1906: A Novel

by Dalessandro, James

  "Lawrence, Kansas. Where William Quantrill and Frank James gunned down all those people during the war. My Grandpa was one of them. One of them who was killed, I mean." Kaitlin turned her head to avoid Rolf's carnivorous grin and stared intently at the stage.

  To the sound of fifes and bugles, the chorus of street boys heralded the arrival of the Spanish relief guard. Kaitlin leaned forward, distancing herself from Rolf's advancing arm, losing herself in the spectacle.

  "Kaitlin," Rolf said, his mood darkening. "Your father? He's a farmer? Or a rancher?"

  "He's the sheriff in Douglas County."

  The door opened and a man moved through the shadows, leaning over Rolf's shoulder. Rolf smiled and patted the man's hand.

  "Kaitlin," Rolf said, "say hello to Mr. John Barrymore."

  Kaitlin's head swiveled and her mouth dropped. She had fallen asleep many nights beneath photos of Caruso and Barrymore tacked on the roughhewn wall of her room. He grinned broadly, the profile unmistakable, his white teeth gleaming, his breath bathed in gin.

  Rolf excused himself and walked to Tommy, who had just arrived to take his usual station near the door. "We have a little problem, Thomas. The girl Tessie Wall sent? Her father's that hick sheriff, the one playing bodyguard for Caruso."

  Tommy looked over Rolf’s shoulder to where Barrymore now sat in his boss's seat, jabbering softly to a transfixed Kaitlin. "She's somethin' all right, boss. Could get downright nasty if daddy shows up at the party just as you're about to break the little filly in."

  "Deviousness is your true talent, Thomas. Quietly make this disappear."

  A ripple shot through the audience as Enrico Caruso, bedecked as Spanish Corporal Don Josè, entered the stage with his fellow soldiers. Caruso stopped near the cigarette factory as young women poured into the plaza for their lunch break, twirling their hips and shamelessly teasing the young men.

  Don Josè watched with disdain as the seductive gypsy Carmen appeared, playing her castanets and singing her saucy Habañera, the lilting aria punctuated with stirring bursts from the chorus.

  "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle."

  Love is a rebellious bird, I scribbled as lumpy Olive Fremstad, in Carmen's ruffled skirt, fumbled through a graceless entry. Enticed by the sight of handsome Don Josè, she sauntered over, her ardor further piqued by his aloofness. She produced a flower from her ebony hair and handed it to him, declaring him the only man for her. As Don Josè inhaled its intoxicating fragrance, Carmen ambled away, casting an alluring look over her shoulder.

  In Spreckels' box, Hunter reached into his jacket, produced the flower I had dropped to him from my tenement and inhaled its waning fragrance. I vowed him a kinder fate than Carmen would offer Don Josè.

  Caruso began to sing, rejecting Carmen and swearing his allegiance to his fiancée, Michaela, the audience riveted by the astonishing voice that filled every corner of the house.

  While Enrico Caruso kept us enraptured at the Grand Opera House, Francis Fagen spread a hand-drawn map of Nob Hill on the floor of room 434 of the Fairmont Hotel. Patrick, Max, and Carlo looked on.

  "This can go easy," Francis said, "if everybody keeps their wits about them. Last thing we need is a gun fight inside Rolf's mansion." They all jumped as Christian burst through the door, his face a mass of purple bruises.

  "Speakin' of the Devil," said Max.

  Christian slipped next to Patrick and said nothing.

  "All right," Francis resumed, "Rolf’s guests will be entering through the front gate on California. We need to watch the entire house so the informant can signal from anywhere inside."

  "That would be Annalisa Passarelli," Christian added.

  "Whoa," Max said. "That knock-kneed girl who used to live at the bottom of Filbert Street? The Society reporter? You tellin' me all this time the Lieutenant's informant is a damn woman?"

  "That's what I'm saying," Christian answered.

  "Now," Francis resumed, "the construction crews are going to be at it all night getting the Fairmont ready for opening tomorrow. Carlo, you and Max will linger in the lobby. I know the foreman, it's already arranged. Keep a sharp eye on the east side of the house, especially Rolf’s office—the three bay windows in the middle of the first floor."

  Francis hesitated, the gravity and fatigue causing a moment's hesitation. "The Crockers across California Street hate Rolf. Patrick and I will take up station behind their wall and watch the front."

  "Hunter wants me to stay up here and man this recording contraption in case another incriminating telephone call comes in," Christian said somberly. "Him and me can watch the second floor and livery out back."

  "Tommy and Shanghai Kelly will die before they let us drag them out in handcuffs," Max said. "Especially if they think there's a noose waitin'."

  "We can accommodate that," Christian said. "Remember what they did to my father when I wasn't there to watch over him."

  It was the closest Christian had come to admitting wrong. His subdued and chastised nature took them all aback.

  The howling of the neighborhood dogs, sporadic all night, reached an unnerving crescendo.

  "M-m-m-maybe th-th-they j-just hate opera." Carlo's joke did little to ease the tension.

  Chapter 44

  GRAND OPERA HOUSE

  APRIL 17, 1906. 9:50 P.M.

  The Grand Opera House filled with the mournful sound of a clarinet, wafting over the audience like a gull gliding on the ocean breeze. A staccato violin deepened the tender entreaty to a phrase of resignation and foreboding.

  The audience straightened, necks straining as though the extra few inches might bring them closer to the magic unfolding before them.

  Caruso stepped to center stage to intercept Carmen, now his fugitive love. From inside his tattered shirt he pulled the faded flower Carmen had given him on first meeting. "La Fleur que tu m'avais jetée," Caruso sang. The flower that you gave me. He ignored Olive Fremstad, digging into an emotional well.

  "I felt but one desire," I whispered, "one desire, one hope."

  "Te revoir, O Carmen, oui, te revoir."

  "To see you again, Carmen," Hunter recited in perfect unity as I watched him through my opera glasses. "To see you again."

  Caruso soared from baritone depths to heavenly notes seemingly beyond the range of the male voice. He told Carmen how the scent of the flower, her scent, had sustained him during his lonely, desperate hours in the brig after abandoning his post for her. He begged Carmen to return to his arms.

  All around the Opera House, people held their breath.

  I caught a quick glimpse of Kaitlin, a tear streaking her face. "Carmen, O ma Carmen." Caruso's plaintive cry dissolved into the melancholy notes of a French horn.

  I dropped my notebook and leapt to my feet with the audience, all cheering madly.

  Caruso, breathless and stunned by the response, waited for his Carmen to respond.

  The music and drama heightened the aching in Lincoln's heart. He squirmed in his chair backstage as Fremstad's Carmen stepped forward to challenge the distraught Don Josè.

  Lincoln jumped when a hand touched his shoulder.

  Tommy nodded for Lincoln to follow him. The two men squeezed through the props and pulleys until they found a quieter spot near the dressing rooms.

  "Mr. Rolf sent me down. He just got word," Tommy said. "The cops may have spotted your daughter at Tessie Wall's place on the Barbary Coast."

  Lincoln tensed. "And just what kind of place is Tessie Wall's?"

  "Ain't the kind of place a man wants to find his daughter. Neighborhood's rough, don't cotton much to strangers. Once the show's over . . ."

  "Let's go now," Lincoln demanded.

  Lincoln followed Tommy through the stage door onto Mission Street, where the Rolls sat at the curb.

  He climbed into the passenger seat as Tommy gave the crank a whirl and jumped behind the wheel. They thundered down Fifth Street, crossing Market with bone-rattling jolts as they bumped over the four sets of trolley tra
cks.

  Tommy wheeled onto Jackson Street, working the bellows of the brass horn to clear unsteady prowlers from his path. He slammed the Rolls to a halt in front of an ornate Victorian and honked again.

  A Negro doorman peeked through the leaded glass door, and then signaled to someone inside. Moments later, a heavy-set woman wobbled down the steps.

  "Evening, Miss Tessie," Tommy called. "Adam got a message you might have seen a young girl we been lookin' for."

  Tessie eyed Lincoln as two women in corsets, black stockings, and garters appeared at the front door.

  She can't be in a place like this, Lincoln thought. Then he remembered Kaitlin exposing her breasts to Rusty for a dollar. He passed Kaitlin's photo to Tessie.

  "She looks different now," Tessie mused. "Redhead, cut real short. I sent her away. I've seen too many runaway schoolgirls in my time. I run a clean business."

  "Where's she now?" Tommy demanded.

  "One of the other girls sent her to a saloon where they ain't so particular. The Boar's Head down on Battery. Poor kid looked awful desperate."

  Tommy eased the brake and the Rolls lurched forward. The throbbing of the engine echoed off the buildings as Tommy worked the horn. The closer they got to the waterfront, where a sea of masts bobbed at anchor, the darker and dirtier the streets became. Lincoln had seen dangerous streets in St. Louis and Kansas City where he hunted rustlers and bushwhackers, but nothing as unnerving as the malevolence infecting the Barbary Coast.

  Tommy wheeled onto Battery Street and jerked to a stop before a bar with a half-fallen sign that read THE BOAR'S HEAD.

  A wary Lincoln stepped onto the wooden sidewalk in front of the faded exterior, which appeared ready to collapse into the garbage-strewn street at any moment. He watched Tommy push through the creaky swinging doors. Lincoln hesitated a moment, then followed.

  The stench of bad cigars, cheap whiskey, and syrupy perfume assailed Lincoln's nostrils. Men as scarred and mangy as alley cats pawed garishly-painted women who had been reduced to lumpy residues of femininity. A singer screeched and someone pounded what may have been a piano. A dozen men lining the glass-topped bar stared at him as though examining their next good meal.

  Lincoln inched closer to the bar. Beneath the filthy glass top was a display of black, decaying human noses that had obviously been gnawed free of their original owners. Each was denoted by a small brass plaque with names and dates of acquisition, all under the heading "the Whale's Scrapbook."

  Tommy shouldered through the crowd, shoving aside clawing whores. After questioning several of the saloon's wobbly denizens, he moved to the end of the bar and had a whispered conversation with the bartender. The man pointed toward a curtain.

  Tommy nodded for Lincoln to follow him.

  They pushed through the shredded curtain, stopping abreast of an enormous, tattooed bouncer. The dimly lit hallway had a dozen stalls, each covered by a filthy curtain. A chorus of grunts and squeals filled the air. In one stall, Lincoln could see a soldier, green wool breeches down around his campaign boots, rooting atop a woman whose stocking-clad legs were wrapped about his naked rump.

  "You got a new girl, come down from Tessie's place?" Tommy asked the bouncer. "Tall redhead, Kansas farm girl, sweet lookin'."

  "She busy. You wait one minutes," he answered in a Polish accent, arms crossed in front of his chest. "Nice beeg teats I like. You wait."

  Lincoln grabbed Tommy's beefy bicep. "My daughter would never set foot in a place like this."

  "Young girls, they come to town, no family, no money. Ain't nobody starts out like this, Sheriff. More of 'em winds up here than the opera." Lincoln stared about, trying to catch a glimpse inside the stalls. "Up to you, Sheriff. We can stay or we can go," Tommy offered. Lincoln nodded. Tommy handed a gold coin to the bouncer, who bit it and nodded his consent. Tommy started down the hallway, followed close by Lincoln, whose hand enveloped the butt of his Colt.

  Lincoln watched as the soldier groaned and arched his back. The whore's plump legs shuddered convulsively and a short-heeled shoe thumped to the floor, revealing a silver dollar-sized hole in her black stocking. His head swooned at the thought of Kaitlin doing the same, a wave of fear dulling his senses.

  He never saw the heavy oak dowel that hit him.

  Halfway to the floor, the bouncer's second blow caught him behind the right ear, an inch from where the first had landed, the sickening crack echoing down the hallway. Lincoln collapsed on the dirty floor as the grunting from the stalls continued unabated.

  Tommy knelt over him, and in the dim red light saw the blood trickling from the side of Lincoln's head. "Don't kill him, you dumb bastard. He's worth ninety dollars alive."

  "He live okay." The bouncer removed Lincoln's gun belt and the gold coins from his pocket, then shouldered him like a side of beef. He carried him to the end of the hallway, kicked open a door, then threw the limp body down a chute.

  At the bottom, someone dragged Lincoln across the dirt floor, leaning him against the wall with four other unconscious men.

  Chapter 45

  GRAND OPERA HOUSE

  APRIL 17, 1906. 11:55 P.M.

  On stage, Carmen was approaching the bullring where her new lover, Escamillo, was doing battle.

  A wild-eyed Don Josè burst from the shadows.

  "I was told to fear for my life," Carmen sang. "But I am brave and have no intention of running away."

  Don Josè replied, "I'm imploring you, beseeching. Yes, together we can begin another life, under new skies."

  Kaitlin gripped the arms of her chair, oblivious to Rolf—and to the drunken Barrymore snoring softly on the other side of her.

  She slipped from her seat and inched along the wall to stand behind me at the railing.

  Caruso sang every note as though it was his last. His hands trembled, his eyes misted, his voice soared gently as he pleaded for Carmen's love. Carmen responded defiantly, "Libre elle est née et libre elle mourra."

  "Free I was born and free I will die," I said, steeling myself.

  A distraught Don Josè pulled a knife from his cummerbund as shouts poured from the bullring and Carmen mocked him, defiant and unrepentant.

  The audience braced.

  Don Josè lunged, his knife came down, and Carmen fell.

  The audience gasped in unison, sobs and tears streaming from people in every corner of the hall.

  "Ah! Carmen! Ma Carmen adorée."

  Weeping, Caruso threw himself on the body of Carmen. Had the audience been closer, they might have heard Olive Fremstad grunt and order Caruso to get off her.

  Hertz brought the music to an abrupt and stirring end. In unison, three thousand sprang to their feet, the roar of exultation shaking the chandelier above us.

  Something truly extraordinary transpired here tonight, I scribbled. This was not an opera, this was a revelation. Those of us who witnessed Caruso's Don Josè will be united forever by the simple fact that we were there. Nothing like it may pass our way again.

  While the audience called Caruso back to the stage again and again, each time more zealously, Hunter slipped out of Spreckels' box. He bounded through the lobby to Mission Street, and dashed between the long lines of polished cars and gleaming carriages. He was soon roaring off toward Nob Hill.

  As the applause continued unabated, reaching a thunderous crescendo, I looked at my watch.

  One minute after midnight. Wednesday morning. April 18, 1906. The beginning of a glorious day. Caruso's triumph. The arrest of Rolf and Schmitz. My marriage to Hunter Fallon.

  A glorious day, indeed. Or so I thought.

  Chapter 46

  NOB HILL

  APRIL 18, 1906. 12:20 A.M.

  At the Fairmont Hotel, Hunter clanged up the rear iron stairwell to the fourth floor, and burst through the door so quickly that Christian pulled his revolver.

  "You're still trying to shoot me, aren't you?" Hunter asked.

  Christian tried to smile. He set the revolver on the table, more for
lorn than Hunter had ever seen him.

  "Anything happen while I was gone?"

  "Not unless you're a champagne salesman or a crab. They must be planning to feed half the city over there."

  "Did you bring me a change of clothes?"

  Christian motioned toward a valise in a corner. Hunter began ripping off his tie as his brother rubbed the smooth stock of the double-barreled Remington.

  "I wanted to ask you something, Christian. How long has it been since you shot somebody? Before the other night, I mean?"

  "A year maybe. That was the first I ever killed three in one night. Would have been four of a kind if I had found Scarface."

  "How many does that make? All together."

  "Eight."

  "Eight? How could you kill eight men?"

  "I didn't shoot that well at first. I mostly winged a bunch of 'em."

  "Eight. Jesus. That's more than dad and grandpa put together."

  "I ain't as forgiving as they were." Christian paused. "Not that I really give a damn, but how was it?"

  "Life's too short not to love opera. Too bad dad isn't here." Hunter hesitated, fearful the comment would seem like a further attack on his brother. "Anyway, they'll be talking about this night for a long time."

  "I ain't been to the opera since we were kids. I threw a fit at Rigoletto once and mom promised she'd never take me again."

  "Tonight is La Bohème," Hunter said. "My favorite. Though it's going to be hard to beat Carmen." Hunter whistled "March of the Toreadors," grinning broadly.

  "You can't be that giddy over an opera. You get some tail somewhere?"

  "Better than that."

  "She brought her sister?"

  "I'm getting married tomorrow. Today, actually. April 18, 1906. It's my birthday, remember? Twenty-three."

  "I must have something stuck in my ears. Who did you say is getting married?"

  "Annalisa is going to marry me. The minute this is over."

  "So much for a long courtship."

  "How long did it take dad to propose? He met mom at noon at a church social for the Orphan's Asylum. He asked her to marry him when? Four o'clock?"