much a part of the City, Willie himself was long gone, and that, plus a general mellowing perhaps brought on by age, seemed to have cooled de Young’s anger toward Hearst’s friends. He spoke to Mack in a way that recognized him as a member of the City’s small and exclusive club of the very wealthy.

  “Good of you to come out for this benefit,” he said now. Wax on his handlebar mustache glistened under the lights.

  “The De Young Art Museum deserves everyone’s support, Mike.”

  He greeted de Young’s wife and the three of them started into the hotel. “I’m glad you feel that way, because we desperately need a new building,” de Young said. “That brick heap left over from the Midwinter Fair has outgrown the collection. Until we get a new museum, the operating budget for the old place must be raised every year. With all those needs, we’ll even accept donations from friends of Hearst.”

  “None of that, Mike. I read your paper right along with the Examiner. I figure the old saying’s true: two sides to every story—”

  De Young sent his wife along to the cloakroom. “What about the state election? Two sides to that?”

  “No. There’s only one right side. The Progressive side.”

  “On that we agree.” De Young squeezed his arm. “Glad you’re with us. Thanks for coming.”

  The music of a Ballenberg orchestra, a jaunty rendition of “Shine On, Harvest Moon,” drifted from the ballroom. Mack crossed the foyer to the cloakroom and handed the attendant his opera hat, stick, and gloves. As he slipped the check in his pocket he noticed a couple coming down the staircase from the floor above.

  Walter and Carla. She wore an ermine wrap over a peach satin gown with matching gloves and a lace décolletage. Tiny satin bows on the lace seemed too girlish for someone her age. White aigrettes bobbed in her hair, and Mack wondered how many water birds had died to decorate her for this affair.

  Carla groped her way down the stairs, one glove never leaving the banister. Her husband’s eyes darted over the foyer crowd, then back to her. Deathly afraid she’ll make a gaffe.

  She almost did when her silver pump slipped off a riser, she would have fallen, but for Fairbanks’s sudden lunge. They exchanged words. Carla was flushed and shook her head vehemently, then flung off Fairbanks’s hand and descended the last several steps by herself.

  “Walter—Carla—good evening. I heard you were living in the hotel.”

  Fairbanks brushed at his little mustache. “When we’re not in Burlingame.” He shot looks over Mack’s shoulder. Taut as a wire, Mack thought. It pleased him in a perverse way.

  Carla swam in perfume. She started to speak but a matron with a battleship bosom grabbed her. “Carla dearest, do come here and meet Cloudsley Ballantyne, the painter.” Carla lurched away to be presented to a young man with a fey face and center-parted brown hair combed down into horns on his temples. He’d pinned a golden California poppy to his lapel with a pearl pin.

  “I’m surprised to see you, Walter,” Mack said affably. “I thought you might be out of town, turning up the heat under your county political bureaus. The election’s not far off.”

  Sliding a silver case from an inside pocket, Fairbanks took out a cigarette and tapped it on the case longer than necessary. A pallor had replaced his usual ruddy color.

  “Everybody deserves a night off. We’ll have no trouble beating your crowd.”

  There it was again, the old smug condescension. God, how Mack despised him. He gave in to the impulse to hit back. “Don’t get overconfident. Remember how the polo match came out. And the race.”

  Fairbanks snapped the wooden match he was lifting to his cigarette and the burning head fell to the carpet. He stamped on it, then lowered his voice. “You arrogant bastard. Haven’t changed, have you? You’re trash. That first day, by the creek, Hellman should have put a bullet in you.”

  Mack smiled too, a broad smile, but hard. “What the hell do you want from me, Walter? No fight at all? No competition—so you never have to risk losing? Well, I’m afraid not. Especially not this time. This is the big one. And you’re going to lose. Again.”

  Livid, Fairbanks struck another match. Deep in his eyes something new lurked, or so Mack thought—fear that Mack might be right.

  What an ass you are to goad him. Only makes him hate you more.

  Carla flung herself between them. “Such an elegant young man. So talented. Well.” She blinked and touched Mack’s sleeve. “This is charming. My present husband and my former one. Hello, former.”

  She made a little lunge at Mack, enveloping him in flesh and the overwhelming scent of her perfume. Had she bathed in it?

  Fairbanks bit out a complaint, but she was already draped on Mack and twining her arms around his neck. She found his mouth and opened hers. He smelled and tasted whiskey, strong whiskey.

  He tried to step away and Fairbanks dragged Carla off by seizing her wrist. “For God’s sake, don’t make a fool of yourself.”

  “Darling, I was only greeting my ex—”

  He showed what he thought of that by forcing her to take his arm. Then he pivoted her toward the ballroom. The little scene had played to one side of the foyer, but Mack saw a number of couples shooting sly glances at Mr. and Mrs. Fairbanks. The damage was done, and Fairbanks knew it. He yanked her against his side and marched her toward the high gilt doors.

  She turned once, quickly. What Mack saw in that blurred glance surprised and saddened him. He saw longing, the same longing he’d seen the night Swampy lay dying.

  He drifted among the tables ranged around the dance floor, stopping first by a large table hosted by Adolph Spreckels and his wife, Alma. Rudy’s older brother was still too proper and starchy for Mack’s taste, but Mack genuinely liked Alma, a handsome, breezy, full-figured woman twenty-four years younger than her husband. Until she married Adolph in 1907, when he was fifty, she had been plain Alma de Bretteville, an artist’s model of uncertain background (she claimed her ancestors were French and Danish nobility). She said openly that she’d been deflowered at a tender age by a Klondike miner, but had taken the son of a bitch to court for a settlement of $10,000. Everyone said she was the model for the Winged Victory atop the monument in Union Square, and she didn’t deny it.

  Marriage to Adolph Spreckels had raised her overnight to social eminence. She was the City’s youngest grande dame, lunching at the St. Francis every Tuesday with her own chosen circle. She involved herself in cultural affairs, notably the planning of another art museum, in direct competition with Mike de Young. The rivalry was a sharp one; the Spreckels table was as far as possible from that of the de Youngs tonight.

  Mack had known Alma casually before her marriage, and in some ways, respectability had changed her not at all. She still had a foghorn voice, a
salty vocabulary, and few pretenses or inhibitions. “For Christ’s sake, Mack, aren’t you going to ask me to dance?” she said as he stood by the table.

  He grinned. “I’d better, or you’re liable to cuss me out.” The guests laughed politely, but Alma brayed. Adolph pursed his lips, his version of hilarity.

  Mack extended his hand. “Thank you, darling,” Alma said loudly as he led her to the floor to waltz. “Some of those friends of Ade’s are fucking cadavers.” Heads turned; she was unperturbed. She fitted nicely into his arms; she had the kind of ample figure men called Junoesque. “Tell me, darling, why didn’t you bring a companion this evening?”

  “I wanted to ask Margaret, but she’s filming another Broncho Billy picture.”

  “I’m sure there are any number of ladies present who’d happily share their dance programs and their tarnished virtue. I certainly would if I weren’t married and loyal to dear Ade.”

  There was a stifled cry and then commotion. The music scraped and squeaked to silence. Alma stretched on tiptoe. “Oh my God, Carla Fairbanks fell down.”

  Mack saw her floundering on her side, callously revealed by couples who had quickly stepped away. Her long skirt was hiked over her knees, and garters and a white satin petticoat were exposed. Her partner, Cloudsley Ballantyne, fluttered his hands and dithered.

  “Help her, for heaven’s sake,” a portly man growled at the painter.

  Carla gripped Ballantyne’s pasty fingers and pulled herself halfway up, then lost control and sat down on her round bottom with a thump. Mack wanted to hide. Such an ordinary thing, sitting down like that. But you didn’t do it in the middle of this crowd.

  “Oh my God, how embarrassing,” Alma said in her brassy voice. “Drunk again.”

  Fairbanks stormed through the hotel suite, snapping on electric lights in a pair of bordeaux lamps with cut-glass grapes decorating the globes. Carla limped from the foyer and threw her fur carelessly. A claw-foot gold clock on the mantel showed ten past three.