Belle Cora: A Novel Page 57

  AROUND NINE-THIRTY THAT EVENING, my establishment was open. The wine flowed. The girls exhibited various degrees of lacy dishabille. The fleet, sensitive fingers of Mr. Rice, a talented freedman from New Orleans, were coaxing an iridescent Chopin waltz from the piano. Charley was out. By midnight he was still out, but that was hardly unusual or any cause for worry.

  Lewis came by. He was a man of consequence now. David Broderick (who over a year ago had returned to power, as he had predicted he would) had made Lewis a clerk in the Board of Supervisors. He went to an office in City Hall almost daily; what he did there, I cannot say. He and Jocelyn had become a couple, secretly, and broken up, and reunited; recently, she had said, with a shrug, that she would let him make an honest woman of her—in a few years, if at that time he still had the notion. I urged her not to show him more public affection than she did to half a dozen others, and she tried to comply, but it must have been suspected, because Lewis had, with his fists, knocked out a tooth and, with his boots, broken two ribs belonging to a man who had suggested that Lewis lived off Jocelyn’s earnings.

  Edward and Lewis had patched up their differences, and we all got along better now, because we had gotten more used to the kind of life we lived in this city, and because, you might say, we had all reduced our expectations of one another and did not worry as much about each other’s character flaws or whether our wicked ways would lead to a bad end.

  I was sitting on a sofa with my back to the piano, and facing the double doors that led to the hallway. “Guess who me and Charley met today?” said Lewis, walking toward me. “General William H. Richardson.”

  That was odd. We’d never met Richardson until the night before. A moment later, Edward came in; he watched us in a way that made me uneasy. I could tell he knew whatever story it was that Lewis was about to relate, and that he expected it to worry me.

  “Where?” I asked them. “When?”

  Mr. Rice finished his waltz and began playing “Long, Long Ago.” “Not here,” said Michelle, slapping a gentleman’s hand lightly. “We don’t do that sort of thing here. You know that.” By “here,” she meant “in this room.”

  “A couple of hours ago,” said Lewis, and with much enthusiasm he told me the following story.

  Richardson, who had apparently been asking for Charley in cafés, barbershops, and saloons all over town, finally caught up with him in the Cosmopolitan, saying, “That’s the man who insulted me.” He was very drunk, and he had three friends with him. Some of Charley’s friends were already present, and, as usually happens in such cases, the two groups both worked to cool tempers (mostly Richardson’s temper) and brought about a truce. Richardson and Charley shook hands and stood each other rounds of drinks.

  Everything seemed to have been settled amicably, until Charley and Richardson went out to the sidewalk to answer the call of nature. (I’m afraid it was usual even for men with pretensions to good manners to do this in San Francisco back then.) Charley finished first, and went back into the Cosmopolitan while Richardson was still doing his business. For some reason, unexplained to this day, this enraged Richardson—that’s what Lewis told me, and it came out later in the trial, and no one said how strange it was. Richardson went back into the saloon, declaring that he would slap Charley’s face. He had his left hand out, and his right hand in his pocket. In 1855, many men kept their guns in their coat pockets, and everyone present assumed that Richardson had his right hand on his gun and meant to follow up the slap with an immediate shoot-out. One of Richardson’s friends said, “You’re in liquor, Bill, you’re not thinking right,” to which Richardson replied, “I’ll slap your face, too.” A second member of Richardson’s coterie stepped in front of him, whereupon Richardson did draw his gun, causing just about every other man in the room except Charley to draw his. The friend, who was either a very good friend or very drunk himself, put his hand on the barrel of Richardson’s pistol, his palm flat against the hole from which the bullet emerges. There followed, I assume, a tense pause, after which the marshal cocked his pistol. “Don’t! You’ll blow my hand off!” cried the friend. A third friend grabbed Richardson’s gun and pushed it down, even as the crazy drunk growled, “I’ll kill all you scoundrels. I’ll say you resisted arrest.”

  In a few minutes, he was weeping and apologizing, saying he was a swine and he didn’t deserve such friends as these, and among his friends, guess which one was the very best? It was Charley, his new friend. Before his mood turned again, the men he had come in with took him home to his wife.

  “Where’s Charley now?” I asked.

  “He’s at Frankie Garcia’s,” said Edward, “with Ned McGowan and Jimmy O’Meara. We just left them.”

  I sent a servant for my coat, and we walked to Frankie Garcia’s café while Lewis told me the tale a second time. I had to hear it twice before I could picture it all.

  Taking note of the briskness of Lewis’s step as we neared the café, and the animation with which he told the story, acting out the parts and imitating the voices, I was nearly as worried for him as I was for Charley. Lewis loved violence. If things were peaceful for too long, he became confused and sulky, and Jocelyn would say, “Go out and get in a fight, Lewis, you’ll feel better.” Few events were so cheering to him as the advent in his circle of a mean bastard just begging to be taught a lesson.

  When we got to Frankie Garcia’s, Charley was at a table in the back with Ned McGowan. Next to the walruslike McGowan, and in sharp physical contrast to him, sat James O’Meara, a diminutive, redheaded newspaperman. They were the advisers, respectively, of the political bosses David Broderick and William Gwin. Broderick and Gwin loathed each other, but their servants McGowan and O’Meara were easygoing. One often saw them together, conspiring against their common enemy, the Know-Nothings.

  Charley, as tranquil as ever, ordered Imperial Punches for Edward, Lewis, and me, while O’Meara told me what he knew about Richardson. It was usual for the marshal to pursue these quarrels, and to hound a man until something happened. “I was telling Charley here to stay clear of him. If there’s a shoot-out and Richardson dies, it would look bad. It would be, if you’ll excuse me, a case of a gambler, who, ah, lives …”

  “In the finest house in the state,” I finished his sentence.

  “That such a man has shot the U.S. marshal, who represents the law.”

  “It would be very bad now,” agreed McGowan, as his fingers conferred with his mustache. “It could be like ’51. They could seize on it to embarrass the government, saying we were letting criminals run loose, shooting marshals. It would be bad for both of us.” He and O’Meara nodded at each other.

  “But if he kills me,” Charley observed, “then I’m not happy.”

  “Somebody ought to fix him now in privacy,” said Lewis mildly, with an expert’s pleasure in his craft. “Put him down quietly. Tell him there’s a fast woman waiting for him in some shack in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Well, now,” said McGowan, smiling, “in a perfect world.”

  “Lewis,” I said, “if people heard you, they might misunderstand.”

  Charley said, “Let’s hope somebody else hurts his feelings and he forgets about me,” and he asked McGowan and O’Meara if they knew anyone who might be interested in a half-share of Kicks, the fighting bear he had won from Abner Mosely.

  I sipped my punch, contemplating the lessons of the evening. There were at least three. One, guns and whiskey don’t mix. Two, even Richardson’s friends feared him when he was drunk. Three, tomorrow he would forget that his quarrel with Charley had been settled.

  AT ELEVEN THE NEXT MORNING, Niobe woke me, as she did every day, and helped me dress. In order to bring the girls all regularly under my eye at once, I had a rule that we ate a late breakfast together every day. One or two were always in rebellion. “Where is Lydia? Marianne, fetch Lydia.” Lydia appeared, sullen: my silly rule had forced her to evict from her bed a gentleman who had paid well to stay the night. “Lydia,” I said, “w
hen you have had my experience of life, you’ll realize that you can’t break a rule every time it’s inconvenient.”

  Except for Jocelyn, all the girls had been in the house for less than two years. That was the nature of our business. The girls, who had worked in the States, made the expensive journey here to obtain their share of California’s gold. Each upon her arrival in my house was the “new girl,” and I made her famous, sending out cards urging the chief men of the town to come and see this exquisite creature. After a year or two, she went to Stockton or Sacramento City, where she was a novelty again. Then, unless something unexpected happened, she returned to the States. So the population of my house was like the population of San Francisco, ever changing.

  The kitchen maid brought in covered trays with eggs, toast, corn bread, kippers, bacon, sausage, fried oysters, cream, coffee, tea, oranges. Some of the girls ate heartily. Others had coffee and hangover remedies. Margaret and Genevieve, who had been feuding over some petty matter yesterday, were still feuding, I noticed. Antoinette was angry with me for insisting that she accommodate Mr. Dixon despite his unusual proclivities—which I had known about beforehand, as she realized when she complained to me and instead of banishing him I insisted that she grant his request. I had assured her the next day that it wasn’t because I liked her less than the others. She must look on it as an opportunity. “You’ll get used to it,” I told her. “I can’t. I can’t,” she said, weeping, and I almost weakened. But Dixon had to be pleased, and the girl who had put up with it once was the girl most likely to put up with it on a regular basis.

  All day long, I was nervous and jumpy, but I kept telling myself everything would be all right: Charley could take care of himself. After breakfast, I did my accounts. Lewis was already up and in City Hall. Charley went out to have breakfast and a shave on Montgomery Street. I wanted to tell him to stay home, in case Richardson came looking for him again, but I didn’t; it would be pointless. I didn’t even tell him to be careful. He would be exactly as careful as he always was, no matter what I said.

  I got into my carriage and picked up my friend and fellow madam Irene Grogan, Big Pete’s girl, whom I had arranged to meet at this time the day before.

  My house, on the corner of Sacramento Street and Pike Street, was a massive two-and-a-half-story building with a mansard roof. Irene’s place, next door on Sacramento, was narrower and higher, New Orleans style, with a second-story veranda and fancy iron grillwork. The famous Chinese madam Ah Toy presided over a house nearby. A neighborhood of parlor houses had arisen at this spot quite naturally, as other streets accumulate doctors’ offices or dry-goods stores.

  We went to the auction house of T. Kilmer & Sons, where according to the Herald the property of several ruined bankers would go to the highest bidder. I bought a cedarwood chest that had belonged to the wife of James King of William. There was a painting of pine trees and robins on its lid.

  Irene and I had a late lunch at Frankie Garcia’s as twilight fell and Frankie turned the key in all the café’s lamps, one by one. Through the window, we watched the lamplighter, his neck craned back, deftly insinuate the end of a slender pole into the four-paned chamber of a street lamp. It was time to return to Pike Street, but my driver was late. When at last he showed up, it was about six-thirty. It was quiet. Within the carriage we heard the hollow impact of horseshoes, the creak of the wheels, and a gunshot. “Stop,” I ordered. Irene and I got out of the carriage and listened.

  There were no more shots.

  For thirty minutes we walked up and down various streets, poking our heads into saloons, looking for Charley. We saw a crowd gathering in front of the Oriental Hotel, and I ran toward it, picturing Charley lying dead or wounded at the crowd’s center.

  I noticed a stovepipe hat hovering and dancing above the hats of the men in the crowd. The hat was crying out for justice. It jerked with the shouted words. Pushing nearer, I glimpsed the arm waving that hat, and below it a pair of sleepy eyes and a narrow face gripped in a vise of sideburns. It was Sam Brannan, the highly talented promoter, urging all the men here to be men and make the town safe by breaking into the jail and dragging a prisoner out of it. “A United States marshal! His poor, sweet wife don’t even know she’s a widow yet! She sets at home, writing a letter to her mama back east, while a man walks up the hill bringing the awful news! Her husband, murdered by a professional gambler! And where is this gambler? Resting safe in the basement of City Hall …”

  Irene grabbed my arm and nodded toward a street lamp under which stood the sheriff, David Scannell, his great belly lit halfway around like the moon. Deputies surrounded him, doing nothing. I pushed my way through the crowd with Irene in my wake, and waited until I was close to say, “Sheriff Scannell!” When he didn’t respond, I shouted it: “Sheriff Scannell!” Men turned toward us. “How can you let him go on that way?” We knew each other, but he looked at me as if he did not care to be told how to do his job. I took a more womanly tone. “Sheriff, I’m scared.”

  “I was going to stop him,” he said, and spoke to the deputies, who told Brannan to consider himself arrested for incitement to riot.

  “Arrest me?” shouted Brannan to the crowd he had gathered. “You mean, take me to the station house? Gentlemen, see how quick on the mark Cora’s friends are. They’re taking me to the basement of City Hall to sit in a cell next to the murderer of General Richardson. Of course I’ll go peaceably. Why don’t you come along! Follow me to the station house and see what happens.”

  About ten men took his meaning and followed him, and I was beside myself with fright. Scannell put his hand on my shoulder and leaned down, smelling of anise and wormwood—he was a habitual drinker of absinthe, which, they say, gives one interesting dreams. “The minute Brannan showed his face, I had Charley taken to county lockup.”

  I thanked him and went with Irene to find my carriage. As I passed by, someone in the crowd said, “That’s her.”

  THE COUNTY JAIL WAS STONE AND BRICK with windows in arches, set in a niche carved from Telegraph Hill. The lowering of Broadway since it was built had put its front entrance eight feet above the street, and a narrow wooden stairway led to it now. Fifty men were guarding it. They let us in. We sought out Billy Mulligan, Lewis’s old friend, now the chief jailer, thanks to the same election that had made Scannell sheriff.

  Mulligan insisted on going with me and taking another guard to watch the cell, because I was a woman and it would be indecent to search me for a pistol.

  “Search me, Billy. Search me all over,” I said, but he wouldn’t. From the very beginning of this thing, he was scared to do anything irregular.

  The hall was dark. The cell doors were massive assemblies of oak reinforced by strips of black iron. Each door had a small window at eye level. Inside, it was a stinking, dark, damp box with a washbasin, a straw mattress, a piss pot, and an invisible residue of lonely despair left behind by previous occupants. “Papa,” I said when I saw Charley. We embraced. Along with the familiar scents of peppermint, tobacco, sweat, and whiskey, I smelled the burnt powder that had come off Charley’s derringer. Mulligan insisted on searching Charley for a pistol again, in case I had slipped him one. Then we sat down on the bed. Charley told me his story, sometimes looking at me, sometimes at his hands, in front of Mulligan and the guard.

  “I was in the Blue Wing with O’Meara and some others. Richardson came in, looking for me, ornery again. So people talk to him, he’s friendly again. He says, let’s go somewhere, we’re buds now. I figure I’ll walk with him awhile, shake hands, ditch him. So we walk, we talk. It’s all right. Then he says, ‘What do you think I am? Who do you think you’re talking to? Let me show you something.’ He draws his pistol. He cocks it.” Charley demonstrated. “With my left hand I grab it by the barrel. I keep my right hand free for my own pistol, because this ain’t no joke. I push on the barrel, like his friends did yesterday, only up, instead of down. I’m twisting the hand with the gun. He’s small, but he’s stronger than he looks
. He won’t let go. I push him into the door. If he didn’t mean to fire that pistol before, he does now. You know how folks say, it all happened so fast? This happened slow. Like wrestling.” Charley put his long, skillful index finger to his neck. “The end of the barrel of his pistol is up here, on my neck—it could blow a hole through my throat. I’m thinking, what about the other gun? O’Meara said he carries two, right? What do I do? I can’t run. I can’t let him go. I need my right hand for my own pistol. I feel him move the other hand.” Charley stopped. “I can’t take the chance. I shoot. He goes loose, like he’s dead. But I’m thinking, maybe he’s pretending; I keep him against the door. I check his pocket for the other gun; nothing.” Charley gave his head a little tilt, his quiet version of a shrug. “I go up the street and a copper arrests me.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone with Richardson, Papa. That was stupid.”

  He shook his head. “I know every kind of drunk there is. If I told this man I wouldn’t walk with him, he’d have drawn on me in the Blue Wing. I thought—I still think—it was safer to go outside with him. But in the end, nothing was safe.”

  I promised him that I would get him out, and the next thing I did was to get Billy Mulligan alone and tell him to name his price. I was not surprised when he refused. Escapes had been common in ’49 and ’50, when there had been no proper jails and no one had cared for anything except instant wealth. The newspapers, to drum up support for a second Vigilance Committee, would soon be pretending that this was still true, but it wasn’t. If there was any escape now, Mulligan would be finished in San Francisco, and he was under the impression that he had a big future here. The best I could do right now was to make Charley more comfortable. In the weeks that followed, I arranged for him to be moved to a larger cell, and to have some furniture from our house taken into it, and his favorite whiskey and cigars. Three times a day, one of my servants brought him hot meals prepared by my cook.