“You would find it illuminating. The conventional wisdom is that the surrender of that godless man Lee put the period to slavery in these United States. Meanwhile, chaste young white women are being exchanged like currency in broad daylight on the streets of our greatest cities, and forced into degradation which to describe would bring a blush to the cheek of a base pagan. Are you aware of the threat posed by the nation’s ice-cream parlors?”
Beecher laughed. Goodhue turned the full heat of his gaze upon him.
“You are amused, my Ethiopian friend; as well you may be, until I explain that most of these establishments are owned and operated by foreigners; Jews and papists, turned in the lathes of Mediterranean seaports where girls are auctioned off in public and conducted in chains to workhouses and brothels, never to be seen again by decent society. These scoundrels ply them with sweets and flattery, and when the tender creatures are sufficiently befogged, offer them employment—stressing that the work is undemanding and respectable—and by these lights lead them down the garden path toward the burning pit. One moment of feminine weakness, and someone’s cherished daughter delivers herself to a lifetime of debauchery and an eternity of damnation. I would no sooner allow a child of mine to enter the polished whiteness of one of these emporia than I would escort her into a saloon. Ice cream, you say? The serpent’s fruit, I say.”
As he spoke, his volume rose, until the room shook with thunder. Just hearing it made me feel hoarse. I cleared my throat.
“I haven’t seen any ice-cream parlors in Barbary.”
“There is no reason why you should, since by the time this poor baggage arrives their purpose is done. Hell’s broad avenue begins in New York and Boston and Chicago and ends in Portsmouth Square. Stare deeply into the eyes of the next harlot you see; disregard the painted features and tinted hair, the hollow cheeks and lying lips, and you will discern the frail, faded glimmer of the trusting girl who turned her back on church and home, never suspecting it was for the last time.”
Beecher said, “You feel that way, you ought to set up shop in New York or Boston or Chicago. By the time they get here, they’re gone for good.”
“That is the crossroads at which the Reverend Forrestal and I part ways. He counsels eradicating this pernicious growth at the point where it blossoms, whereas I am in favor of burning it out at its root. Close an ice-cream parlor, incarcerate its proprietor, and two more will spring up in their place, so long as there is profit to be made. It is simple economics. Destroy the houses of sin, and with them the source of income, and there will be no need for the parlors. Smite the sinners, burn their tabernacles to the ground, baptize them in the blood of the lamb. Sacrifice the sheep that are lost along with those who led them astray, and spare those who may yet be folded back into the flock. In order to rebuild, one must first destroy.”
The walls were still ringing when the door opened from the hallway. The gray-haired woman’s face was stoic. “Owen, I have loaves in the oven.”
His voice dropped six feet. “I’m sorry, my dear.”
She drew the door shut. The exchange was the first indication I’d had that she was his wife and not just his housekeeper.
I said, “It’s the destruction we’ve come to talk about. We want to ask you to postpone Judgment Day until we lay this Sons of the Confederacy business to rest.”
“I am far more concerned with the daughters than I am with the Sons. I care not whether they prosper or perish.”
“Some of the names on your list are no threat to anyone’s daughter,” I said.
“Infamous assassins, harlots, and thieves! Slay the hosts and the parasites will wither. These targets were not chosen arbitrarily. David declared war upon the Philistines, but he joined battle with Goliath, and thereby claimed victory with but a single stone. I wish you gentlemen well upon your mission, but your objectives are not mine.”
“You won’t reconsider?”
“I will not. Indeed, I cannot. Immortal souls are at risk.”
I drew the Deane-Adams.
“That being the case, you’re under arrest for obstruction of justice.”
Beecher unbelted his Le Mat and cocked it.
Goodhue’s brow darkened. The muscles bunched in his arms and thighs. He looked ready to pounce. Then he smirked in his beard. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but I preferred it to Goodhue rampant on a field of hellfire. When he spoke, his tone was level.
“Are you so certain that placing a spiritual leader in a cage will postpone the event you fear, rather than accelerate it?”
I was still thinking about that when the door opened again. Mrs. Goodhue took in the pistols without expression. “A man to see you. He wouldn’t give his name.”
The smoldering eyes remained on me. I returned the five-shot to its holster. Beecher lowered his hammer and put up the Confederate pistol.
“Ask him to wait in the parlor,” Goodhue said.
The door closed.
I said, “Whorehouses are like ice-cream stores. There are two or three waiting to take the place of every one you burn to the ground.”
“Work worthy of the effort is worthy of repeating. Always and again, until the mortal shells rise and the sorting begins. The price of salvation is patience and persistence.”
“You’re not the first man who tried to raise a private army for his own ends. They always come to grief at the finish.”
“You’ve forgotten the late Mr. Lincoln. General McClellan was in favor of suing for peace. Lincoln answered him by inventing the draft. But for his interest in his own ends, the war would have ended three years earlier. History is written by the victors.”
“He paid for it with his life,” I said. “His and three hundred thousand others.”
“I am prepared to answer to that account. Are you?”
“I swore an oath to that effect.”
He smirked again. “I’m aware of the reading habits of my parishioners. I regret to say it is not confined to Holy Writ. Your exploits have not escaped the notice of the vulgar penny press, and I dare say they do not in all ways conform to the spirit of your oath. I judge not lest I be judged. My own methods are not always those of the Redeemer and His apostles, but I live in the modern world. Mark and Matthew could not have anticipated Barbary any more than the hedonistic Greeks could have foreseen Sodom and Gomorrah. Although Samson found the jawbone of an ass sufficient for slaughtering infidels and idolators, I find that a powder charge is far more appropriate when transacting business with Daniel Webster Wheelock’s Hoodlums.”
The atmosphere in that raw room was noxious. It might have been the lingering effects of last night or the smoky lamp on the desk, but there was hardly enough air to fill Owen Goodhue’s lungs, let alone three sets at once. I wanted out of there, but I needed one more answer.
“I notice you didn’t include Wheelock’s name on your list.”
“God has use for Satan, or He would have smote him centuries ago. In any case, Captain Dan is nothing without Barbary. He will shrivel and drift before the first clean draught that blows unhampered across the ruins.”
“You keep talking about Barbary as if it’s just a bunch of buildings,” I said. “They have people in them.”
“What is flesh? We leave it behind when we stand before our Creator.”
“Lying or hanging?”
“I do not propose to say. Joshua did not discuss his strategy before Jericho.”
“But who will be left to write the Book of Owen?” I asked.
“I am a humble man. If in the outcome of this event my name should be erased from human memory, I hold the matter in no great regard. It is already written in the book of St. Peter. If I manage to spare even one young woman from the clutches of Demon Lust, I need not fear what is recorded beneath. Gentlemen.” He rose, dwarfing the room further. He had to stoop to avoid colliding with the ceiling. It made you want to step back.
Beecher held his ground. “What’s white slaving got to do with Horatio Flinders?”
We left him. Entering the parlor on our way out, I stopped. Beecher bumped against me from behind.
Daniel Webster Wheelock used his ivory stick to push himself up from one of the upholstered chairs. He had on his fire captain’s uniform, and he looked as surprised as I felt.
“Deputy.”
“Alderman.”
Mrs. Goodhue came in and led him out.
Nero, Wheelock’s Negro bodyguard, stood smoking a cigar on the boardwalk in front of the house. He wore a tall gray hat and a full-skirted overcoat to match over checked trousers and gleaming Wellingtons. He lowered the hand holding the cigar and tipped his hat as we walked past.
Part Five
The Bonnie-Blue Flag
28
“That man Goodhue’s razier’n ten crazy men,” Beecher said.
I nodded. “I can’t figure out why he isn’t famous.”
“Well, he’ll be plenty famous after tomorrow night.”
We were sitting on a public bench at the top of Telegraph Hill, passing a bottle of Old Gideon back and forth; I’d made the mistake of swearing off liquor before making the acquaintance of the madman of Mission Street. The saloon-keeper in the stained-glass place where we’d stopped for a drink wouldn’t serve us on the premises on account of Beecher, but he’d agreed to sell us the bottle when I showed him my star and asked when was the last time his gas line had been inspected.
The view was impressive, even for a native of the High Plains. It extended all the way down to the ships in the harbor and across the bay where houses were going up, so rapidly we could track their progress between swigs. Cable cars screeched down the slope and rattled back up, taking on and disgorging passengers on the fly. I saw my first omnibus. The place was busier than an antheap.
Both sides of San Francisco displayed themselves simultaneously, the stately homes on Nob Hill and the tumbledown shacks on Pacific Street; parasols blossoming to our left like desert blooms after a rain, pushcart peddlers crawling along like caterpillars to our right, hawking rags and cans of coal oil recovered from the dregs of lamps rescued from trash bins. We saw a liveried groom helping a lady in a bustle into a brougham and the assault and battery of an unsteady pedestrian, both at the same time. It was like looking through a stereoscope whose pictures had gotten mixed up back at the factory.
Beecher shared my thoughts. “What you reckon is holding this place together?”
“The same thing that keeps it apart. If it weren’t for Barbary, the swells would have to pick fights with each other. Look what’s happening on the frontier. We threw out the Indians and let in the lawyers and politicians.”
“What makes you so smart?”
“I’m not smart. I’m just alive.”
“You fought Indians?”
“I’ve fought Indians.”
“And I know you shot it out with outlaws.”
“Outlaws and lawmen.”
“How old are you?”
“Forty-two.”
“You’re smart.”
“Not smart enough to quit.”
“Maybe you’re smart enough to tell me what Cap’n Dan’s doing paying a call on Goodhue.”
“We’ll ask Wheelock tonight at the Bella Union.”
He drank, held the liquor in his mouth a moment, then swallowed. “I clean forgot about that meeting of the Sons of the Confederacy. You done any thinking as to how we’re getting in?”
“I’ve been working on it. I still am. I don’t figure that punch-simple bouncer from the saloon to set much of a challenge, but if Wheelock shows, he’s bound to bring along that bodyguard of his. He knows us by sight, and Wheelock didn’t strike me as the kind of politician who keeps anyone on his payroll just because he looks well in a stiff collar.”
“Nero’s colored. You leave him to me.”
“Matching skin won’t get you past him. I doubt he concerns himself with brotherhood.”
“It ain’t getting past him I’m talking about. Some men you just got to go through.” He offered me the bottle.
I shook my head. It was already beginning to slosh. My stomach was empty. I’d held my own against dog soldiers and brute killers, but that morning I hadn’t been stout enough to face breakfast. “We can’t risk shooting. The noise would raise the South and it would be Bull Run all over again.”
He raised the bottle to his lips, then thought better of it and thumped in the cork. “I ever tell you about the fight at Buffalo Creek?”
“You scalped a young brave and stayed behind to burn the lodges and shoot the ponies.”
“No, the young brave was another fight, and I didn’t tell you how Buffalo Creek got won. We was climbing a hill to attack the village. It was first light, and we was walking the horses with gunnysacks tied on their hooves so as not to alert the sentries; cupping their snouts with one hand so’s they wouldn’t blow when they smelled Indian ponies. We was halfway up when a hunting party come over the hill and spotted us.
“They was just as surprised as we was, and drawed rein just to make certain they wasn’t seeing spirits. They was mounted, we was afoot, and if you tell me you ever seen a good organized Arapaho charge you’re a liar, on account of you wouldn’t be sitting here with hair under your hat. I only heard about them myself, and hearing was enough to satisfy my curiosity.”
He grinned his sunrise grin. He was seeing something other than the metropolis at our feet.
“We had this white lieutenant, Brigham was his name, only he sure wasn’t no Mormon. When he broke wind, you thought it was the regimental band. I seen men who’d gut you with a bayonet turn green and spew up their rations when they caught the scent. Well, he got so scared he let one fly, loud enough to spook the horses, and you know something? That hunting party was so insulted they lost their manners and galloped down that hill all in a bunch, whooping like drunken cowboys, running right over each other, bumping lances and getting their bows all tangled. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Brigham remembered his training and got us into formation, front rank standing and firing, then kneeling to reload while the second rank stood and fired, and so on. We shot that hunting party to pieces and swung into leather and took out after the turntails and right on over the crest and down into the village. All on account of one man couldn’t hold his beans.”
He drew the cork, drank, and restopped the bottle.
“We called it the Battle of Brigham’s Bowels.”
I watched a wedding let out of a church on Stockton, men in morning coats and women in frilled capes spilling down the steps to see off the bride and groom in a phaeton tied all over with white ribbons.
“I don’t remember reading about that one in Harper’s Weekly,” I said.
“Well, it wasn’t Custer’s Last Fight. The point is, you can train a man to overcome everything but his own bad temper. If them braves wasn’t so concerned with their dignity, that village might still be standing.” He stuck the bottle in a coat pocket. “You let me worry about Nero.”
“You aren’t going to break wind, are you?”
“That was just an example. I wouldn’t never enter into a contest with Lieutenant Brigham. One time—”
“Save it for later. You don’t want to use up all your best stories at once.” I stood and grasped the back of the bench for balance. Old Gideon needed a four-course meal to tie it down. “Let’s get something to eat. We might not find time for supper.”
He got up. “What you in the mood for?”
“Anything but beans.”
The Ancient rose from a blanket of fog that swathed the gas lamps almost to their orange globes, pale and shimmering under a rustler’s moon. It was as solid and yet as otherworldly as the Sphinx, and it seemed to say, I am the Bella Union, I am Barbary. I was here before the Chinese, before the Sydney Ducks, and I will stand when all the lesser establishments about me have burned or fallen into splinters. Worship me with cheap champagne and expensive women. We sidestepped a pool of steamin
g urine at the base of the foundation and went inside. We were met by the bouncer, none of whose scars had faded since the last time. His head belonged on a hunched figure in trunks and a tight jersey in a sporting print, not a thickening body in a black frock coat and white shirtboard.
“Sorry, gents. The place is closed tonight for a private party. Come back tomorrow.”
We were alone in the foyer that opened into the saloon, but I didn’t know for how long. The auditorium door was drifting shut behind the last body to pass through. I started to turn away, then pivoted on my heel and hit the bouncer square on the chin with all my weight behind my fist. I felt the impact to my shoulder.
He took a step back, then lowered his head between his shoulders and raised a pair of small, hard fists with ridges across the knuckles where they’d broken and healed several times. He took a step forward. Beecher planted the muzzle of his Le Mat against the bouncer’s right temple and rolled back the hammer. The bouncer stiffened, then lowered his fists to his sides.
I held my star in front of his face. “We’re here on federal business. Take a walk down to the harbor. Have a cigar. Have several. In San Quentin, they don’t let you smoke in the cells.”
“I don’t use tobacco.”
“Have a drink, then. Kill the bottle.”
“I don’t drink, either. I don’t hold with most of the vices.”
“Which ones do you hold with?” I kept my temper in check. I didn’t know when someone might come in from the street or the theater. I didn’t want to buffalo him. You can take only so many cracks to the skull, and the bumps and furrows showing through his close-cropped hair went the limit.
“I got a girl up at the Brass Check.”
“Go see her. You’ve got to tend a romance if you want it to grow.”
“I’ll lose my job.”
“There’s plenty of work in San Quentin.”
After a moment he nodded. Beecher withdrew the pistol and the bouncer walked past us and out the door. He didn’t stop for a hat and coat.
Port Hazard Page 18