"Max is right," Christian said. "This is way over my head."
"Wave of the future, gentleman. Climb on board or step aside," Hunter said.
"I can see every cop in the country rolling one of these things around to listen in on somebody's telephone," Max said. "Nothin's better than a good old-fashioned beating."
"I think that's the optimum phrase," Hunter replied. "Old-fashioned."
Chapter 36
GRAND OPERA HOUSE
APRIL 17, 1906. 2:00 P.M.
A mile below Nob Hill, at the Grand Opera House, Enrico Caruso was engaged in a battle of his own.
"They're buffoons," Olive Fremstad bellowed. "Look at them. Tripping over each other's feet! They couldn't afford a professional chorus because you got all the money."
Fremstad, the two-hundred-pound Teutonic soprano who thought opera died with Wagner, had little use for the Verdi and Puccini-loving Caruso.
Hertz set his baton aside. "Be reasonable, Olive. We're tired. We have all come a long way."
"Reasonable? I'll show you reasonable! I quit! I will not work under these circumstances," she yelled.
Caruso pulled himself up and leaned close to Fremstad. "You know what is happen in thees place last night? The audience is hate Queen of Sheba, they are almost make a riot. Now you are quit on Caruso? I tell you somethings, you stuffed cow. You are sing best Carmen in your fat life tonight. Or I make sure you are never sing in any Opera House where Caruso sings."
Fremstad turned purple and stormed off, the floor squeaking under her furious gait.
"Enrico, Enrico, please," Hertz implored as sixty fully-dressed gypsies and Spanish dragoons watched their dream disintegrate. "You know Olive is temperamental."
"I am tell you in New York that I do not wish to be in same city with thees woman. Or come to thees crazy place."
"Enrico, please. We need her. After the performance last night we must show these people the greatness of Caruso. We cannot do that without our Carmen."
Caruso took a deep breath and stretched the collar of his shirt, allowing the color in his face to drift toward normal. He stared at the chorines who had all been staring at him. "You tell Olive that I no insult her but she no insult Caruso. You tell her she is sing tonight or she is finita."
"I will, Enrico." Hertz signaled for the understudy, a petite Dutch woman, to take Fremstad's place.
She moved close to Enrico, barely able to look at him. The cigarette girls returned to the mock factory and prepared to enter the mock plaza with their substitute Carmen.
I sat in the wings, scribbling quickly. I looked up into the auditorium and saw a door open in the box of Adam Rolf. The silhouettes of two men passed through the rectangle of light and the door closed behind them. I slid my chair behind the stage curtain, safely out of sight, and fished my opera glasses from my bag, cursing as I struggled to adjust the worn-out focus knob.
In his box, Adam Rolf removed his bowler and held his hand out to his guest. It took me a few moments to recognize the pointed goatee, slicked-back hair and long, aquiline nose of William H. Herrin, whose appearance earned him constant lampooning as the Devil. He was chief counsel of the Southern Pacific Railroad, a political fixer and power broker for one of the nation's most powerful trusts, a man bereft of principles and flush with bribery funds.
After several minutes of what appeared to be a heated discussion, Rolf and Herrin smiled and shook hands again. Rolf clapped Herrin on the shoulder. Then Herrin left.
I stowed my notes and walked swiftly toward the stage door.
I bolted to the California Street cable car six blocks away and hopped aboard. As the cable car hit the steep grade above Kearny, I stared up at the onion-domed Stanford Mansion, the towering Hopkins Art Institute, and the sandstone Fairmont.
I jumped off below the Nob Hill summit and ran inside the Fairmont, barely slowing until I reached room 434.
Hunter answered my knock and pulled me inside, where I spotted my disassembled Gramophone, its horn mounted to a telephone and face-to-face with an even larger horn.
"I hope you can put that back together," I said sternly.
"I've done it many times."
I stared at the enormous machine, trying to identify it.
"We're going to record Adam Rolf’s phone conversations on a disk."
"You can do that?"
"Haven't tried yet, but it should work."
I looked to the opposite corner and caught a glimpse of Christian's battered face.
"I heard you and Shanghai Kelly had a slight altercation," I said.
"Don't tell me you were dad's secret witness," Christian said.
I looked at Hunter for approval, then smiled and nodded. The pain on Christian's face seemed little to do with his injuries.
I turned to Hunter. "I think I know what Rolf is up to, why he's bribing the Senator. Can you leave here for an hour?"
"Christian. When the telephone rings, just throw the switch. When the disk runs out, flip it over. When that's finished, replace it as fast as you can. Write down the time they called and who is talking if you can."
"They can't hear me?"
"I only wired the ear piece, not the mouth piece. You can scream and cuss at them all you like."
Moments later, we were roaring down California Street on the Waltham, past the Southern Pacific Station on Townsend. We followed the Bay Shore Highway, gaining speed until we reached El Camino Real.
South of San Carlos, I tapped Hunter's shoulder. He swung onto a narrow dirt road, which he followed for several miles. The air grew saltier and cooler as we approached the bay.
He killed the engine and hid the motorcycle in a thicket, careful not to let anything touch the engine or exhaust pipe.
We followed a path through the high thistles and up a sandy hill until we reached the crest. Below lay a wide marsh that disappeared into the crystal blue water of the bay. Wagons dotted the flats as white bosses and Chinese laborers ran about. A steam engine powered a massive pump sucking water from the marsh. Behind it, a rusted paddy shovel threw dirt and garbage atop the muck. Two giant steamrollers followed and compressed the reclaimed land into a flat surface.
"I came down here with Rolf for a luncheon at the Ralston mansion in Belmont a few weeks ago, hoping I might find something of interest for your father."
I produced my opera glasses and handed them to Hunter.
He fiddled with the adjusting screw and examined the site below. "Must be a hundred men down there. Let's walk a little further." Careful to stay out of view, we traveled along the ridge, well past the workers. After walking a mile or so, we spotted piles of heavy wooden timbers near freshly laid railroad tracks that stretched into the horizon. "Surprise me, Annalisa. Tell me Adam Rolf owns all this land."
"Who else would buy up useless swampland in San Mateo County? Rolf asked me how a railroad line would look running through here. I thought he was making a joke."
"I'm still not sure what this has to do with bribing the Senator."
"About an hour ago I saw Rolf shaking hands with William Herrin, chief counsel of the Southern Pacific Railroad. He and Rolf have been at odds since Rolf got Schmitz elected Mayor over Herrin's lackey in the Republican Party."
"They fight every time there's an election," Hunter said, "then they kiss and make up whenever there's money that needs stealing." He was temporarily drowned out by squawking gulls overhead. "Rolf controls San Francisco, but Herrin and his boss, E. H. Harriman, control everything else in this country."
"Rolf just made some kind of deal with them," I said.
Hunter clasped his hands behind his head and walked anxiously in a circle.
"My God," he muttered, "I don't believe this."
He stopped and pointed across the bay. "You see that finger of land jutting into the water? Dumbarton Point. Shortest distance across San Francisco Bay is from here to Dumbarton. Right now, the transcontinental railroad terminus is in Oakland, not San Francisco. If the government authorized
a Dumbarton Bridge, the railroad could bypass Oakland, cross the bay, and run all the way to the San Francisco waterfront. You marry shipping and railroad together, you couldn't move a crate of lettuce, a ton of steel, or a bolt of silk from Tokyo to New York without Rolf and Herrin taking a cut. They could buy anyone. The White House, the whole damn country would be theirs."
"That's what the hundred-thousand-dollar bribe to Senator Payton is for," I said. "Rolf’s going to get the federal government to pay for it, just like Stanford and Crocker did when they built the railroad. Even this swamp would be worth millions. One endless row of little bedrooms from San Francisco to San Jose. That hundred-thousand-dollar bribe is just a down payment."
"It's tonight," Hunter said, grim and emotional. "Tonight was going to be my father's triumph. Now it's Rolf’s. All he had to do was eliminate my father, the one man with the fortitude to bring him down. This is it. Tonight we get them all."
He raised my opera glasses and stared along the marsh.
"What is it, Hunter?"
"You see that section? Where the tracks are meandering, like a long, slow S?"
He handed me the opera glasses. I watched as several apprehensive-looking men walked along the twisted section taking measurements and shaking their heads in bewilderment.
"When we were doing the water survey for Chief Sullivan, we helped a geologist from Berkeley map a lake about twenty miles from here. That big earthquake fault they discovered runs right through the middle of it."
"The San Andreas."
"Professor Darling believes earthquakes give off warning signs and nobody listens to them," Hunter said. "This is bad. Filled land is the worst. That bend in the tracks means the fault is moving."
Chapter 37
PALACE HOTEL
APRIL 17, 1906. 3:30 P.M.
Jeremy Darling stopped the carriage on Market Street, near the corner of New Montgomery. "You sure you want me to let you out here, Kaitlin? I thought you'd like pulling into the Grand Court."
"This is fine." She extended her hand. "It was a wonderful afternoon, Jeremy. I can't thank you enough."
"Kaitlin?"
She was suddenly distracted, staring toward Montgomery Street. "Kaitlin? I know I'm not one of those wealthy San Francisco nabobs. I'm not even a full professor yet, but I hope to be soon."
Kaitlin did not hear a word. She was frozen in her tracks, staring with a look of horror.
Jeremy failed to notice. "I was hoping I might call on you in a more formal manner. I feel it imperative to be honest about my feelings."
Kaitlin was oblivious to Jeremy's overtures. She saw the telltale Stetson bobbing above the crowd, then the tan duster. Her mouth fell open as her father stepped off the curb and started across Market Street in her direction. She skirted behind the carriage.
"Kaitlin, what's wrong? Why are you hiding like that?"
"Quiet, Jeremy! Don't say my name."
Kaitlin trembled as Lincoln crossed twenty feet in front of Jeremy's carriage and disappeared behind the corner of the Palace. When her father was out of sight, she dashed across Market Street without a word. Jeremy stared, confounded, as Kaitlin ran up Kearny and disappeared from view.
She ran through the Financial District, her panicked look attracting as much attention as her beauty. She passed Portsmouth Square and the Hall of Justice, finally slowing beneath the unfinished, triangular-shaped skeleton of the Rolf Building. She moved on through teeming North Beach until finally tromping up the stairway of her boardinghouse.
Safely inside, she sagged against the wall in her tiny room and wondered how Lincoln had tracked her so quickly. Then she noticed her carpetbag and sketchbook were missing from the chair where she had left them. She jerked open the faded bureau where she had carefully arranged her clothes. Empty. She heard footsteps in the hallway and wheeled to find Francesca drying her hands on a stained apron.
"Where are my things? What did you do with all my clothes and my drawings?"
"You are lie to me, Kaitlin. Thees is why you cut off hairs and make different colors, so you can a' hide."
"What?"
"Your pimp, 'e is come thees morning and look for you."
"My what?"
"Some French mans with leetle mustache and brutta teeth. He ees tell me you are in troubles with police. He is take your things."
"Why did you let him do that?"
"He says you stole much monies from him. He have a policeman downstairs who tells me thees is true." Francesca pulled a slip of paper from her apron pocket. "'Ere is address where he is take your things. He is say if you bring back his monies, he gives back your things."
Kaitlin's hand shook as she tried to read the scrawl on the paper.
"Ees on Jackson Street, on Barbary Coast where all thees other whores is working. Now, you go from a' my 'ouse."
Kaitlin ran down the stairs and into Washington Square, collapsing on a park bench. She stared through teary eyes at the children and lovers basking in the warm sunlight. After a few moments she fought back the tears, and walked stiffly to Montgomery Street.
After six blocks, she stopped and stared down Jackson Street to the Barbary Coast, rife with the noise of honky-tonk pianos and an unsettling odor. Barkers called to passersby, trying to entice them into sampling the house's wares.
She braced herself and started forward, forcing each foot in front of the other. Several wary-eyed whores stared from balconies above.
Two blocks later, she stopped and looked up in disbelief, checking the slip of paper for confirmation. The building stood in stark contrast to the neighborhood. The green four-story Victorian sported a wide, pillared porch, double leaded-glass entrance doors, and windows shaded by lace curtains.
A burly Negro doorman dressed in a butler's suit stood at the front door and examined her sternly. "May ah he'p you, Miss?"
"I was given this number by someone."
"Well, excuse me, ma'am, but that don't tell me a whole lot now, do it?"
"A man with a French accent," Kaitlin said haltingly. "He was on the train. His name was Anton."
"Yo' means Antoine? Got his self a little thin mustache."
"He took my things and told the lady where I was staying a bunch of lies about me."
"Thass Antoine. Lass time he tol' the truth the devil was in sho't pants." He turned the large brass handle of the door, letting it drift open slowly. "I ain't going in there till I see Antoine and get my things back."
"Miss Tessie, she takes care all the bidness here. Yo' wants sumpin', yo' talks to Miss Tessie."
Kaitlin stepped hesitantly toward the porch.
"Ain't nobodies gonna hurt you, ma'am, ain't that kind of place. Now, you wants to speak to Miss Tessie . . ."
Kaitlin gathered herself and stepped through the open door. It clicked softly shut behind her.
"Do you have an appointment?" a voice with a soft French lilt inquired. Kaitlin turned to find a doe-eyed woman in a maid's outfit.
"I'm here to get my things back. The colored man outside told me to see someone named Tessie."
"I'm Tessie," a voice called.
Kaitlin stepped through the wide parlor entrance onto the Turkish carpet, the full expanse of the room coming into view. Even in her frightened state, the room seized her attention. Chintz curtains, ornate Chippendale loveseats, and a gold-edged fireplace highlighted a room larger than her house in Kansas.
Tessie Wall stepped forward, dressed in flowery brocades of satin. The body matched the voice: thick, brassy, and domineering. "You must be Kaitlin. Antoine told me you and he had a nice journey together on the train."
"That filthy little worm stared at me the entire time. Now he steals my things and tells my landlady I'm a whore. I came to get my clothes and drawings back."
"Nicolette, would you get her belongings and bring them here?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Have you eaten? I have a chef here, quite a good one."
"No, thank you. I just want to get my things and
leave."
"Leave for where? Home?"
Kaitlin trembled. "This is a whorehouse, isn't it?"
Tessie smiled. "My girls are courtesans. Those girls you passed on the street, those are whores. My girls are rewarded for beauty and intelligence. They provide companionship and conversation, they are treated like princesses."
"They're whores who dress better."
"My girls have married some of San Francisco's most prominent men. Tonight you'll find them in their opera boxes, explaining the intricacies of Carmen to their husbands."
"Must be hard to do with her head in his lap," Kaitlin said, recalling the sight of Antoine's "cousin" delivering a "Parisian Kiss" on the train. Tessie laughed aloud.
Nicolette arrived with Kaitlin's carpetbag and sketchbook.
"You'll find all your things are intact," Tessie said. "I'll reprimand Antoine when I see him. You're welcome to take them and leave." Kaitlin stared down at her faded bag, unsure of what to do.
"Why don't you sit a spell?"
“Why?”
“I'm not an evil woman. I have never forced a girl to do anything against her will. You look like you've had a spell of bad luck. I'll call the Palace and get a room for you as my guest. How would you like to see Caruso tonight?”
Kaitlin's head swam from fatigue and fear. She stared at Tessie.
"And what do I have to do for all this?"
"You have to be nice to someone. Someone very important."
"How nice?"
"Just be nice. Nothing more."
"Who is it?"
"Adam Rolf, the most powerful man in San Francisco. President of the Opera Association. City Attorney. He can open more doors for you than anyone in San Francisco."
"And just where do those doors lead?"
"Why don't you think about it? I'll have Joseph call a cab. By the time you get to the Palace, your room will be waiting for you."
Kaitlin fought back tears. "What do I have to do for this room?"
1906: A Novel Page 20