California Gold (63 page)

The first floor of every French restaurant was just that: a dining room, and a perfectly respectable one, often patronized by the most conservative and conventional of businessmen. On the second floor, however, you could take supper in a private dining room, either alone or in the company of a discreet female companion who resided on the premises. None of the rooms was without a comfortable couch large enough for two. For even longer periods of refreshment, there were small suites called supper bedrooms on the third floor; you rented those for the entire night.

Mack tried a couple of other French restaurants before he settled on a favorite, Maison Napoleon, tucked away on the north side of Mission, south of the Slot. During his second dinner there, he fell into conversation with the owner, who intrigued him because of her age—she was only in her early twenties—and her air of propriety. Her name was Margaret Emerson. He silently admired her enterprise and her obvious intelligence; no ordinary street trollop could have run a place so close to the edge of the law, yet so clearly successful. He and Margaret quickly became friends.

Margaret Emerson was a slightly built young woman with large brown eyes, auburn hair, and a dappling of freckles on her nose and cheeks. Her jaw was rather too long, and so was her neck. When she was on duty, acting as hostess for the dining room, she maintained a serious air and wore dark dresses befitting someone much older. She enhanced the effect by piling her hair high on her head in a dignified arrangement and covering her freckles with powder.

So long as she kept her mouth closed, Margaret resembled a maiden aunt, or the wife of a Presbyterian deacon. The moment she smiled, however, there was a marvelous transformation. She showed a mouthful of teeth, perfect white teeth. That smile and her brown eyes banished any illusion of age and severity, and she became an ageless pixie, full of charm. But she carefully hid this side of herself from her dining-room customers, perhaps believing a respectable demeanor downstairs was absolutely necessary because of what went on upstairs.

Soon she and Mack were going on outings together. On sunny weekends, they rode wheels through Golden Gate Park, taking picnic baskets brought from the Maison’s kitchen. Once he took her for an overnight cruise on
California Chance.
He had dozens of fresh flowers placed in the largest of the guest staterooms, and made a show of presenting her with the door key just as Captain Norheim’s men were casting off. She gave him a swift look of comprehension. He wanted her company, but not in bed; that sort of companionship he could find on the Maison’s upper floors. If there was a flicker of regret on her face just then, Mack didn’t notice.

The offshore cruise, which lasted until late Sunday, was a splendid success, with past histories shared, and a great deal of laughter. By the time they docked, they were more than friends; they were confidants.

Mack had known Margaret for several months when it occurred to him that she would be an ideal guest and partner for New Year’s Eve. That same evening, he dropped in and tendered the invitation. Her brown eyes showed her eagerness, but she didn’t voice it. She said, “What if someone recognized me?”

“I doubt they will. But suppose they do. You keep telling me politicians and businessmen come in all the time.”

“By the back door, usually. They’d never admit it. You’re taking a risk.”

“I need a hostess. I can’t think of a prettier or more charming one.”

“Very well. I accept the invitation.”

On New Year’s Eve, 1900, one hundred guests presented engraved cards in the three-story foyer roofed with Tiffany glass and lit from above by electric fixtures. An orchestra played in the ballroom while the ladies and gentlemen mingled for an hour in the public rooms. At half after nine everyone went into the immense dining hall.

Margaret sat at Mack’s right, resplendent in a sapphire tiara he’d given her for Christmas. The great horseshoe table gleamed with white linen, glittered with silver cutlery, sparkled with fine crystal. He’d chosen low gaslight rather than the harsher glare of electrics. His boiled shirt shone like snow on a mountain when he rose to speak briefly before the meal.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my house and this celebration of the new century. I was not born in this state, but I am now a Californian to the bone.” Some applause and murmurs greeted that; guests had been plied with unlimited amounts of Cresta Blanca champagne, the state’s finest, before the banquet.

“Therefore, the dinner you’re about to enjoy is a California dinner. Every dish is native to this state. You will be given a printed menu in a moment. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll look with special favor on the stuffing and the glaze of the
caille rôti—
native quail from the San Joaquin. Cooking is a love of mine, and I prepared both the stuffing and the glaze. I confess I’ve never cooked for a hundred people before. That’s a mighty lot of time in the kitchen.”

Laughter.

“The wines, too, are Californian. Tonight we celebrate not only the New Year, and the twentieth century, but the state we love.”

He lifted his brimming glass.

“To California. And your very good health.”

The gentlemen rose for the toast, a long elegant line of black lapels and white ties.
I made it
, he thought, heady with wonder and pride.

Margaret took a symbolic sip of champagne and folded her white-gloved hands in her lap like the most proper of wives. By gaslight her eyes were enchanting, her face luminous as an affectionate child’s.

Mack signaled to the column of waiters queued up in the passage to the kitchen.

“Menus, please. Let the festivities begin.”

To start,
Les Huîtres de Tomales:
Tomales Bay oysters on the half-shell, each enclosed in a linen napkin intricately folded, a mignonette sauce served alongside.

Next,
Le Consommé de Hôte Palace:
clear chicken stock and abalone broth, placed in individual cups, napped with lightly salted whipped cream, dusted with nutmeg, and lightly glazed before serving.

Then,
Le Filet de Sole Sautée:
sand dabs, California’s best fish, filleted, sauteed simply, and served with lemon wedges.

The quail followed, with Mack’s own stuffing of brown rice, nuts, and dried apricots, the whole glazed with his marinade of orange juice and Sonoma Creek wine.

In the European style, the salad came after these entrees.
La Salade de Saison:
The Pasadena salad was a composition of greens, sections of grapefruit and orange—the oranges were Calgolds—and wedges of avocado. A slightly sweet vinaigrette flavored it.

Following
Le Plateau de Fromages Assortis—
Mack told guests seated nearby that very good French-style cheese had been made in Sonoma County for years—the waiters marched in with a triumph for dessert,
La Poire Conde:
whole cored pears from one of his Valley farms, poached in a sweetened wine collation and served on a bed of creamy sauce anglaise, the whole dripping with a dark-chocolate sauce and sprinkled with crushed almond macaroons.

To conclude—Le
Café Noir, Demi-tasse.

At eleven-thirty, Mr. Joe Snell of the Bohemian Club proposed a toast of appreciation to their host.

Instead, someone started clapping. Astonished, Mack saw that it was the sob sister for de Young’s
Chronicle.
He hadn’t noticed her before, undoubtedly because he hadn’t expected her to show up. He’d sent the invitation because de Young’s paper was too important to ignore.

She jumped to her feet, breathy, tearful, and slightly drunk.

She led the standing ovation.

They remembered that night long afterward in San Francisco. It was the start of a legend: the Chance banquets. Nothing like them in America, said those privileged to be invited, who didn’t fail to brag pointedly to those who were not. Among the latter was Walter Fairbanks.

At half past three in the morning, Mack danced the last waltz with Margaret.

She was pliant and warm in his arms, and her small round breasts smelled of powder and perfume. She patted his shoulder gently as they danced on a floor strewn with confetti and pieces of streamer.

“A triumph. An absolute triumph, Mack.”

“Yes, I think so—you helped immensely.”

She squeezed him and risked criticism by resting her cheek on his. “I’d be happy to stay the night, if you’d like that,” she said softly.

He thought of Nellie. Was she asleep now? Where? And with anyone?

“Thank you, but I’m tired. I’m sure you are too. Alex will drive you home.”

She did her best to hide her disappointment.

H
ELLBURNER JOHNSON SWUNG DOWN
from the cable car. It clanged on down California Street while he paused on the corner, inhaling the spring breeze, which, faintly fishy, blew from the Bay.

The sight of the Texan standing there turned heads in passing carriages. A big muskrat cap with the earflaps tied up perched on his head at a rakish tilt and he carried his arctic coat over his arm. From a bulging canvas pack strapped to his back jutted a pair of snowshoes. In the pack, he’d stored his gun belt, wrapped around a cash roll amounting to $4,500—the sum received for the gold he’d panned standing in the sea off the beach at Nome.

Johnson had never visited San Francisco, only seen it pass to starboard as a coastal steamer bore him to Alaska. He had strong memories of the last eighteen months: the onion-dome churches of Sitka, the cold glassy gleam of Muir Glacier and the caress of its icy breath as he walked on it. From Skagway he’d trekked up to the Chilkoot Pass. He became part of a human ascent chain fourteen miles long, sweating through his red flannels one day, clinging to handholds in icy rock the next. “Damnedest land in creation,” he swore afterward. “Mosquitoes big as bullets, and mush ice in the creeks in August.”

Dawson City was a dismal boomtown on a swamp, flooded most of the time. He chewed onions from a carefully hoarded sack to avoid scurvy, but he saw hundreds of victims, men with joints swollen, teeth loosened, cheeks softened till a finger could poke through the skin as if it were wet newsprint. On the pier at Dawson, hundreds of new arrivals were soon lining up to rush out again—all the way down the long snaky Yukon River to the Bering Sea, and the new strike at Nome.

That was his last stop, Nome—a rowdy city of white tents on a black sand beach. He’d survived two robbery attempts there, and come back with more memories stored up. Also, for once, he’d come back a little richer.

All that he’d seen tended to fade away as he walked up Nob Hill. San Francisco was a mighty handsome town, with pretty row houses decorating the hills, and her Bay shining blue out yonder. But he was most impressed by the mansions of the millionaires. When he turned right, then left again on Sacramento Street, consulting an address on a paper, he found a house whose size and ornamentation overshadowed the rest.

Great pillars flanked the entrance, a foot-high cartouche of concrete adorning each. J. M. Chance had his brand on display. Johnson shook his head in amazement. He plucked his emerald-green bandanna out of his shirt to whisk away a tobacco fleck in the corner of his mouth, then opened the iron gate and went up the steps.

“Mr. Chance is occupied at the moment,” said the stiff-necked butler. Johnson couldn’t stop gawking at the sun-flooded Tiffany skylight, three stories above. “Please call again. In the rear. Tradesmen’s entrance.”

“You jackass, I’m his partner. Show me to his office, and right now, or I’ll show you the business end of the Colt stashed in this here pack.”

The alarmed butler led him up, and up, and up again, through a wonderland of carved banisters, potted greenery, sunlit carpet, to a double door on the top landing—again, the cartouche adorned each, hand-carved in a medallion of cherry wood—and these opened on a spectacular suite of rooms. Johnson walked through several, including one fitted out with twelve chairs around a long table. The last room was the largest, bigger and grander than the office in Riverside. Here Mack held forth at a mammoth desk. Behind him, a triptych of leaded windows spread the panorama of Russian Hill, the Bay, and Marin.

Mack was shaking a pencil at a tall, skinny chap with the sort of face Johnson considered suitable for an undertaker. Nearby hovered a young squirt with funny eyeglasses and the gray mane of a grandpa.

“…and I won’t go higher than sixty-five thousand on those blocks out by the Presidio—”

Johnson slung his pack to the carpet to make noise.

“Hellburner! My God. I thought you were going to stay in Alaska forever.”

“Nearly did. Mighty beautiful place. Didn’t mean to interrupt…”

Mack ran forward and embraced him. “No, no. We’re almost finished for the morning. Sit down, sit down.”

Mack was all smiles and energy, bounding back to his desk and rapidly shuffling papers.

He looked thinner, Johnson thought. Plenty of gray showing around the ears. How was he getting along without a woman? he wondered. How was that sprout getting along without a mama?

Mack introduced him to the tall drink of water, Haverstick, a lawyer; and the funny little foreign dude, Alex Muller, who bustled around jerking open cabinets and consulting files from the desk like he owned the place. Haverstick, legs crossed, sat in a chair angled to provide a view of the entrance. All at once Haverstick nodded in that direction.

“Visitor, Mack.”

Mack looked up and saw Little Jim. Mack’s son was outfitted in a Norfolk jacket and tweed knickerbockers. His black stockings matched his shoes and his child’s four-in-hand was perfectly tied. By someone else, Johnson figured. A perfect little dude. Was he ever allowed to get dirty?

The boy bore an unmistakable resemblance to Carla. He’d shed his baby fat, and he stood there observing his father with dark-blue eyes, earnest and maybe a bit scared. Or did Johnson just imagine that?

“There’s my boy.” Mack jumped up and hurried to him. “Two years old now, going on three,” he said to the Texan. He swept his son off the floor and hugged him. “Jim, it’s half past twelve. Time for dinner. Go find Angelina in the kitchen.”