California Gold (21 page)

“No one else is expected,” Huntington said, fire in his eye. “Pedley!” he shouted. “See who’s there and send him packing.”

As the clerk ran from the adjoining bedroom into the foyer, Huntington waited, seeming, while the knocking continued.

On the other side of the double doors, Mack shot looks both ways along the gallery. Below, in the Grand Court, a string trio played, and the hoofs of carriage horses rapped on marble paving. The Montgomery Street entrance was a half-oval that allowed patrons to be driven right into the hotel.

Mack’s face bore garish bruises and his chest, thighs, and stomach ached. He’d put on a jeans jacket, clean but shabby, given him that morning by an Oakland harbor mission, along with everything from shirt to shoes. He’d scrubbed up and combed his hair, but even so, no one would ever mistake him for a Palace guest. Outside the barbershop on the Jessie Street side of the hotel, he’d slipped the shoeshine boy a nickel for the number of Huntington’s suite. Then he’d sneaked through a passage next to the billiard parlor and climbed seven flights of a service stair; he didn’t dare risk a ride in one of the mirror-paneled elevators.

He knocked again, his eye fixed on the nearby pantry; he hoped he got inside before the butler got back from his errand.

The doors opened.

“I want to see Mr. Huntington.”

The whey-faced clerk with round glasses blocked his move forward. Over the man’s shoulder, Mack saw a bearded man wearing a skullcap; he recognized him from engravings and photographs.

“Mr. Huntington is not available without prior—”

Mack’s hands shot to the clerk’s shoulders and he shoved him sideways with no trouble, then stepped inside and kicked the doors shut. As he strode through the foyer to the spacious sitting room, Huntington, who had leaped up, angrily hurled a napkin to the carpet. Mack saw a second man now, and it took him aback: Fairbanks. The lawyer’s index finger smoothed his tiny auburn mustache, a nervous motion.

“I’ll have your job,” Huntington spat at the visitor. “I am a valued patron of this hotel, and no employee dares break in on—”

“Sir, he doesn’t work here,” Fairbanks said. “This is one of the owners of the nickel ferry.”

“What?”

“This is Chance, sir.”

“What I own is forty percent of nothing,” Mack said. “The ferry’s at the bottom of the Inner Harbor.”

Huntington came around from behind the table as if loath to use it as a barrier and Fairbanks stepped back quickly out of his way. Huntington confronted Mack eye to eye. He was several inches taller.

“So you had an accident—” he began.

“Which you and your damned railroad arranged and paid for.”

“That’s ludicrous. An insult. Make sense, young man.”

“Try this. Your thugs did a thorough job. They sank our boat and then one of them smashed my partner’s head open, stuck a knife in him, and killed him. A decent harmless Chinese who just wanted the right to earn a living. You’re a murderer, Huntington.”

Fairbanks clamped a suntanned hand on Mack’s arm.

“I’ll handle this,” Huntington exclaimed as Mack flung Fairbanks off.

Fairbanks hesitated, momentarily resentful, but Huntington paid no attention. “By heaven, sir,” he said to Mack, “if you think that the Southern Pacific Corporation, or I personally, would ever stoop to employing physical violence of the kind you describe, you’re a madman. I will compete with you, or anyone, legitimately. I will employ every business means at my disposal. But I do not condone wanton destruction, or murder—I would never authorize either, and I am outraged to hear you suggest otherwise.”

Huntington’s combative style and his certitude made Mack less certain. “Someone arranged it,” he said.

“Open the door, Pedley,” Fairbanks said, knocking aside fronds of a potted palm as he started for the foyer. “I’ll get someone to help us remove—”

“I said I would handle this.”

Again Fairbanks stopped.

Huntington stepped closer to Mack, never blinking. “I do know your name, Mr. Chance. I have an extensive file on your shabby little ferryboat. I instructed Mr. Fairbanks to make you a substantial offer for the assets of the line—an offer you spurned. Now you come here saying I was forced to resort to hiring thugs. Absurd. Where’s your evidence?”

“I…” Mack’s mouth felt dusty.

Huntington leaped on his hesitation. “I’ll tell you where it is. There isn’t any evidence, because what you said is a pernicious lie, and you are either beside yourself with emotion, or a criminal lunatic. Get out of here, you gutter scum.”

Something flared in Mack’s head. He leaped for Huntington with both hands.

“Great God,” Huntington cried, reeling sideways and groping behind him. Fairbanks shot between them and threw Mack backward just as Huntington’s hand caught the tablecloth and brought down an avalanche of crystal, china, champagne bottles, serving domes, food, and drink.

Mack stumbled against a writing desk, then righted himself. Fists up, Fairbanks ran at him, malicious anticipation in his gray-metal eyes. Mack got his own fists in position in time to deflect the lawyer’s whipping right hand.

Mack tried to recall some of what Corbett taught him. He bobbed left and feinted, and Fairbanks’s next punch sailed by. The lawyer looked astonished. Mack took the opportunity to jab his jaw—it glanced off—then crossed with his left. That blow was solid. Fairbanks’s eyes glazed a moment and he retreated.

Mack didn’t press. He felt a fool, trying to box in the middle of a sitting room. Huntington ran by, throwing him the kind of look he might give a plague rat. “Damn you, Pedley, stand aside.” Doors crashed open; cello music and a faint hum of Grand Court activity drifted in. Huntington’s voice had a hollow quality as he shouted down seven floors.

“Police! Get the police up here! This is Huntington—I’ve been assaulted!”

Mack scanned the four doorways that opened off the sitting room. Could he escape through any of them? Which one? He’d been stupid to let his grief and rage goad him into this. What had he expected—that Huntington would fall to his knees and babble a confession?

In the corner of his eye he caught blurred motion. Mack spun toward Fairbanks, whipping up his guard. But the lawyer was faster, his punch well aimed and powerfully delivered. Mack’s head snapped back and he went down. He flopped on the thick carpet and watched the gas nozzles of the ceiling fixture go round and round like a carousel. The floor spun under him.
Damn fool, when will you learn?

Dazed, he heard the elevator stop, and then the police came charging along the gallery.

Mack lay on his back on the stone floor. It was the only space he could find. Five men were squeezed into a holding cell at the Kearny Street jail that was designed for two. The cell had no lights and it reeked of a full waste bucket in the corner.

A pickpocket had claimed the iron bunk. Two drunks maundered and bickered. The bull-like figure of Diego Marquez occupied the only stool. When the police threw Mack in the holding cell, he’d been astonished to discover Marquez among the prisoners. The priest had listened attentively while Mack told of his misadventures with the ferry, and his accusation of Huntington. Now Marquez sat perfectly still, powerful hands folded in his lap, while lying on the floor, Mack tried to sort out the truth from suppositions and outright fantasies generated by his anger. He slipped his hands under his head, thinking aloud.

“Maybe Huntington was telling the truth. Plenty of white men on the waterfront hate the Chinese, especially a successful one. Bao poached on Redbeard’s oyster beds, and I saw Redbeard watching us the first morning we ran the ferry…” He changed position, resting his crossed wrists on his forehead. “I don’t know what to think.”

“I think you ought to shut up,” one of the drunks muttered.

“Go to hell.”

The pickpocket lurched from the bunk, and pissed noisily into the waste pail. Marquez unfolded his hands and turned slightly on the stool. The gaslight that came through the barred doors at the end of the corridor of cells revealed dark bruises around both eyes, stigmata of a recent beating.

“I think I would agree with you about Huntington,” the priest said. “He probably wasn’t responsible. He hires politicians to drive out his competitors, not criminals. It’s too bad that you’ll never have a positive answer, but you won’t. You know the railroad’s passion for secrecy.”

“I know,” Mack sighed. He rolled over and looked up at the priest. “You didn’t say why you’re in here again.”

“Tonight I spoke to another public gathering. The police objected, I refused to step down—here I am.” A bitter smile. “Last time I was charged with disturbing the peace. This time it’s more serious—criminal syndicalism. It’s nonsense. But there are men in this city and this state who believe that the slightest improvement in the lot of the workingman is somehow a direct threat to their property. That’s so misguided. A worker’s right to join a union is his by his very nature as a man. The Holy Father himself proclaimed it so. But the men who hate the idea have great influence and many friends in city government—”

“So I’m learning. I still don’t understand why a priest has to go to jail. Can’t your superiors raise bail?”

“They can, they do. It takes a little time. My work causes controversy within the archdiocese. Archbishop Riordan is lenient with me. But he’s a fair man, so he listens to all factions—the relative few who support me, and a much larger number who do not. I can’t despise those priests who oppose me. They are my brothers in Christ, men of conservative mind but sincere conviction. They are sure that the owners are right, and the labor movement a dangerous, Satanic force.”

He clasped his hands again, now under his chin. “They don’t see the one-sided nature of the battle. The poor and downtrodden have few resources. Their rights must be upheld—militantly, if necessary—and all the more so because the richer classes have the wealth and the influence to defend and promote themselves more than adequately. That precept shapes my ministry. Sometimes, though, a strong inner voice says I’d be more effective—less restricted—if I didn’t wear this collar, or have to deal with my enemies with Christian restraint. When I saw what they did to my father—shot him down for the murderous outlaw he became after he lost everything—I was grieved and angry, but overcome by the futility of his last years. I chose the Church because I thought God’s glory could effect more change than my father’s gun ever did. So here I am, not punishing those who oppose me, but praying for their enlightenment.”

“I’ll pray for their defeat.”

Marquez chuckled wryly. “Yes, I expect you would, Mr. Chance.” It was a compliment.

The iron door at the end of the corridor opened and a cretinous guard shuffled in and unlocked the holding cell. He waved his truncheon.

“Chance.”

Mack pushed up with both hands, elated, almost forgetting his various aches and bruises. “Did someone put up bail?” The
Examiner
, probably; their police reporter routinely scanned the blotter for new arrivals.

The guard said, “Oh, sure, sure, all arranged.”

“Good news,” Marquez said as Mack stepped outside. Then the guard whipped his truncheon into Mack’s kidneys from behind, and Mack slammed face-first into the bars of the empty cell opposite. He spun around, blood oozing from his nose. The guard grinned, tapping his truncheon on his fingers, a sadistic little invitation.

“Bail for you? Not hardly. One of the detectives is waiting to have a word. Lon Coglan—Old Silver Tooth. Hardest man on the force, Silver Tooth. You’re in for a fine time.”

Detective Lon Coglan wore a natty striped vest and a heavy silver watch chain that matched his hair and his tooth. All of his upper front teeth protruded, the silver right incisor most prominently. It had a rodentlike sharp point. Coglan wore his silver hair long, beautifully combed, but years of cheap whiskey were written on his red cucumber nose. He was half a head shorter than Mack, whom he’d shoved into a chair under a sputtering gas fixture trimmed to its dimmest level.

The room smelled damp, and there was the faint sound of water trickling somewhere. Chunks of plaster lay crumbling amid rat droppings; no one had patched the small craters left when the plaster fell. Another detective stood by the door with arms folded. Coglan walked round and round Mack’s chair while he talked.

“Somebody from the Hearst rag knows you’re in here. So we’ll be letting you go soon. Mr. Huntington won’t file charges.”

Mack couldn’t believe such good luck. And he didn’t—not just yet.

Coglan’s silver tooth gleamed, reflecting the flames of the gas. “I talked to the arresting officer who collared you at the Palace. I understand you accused Mr. Huntington of sinking your boat and killing your partner.” The detective leaned down, smiling. “Did you really do such a thing, laddie buck?”

“You already know.”

Coglan hit him.

The blow, unexpected and powerful, caught him below the breastbone. He jerked backward, choking on vomit. He didn’t fall out of the chair because Coglan had tied his hands in back.

“I do, and it’s a damn outrage, because Mr. Collis Huntington is an honest, patriotic, law-abiding gentleman. That’s my personal opinion, I want you to know. He didn’t put me up to saying it. But I’m the detective assigned to this case, so I reckon you have to listen to my opinions, eh?”

Mack blinked, gasping for air. “I—guess I do.”

Coglan hit him.

“Louder, laddie buck. I had trouble hearing that.”

“I said…” Red drool ran down Mack’s chin. A lower canine tooth wobbled in his gum. “I’ll listen.”

“That’s a lot better.”

Coglan was amiable again. Mack felt tight as a twisted wire. The detective resumed his walk around the chair.

“You’re a nobody in this town, Chance, and you’re an asshole, too, if you think you can sling mud at the SP and get away with it. Two cousins of mine work for the railroad—decent fellas, Christian men, with big families—and I’ll tell you, if they heard your accusations against Mr. Huntington, they’d tear you apart. When Mr. Huntington and his partners built their railroad, they united this great country of ours. The railroad’s done more for businessmen and farmers—more for the state of California—than you and all your thieving slant-eyed pals could do if you lived a hundred years.” Coglan paused, letting his words sink in. “Something else, too. The jailer told Jackie here”—Coglan indicated the other detective—“that you were chummy with that communist priest. Is it true?”