1906: A Novel

by Dalessandro, James

  Four whiskey-emboldened college boys in Berkeley sweaters stumbled by, jabbering about Dr. Jordan's Museum of Horrors several blocks away, where they had paid four bits apiece to examine an embalmed five-legged cow, a two-headed rattlesnake, and the floating head of the Gold Rush bandit Joaquin Murietta. They staggered down Jackson Street, bound for the deadfalls and brothels.

  "Enjoy it, lads," Christian called out, "for tomorrow you'll be suckin' hind wind to Shanghai."

  "We keep in touch by call box," Francis said. "You spot the Whale or Scarface, call for back-up. No bloody heroes, understood?"

  "Yes, sir," Christian replied with a mocking salute.

  "I'm just glad the tenderfoot is covering your ass and not mine," Max growled.

  "Let's have a minute here," Patrick said. He bowed his head and held his hand out. All but Hunter followed suit. "Christian told us you were one of those bloody Socialists," Patrick said. "If you are, you do it on your own time. This is His work we're doing here."

  Hunter reluctantly put his hand atop the pile.

  "Protect us, Father," Patrick intoned. "Guide us with faith and righteousness. Give us the courage and steadfastness to wipe this evil from our hearts and our home."

  "A-a-a-men," added Carlo.

  All but Hunter echoed "amen."

  "What's the matter, Hunter, the Lord abandon you? Or you abandon him?" Patrick asked.

  "I'm a Freethinker. You believe what you want, Patrick."

  "Let's go," Christian ordered. "They'll have nabbed half their lot by the time we get moving."

  Max gave Christian a final angry stare and headed downhill toward Clay Street, his brother Carlo close behind. Francis and Patrick headed uphill toward Broadway.

  Christian looked at his younger brother. "What do you have for weapons? Some little bean shooter?"

  "Dad's Colt revolver. He gave it to me at the docks, before he took off. Just him and Anthony."

  Christian ignored the dig and produced a two-foot length of iron pipe from inside his coat. He lifted Hunter's left wrist, slid the pipe inside his sleeve along the underside of his forearm, and tied his cuff with a piece of dark cord.

  "Pay attention, Hunter. Kelly's men like to slash at you with those long hara-kiri knives. Cut a cop, you drink for a week free anywhere on the Barbary Coast. He loses an eye or a limb, you drink a month. Kill him and you can stay drunk 'til Kingdom come. Block with your left arm, the pipe will save you from needin' a hook for a hand. Pull the slipknot and the pipe drops in your hand for a weapon."

  "You should have been there, Christian, you should never have let dad go off alone."

  Despite the odor of Irish whiskey, Christian's gaze was unflinching.

  "Dad's been wearing a star his whole life. He don't need me. He don't need you. He don't need anybody. Keep your ass below your elbows and do like I tell you. And don't make me daft by asking all those damn questions like you used to."

  Hunter followed Christian toward shadowy Pacific Street, craning his neck skyward as fog threatened to blanket the entire city. It did nothing to ease his worry over his father.

  They entered Pacific Street at the tip of Murderers' Triangle, a pie-shaped six-block section bordered by Broadway, Kearny, and Montgomery, packed with rancid bars and stall-like cribs where women of indeterminate age and origin did anything for any price, depending on their state of inebriation. It was the battles of the brothers' granduncle Arthur and grandfather Malachi with the Sydney Ducks that helped give Murderers' Triangle its name.

  The first thing that hit Hunter was the noise of blaring trumpets, flatulent tubas, tinkling pianos, and screeching non-sopranos that spilled from every door of the crowded saloons and dance halls. His gait slowed when the smell hit, a nose-curdling meld of stale booze, dried sweat, perfumed sex, cheap tobacco, and manure, garnished by a pungent lilt of burning opium. Still, the teeming streets offered up a darkly festive atmosphere.

  Hunter and Christian picked through hop heads, weary prostitutes, tottering sailors, slumming college boys, razor-eyed gamblers and leering thugs. The brothers squeezed past the Bear Cafè where a chained black bear bummed opium-spiked drinks from the surging crowd. Three Cockney sailing men swayed beneath the Café's dull red light, negotiating with an ill-favored crib girl who applied her make-up with a ladle.

  Christian took a long pull from a pocket flask, then tapped Hunter under the jaw until his mouth closed.

  "What's the big attraction down here?" Hunter asked. "Getting drugged and shanghaied? I've been in outhouses that smelled better than this place."

  "Cheap whiskey, three thousand whores, anything you want for a price. Got a crib on the next block, four-hundred fifty stalls, smaller than jail cells. The crib girls and the hostesses at the Melodeons are the worst. Give you a dose make your willy wilt. The French restaurants on Jackson Street, that's where they keep most of the fine tail. You still cherry, or one of those college girls do the job for free?"

  Hunter was distracted by raucous laughter pouring from the Bella Union, its doors wide open to ease the heat. He walked close and peered inside.

  On a battered, garishly lit stage, Big Bertha and Oofty Goofty performed a distinctly San Franciscan form of Shakespeare. "What light through filthy window barely shines?" bellowed three-hundred-pound Bertha. Too fat to climb the parapet, she played Romeo in leather breeches that cost several cows their lives.

  "That's no light, you blubbery slut! That's my stinkin' arse!" cried the troll-like Oofty Goofty from the parapet, where he stood clad in the gown and wig of Juliet.

  A stagehand jumped from the wings and struck Oofty Goofty with a pool cue, sending him over the rail. He crashed to the floor to a roar of hoots and laughter.

  "Oofty Goofty," Christian offered. "The painless man. For a quarter you can kick him. Four bits, you can hit him with a stick. Supposed to be good luck. Ain't a businessman in town doesn't have a whack at him before he makes a deal."

  Hunter spotted two shadowy figures leading a disoriented man from the alley entrance of the Bella Union. The taller of the two men struck the tottering victim with a club; his partner caught the limp body in one swift movement and tossed him into a nearby wagon.

  "Let's move on them, Christian."

  "No. We're after Scarface and the Whale."

  "They're going to shanghai that guy."

  "The minute we pinch somebody, the word will spread like wildfire. It's Easter Sunday, ain't nobody expecting us to be out."

  "What the hell is going to happen to him?"

  "He's going to wind up starved, beaten, buggered, and worked to death. Probably never see San Francisco again. Remember that when it comes time to stomp the bastards."

  The crimps led the wagon away, struggling with their unruly horses. At the end of Pacific Avenue, several blocks ahead, the waterfront was disappearing beneath scarves of fog that grew thicker by the minute, shrouding the bay as dirge-like horns sounded their ominous warnings. Hunter thought of his father, and a shiver of fear went through him.

  Chapter 11

  BUSH STREET

  APRIL 15, 1906. 8:10 P.M.

  While The Brotherhood trolled the Barbary Coast in search of Shanghai Kelly's men, I assisted Adam Rolf in holding court at the California Theater. I did so with all the enthusiasm one feels waltzing with a rattlesnake.

  "Mrs. Flood. Mrs. Herrin. Mrs. Gallagher," I called as the cream of San Francisco's Social Register sashayed by, decked out in a blinding display of baubles. In most cities, madams and courtesans aspire to the dress and decorum of women of means. San Francisco's storied elite owed all things cultural, fashionable, and even culinary to the influence of whores, mostly French.

  During our Gold Rush, Napoleon's petulant nephew, Louis, spared himself a trip to the guillotine by distracting his subjects with a national lottery. The prize was fourteen million francs in freshly-plucked California bullion; the profits, Louis claimed, would send five thousand of France's poor to our gilded shores. The French went mad for the ide
a, gobbling up every ticket.

  Surprisingly, Louis lined his pockets, ignoring the poor and choosing instead to unclog Paris' crowded boulevards by sending hundreds of the soiled doves to our marshy shores. The brave femmes de joie, more cultured than their Ohio and Missouri cousins, disembarked nineteen thousand miles later to a filthy enclave lined with lonely men whose pockets were bulging with gold.

  Overnight, lonely miners traded mule shanks and creme de bark for a taste of French cuisine. Wooden sidewalks appeared to protect hemlines, public baths sprang up, and former swine farmers suddenly developed an appreciation for Moliere. Enterprising unions between the women and suddenly rich merchants and miners created theater and opera guilds, a lavish stream of entertainment, a flourishing fashion industry, a bon vivant spirit that nurtured a uniquely sophisticated bacchanalia. They begat mansions, public gardens, opera houses, grand boulevards, and gaslight cafés, with a boisterous joie de vivre unmatched in the East.

  It was their lascivious heirs, the whores and madams of our day, who fired the first salvo in the next great social revolution.

  Margaritte Jensen—seated in the box adjacent to Rolf’s, and dressed in a pale silver gown and enough black pearls to cover a barrel—had been complaining for weeks about Boss Rolf's mounting extortion of her Jackson Street French restaurant, nicknamed "The Municipal Crib" for the number of city officials who dallied there. Margaritte and the owner of Marchand's, Pierre, had contacted Fremont Older after Rolf had raised the tariff for each ninety-day liquor license renewal to $10,000. They offered to testify before a grand jury. And so the war began.

  We settled in for The Dictator, featuring the emerging legend in American theater, John Barrymore. The door opened behind us and the light from the hallway caught my attention. A tree-stump of a man moved next to Adam Rolf, close enough that I could hear his labored breathing.

  "Annalisa, I'm not sure you've ever met Mr. John Kelly," Rolf said.

  The broken-nosed thug plunged into the seat next to Rolf, looking as though meat packers had stuffed him into his tuxedo.

  "Mr. Kelly here represents our interests along the waterfront. I'm about to announce his candidacy for a supervisor's seat next election."

  "Miss Passarella," he growled with whiskey breath.

  "Mr. Kelly. Excuse my ignorance, but are you the one they call Shanghai Kelly?"

  "We try not to use that nickname," Rolf laughed.

  I was gratefully distracted when Barrymore arrived on stage to a thunderous reception.

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed Rolf click open his pocket watch and offer a peek to Kelly, who smiled. The seemingly innocuous gesture disturbed me greatly. The room seemed to tilt and the chair wavered beneath me.

  The end could not come soon enough.

  Chapter 12

  BARBARY COAST

  APRIL 15, 1906. 9:40 P.M.

  As John Barrymore roamed the stage to repeated outbursts of applause, I scribbled notes, oblivious to the drama unfolding outside the confines of the theater.

  Hunter and Christian approached Lime Juice Corner, at the dark end of Pacific Avenue, where British captains prowled in search of reluctant sailors. It was nearly ten o'clock when Christian jerked Hunter into a doorway and pointed toward the cellar door of Henderson's Melodeon, where a giant figure emerged.

  "See that ugly mound of blubber?" Christian warned. "The Whale. When he's not out shanghaiing, he bounces at Kelly's place. Likes to get you in a bear hug and bite your nose off. Got twenty of 'em pressed under the glass on Kelly's bar. He even looks at you cross-eyed, shoot him."

  The Whale was quickly joined by a dapper little man with a waxed mustache and flattened nose.

  Christian grinned and took a celebratory pull from his flask. "This is getting good. Chicken Devine. See his left hand?"

  The light streaming through Henderson's cellar doors illuminated Chicken's metal hook as he reached up to adjust his porkpie hat.

  "The Chicken had a run-in with another shanghaier and one of those hara-kiri knives. Took his hand off with one swing. Likes to tell people a dog snatched it. Packs an Army Colt and a Bowie knife so sharp you could shave with it. Keep an eye on that one good hand of his."

  A limp body was shoved upward into the waiting arms of the Whale and Chicken Devine. The Whale gave him a kick. Nothing. A second body was passed up.

  "That looks like a kid, Christian."

  "Charlie Tate. He was at the station yesterday asking for food. He's fourteen, ran away from somewhere in South Dakota. Farm boy. I gave him a dime for lunch and told him stay away from the Barbary Coast. Didn't listen, like a lot of people I know."

  Hunter ignored the slight. He could see a large purple bruise on the side of Charlie Tate's face.

  "They'll get ten dollars extra from some toothless captain who likes 'em young," Christian said. "Two days at sea, the kid will be cursing his mother for having him." Christian grabbed Hunter's arm to keep him from charging forward. "Easy there big fella. It ain't shanghaiing until they load 'em in a boat."

  "They're not taking that kid, Christian, if I have to kill every one of them myself."

  "Listen to you. One day on the job and startin' to sound like a cop."

  "They ain't takin' that kid."

  After shoving another victim from the basement, a third shanghaier emerged, gaunt-faced and hawk-nosed, a patch over his left eye and a pearl-handled knife in his belt.

  Even Christian got his blood up. "Now, there's one I got personal business with. Zipper. Slices a man so fast all you hear is 'zip.' Been lookin' for him since he put an ice pick between my ribs. Yeah, this is gonna be a real good night."

  A shallow dump wagon rumbled around the corner. At the reins was a tall, broad-shouldered man, a jagged scar wending from his left ear to his jaw.

  "And there's Scarface, Kelly's chief lieutenant. Only one of 'em who ain't dumber than an anvil. The gang's all here."

  "Let's move on them. That kid needs a doctor."

  Christian was halfway through a good pull from the flask. "We wait." This time he offered a taste to Hunter, who waved it off.

  "You keep drinkin' that stuff, maybe I should paint my name on the back of my coat so you don't shoot me."

  "I ain't shot you yet."

  "We've been partners two hours. You have time."

  After Kelly's crew had loaded their prey aboard the dump wagon, Scarface snapped the reins and headed toward the waterfront, his cronies walking close behind.

  Christian waited until they were a full block away. "Keep your eyes peeled, watch our backs. These guys use a trailer, some rummy to lag behind in case they're being followed."

  The trolling gang crossed through the circle of yellow light illuminating the intersection at Washington Street. Two doors behind them, a burly Negro dressed in plumber's bibs staggered from the door of the Ivy, a raucous colored cabaret. A bartender stepped through the door behind him and whistled, alerting Scarface and the Whale to the presence of a potential victim.

  Christian pulled Hunter into the shadows of a dry goods store as the shanghaiers circled back.

  "Hey you, young man, you a sailor?" the Whale called.

  The man stumbled forward, oblivious to the peril, as the waiting crew tipped their hats in welcome.

  "They didn't put enough laudanum in his drink. He's so big he muscled through it," Christian whispered.

  The Whale was quickly out of patience. "Hey, you! You a seafarin' man?"

  "Wha'sat?"

  The crimps surrounded him, hyena-like.

  "You lookin' for work?" Scarface asked. "We got us a ship lookin' for crew. Payin' top dollar."

  The man slowed, wobbly. "Sailor? Hell no. I got me a job. I'm a plumbin' over ta' Fairmont. Got two colored plumbers workin' there."

  The Whale launched a gnarled fist that looked like it would drop an ox.

  But the man had begun to turn his head, reducing the effort to a glancing blow. Thick-limbed and broad-shouldered, he raised his fists in de
fense.

  "Sober, he might have a chance," Christian said.

  Clumsily, the man struck back at the Whale.

  Chicken jabbed at the man's ribs with brass knuckles, while Zipper laid a two-foot length of maple across the man's ear, the crack echoing down the street.

  Still, he fought back, shoving Chicken aside and landing a clumsy punch to the middle of the Whale's face.

  The Whale cursed, produced a belaying pin and struck a blow to the man's knee that sent him crashing to the ground. They pummeled him furiously, his howls mixing with the raucous laughter and music drifting through the Barbary Coast.

  Hunter pulled his pistol and began to move. Christian shoved him back into the shadows.

  "They're going to kill that guy," Hunter said.

  "And lose ninety dollars? If we grab 'em now, they'll say he picked a fight. Desk sergeant won't even book 'em."

  Hunter stared as the crimps took turns beating their prostrate victim, the spray of blood visible in the yellow streetlight.

  The Whale straddled the man and began pounding his face until the howling stopped. Scarface brought the wagon close, and they heaved the man inside, laughing when his body banged on the wooden bed. Christian pulled the flask from his jacket and took a healthy swig. "What the hell is that you're drinking?"

  "Your guess is good as mine. Sure you don't want a little bracer? Makes it easier to put a slug in a man, especially your first time."

  "We're going to arrest them and watch them hang for what they did to Elliot and Jessie. That's the law. We only shoot if they resist," Hunter said.

  "Try selling that to Elliot or Jessie." Christian took a final pull at his flask. "Rule Number One. Kill a cop, you die. Save the courts a lot of time and bother."

  Scarface eased the brake and started off, his crew walking beside and watching warily. They turned onto Jackson Street, disappearing around The Other Eye Pub.

  "Let me have your call box key and I'll sound the others," Hunter said.