California Gold (101 page)

On Sunday, Elihu Flintman and Jim worked in the bookkeeping office from one o’clock until dark, pulling and listing every ledger and record of the tabernacle in preparation for turning the lot over to the attorneys. Flintman dictated the descriptions and Jim wrote them down with a steel nib in his fine large hand.

Flintman was smugly exultant, though his good feeling was blunted by occasional severe angina, and by worry about Winona. After the frightful session the day before, from which Wyatt had stalked screaming the vilest obscenities, Winona Flintman had collapsed. Flintman rushed her to Pasadena Hospital, where she was sedated for nervous prostration.

Jim worked quietly, following instructions, asking no questions. He hadn’t been allowed to attend the meeting, but he knew that a group of elders and a sheriff’s deputy had escorted Brother Paul off the grounds at five past twelve. Jim was relieved that the founder was gone; Brother Paul had always frightened him a little. He just hoped he and Jocker would continue to have jobs.

Around eight o’clock, just as he was starting to yawn behind his hand and wonder if he dared ask Flintman about supper, he heard someone cross the veranda with a soft tread. Then faint clicks signaled the opening and closing of the front door. Immersed in canceled checks, Flintman didn’t Look up.

“See who’s there, Jim David.”

Dutifully Jim left the office. Deacon Rowena, Deacon Helen, and the others had packed up and departed sometime Saturday night. Could it be one of them coming back for something? He limped from the central foyer past the staircase and caught his breath. Brother Paul was halfway up the stairs.

“Mr. Flintman,” Jim shouted.

“You little prick.” Brother Paul lunged at him, shooting his hands over the banister. Jim jumped back, but his bad foot twisted, and Brother Paul’s fingers brushed his throat.

Elihu Flintman lumbered from the office. “Here, what are you doing? Come to add thievery to your mischief?” Flintman rushed up the staircase, though he slowed, noticeably on the last few steps. He grabbed Wyatt’s arm. “Get off these premises. Jim, telephone the sheriff.”

Brother Paul bashed him with an elbow and Flintman staggered down three steps, sucking air, his eyes bulging. Jim struggled up past the bookkeeper as fast as he could. “You hurt him,” he yelled, throwing himself at Wyatt. He got one hand around Wyatt’s arm and then Wyatt punched his jaw.

Jim’s teeth cut the lining of his mouth. He spat bloody saliva. A few drops splattered Wyatt’s sweater, and it seemed to drive the man wild. He grabbed Jim’s blond hair and kicked him between the legs, then flung him bodily down the stairs.

Jim landed hard, skidding. As Wyatt ran down, Flintman clutched at him. “You—monster—” Wyatt pivoted and threw a brutal blow into Flintman’s abdomen. The bookkeeper collapsed, grasping for the banister and choking. His eyes rolled up in his head. Then he flopped like a rag doll.

Wyatt’s head was afire with rage and the lovely unexpected satisfaction of dealing with these two. He darted the rest of the way down and paused over Jim’s prostrate body.

If he had ever seen the boy before, it hadn’t made an impression. They said everyone in the world had a twin; this boy was Carla’s. Uncanny. How like a beautiful sleeping seraph he was…

Wyatt’s dreamy smile vanished, and he kicked Jim’s head viciously. The boy’s head snapped over. Wyatt heard his weak cry as he ran to a bay window. Grinning, Wyatt tore draperies from their rings, and then he held one edge up to the gas until it flamed.

Jocker Sprue was sitting in the cool darkness outside his cottage when he saw the rose-pink light in the octagonal house. He shouted until he roused two other gardeners who could run faster than an arthritic old man. They reached the tabernacle as the fire spread out of the foyer. Flintman was found with his legs still on the stairs and his mussed gray hair resting on the polished floor. The gardeners dragged his lifeless body outside, then rescued Jim from the puddle of blood where his head lay.

By nine o’clock the fire had gutted the tabernacle. By half past, the last beams crumbled in shining waterfalls of sparks. Old Jocker shivered in the night air and thoughtlessly remarked that the fire was bright as the sun.

C
ARLA LEFT THE PARTY
at half past one. Party? It was a funeral. She’d consumed two full bottles of champagne and half of a third. She was still depressed, and wanted more.

After eleven o’clock Walter barely said a word to her, just sat there watching the numbers going up on the chalkboard, sat there with a full glass and a sick-dog expression as the telephone lines brought the totals into the St. Francis. Around twelve-thirty she slipped into a cloakroom with a randy little ward captain. He bolted the door and she screwed him standing up. When she came back, Johnson still held his twenty-thousand-vote lead. Walter didn’t know she’d been gone.

She staggered out the Post Street entrance, taken aback by the sound of rain. It was pouring, sluicing off the canopy and flooding the sidewalk underneath. To her left, headlamps came on, and Walter’s newest Pope-Toledo, black as usual, glided out of its space and pulled in near the canopy. Carla’s fox fur dragged in the water as she crossed the sidewalk.

After he had gotten Carla in, the chauffeur U-turned, heading west on Post, then south on Mason. The rain hammered the metal roof and rushed under the car like Niagara. Carla leaned back and shut her eyes. Walter had failed the SP. God. What next?

The car slowed for the O’Farrell intersection, and she opened her eyes. On a brick wall ahead she saw two big posters washed by the rain. One advertised a motion picture with a large, heroic illustration of a cowboy firing spitting six-guns. An oval inset showed a young woman with auburn hair and a pretty smile.

ESSANAY

PRESENTS

BRONCHO BILLY’S COURAGE

FEATURING AMERICA’S NEW “SWEETHEART OF THE WEST”

MARGARET LESLIE

But what drew Carla’s attention was the other poster:
ELECT HIRAM JOHNSON.
Someone who didn’t like the suggestion had torn a long strip from the center of the new governor’s photograph.

“Stop, Haines.”

“Mrs. Fairbanks—”

“I said stop right here.”

“Ma’am, I got orders from your husband to take you straight from the party to the Palace.”

“Screw you.” She struggled with the door handle. “Some party. A fucking wake for the political dead—” Unexpectedly, her weight hurled the door open and she almost pitched into the gutter. A silver flask fell out of her beaded bag and lay in the rushing water like a silver fish, her fur piling on top. She staggered to the posters, rain soaking her gown, matting her tangled hair, and dissolving her makeup. Weaving back and forth in front of Hiram Johnson’s portrait, she spat on him, then attacked him with her nails. “Piss on you, Johnson—goddamn pious hypocrite—piss on you and your whole pack of righteous—”

“Here, stop that.” The voice came from the corner. A second later the chauffeur called a warning. He was crouched in the beams of the headlights, his fine uniform soaked.

Carla heeded neither voice, tearing at the picture savagely. A fingernail broke, then another, but she kept on cursing and shredding the paper face. Suddenly a bright beam blinded her.

“Take that fucking light out of my eyes.”

A young policeman in a slicker and bill cap strode up. “Ma’am, I don’t know who you are, but it’s illegal to deface political posters—even after the election. I’ll have to take you in and—”

Carla spat in his face.

The cop blinked and wiped his chin with his sleeve, then grabbed Carla’s arm. “Listen here, lady.” With her other hand she raked his jaw, three bloody nail tracks. He cursed and blew his whistle, and that enraged her more.

The chauffeur pleaded and tried to wedge between them, but the cop was angry and she was out of her head, battering the cop, kicking and gouging him. Suddenly there were running footsteps, splashing in the rain. The struggling cop heard them and, holding Carla at bay with a palm against her chin, called, “Frank, for God’s sake, help me with this bitch.”

The second cop, older, and burly, wrestled Carla against the brick wall. She spat on him too, then tried to kick his testicles. He whacked her with a hard backhand; it was done neatly and professionally, with no animosity. Her eyes lost focus and she started to slide down the wall. There was a flash of plated metal and then something snapped shut.

Carla braced her legs and opened her eyes. Dragging her forearm forward into the glow of the headlights, she saw the diamonds dazzling on her wrist bracelet, but the links of the handcuff chain were almost as bright. The chain connected to another cuff on the wrist of the older cop.

“I know who this is, Tommy,” he said. “We’ll take her in, then I’ll telephone around to find her husband.”

Sobriety came like a thunderclap. Carla stared at the policemen with the wild look of a trapped animal.

At 3:20
A.M
. Fairbanks pushed open the doors of police headquarters at Fillmore and Bush. He practically dragged Carla down the steps in the pelting rain.

He started when he saw two black Fords parked one behind the other at the curb, then put on a show of calm as he descended the last three steps.

Two men leaped from the Ford in front, another from the second car. The fastest, wearing a fedora and belted coat, shot up to Fairbanks with a reporter’s pad poised.

“Reeves of the
Examiner
, Mr. Fairbanks. I’d like to ask—”

Fairbanks smashed him down against the running board of the Ford with a roundhouse punch.

Fairbanks walked out of the opulent bathroom of their suite at the Palace. Clouds of steam from the hot tub dulled the luster of the gold faucets. He tried not to think of his loss of temper outside headquarters.

He crossed the bedroom to the parlor. Carla sat drowsily in her muddy finery, rolling her head from side to side. Open-mouthed, she hummed a tuneless little song.

“Get up.” He could barely keep from striking her, and she seemed to realize it; she didn’t resist. Fairbanks dragged her back through the bedroom like a chattel, then shoved her roughly into the billowing steam.

“Take your clothes off and sober up, goddamn you.”

Carla gave him a sad, searching look. Her eyes were stained black from all the running makeup, and she looked like a tawdry circus clown. Bowing her head, she shut the bathroom door.

Rain rushed down the window, throwing a mottled pattern on his face. In the next bed, Carla slept restlessly, muttering. Fairbanks was sitting up, arms crossed over his starched pajama jacket.

With his eye fixed on some remote point of the dark, he tried to chart the probable course of his future. He didn’t know the exact time—four-thirty or five in the morning. He couldn’t sleep; his stomach was tearing him up with pain.

Carla pushed at her pillow and muttered something. Fairbanks regarded her with loathing. She rolled her head from side to side, then spoke the word again.

“What did you say?”

She repeated it. He swung his legs out of bed, stepped over, and leaned down. She rolled from her shoulder to her back, fretting in her dream, then pushed the sheet down off her satin nightgown. This time he heard it clearly: “Mack, Mack.”

Carla’s tongue crept out and slid across her lower lip. Her hips arched a little and her hands found the roll of her fat stomach. She held herself as if suppressing pain or some other sensation, and moaned again. Fairbanks hardly had to speculate about the dream.

He walked barefoot to the window. There he gazed down at the rainy bleakness of a deserted Market Street. He heard Carla tossing and grumbling, her hips heaving up and down. Fairbanks watched, contemplating murder.

Hiram Johnson carried the state 177,000 to 155,000, rolling up his greatest margin in Protestant Southern California.

At the San Francisco celebration, Mack drank and danced with Margaret until it was light, then drove her up Nob Hill. He showed her the site of the old house. It was cleared now, sodded, and planted with a few skimpy trees.

“But I have no plans to rebuild.”

At Greenwich Street he cooked breakfast. She asked whether he’d seen Nellie and he told her Nellie had a new lover.

“Are you sure?”

“I saw him. Do you want champagne with your eggs?”

Fairbanks, like a man under a death sentence, was allowed to dangle the rest of the week. Then he was summoned to the boardroom at ten o’clock on the Monday following the Progressives’ statewide sweep.

It was a gray, foggy morning in the City, and the drab light made Fairbanks’s face all the more mealy and ghastly.

“Walter, I deeply regret this—” Herrin began.

“Spare me, Bill. I know you need a goat to sacrifice.”

Displeased, another executive said, “There’s no need for emotional rhetoric, Walter. We explained the consequences of a loss very clearly beforehand.”

Herrin regained control of the meeting by clearing his throat. “Your wife’s arrest and all the attendant publicity make a decision not only more unpalatable, but, I’m sorry to say, even more necessary.”

Fairbanks’s gray eyes had a destitute look. Wearily, but doing his best to square his shoulders and maintain good posture, he stood up. “Is there really any need to prolong this? I’ll give you my letter of resignation by the close of business.”

“In that case…” Herrin spoke with surprising kindness. “No, there is no need to prolong it. Thank you for being understanding, Walter.”

“Of course,” Fairbanks said, bitter suddenly.

He marched out like a good soldier, though not under the best of control; he slammed the door.

Once outside the room, he bowed his head and covered his eyes. He heard the rustling skirts of a secretary walking along the hall. She passed him and saw his shame and disarray. He was surprised at how little he cared.

Gaspar Ludlow found his chief at his desk with his head in his hands.

“The word’s all over the building, sir. Speaking for everyone in the legal department, it’s damned unfair.”