A Race to Splendor (21 page)

Thus, for J.D., the evening ahead provided an opportunity to demand better service and products from Kemp Lumber Company so that he might satisfy his ambition to be the first major hotel owner in San Francisco to open his doors before the first anniversary of the disaster of April 18. Once back in business, he could then pay his previous debts to Kemp for the destroyed gambling club and be free of the man he’d grown to heartily dislike.

“Ah… Thayer, welcome.” Ezra himself had appeared at the front door to greet him while a manservant took his coat and hat. His host ushered him into a paneled study. “My daughter, Matilda, will join us for dinner, along with a school friend of hers visiting from back East. Emma Stivers is her name. The chit’s a bit long in the tooth, if you ask me,” he added sourly, “but they seem happy enough making pottery or whatever on God’s earth they do in that studio of Matilda’s at the bottom of the garden.”

At twenty-seven, Matilda Kemp was—to be blunt—a bit long in the tooth herself, thought J.D., recalling the first and only time he’d laid eyes on the woman on the evening he’d come to this house to sign the purchase agreement for lumber to build the gambling club.

But then again, times were changing and many women no longer married by age eighteen. Unbidden, the image of Amelia floated through his mind. She seemed proud to admit she was thirty years old and focused on life as an architect—not as a wife and mother. Ling Lee had been another woman who had eschewed marriage and shown she was as capable as any businessman. Perhaps it was, indeed, a new age for women, he mused, accepting Kemp’s offer of a drink.

“Cheers, Ezra.” J.D. raised the glass of whiskey his host had poured from a crystal decanter. “I’m looking forward to a civilized meal with people who don’t have to dust off their boots every time they take a step.” He sank into a leather chair and offered another salute. “Let us drink to the opening of the Bay View before April eighteenth.”

Kemp also raised his glass. “And may you beat that wretched Morgan woman and the Fairmont to the finish line.”

“She bought her lumber elsewhere you say?” J.D. asked, biting back a smile.

“Yes, she did, the witch,” Kemp replied with no sign of humor. “You know, I’ve often thought it might not be so difficult to arrange some unforeseen problem on the Fairmont site, if you catch my drift. What if, by chance, an entire section of her scaffolding mysteriously weakened and—”

“No need for anything that drastic,” J.D. intervened, affecting a shrug. “We’re proceeding nicely at the Bay View and should have no trouble opening our doors first.”

He was beginning to see that Kemp was more than just an opportunistic, larcenous hardhead. Ezra’s minions reported everything to him from key building sites around the city, intelligence he had then been known to pass on to the enforcers at City Hall. Kemp’s bullyboys were perfectly capable of making a mishap on the scaffolding of a competitor appear an accident. As it was, it was dangerous for Amelia and Miss Morgan to be scampering around six stories in the air without Kemp’s murderous musings.

Stay clear of this, J.D. Keep your focus where it belongs.

He swiftly assumed the air of a coconspirator in the push to open the Bay View before the Fairmont. “In fact, Ezra, you’ll be pleased to hear that we’re progressing at Taylor and Jackson with due speed—assuming I can encourage you to urge your people to deliver sound lumber in the correct length.”

Kemp’s genial manner toward his visitor underwent a swift change.

“My best wood goes to customers who pay their bills. Make good on the note due me for the
last
lumber you bought to build the original gambling club, J.D., and you will marvel at the efficiency of my employees.”

J.D. carefully set his glass down on a small table to the right of his chair.

“You’ve known from the beginning that I can’t give you the final payment on the old note until I open the doors to the new hotel,” he replied matter-of-factly. “I can only use my insurance and loan monies on current construction. But rest assured, Ezra, you are the first creditor on my list. Thanks to funds from the Committee, you’ve certainly been paid handsomely for the lumber you are currently supplying me, so I think it’s only fair, therefore, that you give my orders high priority for quality and an honest count. The sooner I complete the hotel and open it to paying customers, the sooner you’ll be paid back on your original investment in the old club.”

Kemp cast him a noncommittal look. Then, eyes narrowing, he said, “You know, J.D., I’d be willing to forgo immediate payment of what you owe me from before the quake—which is my right to demand, by the way—if we could… uh… reach a certain understanding about something.” He lowered his gaze to the rim of his whiskey glass as if deep in thought.

“And what understanding might that be?” J.D. asked warily. He could just imagine Kemp demanding a partnership deal in exchange for forgiveness on the money owed.

Kemp looked up from his drink. “That you begin to court my daughter.”

“
What
?”

J.D. couldn’t disguise his astonishment. He instantly regretted revealing his obvious dismay, but a man only had to behold Matilda Kemp in all her gangling awkwardness to understand his reaction.

“You heard me,” snapped Kemp. “I have a daughter of marriageable age with no prospects in sight. You and she are near contemporaries, and despite your unhappy status with your family, I think an alliance of my wealth and your name could do wonders for us both.”

“I have no intention ever to marry,” J.D. declared bluntly. There was no point mincing words about such a preposterous proposal.

Not ever?

He immediately realized he’d taken a radical stance, considering the majority of women he’d known well had either been prostitutes or ninnies like Matilda Kemp. Even so, his experience in his own family showed all too clearly that a state of matrimony could create plenty of misery for everyone concerned.

Kemp, however, was doggedly sticking to the subject at hand. “All the more reason such an alliance with Matilda would be of no personal consequence to you whatsoever. You’ll live your life and she’ll live hers.”

J.D. was more amused than vexed at Kemp’s outrageous proposal. “Have you discussed this idea with the lady in question?”

“I have hinted at your interest in getting to know her better,” Kemp replied, straight-faced.

“I’ve met Matilda exactly once, Ezra, and exchanged a few inane pleasantries. How could you possibly convince her of my interest
,
for God’s sake?”

“That is
your
task. Either that, or I will be forced to demand that you pay me the note for the gambling club in full. Immediately.”

“You know all my funds are committed to rebuilding.”

“A pity,” Kemp replied. “Well, then, I expect I’ll have to put a lien on the new hotel and have a word with the Committee of Fifty that you’re in debt to me and it’s my recommendation that the bankers not risk another loan since you’re so deeply in arrears.”

“So is half of San Francisco,” scoffed J.D.

“Perhaps they’ll see the wisdom of turning over the project to me, since I can guarantee its completion. After all, it’s my wood, my foreman and carpenters you got through my good offices.”

J.D. felt like reaching across the narrow space that separated their two chairs and slapping the smug look off his host’s face. In Kemp’s usual, grasping fashion, he’d done his best to wrest the Bay View away from him from the first, and by this time, J.D. was thoroughly fed up.

“Why are you suddenly so eager to marry off a daughter whose welfare you’ve ignored since her babyhood?”

“You know nothing of these matters.”

“I know that the moment her mother died of pneumonia, you shipped Matilda east to boarding school and even after she returned, you have barely allowed her out of this house.”

Kemp appeared nonplussed at the accuracy of J.D.’s observation. “What business is this of yours?”

“I make it my business to know with whom I’m dealing.”

“She’s twenty-seven years old. She should be married.”

“She was twenty-six last year and you never showed a scintilla of concern.”

“Let’s just say marrying her off to you would benefit me in several ways, not the least of which is that I would be protecting my investment in the Bay View.”

“You’ll get your money. I’m a man of my word and I pay my debts.”

“Perhaps I would prefer to own the hotel myself, rather than just the lumber
in
it.”

J.D. regarded his host for a long moment. “Ah. I see. You couldn’t win the Bay View gambling at cards, so now you’re resorting to extortion. You’ve been hanging round Schmitz and Reuf too long, I fear.”

“You were just damned lucky the night of the quake, and you know it. If you don’t wish to revisit that event, J.D., or want problems on your building site, I suggest you lavish some attention on my daughter at dinner this evening.”

J.D. couldn’t believe that he’d been at Ezra Kemp’s house for less than a half hour and could barely keep his temper under control. The man was infuriating. And dangerous.

J.D. set his drink down with a thud. “So… the charming host reverts to his bullyboy tactics from days of yore. Don’t you realize, Kemp, that you can never worm your way into Nob Hill society—such as it is—behaving like a boor? You must at least make a show of civility, though God knows there are plenty of other thugs in evening clothes masquerading as pillars of society in this town. The only difference, my dear Ezra, is that they are better than you at covering their tracks—and their parentage.”

A murderous look invaded Kemp’s features. “Thayer, I’m warning you—”

“I like your daughter,” J.D. interrupted, noting with satisfaction that he’d succeeded in goring Kemp’s ox. After all, Big Jim Thayer taught him well in the art of deflating an opponent. He swiftly considered the various moves he could make in this treacherous game. He
had
to have a continuing supply of decent wood, since the hotel was covered in shingles and Kemp had bankrupted most of his fellow lumbermen. Even worse, J.D. needed Kemp’s foreman, Dick Spitz, and his head carpenter, Jake Kelly—no matter how incompetent they were—to keep the unions from causing trouble and to continue their working full-bore on the Bay View to open on time.

And most importantly, he couldn’t afford Kemp denigrating him to the Committee of Fifty at this crucial moment. Thanks to James Thayer Sr., his own standing with that body was not very high while he waited for the second payment of the loan that the bankers
said
they were willing to grant, but had not yet made good. A lien on the property right now by Kemp could prove disastrous. If only he could get into his damnable safe!

“You ‘like’ my daughter, you say,” Kemp repeated, interrupting J.D.’s reverie. “Are you saying you’ll agree to court Matilda publicly?”

J.D. decided in that instant that agreeing to this preposterous proposal might be the only way to buy time.

“I’m saying that I’ll… consider it.”

Oddly, his next thought was of Amelia after she offered to hire a crew of Chinese workers to clear the rubble littering the back of his property. What would the starchy Miss Bradshaw think of this “arrangement”?

It would disgust her… she would think you the cad that you are, on occasion…

“You’ll have to do more than merely consider my proposal,” Kemp snapped. “I want you to come here for dinner every Saturday. I’ll be happy to serve as your chaperone.”

“And if Matilda would prefer not to associate with a black sheep and known gambler?”

“She’ll do what I tell her, or she can fend for herself.”

“Mmmm… such fatherly affection.”

“So you’ll do it?”

J.D. retrieved his whiskey glass and took a sip, buying a moment’s time to think.

“Understand this, Kemp. I’m not making any promise to marry Matilda. What I
am
willing to do is to better make her acquaintance and see if that might lead to something… acceptable.”

Good grief! How did he find himself in such a ludicrous fix?

“So you’ll agree to
begin
courting the chit?”

“If—and only if—you send me your best wood starting
tomorrow
. Agreed?”

“And
I’m
the mercenary, calculating one?”

“Do I get your best wood?”

Kemp regarded J.D. for a long moment and then said, “Agreed.”

Even the lumber tycoon apparently understood there were limits to forcing reluctant parties to the altar.

“And Ezra,” J.D. added, taking a last draw from his glass, “if I receive one shoddy length of redwood, or if Dick Spitz or that so-called head carpenter you sent me make one tricky move at the work site, I have a few threats of my own I can make good on regarding a man’s credentials for gaining admittance in to the world of Nob Hill. Understood?”

Kemp held J.D.’s gaze and then nodded. It was as if both men knew that they had pushed each other far enough and would have to wait to see who held the best cards in the next round of play.