California Gold

by John Jakes

  “I’m afraid we have nothing at the paper, but there’s always a big enamel pot of coffee on the stove. You could warm up and dry out.” She stood, smoothing her soaked shirtwaist. It clung to her, and he could see clearly that she didn’t have the kind of billowy figure women prized—not Carla Hellman’s kind of figure. But he found her exceedingly attractive.

  “I honestly didn’t know women wrote for newspapers,” he said.

  “Do you disapprove?”

  “Well…” He looked away at some gulls.

  “Mr. Chance, your opinion’s written on your face. A woman belongs in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. That’s your concept, isn’t it? You and a million others.”

  “Miss Ross, you keep wanting to start a fight.”

  “You keep inviting it. You’re living in the past, you and every other man I know. There aren’t many women in journalism so far. But that’s changing—despite the outraged squeals of my colleagues, most of whom seem threatened by the mere sight of a skirt in the editorial rooms. But I’m there, and I’ll stay there. I’m what some people call a sob sister…Mr. Chance, do stop gawking at me. Come along.”

  But he couldn’t help gawking; he’d never met any girl like this Nellie Ross—independent, a trifle hard, pretty in an unconventional way. There was something exotic about the shape and tilt of those warm brown eyes.

  He hoisted his bundle and followed her up the pier past the old fisherman, who kept his guilty gaze on the water. She said, “If you like, I’ll ask around the office about a job. Someone might know of something. It’s the least I can do for my rescuer.”

  “Am I hearing an apology, Miss Ross?”

  She seemed to see him, actually see and appraise him, for the first time. And not unfavorably. The tip of her tongue rolled inside her cheek a moment.

  “Reporters never apologize. It weakens the air of authority.

  “Follow me, Mr. Chance.”

  They walked up Market Street, the busiest thoroughfare Mack had ever seen—drays, buggies, horse-drawn trams, impressive buildings, and people everywhere. Above the din, Nellie asked why he’d come to California.

  He showed her the guidebook. “Because I’ve always believed what this says…that a man can get rich out here.”

  A smile flirted over her face, but an innate kindness suppressed it. Bedraggled and poor as he was, he looked so serious, so determined, that laughter would have cruelly insulted him. She found herself admiring his dogged sincerity, in spite of her earlier anger.

  “I understand that kind of ambition,” she said. “I have it too. My ambition is to write. Not only news stories, but novels one of these days.”

  “Is that a good way to make a lot of money?”

  “Don’t be exasperating. Not everyone here worships wealth. I write to tell the truth. To change things. We turn here,” she added, striding around the corner two steps ahead of him.

  The San Francisco Examiner, Monarch of the Dailies, W. R. Hearst editor and proprietor, operated from rooms at 10 Montgomery Street. Mack had never encountered such a place, full of shouting and cigar fumes and boys racing up and down the aisles snatching foolscap pages from the reporters at their desks. He actually saw a man speaking into a wall telephone. He’d seen pictures of the device, but to watch someone using one was a marvel.

  Nellie took him to an alcove at the back and poured him some hot coffee. His clothes were already drying stiffly. He sat down at a cheap table, not a little intimidated by this girl and the general air of worldly sophistication in the office. He heard men shouting expletives as casually as other people said good-day.

  Nellie took a chair. “That was a good hat that floated away. Oh well.” She noticed his expression. “Yes, it’s noisy,” she added, taking a sip of her coffee, “but in most respects it’s a fine place to work. The senator lost over a quarter of a million dollars after he bought the paper, but then Mr. Hearst was thrown out of Harvard, and he came home and asked the senator to let him take over. Mr. Hearst is only twenty-four, but he has wonderful ideas—a real genius for newspapering. He spends money to cover the news. A lot of people don’t like him and call him Wasteful Willie, but he’s perked up the paper with controversy and much better writing. Our circulation has already passed twenty-five thousand. Two months ago he personally lured Mr. Bierce away from the Argonaut to write general news and his ‘Prattle’ column—a real coup.”

  A long rail of a young man, in shirtsleeves with garters and natty striped trousers, shot around the corner and dashed to the coffeepot. His center-parted yellow hair, drooping mustache, and pop eyes didn’t impress Mack.

  “What about the drowning stunt, Nellie?” the man asked, gulping coffee. He had a high-pitched voice.

  “It wasn’t the right moment, Mr. Hearst. I’ll try again tomorrow.” Nellie didn’t so much as glance at Mack. He warmed to her all over again.

  “Well, do—we haven’t stuck it to the railroad for a week now. Hello,” Hearst said to Mack in an offhand way. He leaped into the aisle to snare the arm of an older man wearing a coat and cravat in the midst of general sartorial disarray. The man had cool, sardonic eyes.

  “Bierce, what’re you working on?”

  “Avoiding colds and drafts. This place is a pest house.”

  “You can fixate on your health on your own time. Answer my question.”

  “The story of the moment is Supervisor Smiley and that little tart he’s been keeping over in Sausalito,” Bierce said. “At taxpayer expense.” Thumb in his waistcoat pocket, he studied Mack with lofty curiosity.

  “Be careful—Smiley’s a thug. If he finds out, he’ll be after you,” Hearst said.

  “Trust in God, but carry Smith and Wesson,” Bierce said, patting his coat. Mack saw the outline of a pistol.

  Bierce showed Hearst a small leather-covered book. “Also, one of my alcoholic informants got a job as a janitor at Fourth and Townsend. He managed to purloin this.”

  “What is it?” Nellie asked.

  “Southern Pacific cipher book. Copy number seven, one of Crocker’s.” He licked a fingertip and turned a page. “The word ‘bold’ means ‘cash payments.’ ‘Concave’ means ‘do not commit yourself.’ ‘Gorilla’ stands for ‘the state legislature.’ My favorite is ‘adultery.’ Translation—‘admit nothing.’ There’s twelve pages of the stuff.”

  Hearst snatched the book gleefully, and Bierce pressed a handkerchief to his lips and coughed. “Don’t excite yourself, Mr. Hearst. It’s worthless without copies of the encoded dispatches they use to conduct their rotten business. They’ll soon discover this copy missing, change the cipher, and issue eight new books.”

  “The railroad does business in code?” Mack asked, astonished.

  Bierce raised his nose. “Who is this naïve young gentleman, Nellie?”

  “Mr. Chance, an acquaintance who put himself out to help me at the ferry terminal.”

  “Well, Mr. Chance,” Bierce said, “the answer is yes. The three surviving members of the Big Four, the Messrs. Crocker, Huntington, and Stanford—Uncle Mark Hopkins died this year, God rest his skinflint soul—are creatures of enormous resource, and even greater cupidity. A large segment of the public is aware of it, and growing more so. Thus a countervailing passion for secrecy has developed within the SP bureaucracy. The man who really cracks the whip, old Collis P., operates from the East—further reason why sensitive management messages are transmitted in cipher.”

  “Mr. Chance is new here,” Nellie said. “He doesn’t know a lot about the gentlemen of the SP.”

  “One of my favorite subjects,” Hearst said with a fierce look. “Let me tell you how crooked that bunch is, Mr. Chance. When the line was under construction, they rigged geologic surveys to convince Congress that the Sierras begin forty miles west of the commonly accepted point. The per-mile construction subsidy from the government was higher in the mountains than on flat land, you see. Congress swallowed it and the fraud netted those four bandits half a million. That’s how they ope
rate. The public is there to be robbed.”

  The takers and those they take from…

  “Of course, knowing it and proving it are two different things,” Bierce said. “But the Examiner does keep trying—” An electric bell rang. “One hour till deadline. Duty calls.” He started away.

  “Ambrose, just a minute,” Nellie said. “Mr. Chance needs work. Have you heard of anything in town?”

  “Unskilled, I presume,” Bierce said in a way that made Mack boil. “Sorry, no.”

  Hearst said, “Ned Greenway was looking for a man last week. Could you stand to work for a self-important snob, Mr. Chance?”

  “Who is he?”

  “Local sales representative for Mumm’s champagne. And the arbiter of San Francisco society. Our own, self-appointed Ward McAllister. Delivering for him, you’d get to meet all the best people.”

  “Look but don’t touch,” Bierce said. “Charmed, all.” After a mock bow, he sauntered off. Hearst shook Mack’s hand with vigorous enthusiasm.

  “Good luck to you. Nellie, I want to discuss the next exposé, the Receiving Hospital.” He shot away into the smoky chaos of the editorial rooms. An unseen press started to rumble; Mack felt it in the floor.

  Nellie stood, smoothing her skirt. “Well, Mr. Chance, how do you feel about delivering champagne for a snob?”

  “It’s work. Will you call me Mack?”

  Her chin came up and there was a startled look in her large eyes, as if she hadn’t expected that gesture of interest. But she wasn’t displeased.

  “Why yes, I will. Here, let me write out Greenway’s address and you can go straight around while Mr. Hearst and I discuss how I’m going to surrender myself to the abominable conditions at the Receiving Hospital.”

  9

  NED GREENWAY PROVED TO be all that Hearst said, and considerably more: pompous, posturing, a little whale who strutted or, alternately, minced around his office on tiptoe. He was forty or so, with a magnificent handlebar mustache and the florid complexion of a drunk. He interviewed Mack at half past one in the afternoon, informing him that he’d been up only half an hour. A silver tray bore his breakfast: hard-boiled eggs, a salt cellar, and a bottle of Mumm’s Extra Dry. He talked more about himself than about the job. “I have drunk more wine than any man in America”; “Last year I set a new record, twenty-five bottles in one day”; “I am creating in San Francisco a society fully the equal of New York’s Four Hundred.” He conducted the interview wearing a full suit of evening clothes. He never wore anything else in public.

  On the pittance Greenway paid, Mack couldn’t afford a good room, or even a good neighborhood. He found a place next door to Major Wells’s Salvation Army headquarters, farther up Montgomery in the seething belly of San Francisco’s wickedest district, the Barbary Coast. Mack rather liked the raffish array of pawnshops, whorehouses, secondhand-clothing stores, cheap cafés, and concert saloons, where the melodeons cranked away at all hours and barkeeps slipped chloral hydrate to the unwary. When the victims passed out they were slid through the back door to the crimps; next day they woke up on the ocean, part of a crew bound for the Japans. Mack’s pugnacious manner was a good defense against crimps. He was bothered only once, and the crimp crawled away with his balls kicked.

  The hours on Greenway’s wagon were long and the cases of Mumm’s heavy, but the job taught him the layout of the city in a matter of weeks. He spruced up his wardrobe with a plaid suit from a secondhand shop and called at the Examiner to see Nellie. The editor informed him she and Bierce and three staff artists had rushed to Sacramento, where a Central Pacific express had derailed and overturned due to a switch failure. Six were dead. Ironically, Hearst had sent his team to the site by special train, over the rails of the line his headlines damned:

  BLOODY TRAGEDY ON

  THE “LINE OF DEATH”!

  Horrific Sights! Relatives

  Seek Loved Ones

  Among the Corpses!

  Absolute Silence from

  the Rail Moguls Greets

  Latest Outrage Against

  Public Safety

  The byline of the featured dispatch was Ramona Sweet. Mack felt proud; he knew a celebrity, Mr. Hearst’s answer to the famed Nellie Bly in New York. He tore out the story and tacked it up in his room next to a city map he studied for a few minutes every night.

  When he didn’t feel like eating in a café, or ran short of money, the Salvation Army officers next door could always find him a bowl of soup; they did it for anyone who lived in the neighborhood. Mack soon felt at home.

  The painted wagon said GREENWAY’S SPIRITS. Mack tied his horse to a trash can in the alley behind the Odd Fellows Hall, then opened the wagon’s back doors. He wore his work uniform, a loose white shirt, cord breeches, boots, and a canvas apron. It was eleven o’clock on a Friday evening in September. Infernally hot for San Francisco.

  He pulled out cases of Mumm’s Extra Dry and stacked them on the stoop. Noisy conversation flowed out through the hall’s back doors, along with the music of Ballenberg’s Society Band. One of Mr. Greenway’s recently organized Friday-night cotillions was in progress. The dancing had started at ten, and chefs would serve a buffet supper at midnight. Mack’s job was to deliver the iced champagne at the last possible moment.

  He puzzled at the heavy, almost martial beat of the music, which didn’t sound like dance music to him. A police whistle blasted inside and people applauded. He didn’t understand the ways of these society types.

  He had turned to the wagon, bracing himself to pick up three cases at once, when he heard a man come out, complaining loudly. “Crazy in there. That little fart-face blows his whistle and they all march around like a bunch of tin soldiers. Ain’t like any dancing I ever—” The man stopped abruptly as Mack turned to face him.

  Mack was just as surprised, and immediately tense. “Good evening, Mr. Hellman.”

  Hellman scratched the dimple in his chin. His white tie hung crookedly and his formal suit resembled a potato sack. Sucking on a pungent cigar, he keenly studied Mack.

  “Move over,” he said finally. “I got to sit down.”

  Mack put down the cases. Carla Hellman’s father seemed positively affable—as if he’d never pointed a revolver at Mack and threatened to kill him. And, even more amazing, Mack was actually glad to see him.

  “Jesus, hot in there.” Hellman yanked at his collar as if it were a noose. He eyed the crates. “So—this is where you got to. You don’t need water. You got champagne.”

  “I don’t drink it, I just deliver it.”

  Hellman shrugged. “Work’s work. Ain’t nothing disgraceful about it so long as you make money.”

  “I don’t make enough to suit me.”

  Hellman stabbed the air with cigar. “Now I like that. That’s the attitude of somebody who’s going to succeed.”

  Mack tapped one of the champagne cases. “Excuse me, I’ve got to take these inside.”

  “Say hello to my daughter if you see her.”

  “She’s here?”

  “You don’t think I’d put up with this on my own account, do you? Sure she’s here. This is a big fancy affair. I got to tell you, Mr.—” He struggled for the name.

  “Mack Chance.”

  “Well, Mr. Mack Chance, my daughter liked you right away out there at my ranch. She said you’re an ambitious jüngling— young fella. She liked the way you talked back to me.”

  “I wasn’t trying to talk back. I was thirsty. One drink wouldn’t have cost you anything.”

  “Now listen, we discussed that.” Hellman waved the cigar again. “The law is the law. You got to learn to respect it, and use it, if you want to make money. Hellman’s lesson number one.” He puffed. “Here, take this. It’s a dance favor. Crappy, if you ask me, but maybe you can use it.”

  He handed Mack an expensive wallet of black-dyed calfskin the elegance of which was spoiled by a garish pasted-on picture of an orange sun setting over rock formations. A lettered ribbon said THE Y
OSEMITE VALLEY.

  Mack thought it was beautiful.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Sure, I got a dozen better. By the way, Carla ain’t by herself in there. She came with that lawyer you met, Fairbanks. He just took that big job. Number-two man in the SP legal department.”

  Mack’s stomach churned in disappointment. “I can understand why he’d want to escort your daughter. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  “Like her mother,” Hellman said with a strange scowl. “That’s a big part of Carla’s problem, don’t you know. Beautiful women are always messed up. When they’re spoiled on top of it, you got real trouble. I take the blame for spoiling her. I gave her too much because she’s the only child I got. I love my daughter, but I also know all about her, Johnny—”

  “My name is Mack, not Johnny.”

  Hellman slapped his knee and guffawed. “By God you’re all right. Got sand—ain’t that what these westerners say? One more little tip before you go.” He slid closer on the stoop, getting dirt all over his satin-striped formal trousers. “Confidential. Be glad you ain’t got the money to hang around with Carla. It’s the going after, not the getting, that fires her up. Soon as she gets what she wants—a new hat, a new man—she don’t want it anymore; she wants somebody new. On top of that, when she drinks too much she acts wild. I wish somebody could straighten her out, but it’s impossible. God pity any man who tries. I’m telling you as a father—you don’t want to get mixed up with her.”

  Mack nodded. Hellman obviously didn’t know about the encounter in the fog, and he wasn’t going to inform him.

  “Excuse me,” he said again, stooping and heaving the crates up.

  “Sure, Johnny.” Hellman sat there squinting into the smoke with a vaguely forlorn expression.

  A committee had decorated Odd Fellows Hall with swags of satin and great sprays of flowers. Gaslight rather than electric light illuminated the dancers, who marched four abreast, then split in two and curled back along the opposite side of the floor to the thump of Ballenberg’s strident music. In a faultless tail suit, Ned Greenway led the figure, partnered with a homely old woman, who had to be the Mrs. Martin he’d mentioned to Mack. Greenway said Mrs. Martin was a society leader because some relative of hers had founded the local gas works. Together, Greenway and the old woman decided who was invited to these affairs, and who wasn’t.