California Gold (64 page)

“You come, Pa.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Pa, come on.”

“I can’t,” Mack said in a harder voice. He set the boy down and patted the seat of his pants. “I’ll see you later today.”

Little Jim’s mouth turned down, but he said nothing. With a last look at his father—Mack was already striding back to the desk—he walked out past the conference table and through the vast rooms beyond. Young as he was, there was definitely a sad air about him, Johnson decided. A lonely, abandoned air.

Like a dutiful little soldier, Mack’s son marched straight through to the staircase, and Johnson watched his blond head sink from sight below the line of the floor.

Quickly Mack scanned the agenda Alex had prepared for the morning. “We’re finished. The Presidio property was the last item—”

The wall telephone rang and Alex grabbed it. “Mr. Potter in Los Angeles,” he said to Mack after a moment.

“Yes, Enrique,” Mack said. He listened. “Absolutely not. No extension. We close on that Long Beach tract in thirty days or no deal. Tell them.”

He hung up and scribbled a note on a pad.
Looks damn prosperous
, Johnson thought. A gold watch chain decorated the front of Mack’s vest, and there was a gleam of the same metal inside his mouth. Nothing but the finest.

“That’s it, gentlemen. Thanks to you both.”

Rhett Haverstick closed the clasp on his legal case. “Mr. Johnson, welcome. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

“There’s a huge guest suite waiting for you on the second floor,” Mack said.

Alex Muller snapped his pocket watch open. “Sir, you are due at the Olympic Club in fifteen minutes.”

“Bankers,” Mack said, giving his friend an apologetic smile and snatching his coat from a rack. “Call the carriage.” Alex darted to the speaking tube in the wall.

Johnson licked a cigarette paper and pasted it shut. He stuck the cigarette in his lip and lit a match on his boot. “Olympic Club. Sounds pretty high-toned.” He was beginning to feel out of place, about as comfortable as a minnow in the sea with a typhoon blowing.

“The best in the City, you’d have to say.” Mack slipped into his coat. “Alex, what about the figures on the ranches in the Valley?”

The foreign squirt peered through his thick pince-nez. “On your desk, sir. Together with an estimate of the harvest at the winery.”

“I’ll go over them tonight.”

Johnson’s jaw dropped. “Winery?”

“Something else I picked up,” Mack said with a grin. “In the country a few miles above Sonoma. I’ve started to throw supper parties. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper if I serve my own vintages.”

“I guess that’s how the rich get richer,” Johnson muttered. He slid lower in his chair and squinted through curling smoke while Mack whispered something to the squirt.

Then Mack waved to his friend. “Walk downstairs with me.”

Johnson did, but he was feeling sour and didn’t hide it. “This here all the time you can spare for conversation?”

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re back, but it’s a busy day. They’re all busy now. We’ll eat supper tonight, catch up on things.”

“This here’s a palace, Mack.”

“Too big for me. But it creates an impression. Helps with business.” They clattered down the wide stairs and crossed the second-floor landing, which was big enough to park a covered wagon.

“What do you hear from Carla?”

“Nothing since the divorce.”

“Your boy sure looks like her.”

Colored lights from the Tiffany window patterned the marble floor of the foyer. The butler glided up in a spooky way and handed Mack his hat, gloves, and stick.

“Jim’s a quiet one. I can’t seem to talk to him very well.”

“Takes time to raise a youngster.” Mack shot him a look.
Shit, he can’t stand criticism
, Johnson thought. He quickly added, “So I been told.”

That mollified Mack. “Lord, I’ve missed your company. What have you been up to for so blasted long?”

“Chasin’ after gold in the by-God frozen north. Some places, it’s so cold even this damn cork foot got the frostbite. I met a young fella up there I think you’d like. Matter of fact, he’s an Oakland boy. Your sort, in a way. A parlor socialist, don’t y’know…”

Mack accepted that with a tolerant smile. The butler opened the front door, his expression indicating that Johnson was interfering with the orderly affairs of the house.

“He writes stories too—like Nellie. Name’s Jack London. I got his address. I’ll introduce you.”

“Fair enough.” Mack dashed down the steps to the waiting carriage, a double-suspension brougham with a shiny dark-green body and green morocco interior. The driver snapped the lacquered door shut after Mack. Sun flashed from the enameled
JMC
emblem. The driver scooted up the wheel to his seat and Mack leaned out. “And I’ll introduce you to my new automobile.”

“Your what?”

“
Automobile.
That’s the name they’ve settled on for the horseless carriage. I bought a steamer. Eight hundred and fifty dollars.”

The brougham pulled away. Johnson had a fleeting look at Mack leaning back and lighting a cigar. Johnson had seen him smoke cigars before—cheap stubby ones—but this monstrosity was green, and fully as long as the barrel of Johnson’s Peacemaker.

The Texan tossed up his hands in dismay.
That’s all; that’s the end
, he thought. An airy wake of smoke followed the brougham as it left Nob Hill.

On Saturday, Mack, Johnson, and Jack London ate lunch in the tiny kitchen at the Sonoma Creek Winery. London was eight years younger than Mack, a garrulous, hard-talking towhead with thick knuckles and a burly build. Full of himself, he hardly gave the others time to speak. He informed them he knew everything important about the writings of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer. Karl Marx too.

“Don’t know any of them boys,” Johnson remarked. “I figure I get all the lies I need from the papers and ten-cent novels about Buffla Bill.”

London’s eyes flashed. “Those
boys
tell the truth. Like I do.”

“Sure, Jack, Eat your lunch.”

Halfway through, Mack jumped up and pulled on heavy driving gauntlets. He ran to the stove with a pair of tongs and gingerly opened the lower door, lifting out a
U-
shaped, glowing red steel pipe.

“What the devil’s that?” London asked.

“The firing iron. To start the burner. Can’t stop to talk. Have to keep it hot.”

He ran out.

“He didn’t answer my question,” London said.

“The Locomobile don’t run on gasoline. He has to get the steam up ’fore we drive. Takes about a half hour. That firing iron starts the burner.”

“If I ever sell enough fiction to become a rotten capitalist, damned if I’ll buy an auto that complicated.”

“Me neither. Four legs an’ a tail suits me.”

In the yard they heard purple oaths. A moment later Mack walked in. The firing iron had turned gray.

“Not hot enough. Have to start over.”

A thin fog settled in the afternoon. They didn’t leave the winery till after three. But when they did, Johnson had to admit it was a sensational experience.

“Steam’s up,” Mack cried. “The water supply’s good for twenty miles. Let’s go.”

The Locomobile Steam Runabout was a beauty, the best steam car offered by the factory in Watertown, Massachusetts. She carried a single wide passenger seat and a shining coat of red lacquer. On the front side of the dash panel Johnson discovered the
JMC.
Looking for it was getting to be tiresome, because you always found it.

Mack buttoned his tan duster, togged down his goggles, and settled his stiff-billed canvas cap. He’d provided similar gear for his passengers. They squeezed into the seat and away they went, rolling down the hard dirt lane from me adobe-brick winery, past the arbors to the main road. The Locomobile didn’t sputter, shake, knock, or generate any noise except a low hiss of escaping steam. Johnson and London hung on tight to the seat, while Mack handled the steering tiller. He was like a boy with a toy.

A ribbon of steam unfurled in the mist behind them as Mack steered expertly around a fanner’s cart full of melons. The farmer cursed the steam car and calmed his frightened nag. They whisked through a cathedral arch of tall eucalyptus, Mack shouting, “I don’t have to fool with a spark advance or gears. There’s a lot to recommend steam.”

“You’re a demon driver,” Johnson laughed. He enjoyed the reckless rush down the country road, and temporarily forgot his dislike of Mack’s obsession with material things.

“I’m going to race one of these days,” Mack promised,

Suddenly they found themselves in a flock of frightened doves, which flew in their faces and beat their wings against the tan dusters and the moving vehicle. Mack steered away from the birds, hit some weeds alongside a fence, jerked the tiller over, and brought them back to the road. Steaming and hissing, the Locomobile sped up a thirty-degree rise without a hesitation.

“She’s a marvel climbing hills. No effort, notice?”

They drove on to the rugged terrain above Sonoma, the Valley of the Moon. “I’ll have a house on one of those hilltops someday,” London shouted.

“My friend Nellie Ross is making a lot of money from her book. No reason you can’t,” Mack shouted.

“She’s a hell of a good writer,” London shouted. “They call her the female Zola.”

“I know,” Mack shouted.

“Say, Mack,” Johnson shouted, “what happens if something blows out the fire in this tin can?”

“We walk back.”

Fifteen minutes later, they did.

Late one afternoon in May, Mack and Haverstick met for a drink at the Bank Exchange, a favorite watering spot of the City’s rich and powerful. Haverstick ordered a martini, the gin-and-vermouth cocktail invented by the legendary bartender “Professor” Thomas of the Occidental Hotel, and Mack ordered a Blue Blazer. When Haverstick excused himself and squeezed through the crowd to speak to Hunter Vann, the trial attorney, Mack occupied himself watching Jerry mix the Scotch and a dash of sugar syrup, add boiling water, and touch a match to it. As the blue flame flickered, someone poked Mack’s elbow.

“Hy Hazelton. President of Glacier Ice Company.”

Mack regarded the sweating round face. Reluctantly he shook hands. “Macklin Chance.”

“Oh, everybody knows who you are. I need to speak to you, one businessman to another. You own a large produce warehouse—”

“Three.”

“That’s a lot of drayage. Wagons in and out all the time.” Hazelton’s little eyes glistened.

Careful, here’s another crusader. But for what?

“We don’t need union draymen in San Francisco, Chance. We don’t need union shops of any kind. We need a free labor market. The kind General Otis created down south. There’s a new local organization of community leaders dedicated to that idea, the Employers Association. I want to personally invite you—”

“No thanks. I’m not interested in union-busting. Workingmen have a right to organize to protect themselves.”

“That’s a misguided attitude. Trade unionism’s a cancer. We’ve let it grow too long in San Francisco.”

“Hazelton, excuse me,” Mack said with an ominous little smile. “I paid for this drink and I’d like to enjoy it.”

Hy Hazelton the ice king sneered and waddled off. Jerry added a bit of lemon peel to the Blue Blazer, and Mack picked up the warm glass and sipped. When Haverstick came back Mack mentioned the conversation.

“I’ve heard about the Employers Association,” Haverstick said. “You can’t get a fix on who belongs—they’re secretive— but there’s talk on the street of the association forcing a confrontation this summer.”

“What kind?”

“Against the union teamsters is what I’m hearing. With all your connections on the waterfront, you’ll want to keep your eyes open.”

“I can’t tell you why they’re called French restaurants,” Mack said, in answer to Johnson’s question. The two of them were walking down from Nob Hill in the purple dusk. Windows in electrified buildings twinkled along Market Street. The
wonk-wonk
of an auto’s bulb horn sounded from a cross street. The changes, Mack thought. So many changes.

“Do any respectable people go to these joints?” Johnson asked. He’d donned a new black suit, knotted up a string tie, and slicked his hair for the occasion.

“All the time. To the first floor.” He explained what went on up above.

Brass electric fixtures and a painted tricolor plaque decorated the entrance of Maison Napoleon. Several couples and a large family were already seated in a dining room as conventional as any hotel’s. A plaster bust of Bonaparte glowered from a corner pedestal and Empress Josephine’s vapid face gazed down from a gilt frame. A small electric lamp with a fringed shade of translucent silk shed a peach-colored light on each table. The blue-rimmed bistro china was heavy and solid, and a thick carpet hushed the noise.

Johnson studied his menu, handwritten on parchment inside a leather cover stamped with fleur-de-lis. Mack lit one of his gun-barrel cigars and Johnson made a show of fanning away the smoke. Mack grinned and kept on puffing.

After a bald waiter took Mack’s order for a bottle of cabernet, Johnson noted a stairway leading up from an alcove in back. “You been upstairs?”

“I’ve paid a couple of visits, yes. Mostly I just like the food here. And Margaret’s company—there she is.” He smiled and raised his hand as she came through the kitchen door. Johnson craned around to see a boyishly slim young woman, wearing a starched white shirtwaist with long sleeves and a white tie. Her navy skirt swished as she hurried to the table. She might have been running a bordello, but on any stage she could play a schoolmarm or someone’s hymn-singing virgin cousin from Toledo. The disguise amused Johnson.

“Mack. Good evening.”

He jumped up and kissed her cheek. She gave his arm a quick squeeze but he seemed not to notice. Then she smiled.
Lord, look at them teeth
, Johnson said to himself.

“Margaret Emerson, this is my friend and partner, H. B. Johnson.”

They shook hands decorously.

“Welcome to Maison Napoleon, Mr. Johnson. Mack’s said so much about you—”

“Nothin’ good, I ’spect.”

“To the contrary. Did Mack tell you about our two upper floors?”