She looked at me and said, "I talked to Robert Evans in your office and he's found an apartment in one of your buildings for them. That means Samuel will have to drive to work, so I've already bought him a used Ford that should do nicely. Of course, your foundation is going to donate to the society."
I nodded. What else could I do?
"And, Mr. Robertson already agreed to hire Lawrence. He mentioned something about the Western Addition, whatever that is."
Carter looked dumbstruck. "Mama? Just last year--"
She put up her hand and said, "I know. If your father had any idea what I was up to--"
John interrupted and said, "He'd have a few things to say about it, that's for damn sure."
We could hear Lettie call out from the kitchen, "John! Please watch your language around your Aunt Louise!"
We all laughed as John said, "Yes, ma'am. Sorry Aunt Louise."
She just smiled and nodded as my father walked in with two cups of coffee in his hand. The sloshing wasn't too bad but I could tell that he was trying to keep them from shaking, which was making things worse. He put them down on the table in front of Mrs. Jones and where Geneva had been sitting. Both with a slight bang. Carter's mother started to laugh and then quickly stood and fled down the hallway, covering her mouth and trying not to be rude.
Once everyone had their coffee, we all took a sip. It wasn't bad if you liked the flavor of burned things. My father looked around expectantly and asked, "Well?"
Geneva said, "For a moment I was afraid I might lose my job if you started working in the kitchen, Dr. Williams." She smiled over her cup at Lettie who giggled just like Marnie, something I'd only seen once before.
My father took a sip from his cup and frowned. "I don't think there's any chance of that, Geneva."
Right then, Mrs. Jones came back into the room. My father said, "Don't bother trying it, Louise. I'm afraid my efforts at making coffee have failed."
I stood up and said, "Let's walk over to the Top of the Mark and let them make coffee for us."
Everyone agreed and rather quickly, I noticed. Before long, we were strolling down California Street towards the hotel at the corner of Mason.
As we walked into the lobby, I saw George Hearst and his wife, Collette, emerge from the elevator. Carter tapped my father on the shoulder and quietly said, "Look."
My father abruptly dropped Lettie's arm and strode across the room. I had been escorting Mrs. Jones while Carter had Geneva on his arm. I said, "We'll be right back. Stay here."
John asked, "What is this?"
I turned and shook my head. "Just wait here."
We caught up with my father right as he was laying into Mr. Hearst. "And another thing, George, that yellow rag of yours is the laughing-stock of this City. Why don't you do some good with your paper instead of tearing people down?"
Mr. Hearst pointed at Carter and me, and said to my father, "Is that what you mean? These perverts? Like I said to your son last year, this City would be better off without their kind."
My father began to take off his coat. "No one calls my sons names and gets away with it."
Carter stepped in front of my father and looked down at Mr. Hearst. "This might be a good time to leave."
Mrs. Hearst pulled on her husband's arm and said, "Come on, George. These shoes are killing me. Let's go home."
Mr. Hearst looked at me with a sour grin and asked, "How was jail, Nick?"
I just stood there and looked at the man. There was nothing to say so I didn't reply.
Right at that moment, a bulb flashed to my left. We all turned in time for another photographer to get a second shot.
Mr. Hearst waved his right hand around wildly and said, "Get out!" I didn't know if he was talking to us or the photographers but they got a third picture before a bulky man with a badge came up and said to them, "Leave the hotel now. No photographs allowed in the lobby."
The three men with cameras all grinned at me and ran outside. They had the best photograph they were going to get that year, no doubt.
I looked up to see Mrs. Hearst dragging her husband down a hallway so they could escape. Everyone else walked up right at that moment. Lettie said, "Let's all go up, shall we?"
We walked over to the elevator. John pressed the button while Lettie helped my father back into his coat and talked soothingly to him. When the door opened, the car was empty except for the operator, a smartly-dressed woman in a red uniform with bright brass buttons wearing a square red cap. She grinned at me and said, "You just missed George Hearst."
As we piled into the car, I said, "No, we didn't. My father tried to punch him."
Pressing the button for the Top of the Mark, she said, "Gee! I'm sorry I missed that."
Lettie sighed and said, "Don't worry, my dear. It will be in all the papers tomorrow."
Carter added, "Except the Examiner."
Author's Note
Thank you for buying and reading this book!
The plot and flow of this story came out of thin air, as with all the Nick & Carter books.
Many thanks, as always, to everyone who has read, reviewed, and emailed me about the Nick & Carter books. It is deeply gratifying in ways that words will never do justice to. Thank you.
Acknowledgments
I first became aware of the editorial note ("Needed: A Cleanup") that appeared in the June 28, 1954, issue of the San Francisco Examiner after reading Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 by Nan Alamilla Boyd. As I've mentioned before, I have referred to Ms. Boyd's research for the names of bars and nightclubs and specific historical events that affected the LGBT community of San Francisco. I have also relied on her descriptions of the era, which has been very useful. I am deeply grateful for her research and this book.
The full text of that editorial note (which is found in the Prologue of this book) was something I had been trying to locate for more than six months. Sean McNamara found it for me and I am deeply grateful to him for his super-human librarian skills and connections.
Once again, I relied upon the insight and knowledge of Marc Echeveste to help me make sure the legal matters in this book, as they apply to courtroom procedure are correct. As I mention in the Historical Notes, there is much about Nick and Carter's arraignment, hearing, and trial in San Rafael that is not constitutionally correct. Marc confirmed all of that, as I hoped he would, and then gave me the basis that I use in explaining what is wrong with the case in the Historical Notes. However, any mistakes in application or analysis are completely mine.
Finally, I want to thank my mother, Carol Haggard, for her many stories about Galveston, her birthplace. And, as always, for her powerful gift of storytelling.
Historical Notes
This book takes place from Monday, July 5, 1954 through Saturday, July 22, 1954.
The San Francisco Examiner: On Monday, July 28, 1954, the Examiner began a daily series of front-page stories focused on police raids around San Francisco. These stories ran for that week, although similar ones had been appearing intermittently in the newspaper for several years. The first article, featured on column 2 of the front page, described the efforts of the San Francisco D.A. and police to rid the City of "sex deviates" for, as Dr. Karl M. Bowman of the Langley Porter Clinic was quoted as saying, "[s]ociety is entitled to protect itself against being bothered by these persons." Mention was made of a state-mandated study that, not surprisingly, found that most homosexuals being treated for their "illness" did not want a cure. On that day, the Examiner also printed an editorial note and call to action which is found in the Prologue to this book.
Sausalito: This charming bayside town has been through a number of incarnations in the last hundred years. During Prohibition, the secluded coves of the surrounding Marin Headlands made an excellent location for rum-runners and bootleggers. Speakeasies and brothels flourished in the town and the local authorities turned a blind eye to most of these illegal operations, although not to all. Things calmed down a bit when Prohibition was r
epealed but heated up again when the Marinships shipyard opened during the war and the town's population swelled almost overnight. Once the shipyards closed, Sausalito became a sleepy town once more until the Beats and other artists discovered how cheap it was to live just across the Golden Gate Bridge and began to make their way over from North Beach causing a bit of a stir with the locals.
Sausalito Police: In 1954, Alden Ingalls was the Chief of Police. He resigned in the fall of that year to become undersheriff to the Marin County Sheriff and was replaced by Louis Mountanos whose term started in January of 1955. He was only 29 years old at that time and an article from the November 5, 1954, issue of the Sausalito News describing the appointment included this bit:
Before Mountanos’ appointment was approved, the city clerk read an application for the post from Sgt. Stanley Kelly, a member of the department for the past ten years. The application was ordered filed with the comment that Kelly had already been under consideration.
In those two sentences, the fictitious person of Sergeant Stewart O'Connor was born.
Superior Court for the County of Marin: District Attorney William Weissech and his assistant, Roger Garety, were both real persons. My interpretations of their attitudes and actions are completely fictional while shaded by what I read in what their contemporaries said of them and how they were quoted in the newspapers of the day.
Judge Jackson Roswell is completely fictitious as is Dr. Gerald Wildman, M.D.
In this book, Nick and Carter are arrested for vagrancy and not indecent exposure. I did this on purpose. In Edelman v. California (1953), Justices Black and Douglas wrote in their dissent that:
Subsection 5 of 647 of the Penal Code of California provides that "Every idle, or lewd, or dissolute person, or associate of known thieves . . ." is a vagrant, punishable by fine of not more than $500 or by imprisonment of not more than six months, or both. 2 Petitioner was charged with and convicted only of being a "dissolute" person. The ambiguity and consequent broad reach of this crime of "dissoluteness" is patent. The trial court's efforts to reduce the ambiguity greatly increased it. The judge told the jury that petitioner was not accused of "any violation of any particular act" but with being a person of "a certain status" or "in a certain condition." His "character" alone was involved, since "vagrancy is a status or a condition and it is not an act." Petitioner was therefore to be tried for a subjective "status," not the easiest thing in the world to prove or disprove.
Once I read this, I realized that if one were to combine the subjective vagueness of the vagrancy statute with the psychiatric notion popular in the 1950s that homosexuality was a treatable illness, then the Examiner would get exactly what it wanted: a perfect catch-22 that damned queers of any stripe and made them subject to arbitrary arrest until they could be "cured," even if they didn't want to be.
In order to make this case, I had to force the judge and the D.A. to flagrantly ignore several important points of law, particularly the right of all prisoners to bail (excepting those charged with capital crimes) and the basic notion of corpus delicti. While a D.A. in Dougherty County, Georgia, for example, might conceivably do such a thing and not expect any reprisals, it's hard to imagine that one in Marin County would do the same. But the Marin County of 1954 was a lot different than the one of 2017. Still, it's a stretch and so I must rely on creative license.
Galveston: 1954 was in the waning years of this "wide-open town," sometimes known as the "Free State of Galveston," that had once been much more celebrated than Las Vegas. During its heyday, in the 1940s, the local mob was run by the Maceo brothers, Sam and Rosario, in conjunction with Galveston County Sheriff Frank Biaggne, who served from 1933 to 1957.
Although the stories of how it happened are fascinating and numerous, the state was finally able to shut down the majority of vice activities after a new sheriff was elected in 1956.
The Rio Grande Club on Market Street was a real place. It was described in a small LIFE magazine article that ran in July of 1954.
The Hotel Galvez still stands overlooking the Gulf of Mexico and, according to many accounts including online reviews, is still quite haunted.
I initially wanted Nick & Carter to visit Galveston so that maybe they could run into my grandfather (who was quite handsome) and visit The Balinese Room and perhaps see Peggy Lee perform there. Alas, my grandfather didn't live in Galveston in July of 1954 and The Balinese Room was being renovated after a fire broke out earlier that year. But they rescued Mildred and Andy, and that's really all that matters.
More Information
Nick Williams Mysteries
The Unexpected Heiress
The Amorous Attorney
The Sartorial Senator
The Laconic Lumberjack
The Perplexed Pumpkin
The Savage Son
The Mangled Mobster
The Iniquitous Investigator
The Voluptuous Vixen
The Timid Traitor
The Sodden Sailor
The Excluded Exile
The Paradoxical Parent
The Pitiful Player
Nick & Carter Stories
An Enchanted Beginning
Golden Gate Love Stories
The One He Waited For
Their Own Hidden Island
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The Iniquitous Investigator (A Nick Williams Mystery Book 8) Page 22
