1906: A Novel

by Dalessandro, James

  "Listen, son," Schmitz said, "Mr. Rolf isn't going anywhere. If anyone was involved in the death of your father, I will see they answer for it. But right now, I have much bigger problems to contend with."

  "No," Francis argued, stepping back, and gripping his shotgun. "You can't do this. These men killed the Lieutenant, sure as we're standing here."

  "I'm going to give both of you boys one last chance," Donen warned. "Stand down or I'll have you disarmed and arrested."

  Hunter and Francis glowered at the smug Adam Rolf, and then stormed from the room. Ting Leo and I scurried after them.

  Rolf moved close to Schmitz. "This would be a very bad time to develop a backbone, Eugene."

  "No, Adam, this is precisely the time. If I find evidence you or anyone murdered Byron Fallon, God help you."

  Rolf limped away, his jubilant goons trailing behind him.

  Dougherty huffed back to Schmitz' side and spread a tourist map on the table. Funston stepped in next to them as Dougherty pointed.

  "The most important buildings south of Market are the Mint on Fifth and the Southern Pacific Depot on Townsend," the old man said nervously. "We're going to have to make a firebreak somewhere. Right now the wind is blowing south, toward the train depot. If we make the break along Brannan, we can save the station. As for the Mint, they have an artesian well and the building is made of granite. They can fend for themselves unless the wind changes."

  "And how do we make a firebreak along Brannan if we have no water, Chief?" Schmitz asked.

  "Dynamite," Funston interjected.

  Schmitz stared at the map, his spirits sinking by the second. "And what do we dynamite? Boardinghouses, hotels? There's a hundred thousand people in that neighborhood. Except for Chinatown, it's the densest area in the whole damn city."

  "We have no choice," Funston argued. "It's either water or dynamite, and right now we have no water."

  Schmitz tried to steady himself. "We never trained anyone to use dynamite. That and a supplemental saltwater system were part of Chief Sullivan's proposal."

  "My men will carry out the assignment," Funston countered. "They have experience with ordnance."

  "Ordnance, yes," Dougherty replied, "but cannon and dynamite are not the same, General. The improper use of explosives can be disastrous."

  "Do you have a better plan, Mr. Dougherty?" Funston inquired. Dougherty's silence shook the anxious men around them.

  Outside the Hall of Justice, the smoke wafting skyward from South of Market grew by the minute.

  "I guess God figured our efforts were too little, too late," I said. "And now, we set cop killers free and turn the Army loose to start shooting people!"

  "I'm worried about what Christian will do when he finds out they let dad's killers go," Hunter answered.

  "You leave Christian to me," Francis countered. "The only one who can straighten this out is Prosecutor Feeney. Right now there are people all over the place desperate for help. Let's go find Christian and get to it."

  I grabbed Ting Leo's hand and the four of us hurried up Montgomery, past the battered Barbary Coast. Garbled music and raucous laughter poured from buildings that appeared to stand by nothing but force of habit.

  Near Broadway, we heard the Waltham approaching, followed by the sight of Christian bouncing over the twisted trolley tracks and broken bricks. He skidded to a stop in front of the Montgomery Museum, where the formaldehyde-filled jar that bore the head of Joaquin Murietta had fallen through the window and shattered on the sidewalk. The frantic people running by scarcely noticed the pickled skull staring up at them.

  "My place survived okay," Christian said. "I packed Elizabeth and the kids onto old man Hazifotis' fishing boat. He's taking them up the Delta to his brother's place near Sacramento. Dad's place is a mess but it's still standing. I hid the evidence in the wine cellar, behind the panel. Where's Rolf and Kelly?"

  Our glum looks stopped Christian. "Don't tell me. They turned them loose? I'll kill every one of them."

  "Right now, we got other things need doin'," Francis argued. "The fire department is lookin' at a nightmare, especially South of Market."

  Shouts and screams resounded from Dupont Street a block away. In seconds, dozens of Chinese came pouring from the alleys, fleeing some unseen terror.

  Hunter turned to Francis. "We'll meet you South of Market. Sixth Street looks like it got the worst of it. We'll see what's going on in Chinatown and meet you there."

  Ting Leo, Hunter, Christian, and I ran toward Chinatown.

  What awaited us on Dupont Street looked like a moving sketch of Dante's Inferno. The flimsy façades, designed to conceal opium dens, brothels, and gambling joints, had tumbled into the streets, leaving their occupants exposed as if on some pornographic stage. Bodies jutted from mounds of debris, bloodied prostitutes dug among the ruins for their silk robes, dazed customers struggled to find their britches. A few opium habitués clung to the wooden slats of their bunks, trying to relight their pipes, waving nonchalantly to passersby.

  A flood of terrified Chinese ran down the middle of Dupont. Through the sea of frantic bodies we spotted the cause: a bull with massive horns, goring and trampling the poor souls in its path. A dozen young men ran alongside it, yelling and striking the enraged animal with bricks and stones.

  The bull charged into a shop whose occupants tried to jump through the shattered window to escape. Three prostitutes ran from the adjacent building, stumbling on their rocker shoes, shrieking in terror.

  "The Chinese believe the world is held up by four giant bulls," Hunter explained. "They must think the earthquake was caused by this one leaving his post."

  The bull charged back out through the broken window, shards of glass slicing its belly.

  I noticed Christian walking calmly down the middle of Dupont, waving his arms, throwing chunks of cobblestone and screaming, "Hey! Hey!" The furious animal pawed the ground, snorting, and then charged from fifty yards away. Christian removed the Colt from his belt and walked forward. At thirty yards, he aimed and cocked the trigger. At twenty yards, he fired, and fired again, three times in all, the bullets slamming into its skull. The bull bellowed and stumbled, its momentum carrying it forward until Christian danced aside, barely avoiding the horns. He emptied his revolver into its flank.

  People surrounded the animal, weeping and screaming. They dipped their fingers in its blood and held their hands to the heavens. Several old women ran into the street and fell to their knees, clasping their hands and praying.

  "My Cantonese is weak," Hunter said, "I know a few hundred words. One of them is 'death.'

  "Peepers dies," Ting Leo said.

  Hunter and I looked at her in astonishment.

  "Aw peepers dies," she said, waving her hand to show the old ladies were talking about the whole city. Ting Leo struggled with the words she had memorized from the Falmouth's crew. "Peepers dies." She waved her hand again. "Aw peepers dies."

  "We better drop her off with Miss Cameron at the Chinese orphanage," Hunter said, "if the building is still standing. I have a bad feeling these old Chinese ladies may be right."

  Chapter 50

  NOB HILL

  APRIL 18, 1906. 7:15 A.M.

  On the rooftop of his mansion, Adam Rolf handed Citizen's Police badges to Tommy, Shanghai Kelly, and Scarface.

  "Where the hell did you get these?" Kelly asked.

  "I'm the City Attorney," Rolf explained. "Chief Donen and I can appoint special Civilian Officers in an emergency. I think this qualifies."

  A butler appeared, bearing a silver tray with a bottle of cognac and several monogrammed snifters. He poured each of them a healthy drink "Tell me something, Kelly," Rolf asked, "what do you see out there?"

  Kelly stared South of Market, where the scattered fires had begun to merge and grow. "A lot a' whores and pimps out of work."

  "That's why you're still knocking rummies over the head for a living. You know what I see? Unlimited economic opportunity A chance to rid ours
elves of a few enemies."

  "That ought to be worth what, Adam? Five grand a head?"

  "After you shook me down for fifty grand with that sham story about not having those papers? Right now, I'm inclined to hire someone less likely to get himself stomped by Christian Fallon."

  Kelly's face contorted into a rainbow-colored scowl: bloodshot eyes, purple jaw, a solitary gold tooth swimming in a sea of its brown-chipped cousins. He gazed over at Tommy, who stood with his hands over his midsection, where he carried his pistol. "You find better muscle, Adam," Kelly replied. "You let me know."

  Rolf pondered a moment. "I'm going to give you one last chance, Kelly. One. I want everything they have. Evidence, affidavits, maybe a head or two for posterity."

  "Five grand a head for The Brotherhood, ten a piece for Feeney, Spreckels, Older. A bargain to my way of thinkin'."

  "Evidence first, bodies second this time, understand me?" Rolf swallowed his cognac. "Tell me something, Kelly, what is it with the Fallon brothers? One of 'em is a drunk; the other's a college boy. You sure you're up to it?"

  Kelly raised his glass in a toast. "To some very expensive cadavers." He guzzled and wiped his mouth on a dirty sleeve.

  Rolf watched Kelly and Scarface depart, and then turned to Tommy. "Find my broker and tell him to buy up every lumber mill, cement factory, and plumbing supplier from Santa Cruz to Santa Rosa. And hurry back. After they dispose of the Fallon brothers and the rest of that lot, I want you to eliminate Kelly and Scarface. Whatever they would have collected for their efforts is yours."

  "Be my pleasure, Mr. Rolf."

  "And, Thomas. Stay away from the hop-head dens until this is over, understand?"

  On Sixth Street, four blocks south of the Palace Hotel, Captain Charles Cullen and nine firefighters of Engine Company No. 6 had an immediate problem. The rear of the firehouse had sunk three feet into the muck of old Mission Swamp, filled in with the debris of the earthquake of '68. The sinking had split the long, narrow building in two and shattered the front doors.

  Christian arrived outside the firehouse. A blaze across the street at Prost's Bakery was threatening the entire block. Christian ran to Cullen and his men, who were desperately trying to drag their heavy Clapp and Jones steam pumper over a pile of rubble.

  "Charlie," Christian yelled, "where's your horses?"

  "They went plumb loco, like to tear themselves to pieces squeezing out the busted door." Cullen tried to catch his breath, staring at Prost's as the flames climbed higher. "It's bad down here, Christian. Real bad."

  Cullen's lieutenant, a bearded man of thirty, ran back to the station. "Captain," he yelled. "There ain't a drop in the hydrants. You can see the water pouring up through the streets."

  "Then drop a hose in the sewer," Cullen ordered.

  A disheveled man, waving his arms as if he were trying to fly, rounded the corner of Howard and ran straight toward them. "You gotta come!" he yelled. "There's people trapped. Hundreds of 'em! Hundreds of 'em and the fire is coming!" The man grabbed Christian's upper arm so hard his fingers dug into the flesh. "Oh God! You gotta see it! It's awful. It's some-thin' awful!"

  "Stay here and help pull this engine," Christian ordered the man as he sprinted toward Howard Street.

  Minutes after we left Ting Leo in the care of Dolly Cameron on Sacramento Street, Hunter and I reached Market near the Palace Hotel. We drove through a mounting stream of refugees pushing wheelbarrows bulging with personal possessions, balancing suitcases atop bicycle seats, or towing armoires with wheels nailed to the legs. Smoke had darkened the sky and flames cast an orange glow on warped buildings and anxious faces.

  We got to Mission Street as a building exploded a block ahead, shattering windows and sending a mountain of flaming wreckage skyward. Hunter jumped the motorcycle over the curb and skidded into the alcove of a brick warehouse as flaming shingles and ceiling joists crashed around us.

  A half block away, twenty soldiers milled around a horse-drawn caisson.

  Hunter drove back into the street. When the officer in charge of the demolition squad spotted us approaching, he raised his revolver and yelled "Halt!" his voice almost lost in the roar of the fire.

  Hunter produced his star. "Officer Hunter Fallon, SFPD!"

  "I have orders to clear this area," he shouted at Hunter.

  "And I'm a police officer whose authority supersedes the military in civilian affairs," Hunter yelled.

  "Not today it doesn't."

  "I am ordering you to clear this area, Officer Fallon."

  "What's your name, Sergeant?"

  "Levert Stillman."

  "Who gave you orders to blow up these buildings?"

  "General Funston ordered a firebreak to keep this thing from spreading to the train station on Townsend. Now, run along and mind your own damn business." Stillman turned away as a soldier ran from the warehouse of a lamp wholesaler, screaming "Fire in the hole!"

  The building exploded with such force the concussion nearly knocked us over. Our ears pounding, we stared skyward as bricks and cases filled with flaming paper crashed down over the entire block.

  "Sergeant," Hunter yelled, "that smells like black powder! You're not stopping the fire, you're spreading it!"

  "If you don't get out of here," Stillman replied, "I'm going to have you hauled off in irons."

  Stillman stepped back and raised his revolver across his chest. "The last thing I want to do is draw down on a police officer," he said, "but if you don't move and stop interfering with my orders, I will."

  "Let's go, Hunter," I pleaded. "Nothing is going to stop these men." Hunter turned around and pointed us toward a large plume of smoke billowing above Sixth and Howard.

  At Sixth Street, my eyes refused to believe what lay before us. The Nevada House, a cheap three-story hotel in the middle of the block, had fallen against the Lormor Hotel next door. The Lormor had crashed into the Ohio House, which in turn rammed the massive Brunswick House on the corner with such force that the latter now sprawled across Howard Street, the bodies of pedestrians and horse-drawn wagons tangled in the debris. A chorus of agonized screams pierced the mounting roar of the inferno.

  "My God," I said, "those hotels are nothing but tiny rooms filled with immigrants and transients. There could be a thousand people in just those four buildings." Less than twenty yards away, I spotted the lifeless foot of a child protruding from the wreckage of the Lormor.

  Hunter pointed to the Brunswick Hotel, whose fourth-story roof was now but ten feet off the ground. There we could see Christian, Francis, Patrick, and Carlo struggling to lift a beam from the legs of a young woman who writhed convulsively.

  "Annalisa, stay here," Hunter yelled, and ran to them.

  An aftershock hit and the wreckage shifted, drawing a chorus of screams from the entrapped. Patrick, Hunter, and Christian put their backs to the beam and managed to raise it a few inches, the woman screaming as Francis pulled her clear, her legs crushed beyond recognition. She pointed frantically to a gaping hole in the wreckage, unable to speak in anything but animal grunts.

  Patrick dropped to his knees and peered into the opening, where he spotted the motionless bodies of two small boys. He turned back to the mother as the last gasp of air escaped her lungs.

  "The Lord has her now," he said. He took the St. Christopher medal from his neck and wrapped it in the woman's hand.

  I watched in a daze, clasping at the St. Christopher beneath my dress, the first I realized I was still wearing my opera clothes. Francis climbed through the opening and after a few minutes passed a weeping girl up to Christian and Hunter.

  Carlo and Patrick tied a rope to her waist and lowered her toward the ground, where she collapsed, gasping and sobbing in my arms.

  Francis next lifted out a boy of about ten, then a girl who might have been the boy's twin sister. Christian put his arm up to shield his face from the flames eating across the rooftop as Hunter pulled a naked, mumbling woman through the hole.

  "Francis, y
ou gotta come out. Now!" Christian screamed.

  Francis looked at the pleading face of a man trapped in the wreckage of a brick fireplace.

  "Now, Francis. Now!" Christian and Hunter yelled from above.

  Francis jumped for Hunter and Christian's outstretched hands. They pulled him clear and ran for the edge of the building, jumping to the ground as the roof exploded in flame.

  A voice, high-pitched and barely human, pierced the roar of the fire. "Kill me! For God's sake, someone please shoot me!"

  Through a skewed window frame, we spotted the trapped man and the fire eating across the beams that pinned his legs. "Kill me!" he screamed.

  Francis raised his revolver and aimed. "I can't do it," he said. "God would not forgive me."

  Christian pushed Francis' arm down and then raised his own pistol. The shot echoed down the street, freezing the bevy of soiled onlookers.

  "Shoot me, someone shoot me, don't let me burn for God's sake!" another voice cried, too fractured for anyone to tell if it was male or female.

  Christian moved a dozen steps to his left and fired again.

  Another building exploded behind us, sending a shower of burning debris skyward. When it landed, another dozen buildings were set ablaze.

  "We have to find a way to stop this," Hunter yelled in my ear. I looked at the flaming refuse and realized that one of the buildings just blown to bits was my rooming house: the flames were now consuming my clothes, photographs of my parents, mementos of my childhood.

  I climbed behind Hunter, fearful that the fire-and-brimstone folks were right and that God had grown impatient with our feeble efforts to reform.

  Chapter 51

  MARKET STREET

  APRIL 18, 1906. 8:00 A.M.

  Enrico Caruso, a topcoat covering his silk pajamas, entered the Palace Grill to a sight that belied the horror a few blocks away. The post-temblor frenzy of the hotel's guests had vanished. Scores of people lounged amidst the clinking of bone china and the patter of small talk, eating and drinking as though nothing unusual had transpired.