Bound for Gold--A Peter Fallon Novel of the California Gold Rush

by William Martin

  Peter said, “They sure did make a mess.”

  Evangeline was awestruck. “Manion is right.”

  “About what?” said Larry.

  “Nothing like this should ever happen again.”

  * * *

  AFTER THAT, PETER AND Evangeline snoozed. Midday wine mixed with jet lag. They slept from Sacramento all the way to the bridge across the Carquinez Straits, where the traffic went from bad to Bay Area terrible.

  Forty-five minutes later, as they inched through a FasTrak gate on the Bay Bridge, Larry Kwan said, “That’s funny.”

  “What?” asked Peter.

  “I got a midnight-blue Ford Explorer about five cars back.”

  Peter looked behind him.

  “A blue Explorer followed us down Highway 49 onto 16. That was half the reason I pulled over at Michigan Bar, to see if he’d go by.”

  “Did he?” Peter realized that he had let down his guard altogether after lunch.

  “Yeah. But … you think he’s following us?”

  “Why?” Peter did not want to give up anything. “Another tour operator wants to learn your secrets?”

  “I don’t know. But if he follows us into the city, I might have to go all Steve McQueen on his ass.”

  And yes, the Ford followed them off the downtown exit, right onto Fremont.

  As the afternoon traffic inched toward Market Street, Larry said, “Maybe we lose him here, right in the heart of Old San Francisco.”

  Evangeline said, “Hey, listen, Mr. Bullitt—”

  Willie gave the big Escalade a goose and rode the bumper in front of him right across the intersection, with the light turning red behind him. He sped two blocks on Front Street, hung a left on California, drove right up to the rear of a cable car lurching up the hill, and slammed on his brakes.

  “That went well,” said Evangeline.

  Peter looked through the back windscreen as the blue SUV swung round the corner and came toward them with two or three cars in between.

  Evangeline said, “Can’t you pass the cable car?”

  “I got a better idea.”

  They came up to the light on Grant Street, known to the Gold Rushers as Dupont, the main thoroughfare through Chinatown. The cable car ground to a stop, so Larry Kwan threw the Escalade into park and popped out.

  “Not a better idea,” said Peter. “Not even a good one.”

  As quickly as that happened, the Explorer turned left and disappeared. That’s what it looked like. Just disappeared into the middle of the block and—gone.

  Before the light changed, Larry was back in the driver’s seat. “They went down Quincy, a skinny damn alley. We’ll never catch them.”

  “Probably for the best,” said Peter.

  “You got any idea who they were?” asked Larry.

  Peter shook his head. Larry did not need to know that the SUV matched the one in the parking lot of the Emery Mine that morning. The Asian guy and his bodyguards? Had they tracked Peter around the Mother Lode all afternoon? Why?

  A few more blocks uphill and they were pulling into the Mark Hopkins turnaround, a graceful circle that covered half the footprint of the fabled property, all in brick as nicely laid as a Beacon Hill patio.

  Peter offered a tip, but Larry refused. “Just say the name of my company in your article. And if you need more driving, call me. I live over in Emeryville. I can be here in no time. And this Escalade is armored, in case you didn’t know.”

  “Armored,” said Peter. “Why?”

  “So I can drive diplomats, businessmen, big deals. You’re in good hands with Larry Kwan.”

  “Good to know.” Peter got out, took Evangeline’s arm, and whispered, “Someone is watching us.”

  “Maybe it’s because I’m so gorgeous.”

  “Is that what Manion said?”

  “Jealous. I like that.” She went in ahead of him.

  He watched her go up the stairs and said, “You’re playing me. I’m wondering who in the hell is following us, and why, and you are actually playing me. Either that or you’re still feeling the wine and those big Manion eyes following every step you took.”

  * * *

  LJ SENT HIS FATHER an email before dinner: “Our guest will be Michael Kou, 39. Berkeley B-School. Phi Beta Kappa. Venture capital guy, lots of commodities, drug research. Invested in Cutler Gold Exploration in 2015. Many connections. But Jack Cutler not coming.”

  LJ and Michael Kou were waiting in a booth when Peter and Evangeline arrived. Howard Ching had set them up with Tsingtaos, pork fried dumplings, fried wontons.

  And answers? Would Michael Kou set them up with those?

  He looked about ten years younger than he was, thought Evangeline, and very sharp in a gray suit, silver tie, white shirt.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Peter. “I’m disappointed that your partner isn’t here.”

  “So am I,” said Michal Kou. “But Jack Cutler has a core sampling job up in Placerville. And core sampling keeps geologists in business. Can’t turn down work.”

  “Maybe he’s looking for buried bags of Chinese gold.” Peter decided to toss out the Manion Sturgis rumor right at the start.

  LJ laughed, but Evangeline thought he seemed nervous. His eyes kept shifting to the young Chinese guys in the corner booth, half a dozen of them, talking loud, cracking jokes, living large.

  Michael Kou, however, kept his eyes on Peter and said in a flat monotone, “Chinese gold?”

  If the wise guy who called himself Wonton Willie defined colorful, thought Evangeline, Michael Kou was Chinatown’s Prince of Bland.

  Peter said to his son, “Remember when I used to ask you what you learned in school every day? I’d ask you to tell me one new thing?”

  LJ nodded.

  “Well, I learned three things today. One: Broke Neck is a ghost town surrounded by a lot of very touchy locals, some of whom have strong opinions about Jack Cutler. Two: the Emery Mine has a lot of very touchy staffers, especially after a visit from a scowling Chinese businessman who looked very familiar. And three: Manion Sturgis grows very good wine on the edge of an old gold field where legend has it that there’s buried bags of Chinese gold.”

  “Chinese gold?” said Michael Kou again, as if testing the words in his head.

  “That’s four things,” said Evangeline.

  “Three and a corollary,” said Peter.

  “So you don’t have to learn anything else for two days, Dad.” LJ tried a joke.

  “What I want to learn,” said Peter, “is how Cutler Gold Exploration fits into this. Or why a guy with a Berkeley MBA would invest in the unpredictable gold business when there are better bets all over the Bay Area.”

  “I like the romance of gold, the adventure of it,” said Michael Kou.

  “You don’t seem like a romantic,” said Evangeline.

  “Don’t let the gray suit fool you.” Michael Kou smiled. “If I’d been around in 1849, I would have sailed for San Francisco with all the other Celestials. But today—”

  “Today, you have three kinds of gold miners,” LJ jumped in. “The hobbyist, like the mom-and-pop prospector who might belong to a mining club that owns a stretch of riverbank, or the guy who just pulls up at the side of a road and starts placer mining.”

  “You mean, like, panning?” asked Evangeline.

  “Yeah. Placer means ‘sandbar’ in Spanish,” said LJ. “You dig into a sandbar, put the sand into a pan, and start washing.”

  “I thought the placer gold was panned out a long time ago,” said Evangeline.

  “Most of it was. But every flake counts. Gold is that scarce. In all of human history, we have only mined 160,000 tons of it, just enough, given its amazing density, to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools.”

  “That’s all?” said Evangeline.

  “That’s all,” said LJ. “Panning today is like fishing. You might catch a big striper. More likely, you’ll get skunked. You do it for fun.”

  “Fun I get,” said Evangeline
. “But—”

  “Then you have what are called ‘juniors,’” said LJ. “Professionals. Businessmen.”

  Michael Kou added, “The pros know that eighty percent of the gold is still out there in the Mother Lode, but most of it is too dispersed to make it economically feasible to mine. If gold prices go up, however, the juniors get attention. They’ve been out in the field, researching, identifying formations, core sampling, buying claims.”

  “What constitutes a major?” asked Peter.

  LJ said, “A big corporation like Barrick or Newmont. They trade on the Toronto exchange, where most gold stocks get sold. They have real equity valuation, high capitalization, layers of management, all the bells and whistles.”

  “Like Emery?” said Peter.

  “Technically, Emery is a junior,” said Kou, “with a low stock price but big dreams and proven reserves.”

  “Worth fifteen cents as of this afternoon,” said Peter.

  “If gold prices rise, watch that stock,” said Kou. “Emery could go through the roof. A buyout would make a lot of small-time investors happy.”

  “From what we learned in Chinatown last night,” said Peter, “a certain small-time geologist made some Chinese investors very unhappy not too long ago.”

  “You mean Jack Cutler? That stuff about him burning investors?” Michael Kou dipped a wonton in sweet sauce and popped it into his mouth. “They should’ve read the prospectus.”

  LJ explained: “Cutler is a loner, a wildcatter, drilling test holes, exploring, selling his services to juniors or acting as one himself. Invest with a guy like him, the risks are enormous. So are the rewards.”

  “That’s why I partnered with him,” added Michael Kou.

  “Cramer put it best on CNBC,” said LJ. “Majors are Big Pharma. Juniors are research labs, looking for the next Viagra. You could add that my future father-in-law is a mad scientist with a lab in his garage.”

  “Right,” said Michael Kou. “Sometimes it’s science that makes us money. Sometimes it’s dumb luck. Sometimes it’s legends about bags of Chinese gold that bring investors to an area like Broke Neck, but legends bring cash, and cash means working capital.”

  “Have you read these legends in, say, the Spencer Journal?” asked Peter.

  “I’ve heard of the journal,” answered Michael Kou, perhaps a bit too innocently, “and the legends.”

  “I’ll bet you have.” Peter detected a moment of … something … that passed between LJ and this smooth businessman. They had been tag-teaming the conversation, finishing each other’s thoughts like longtime associates. But there was a twinge of tension.

  Then LJ said, “Whatever a lost journal may tell us, any geologist will tell you there are undiscovered ore bodies out there, worth mining in 1849 or tomorrow morning.”

  “Finding one of them is a junior’s dream,” said Michael Kou, “But seasoned investors at a place like the Emery Mine live with the reality of fluctuating gold prices and wait. When prices rise enough to pay for operations and for lawyers to wrangle the California regulations—”

  “Is Asian money running Emery?” asked Peter.

  “Asian?” said Michael Kou, again a bit too innocently.

  Peter and Evangeline both felt another little twinge of tension.

  Michael Kou said, “Money is money, whether it’s from Hong Kong or Iowa. Investors want profit. And the greater the risk, the greater the reward. The Emery Mine is risky. But the work of Cutler and others tells us that there’s still gold there, in proven hard-rock reserves and—” Kou glanced at LJ, as if to ask if he should say more.

  LJ finished the sentence. “—in other forms as well.”

  “Exactly,” said Michael Kou. “So I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw Asian investors, Canadian gold firms … even Donald Trump.”

  That brought a laugh from LJ, a big, broad laugh of the kind that Peter seldom heard from his son, who always held things close.

  * * *

  JUST THEN, THE FRONT door swung open. Wonton Willie was making a big entrance … flashing in like he owned the place.

  Some diners—mostly tourists who didn’t know enough—glanced up, then went back to their dry-cooked shrimp or crispy orange beef. But Chinese diners watched, some surreptitiously, some nervously, a few submissively, with a little smile or a nod, as if to ask, Now what? Or to say, I’m a civilian, so play nice.

  Whenever a Tong tough guy walked into a restaurant, especially a guy like Willie, the people who knew about local power struggles knew enough to be nervous. Was something up? Something going down? Would there be gunplay? It wouldn’t be the first time.

  Wonton surveyed the room, noticed Peter and Evangeline, and ambled over, with Wraparound and Mullet Man at his heels, all smooth, all smiles, all attitude in his dark shades and black-on-black outfit. He said, “Can’t get enough of Chinatown, hey?”

  Evangeline said, “I’m writing about it.” If she felt threatened, she always called forth the power of the press. Nobody messed with the press, even if her hard-hitting article would run in Travel & Lifestyle magazine.

  “What you writin’ ’bout?” Willie pulled off his shades. “Chinese gold?”

  “There it is again,” said Peter to LJ.

  LJ said nothing, showed nothing.

  “I’m writing about Chinese food,” said Evangeline.

  “Yeah,” said Peter. “In a Chinese restaurant, you write about Chinese food.”

  “That’s where I get my nickname, hey, from Chinese food. But when you write about it, don’t put no hyphen in Wonton.” Willie looked at his boys. “Chronicle crime writer, he put a hyphen in my name.”

  “What’s a hyphen?” asked Mullet Man.

  “Don’t know, but he only do it one time.” Willie laughed. So all of them laughed.

  Peter stood, and Wraparound took a step. Peter suspected he was still angry after Evangeline’s Mace threat the night before.

  Willie put up a hand. Relax, boys.

  Peter nodded. Yeah, relax, boys. “Want to join us, Willie? Maybe we’ll talk about—oh, I don’t know—Cutler Gold Exploration.”

  “See … you are talkin’ ’bout Chinese gold.” Willie wagged a finger in Peter’s face. “You can’t fool Willie. But my friends are waitin’. They don’t order without Willie. You and me, we sit down real soon, Mr. Boston. I tell you all about Jack Cutler and what he cost Chinatown peoples. Ain’t that right, Michael Kou?”

  Kou said nothing, showed nothing, though his eyes shifted to a table nearby, where two older Chinese men ate quietly. One of them had an ankle holster. The other was wearing a loose windbreaker with the Racing Form in the pocket and a shoulder holster under the arm.

  Willie leaned down and whispered to Michael Kou, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I watch out for my own. That why Chinatown peoples like me. I don’t fuck nobody.” Then he gave his boys a flick of the finger—follow me—and headed for the circular booth in the corner, where the others slid out to give him the best seat, back to the wall, surveying the room. Loud voices and big laughs followed.

  Evangeline said, “Are we the only ones who don’t know about this Chinese gold?”

  “That’s not why Willie’s here,” said LJ.

  “You mean, he’s just hungry?” said Evangeline.

  “Maybe,” said Michael Kou. “Or maybe marking turf … or maybe a target.”

  “Target?” said Evangeline.

  “Sometimes,” said LJ, “Chinese gangs bring a hit man from out of town—”

  “Right.” Michael scanned the restaurant. “They bring him to a place like this to show him the target. Someone in here might be an assassin, someone eating hoi-sin chicken, pretending to mind his own business. Maybe Willie just marked someone.”

  “One of us?” Peter sat again.

  Evangeline took the can of Mace from her purse and put it on the seat beside her.

  “Or,” said Peter, “one of the guys over there talking about horse racing. They look like two grandfathers.
But they’re both carrying.”

  “I’m a powerful man,” said Kou, without a hint of arrogance. “They are my bodyguards.”

  “Since when do venture capital guys need bodyguards?” asked Evangeline.

  “Since I got interested in something that interests Wonton Willie,” answered Kou.

  “The Chinese gold?” said Peter.

  “Or the Spencer Journal?” said Evangeline.

  “Some people think Willie already has the journal,” said Michael Kou. “They think he stole it from the California Historical Society.”

  “Didn’t the society make a copy?” asked Evangeline.

  “It was one of those items they hadn’t gotten around to digitizing yet,” said LJ.

  Peter was not surprised. “That happens a lot in big libraries.”

  LJ added, “When they opened the archive box about nine months ago, the journal was gone.”

  Peter leaned across the table and looked hard at his son and Michael Kou. “This is about more than a journal or a mythical bag of gold. And what happened last night in Portsmouth Square is tied into it. So is the hit-and-running of Maryanne Rogers. But how?”

  LJ and Michael Kou looked at each other.

  “Don’t all talk at once,” said Peter.

  Michael said, “Exploration is an inexact science. Cutler’s ventures have lost money for small investors. They’ve lost me and my big investors money, too. He dreams of finding bags of gold and paying off his debts to the locals, so he can regain respect in the community. He married a Chinese woman, don’t forget.”

  “And fathered a lovely daughter,” said Evangeline.

  LJ smiled, as if to say he appreciated that.

  Evangeline appreciated the smile.

  But Peter still had his eyes on Kou. “What do you dream of?”

  “Something bigger, Mr. Fallon. Much bigger.”

  Peter wished he had asked his question another way.

  * * *

  SOMEHOW, DESPITE THE TENSION and that filling vineyard lunch, Peter and Evangeline managed to eat their way through another Chinese feast.

  And when Wonton Willie and his boys left in another big flurry, the whole place seemed to breathe a little easier.

  Then Evangeline recognized a guy in the corner. She had noticed him earlier, sitting alone, eating a bowl of lo-mein noodles and reading a Chinese language newspaper. When Willie left, this guy got up, put on his Giants cap, and went out right after him.