1906: A Novel

by Dalessandro, James

  "Then tell me about you. How long have you been helping him?"

  I had to smile at his persistence. "Very clever, Hunter. I'll tell you my story, and that's it. A year and a half ago, I was at a supper at the Palace's Garden Room when I overheard the drunken wife of a PG&E executive complain about the bribe her husband had to pay to get a gas rate increase passed by the supervisors. Then the owners of several French restaurants chimed in about Rolf extorting more and more money for liquor licenses.

  I was about to pass the information to my editor, Mr. Older, when I spotted your father at Lone Mountain Cemetery, where my aunt is buried. I found out from the attendant that Byron visits your mother's site every other Sunday. I waited for him one morning and offered to collect information on Rolf and his cronies. Your father refused. He said it was too dangerous. I came back several times with new information until finally he relented. Now, how did you figure all that out so quickly back there?"

  "There were other clues. When you arrived, the pleats on the back of your dress, behind your thighs and hips, were squashed down, only a hard wooden bench would do that. Not just pressed, but mashed: it's warm out, your body heat, a little perspiration."

  "Your intellect is only rivaled by your tact."

  He smiled. "But the pleats on the back of your torso were perfectly fresh, intact, which meant you were leaning forward during the ride. You rode the cable car down a steep hill, leaning forward. The California Street line, down Nob Hill, was my guess. The rest was pretty elementary. It didn't take Scotland Yard to figure that ledger was Adam Rolf's."

  "Elementary. That's right, you wrote about Sherlock Holmes in one of your letters." No sooner had the words left my tongue than I regretted it.

  "That would mean that dad has been sharing my letters with you for a year, at least," Hunter countered. "The only time I made a Holmes reference was last year. A day or so after I helped the San Mateo County Coroner solve the murder of a minister's wife. That would have been early March, probably the ninth or tenth that I wrote that letter."

  I was impressed by his skills of memory and deduction. I'm sure it showed.

  His boyish smile was self-satisfied, without being bold or arrogant. It appeared that it was the challenge, not any sense of conquest or superiority, which invigorated him. As a man accustomed to charming others by force of intellect, he was succeeding nicely.

  "He was lonely, your father," I explained. "He was proud of you and he had no one to whom he could sing your praises. Sharing your letters with me was not meant as an intrusion. It was the only thing he ever did that approached showing off. That's how proud he was of you. Now, you tell me something, do you ever find it a damper on conversation when you do the thinking for both parties?"

  He smiled, teasingly. "I'm sorry I did not recognize you."

  "I'm pleased you didn't. I'd hate to think that timid, bony thing was still me."

  We rode in silence for the next few minutes, as though it were indeed an outing. We transferred from the Stockton Street cable car to the California Street line for the climb up Nob Hill.

  After we settled in, he asked about my family. I explained that my parents had returned to Italy when I was sixteen, where they died in the great influenza epidemic of 1898. He offered his sympathies and then asked how I wound up on the "diamonds and divas" beat at the Bulletin.

  "I wanted to be a muckraker, like Lincoln Steffens and Nellie Bly. Jack London. The only paper that would hire a woman with no professional experience was the Bulletin. My editor, Mr. Older, is adamant that sort of thing is not for women. That's one of the reasons I turned to your father. Ironic, isn't it? Mr. Older is leading the public crusade against Rolf and Schmitz, and I'm sitting there right under his nose, collecting information he's never dreamt of, and turning it over to one of his corruption hunters." Hunter watched me intently, with a gaze both pleasant and piercing, suggesting something more than friendly or flirtatious interest. It appeared he was reading me, probing for some meaning beneath my words. I was intrigued but said nothing. The exchange had helped calm my uneasiness over the day's activities.

  The bell of St. Mary's, several blocks away in Chinatown, pealed twice as we neared Nob Hill. I pressed a key into Hunter's calloused hand.

  "Room 434, go up the back stairwell of the hotel, your father has been using it for surveillance. I'll be in the first floor office, the section that juts out closest to you. I'll be wearing a white scarf if things are well. If I remove it, things are not."

  Hunter was about to ask another question, thought better of it, and hopped off the moving cable car as we approached the Fairmont. I watched him dash toward the rear entrance, threading a path through the frantic workmen before he disappeared into the iron stairwell.

  I got off the cable car in front of Adam Rolf's mansion, the anxiousness returning as I walked purposefully up the front steps, donning the white scarf.

  The moment the door opened, Pierre plunged into panic.

  "Oh, God, hurry! He just called on the telephone, he's on his way home!"

  I bolted down the long hallway and into the office, where I grasped the thick nickel dial on the safe, hand and mind trembling so that twice I dialed past the first number. I wiped my damp fingers on my dress and forced myself to turn the dial as slowly as I could until the numbers began to align. After two more failed attempts, I managed to execute three of the numbers properly before dialing past the fourth and final one. I looked up at the clock: two-fourteen.

  Hidden in the shadows of the fourth-floor Fairmont room across the street, Hunter checked his pocket watch, briefly examining his mother's sepia photograph inside the silver casing. He offered a hasty apology for joining the department against her wishes, and then went back to watching the windows of Rolf’s mansion.

  I finally managed to align the numbers, breathing a sigh of relief as the safe sprung open. I fumbled the red ledger from my bag and placed the book next to the blank card I had used to mark its position on the upper shelf. I closed the enormous steel door so quickly it trapped the air inside and I was forced to ease it back. I turned the enormous handle and spun the dial to forty-two, the number it was on when I first saw it.

  I had barely taken two steps when Adam Rolf strode into the room, reading his mail. I stopped in my tracks as he looked up.

  "Annalisa! To what do I owe this surprise?"

  Pierre slipped into the room behind Rolf, holding his hand to his mouth.

  I forced a smile and reached inside my purse, Rolf's eyes flaring as my hand re-appeared, wrapped about a dark object. I stepped forward and pressed the small, hand-carved mahogany box into his hand.

  While he opened it, I inched toward the window facing the Fairmont. In the velvet interior of the mahogany box, Rolf found a silver watch chain, anchored by a cursive sterling "AR." He opened a small, handwritten card tucked against the lining as I managed a nervous smile. He smiled back and stroked his salt and pepper goatee.

  "Please accept this as a modest acknowledgment of all the things you have done for me. And for all of San Francisco," he read aloud. "Fondly, Annalisa." When he lowered the note, he was beaming.

  "It is such a tiny gesture, I was too embarrassed to hand it to you directly. I pleaded with Pierre to allow me to leave it on your desk."

  Rolf pivoted and cast a quick look at Pierre, who managed to conceal a felonious heart with a smile of simple trespass.

  "Pierre. I think we have some chilled champagne in the cold box." He practically sprinted from the room.

  "With my initials in silver yet! I'm flattered," Rolf beamed.

  I started breathing again.

  He removed his watch from his fob pocket and started disconnecting the chain. "My father gave me this old chain when I went to school at Berkeley. Made from a nugget he found in the American River. The only nugget he found, I might add. You noticed how fragile it has become. How thoughtful and observant of you, Annalisa." At his most charming, Rolf exuded a paralyzing warmth, thick and cloying as i
t enveloped friend and foe.

  He held the watch and chain aloft, nearly misty-eyed, possibly the only gift anyone had ever given him that was not the product of extortion.

  I toyed with the white scarf, turning my profile to the window and smiling broadly in hopes of assuaging Hunter's concerns. I looked up and caught a quick glimpse of him. It offered further comfort.

  I turned. "I'm glad you like it, Mr. Rolf. I wasn't sure what to give a man who has obtained all he wanted in life."

  I hoped my next present would be a noose to match his collar size.

  Chapter 8

  UNION SQUARE

  APRIL 15, 1906. 6:15 P.M.

  Several hours after my precarious encounter with Adam Rolf, Christian Fallon held court among the sweaty denizens of McGinty's, a tubercular tavern out on Union Street, a block from Washerwoman's Lake.

  "Kelly's main crew, Scarface and the Whale, they had bartenders serving Mickey Finns at half the slop holes and blind pigs on the Barbary Coast. Them they didn't drug they set on with these oak dowels, three feet long, smooth as a baby's ass. By the end of the night they were all brown and sticky from the blood. Shanghaied nineteen of the poor bastards, took two big dump wagons just to collect them all."

  Christian paused to down a shot of Bushnell's. Most of his wobbly companions had heard the story a dozen times, yet no one seemed to care.

  "But they promised these Portugee whalers they'd have 'em twenty men. One of the crimps notices a guy floatin' facedown near Mission Wharf. We find ten, twenty a year like that on the Coast. Scarface and the Whale, they ain't about to pass on another ninety dollars. So they fish 'im out and now they got twenty."

  A guffaw made the rounds as Phil the Bartender refilled Christian's shot glass. Even his wife called him Phil the Bartender, a sodden lump who last bathed on his wedding day.

  Christian tipped it up and the Bushnell's went down warm and soothing as the salty breeze blowing from the marshy bay nearby. "Next day, the Portugee captain has a problem wakin' his new deck hand. Now Scarface, he's smarter than the Whale, but so is a stump. Scarface knows the captain will dump the stiff before they haul anchor. So they fish him out and mix him in with another lot. 'Throw some cold water on him, he'll be fine in the morning,' they tell the next dumb bastard captain. They sell a bloody corpse three times before the smell gives them away." His words brought a low roar from the bleary-eyed crowd, a melody of forced laughs and hacking howls.

  Christian looked up at the grandfather clock behind the cluttered bar: six twenty-five. Time for two more shots of Bushnell's before the rendezvous with his father.

  Meanwhile, in the wine cellar of the Fallon house atop Telegraph Hill, Hunter fished the last of sixty photographs from the pungent stop-bath and hung it on a clothesline. The smell made his eyes run and his head swampy.

  Byron entered the dank cellar and stopped at the sight of the perfect images. His face bore a mixture of foreboding and pride.

  "Do you realize what you have here, dad? This is the Holy Grail."

  "Son, I know you're smart, but sometimes you make people feel like they were bred from a turnip seed. How long have I been working on this?"

  "I know, dad, but just look at these," Hunter continued unabated, snatching down several photographs, flapping them to speed the drying process. "A million dollars from the Bay Cities Water Company. Twice

  Congress turned down that abomination to dam up the Hetch Hetchy Valley and ship the water to San Francisco. When I was working on the water survey, the Bay Cities Company was drafting an alternative plan, to use the American River instead and get the city to foot the bill. Ten million dollars, the bastards are asking. They're going to pay Rolf a million dollar bribe to get his toadies on the board to vote for it."

  Byron stepped forward and began to examine the photographs.

  "Here's another beauty. Home Telephone. Home Telephone has a system where you dial some numbers—like the combination on a safe—and the call goes directly to the party without an operator. I took one of them apart last semester; it's ingenious the time and money it would save. They want a franchise to compete with Pacific State Telephone, so Rolf collected bribes from both of them."

  Byron shuffled slowly through one photo, then another, a pained resignation in deep set eyes, a look not lost on his son.

  "See this payment from the United Railway, dad? Those are the guys who want to tear out the cable cars and replace them with overhead trolley lines so the city looks like one big web. Look at this photo here." He took a photo from his father's hand and handed him another. "Rolf collected $200,000 from W. H., that's William Herrin, chief lobbyist of the Union Pacific Railroad, the parent company of United Railway. Now, look at this one here," he said, replacing it with still another.

  "Two days later, Rolf doles out the two hundred grand. He keeps fifty for himself, gives Eugene Schmitz fifty, and gives the other hundred grand to J. G., James Gallagher, President of the Board of Supervisors. Gallagher splits the money among seventeen supervisors. There's a check mark beside each name, dated the day before the vote. Only problem is, there are eighteen supervisors."

  Hunter pulled down several more photographs, hastily paging through. "One supervisor, Louis Rea: no check marks anywhere in the ledger. Rea refuses the bribes every time! He's the key, the only honest one on the board. Rolf's ledger exonerates him. If you can get to Rea, he will give up Gallagher, and Gallagher will save his behind by testifying against Schmitz and Rolf. Then they give you Calhoun and Herrin and when the dust clears, there's E. H. Harriman, most powerful railroad man in America, butt naked in the middle of it."

  Byron's head was reeling. Hunter was almost breathless.

  "Dad, this is more than Rolf and Schmitz, this is the whole corrupt system. The railroad, the utility companies, every politician-buying, boss-making, worker-exploiting corporate trust in America is connected to this book in one way or another. Mr. Feeney will have to build a wing onto San Quentin."

  "Who told you about Feeney?"

  "Last year, he put away a senator from Oregon for massive land fraud. Then he tours the country giving lectures on how Big Business is killing democracy. He didn't move to San Francisco because he likes the salt water soak at Sutro Baths."

  "Then go to law school, son, become a prosecutor or a judge. Stop this cop nonsense."

  "Maybe later. Nothing changes unless somebody's willing to do the dirty work. It's my turn now."

  The look on Byron's face said it all. He knew his son was right, much as it pained him. Evil was now the province of men in ascots and automobiles. It would take someone like Hunter, as smart as they were, to defeat them.

  It was a new war, unlike any seen before. The standard was passed, from father to son, old warrior to young, in the dusty wine cellar of the Fallon house that Easter Sunday.

  "Let's put this stuff in my leather valise, Hunter. All the prints, the film, everything. We have to get to Meigg's Wharf. Looks like a blow is coming."

  They exited the house atop Telegraph Hill as the fog began rolling through the Golden Gate, the sinking sun illuminating the billowing puffs in palettes of rose and violet. The cable car was nowhere to be seen; the cable had jumped its guides, as it did often on the steep line.

  "Damn it. All right, Hunter, get that motorized thing of yours."

  Hunter bolted into the garage and reappeared pushing the Waltham. He primed the coil and kicked the pedal and the engine roared to life. Byron climbed onto the long, flat leather seat behind Hunter and stared anxiously at the whitecaps rising on the surface of the bay.

  They roared off with Byron clutching his portfolio and holding onto Hunter, the cobblestones chattering beneath them. Hunter took the curve at the top of Filbert so quickly he almost spilled his father.

  At McGinty's Tavern on Union Street, Christian looked again at the grandfather clock. Six-forty. Then he noticed the plumber next to him checking his pocket watch. He grabbed the man's wrist: a bolt shot through Christian as the minute h
and came into focus. Six fifty-three.

  "Goddamn it," he shouted, draining his glass.

  He hit the wooden sidewalk at full stride, cut left through the dirt lot behind D'Egidio Die-Makers and down Laguna, weaving amongst the cars and carriages. It was twenty blocks to the waterfront, all of it flat or downhill.

  Hunter and Byron rumbled over the rough timbers of Meigg's Wharf, the rusty iron fastenings jangling as the wind whistled between the boarded-up souvenir shops and food stands.

  The sun touched the edge of the Pacific and a sheet of crimson spread across the dark blue surface. A steam launch waited at the end tie, its shifting white plume aglow with sunset.

  Hunter killed the engine, rolling to a stop next to the launch.

  "Where's Christian?" Byron bellowed to his nephew Anthony.

  "I dunno, Uncle Byron. Lieutenant, sir. I been here about twenty minutes and I ain't seen no hide of him yet."

  "He's in a Goddamn bar somewhere. I swear, I'll suspend him a month without pay. After I wring his miserable neck." Byron gazed at the churning, mile-wide mouth of the Golden Gate. On the other side of the bay, a fresh breeze fanned the spindly grass of the Marin Headlands.

  In the fading light, both Byron and Hunter spotted the riptide, the massive collision of flood and ebb tides. The rip's telltale ribbon stretched through the Golden Gate, into the bay and past Alcatraz, winding south toward San Jose.

  "Dad, let me go with you. You can't go, just you and Anthony."

  "No. The fog's coming in, the shanghaiers will be out in force. You go to Fort Gunnybags, tell Max and Francis and the rest of The Brotherhood to get out after Kelly's men for what they did to Elliot and Jessie. Then go home and wait for me. You can help me serve the warrants on Rolf and Schmitz tomorrow."

  Byron pulled his Colt and handed it to Hunter, taking back his derringer. "Be careful when you head to Fort Gunnybags, that's the Barbary Coast, you ain't used to that."