Port Hazard (18 page)

“Ask him to wait in the parlor,” Goodhue said.

The door closed.

I said, “Whorehouses are like ice-cream stores. There are two or three waiting to take the place of every one you burn to the ground.”

“Work worthy of the effort is worthy of repeating. Always and again, until the mortal shells rise and the sorting begins. The price of salvation is patience and persistence.”

“You're not the first man who tried to raise a private army for his own ends. They always come to grief at the finish.”

“You've forgotten the late Mr. Lincoln. General McClellan was in favor of suing for peace. Lincoln answered him by inventing the draft. But for his interest in his own ends, the war would have ended three years earlier. History is written by the victors.”

“He paid for it with his life,” I said. “His and three hundred thousand others.”

“I am prepared to answer to that account. Are you?”

“I swore an oath to that effect.”

He smirked again. “I'm aware of the reading habits of my parishioners. I regret to say it is not confined to Holy Writ. Your exploits have not escaped the notice of the vulgar penny press, and I dare say they do not in all ways conform to the spirit of your oath. I judge not lest I be judged. My own methods are not always those of the Redeemer and His apostles, but I live in the modern world. Mark and Matthew could not have anticipated Barbary any more than the hedonistic Greeks could have foreseen Sodom and Gomorrah. Although Samson found the jawbone of an ass sufficient for slaughtering infidels and idolators, I find that a powder charge is far more appropriate when transacting business with Daniel Webster Wheelock's Hoodlums.”

The atmosphere in that raw room was noxious. It might have been the lingering effects of last night or the smoky lamp on the desk, but there was hardly enough air to fill Owen Goodhue's lungs, let alone three sets at once. I wanted out of there, but I needed one more answer.

“I notice you didn't include Wheelock's name on your list.”

“God has use for Satan, or He would have smote him centuries ago. In any case, Captain Dan is nothing without Barbary. He will shrivel and drift before the first clean draught that blows unhampered across the ruins.”

“You keep talking about Barbary as if it's just a bunch of buildings,” I said. “They have people in them.”

“What is flesh? We leave it behind when we stand before our Creator.”

“Lying or hanging?”

“I do not propose to say. Joshua did not discuss his strategy before Jericho.”

“But who will be left to write the Book of Owen?” I asked.

“I am a humble man. If in the outcome of this event my name should be erased from human memory, I hold the matter in no great regard. It is already written in the book of St. Peter. If I manage to spare even one young woman from the clutches of Demon Lust, I need not fear what is recorded beneath. Gentlemen.” He rose, dwarfing the room further. He had to stoop to avoid colliding with the ceiling. It made you want to step back.

Beecher held his ground. “What's white slaving got to do with Horatio Flinders?”

Goodhue hoisted his shaggy brows. “Who?”

We left him. Entering the parlor on our way out, I stopped. Beecher bumped against me from behind.

Daniel Webster Wheelock used his ivory stick to push himself up from one of the upholstered chairs. He had on his fire captain's uniform, and he looked as surprised as I felt.

“Deputy.”

“Alderman.”

Mrs. Goodhue came in and led him out.

Nero, Wheelock's Negro bodyguard, stood smoking a cigar on the boardwalk in front of the house. He wore a tall gray hat and a full-skirted overcoat to match over checked trousers and gleaming Wellingtons. He lowered the hand holding the cigar and tipped his hat as we walked past.

“That man Goodhue's
razier'n ten crazy men,” Beecher said.

I nodded. “I can't figure out why he isn't famous.”

“Well, he'll be plenty famous after tomorrow night.”

We were sitting on a public bench at the top of Telegraph Hill, passing a bottle of Old Gideon back and forth; I'd made the mistake of swearing off liquor before making the acquaintance of the madman of Mission Street. The saloon-keeper in the stained-glass place where we'd stopped for a drink wouldn't serve us on the premises on account of Beecher, but he'd agreed to sell us the bottle when I showed him my star and asked when was the last time his gas line had been inspected.

The view was impressive, even for a native of the High Plains. It extended all the way down to the ships in the harbor and across the bay where houses were going up, so rapidly we could track their progress between swigs. Cable cars screeched down the slope and rattled back up, taking on and disgorging passengers on the fly. I saw my first omnibus. The place was busier than an antheap.

Both sides of San Francisco displayed themselves simultaneously, the stately homes on Nob Hill and the tumbledown shacks on Pacific Street; parasols blossoming to our left like desert blooms after a rain, pushcart peddlers crawling along like caterpillars to our right, hawking rags and cans of coal oil recovered from the dregs of lamps rescued from trash bins. We saw a liveried groom helping a lady in a bustle into a brougham and the assault and battery of an unsteady pedestrian, both at the same time. It was like looking through a stereoscope whose pictures had gotten mixed up back at the factory.

Beecher shared my thoughts. “What you reckon is holding this place together?”

“The same thing that keeps it apart. If it weren't for Barbary, the swells would have to pick fights with each other. Look what's happening on the frontier. We threw out the Indians and let in the lawyers and politicians.”

“What makes you so smart?”

“I'm not smart. I'm just alive.”

“You fought Indians?”

“I've fought Indians.”

“And I know you shot it out with outlaws.”

“Outlaws and lawmen.”

“How old are you?”

“Forty-two.”

“You're smart.”

“Not smart enough to quit.”

“Maybe you're smart enough to tell me what Cap'n Dan's doing paying a call on Goodhue.”

“We'll ask Wheelock tonight at the Bella Union.”

He drank, held the liquor in his mouth a moment, then swallowed. “I clean forgot about that meeting of the Sons of the Confederacy. You done any thinking as to how we're getting in?”

“I've been working on it. I still am. I don't figure that punch-simple bouncer from the saloon to set much of a challenge, but if Wheelock shows, he's bound to bring along that bodyguard of his. He knows us by sight, and Wheelock didn't strike me as the kind of politician who keeps anyone on his payroll just because he looks well in a stiff collar.”

“Nero's colored. You leave him to me.”

“Matching skin won't get you past him. I doubt he concerns himself with brotherhood.”

“It ain't getting past him I'm talking about. Some men you just got to go through.” He offered me the bottle.

I shook my head. It was already beginning to slosh. My stomach was empty. I'd held my own against dog soldiers and brute killers, but that morning I hadn't been stout enough to face breakfast. “We can't risk shooting. The noise would raise the South and it would be Bull Run all over again.”

He raised the bottle to his lips, then thought better of it and thumped in the cork. “I ever tell you about the fight at Buffalo Creek?”

“You scalped a young brave and stayed behind to burn the lodges and shoot the ponies.”

“No, the young brave was another fight, and I didn't tell you how Buffalo Creek got won. We was climbing a hill to attack the village. It was first light, and we was walking the horses with gunnysacks tied on their hooves so as not to alert the sentries; cupping their snouts with one hand so's they wouldn't blow when they smelled Indian ponies. We was halfway up when a hunting party come over the hill and spotted us.

“They was just as surprised as we was, and drawed rein just to make certain they wasn't seeing spirits. They was mounted, we was afoot, and if you tell me you ever seen a good organized Arapaho charge you're a liar, on account of you wouldn't be sitting here with hair under your hat. I only heard about them myself, and hearing was enough to satisfy my curiosity.”

He grinned his sunrise grin. He was seeing something other than the metropolis at our feet.

“We had this white lieutenant, Brigham was his name, only he sure wasn't no Mormon. When he broke wind, you thought it was the regimental band. I seen men who'd gut you with a bayonet turn green and spew up their rations when they caught the scent. Well, he got so scared he let one fly, loud enough to spook the horses, and you know something? That hunting party was so insulted they lost their manners and galloped down that hill all in a bunch, whooping like drunken cowboys, running right over each other, bumping lances and getting their bows all tangled. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Brigham remembered his training and got us into formation, front rank standing and firing, then kneeling to reload while the second rank stood and fired, and so on. We shot that hunting party to pieces and swung into leather and took out after the turntails and right on over the crest and down into the village. All on account of one man couldn't hold his beans.”

He drew the cork, drank, and restopped the bottle.

“We called it the Battle of Brigham's Bowels.”

I watched a wedding let out of a church on Stockton, men in morning coats and women in frilled capes spilling down the steps to see off the bride and groom in a phaeton tied all over with white ribbons.

“I don't remember reading about that one in
Harper's Weekly,
” I said.

“Well, it wasn't Custer's Last Fight. The point is, you can train a man to overcome everything but his own bad temper. If them braves wasn't so concerned with their dignity, that village might still be standing.” He stuck the bottle in a coat pocket. “You let me worry about Nero.”

“You aren't going to break wind, are you?”

“That was just an example. I wouldn't never enter into a contest with Lieutenant Brigham. One time—”

“Save it for later. You don't want to use up all your best stories at once.” I stood and grasped the back of the bench for balance. Old Gideon needed a four-course meal to tie it down. “Let's get something to eat. We might not find time for supper.”

He got up. “What you in the mood for?”

“Anything but beans.”

 

The Ancient rose from a blanket of fog that swathed the gas lamps almost to their orange globes, pale and shimmering under a rustler's moon. It was as solid and yet as otherworldly as the Sphinx, and it seemed to say,
I am the Bella Union, I am Barbary. I was here before the Chinese, before the Sydney Ducks, and I will stand when all the lesser establishments about me have burned or fallen into splinters. Worship me with cheap champagne and expensive women
. We sidestepped a pool of steaming urine at the base of the foundation and went inside. We were met by the bouncer, none of whose scars had faded since the last time. His head belonged on a hunched figure in trunks and a tight jersey in a sporting print, not a thickening body in a black frock coat and white shirtboard.

“Sorry, gents. The place is closed tonight for a private party. Come back tomorrow.”

We were alone in the foyer that opened into the saloon, but I didn't know for how long. The auditorium door was drifting shut behind the last body to pass through. I started to turn away, then pivoted on my heel and hit the bouncer square on the chin with all my weight behind my fist. I felt the impact to my shoulder.

He took a step back, then lowered his head between his shoulders and raised a pair of small, hard fists with ridges across the knuckles where they'd broken and healed several times. He took a step forward. Beecher planted the muzzle of his Le Mat against the bouncer's right temple and rolled back the hammer. The bouncer stiffened, then lowered his fists to his sides.

I held my star in front of his face. “We're here on federal business. Take a walk down to the harbor. Have a cigar. Have several. In San Quentin, they don't let you smoke in the cells.”

“I don't use tobacco.”

“Have a drink, then. Kill the bottle.”

“I don't drink, either. I don't hold with most of the vices.”

“Which ones do you hold with?” I kept my temper in check. I didn't know when someone might come in from the street or the theater. I didn't want to buffalo him. You can take only so many cracks to the skull, and the bumps and furrows showing through his close-cropped hair went the limit.

“I got a girl up at the Brass Check.”

“Go see her. You've got to tend a romance if you want it to grow.”

“I'll lose my job.”

“There's plenty of work in San Quentin.”

After a moment he nodded. Beecher withdrew the pistol and the bouncer walked past us and out the door. He didn't stop for a hat and coat.

“Thought you said he wouldn't set much challenge,” Beecher said.

I shushed him, strode to the auditorium door, and cracked it. It opened into a carpeted alcove with stairs to the right and left, which I guessed led to the curtained boxes where the gentry plied Owen Goodhue's lost daughters with drink and pressed their affections in private. I hoped they'd be vacant that night. I drew the Deane-Adams and led the way upstairs. Voices buzzed in the orchestra. The place sounded like opening night for a revue from New York.

“Sir, I'm afraid you've lost your way.”

I recognized the deep silken voice before I saw its owner. Wheelock's bodyguard stood in the center of the floral carpet that ran past the entrance to the boxes, his feet spread in patent-leather boots. Tonight he had on plum-colored plush, ruffled white linen, and black broadcloth, tailored to within a quarter-inch of his measurements. It made him look almost normal size until you realized that what appeared to be a ladies' pocket pistol in his right hand was a full-size Colt Peacemaker, with the barrel shortened to accommodate a concealed holster. It was steadied against his hip.

I said. “Nero, this isn't your affair. I represent the law.”

I might as well have been throwing pebbles at a statue. The fact that I had a revolver in my hand as well meant no more to him than the color of my eyes. We'd neither of us miss the mark at that distance.

“Nero.”

I twitched. Nero didn't. I hadn't realized Beecher wasn't behind me until he stepped around the corner behind the bodyguard and called his name. He held the Le Mat straight out from his shoulder with the muzzle aimed at the back of the big man's head. He'd climbed the other set of stairs and followed the carpeted walk all the way around the auditorium.

“That's Beecher,” I said. “You met him the other day in your boss's reception room.”

That bounced off him. He was a fixture. They'd built the Bella Union around him and he'd be the last thing to go come the next big fire. The Colt didn't move. Judge Blackthorne's deputies were trained in that situation to fire at their primary target, then if they were still standing, turn and try for the men behind them. In that moment I knew Nero had been taught the same thing. We were going to burn each other down, and God couldn't stop it. He'd turned His back on Barbary. My finger tightened on the trigger of the Deane-Adams.

“He won't remember,” Beecher said. “We're all the same to him, a pat on the head and a scratch behind the ears. He'll wag his tail and lick the face of whoever comes around to see his master. Ain't that right, nigger-oh?”

He licked his lips. “Nero.”

I couldn't fathom it. If Beecher had told me what he'd had in mind, I'd have refused to go along. You could see through it from a hundred yards, and the bodyguard wasn't a fool. But Beecher had known something I hadn't, something I never would. I relaxed my finger just a little.

“That ain't what I asked, you dumb coon. You must have cotton in your ears.”

Nero didn't move. A vein I hadn't noticed before rose like a blister on his left temple. I saw it pulse.

“Let's us go,” Beecher said to me. “This boy's got spitoons to empty out.”

Nero twisted suddenly, bringing the Colt around with him. I made two long strides and swept the barrel of the five-shot across the bulge of his skull. His knees buckled. I reached past him, closing my hand over the Colt and jamming the base of my thumb between the hammer and the chamber. I sucked air when the hammer pinched flesh, but the cartridge didn't fire and I twisted the weapon out of his grip as he fell.

We gagged him with his cravat, used his belt and Beecher's to bind his arms and legs, and dragged him through a door into one of the boxes overlooking the auditorium. I told Beecher to watch him.

“What about you?”

“I came to see the show.”