That got everyone’s attention, but then they heard something outside, in the driveway beside the house.
Wild Bill stepped to the curtains and peered out. “Two guys, out on the sidewalk. And one of them just jumped the gate.”
“I’m surprised it took Kou’s boys this long,” said Peter.
Then they heard footfalls on the porch.
Peter said to Yung, “The guys out there are a lot worse than Barber.”
The doorbell rang.
Wild Bill said, “But polite assassins always ring first.”
“Maybe they think I’m off at my son’s,” said Yung. “Or alone.”
“Alone with the seven-barrel Nock gun,” said Peter.
“It’s not loaded,” answered Yung. “And it has no flint.”
The bell rang again.
Wild Bill went to another window, peered onto the porch, and whispered, “Big white guy. Dark suit.”
“The bodyguard who turned on Lum?” said Evangeline. “The one named Steele?”
Wild Bill reached for his shoulder holster. “Mr. Steele may meet Mr. Magnum.”
Peter said, “Are you sure we can’t run, instead?”
“Running is preferable,” said Wild Bill. “But to where?”
Then they heard a different doorbell, a sharper buzzer.
Yung said, “The back door.”
“And we’re surrounded,” said Peter, as if he was expecting it.
“I wish I had my Mace,” said Evangeline.
“Relax, miss,” said Yung. “This house is a fortress.”
Wild Bill said, “The white guy is leaving. Down the steps … back onto the sidewalk … crossing the street … taking up a spot at the lamppost … making a call.”
Peter looked out. “Lamppost becomes command post?”
Three hoodies, riding Dahon bikes, appeared from the shadows.
“Calling in the reinforcements,” said Wild Bill.
Yung gave them a jerk of the head, had them step out of the library. Then he punched in the code and the pocket doors rolled shut with a thunk. “Those are steel, clad in wood. The windows are impenetrable. If there’s a fire, halon gas will extinguish it. So the books and the Bierstadt are safe. Come on.”
He led them up the stairs, past the portrait of Maryanne Rogers in the sitting room, past James Spencer’s master bedroom in the turret, to another flight that rose to the servants’ quarters. Yung bolted the door behind them and pointed them up the stairs to a beautiful circular room, with a 180-degree view of California Street below.
“We’ll be safe up here,” he said, “until help arrives.”
“Very cozy,” said Evangeline.
Yung said, “After our children went to college, my wife and I moved in. When she passed, I stayed to care for Mrs. Rogers. She was like family. And this is my home.”
“And you don’t want to lose your home?” said Evangeline.
“Would you?”
Wild Bill went over to a window and looked down. “White guy is still by the lamppost, still on the cell.”
From somewhere down in the house, they heard pounding on the door.
“They should know that the house is alarmed,” said Yung.
“So am I,” said Evangeline.
Yung took out his cell phone.
“Who are you calling?” asked Peter.
“The police.”
“No police,” said Wild Bill. “Not yet. I’ll text Rice Balls first. See what he suggests.”
“Rice Balls wants the journal,” said Peter. “Finding it is what he suggests.”
“Rice Balls?” said John Yung, pure deadpan. “How … Oriental.”
Evangeline said to Yung, “Mrs. Rogers was killed for those notebooks, probably by one of the guys trying to get into this house right now.”
“But once the journal is complete,” said John Yung, “they will sell this house and all its history. And my ancestors have a past here, too, just like the Spencers. It says so, right in the last notebook.”
That caused Peter’s heart to pop toward the back of his throat. “Last notebook? Then you’ve read it?”
Mr. Yung led them from the turret bedroom into the sitting room under the eaves, to a steamer trunk with oak strapping. “The Spencers gave this trunk to Mickey Chang when he was a boy in an orphanage. He kept it all his life. Others who lived in these rooms have added things. But it started with gifts from the Spencers.”
“Like the Nock gun?” said Peter. “That was Mrs. Spencer’s.”
“I found the Nock gun here … and this.” Yung pulled out a wooden box that contained a Walker Colt, wrapped in an oiled rag. The initials M.F. had been scratched into the grip. Michael Flynn. Then came an ancient hat, all moth-eaten and squashed, with a cracked leather brim.
“My God,” said Peter. “Flynn stole this from Spencer the day they met. Janiva picked it up the night they hanged him.”
Yung nodded. It was hard to tell if he was impressed with Peter Fallon’s knowledge or feeling smug about how much more there was for him to see.
Then came an envelope out of which Yung removed a rag of red and yellow-paisley neckerchief … then a back strap shovel, manufactured by Ames & Co., Easton, Massachusetts … a rusted pan that looked like a deep-dish pie plate … a crumbling copy of the Alta California from June 11, 1851, the day after Flynn’s hanging, with the headline, “Justice Is Served!”
Then came other items from other generations: a tasseled silk mandarin hat, an unopened bag of ginseng, a framed photograph of a Chinese man in dark, padded jacket and fedora, seated behind the wheel of an ancient automobile, and a well-dressed white man beside him. On the back: October, 1905—Mickey Chang drives Mr. Spencer in new Ariel autocar.
And from the bottom, John Yung brought forth a long notebook that he put reverently into Peter’s hands.
Peter took it just as reverently, opened it, and read the inscription, “‘To be given to Mickey Chang for his years of service, so that he may know his family and his father.’”
Peter felt the synapses firing again across the decades, between himself and James Spencer and the Chinese man who had been given this notebook. The feeling never got old. He muttered, “My God.”
“My God,” said Evangeline. “But why?”
“Read on,” said John Yung.
“Before you read”—Evangeline waved her phone at Peter—“remember why we’re here.”
“Right.” Peter pulled out his iPhone and scanned every page while Evangeline turned them. It didn’t take long. Another wonder of modern technology. Then he emailed it all to LJ and Uncle Charlie as a single document.
“That should do it,” said Wild Bill, who was looking out from a little porthole window under the eaves, watching the movement in the street.
“Do you see anything?” asked Peter.
“Steele is still at the lamppost. The bike boys are down in the shadows around the driveway, trying to open the gate, it looks like.”
“Do you have other security?” Evangeline asked Mr. Yung.
“Of course. But if I’m here, I don’t always turn on the cameras.” He grabbed his iPad and brought up a screen. “I can start everything with this. I can have police here in four minutes.”
Wild Bill put out his hand. “Wait, at least until I hear from my friend—”
“Mr. Balls?” said John Yung.
“That’s Mr. Rice Balls to you,” said Evangeline.
“No middle initial,” said Peter, and he flipped through the notebook.
Not a lot changed from the final version … some phrasing here, bits of the story there, until he came to a passage not in the final transcription. It was entered about nine months after Michael Flynn’s death:
One cool March eve, as Janiva rocked the baby and I read by the wood stove, there came a pounding on the door. Despite the retreat of the Sydney Ducks and other gangs, I never answered the door at night without my pistol, so I armed myself and asked who was there.
R
eceiving no answer, I cautiously opened and heard someone leaping down the stairs, running off into the night. Then I heard the mewling cry of a baby in a basket left on the landing. I brought it into the warmth, and upon closer examination, discovered a child, male, newborn, with a Chinese cast to his features and skin color. Had someone left him here because we had helped establish the orphanage? Or was there another reason? I determined to get answers the next morning.
Chin was behind the counter at Ah-Sing’s. When he saw me, he spoke without prelude, angrily, almost in mid-emotion, as if he had been expecting me. He said, “Mei-Ling dead.” And the anger in his voice implied that, somehow, he blamed me.
“In childbirth?” I asked.
He did not answer directly. He said, “I try protect her. I try find happiness for her. But white man’s world destroy her.”
I said I had not seen her in some time. “Did she go into hiding?”
He said she went to work for Ah-Toy. “Where else woman work with no husband and swelling belly, thanks to Flynn? But Mei-Ling no make fuck at Ah-Toy’s. Never fuck.”
So there it was. Michael Flynn was the father.
Chin said he could not raise Flynn’s child. His bitterness toward the Irishman, for all the hurt he had brought them, all to plant his seed in Mei-Ling, was a thing that would never die. So Chin had left the child with us. “Skin light enough, maybe he pass.”
But I told him I could not take this child into my house.
“Flynn your friend. You loyal to your friends. Be loyal to their seed.”
I said that the child was his blood. He should be loyal, too.
“Then who raise him? Ah-Toy? No real Chinese mothers here.”
I did not mention Chin’s dabbling in female slavery. Instead, I looked into his eyes and gave him the answer I had been considering since the night before. “My wife cannot take in another child. It will kill her.”
“Kill?” he said, puzzled.
And I considered telling him the truth. He knew nothing of the rape, nothing of the deep well of pain bored into Janiva on that awful day almost two years before. As I have written, she did her best to cover it, to ignore it, to rely on her straight spine and fierce will to bring her through. But sometimes, that well overflowed. When it did, I had no answers. I could only wait in quiet understanding and wish silently that we lived closer to family, for a wise mother might offer the surcease that a young husband could not.
Then our son was born. And when Janiva should have been overflowing with love, an even greater sadness bubbled out of her. And its dark waters threatened to drown us all. She could barely bring herself to suckle, to comfort, even to love our innocent babe.
Mrs. Brannan explained that this sadness sometimes afflicted women who had given birth, and she suggested a wet nurse. But where? The answer betook me to the establishment recently opened by the two soiled doves who sang so sweetly the night I killed Hodges, Sheila and Roberta. Rumor had it that Roberta had given birth to a stillborn. So I offered her an ounce of gold a day to wet nurse my son.
And little by little, with the help of Roberta and the steady rise of the sun toward the equinox, Janiva emerged from despair. Her strong spine held her upright. The lead of sorrow melted from her jaw. In time, she smiled again. But I feared that at any moment, sadness might swamp her once more, especially if we overwhelmed her now with a foundling.
But I did not tell any of this to Wei Chin. I said only, “We have an infant of our own. We cannot take another. If you cannot take your sister’s child, I will see to his care in the orphanage.”
Janiva felt considerable remorse at turning Flynn’s child away. I felt it myself. But we agreed. As for Wei Chin, he was a man in whom pride and anger were stirred in equal measures, making for a volatile mix, and in this matter, anger seemed to have won. So we placed the child in the orphanage we had helped to establish at Second and Folsom.
Then I sent Roberta to suckle him.Soon she was wet-nurse and mother to half a dozen motherless infants. And she pronounced herself happier than she had ever been.
“Wow,” whispered Evangeline. “Postpartum depression.”
“Did they even have a name for it back then?” asked Peter.
“Whether they did or not,” said Evangeline, “Janiva had it.”
“Not surprising, after all she had been through,” said Peter.
And for a few moments, they were silent in the attic, absorbing the pain of those lives, lived so long ago on those San Francisco hills.
Then they heard a vehicle pull up out front.
Wild Bill peered down. “Our friends have figured out how to get the gate open. A black panel truck is now in the driveway.”
Peter said, “Is it the truck that hit Maryanne Rogers?”
“That one was white,” said John Yung.
“They could have painted it,” said Wild Bill.
“They have ladders,” said Evangeline, peering out. “What do they want with ladders?”
“Maybe they’re planning to try the second-floor windows,” said Yung. “They will be disappointed.”
“Or maybe,” said Wild Bill, “they’re thinking of cutting the power.”
“There are back-up systems,” said Yung.
“And”—Wild Bill looked at his phone—“Rice Balls just texted. The cavalry’s on the way. We should sit tight.”
“Sit tight and keep reading,” said Peter. “Nothing ends until we finish.”
He flipped to the last pages, looking for answers there in James Spencer’s attic, and for the last time, he felt the persistence of Spencer’s humanity, the decency of his character, sometimes flawed but always positive:
… We followed the rolling path across hills and through stands of trees. We bumped over the Rainbow Gulch water trench and came finally to the north rim of the ravine, where the graveyard had grown, filling with so many who had come to California in pursuit of a dream that life promises but seldom delivers.
There are tales of gold country burials in which actual gold nuggets appeared in the turned earth of a fresh grave, but no such miracle occurred when we dug for Michael Flynn that day. We lowered him, said a few psalms, and prayed for his orphan child.
The boy’s uncle, Wei Chin, had become a great Mandarin by then, a “ticket broker” bringing cheap labor from China, and he had recently imported a childless couple named Chang. They had agreed to raise young Mickey, as he is called, with the financial support of Uncle Wei. As the Changs had worked “in service” to British officials in Hong Kong, I hired them for the new home we were building on California Street. So Mickey would grow under our roof, after all.
We stayed a few days with the Emerys in Broke Neck and negotiated with the Gasparich brothers, who owned the stretch of land which in April was a river of budding vines. These brothers had been diligent and hard working, but they had far to go to make wine that would last. So we offered to partner with them in wine if they would partner with us in gold.
Then we prospected for alluvial deposits, following the volcanic soils from the north-facing slope of the ravine all the way to the turn in the landscape that we now call Flynn’s Bend. We dug a coyote hole and hit gravel at twenty-six feet. But there was no gold. In the next few days, we dug a dozen other holes with the same results. Whatever ore this ancient river had been carrying, it dropped elsewhere, into Rainbow Gulch, perhaps, or at the site that we exposed on the night we blew up the Sagamore dam.
So I decided that the best I could do for my old friend would be to buy that vineyard, and from its profits, establish a trust for Mickey Chang. Janiva approved. And thus did our Gold Rush come to an end.
Machines and mighty jets of water were doing the work that independent men once did with shovels and pans. The adventure and romance, the misery and heartbreak, the joy and sorrow of those early days were becoming no more than memory, as evanescent as the fog on the bay.
But we learned much in those hills, from great friends, from resolute enemies, and from those who b
egan as one and ended as the other. I can close my eyes and see a hundred faces flying past, feel a thousand emotions pouring forth, and remember how brilliantly gold illuminated every dream and base instinct in all of them.
I have come to believe that human nature may appear to change, but in its hatreds and obsessions, in its hopes and generosities, in the bedrock places where decency and deceit reside, people never change. Gold cannot turn a man from one thing to another, from good to evil, from miser to philanthropist. Gold and the getting of it can only reveal him, as it did so many of us. And yet any man can be raised up with fair treatment. No matter the words of Cletis Smith, there is no such thing as too much mercy.
So we build our society in California, at once the promised land of the grand old song and yet another American paradise lost. Janiva and I will strive to make of this city a golden place, bright and hopeful, not because it will profit us but because it is the right thing to do.
* * *
FOR A MOMENT AFTER that, the four people in James Spencer’s ancient attic sat in silence, considering his words.
Then John Yung nodded and gave a laugh.
Evangeline said, “What? What’s so funny.”
“That trust. It helped pay for my son’s education at Stanford.”
But that was a glow that no one had time to bask in, because a ladder thunked against the side of the house. The whole building shook.
John Yung said, “They are very stupid, whoever they are.”
Wild Bill pulled the Magnum. “They’re in for a helluva surprise.”
Peter unwrapped the Walker Colt and popped the cylinder. Empty.
Evangeline said, “It would take you twenty minutes to load that thing, and you might still end up with a misfire.”
“In that case”—Peter pointed to the iPad and told John Yung—“light her up.”
John Yung tapped, swiped, tapped, swiped, and outside lights came on all around the grand old Victorian mansion.
Dark shadows scrambled in every direction. Dahon bikes went speeding toward Van Ness. The panel truck rocketed up California Street.
And across the street, the big white guy in the dark suit started down California, moving as casually as if he was on the way to Whole Foods. Then he stopped, because someone was walking up the hill toward him, a shadow of a small man in a windbreaker.
Bound for Gold--A Peter Fallon Novel of the California Gold Rush Page 60