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

by William Martin

  FIVE

  Friday Morning

  “SO … DID THEY BURY the Chinese gold?” Evangeline dipped her spoon into the tiny jar of strawberry jam and spread it on her croissant. “Or did Manion show us his section of the journal just to prove that they didn’t bury it, so we should stop bothering him?”

  “Not sure.” Peter sipped his coffee. “But I think he likes it when you bother him.”

  “Please.” She took a bite of croissant.

  “I think you like it when he bothers you.”

  “Right now, you’re the one bothering me.”

  They were eating breakfast by their window. They liked the view of Nob Hill. And she liked to luxuriate over room service in a hotel bathrobe, with wet hair wrapped in a plush towel. He liked his robe, too. He also liked looking at her in terrycloth.

  He held up a piece of bacon. “Ever wonder why they call these rashers?”

  “Focus, Peter. The journal. The gold. The big rock.”

  “Big Skull Rock?”

  “Do you think you can find it?”

  “I found it. Yesterday.”

  “You found it? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Yesterday, I didn’t know the Chinese wanted to bury their gold under it.”

  They had both stayed awake to read. Neither of them could sleep. Not surprising after a bad night in the back of Wonton Willie’s limo or another cryptic phone call. Evangeline drifted off around two. Peter kept reading till the end.

  Evangeline popped the last of the croissant into her mouth. “Two bags of Chinese gold, each weighing thirty pounds. What would a bag be worth in today’s dollars?”

  “Precious metals are measured in troy ounces. Twelve troy ounces to a pound, almost half a million a bag at thirteen hundred an ounce.”

  “Nice haul,” she said. “But enough?”

  “For what?” He dipped the bacon into his fried egg.

  “For all this trouble.” She poured more coffee. “For the Spencers to get all twisted over … for your son to drag you out here over … for Chinese gangsters to start whacking each other over.”

  “Have your ears stopped ringing from the gunshots?” asked Peter.

  “I have tinnitus. I hear hissing, not ringing.”

  “Too many rock clubs in your twenties.”

  “I ran a flower shop, remember? I was dreaming of a nice, quiet life.”

  “Boring.” He finished his egg, took a sip of coffee.

  “Your lifestyle was not what I signed up for.” She unwrapped the towel. Her hair dropped down, wet and stringy. She saw his look and said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What?”

  “Gray hairs. You see gray hairs up under the blond.”

  “Even gray hairs look good on you.”

  “You’d better say that. You gave me most of them.”

  “You know … this is what couples do best.”

  “Give each other gray hairs?”

  “Know what they’re thinking across the breakfast table.”

  She finished her coffee. “So what am I thinking now?”

  “I should shave. Male-model stubble looks lousy on me.”

  “Wrong.” She stood and toweled her hair. “I’m thinking you need to get this Wonton Willie off our backs, because I don’t want any more gray hairs.”

  He put an arm around her waist.

  She allowed the arm, but she knew just how to stand to tell him she wasn’t interested in anything but conversation.

  And he knew the signals: don’t push. He said, “It looks like we’re back in it.”

  “So, focus. What’s your plan?”

  “Have another chat with my son.”

  “LJ has become a very evasive young man.”

  “He didn’t pick up when I called him last night. He just texted, ‘Stay the course.’”

  “We need to know the course before we can stay it.”

  “We start by visiting the California Historical Society.”

  “Why? You think they have answers?” She finished toweling.

  “We need a baseline. Who was looking at the journal transcription? How often was it requested? That kind of thing.” Peter put his face against her robe and inhaled.

  She let him enjoy the moment. She enjoyed it herself … for a moment.

  But he knew enough to keep talking business, no matter how good she smelled after a shower. “The reading history of the transcription can tell us a lot.”

  “Not us. You.” She slipped out of his grasp.

  “Are you quitting?” He sat back, sensing that the moment was slipping away, too. “It’s all right if you’re quitting. It’s dangerous. And I hate giving you gray hairs.”

  “No matter how many times we get into these things, I never quit on you, do I? And I wouldn’t quit on LJ. But I’m not letting some Chinese thug stop my work out here.”

  “What work could be more important than finding Spencer’s journal, and Flynn’s lost river of gold, and the bags of Chinese gold? In no particular order?”

  “A helicopter ride with Manion Sturgis.”

  “Sturgis? In a helicopter? What the—”

  “I brokered a meeting between Manion and his brother in Napa.” She headed for the bathroom. “Relax, Peter. It’s research. The brother makes Cabernets. My editor told me to write about Cabernets. So I’ll take the ferry to Alcatraz, then—”

  “Alcatraz?”

  “The National Park Service lets Manion land there. Pretty cool.”

  “Yeah. Cool as hell.” He watched her go padding off to the bathroom. No chance now that they’d finish breakfast in one of the single beds. He finished his coffee instead.

  * * *

  THE DAY WAS DANK and overcast. Sometimes it began that way in San Francisco and ended in sunshine. Sometimes it began in sunshine and ended in cold fog. And sometimes you got all four seasons in a single day.

  Downstairs, everything seemed back to normal. No police tape. No one paying attention to Peter Fallon. No Ms. Ryan in the lobby. He even asked for her at the concierge’s desk, but no, she had checked out. And no one followed him across the traffic turnaround or noticed him pounding past the Fairmont, down Mason, moving like a man who was very pissed off.

  Helicopter ride with Manion Sturgis? Jesus.

  Breakfast table chitchat clearly hadn’t worked with Evangeline. Maybe a little fatherly talk would work with LJ. The boy had always hidden his emotions, even during the divorce, but he was playing things way too close now. Time for a face-to-face.

  And it was early enough that LJ might still be at home.

  So Peter followed Mason’s drop down to the corner by the Cable Car Museum, where he stopped and texted his son: “I am right outside. I need answers.”

  LJ texted back. “On the way to L.A. Following journal lead. At airport now.”

  Peter answered, “BS. I can see you in your bay window.”

  LJ: “Not me. Maybe Mary forgot something and came back. Talk tonight. Cocktail Reception, NPS Maritime Museum. Big SF history event. 5:30–7PM.”

  Peter decided to back off. “Okay.” But now what?

  Somebody was up in that apartment, and it did not look like Mary Ching Cutler.

  Best find out who it was … and maybe find a few more answers.

  Peter knew that his son always kept a hiding place for an extra key—in Cambridge, in his apartment in Berkeley—always where Peter could find it. Force of habit from back when LJ was a latchkey kid and he feared that on visitation days, Dad might get to the house early and leave if no one was home. Peter had always promised that he’d wait in the car all afternoon if need be. Still, the key was always there.

  Why should it be any different in San Francisco? So Peter turned onto Jackson and climbed his son’s stoop. The building was a post-earthquake classic: wood frame, blue and white paint, big windows with a bay hanging out over the intersection, two sets of names on the buzzer box. Apartment B, top floor: Fallon/Ching-Cutler.

  But �
� an inner door and an outer door. This might be harder than he thought.

  He looked around. No pedestrians, but over on the downhill corner of Mason and Jackson, three Chinese guys, talking and smoking and laughing. Two of them were wearing hoodies over ball caps. One of them was circling idly on one of those bikes with undersized wheels, curb-jumping, spinning, killing time. Were they waiting for a ride? Or a meet-up? Or were they on a stakeout? Of what? LJ’s apartment?

  Peter was happy that Evangeline wasn’t with him. Sometimes, it was easier to go solo. It attracted less attention. He took his own keys out of his pocket, pretended to fumble with them, dropped them, all so that he could kneel. While he was down there, he ran his hand along the threshold. And … right where he had expected it: the key, duct-taped to the underside. LJ really was a creature of habit.

  But a single key … for three doors?

  Give it a try. Into the main lock and … pop. Open. The same with the inner door. He let it close softly behind him. Then he slipped off his loafers. No footfalls on the stairs. And up he went … to the landing at Apartment A. He stopped and listened. No TV or radio. No movement. Nothing.

  So on to Apartment B, stairs leading right up to the door. He listened: silence and city sounds. Would the same key work? No. But he found another duct-taped to the underside of that threshold. Into the lock and … pop again.

  He pushed the door open but did not step in, just looked. Everything he saw was rehab modern: a galley kitchen across from the door, with counter and stools opening on a living area and that big window with its view down Jackson all the way to the Bay Bridge. Everything high-end, well-chosen, sleek … leather furnishings, leather window seat, glass tables, granite this, stainless that. To his right, a hallway, open doors, a window at the end.

  The clanging of a cable car startled him in the silence, but he stayed where he was, right on the threshold, listening. Then he heard movement in one of the bedrooms, then a door opening, and a draft blowing down the long hallway.

  Someone was running. He dropped his shoes and followed the draft to the end, to a pair of doors: one led to the bathroom, the other onto a service porch. He stepped onto the porch. Stairs led down to an alley and up to the roof. A gate on the downside appeared locked. So … above? To a trap door that opened to the roof? Or back into the apartment? Or stand still and listen for footfalls?

  Hard decisions in a place he’d never been. He heard muffled traffic. Somewhere a radio was playing.

  He took the lid from a rubber trash can on the landing and held it like a shield. He wished he had his shoes, too.

  He led with the lid and climbed until he could just poke his head above the roof line: Right, left, nothing, nothing. He turned toward the front of the house: a fire escape dropping down between two windows. No one hiding. No one running. No one coming at him with a knife. He was glad of that, and glad that no one saw him with the trash can lid. He looked pretty stupid.

  He dropped back down, replaced the lid, went back into the apartment, to a room along the hallway that had caught his eye: the office. At dinner, the kids had talked about the office. They worked in the same room, which Evangeline thought was cute.

  Peter stopped in the doorway and looked in at a mess.

  Then a tight, nervous voice surprised him: “I am licensed for concealed carry in California, and you are a home invader. I can blow your brains all over the wall. So put your hands behind your head and turn very slowly.”

  Peter did as he was told and was greeted by the barrel of a small handgun, a Walther PPK, maybe, and a widening set of eyes. “Oh, shit. Are you LJ’s dad?”

  Peter said, “You first.”

  “I’m Jack Cutler”—he lowered the gun and made a gesture for Peter to put down his arms—“your future in-law.”

  He was a tall guy, skinny, sunburned, dressed in a tan bush jacket and cargo shorts and big boots for tromping across dry fields or old vineyards in search of gold-bearing quartz veins. The adventuring geologist … or the host on a wild animal show.

  Peter asked, “What are you doing in their apartment?”

  Cutler gave a jerk of the head and led Peter back to a spot in the living room where they could look out the bay window without being seen. “Notice the three Chinese guys.”

  “We’re on the edge of Chinatown,” said Peter. “It’s the white guys who stand out. But yeah. I noticed them. They didn’t even look at me.”

  They were still smokin’ and jokin’ on that corner, with cable cars bumping past and street life flowing like a river around them.

  “They may not have looked, but they were watching. And they’re watching right now. I figured it out after I let myself in.”

  Peter asked, “Wonton Willie’s boys?”

  “Willie? Willie’s small-time. A pimp.” Jack Cutler put the gun back into the side pocket of his cargo shorts. “But if those guys cross the street, we ought to run. I think they work for the Dai-lo.”

  “The Dai-lo? The Big Dragon from the Triad?”

  “Word is that he’s coming to town. He might even be here.” Cutler went into the kitchen, poured coffee for himself, and gestured with the pot. Want a cup?

  Peter shook his head.

  “I need some. Glad it’s hot. You gave me the jitters. You and the Dai-lo.”

  “Is he why you’re waving a gun around in our kids’ apartment? The Dai-lo?”

  “I need a little armament. I’m not really a civilian.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “Long story. Google my name and ‘gold fraud.’” Cutler went to another window and looked again into the street.

  Peter didn’t like the evasion, and he’d been getting a lot of it, lately. He said, “What were you doing in their office?”

  Cutler’s face got long, then longer. “Who said I was in their office?”

  “My son’s desk drawers are open. He never leaves his drawers open. He’s a neat freak. And the computer is on. He never leaves his computer on. He’s a green freak, too.”

  Cutler backed away from the window but kept his eyes on the street. “They’re coming. We better go.”

  Peter snapped at Cutler, “Stop playing games. They’re nobody.”

  “Hey, fuck you, Pete.”

  “Just tell me what the hell you’re doing here. And don’t call me Pete.”

  “Okay, Mister Fallon.”

  This was not going well, thought Peter. Meeting the future in-laws was supposed to be more civilized.

  Cutler moved to a side window, above Jackson, and tracked the movement of one of the Chinese guys. “We got one coming up to the stoop, one still standing watch, and”—Cutler looked up—“if I hear anyone up on the roof—”

  “Just tell me this: why is my son’s desk ripped apart?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “LJ does a thing as if he’s choreographed it.” Peter had believed that until the last few days. “He considers every move and doesn’t move until he considers every option.”

  “Like marrying my daughter?”

  “A very good move.”

  The compliment seemed to soften Jack Cutler. He said, “Yeah, well, they make a nice couple, but your kid’s tap dancing right now.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s in trouble over this journal. He’s helping the wrong people.”

  “Who?”

  “You’ve met a few of them. Unfortunately, I’m in business with them.”

  “Are you in trouble, too?”

  Cutler gestured to the window, “Half the people in Chinatown hate me, so, yeah.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Research I should have done years ago, before that damn journal disappeared. I could have put all this business to bed before it started. But if the right guy puts it back together again now, he can—” Cutler caught himself, as if he did not want to say more.

  “He can what?”

  Just then, the buzzer rang. The electric sound snapped through the apartment and
right through Peter’s spine. Through Cutler’s, too, from his reaction. Without another word, he drained his coffee and headed down the hallway.

  “Where are you going?” said Peter.

  “Back to my place in Placerville. It’s safer there. I have a shotgun there. I should have stayed there.”

  Peter went after him. “What were you looking for in the desk?”

  “The journal pages that tell where the goddamn Chinese gold is hidden.”

  “Bags of it? Or a lost river?”

  “Everybody says the lost river is a myth. But the bags are real. If I find them, maybe I can have dinner in Chinatown again.” Cutler disappeared around the corner.

  Peter would have followed, but he wasn’t wearing shoes. So he went back to where he had left them, by the front door, slipped a foot into one, and … the stairs creaked in the hallway. Somebody was out there. One shoe on, one shoe off, Peter listened, motionless.

  On the street, a cable car clanged. In the kitchen, the coffee maker hissed. On the other side of the door, a person took a breath.

  Peter reached for the dead bolt … an instant too late.

  The door burst open and slammed into him and sent him flying into the stools, which went flying into the living area, with Peter Fallon flying right after them.

  The guy was short and square and as solid as a fireplug. He reminded Peter of Oddjob, the James Bond villain.

  “Where’d Cutler go.” Perfect English.

  “Cutler?” Peter played dumb. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Fuck that. Where is he?” The guy came at Peter.

  Peter rolled to his feet, grabbed a stool for protection, and retreated.

  Could he talk his way out or would he have to fight?

  Talk was always better. But if he had to fight, best know the ground. He shifted his eyes from point to point. Behind him: the bay window. Before him: the front door and the hallway to the bedrooms, blocked by Mr. Oddjob. To his left, through the dining area: the galley kitchen, with two entrances, one a few feet away, and the other opposite the front door. That would be his route.

  He said, “Do you work for the Dai-lo?”

  The guy scowled and reached into his jacket—black leather, a fashion statement in the Tong tough-guy community—and pulled a pistol with a silencer, also a statement.