1906: A Novel

by Dalessandro, James

  A muffled gunshot shook him from his introspection. No one else seemed to notice. He heard another shot, and then a third.

  Lincoln hastily made his way through a dozen Pullman cars, jumping from platform to platform. A group of faro players in a baggage car showed no reaction as he headed in the direction of the gunshots.

  After crossing through the empty caboose, he entered a car paneled in mahogany, the floor covered in Moroccan carpets. On the left, a row of sleeping compartments, dressed in Irish lace, stretched from floor to ceiling. On the right, a small kitchen and pantry sat adjacent to a brass bathtub.

  A gunshot sounded from the rear platform. Lincoln eased his right hand onto the butt of his single-action Colt. With his left hand, he slid open the door to the platform.

  Three men stood with their backs to him. The shortest went through a series of gunfighter-like contortions, wriggling his hand and shoulder before grabbing for the revolver strapped around his waist. An ear-splitting shot grazed the toe of his boot and splintered the wooden deck. "No! No," said the tall, angular man to the left. "You must pull the pistol from the holster, then squeeze. Pull, then squeeze, not squeeze and pull."

  Lincoln was examining the two-dozen bullet holes that gave the platform the appearance of Swiss cheese when they noticed him.

  They turned in unison to stare at his Stetson hat, long brown duster, and long-barreled Colt. The short man's eyes grew big and a smile crossed his face when he spotted Lincoln's star.

  "Lui e un vigile rustica," the shorter man said.

  "Yes, I am an old country sheriff."

  "Lei parla l'italiano?" the short man replied, his eyes growing wider. "Not Italian. Latin, actually. It was a requirement at the university in Lawrence."

  "Allow me to introduce myself, Sheriff," the tall man said. "My name is Alfred Hertz, conductor of the New York Metropolitan Opera. This is our valet, Martino. And this is Maestro Enrico Caruso."

  "I recognize Mr. Caruso from his photographs. Lincoln Staley, Sheriff of Douglas County, Kansas. Pleased to meet you all."

  Caruso shook Lincoln's hand vigorously, his eyes darting between badge and gun. "You are some times use these pistola? I am hear there are many ladri, banditos, in San Francisco."

  Lincoln eyed Caruso's bullet-frayed pant cuffs and boots. "Sometimes," he said, doing his best not to smile.

  Caruso raised a bushy eyebrow. "You can maybe show me thees, per favore? You can make 'ow you say? Dimostrazione."

  "I'm not sure that would be appropriate, Mr. Caruso."

  "Please, Sheriff. I'd be most grateful," Hertz pleaded, sweeping his hand to emphasize the jeopardy to the great tenor's toes.

  Lincoln hesitated, then stepped onto the platform and slid the duster to one side. As the train drew abreast of an abandoned buckboard thirty yards from the track, Lincoln whipped the Colt out and fanned the hammer. Five shots thundered forth, four of them splintering the left front wheel. Lincoln spun the Colt by the trigger guard and dropped it nimbly into the holster. The whole display required less than two seconds. He stood quietly amid three slack jaws and the smell of gun smoke.

  "Madre del Dio. Sheriff Lin-cone. You can please to join us for supper? My butler, Martino, is a capocuoco magnifico. We 'ave some nice vitello. Veals. And some San Giovese favoloso."

  "Please do, Sheriff Staley, we would welcome your company," said Hertz, "and I have a proposition for you."

  Chapter 17

  SAN FRANCISCO BAY

  APRIL 16, 1906. 5:45 A.M.

  In the cargo hold of the clipper Falmouth, twelve-year-old Ting Leo was awakened by footsteps on the gang ladder, the rattling of keys and the soft unlocking of the gate. "Smy-yays," she said softly, recognizing the silhouette of Smiles, the skinny sailor with the broken teeth.

  The one called "Gimpy" grasped the smooth brass rails and slid to the bottom, landing softly behind Smiles. She smelled them, even above the stench of the hold after forty-three days on the Pacific.

  Smiles approached. She stiffened as he reached inside her filthy shift and stroked her breasts. With the other hand, he reached inside his rancid linen pants, his hand bobbing up and down. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists.

  But Gimpy said "go on," and shoved him away. At least the men had not touched her between her legs.

  "Gwo wan," she muttered softly, practicing until she could almost say "go on." She knew Gimpy was telling him to go forward. "Go wan."

  She had never seen a white man until she boarded the ship, the day after her father stripped her naked and sold her for two gold pieces with eagles etched into the shiny metal, bragging that the broker had paid twice his normal price.

  "Sam Fransco," she heard the sailors say. She knew that it was Gum Saan, the Golden Mountain she had heard about in her village in Kwangtung.

  "Go won," she said, repeating their words: "captain," "evenin'," "aye," and "nay" and all the variations of "bastard," including "Limey bastard," "Yankee bastard," "Chinese bastard," and the like.

  Ting Leo watched as Smiles and Gimpy unlocked the brig at the end of the cargo hold. Inside were the two homely girls the captain rented to the crew at a dollar a visit. At first their shrieks had terrified the other girls. Now, after too many visits for anyone to count, their cries had faded to muffled whimpers.

  On the wooden slats where she lay, the strongest of the girls in the hold of the Falmouth, Ting Leo remembered the talk she heard in her village of a peasants' revolution. The other girls had asked many times if Gum Saan was as evil as their home, if the fathers there killed their infant daughters or sold them to strangers. She answered that a revolution was nearing, and soon a man would come and free them. It was all she could think of to comfort the frightened girls.

  When Smiles and Gimpy had finished grunting atop the homely girls, they climbed the stairs and locked the gate behind them. The Captain bellowed on the wooden deck above.

  "Hove to!"

  Ting Leo sprang to her knees and scurried to a porthole left open by the crew to ease the heat and smell. She gazed at the tallest trees she had ever seen, towering over a rocky coastline.

  She hurried to a porthole on the other side, squeezing between two sleeping girls. Her eyes filled with a stirring sight. Dozens of hills covered with houses, their lights glowing in the morning mist, smoke billowing from the chimneys. Hundreds of ships, their masts waving, lay at anchor along a vast harbor. Behind them, rows of stone buildings touched the sky. "Gum Saan," she cried.

  Within seconds, the girls around her stirred from sleep, pushing each other aside to peer through the open portholes.

  "Gum Saan! Gum Saan!"

  The Falmouth rode the flood tide through the mile-wide opening of the bay. They passed a white boat with white smoke pouring from its middle, so close Ting Leo thought she could touch it.

  On the white boat, men with pained looks on their faces held beams of light in their hands, running them over the surface of the water.

  Ting Leo squinted, shading her eyes as one of the young men shone his light on her face.

  Amidst the pained expression on his face, she saw eyes of kindness. He raised a hand and wiggled his fingers at her.

  "Hunter," someone called to him. "Hunter!"

  Slowly, he lowered his hand and moved to the other side of the boat, joining his beam of light with those of two other men.

  "Hun-ner", she said aloud. "Hunn-ner." She watched the cloud of steam thicken and the boat pull away. In the glowing sunrise, she saw Hunter look back, again playing his light over the porthole where she stood. She wondered if he was the great man people in her village had talked about. The one who would save them from the hated emperor. This man who held light in his hand and found her in this Gum Saan.

  Aboard the Alcatrice, the six young members of The Brotherhood were cold and spent from battling the turbulent bay, their batteries and hope nearly exhausted. They were making their second trip around Angel Island, aided now by the amber sunrise.

  "There's som
ething over there, tangled in the thickets," Francis shouted over the rattle and wheeze of the boiler. "Looks like a body, floating facedown."

  Christian ran to the bow and threw out a weighted line, sounding for the bottom. "You still got a good twenty feet here," he yelled at Nick Hazifotis in the pilot's roost above, his voice strained from a night of vomiting.

  "Is too rocky, Christian—is get shallow very fast!"

  Hunter peeled down to his wool briefs and dove into the icy water, disappearing beneath the chop. He surfaced thirty yards away and quickly turned the body over.

  His father's eyes, clouded by the immersion in salt water, stared blankly skyward.

  Christian jumped into the frigid water and swam to them.

  The Fallon brothers struggled against the surging water to tow him toward the boat. When they got close enough, Hunter took the rope still tied to his father's waist and threw the end to Francis.

  With Francis, Patrick, Max, and Carlo pulling, they raised Byron's body over the rail and onto the slippery deck. Hunter and Christian were pulled aboard.

  Hunter crawled to his father's cold, rigid body, cradled his head and rocked slowly, tears mixing with salt water. The grieving son let out a gasp and the quiver in his lip spread across his face, which he buried in his father's sodden vest.

  Max Rinaldi glared at Christian, who had slumped to the deck, his head in his hands. Only his wobbly legs and heaving stomach prevented Max from trying to kill him.

  A swirling mass of seagulls erupted off Alcatraz, screeching in frenzy, several of them colliding in midair.

  "Ai-ain' n-never seen them do-do that be-before," Carlo said quietly to Francis. "Bad o-omen to a s-sa-sailin' man."

  Chapter 18

  BUSH STREET

  APRIL 16, 1906. 7:00 A.M.

  I had retreated to Fremont Older's glass-enclosed inner sanctum to answer the ever-ringing telephone. Across the editorial room, Older tried his best to fend off a mounting stream of people desperate for information.

  I had just hung up after explaining our lack of information to Mrs. Older for the third time. The phone rang instantly.

  "This is Mr. Feeney. Is Mr. Older in?"

  "This is Annalisa Passarelli."

  "Annalisa. Lieutenant Fallon's sons have found his body near Angel Island. They should be bringing him to the Ferry Building within the half-hour. They're aboard the Alcatrice, a small fishing steamer."

  I replaced the receiver and slipped from the room, past Mr. Older who was surrounded by a dozen people, all asking the same questions they had been asking all night. I feared that announcing the news about Byron would send a stampede toward Mission Wharf.

  Once I reached Bush Street, I broke into a dead run, weaving through the morning traffic. I ran eight blocks or so to the wharf.

  I arrived, breathless, at the cable car turnaround in the Ferry Plaza. In front of me was a crowd of perhaps three hundred people who had assembled to protest the arrival of the Chinese girls. Standing before them were the protest's leaders, Donaldina Cameron, from the Presbyterian Mission, and Father Peter Yorke.

  I took my opera glasses from my bag, struggled with the ill-working adjustment and scanned the piers for signs of the Alcatrice. I spotted it offshore, jockeying in the still-rough seas with the ferries and schooners waiting for a place to dock.

  A hundred yards away, in the hold of the Falmouth, Ting Leo jostled at a porthole with the other girls as the Ferry Building loomed. She caught a glimpse of the boat she had seen upon entering the harbor, straining to see the young man with light in his hand.

  Aboard the Alcatrice, Hunter and Christian stood with their father's blanket-covered body, the Falmouth inching a few yards ahead of them toward the Jackson Street Pier just north of the Ferry Building. The dual tragedy was not lost on Hunter. The man who might have saved the girls from their terrible plight lay cold at his feet.

  The Falmouth docked. A foul-looking crewman secured the gangplank and a Chinese girl, her head barely above his waist, took her first wobbly steps forward. When she recoiled, fearful of the crowd below, the sailor shoved her.

  A howl went up from the demonstrators. Several girls appeared on deck, tears streaming down their dirty faces.

  "Excuse me, can you tell me what's going on here?" a female voice inquired from behind me.

  I turned and looked up into sky blue eyes and a sunny face beneath a broad-brimmed hat.

  "Chinese slave girls," I replied.

  "What?"

  "They bring these girls from China, pretending they are going to find work as domestic servants or marry Chinese men. Then they sell them to brothels and businessmen who like them as young as they can get them."

  "How can they do that? That's what the whole Civil War was about. You can't just sell human beings."

  "My thoughts precisely." I pulled out a notebook and hastily scribbled notes, my hand barely able to function.

  "You're a reporter?"

  "From the Bulletin. Annalisa Passarelli."

  "Oh, my gosh. Annalisa Passarelli! The opera writer! Sometimes they print your stories in the Kansas City Star! I don't believe it!"

  I smiled politely, in no mood for chatter.

  "I'm Kaitlin Staley. I just arrived on the train."

  "Enjoy your stay, Kaitlin, and be careful," I muttered, moving toward the protestors, who had begun sitting at the foot of the gangplank to block the path of the Chinese girls.

  Several paddy wagons stopped at the edge of the crowd, disgorging forty men in blue uniforms.

  With his men in tow, Police Chief Donen strode forward. "All right, ladies. I'm gonna say this one time only. You can all avoid a trip to the pokey by coming to your senses and clearin' a path."

  Father Yorke and Donaldina Cameron stepped into Donen's path.

  "Mornin' Peter. Miss Cameron," the burly Chief said. "Perhaps you two ought to confine your meddlin' to matters of the soul and leave police matters where they belong."

  "You surprise me, Jessie," Father Yorke seethed. "You talk about matters of the soul as though you had one."

  "You've been warned, Father." Donen stepped back and blew a shrill blast from his whistle.

  Two mustachioed officers stepped forward to grab the ankles of a seated female demonstrator, her dress flying above her waist as they dragged her, screaming, toward the paddy wagons. A roar of laughter swept through Donen's men.

  "All right, lads," he bellowed, "let's haul 'em off!"

  Donen's men waded into the crowd, jabbing their billy clubs at several demonstrators, whose screams mingled with the shrieks of the Chinese girls.

  Enraged, I had to fight the urge to join the demonstrators. Instead, I raised the battered opera glasses and gazed toward the Alcatrice, which had veered off to dock south of the Ferry piers, where a blanket-covered body was being passed to Hunter and Christian. My insides churning, I cast one last look at the demonstrators, raised the hem of my dress, and sprinted toward the piers.

  Hunter and Christian loaded the body of their father into the coroner's wagon. Hunter produced his Buck knife and sliced through the rope Anthony had used to secure his father to the rail of the launch. "You see this, Christian?"

  "A piece of wet rope?"

  "Do you see the nice clean cut at the end of it?"

  "Maybe dad cut it himself, he carries a knife."

  "Sever his own lifeline? Why would he do that?"

  "It was just him and Anthony on board, remember? Finish your first week on the job before you promote yourself to detective."

  Herb Szymanski, the coroner's driver, poked his head around the wagon. "Christian, you both riding with your father?"

  "Give us a damn minute here, will you Herbie?"

  Herb meekly retreated.

  "You believe what you want, Christian. It makes you feel better. Just don't let his body out of your sight. I'll see you at the morgue."

  From behind a pile of cargo pallets a hundred feet away, I could see the pain in Hunter's face. I watc
hed him sling a leather bag over his shoulder, unchain his motorcycle from a dock piling, and speed away.

  Christian climbed in next to Szymanski, who snapped the reins. The bony gray mare reared her head and lumbered off, the wagon wobbling from side to side as the cries of the demonstrators and the sobs of the Chinese girls drifted through the morning air.

  After a breakneck ride along the waterfront, Hunter arrived at Meigg's Wharf. He jumped aboard his father's launch and hurried aft.

  He fitted the five-foot length of rope he had removed from Byron's body to the foot-long piece still hanging from the rail. Even if Byron had wanted to cut his own rope, Hunter surmised, he could not have been dangling at the end of it and reached the point where it was cut.

  Hunter climbed to the pilot's roost and surveyed the deck below. In the thick fog and rolling seas, he reasoned, it was more than likely Anthony could not see what transpired behind and below him.

  Hunter climbed back to the deck and made his way to the boiler room. He struck a match and lit a candle taken from his shoulder bag. On the jagged iron cage surrounding the boiler, he spotted a sticky, reddish-brown substance. Producing two clean glass slides, he collected the blood on one slide, covered it with the other and tied them together with a string.

  On the sharp corner of the angle iron, he noticed a rubbery black substance, apparently soaked with blood. He scraped it into a test tube and corked it firmly.

  A trail of blood drops led him back to the passageway. On the smooth brass handle of the door were two bloody fingerprints and a bloody thumbprint. Below them, a bloody hand and palm print. Carefully, he pressed a white paper onto the handprint, repeating the effort with the finger and thumbprint on the brass handle.

  He tensed as footsteps approached the passageway. He blew out the candle, unsure whether to hide or accost his visitor.