California Gold

by John Jakes

  “Thank you, Brother Paul. I really must go back. Miss Ross is scheduled for half past eight.”

  “The check won’t be ready until nine.” Wyatt said it sharply; Fairbanks had overstepped. “If you want it, call Los Angeles and get someone else to spy on the woman.”

  “Certainly. Of course.”

  Brother Paul was pleased again. He draped his white sleeve over Fairbanks’s shoulder a little too intimately for the lawyer’s taste. “Good. We can at least have a drink in my rooms. Perhaps you’d like a rest and brushup first?”

  Fairbanks felt dizzy. What if he’d lost the donation and the board had found out? He felt like a man on a precipice these days. That was why he drove himself through the tank towns, repeated the same dreary speech at local chamber-of-commerce dinners, survived on three or four hours’ sleep a night and meals of hard rolls and acidic black coffee that destroyed the stomach. He had to win. You either made a perfect mark, or you didn’t. There was no middle ground. There had seldom been any in his life, and there was absolutely none this time.

  Brother Paul was staring again. Fairbanks fumbled out his reply.

  “I’m sorry—yes—kind of you. I’ll make the telephone call. Then I’ll rest. It has been a trying day.”

  To his astonishment, Fairbanks napped, for a long while. When he woke, fully dressed, on the large bed in the Victorian bedroom on the second floor, he checked his watch hastily. Five minutes past nine. His eye leaped to the windows. It was dark.

  In front of the mirror he smoothed his hair and straightened his cravat. He heard distant music, a woman singing in a slightly tinny voice, as though she sang inside some huge resounding sewer pipe.

  The tabernacle rooms were equipped with old gas mantles as well as newer electrics, and the gas had been lit and trimmed low. Fairbanks followed the music to double doors at the back of the house, directly above the sanctuary, and knocked. Wyatt’s cheerful voice bade him walk in.

  Fairbanks felt the hot guilty thrill again. His palms were perspiring. He slid the doors open and tried not to let his eyes bug.

  Wyatt’s quarters were spacious, but crowded with dark furniture. He was relaxing on a leather lounge, wearing only his white trousers. His hairless chest was hard, flat, sun-browned. Beside him sat Deacon Helen, a peculiar dreamy look in her eyes. She’d changed her dress for a white dressing gown, and Wyatt had his hand inserted under one lapel, idly teasing and pinching her great sagging breast.

  “Good evening, Fairbanks.” Wyatt had to speak loudly to be heard. On a stand, an enormous Victrola poured music out of its fluted horn. The needle scratched on the Red Seal disc and the singer reached for the sweet aching high notes of “Un bel dí.” Fairbanks counted four dark-green wine bottles on a white rug, two of them empty. “Do come in and have a drink,” Wyatt went on. “Is it nine o’clock already?”

  “Just past.” Fairbanks stepped onto the white rug and started. His foot had come down on the stuffed head of a polar bear, its huge ranged jaws open and glass eyes shining.

  Wyatt laughed over his discomfort. “You’re still tense. I don’t think you relaxed properly. Some of this wine will help.”

  Fairbanks noted other details: the butts of fat green cigars in a cut-glass tray, the remains of a meal on a taboret, gnawed beefsteak bones strewn on a platter of bloody juice. He was cynically amused; before napping, he’d skimmed a copy of A California Sunshine Diet in the guest room.

  A curtain parted in the shadows and another young woman walked into the room rubbing her eyes. She was short, with blond ringlets, and was even more stupendously endowed than Deacon Helen. Her robe was carelessly open, exposing her hobbling breasts and pubic mound. Fairbanks almost strangled getting his breath.

  Amused, Wyatt used a waiter’s corkscrew to open a new bottle of wine, then filled a clean silver cup. “This is very special.”

  Fairbanks drank, expecting some ordinary vintage. Sweet fumes floated up his nose. The red wine was heavy, with a curious undertaste. “Remarkable. What is it?” Perhaps it was his imagination, but he felt the soothing effects at once.

  “Vin Mariani. It contains a specially prepared extract of cocoa leaves. A young Corsican developed it and ships it all around the world. He has endorsements from H. G. Wells, Rodin, the czar, the Prince of Wales—the pope even awarded him a gold medal for it.” Wyatt splashed wine into cups for the two deacons, and the new girl seized hers in both hands and drank noisily.

  It wasn’t an ordinary wine, then. It contained a drug. Fairbanks perched on the edge of a plush chair, rolling the silver cup between his palms. He wanted to run to the new girl, so voluptuous and vacant, and throw her down and rut on her. The moment he imagined it, guilt stabbed him. Not because he was married—fidelity to Carla hardly mattered anymore—but simply because a part of him wanted to succumb so badly. Only proles and degenerates behaved that way. His bowels began to grumble and pain him.

  “Brother Paul, I really don’t want to be an ungracious guest—”

  “But you must go. Until you came in I didn’t realize it was past the appointed hour. Time tends to lose meaning when one is surrounded by charming diversions.” He parted Deacon Helen’s robe below her waist. Fairbanks saw her tanned strong legs. He saw everything.

  “Look at their bodies, Mr. Fairbanks. Golden bodies. California bodies. Strengthened and made vital by the mystic healing sunshine.”

  A cold little knot wound up inside Fairbanks’s head, and he was suddenly fearful of this dim room, the sweet rich wine, these strange, dreamy-eyed people. The evil part of him wanted to sink into this world and drown in it, forget all the responsibility crushing down. But a larger, dominant part knew that it was imperative he leave. The pupils of Brother Paul’s eyes were huge as a cat’s at night. Fairbanks could deal with ordinary people, but this man wasn’t ordinary; this man was not right in the head.

  Steering the conversation clumsily, he said, “I do appreciate your willingness to donate to our campaign—”

  “It’s the right side,” Wyatt exclaimed. “The side of free commerce, which is the genius of California. Those Progressives would have us saddled by all sorts of restrictive laws to make us our brother’s keeper. Well…” He drank from his silver cup and the Vin Mariani ran down his chin. “I am my own keeper. And sometimes my sister’s.”

  He reached up between Deacon Helen’s spread legs and fondled. She giggled and held out her cup. The other girl, unwanted, lifted the needle scratching at the end of the record, then disappeared.

  Fairbanks stood up, his pulse loud and fast in his inner ear. The wine had set him afloat. “Brother Paul—”

  “Oh, all right. But you’re a spoilsport.” Wyatt opened the door of a small drum table next to the lounge and rummaged inside. A news clipping fell out, then a bank check. He picked up both, handing Fairbanks the check.

  Damn him, he probably had it ready this afternoon. Had to show his power by making me wait.

  “Thirty thousand dollars from my personal funds,” Wyatt said. “But it’s anonymous. You understand that?”

  “Perfectly.” Fairbanks folded and pocketed the check as if it might melt. “It will be of enormous help.”

  “Better be.” Wyatt sounded drunk. He waved the clipping. “I don’t want any of this bastard’s candidates to win so much as one damn vote.”

  Fairbanks took up the invitation to examine the clipping. At the head of the column, Mack and Hiram Johnson peered out of a photograph. It was an unflattering, grainy picture of both. J. M. CHANCE STUMPS VALLEY WITH PROGRESSIVE CANDIDATE.

  Fairbanks’s palm grew moist again. “You know Macklin Chance?”

  “Too well. Twenty years ago he defrauded me of oil rights to land we owned jointly. And he stole something else that was mine. A woman.” Wyatt wiped a shiny dab of drool in the corner of his mouth.

  Fairbanks’s neck itched, and the constrictions in his middle worsened the moment the awful suspicion occurred to him. “Would I know this woman?”

  W
yatt was staring at him, but now looked away with a shrug. “Oh, I don’t think so.” A little smile played on his mouth a moment. “She’s prominent, but—no, I don’t think so. Her name isn’t important. What’s important is how I felt about her. I wanted to fuck her for the rest of my life. He took her, and that’s why I’d like to put Mr. Macklin Chance into permanent retirement. Unfortunately there are laws against murder, so I’m reduced to fighting him with money.”

  Fairbanks switched to his careful courtroom mode. “Chance has a great many enemies in California, I find.”

  Wyatt rubbed Deacon Helen’s exposed thigh. “But none like me, Mr. Fairbanks. Absolutely none like me.”

  Fairbanks could fairly feel the poison. Remarkable to find someone who hated Mack even more than he did. Hated him to the point of wanting to kill him.

  “Brother Paul, thank you again for your hospitality.”

  Wyatt shrugged. “Didn’t avail yourself of much. Shame to be so tight all the time, so scheduled—”

  “We must win this election.”

  “That we must. Can you see yourself out?”

  “Certainly.”

  After Fairbanks rolled the doors shut, he started at the unexpected sight of a man half visible at the head of the stairs, a bearded man with papers in his hand.

  The man looked stunned and angry, but Fairbanks supposed it had nothing to do with him. Then he realized that the man might have glimpsed Brother Paul without his shirt and Deacon Helen beside him, glimpsed them just as he came up, when Fairbanks opened the doors to leave.

  The man shot him a suspicious look, turned, and hurried down the stairs. When Fairbanks reached the first floor, the central foyer was empty.

  Outside, he woke the chauffeur, who was snoring in the front seat. Faintly, through muffling layers of glass and velvet, the soprano sang “On bel dí.” The aria was masked suddenly by another woman’s shrieking laugh. Walter Fairbanks dove into the backseat.

  “Get away from here, Sanchez—fast.”

  77

  THE MUTOGRAPH CAMERA WHIRRED and clacked. A slim rider on a palomino galloped along the Niles Canyon road, skirt hiked above the stirrups, auburn hair streaming. Suddenly the long hair lifted and sailed into the roadside weeds.

  “Cut it, cut,” Van Zant Morgan screamed, throwing his tropical helmet on the ground. “Makeup, damn it, can’t you secure that wig?”

  The chagrined young man in the dress reined the palomino. Anderson, who was to ride into the shot at the last moment, trotted his white horse forward and commiserated with the stunt player. Anderson didn’t seem too disturbed, but the director acted like a child robbed of his candy.

  In the shade, Mack sat on a wooden box next to Margaret, whose chair had white letters on the canvas back that said Margaret Leslie. Her dress, a plain cotton befitting a frontier woman, matched that of the rider who was pulling burrs from the auburn wig.

  “How is the campaign going, Mack?”

  “We look stronger south of the Tehachapi than we do in the north. I expect it’s because the Progressives are basically Republican and Protestant, and those are the kind of people who predominate down south. San Francisco is more cosmopolitan. We’re drawing good demonstrative crowds in the Valley. I predict a big win.”

  “You’ve been out with Hiram Johnson, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, and I’ll start again tomorrow. I came down on a boat from Sacramento to take care of some business with Haverstick. I had a free afternoon so I decided to look in on my investment and my favorite actress. How is she?”

  “She’s in bed in her bungalow by eight every night. This is hard work.”

  Mack tapped the white lettering on her chair. “This is new.”

  “Billy’s idea. He picked the name.”

  “I like it.”

  “So do I. Miss Leslie will be billed in the titles when the new Broncho Billy is released next week. Billy keeps assuring me Miss Leslie will have a long career.”

  “I think so.”

  He said it quietly, reflectively. A sadness gripped him. Perhaps it was the season—late October—or the nearness to sunset. Van Zant Morgan took note as well, clapping. “Hurry up, hurry up—we’ll be chasing our tails in the dark before long.”

  Mack was staring fixedly at the homburg held between his knees, and Margaret made up her mind to speak.

  “I finished Nellie Ross’s novel last night. It’s wonderful.”

  “The railroad doesn’t think so.” The mention of Nellie perked him up noticeably.

  “Where is she, still campaigning?”

  “She’s largely finished, I think. She’s back in Carmel.”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “I’ve thought of it. Quite a lot. Haven’t done anything about it.”

  “But you should.” She laid her hand on his. “Let me confide in you, Mr. Chance. I knew the very moment I fell in love with you—” His head snapped up. “—I knew I might as well fall right out, because there was no other woman in your world, only Nellie.”

  “That’s quite an admission.”

  “Not really surprising, is it? You’ve known how I felt for years.”

  “Yes.” He seemed embarrassed. “But if what you say is true, I’ve certainly done my best to keep Nellie out of my world for a long time.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Oh—many reasons. Different ideas, for one. We’re never able to agree on major things. And she accused me more than once of overweening ambition. I could say the same about her.”

  “That sounds like male pride speaking.”

  “Now wait—”

  “Please let me finish. Pride is deadly, Mack. It injures all of us. We shouldn’t allow it. Time is too precious. Look at this lovely day—it’s almost over, and so is another year. Autumn weather reminds me that I’m not as young as I once was. Neither are you, my dear. Don’t waste the rest of your life because of pride.”

  “Margaret, I have a lot of bull-headed notions, I admit it. I’ve been wrong plenty of times, especially in the way I’ve expressed certain things to Nellie. About her work—I do respect and admire it, but I’m not sure a woman should spend her entire life at a writing table.”

  “In preference to what? Childbearing? I don’t understand. You don’t find a career acceptable for her, but you encouraged me in this one. Why two standards? Because you decided Nellie should marry you?”

  Mack turned scarlet, then slid past the accusation. “I encouraged you on an impulse. I have money in Essanay—Anderson needed an actress on short notice.”

  “And that’s how lives change forever? As a result of an impulse? How disillusioning.” A mocking sigh. Then: “Don’t take that seriously. I’m not unhappy.”

  “I hope not. Everything’s going splendidly for you.”

  “Yes. Billy has almost convinced me it’s safe to sell the Maison. But we’re discussing J. M. Chance.” She clasped his hand. “Forget the arguments with Nellie, your differences. Soften your stand. Lower the righteous male fist you shake at everything not quite in tune with your views. Go to her.”

  “She’d probably turn me down again.”

  “She might not.”

  His expression was skeptical, but he wanted to believe it.

  “Mack, you’ve changed a lot in the time I’ve known you. You’re willing to examine your ideas about most anything else. To try the new—jettison the old—can’t you do it with her? And has it never occurred to you that Nellie may have changed too? You should find out. Take the first step. If you’re too proud to do that much, and you lose her permanently—”

  “Ready, please, Miss Leslie,” Morgan’s assistant shouted through a megaphone.

  Mack stared at the woman who’d admitted her love as calmly, as casually, as someone might express a taste for black coffee. She had never said it straight out before, not even during their night at the Redondo Lodge. Her admission sharpened a new guilt in him. Margaret was special, and she needed someone equally so, a man who’d
devote his life to her. He couldn’t be that man. She knew it, and in her generosity she was sending him where she knew he wanted to go.

  Golden light slanted past the hills, thin and pale as the day waned. Anderson walked toward them, leading his white horse. His bulky shadow fell across Margaret’s skirt. He’d seen the earnest conversation and spoke now in an apologetic way.

  “We’re ready.”

  Margaret stood and touched Mack’s cheek. “Perhaps you did drive her away long ago. But that’s past. Remedy it, Mack. Change. If you can’t change for the person you love, then you’re a bigger fool than you were in the first place. I’d change for you if you so much as lifted an eyebrow. I’d wear rags for you. I’d climb Mount Shasta in a blizzard. I’d do anything. That’s what love’s about.”

  She kissed him almost chastely on the mouth, then gathered up her skirts in both hands and ran to her puzzled employer.

  They crossed the San Joaquin, and soon the red Locomobile chugged into Manteca. If Mack remembered correctly, the SP had established this depot and named it after a creamery in the neighborhood.

  At the edge of town they passed a billboard, an enormous photo enlargement of “The Shame of California,” captioned VOTE PROGRESSIVE. The Johnson campaign had spread this board all over the state.

  Open to the heat and dust, the Locomobile left its passengers sweaty and dirty after a short time on the road. Neither Mack nor Hiram Johnson nor the driver minded, because there was a sense of great forward momentum in the campaign, a presentiment of victory, and it energized them.

  In Manteca’s dusty downtown, they parked and followed the established routine. Mack and the driver walked along different streets, ringing cowbells.

  “Come hear Hiram Johnson, the Teddy Roosevelt of the West—your next governor. Hear the Progressive candidate in ten minutes. Look for the big red Locomobile parked in front of the hardware store.”