1906: A Novel

by Dalessandro, James

  Behind them, the Ferry Building was still standing. Along the waterfront, every pier and warehouse was soiled but intact. Not a single one had been lost.

  Epilogue

  TELEGRAPH HILL

  MAY 30, 1906. 8:00 A.M.

  When you first dream of becoming a writer, you never know when the chance might come, or whether you have the gifts the task requires. You wonder if you will ever craft the indelible line, record a treasured character, expose some festered evil, offer up some moving insight. You never dream the opportunity might come as mine has, a jolt in the night, a call when least prepared, an event so momentous that no matter how inventive the effort, how deft or impassioned the juggling and re-arranging of your thoughts, the words still seem trifling.

  I have done what I could. I mixed first person observations with third reportage, as did my hero Nelly Bly, stirring together observation with hearsay, conjecture with fact. Light and shadow, terror and mirth, heartbreak and romance, all blended as well as I am able.

  I used the diaries of Kaitlin Staley and the expansive letters she has sent—the post office has never stopped working—nearly a dozen letters, all crafted in a marvelous, flowing hand. In her most recent, Kaitlin, now sixteen, vows to return and create "elegant but inexpensive fashions" to replace those lost in the fire. She was wandering the docks of Oakland when Lincoln spotted her. Lincoln's journal had burned up in the Palace Hotel, but he has graciously sent an account of both his travails and his grand journey with the great Caruso. Just yesterday, the third of his correspondence detailed his killing of Scarface with a derringer.

  Ting Leo has been adopted by a Chinese doctor and his wife in Berkeley. Through a translator, I interviewed her about her frightening adventures.

  The twelve girls we rescued from Ah Toy's are safe and adapting to life with Donaldina Cameron.

  I found much of the interchanges between Rolf and Schmitz in the barely literate scrawlings of Tommy Biggs, who probably planned to sell his notes and recollections to the highest bidder after Byron Fallon finished with him. I took license in recounting moments between Rolf and Tommy, Donen and Schmitz, Antoine and Tessie Wall, but as I stated at the beginning of this account, I strove for the truth, though not always the exact words.

  I have been informed by Fremont Older and the new prosecutor, Mr. William H. Langdon, that corruption charges against Eugene Schmitz, Adam Rolf, and their cohorts at City Hall will soon be presented to a Grand jury. General Funston, it is rumored, may face a military tribunal.

  Hence, I am ordered to change a name or two, to make composite some elements to avoid any conflict with judicial efforts. The law, Older and Langdon assure me, will render the ultimate truth. Another firestorm is brewing—perhaps even larger than the one we just witnessed—this one in a court room. I pray when it is finished that justice will finally have its day.

  One hundred years from now, when the world looks back on our tragedy, I want them to see the human face of it. I pray they learn that Schmitz and Funston were not our heroes; that the feeble Mayor's sudden decisiveness and the little General's boldness merely hastened our demise. Hell will have a special place for Adam Rolf and Eugene Schmitz, Jessie Donen and John Kelly, Scarface and Ah Toy, who all thrived on the misery of others.

  Fire Chief Dennis Sullivan lingered for four days, until the last embers of the fire died, as though his spirit were a part of it. In one hundred years, I would like people to remember him. I would like them to know of Hunter Fallon and his father and brother. Of a group of young men they called The Brotherhood, a fearless Chinese girl named Ting Leo, and Kaitlin Staley, a young runaway who came in search of Shangri-La and found more than she ever dreamed. Perhaps they will remember me as well, Annalisa Passarelli, a newspaper reporter and opera critic, and my friend, the great Caruso.

  Most of all, I would like them to remember a fabled city that is no more. For this is the story of San Francisco, a place so unique we will never see her likes again.

  But the story does not quite end yet.

  Sometime after dawn this morning, Hunter entered the barren living room, where I was typewriting in a sea of ash.

  "Are you ready?" he asked.

  I nodded, looking up at him, a tinge of pink remaining in his once-ravaged face. The blue eyes, Byron's eyes, sparkled again.

  "I am ready, Officer Fallon."

  I held his arm as we descended the south side of Telegraph Hill, to Union Street, as a clanging trolley car approached. A golden light illuminated the scorched hills around us. "La luce splendida," we whispered together, the spirits of Gioia and Giuseppe, Byron and Isabella and Christian palpable among us.

  We climbed aboard the trolley where a tall man turned and doffed his slouch brim hat. "Officer Fallon. Miss Passarelli. I guess this is quite appropriate. The first passengers on the maiden voyage of the restored Union Street trolley line, a mechanical Phoenix rising toward our glorious future."

  "Mayor Schmitz," Hunter nodded. "I hear things are getting lively down at City Hall." Schmitz was unaware that while Hunter recuperated, he had been aiding Prosecutor Langdon in the renewed graft hunt.

  "Let us say they are always interesting, but I am confident that I will be exonerated." The Mayor handed us a newspaper, a joint effort by the city's publications, with his photo and a bold caption underneath.

  Our fair city lies in ruins, but those are the damndest, finest ruins ever seen on the face of the Earth.

  -MAYOR EUGENE SCHMITZ

  Schmitz was grinning when I handed the newspaper back to him.

  Hunter and I rode silently up Union Street, dressed in clothes we had borrowed from Francis and Eleanor Fagen, whose house in the Western Addition had been saved by the valiant effort on Van Ness Avenue. Hunter was dressed in brown herringbone English tweed, the sleeves an inch too long, and his father's bowler hat, which we found hanging near the wine barrels. I was in a lilac silk afternoon dress with white lace, crossover bodice and three-tier banded skirt, topped with a white, broad-brimmed bonnet with a plume of pheasant tail.

  Not that it really matters.

  Near the summit of Russian Hill, we stared down at the dusty ruins of Chinatown on our left. Beyond Chinatown, several square blocks of the Barbary Coast had miraculously survived. A song had already been composed in tribute.

  "If God spanked San Francisco for being so frisky/Why did he burn the churches down/And spare Hotaling's Whiskey?"

  We passed the aftermath of the firestorm on Russian Hill. Scarcely a structure stood and nothing remained unscathed.

  At Van Ness, St. Mary's Cathedral stood by the inspired efforts of Father Ramm and a cadre of true believers.

  Close by the cathedral was a row of newly-burned buildings. Days after the fire had burned out, General Funston's dynamite teams tried to level a row of damaged structures. The flaming debris rained down over several blocks. Before irate firefighters could extinguish it, the blaze had added twenty-six buildings to the toll.

  Everywhere, the usual sounds—honking horns, shouting merchants, squealing children, Caruso on the Victor—had been replaced by the churning of a paddy shovel, the clanging of steel hammers, and the bite of saws. The first building was raised four days after the fire died out. A new edifice was now rising every four minutes.

  We asked the gripman to stop at Union and Webster Street, where we laid a rose near the spot where Christian and Carlo fell and read the Lord's Prayer for both of them. Hunter was calm and stoic, reading with a tiny streak of emotion in his voice, the pain seeping through the brave face just before he finished. I stammered through most of my part.

  When we reached the end of the Union Street line, Hunter doffed his hat politely to Mayor Schmitz. We crossed Lyon Street and entered the Presidio, where a buckboard carried us to a hill above a cemetery.

  At the hill's crest, overlooking rows of fresh white crosses, we took our place behind three couples waiting patiently in line before Father Yorke.

  "Do you, Rose Galante, take Neil Fi
gurelli to be your lawful wedded husband?" asked Father Yorke.

  "I do."

  The good Father blessed them, they kissed and moved aside.

  I gripped Hunter's arm, adjusted my hat to shield my eyes from the brightening sun, and stepped ahead.

  "Do you, Thomas Cahal, take Donna Antonelli as your lawful wedded wife?"

  "I do."

  "Rosalind Rubenstein, do you take Randolph Johnson as your lawful wedded husband?"

  "I do."

  We stepped forward to face Father Yorke.

  "Are you keeping busy, Father?" Hunter asked.

  "I switched from wakes to weddings last week," he replied. "Just married a fireman and a woman he chopped out of a burning building. Married a hundred people this week. I think it's living in parks and tents that's doing it, cookin' and eatin' together' in the streets, like a big social gathering. Rich people, poor people, black and white, it's like the Devil brought out the saint in everyone. Never seen anything like it. More weddings than I've done in five years."

  "That is a good thing," I said. "Hopeful."

  "I hear the restoration committee promoted Francis to fill your father's vacancy on the detective squad," Father Yorke replied, opening his Bible.

  "Francis wants to be Chief of Detectives someday. If I don't beat him to it. He and I are surrogate fathers to Christian's children."

  "I expected no less. You're your father's son, which is the best I can say of any man. I can see him plain as day in you." Father Yorke had to take a breath and steady himself.

  "And you, Annalisa, ain't a man alive, or left us, who wouldn't love a gal that did what you did."

  He recited some words I scarcely remember.

  "Annalisa Passarelli, do you take Hunter Fallon as your lawful wedded husband?"

  "I do."

  "Hunter Fallon, do you take Annalisa Passarelli as your lawful wedded wife?"

  "I sure do."

  I reached up and kissed Hunter, my eyes wide open. Other than our fleeting encounters in adolescence, I had known him six weeks. In that brief time, I had seen more in him than I had dreamed possible in any man.

  I do not know what will become of Hunter and me and of the great and terrible City as it begins anew. Those who God blessed with our very lives will be marked forever with "survivor" beside our names.

  For now, that is enough. Whatever the future holds for the new San Francisco, it will be blessed with one thing.

  It will have a Fallon looking over it.

  In fact, it will have a few.

  "Hunter and Annalisa Fallon, you are husband and wife. May God bless you for all your days."

  Of one thing I am certain. Enrico Caruso will never again sing in San Francisco. "I prefer Vesuvio," he told a reporter as he was boarding the eastbound train.

  I cannot say I blame him.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND AFTERWORD

  The writing of this novel was a six-year adventure that would never have succeeded without the help of the following people.

  First and foremost, my most loyal friend and manager, Peter Miller, has stood by me when lesser men would have folded. Gladys Hanson and Richard Hanson of the San Francisco City Museum have devoted their lives to unraveling the distortions in the events of April 1906, and have provided their archives, insight and support from the day of conception. The support of Steve Chicorel in all aspects of my career has been invaluable, as has that of my personal assistant, Lauren Gee.

  Len Amato, Director of Development for Spring Creek/Baltimore Productions, was the first person outside of my personal enclave to hear this story and recognize its strength. His support, friendship and consul have been invaluable.

  I had an army of dedicated researchers and personal editors. My wife Katie; Cy Bowers, Angelo Hazifotis, Lorraine Flett; the wonderful novelist Mary Wings; my sometime writing partner Lidia Fraser; "Citizen Jane" Alexander; Tim McDowell; Tony Mastrogiorgio, Barbara Brennan, my friend and ally Paul Aratow, Kenn Fong and Maitland Zane of the San Francisco Chronicle. A special thanks to Brooks Parsons for his constant needling for me to finish, and to his three sons, Anthony, Hunter, and Christian.

  I would like to acknowledge Richie Corsello, Karl Dakin, Steve Haun and my directing partner Ben Burtt, who are united in our efforts to expand awareness of this story via a documentary, The Damndest Finest Ruins. The discoveries we made in that effort have helped dramatically in the writing of this novel.

  Two great minds saved me when the 1906 effort seemed daunting and incomplete. The first was Otto Penzler, owner of New York's marvelous Mysterious Bookshop, who refused to let me produce anything less than my best work, and to one of the great freelance book editors in the business, Lou Aronica, who spotted the flaws that turned the corner in my effort.

  To Nion McEvoy, owner of Chronicle Books, and to Editorial Director Jay Schaefer, who care passionately about their work and have fun doing it: through them this book is now a reality.

  And thanks to Lew Hunter, who made me think that a truck driver's son from Cleveland, Ohio, could actually do this.

  Finally, with great joy and sadness, I acknowledge the inspiration and friendship of Ken Kesey. When I was twenty-three years old, a friend took me to Oregon to visit him at his farm. There began a friendship that lasted thirty years, until Ken's death. That first meeting led to the founding of the Santa Cruz, California, Poetry Festival with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Ken Kesey, and where I came of age as the youngest writer on the bill.

  Ken Kesey may have been the most civil and intelligent man I have ever known. I am still wounded at his loss: the world is a much less interesting place without him.

  On April 18, 1906, the city of San Francisco, wealthiest and most influential in the American West, was struck by an earthquake and subsequent fires that burned for three days. It was the worst natural disaster in American History, our most catastrophic event outside of war. Twenty-nine thousand buildings were destroyed. The death toll was fixed by city officials at 478 so as not to scare away investors: the death toll was easily 5,000, perhaps double that. The city's corrupt mayor, Eugene Schmitz, has long been heralded as a suddenly decisive leader who rallied a chaotic city when, in fact, his decisions contributed to the horror. These falsehoods have endured for a century.

  On the day of the earthquake, the biggest corruption hunt in American history was underway in San Francisco, authorized by President Theodore Roosevelt and aimed at prosecuting Mayor Schmitz and his entire regime. It was part of an attempt by Roosevelt to destroy Boss Rule in America and challenge the power of big business and broad "trusts" to corrupt every aspect of urban life. During and immediately after the chaos of the fire, the men under investigation struck back at their enemies.

  Annalisa Passarelli, Kaitlin Staley and her father Lincoln Staley, and Ting Leo are all fictional. Also fictional are the Fallons (Hunter, Christian, father Byron), though the death of Byron is based on San Francisco's most celebrated unsolved mystery, the death of reformist Police Chief William Biggy, who in 1908 disappeared from the police launch on San Francisco Bay after a meeting with the Graft Hunters.

  Mayor Eugene Schmitz is portrayed as accurately as possible, as are Fire Chief Dennis Sullivan and his wife, Margaret. Enrico Caruso is very accurate, with one uncertainty: no one knows for sure if he sang Che Gelida Manina from his window at the Palace during the fire/exodus.

  Adam Rolf, who is actually a composite of several men, including Abe Reuf, the city’s corrupt political boss at the time.

  The prosecutor in the novel, Charles Feeney, is based on Francis Heney, who was gunned down in the courtroom during the corruption trials that followed, not blown up in his house during the fire. Abe Ruef’s favorite method of eliminating people who stood against him was to dyamite their houses: he did it three times attempting to silence James Gallagher, President of the Board of Supervisors, who survived to become a key witness in the trials. The burning of the Spreckels mansion, many historians be
lieve, was an attempt by Abe Ruef's goons to destroy evidence that Spreckels was hiding for the corruption investigation, which he was helping to finance in an attempt to break Abe Reuf's stranglehold on the city. Spreckels' wife Eleanor gave birth to a baby girl on the sidewalk as her house burned. The documents were actually in another of Spreckels' mansion in the city.

  The sequence of the fire is accurate hour by hour, neighborhood by neighborhood, including details of Mayor Schmitz having to move the command center three times in order to stay ahead of the blaze.

  The original Emperor Norton and Shanghai Kelley had already died by 1906, but others regularly assumed their names and habits; I've kept the originals, and some other colorful characters, alive as they were just too memorable to be left behind.

  The events are real: this was San Francisco, and this is what happened. I deferred, at every juncture, to a simple notion: that no one named Rhett Butler fought in the Civil War, nor was he acquainted with a woman named Scarlett O'Hara and yet, where would our understanding of that turbulent moment in American history be without them?

  -JD