1906: A Novel

by Dalessandro, James

  On the fifth floor, Kaitlin wiped her tears."You see, Enrico," she said, "your voice is fine."

  I sprinted across Market and up the littered stairwells of the Palace as the last of Caruso's trunks were being removed. Exhausted by the effort, I burst into his room, almost butting heads with him.

  "Enrico" I called, "You must come with me. Please."

  "Annalisa! Where must we go?"

  "My fiancé has a house on top of Telegraph Hill where you should be safe. It is too difficult to leave the city now."

  Caruso looked at Hertz and Kaitlin. "They are come with me?" he pleaded.

  "No," Hertz replied, "I must look after the others. Go, Enrico. Take Kaitlin. I will be relieved to know that you are safe."

  "If you see my father," Kaitlin said to Hertz, "please tell him where I am."

  "Telegraph Hill. I will tell him. Now go, all of you."

  Halfway down the hall, we passed a soot-covered Alexander Sharon as he hurried from the roof.

  "Mr. Sharon," Kaitlin called. "Have you seen Mr. Barrymore? He was still in my room when I left."

  "Oh, God," he said. Sharon banged through the fire door. After running frantically down three flights of stairs, he burst into Kaitlin's room. Barrymore had just begun to stir.

  "Ahh, Mr. Sharon," Barrymore inquired through his fog, "is it me, or is it warm in here?"

  A mile west, in the cavernous interior of the Mechanics' Pavilion, Christian and Carlo used a blanket to carry an old woman, her broken arm still unset, toward the street.

  "Save me, dear God. Somebody please save me," she begged, her cries lost in the nightmarish dirge of moans and shrieks from a thousand other victims. In the rafters overhead, papier mâché masks, remnants of the previous night's Mardi Gras, twisted in the sinister red glow streaming through the windows, adding a Luciferian quality to the already grisly scene.

  Christian stared at Carlo, who had been mumbling periodically since Max was killed. They struggled toward the exit, stepping over bodies, bumping into desperate rescuers.

  On the sidewalk outside, Francis and Patrick hog-tied a sandy-haired young man who had gone mad, trampling the wounded and flailing at anyone who got in his way.

  Carlo and Christian spotted a bakery truck on Grove Street and outran the other rescuers to secure a place for the wounded woman. Within seconds, a dozen more injured were piled around her.

  A few feet away, two soldiers carried the body of a teenage boy who had succumbed to head injuries. He was covered with red dust and particles of brick, the obvious result of a wall falling on him. They placed him in the gutter. No sooner had they released him than several more bodies were piled atop like cordwood. The wagons were only for the living.

  Christian seized Carlo's arm and pulled him through the jostling crowd to Francis and Patrick. A motorcycle roared toward them.

  "Where you been, Hunter?" Francis asked. "We need all the hands we can get!"

  "I took Chief Sullivan's disaster plan to Mayor Schmitz to try to stop the dynamiting." As if on cue, a volley of explosions thundered through the air. "Instead of looking for water," Hunter continued, "those idiots are going to let Funston blow up the whole damn city."

  Hunter looked over Christian's shoulder and spotted a woman clutching at rescuers, pleading for attention. "Mrs. Feeney," Hunter yelled, "Mrs. Feeney!"

  Hunter pushed through the crowd and seized her arm. "Mrs. Feeney. It's me, Hunter Fallon. Inspector Fallon's son, remember?"

  "They killed him, they killed him," she babbled repeatedly. "They blew up our house. They just blew it up. He went back for his papers and they blew it up with him inside." She sobbed and her knees buckled.

  Hunter caught her as Christian, Francis, and Patrick ran to them.

  "Who killed him?" Hunter pleaded. "Mrs. Feeney, listen, please. If someone killed him you have to tell us. Who killed Mr. Feeney?"

  "I don't know," she gasped. "They had badges, but they weren't policemen. They were hoodlums."

  "Mrs. Feeney," Francis implored. "You have to help us. What did they look like?"

  "A scar on his face. Tall. Another man, bald, tattoos all over."

  Francis spotted an automobile approaching the curb. He and Hunter grabbed Mrs. Feeney and carried her through the crowd.

  "Mr. Howard, Mr. Howard!" Francis yelled to a passing car. Charles Howard, owner of the fledgling automobile dealership on Van Ness, slammed his Buick to a halt.

  "Mr. Howard," Francis said as they lifted her onto the seat next to him. "This is Mrs. Feeney, the wife of the Federal Prosecutor. You must get her to the Presidio! Take her to the Duty Officer, tell him she is to stay in his protective custody, do you understand me?"

  Soldiers and volunteers loaded more wounded into the Buick's back seat. "I'm going there anyway," Howard called over the fire's roar, "been ferrying people to Letterman Hospital, only one still working!" He offered a half-hearted salute and drove off.

  "We got a war on our hands," Francis said. "Scarface and Dumbrowski, the tattooed gorilla. We put him away for beating one of Kelly's whores to death. Bastard. Kelly promoted him to replace the Whale."

  "They killed Feeney," Hunter added. "They're using this chaos to go after their enemies. They'll go after Spreckels, Older, every damn one of us."

  Francis examined the victims being carried to the sidewalk. Above the carnage, he could see towering St. Ignatius where he had been baptized and married, now being devoured by flames. The embers drifted onto the roof of the Mechanics' Pavilion.

  "We can't let them run around the city killing people," Francis said. "Hunter, you go get Annalisa, she's in danger. My guess is they'll go after Spreckels next, he's got all the documents stored in his mansion on Van Ness."

  "Carlo, you have to snap out of it," Francis said. "Carlo, do you hear me? Are you with us?" Carlo put his head down and looked away.

  "This is war," Christian said. "No prisoners this time. They get in our way, they're dead men."

  A mile north, on flooded Van Ness, a soot-covered Ford zigzagged between columns of rifle-wielding troops and made a sharp turn onto Sacramento. It swerved into the driveway of the corner mansion and stopped near the stables. A frantic Rudolph Spreckels jumped out and ran inside, his face a mask of worry.

  He bounded up the winding staircase to the second floor and slipped into the bedroom, where Mrs. Flaherty, the plump Irish housekeeper, attended to his wife. He sat on the edge of the bed and pressed Eleanor's hands as her breath came in quick, short gasps.

  "I tried t' telephone the midwife, Mr. Spreckels, but none a' the bloody things was working. Ain't a doctor in the city not tendin' the wounded and dyin' somewheres."

  "I know," Spreckels said, "it's just the three of us."

  "It'll be the four of us in a few minutes here," Eleanor smiled, her face covered in sweat. "This baby is not waiting for anyone."

  Spreckels placed his hand on her belly and felt the child move. Through the window he could see City Hall burning a mile away, the peak of the fire waving in his direction. He was jarred by pounding and shouts of "open up" coming from his front door.

  "Stay with her, Mrs. Flaherty."

  He ran down the wide stairway and jerked open the front door. A tall man with a scar on his face and a badge in his left hand stared down at him.

  "We're clearing out these houses," Scarface said. "We got orders from the city."

  "The fire is a mile from here," Spreckels argued. "It might not even make it this far."

  Scarface stepped aside, revealing a bald, tattooed Dumbrowski and three other men, all sporting ominous scowls and the badges of the Citizens Police. "We got our orders," Scarface said threateningly. "Now git."

  "I'm Rudolph Spreckels. You have no right to order me from my own home. You can tell Mayor Schmitz I said so."

  "We'll be sure to let him know," Scarface replied, fingering the Colt in his waistband. Scarface looked over his shoulder and spotted a detachment of soldiers. They stopped in the middle of Van Ness, fifty
feet away. Several of them stared back at him.

  He turned and glared at Spreckels. "Let's get moving," he hissed.

  "Look," Spreckels said, "my wife is about to deliver her child. I'm not moving her."

  "If your missus is about to drop a foal, you better get her the hell out before things get burned up. Now get movin'. And don't plan on cartin' anything with you."

  Spreckels slammed the door and hurried outside to the stables, where two Chilean grooms were trying desperately to calm the horses.

  "We have to move Mrs. Spreckels," he yelled.

  They followed Spreckels back into the house and dashed to the bedroom.

  "Rudolph, what's happening?"

  "We're going to move you Eleanor."

  "Oh, God. No."

  "We have no choice. We're being ordered to evacuate."

  "Can't they wait? Please!"

  "We can't."

  Spreckels nodded to Mrs. Flaherty and the two nervous grooms. They hoisted the corners of the bed sheets and struggled down the hallway. "Rudolph. Rudolph! Put me down."

  Near the back door, Spreckels saw the tattooed man and several others staring at his car and examining his stables. "Let's take her out the side door toward Clay Street," he said softly.

  Halfway to the street Mrs. Spreckels gasped and her breathing quickened.

  "She's not going to make another meter," Mrs. Flaherty warned him. They set her gently on the lawn. Mrs. Flaherty knelt and pulled the blanket up. "This little one's got a mind all its own," she said. "It ain't waitin' for no one."

  Spreckels looked at the throng hustling down Van Ness toward the bay. "Let's raise one of the bed sheets and at least give her some privacy," he ordered.

  "All right," Mrs. Flaherty said, "the head's comin' through, we need you to push, ma'am. Push!"

  Spreckels looked toward the attic, where he often had met with Fremont Older, Byron Fallon, and Charles Feeney. Documents crucial to the investigation were stacked about the room. A figure scampered past the dormer window: moments later, flames raced up the curtains, through the dormer window, and began climbing up the bone-dry roof.

  Spreckels looked toward the rear of his home, where the scar-faced man leapt from the back porch and hurried toward his surly companions near the stables.

  The flames spread rapidly, fanned by the hot wind. By the time Mrs. Flaherty tied the umbilical cord with a shoestring, the house was engulfed in flames.

  Eleanor Spreckels clutched her daughter to her chest and squeezed her husband's hand.

  "We'll call her Eleanor, after you," he said. "The bravest woman I know."

  She looked into her husband's damp eyes and saw the reflection of the flames devouring her home.

  Chapter 57

  SOUTH OF MARKET

  APRIL 18, 1906. 2:42 P.M.

  On the second floor of the San Francisco Mint, Frank Leach, Army Lieutenant Armstrong, and Fire Captain Brady teetered near collapse. The smoke and heat made it painful to breathe, their hands were raw and blistered from touching the brass nozzle and fittings. Even worse, the lone fire hose was not enough to cover the dozen new fires that seemed to break out every minute.

  They heard screaming from above.

  On the roof of the Mint, a dozen men had been hoisting pails from the well five stories below, their shoulders aching, their faces baked and swollen. They had soaked curtains and slapped desperately as sparks from the fire at Lincoln School across the street rained onto the Mint's roof.

  One of the men pointed to the Call Building two blocks north, which had caught fire at the top. Window after window, hundreds of them, exploded. Massive columns of flame rushed up the elevator shafts and along the granite exterior, turning the building into an eighteen-story Roman candle. A giant fireball exploded above the dome and arched high into the blackened sky. The concussion shook every building within blocks.

  The men atop the Mint suddenly realized they were trapped against the wall overlooking the courtyard. In unison, they screamed for Leach until his face appeared in the window below.

  They lowered a rope to which Leach tied the fire nozzle. They pulled it up and attacked the roof fires, several of the men stumbling to their knees, weeping with exhaustion. As they extinguished the flames, they pointed the nozzle skyward and tilted their heads back to let the cool water bathe their faces and swollen tongues.

  On the roof of the Palace, Manager Sharon felt the wind shift again. It carried sparks and embers from the Call Building, igniting fires where his exhausted men had just doused them.

  "Up," Sharon screamed. "Up, dammit!" Sharon turned the wheel on a roof-top water tank as his men staggered to their feet. The hoses spat and sputtered, then ran dry.

  Sharon ran to the roof's edge. Down below, he saw that city firemen had attached their hoses to spouts on the hotel wall, draining his reservoirs. He cursed the firemen with what little voice he had and then followed his men through a whirlwind of cinders to the stairwells.

  Kaitlin, Caruso, and I watched the terrifying spectacle from the porch of the Fallon house, where we had sat since the strenuous climb up the southern slope of Telegraph Hill.

  I had changed from my opera clothes into bicycling bloomers and a cotton blouse while a weary Enrico Caruso sketched a portrait of himself singing from the hotel window. In the scant minutes since he had looked away from the Palace, the hotel's roof had caught fire.

  "Dio mio," he said to Kaitlin and me, "they are say to me Palace Hotel does not burn."

  I had no answer. I stared at the rooftops of buildings scattered about the corners of the city, and noticed a strange and distressing sight. From Cow Hollow north and Russian Hill west and Rincon Hill to the east, all the flags that had so far survived were pointing toward the center of the fire on Market Street.

  I held my arms out to test the wind. "Feel that," I said. "The fire is coming toward us, yet the wind is coming from behind us. The fire is creating its own draft, like a giant chimney sucking air from every direction."

  "Is getting closer, the fire," Caruso said. "You are think maybe is come here?"

  I turned my gaze from the Palace to the waterfront, where thousands of people pushed and shoved, trying desperately to board boats to ferry them to safety.

  "I don't know, Enrico. I don't know if anything can stop it now."

  Kaitlin stared westward, toward the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, then along Russian Hill and Cow Hollow to North Beach below us, a colorful sea of picturesque Victorian houses and flats that had suffered significantly less earthquake damage than those South of the Slot. "You mean the fire could come this far? It could burn all those houses?"

  I rubbed my soiled face, afraid to answer. I felt some relief to hear the growl of the Waltham approaching, moments before it emerged from the overgrown lot on Kearny. Hunter skidded to a stop a few feet in front of us.

  "We have a problem," Hunter shouted.

  "I can see that."

  "Rolf's goons—" he choked, "those bastards killed Prosecutor Feeney."

  "Oh, my God," I said, clasping my hands to my face in horror.

  "They blew up his house. They're using this pandemonium as a cover to strike back. If they went after Feeney, they're going to come after all of us."

  Hunter looked to Kaitlin and Caruso. "The two of you have to get to Golden Gate Park. It's past the fire line, you'll be safe. They're setting up tents and kitchens."

  "That's Broadway," I said to Kaitlin, pointing to the bottom of Telegraph Hill. "Take it until it gets steep. Turn left, then go right on Fulton Street. Fulton leads to Golden Gate Park."

  "I have a map," Kaitlin replied. "I can find it." Her stoic demeanor wavered. She reached in her bag. "Can I leave this in your house?" she asked, ready to cry. She handed me her diary. "I'm afraid I might lose it." I nodded. "Please find my father," she said.

  I turned to Caruso. "You must go with Kaitlin, Enrico. Stay in Golden Gate Park as long as you can. We'll find you when this is over."

  I hugged Caruso
and ran into the house, placing Kaitlin's diary on the bench near Hunter's toppled instruments.

  When I returned to the street, I climbed on the seat behind Hunter. We flew back down Kearny, my arms wrapped tightly around him, my head buried against his back so I could hear and feel his heart thumping. The temperature rose block by block as ash and soot swirled around us.

  A few blocks from where we passed, Lincoln Staley was beginning to stir in the dank cellar below Shanghai Kelly's saloon.

  His first conscious moment was terrifying. A blinding flash of light, followed by a jarring throb threatened to rend his skull in two. Liquid fire rose through his gullet, burning his mouth and tongue as he vomited bitter coffee and laudanum.

  Praying he was still alive, he reached out to stop the room from spinning and forced himself to open his eyes. Through the darkness he saw a thin trickle of flickering red light. He reached into his duster for a container of stick matches. He fumbled the lid off, spilling them in the dirt. He felt around until he found one and then struck it on the lid. The match sizzled to life.

  Several heavy beams lay at jagged angles ten feet away. At the end of one, two men lay crushed in a moon of blood-soaked dirt. Lincoln looked around for his Stetson hat but could find it nowhere.

  Then it came to him. Following Tommy down the whorehouse hallway. The bald, tattooed man, the sharp crack and the blinding light. The match burned Lincoln's fingers. He struck another and crawled toward the flickering light outside, fighting nausea and vertigo.

  Lincoln struggled to a kneeling position and rammed his shoulder upward, toward the light. He did it again and again until the wooden door popped open. He heaved his body through the opening and collapsed on the broken sidewalk, where he lay for a minute, listening to a horrendous roar, the air as hot as a boiler room.

  Move. You have to move Lincoln. You have to keep moving.

  He pulled himself to his feet and rubbed his eyes. Every building on the street lay in some form of ruin. Shards of broken glass sparkled crimson on the wooden sidewalks, roofs and porticos lay sprawled across the cobblestone streets, several buildings appeared to be holding each other up. He tried to breathe through his mouth, his throat raw, the heated air so painful he felt he was swallowing glass. He realized the roar was not coming from inside his head but from behind him.