by John Jakes
78
CARLA LEFT THE PARTY at half past one. Party? It was a funeral. She’d consumed two full bottles of champagne and half of a third. She was still depressed, and wanted more.
After eleven o’clock Walter barely said a word to her, just sat there watching the numbers going up on the chalkboard, sat there with a full glass and a sick-dog expression as the telephone lines brought the totals into the St. Francis. Around twelve-thirty she slipped into a cloakroom with a randy little ward captain. He bolted the door and she screwed him standing up. When she came back, Johnson still held his twenty-thousand-vote lead. Walter didn’t know she’d been gone.
She staggered out the Post Street entrance, taken aback by the sound of rain. It was pouring, sluicing off the canopy and flooding the sidewalk underneath. To her left, headlamps came on, and Walter’s newest Pope-Toledo, black as usual, glided out of its space and pulled in near the canopy. Carla’s fox fur dragged in the water as she crossed the sidewalk.
After he had gotten Carla in, the chauffeur U-turned, heading west on Post, then south on Mason. The rain hammered the metal roof and rushed under the car like Niagara. Carla leaned back and shut her eyes. Walter had failed the SP. God. What next?
The car slowed for the O’Farrell intersection, and she opened her eyes. On a brick wall ahead she saw two big posters washed by the rain. One advertised a motion picture with a large, heroic illustration of a cowboy firing spitting six-guns. An oval inset showed a young woman with auburn hair and a pretty smile.
ESSANAY
PRESENTS
BRONCHO BILLY’S COURAGE
FEATURING AMERICA’S NEW “SWEETHEART OF THE WEST”
MARGARET LESLIE
But what drew Carla’s attention was the other poster: ELECT HIRAM JOHNSON. Someone who didn’t like the suggestion had torn a long strip from the center of the new governor’s photograph.
“Stop, Haines.”
“Mrs. Fairbanks—”
“I said stop right here.”
“Ma’am, I got orders from your husband to take you straight from the party to the Palace.”
“Screw you.” She struggled with the door handle. “Some party. A fucking wake for the political dead—” Unexpectedly, her weight hurled the door open and she almost pitched into the gutter. A silver flask fell out of her beaded bag and lay in the rushing water like a silver fish, her fur piling on top. She staggered to the posters, rain soaking her gown, matting her tangled hair, and dissolving her makeup. Weaving back and forth in front of Hiram Johnson’s portrait, she spat on him, then attacked him with her nails. “Piss on you, Johnson—goddamn pious hypocrite—piss on you and your whole pack of righteous—”
“Here, stop that.” The voice came from the corner. A second later the chauffeur called a warning. He was crouched in the beams of the headlights, his fine uniform soaked.
Carla heeded neither voice, tearing at the picture savagely. A fingernail broke, then another, but she kept on cursing and shredding the paper face. Suddenly a bright beam blinded her.
“Take that fucking light out of my eyes.”
A young policeman in a slicker and bill cap strode up. “Ma’am, I don’t know who you are, but it’s illegal to deface political posters—even after the election. I’ll have to take you in and—”
Carla spat in his face.
The cop blinked and wiped his chin with his sleeve, then grabbed Carla’s arm. “Listen here, lady.” With her other hand she raked his jaw, three bloody nail tracks. He cursed and blew his whistle, and that enraged her more.
The chauffeur pleaded and tried to wedge between them, but the cop was angry and she was out of her head, battering the cop, kicking and gouging him. Suddenly there were running footsteps, splashing in the rain. The struggling cop heard them and, holding Carla at bay with a palm against her chin, called, “Frank, for God’s sake, help me with this bitch.”
The second cop, older, and burly, wrestled Carla against the brick wall. She spat on him too, then tried to kick his testicles. He whacked her with a hard backhand; it was done neatly and professionally, with no animosity. Her eyes lost focus and she started to slide down the wall. There was a flash of plated metal and then something snapped shut.
Carla braced her legs and opened her eyes. Dragging her forearm forward into the glow of the headlights, she saw the diamonds dazzling on her wrist bracelet, but the links of the handcuff chain were almost as bright. The chain connected to another cuff on the wrist of the older cop.
“I know who this is, Tommy,” he said. “We’ll take her in, then I’ll telephone around to find her husband.”
Sobriety came like a thunderclap. Carla stared at the policemen with the wild look of a trapped animal.
At 3:20 A.M. Fairbanks pushed open the doors of police headquarters at Fillmore and Bush. He practically dragged Carla down the steps in the pelting rain.
He started when he saw two black Fords parked one behind the other at the curb, then put on a show of calm as he descended the last three steps.
Two men leaped from the Ford in front, another from the second car. The fastest, wearing a fedora and belted coat, shot up to Fairbanks with a reporter’s pad poised.
“Reeves of the Examiner, Mr. Fairbanks. I’d like to ask—”
Fairbanks smashed him down against the running board of the Ford with a roundhouse punch.
Fairbanks walked out of the opulent bathroom of their suite at the Palace. Clouds of steam from the hot tub dulled the luster of the gold faucets. He tried not to think of his loss of temper outside headquarters.
He crossed the bedroom to the parlor. Carla sat drowsily in her muddy finery, rolling her head from side to side. Open-mouthed, she hummed a tuneless little song.
“Get up.” He could barely keep from striking her, and she seemed to realize it; she didn’t resist. Fairbanks dragged her back through the bedroom like a chattel, then shoved her roughly into the billowing steam.
“Take your clothes off and sober up, goddamn you.”
Carla gave him a sad, searching look. Her eyes were stained black from all the running makeup, and she looked like a tawdry circus clown. Bowing her head, she shut the bathroom door.
Rain rushed down the window, throwing a mottled pattern on his face. In the next bed, Carla slept restlessly, muttering. Fairbanks was sitting up, arms crossed over his starched pajama jacket.
With his eye fixed on some remote point of the dark, he tried to chart the probable course of his future. He didn’t know the exact time—four-thirty or five in the morning. He couldn’t sleep; his stomach was tearing him up with pain.
Carla pushed at her pillow and muttered something. Fairbanks regarded her with loathing. She rolled her head from side to side, then spoke the word again.
“What did you say?”
She repeated it. He swung his legs out of bed, stepped over, and leaned down. She rolled from her shoulder to her back, fretting in her dream, then pushed the sheet down off her satin nightgown. This time he heard it clearly: “Mack, Mack.”
Carla’s tongue crept out and slid across her lower lip. Her hips arched a little and her hands found the roll of her fat stomach. She held herself as if suppressing pain or some other sensation, and moaned again. Fairbanks hardly had to speculate about the dream.
He walked barefoot to the window. There he gazed down at the rainy bleakness of a deserted Market Street. He heard Carla tossing and grumbling, her hips heaving up and down. Fairbanks watched, contemplating murder.
Hiram Johnson carried the state 177,000 to 155,000, rolling up his greatest margin in Protestant Southern California.
At the San Francisco celebration, Mack drank and danced with Margaret until it was light, then drove her up Nob Hill. He showed her the site of the old house. It was cleared now, sodded, and planted with a few skimpy trees.
“But I have no plans to rebuild.”
At Greenwich Street he cooked breakfast. She asked whether he’d seen Nellie and he told her Nellie had a new l
over.
“Are you sure?”
“I saw him. Do you want champagne with your eggs?”
Fairbanks, like a man under a death sentence, was allowed to dangle the rest of the week. Then he was summoned to the boardroom at ten o’clock on the Monday following the Progressives’ statewide sweep.
It was a gray, foggy morning in the City, and the drab light made Fairbanks’s face all the more mealy and ghastly.
“Walter, I deeply regret this—” Herrin began.
“Spare me, Bill. I know you need a goat to sacrifice.”
Displeased, another executive said, “There’s no need for emotional rhetoric, Walter. We explained the consequences of a loss very clearly beforehand.”
Herrin regained control of the meeting by clearing his throat. “Your wife’s arrest and all the attendant publicity make a decision not only more unpalatable, but, I’m sorry to say, even more necessary.”
Fairbanks’s gray eyes had a destitute look. Wearily, but doing his best to square his shoulders and maintain good posture, he stood up. “Is there really any need to prolong this? I’ll give you my letter of resignation by the close of business.”
“In that case…” Herrin spoke with surprising kindness. “No, there is no need to prolong it. Thank you for being understanding, Walter.”
“Of course,” Fairbanks said, bitter suddenly.
He marched out like a good soldier, though not under the best of control; he slammed the door.
Once outside the room, he bowed his head and covered his eyes. He heard the rustling skirts of a secretary walking along the hall. She passed him and saw his shame and disarray. He was surprised at how little he cared.
Gaspar Ludlow found his chief at his desk with his head in his hands.
“The word’s all over the building, sir. Speaking for everyone in the legal department, it’s damned unfair.”
Fairbanks pulled his hands down slowly. “What a consolation. “ He knew the little rodent was probably scurrying around kissing the asses of all those presumed to be in line for his job.
Ludlow nervously offered a yellow flimsy. “At least I have one piece of good news.”
Fairbanks looked at the clerk blankly.
“One of those queer cults down south threw out its leader over the weekend. The man returned and burned the headquarters. A bookkeeper died of a heart seizure trying to prevent the arson, and a young gardener named Jim David received a head injury. The gardener is recuperating in a local hospital. We received all the details from the Pasadena police. They were interviewing the gardener, and one of the officers recalled the description we circulated. It was still lying on his desk…”
Fairbanks continued to stare at him. Ludlow desperately rattled the flimsy.
“Sir, the young man in the hospital fits the description. Blond hair, blue eyes, a crippled left foot—he fits it exactly.”
Fairbanks sat motionless for some fifteen seconds, then snatched the flimsy and smoothed it with both hands. He read it twice. Grabbing the telephone, he clicked the hook up and down. “Eunice? Eunice? Dammit, answer.”
He kept clicking the hook. Ludlow almost interrupted to add something else Pasadena had told him on the telephone, when he called to verify after receiving the hospital’s address. Pasadena told him that the officer who made the connection between the boy and the SP description also recalled a similar inquiry, and a similar description, from Pinkerton’s detective agency, months before. But the point didn’t seem that significant, so he decided to drop it.
“Eunice? Where the devil were you? This is Mr. Fairbanks. Telephone the main ticket office. I want a reservation on the Daylight Limited to Los Angeles tomorrow.”
The coastal range shone blue and white to the west of the speeding Limited. Fairbanks leaned his forehead against the cool glass and watched the mountains. Long ago, he’d studied Darwin, and more recently, the superman theories of the socialist Jack London. Out of such reading, his upbringing, and his long association with important and powerful Californians, he’d evolved a theory of how he should live and behave. This place, California, called on a man to dominate it. The sheer overwhelming natural beauty inspired some, but others, like him, it taunted. Its very bigness challenged him to a contest for mastery. He understood a man like Cholly Crocker, who had torn down trees, plowed up the earth, drilled and blasted through mountain rock to build the CP line and prove to everyone that he was mightier than God’s own handiwork. Fairbanks shared Crocker’s need to prove he was the master of his time, his place. But in that effort, he had lately failed on a scale unimaginable in any previous season of his life. He’d failed and been kicked aside like a street cur. Dreaming in the sunshine, his brow on the cool glass, Fairbanks felt he had but one great opportunity left, one opportunity to recoup the enormous loss, vindicate himself, win.
One opportunity.
79
“THERE, SIR.”
The matron pointed down the aisle of the sunny ward to the farthest bed on the right. Fairbanks tipped his hat and walked quickly. Although the walls were whitewashed and large arched windows admitted fresh air, he disliked the odors: the staleness of dressings, blood, strong cleaning solution.
He stopped suddenly, and an orderly with a tray of medicine cups almost ran into him. Muttering an apology, Fairbanks thought he’d lost his mind.
It was Carla in the last bed. A younger Carla, with less flesh on the face, but the same features, the same cap of bright-gold hair.
From a high window opposite his bed, sunlight fell on the boy, and the gently moving shadow of a palm. The boy was supposed to be twelve, but the size of his shoulders and the maturity of his face suggested fourteen or fifteen. A bandage bulged on the back of his head, fastened with sticking plaster, the hair around it shaved.
Fairbanks tapped his gold-headed stick on the bed’s metal foot rail. “Good morning. You’re Jim David, aren’t you?”
The boy put down his dime novel and pulled the sheet higher over his coarse cotton gown. His eyes were large, and as blue as Carla’s. Fairbanks was unmanned by emotion. In a rush of excitement before leaving the City, he’d told Carla the boy’s assumed name and mentioned Pasadena. To his astonishment, Carla broke down completely. Crying, she begged him to telephone the moment he found out whether or not it was their son. This touched him in a way he’d not been touched for a long time. He patted and soothed her, and promised he’d call.
The boy didn’t directly answer the question. “Who are you?”
“Allow me to introduce myself. Walter Fairbanks the Third. I’m an attorney.” The identification was automatic; he was incomplete without it. “I came down from San Francisco to see you on a personal matter.” He pointed his stick at a stool pushed under the bed. “Might I sit down?”
Jim remained suspicious. “I guess.”
The stool was low and Fairbanks felt awkward, less authoritative, on it. His eye was on a level with the boy’s hip.
A patient in another bed called plaintively, “Matron. Matron, may I have the—ah—receptacle? Hurry please, matron.”
Fairbanks concentrated on his son. “I’m familiar in a general way with the tabernacle in Pasadena, the fire set by the man who ran it. I’m sorry you were injured—”
Jim shrugged it away. “My head hurt like the devil for three days. It doesn’t now. They’ll take the stitching out Monday, they said. Then I can go home with Jocker.”
“Who’s Jocker?”
“A friend. He takes care of me, like.” Jim stared at the visitor, awaiting some better explanation than he’d received so far.
The boy’s deep-blue eyes fascinated Fairbanks. They were a man’s eyes, experienced, wary. How remarkable—and strange—that this was the offspring of his own loins.
“The admitting records show your name is James David, but it isn’t, is it? You’re really James O. Chance.”
A curtain closed behind the boy’s eyes. “Who are you? What’s this about?”
“Please, it�
��” Fairbanks extended a gray-gloved hand, a supplicant. Tiny sapphires of sweat popped out in his trimmed mustache. “It’s very hard for me to answer that. You see…” He faltered again. He had no skill in personal dealings, no charm like that bastard Chance had. He felt especially inadequate dealing with a son.
All at once Jim’s face showed hostility. “Then just answer.”
“I am…” Fairbanks cleared his throat like a public speaker. “I’m your real father.”
There was a long, long silence.
“Oh, matron. I’m finished with the—ah—receptacle.”
Jim rolled up the dime novel and held it in both hands, his knuckles white. “What are you saying to me?”
“I know it’s probably difficult for you to comprehend that assertion…”
Angry tears appeared. “Use words I can understand, will you?”
“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Fairbanks blurted, his voice pitching high. He made nervous gestures, little quirky attempts at a smile. “I’m a lawyer, you see—accustomed to a certain formal—” Christ, I’m botching it. “Yes. Well. What I said is true. I’ll take all the time necessary to explain the circumstances, but I’m telling you the truth. Please believe me. Your mother is Carla Hellman. When you were born, she was married to James Macklin Chance of San Francisco and Riverside. But Chance is not really—that is…” Jim’s incredulous expression undermined him and he faltered again, his voice weakening. “Please give me the opportunity to prove what I’m saying. Can you get out of bed? Walk down to the superintendent’s office with me? I’ll telephone your mother. You can speak to her and she’ll corroborate everything…”
That sentence died too. It was no good. The boy stared at him with open disbelief, and even fright. Fairbanks reached out to touch him.
“Jim, you’re my son—”
Jim pulled away from the pleading hand. “I don’t understand this. But I don’t think I want to, mister.” Fairbanks heard something new in the boy’s voice—a deep underground river of emotion rushing to the surface. “My father is the man who brought me up, J. M. Chance. He was rotten to me sometimes, but he’s my father. I can’t change that, and you can’t either.”