Belle Cora: A Novel

by Margulies, Phillip

  LVI

  I KEPT THE NEWSPAPERS THAT CARRIED STORIES of the trial under my bed, in the cedarwood hope chest that once belonged to the wife of James King of William. Years later, I pasted the articles into a scrapbook. Even today I can’t read them without picturing the men at whose behest they were written, and I still want to hurt them, wherever they are.

  The Alta California reported the incident in this way: “Gen. William H. Richardson was assassinated in the streets of this city last evening, under circumstances particularly atrocious,” from “no inciting cause but an unnatural thirst for blood.” After a grossly prejudiced account of the incident, a summary of the medical examiner’s report (“The ball entered the body about two and a half inches above the left nipple: it perforated the fourth rib …”), and a short biography of the deceased, the article concluded: “Gen. Richardson was brave and chivalric to a proverb, and withal so gentle and quiet in his demeanor towards all, that none could know him and not love him. He leaves a young wife overwhelmed in grief, and whose situation is such as to call forth the strongest sympathy of every individual.”

  James King of William added his voice to the chorus with an editorial in his newspaper, the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin. “Murder & Gambling, etc.” was the headline. “The cowardly-like assassination on Saturday of a U.S. Marshal, General Richardson, on one of our public thoroughfares and within a few yards of Montgomery Street, calls for some expression of opinion from us. We are told by those who knew the deceased, that he was a good citizen and an efficient officer, ever diligent in the discharge of his duties. Cora was an Italian assassin and a gambler …”

  Like the Alta California, King mentioned the vigilantes right away, using his favorite technique of strenuous insinuation—it would be a shame if government corruption left the People no choice but to form another Vigilance Committee. It was his custom to put his most reckless libels into fictitious letters to the editor from imaginary irate citizens. Then, as himself, he would comment on the understandable frustration that inspired those intemperate words. Give the courts a chance, give them a chance, and if justice was not served (meaning, if Charley didn’t hang), why, then, it would be no surprise if a Vigilance Committee again arose to punish malefactors as it had in the heroic early days of San Francisco.

  It was a conspiracy from the start. But though I had been warned that it was, and sometimes I said it was, I didn’t really believe it. More often I told people—my girls, my servants, storekeepers, gamblers, gentlemen at my house—that James King of William had the penis of a four-year-old boy, that Sam Brannan’s was just a little bigger, and they both hated me because I knew it. People liked hearing this; it was the kind of thing they expected a parlor-house madam to say. For that very reason, it did not make much of an impression, and after a while I stopped saying it.

  LVII

  ON THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING, I had a messenger deliver letters to Ned McGowan, Herbert Owen, and two or three other men who knew about courts and lawyers. McGowan came to see me. We talked for several hours about the shooting, and he bedded down in an empty room upstairs.

  I had the kind of long night that Charley used to help me through, in our early days in Sacramento City and San Francisco, when Jeptha had left me and I felt as if I were someone else, some innocent soul deposited into the body of this wicked woman who dared not even use her real name. Charley had been my anchor. He had saved my life.

  Then, last year, I had begun to betray him, on a regular basis, with Jeptha.

  I thought a lot about that now, in our big half-empty bed. I tried to sleep. I reminded myself that I must be wide awake tomorrow, when I would have many decisions to make. Of course, that did no good at all. I got up. I lit a lantern and went to the room where I had put Ned McGowan and looked in on him. He was sleeping soundly. I thought about shaking him awake. I almost did—he would be company at least. But, after all, he wasn’t Charley, and he would be of better use to me tomorrow with a clear head. I grabbed a book—The Count of Monte Cristo, which I had sent a servant to purchase for me the morning after our encounter with Mr. and Mrs. Richardson at the American Theatre—and I went downstairs to the kitchen and fixed myself a hot toddy with plenty of whiskey and began to read it. Edmond Dantès (I remembered this from the excerpt) was imprisoned for fourteen years in the Château d’If. He languished in the Stygian shadows, deprived of sunlight, for so long that even after he escaped, for the rest of his life, he had the unnatural pallor of a prisoner: it was too late for the sun to darken his skin. I wondered if such a thing could be, if skin could lose its ability to absorb sunlight. I made myself another hot toddy.

  Early in the morning, I became drowsy and drank coffee to stay awake. A couple of hours later, I went with McGowan and Lewis to the place in City Hall where the inquest was to be held.

  There were three factions present among the spectators: curious neutrals; sporting men (Charley’s friends); friends of Richardson.

  Mrs. Richardson was there in black bombazine, more becoming than the dress she had worn at the theater, and such a perfect fit that I could not help thinking of it hanging impatiently in her closet, awaiting this day. When she saw me, her right arm rose in a slow, unbending gesture learned from melodramas. “That’s her. Dear Lord, she dares to come here, she’s here to gloat! How dare you!” Everyone looked. “Get her out of here! Get her out of here!” A burly fellow, one of Richardson’s friends, patted her hand and spoke to her softly. She jerked the hand away. “I don’t need your help, I need a man’s help. They say there are more men in San Francisco than women, but I haven’t met one here except my Billy, and this woman has had him killed!” The last part was spoken in a crybaby whine, eyes on the ceiling, head wagging.

  “You ridiculous woman,” I said. “You know damned well it was you who killed your husband, by calling him a coward and egging him on into a fight.”

  McGowan tugged my arm. “You can’t win against her now.”

  “Get her out of here!” wailed Mrs. Richardson like an infant.

  “It was you,” I said, unable to stop. “You told your Bill to prove he was a man. So he filled himself with Dutch courage and wagged his stupid pistol at my Charley.”

  “Oh!” she cried as if stabbed. “Oh, help me, someone!”

  After murmuring to each other in low tones, several men approached the sheriff’s deputies. “Are you going to let a common prostitute talk that way to the general’s wife?”

  As the deputies turned toward me, my eyes sought Ned. “Judge McGowan,” I said, using his title to remind everyone that he was a man of importance, “would you speak for me?”

  Ned called the sheriff’s deputies each by name, and said, “I know you’re not going to let these fellows bully you. Charles Cora is her man. She has as much right to be here as Mrs. Richardson.”

  “Well, okay,” one of them replied. “But keep her away from the widow.”

  Except that the dead brute had rejoiced in the plum of a lucrative federal appointment, the incident was not unlike many a whiskey-soaked affray of the type San Francisco newspapers dispensed with in two paragraphs: a drunk had drawn a weapon, forcing another man to kill him. That would come out. Charley would be released. The Bulletin and the Alta California would cry foul, but it would happen, because facts were facts.

  But when the eight-man inquest jury was impaneled, McGowan became serious. “What is it?” I asked. “They’re all Know-Nothings,” he said. “Every last one.”

  There was much smoking and chewing and spitting. The judge called repeatedly for order. Three guns and a knife were laid out on a table. When the witnesses were called, a court stenographer and three newspaper stenographers scratched furiously away in their notebooks.

  I knew from reading the papers that one of the chief witnesses to the shooting was to be Abner Mosely, who had lost everything to Charley in a card game only a few days ago. When he was sworn in, I rose from my seat, ready to tell the jury that they couldn’t trust a word th
is man had to say—he hated Charley. But McGowan warned me that I could be kicked out if I said anything.

  When I heard Mosely’s testimony, I thought it would be clear to everyone that this man, standing where his own account placed him—twenty yards away, on a dimly lit street at dusk—could not possibly have seen what he claimed to have seen or heard what he claimed to have heard. He said that he saw Charley push Richardson into the door. He said he had heard Richardson plead, “You’re not going to shoot me, are you? I’m unarmed.” He said that Charley had Richardson pinned by both his arms while he pulled the trigger, which would seem to require that Charley have three arms of his own, as I remarked to McGowan, who said, “Good point.” But the jury, though it asked other questions, said nothing about this.

  The remaining witnesses told conflicting stories. Three men said they had found a derringer—no doubt, Richardson’s gun—near the body when they moved it. One witness had found a knife lying on the ground. See? I thought. He was armed. But then another man said that when Richardson’s body was moved he saw no gun at all; the gun appeared later. And a couple of subsequent witnesses told stories implying that someone had rushed to the scene and planted the gun and the knife. (The someone, I learned later, was generally supposed to have been sent to the spot by me.)

  The foreman of the jury, reading from a page, said it was their conclusion that “William H. Richardson came to his death by a pistol shot fired from the hands of one Charles Cora on the night of Saturday, Nov. 17, between the hours of six and seven o’clock … and the act was premeditated and that there was nothing to mitigate the same.”

  THE ONLY REALLY GOOD ATTORNEY I KNEW was Hall McAllister, who used to patronize my house on Dupont Street in the company of his brother Ward, later famous as Mrs. Astor’s social secretary. The morning after the inquest, I went to McAllister’s office, telling him that I wanted Charley to have the best defense money could buy. He said that he would love to take the case, but public opinion was so inflamed against Charley that it would be the ruin of him: the lawyer who defended Cora could lose all his other business. McAllister had a family. Besides, his father, Judge McAllister, would never forgive him.

  “Fortunately, I know just the men who can help you,” said McAllister. First, I must hire James A. McDougall, the former state attorney general. McDougall loved a fight, did not mind representing unpopular defendants, and was friendly with Colonel Edward D. Baker, whose services I must obtain at any cost. Baker was one of the finest orators in the country, a man of unimpeachable integrity, admired by the sort of people likely to end up on our jury. His mere presence in the courtroom, at Charley’s table, would help us. Baker, however, would have to be persuaded, and he would be very expensive.

  McAllister sent an errand boy to fetch McDougall, telling him to look for him in his office, and if he was not there to try this saloon, and that saloon, and that other saloon; this bothered me, because it was early in the day for drinking. Then we waited. I raised the second-story window’s shade, revealing the elaborate ironwork of the exterior windowsill, the arched windows of a bank across the street, and the naked masts and yardarms of ships in the bay. Below me were the bricks of Montgomery Street, signs, canvas awnings, hopping sparrows, men in stovepipe hats, a silent shouting match between two cart drivers. It occurred to me that the birds and horses, and some of the people on the ships, did not know that Charles Cora had shot William Richardson, but everyone else out there did, and it was the first thing that many had heard about either of these men. That amazed me. I could not quite grasp it. I thought of Charley in his cell. I thought of Jeptha and Agnes. With everyone they knew talking about the case, would they mention it to each other, or avoid discussing it so that they could avoid discussing me? Jeptha was not easily fooled, but I hated to think of him reading the newspapers and not getting Charley’s side of the story. I wished I could tell him about it now.

  At last McDougall came in. He was small and spare, with a goatee, a Mephistophelian expression, and agate eyes surrounded by crow’s-feet. Newspapers sprouted from the pockets of his frock coat. When he saw me, his mouth stretched in delight, but he looked at McAllister inquisitively.

  “I’m just helping her find counsel,” said McAllister. “I was thinking you and Baker. Baker likes you. You help bring Baker in.”

  McDougall’s glittering eyes inspected me. He nodded absentmindedly when McAllister rather belatedly said, “Mrs. Cora, allow me to introduce Mr. McDougall.”

  The little man exuded eagerness and confidence—maybe justified, but how, really, could I judge? I had seldom used a lawyer in my business.

  McDougall took me across the street to the headquarters of Baker & Wistar, Attorneys at Law. Baker was out. His partner let us wait in Baker’s untidy office, where a window was propped open by books, and stacks of papers bound in twine stood against the wall. I told McDougall about the events at the American Theatre and about Richardson’s actions the following evening at the Cosmopolitan, when he had threatened to shoot Charley and anyone who got between him and Charley. McDougall, after hunting for ink and paper on Baker’s desk, had me repeat all of the names that had come up in my account. “The prosecution will try to restrict the testimony to the shooting itself,” he predicted. “When we bring witnesses against Richardson, they’ll say we’re soiling his name, putting him on the level of a gambler who lives on an immoral woman’s earnings.”

  “He does not! He’s just not flush enough now to pay for his defense.”

  McDougall looked up, a little surprised.

  “Is Baker really a fine lawyer?” I asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “Which of you is better?”

  He smiled. “I am, I think. But that’s a minority opinion. When Baker gives an address, the newspapers print all of it, word for word. They don’t do that for the rest of us. Nor is his value merely ornamental. He changes minds. We need him.”

  Baker came in at last, a tall man, untidy in his person and evidently proud of it. His head sat in his upturned collar like a cauliflower in a garden; the sparse hair was wild yet stiff, reminding me of those mountain cedars that look permanently struggling and windblown. It was a studied dishevelment speaking of eccentric genius indifferent to appearances. He had shiny skin, a piercing gaze, a long straight nose, and a double chin. From some angles he resembled a middle-aged baby.

  He made a visible decision to treat me like a lady (unlike McDougall, who was equally indifferent to my profession and my feelings). He sat in royal silence as McDougall told him that if he did not take the case Charley was doomed. If I had not guessed that Baker was vain, I would have known it from the way McDougall spoke to him. Encouraged by McDougall, I made my own plea on Charley’s behalf.

  Afterward, Baker sat for some time with his hands folded. A mighty mind was at work: we were not to interrupt. At last he rose to his feet and addressed me as if I were a foreign potentate or a vast crowd. “The most basic principles of equal justice under the law are at stake in this case. I am at your service, Belle Cora. I will do everything in my power, use every tool at my command, all my skill, my knowledge, and all my heart, to vindicate this man attacked by a drunken bully in the guise of a marshal, traduced by a bought press and all but abandoned by the legal profession. Though he had led a dissolute life and kept evil companions, he deserves justice, and I shall not abandon him.”

  I thrilled to this free sample of the mysterious natural force that was Colonel Baker’s power over the English language. Of course it was expensive: it was the best.

  LVIII

  WHEN THE NAMES OF THE LAWYERS I HAD HIRED were made public, it was understood immediately that Belle Cora would spend vast sums of money to save Charles Cora. My house promptly became the site of its own little gold rush. In the weeks before the trial, half a dozen people came to me claiming to have witnessed the shooting, or to know those who had seen it; with varying degrees of subtlety they would offer to change their testimony, or threaten to change it. I would
tell them that they should not have come: my house was being watched, and any suspicion of bribery would hurt Charley’s case. But I added that, just the same, whoever helped Charley was my friend, and whoever hurt him was my enemy, and that I was both generous and vengeful.

  One of these people was a woman named Maria Knight, who had testified at the inquest. She arrived early in the afternoon, wearing Sunday clothes, looking her best given that her head was too small for her body, her nose was the right size but too complicated, and standing near the nose, like an ill-conceived distraction, was a pink mole from which a long hair sprouted. With her was a sober-looking man with bad skin and round shoulders whom she introduced as Thomas Russell. I bade them sit, sent for tea and a seed cake, and said as usual that though she was welcome I was afraid that her visit might be misunderstood. It might be thought that she intended something dishonest, especially if later her testimony changed in a way that proved favorable to Mr. Cora.

  “It would? Really?” she asked, holding out her cup while I poured. “What kind of thing would folks think you’d like me to say?”

  That was a plain enough invitation to make an offer, and I would have struck a bargain with her if it hadn’t been for the presence of her companion, Russell. Perhaps she had brought him so that she would feel safe in a brothel. But he was also a witness to this conversation; I was afraid of a trap. “I’m not sure I want to give an example. Unless—would you mind if we continued this conversation in private?”