A Race to Splendor (44 page)

“Jake Kelly’s keeping her company ’til Matilda’s wedding day. The little strumpet’ll be heading back east on the train July fifth—
after
she serves as bridal attendant for her dear friend. Everything will appear quite ordinary Thursday night. I’ve got the
Call
’s best reporters coming to write about ‘the wedding of the year.’ And I sent a telegram to
Collier
’s
to get Jack London down here from Sonoma. It’s all happening, J.D. Get used to the idea of being a married man and my son-in-law, or something mighty unpleasant is going to happen to that lady architect.”

“I see… but there’s one more important fact you should know. You can call your dogs off Miss Bradshaw. She’s completed everything here and left San Francisco this morning.”

“Left? For where? Why should I believe you?”

J.D. reached into his desk drawer. The sight of Amelia’s letter was reassuring. Should he use it? It was a risk, but the odds were in his favor that Kemp wouldn’t try to hurt her if he knew she’d departed for France. And it would buy J.D. time to figure out what to do about getting his unwanted “partner” out of his life—permanently.

“Here, read her letter. She’s probably already boarded her train for New York. Apparently she’s taking a boat to France next week.”

“Why would she do that?” he asked suspiciously.

“Her mother lives in Paris, remember? Miss Bradshaw’s not even coming to the hotel’s opening. That’s what close
friends
we are. You’re way off base about her, Ezra.”

Kemp scanned Amelia’s note to J.D. telling him where to send the final installment of her fee. He tossed the letter back on the desk.

“Glad to hear it, but I’m not calling off anyone.”

“She’s no threat to you. She’s already gone.”

“You could always be bluffing,” declared Kemp. “As a matter of fact, I’ll give Dick Spitz the job of watching all the ferries in and out of Oakland. If anybody sees her here before the wedding, I’ve got a special lumber barge christened with her name on the hull. So you’d better be playing it straight with me about her leaving the country if you don’t want a tragedy to mar your wedding day.”

Suddenly, it seemed to J.D. that, indeed, the safest course was for him to make his own brand of “Boston Marriage” with Matilda Elizabeth Kemp at the Bay View Hotel on the evening of the Fourth of July with bombs bursting in air.

Extreme circumstances called for extreme measures.

***

Lacy Fiske’s eyes were wide with admiration as she inspected the gown under Amelia’s long black evening cloak.

“Trust me, Amelia. That dress will garner more attention than the new hotel.”

Lacy, Julia, Amelia, and Aunt Margaret stood at the railing, waiting for the crew of the
Berkeley
to tie the ferry’s lines to the pier on the San Francisco side of the bay.

“That’s just what I said,” Margaret scolded. “That dress is far too revealing for such a dignified occasion.” Amelia’s aunt was attired in her usual black bombazine.

“Julia brought back silk blouses from Paris,” Amelia said by way of defending herself. “And of all the things I purchased in France, this dress is my favorite. Thank goodness I’d sent all my clothing from there to the bungalow in Oakland before the quake.”

“Well, you look lovely,” Lacy reassured her.

Amelia inhaled a gulp of sea air to calm her nerves and take her mind off the gown’s dramatic décolletage. She had a very good reason for wearing a dress to her former lover’s wedding that would halt traffic on Market Street.

J.D. had never seen her in it.

J.D. Thayer, you’re going to behold me and weep…

She wondered if she had the grit to go through with her plan after all. Then she assured herself that she was just having an attack of the jitters. In Oakland, when the ferry had pulled away from the docks and headed across the bay to San Francisco, her heart nearly leapt from her chest when she’d caught a glimpse of the odious Dick Spitz. She saw him standing on the other side of the boat, his head bent toward Harold Jasper’s as if they were conferring. When she peered around her clutch of friends to get a better look, the two men quickly turned and retreated to a lower deck. Thirty minutes later, she was positive she saw Spitz again, melting into the disembarking throng. The purser kept his distance from their group during the entire crossing, which also struck her as odd.

She patted her beaded handbag, glad she’d tucked her lady’s revolver inside for any eventuality. J.D. had finally returned it to her after Foo died, though there never seemed time for him to drill her in shooting practice. Even so, after her previous violent confrontation with Kelly, Kavanaugh, and Spitz, she wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

Again, she glanced down at the lemon-yellow silk chiffon evening dress purchased the week she gained her certificate from L’École. She had worn the gown in triumph to dinner at chic, romantic Lapérouse on the Quai Malaquais across from the Louvre, with Etienne Lamballe on her arm. It was the night she’d drunk nearly a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and he’d drunk
two,
and then declared he expected her to give up architecture when they wed.

How long ago that seemed.

“I fear tonight will be an awfully late evening, Amelia,” her aunt said with a sigh, “and such a crush of people.” She reached toward Amelia’s cape. “Pull your cloak tightly around your shoulders, dear. It won’t do for you to catch your death just before you take the train tomorrow night.”

Amelia gave her aunt’s shoulder’s a little squeeze. “I feel fine, Aunt Margaret, and don’t worry. We’ll get plenty of sleep tonight so tomorrow we can have a lovely day together. What I have to do for the hotel’s opening shouldn’t take long.”

Margaret Collins turned to address Julia and Lacy. “It’s amazing, really. Amelia finally comes back to me in Oakland after more than a year in the city, and then, a day later, poof! She’s off to Paris. You young people lead such a carefree life.”

By this time, Amelia and her companions had made their way to the bottom of California Street where Edith Pratt waited for them in a staid gown of brown moiré.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Amelia said to her old school chum who had nursed Grandfather Hunter during his last illness.

“I traded shifts at the Presidio hospital,” Edith said. She murmured in Amelia’s ear, “Did you know that Angus is serving as best man tonight?”

“No…” Amelia said under her breath, fighting against another wave of betrayal washing over her.

A cable car rumbled to a halt and the five women mounted the running board and settled onto the wooden benches. Slowly, the car began the steep ascent to Nob Hill. Amelia glanced at Lacy and Julia, both of whom had worn their smartest attire for the occasion.

“Thank you
all
so
much for going to this with me tonight,” she said in a rush. “If you weren’t right here beside me, I’d probably take the next ferry back to Oakland.”

“Donaldina will definitely be there with Wing Lee,” Lacy volunteered, “so you’ll have plenty of people to rally ’round during the hotel’s dedication. I doubt any man would dare come near such a gaggle of females,” she said with a laugh.

Julia nodded. “You’re merely expected to greet the invited dignitaries and then you can discreetly take your leave before… well, before the other ceremony begins. We’ll be right there with you.”

And thus, I shall return to Oakland in the company of women.

That’s what this path she’d chosen for herself undoubtedly meant, she thought with a deepening sense of melancholy. One could have success in the public sphere, but it certainly appeared to Amelia as if a woman who dedicated her life to architecture ruled out nearly everything else—everything except hard work and the company of a few female professionals who were forging this new trail beside her.

She’d made her choice, she told herself silently, and now she must follow through with it. She had provided to Julia and Lacy a sanitized version of events regarding J.D.’s withholding information about the outcome of the poker contest on the night of the quake. The Misses Morgan and Fiske had been awestruck when Amelia showed them the five cards now in her possession. To them it would seem that the evening’s challenge was to stand stoically in a reception line in the presence of the man who was a gambler that had betrayed their friend’s trust in order to gain title to Amelia’s family legacy.

Aunt Margaret, on the other hand, assumed her niece was merely nervous to have the hotel reviewed by San Francisco’s leading citizens. Edith Pratt had insisted on attending by Amelia’s side when she heard from Angus about the threats Kemp had repeatedly made against J.D. and Amelia and felt it her duty to be there to help physically protect her friend from possibly being accosted by Kemp’s bullyboys.

But even beyond any danger from Kemp, only Amelia knew the night represented much more than confronting J.D about the five playing cards tucked into her cloak’s inside silk pocket.

She knew events this evening meant that she would never have a husband. She would never have a child. Her daydream of J.D. and her living as loving partners had been pure fantasy, and yet she couldn’t imagine living with anyone else. She felt hollow inside. Bereft.

But there was no escaping plain facts. The day J.D. and she had sparred over his assigning the Pigati cousins to guard the hotel without informing her, she’d asked him to tell the unvarnished truth when it concerned her welfare—and he hadn’t. It had obviously been a pattern, and who knew what other truths he’d neglected to reveal? He’d consistently put the hotel and his own welfare first. It was as simple as that. He clearly wasn’t in love with his bride-to-be. He was marrying Matilda to save his stake in a
building
!

When it came to J.D. Thayer, cement had won over sentiment.

Well, she admitted to herself, when it got right down to it, there probably wasn’t a man on the planet who could meet her standards, nor she theirs. She had married architecture, and that was the end of it. Yet there were times—like tonight—when her profession seemed a cold companion and she suddenly felt like turning toward Aunt Margaret standing to her right and sobbing like a child against her bombazine-clad shoulder.

Instead, Amelia slipped a gloved hand into the pocket of her cloak and fingered the five playing cards. They confirmed that her task this night entailed a greater gamble than anything her father had ever dared—and she intended to win.

Chapter 34

Carriages, hackneys, and motorcars jammed the courtyard entrance to the Bay View Hotel. Joseph, the elderly doorman, commanded an army of assistants in trim, brown uniforms stamped with the BVH monogram. In relays, they rushed forward to assist the elegantly dressed passengers onto the red carpet and usher them through the arched entrance.

The swarms of arriving guests walked past sculpted Cypress trees that flanked the portico. Nearby, stone statuary dotted the narrow flower beds that curved around Taylor Street and down Jackson, toward the grand gardens on the lower elevations of Nob Hill.

For Amelia, the opening of the Bay View Hotel symbolized that a degree of normalcy had finally returned to San Francisco. At this newest landmark of the fledgling twentieth century, she had replaced its flickering gasoliers with reliable electric lights. Elevators had augmented staircases, even in the service areas. Telephones were installed in every bedroom. Heaters and hot water boilers were fired with natural gas, not coal or wood. A fleet of motorcars garaged in the spacious underground parking area would soon be available to chauffeur guests wherever in the city they wished to go.

And as with the Fairmont, Amelia too had ordered extra fire hoses and on-site sources of water. All the materials she’d employed both inside and out gave the new building structural integrity and heat-resistance qualities that had been sorely lacking before the great quake and fire.

She stood at the grand entrance to the hotel, buffeted by the crowds pressing in from all sides, and did her best to concentrate on her accomplishments, not the yawning hole in her heart. From inside the Bay View, festive music wafted from a string quartet that played in a recess of the spacious, red-carpeted lobby. Flanking her were her companions and surrounding her were laughter and gaiety and a joyous sense of the city’s continuing recovery, yet no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t put aside a sense of overweening sadness and apprehension.

“You all go in,” she urged her companions. She needed a moment alone, and also a chance to say her good-byes.

“Are you sure?” Edith Pratt asked with a worried frown.

“Yes. I want to duck into the kitchen to see how the backstairs staff is holding up. I’ll join you in the grand ballroom in just a few minutes.”

Edith turned and hugged Amelia’s shoulders while Julia Morgan’s sharp eyes surveyed every detail of the terra-cotta-clad facade.

“Why, it’s absolutely breathtaking, isn’t it?” Edith exclaimed to the others.

“A petite Fairmont,” Lacy said. She turned to her employer and now housemate. “Don’t you feel like a proud mother hen, Julia?”

“Yes, I do a bit,” Julia replied, and Amelia felt a rush of gratitude for Morgan’s generosity of spirit.

Aunt Margaret at first appeared speechless as she gazed at the broad entrance of the glamorous hotel her niece had built. Then she turned and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m simply in awe of what you’ve created, my dear. Your grandfather would be too.”

Her aunt could have said nothing more likely to bring moisture to Amelia’s eyes. She swiftly ducked her head and fiddled with the tie at the throat of her velvet cloak.

“Go on, now, all of you,” she urged. “I’ll be with you in just a few minutes.”

As soon as the four women disappeared into the crowd making its way through the front entrance, Amelia pulled the hood of her cloak over her head and sped down Jackson Street. She was relieved to see that the outdoor floodlights were bathing the side of the hotel in a soft glow that issued from the flower beds.

She entered from a rear door that led directly into the kitchen and paused at the threshold, pushing back the hood of her cloak to fall on her shoulders. A platoon of cooks, pastry chefs, servers, and wine stewards bustled in and out of the high-ceilinged room.

“Missy Bradshaw!” cried a voice. Suddenly, Amelia was surrounded by Loy Chen and Shou Shou and several other Chinese workers she recognized. They all had exchanged their laborers’ clothing for the fancy brown livery denoting the dining staff.

The Bay View would be the first hotel in San Francisco to employ Asians in publicly prominent positions—as waiters in the elegant dining room—a gesture on J.D.’s part Amelia couldn’t help but admire.

In an uncharacteristic display of emotion, Shou Shou threw her arms around Amelia and hugged her. “We thought you go to France!” she exclaimed.

“Soon,” Amelia said, and put her finger to her lips. “Shhhh… my being here is a surprise.” When the hubbub died down, she asked, “Is Mr. Thayer in his office?”

“No, he go penthouse. Dress for wedding.” Loy sounded tentative. “Then he go to lobby… see to guests.” He eyed Amelia grimly. “You know Miss Matilda?”

“I met her just once,” she replied. To avoid any further questions, she smiled brightly and said, “I wanted to come down to thank you
all
for the wonderful job you’ve done and for… well, for the friendship you bestowed on me this past year.” She extended her hand to Loy who looked as if he’d never before shaken hands Western fashion. “And especially you, Loy, and you, Shou Shou.” She could feel the tears well up again. “I don’t know how things will go for you now in the new hotel, but I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done to make this opening night possible.” She paused and then went on. “I’m… I’m so grateful for the loyalty you’ve shown Mr. Thayer and myself. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Loy seized Amelia’s hand and bowed his head over it. “You good friend to us, Missy. I do all hotel laundry now. You good friend to Chinese. Just like Lo Mo.”

Equating her with Donaldina Cameron was the highest compliment Loy Chen could possibly bestow. Amelia wiped her eyes with the back of her kid gloves and produced a weak smile. “She’ll be here tonight, I think. With Wing Lee.”

“Wing Lee, guest of
honor
,” Loy said, bowing proudly from the waist. “Stand next to Mr. Thayer in line, he say. And next to his mother, Missy Consuela.”

“I’m glad,” murmured Amelia, though she wondered how having J.D.’s child as part of the proceedings would sit with the bride, or with J.D.’s future father-in-law, for that matter. She was also surprised to learn Mrs. Thayer was attending the opening and supposed his mother must have finally made her peace with J.D. now that Ling Lee was dead.

“Well, I’d better go up,” she said, nodding farewells around the kitchen.

“You take
back
elevator?” Loy asked with a disapproving frown as he escorted her down the hall along side her sweeping skirts. “Missy should take
front
elevator!”

“I’ll get off on the mezzanine,” she assured him, “and then come down the grand staircase, if that will make you happy. And besides, I want to see how the balustrade looks tonight.”

“Yes, Missy.” Loy nodded with a stoic expression. Apparently he remembered all too well the occasion when Amelia tore out a large section of the banister with a crowbar and then demanded Dominic Pigati reset it to her exact specifications.

“Good-bye, Loy. Be well.”

“Good-bye, Missy. You good lady.”

***

Amelia stood at the summit of the red-carpeted stairway that curved downward to a grand ballroom rivaling any in the courts of Europe. In one corner of the polished marble floor, the Bay View Hotel’s string quartet played behind a forest of potted palms. Their music provided a gracious counterpoint to the noisy, excited chatter resounding off the mirrored walls.

This evening was a repetition of the opening of the Fairmont Hotel, only this time, she alone was responsible for the design and construction from the foundations to the roof. To Amelia’s surprise, she had become amazingly calm while standing at the top of the stairs surveying the scene below. Her sweeping gaze absorbed the sight of enormous sprays of white floral arrangements dotting the ballroom.

J.D. is actually going through with this insane wedding!

Her rising anger was equal to the palpable sense of betrayal she was studiously ignoring. She retrieved her father’s small pocket watch from her handbag and opened its case encrusted with tiny gold nuggets, stealing a glance at the hour and minute hands. Amazingly enough, the convex circle of cracked glass, shattered at 5:12 in the morning on April 18, 1906, shielded dials that had continued to function. She would keep it always as a reminder of that day… the day she found J.D. half-dead in the quake’s rubble.

Twelve times nine… don’t think about that… think about the playing cards… eleven times nine…

It was nearly eight p.m. Only minutes away from the bride’s debut.

Hordes of celebrants milled at the foot of the staircase, the company attired in winged collars and starched linen shirts, swallowtail coats or beaded silk chiffon gowns. Several guests sported monocles and lorgnettes. A delicious aroma of roasted lamb sent down from the verdant farms of Marin County wafted from the adjacent dining room where guests would be served a midnight buffet after the festivities.

Slowly, unobtrusively, Amelia pulled a fan of tattered playing cards from inside her silk-lined cloak and held them by her side. In stark contrast to her spotless white kid gloves, three of the five cards remained splotched with dirt. All the cards she held had been used in a game of chance that must now seem almost dreamlike to the two surviving men who’d gambled in the bowels of the original Bay View Hotel—a lifetime ago.

Amelia noted that among those nibbling canapés and sipping bubbling wine were gentlemen whose economic muscle, back-room connections, and access to raw materials had helped to rebuild thousands of structures destroyed in the wake of the unparalleled disaster—a cataclysm that had leveled most of the city and still left more than fifty thousand residents without homes.

Like the reopening of the Fairmont, the evening’s occasion had brought out a bevy of Stanfords, Crockers, Huntingtons, Hopkinses, and Spreckels, along with a new wave of politicians who not only wished to honor the newlyweds from two powerful families, but to celebrate another milestone in San Francisco’s astonishing triumph over unprecedented adversity. And what better way to commemorate such a remarkable achievement than a wedding—an event pregnant with promise for the future.

How shocked these guests will be to learn the identity of the true owner of this legendary hotel site,
Amelia thought defiantly. How embarrassed to hear the names of people in their midst who were responsible for unprecedented graft and the deaths of untold nameless women—women who had perished behind the iron bars of brothels, unwilling captives on the day the earth shuddered and the heavens burned. Women whose bodies had never been counted in the official death toll.

Surely, Amelia Hunter Bradshaw was the last person Ezra Kemp or J.D. Thayer expected to make an appearance on this occasion, for she now possessed the proof that could destroy at least one man’s dreams, just as the quake and fire of ’06 had shattered the hopes of so many others.

She noticed reporter James Hopper lounging in one corner of the ballroom talking to a handsome young man furiously writing in a notebook—and she quickly looked away. Then she returned her father’s gold watch to her handbag and nestled the soiled remnants of that long forgotten poker contest next to the cherished timepiece—and her pearl-handled revolver. Next, she removed her velvet cloak and hung it neatly on the balustrade.

For a few more seconds she stood poised at the top of the stairs in her daring Paris finery and scanned the scene below. On the far side of the ballroom, behind a pillar, she spotted Jake Kelly and Joe Kavanaugh also surveying the crowd. Kemp’s henchmen had squeezed into evening clothes and looked like matching, overstuffed sofas. With a start, she spied Dick Spitz posted near the ballroom’s south entrance where gaggles of late-arriving guests joined the long queue for the reception line of civic dignitaries. He was obviously looking for someone.

Then she saw J.D.

He stood near the foot of the grand staircase, nodding and shaking hands with guests who were offering praise for his new hotel and congratulations about his pending marriage. A little Chinese girl stood shyly by his side. On his other side was a woman with a bronze complexion and shining black hair drawn sleekly into a chignon at the nape of her neck. J.D. frequently bent his head to speak to his mother and then leaned down and smiled encouragingly at the little girl.

Amelia steeled herself from thinking well of him for being so kind this night to members of his family that he had previously shunned. Better that her heart went out to the orphan child, she reminded herself, wondering how J.D. explained the identity of Wing Lee to the visitors filing by.

For a moment, Amelia caressed the polished walnut banister, an elegant symbol of a city that had literally risen from cinder and ash. Then, she slowly descended the crimson carpet. Soon a decision would be made and all secrets revealed.

But not yet.

***

Reporters James Hopper and Jack London stood off to the side of the glittering throng, notebooks held loosely in one hand, champagne glasses in the other.

“What do you think the chances are that President Roosevelt will make a surprise appearance?” London asked.

“Zero,” Hopper retorted with the vehemence of a City Room cynic. “The newspaper’s had spotters at the train station all week. It was just that blowhard, Ezra Kemp, trying to drum up guests for his daughter’s wedding.”