Christian stood on the rear platform of the Union Street cable car as it climbed the steep western slope of Russian Hill. He inhaled the chill spring air, staring out through the Golden Gate as the surface of the dark blue Pacific ignited with the shimmering gold and crimson sunrise. It was a sight that often comforted him, though on that morning it did not.
According to Elizabeth Fallon, Christian returned later that morning and handed her the insurance policy he had purchased from Ian Senzon.
He also swore that on his day off, Wednesday the eighteenth, he would visit the fire chief, Dennis Sullivan, a family friend, and tell him of his nightmares.
It was a promise Christian would not keep.
Chapter 4
SOUTH OF MARKET STREET
APRIL 15, 1906. 6:20 A.M.
I should use this opportunity to better introduce myself. Jack London once told me—before I rejected his opium-glazed advances at Poppa Coppa's bohemian café in North Beach—that a reader must have a precise image of his subject or else be lost.
My mother named me Annalisa after her elder sister, who had died en route from Rome to San Francisco when her ship sunk while rounding Cape Horn. I was a bookish and artistic child who grew up immersed in the writings of Jane Austen, Susan B. Anthony, and Nellie Bly—the latter became a personal icon when she defied convention and offered first-person observations of the stories she reported, a technique I have emulated from the moment I took up the pen. I graduated valedictorian, class of 1904, from the University of California in Berkeley. I am also tall and athletic; the latter a result of years peddling a bicycle over San Francisco's imposing hills. I have the arched eyebrows, aquiline nose, and obsidian eyes of my mother. A mass of black curly hair, compliments of a Sicilian grandmother, seems to boil about my shoulders.
After college, I attempted to join Fremont Older's journalistic campaign against our city's corruption. Learning of my fluency in French and Italian, and perusing my theater reviews for the college newspaper, Mr. Older instead assigned me to cover the opera and theater, replacing the male critic who had been shot and wounded, albeit non-fatally, by a disgruntled actor who had taken umbrage over a scathing review. Muckraking, Mr. Older informs me whenever the subject is revisited, is a distinctly male occupation.
I am also a Suffragist, reform Catholic, and Progressive Socialist, and pray these admissions not deter you from my story.
Shortly after sunrise—the last Easter sunrise over the city of San Francisco as we knew her—I was absorbed in the newest phonograph recordings of Enrico Caruso, records that were as yet unreleased and sent by a friend, a music and theater reporter for one of the New York newspapers.
I listened attentively to two arias Caruso would perform at our Grand Opera House, "Che Gelida Manina" (What a Frozen Little Hand) from La Boheme and "Il Fiore Che Tu Avevi Mi Dato" (The Flower That You Gave Me) from his opening night's Carmen. I was grateful for the near-deafness of my Polish neighbor lady, as I played them over and over, twirling rapturously about my tiny room.
As a young girl visiting New York with my parents, I attended the Metropolitan Opera to hear both Italo Campanini and the legendary Jean De Reske, and was at the Tivoli in San Francisco when our own Louisa Tetrazzini first leapt onto the opera firmament. Those memories paled in comparison to the sound resonating from the brass horn of my Victor, a voice of seemingly incongruous elements: thunderous and sweet, profound and joyous, so impassioned and precise that I listened in disbelief. I left my cramped tenement building South of Market—South of the Slot, the cable car slot, the only area I could afford on a reporter's salary— and dodged the clanging trolley cars and clomping horses and honking automobiles on Market Street. I scarcely heard the clatter, still dizzy with Caruso in my ears.
At Bush Street near the gateway to Chinatown, I ducked inside the entrance of The Evening Bulletin just as Fire Chief Dennis Sullivan and his men returned to Central Station across the street. Sullivan and his men struggled with their spent horses and ornate brass pumpers after battling an all-night blaze at a paint and solvent factory out near Hunter's Point Shipyard at the city's southeastern edge.
When I reached the top floor of the Bulletin offices, I dropped my review of Caruso's new recording, which I headlined "The Voice of God," on the cluttered oak desk of my editor, Mr. Fremont Older, and hurried back downtown.
At approximately seven-twenty, I passed Union Square on its southern border, crossing behind the Powell Street cable car as the rhythmic clanging of its brass bell resounded off the massive granite face of the Saint Francis Hotel. At the corner of Geary and Powell, I stopped to observe a red and green Ocean Beach Railroad car, already jammed with people. If New Yorkers are the country's most refined city dwellers, we are certainly the most vigorous, a people obsessed with recreation and outdoor frivolity.
Though a few clinging to the running boards were dressed in Easter finest for services at St. Ignatius, St. Mary's, and Congregation Emanu-el. An elderly Negro couple carried a framed daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln, en route to services commemorating the 41st anniversary of his assassination. Most of the energetic contingent carried towels and bathing suits for Sutro Baths or the waterslides at Chutes on Haight Street. Some sported knickers for bicycling excursions, others toted Hawkeye cameras to photograph the Arboretum or giant water lilies at Golden Gate Park. A lone woman on the running board of the rear dummy car carried a banner emblazoned with the likeness of suffragist Susan B. Anthony, who had died the previous Thursday, and for whom services were being conducted in the park.
When the trolley passed, I crossed and headed South of the Slot, toward the Grand Opera House.
Meanwhile, in keeping with the city's singular reputation for irreverence, three of San Francisco's most powerful men began arriving at a whorehouse, on Easter Sunday no less, for a meeting that would forever seal our fate.
The infamous Poodle Dog, a six-story Victorian at the corner of Mason and Eddy Streets, sat a few blocks from our famed Palace Hotel; a great convenience for many of the latter's male guests. From six until eleven every evening, well-turned residents and visitors dined on the Poodle Dog's sumptuous fare at the chandeliered first-floor restaurant. After witching hour, the male elite retired to other diversions via a private elevator to the penthouse suites, where "dining French" meant ordering the specialty of the house, the black-stockinged Femme du Jour.
"Handsome" Eugene Schmitz, the city's mayor, arrived first, following Mass at St. Mary's, still dressed in his pious suit and sporting a red Easter carnation in his lapel. The former conductor of the Columbia Theater Orchestra and past President of the Musicians' Union, he had recently been re-elected to his third term as the head of the Union Labor Party—a fabrication of Adam Rolf designed to capitalize on the burgeoning Progressive movement—a party that was neither pro-Union nor pro-Labor. Schmitz was a perfect icon of the city at large: attractive, buoyant, corrupt, and hollow as a drum.
He was soon joined by his master and benefactor, Boss Adam Rolf, a uniquely San Francisco version of the traditional urban power broker: a champagne and opera-loving alternative to the beer-swilling, bawdy house brawlers such as New York's William Tweed, Boston's Martin Lomasney, and the recently deposed Ed Butler of St. Louis. A brilliant attorney, fluent in French and Latin, Rolf had executed one of the shrewdest maneuvers in American politics when he created the Union Labor Party five years earlier to fill the vacuum left when public outrage drove the corrupt Democratic potentate, "Blind" Chris Buckley, into exile.
In search of a candidate long on charm, short on morals, and bereft of a spinal column, Rolf plucked popular Eugene Schmitz out of the Columbia's orchestra pit and anointed him puppet-mayor.
According to a Poodle Dog waiter who provided information in exchange for opera tickets or a cash gratuity, Rolf had spent the previous night in the sixth-floor penthouse, resplendent with Persian carpets, Tiffany lamps, mahogany-paneled walls, and a Turkish sitz bath, where he dined on baked abalone, potatoes au grati
n, leg of lamb au jus with mint sauce, a double magnum of Château Lafite '79, plus aperitif of peroxide blonde, a head taller than he, with a garnish of red-headed Jewish girl from Boston. Rolf was a slight man, barely five feet two with watery gray eyes, a proboscis ample enough to gaff steelhead, and the conscience of a famished rodent.
The trio was completed by the arrival of one of their principal adversaries, the rugged Fire Chief, Dennis Sullivan, still red-eyed from the fire he had battled past sunrise. The Poodle Dog was otherwise empty save for the cleaning and preparatory staff, including the aforementioned waiter.
Sullivan quenched his parched throat from a crystal goblet that had been poured for Handsome Eugene, and then pulled a report from inside his gray tunic. He donned his wire-rim glasses and read aloud, his voice hoarse from shouting orders until dawn.
"The fact that the city of San Francisco has not burned to the ground yet again can only be attributed to the diligence of the fire department and the will of the Divine. Nowhere have we seen a city that so violates every rule of modern construction and common sense. Virtually every building is made of wood and there is insufficient space between them to slip a fire hose. One-quarter of the buildings in the Financial District, one-half of those on the waterfront, and every building south of Market Street is built on filled land. In lieu of any effort at self-preservation by the current city administration of San Francisco, a conflagration of epic proportions is inevitable."
"That is not my opinion," Sullivan concluded. "That is the report of the Fire Underwriters Association of America." Dennis Sullivan had long been the most revered man in San Francisco, a legend from the days when volunteer companies raced to arrive first at a blaze, dragging their ornate pumpers as hundreds of citizens rose from their beds to chase after them. He was strong-willed, intolerant of corruption and sloth, and bore the leathery skin of a man who had spent his life too close to fire. Both Schmitz and Rolf knew he was not a man to be taken lightly.
Sullivan stared as Schmitz licked coffee from his well-waxed mustache, smiling throughout.
"My conclusions, gentlemen, are much harsher than those of the Fire Underwriters," Sullivan added.
"Were your conclusions anything less than harsh, Chief Sullivan," Adam Rolf replied, "we would be gravely disappointed."
Sullivan's singed face flushed a deeper shade of crimson. "I have here," he continued, summoning the document that Hunter Fallon had delivered earlier that morning, "a report on the condition of the water system, compiled by the College of Engineering at Stanford University. All three of the main conduits running from the Spring Valley Water Company run over a major earthquake fault, the one they are calling the San Andreas.
Two of the feeder lines pass through filled ground. The entire system could not be more fragile if it lay across the cable car tracks. I have said it time and again. This city needs a supplemental salt water system, a renovation of the cisterns beneath the streets, a new set of enforceable building codes and enough honest men to enforce them!"
Schmitz rose and cleared his throat. "Splendid work, Chief Sullivan. You will have to excuse us. We must attend to final preparations for the arrival of Enrico Caruso. We certainly don't want to embarrass our great city by being unprepared, do we? Therefore, I declare, as Mayor of San Francisco, that no flaming holocaust shall occur until after Maestro Caruso has made his curtain call."
"And what should I do with these reports, Mr. Mayor? Tack them up at Lotta's Fountain so the people who pay our salaries can see how concerned you are about their lives? Three years now, I've been pleading to deaf ears, and every time that bell rings, I wonder if it's going to be the one that gets away from us."
"Have the reports sent to Mr. Rolf’s office tomorrow, Chief Sullivan. He will give them his immediate attention."
Rolf tugged at his collar, fuming at Schmitz assigning him chores.
"And how much of a bribe should I pay Mr. Rolf to read the damn things?" Sullivan thundered, his chair scraping the polished floor. Before he could strangle them, Schmitz and Rolf were gone.
Schmitz' long, graceful stride carried him out into the warm spring morning. The symphony of rumbling trolleys and clanging cable cars, the bobbing, colorful sway of bowler hats and feathered chapeaux swirled about him. He breathed that special air, struggling to calm the tempest boiling beneath the painted smile.
With his short choppy steps, Rolf walked purposefully past Schmitz. Tommy Biggs, Rolf’s cauliflower-faced goon and driver, had the Phaeton's leather top down and was polishing the brass headlights when his boss arrived. Tommy dutifully set the spark, turned the starter crank and climbed behind the wheel as the Rolls belched to life.
With Rolf and Schmitz on the pleated black leather seat behind him, Tommy spun a dizzying turn onto Market Street, posters of Caruso dressed as La Boheme's impoverished poet Rodolfo or Carmen's Spanish corporal Don Josè swaying from the spider web of telephone and electric lines above. The sidewalk cafès were crowded with the nattily attired breakfast crowd and Caruso's voice seemed to blare from every window on a boulevard that rivaled Paris' splendid St. Germaine.
Despite his flippant dismissal of Dennis Sullivan's demands, Eugene Schmitz was troubled. He loved his city, his job and his stature. His city had risen, in a single lifetime, from a sand dune village of eight hundred inhabitants to a city of astonishing wealth and influence. Schmitz' San Francisco was built on money, wave after wave of it: gold, silver, whaling, fishing, shipping, transcontinental railroad, Coast redwood, Sierra lumber, Napa wine, and the Green Gold Rush of the Santa Clara and San Joaquin valleys. The Jewel of the Pacific, a freewheeling city unfettered by the Brahmin pretensions of the East had spawned an artistic revolution virtually unmatched: Mark Twain, Jack London, Isadora Duncan, Lincoln Steffens, Frank Norris, Ambrose Bierce. A half-century of progress and profit that had not merely transformed San Francisco, but an entire nation. No city anywhere on Earth had ever grown so wealthy or so powerful so quickly, and Eugene Schmitz was paper lord of it all.
Schmitz' euphoria had dimmed in recent weeks, thanks to the mounting vitriol of Fremont Older's anti-corruption editorials and Dennis Sullivan's apocalyptic warnings.
"I don't know how long we can put Chief Sullivan off like this, Adam," Schmitz said. "God knows what would happen if another earthquake strikes like the one in '68. They would nail our charred hides to City Hall."
"Dennis Sullivan is the least of your worries. The new Federal Prosecutor, Charles Feeney? He's not really here to count pork rations at the Presidio. After schemin' Joe Folk brought down Ed Butler in St. Louis, that meddler Roosevelt got his powder primed. He sent Feeney to nail us in our coffins. Be proud, Eugene. Your name is atop the gallows, right next to mine."
Tommy gazed casually over his shoulder as Schmitz' throat tightened and his face flushed. Despite the gentle throbbing of the Rolls' engine, Tommy overheard it all. Handsome Eugene gripped the polished door handle with both hands: a moving Rolls Royce made an inconvenient place to vomit.
From a doorway across from the Grand Opera House on Mission Street, where I had been waiting impatiently for their arrival, I watched Tommy jump down and help a visibly wobbly Schmitz to the ground, whereupon he followed Boss Rolf inside.
Once he was assured that Rolf was out of sight, Tommy returned to the Rolls and produced a small leather-bound book from inside his chauffeur's tunic. He began to scribble the details of the conversation between his boss and the Boss, for unbeknownst to them Tommy had recently gained another master in Byron Fallon.
I hiked the ankle-length black dress that covered my jodhpur pants and sprinted down Market Street to the Financial District, where I jumped onto the rear platform of the California Street cable car.
It was not the brief run that sent my heart pound wildly.
Chapter 5
HALL OF JUSTICE
APRIL 15, 1906. 9:30 A.M.
After leaving Easter services at St. Peter and Paul Church on Washington Square, Byron Fallon worked his way
down teeming Montgomery Street, the cobblestone canyon that separates Telegraph Hill and Russian Hill. The streets were choked with rumbling Berlins and wobbling Broughams filled with churchgoers, and the popular Lieutenant nodded frequently to the tipped brim and raised cane.
He arrived at the side entrance of the red brick Hall of Justice, across from Portsmouth Square, where the six-member Chinatown Squad waited with two Chinese girls, the older no more than twelve. Both were clad in flour-streaked green silk blouses, the trademark dress of Chinatown's most powerful madam, Ah Toy.
Byron stopped next to Charlie McBride, the most honest of the Chinatown Squad by virtue of only taking bribes from gamblers and opium dealers. Jack rollers and slavers were off limit, making him only half the department outcast that Byron was. "You had a good night, Charlie?"
Charlie moved a Cuban victory cigar to the corner of his mouth, rippling the edges of his drooping moustache. "We hit 'em this mornin' Lieutenant," he answered in the voice of County Cork. "When the pigtail bastards was sleepin'. Pulled these two little twists from a old flour barrel where they made 'em sleep 'cause they didn't make their pokey last night. Miss Cameron will be along to take 'em to the Mission. Tried ta' bribe 'em with a sweet to come inside but the Tongs tell 'em there's a monster inside bites little girls' heads off."
"You get any of them?"
"Got a couple a' the hatchet swingin' bastards gettin' Bertillon'd upstairs."
Byron gazed toward Chinatown, to the alley where he and Charlie had investigated the murder of "Little Pete," Chinatown's leading gangster, gunned down while having his queue braided and forehead shaved in high-brow style.
"Good work, Charlie." It was a halfhearted gesture. Two girls rescued from among a thousand held in the fetid catacombs below Chinatown, the whole sordid business protected by Police Chief Donen, Boss Rolf and their cronies at City Hall.
1906: A Novel Page 3