California Gold (66 page)

“Mack,” she said, stepping back.

“Evening, Margaret.” He went into the dark little foyer that smelled of frying. Sounds of clinking dishes drifted from the far end of a hallway. “I felt in need of your hospitality tonight.”

“You’re going upstairs, then?”

“Yes, and I don’t care to be seen.”

That surprised her; always before, he’d used the front stairs, not the back door, which the girls and some of the customers jokingly called the husband’s door. All at once his respectability was weighing on him—and evidently other things too. He looked tired, downright haggard. His voice had an uncharacteristic bite.

Margaret gestured to the stair, trying for a light tone. “We always protect the anonymity of our patrons. Go right ahead. We aren’t busy tonight; you’ll have your choice. I’ll put it on your bill.”

He nodded, went up quickly, and disappeared.

A girl with a peacock-green wrapper floating over her heavy white thighs crossed the landing smoking a cigarette. Faint laughter and thumping drifted down. Margaret pressed her closed hand to pale lips never touched up with color.

“Yes, go on,” she said. “You could have any woman in the place if you only knew it.”

I
T WAS A SUMMER
of trouble in San Francisco, the very trouble Haverstick had predicted.

The national convention of the Epworth League came to town in July, and the Employers Association, operating through its Drayman’s Committee, secured the league’s sizable baggage-handling contract for a nonunion firm. “So the association’s first target is the teamsters,” Haverstick said. The union was barely a year old, but already a strong member of the Labor Council.

The nonunion draymen found themselves unable to handle all the luggage of thousands of Epworth delegates and issued an emergency call for help. When union teamsters refused to respond, the Employers Association declared all union drivers locked out and further declared an end to the closed shop in the cartage business.

The union called a general strike on the waterfront. Along with the draymen, merchant seamen went out, longshoremen, warehouse workers—something like fifteen thousand men on both sides of the Bay. The commerce of the harbor came to a halt.

But produce from the Valley kept pouring into Oakland and rotting. Boxcars piled up in the rail yards and cargo ships rode at anchor, waiting to unload. Mack honored the strike, put his warehouse men on half-pay for the duration, and watched anger build on both sides.

Valley farmhands came over the Coast Range and started to handle the piled-up produce. Berkeley students were recruited as summer stevedores. The inevitable result was violence-scuffles, rock-throwing. Someone poured kerosene on two hundred crates of melons softening on a dock and set them afire. A warehouse belonging to Himmel, Mack’s camp-mate at the Bohemian Grove, was vandalized at night.

Just a few defended the strikers. And just one newspaper, the
Examiner.
Hearst’s editor Tom Williams wrote, “The attempt of the Employers Association to destroy the teamsters union is an act of criminal viciousness without parallel in the annals of the City.”

Chief of Police Sullivan didn’t see it that way. A colonel of militia in ’94, Sullivan had moved ruthlessly against railroad strikers in Sacramento. Ordering his troops to fire, he had earned the nickname Shoot Low.

Shoot Low Sullivan said the nonunion teamsters would work, and the wagons would roll without hindrance. To ensure it he hired what he called special police. “Ex-convicts and Spanish-American veterans out of work,” Mack fumed to Johnson. “They’re registering their addresses in empty hotel rooms. You know who’s supplying their pistols and clubs? The Employers Association.”

Mayor Jim Phelan, whom Mack knew and admired, seemed to lose control of events. Pleading the need to maintain order, he approved the use of additional, specially deputized police officers. That infuriated the unions. Then he refused to call for state troops, and that enraged the businessmen. One of the City’s best and most popular mayors suddenly found himself without a constituency.

The summer of trouble became a season of death. On September 6, at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, a deranged anarchist shot President William McKinley, who died eight days later. Johnson’s commander in Cuba, Roosevelt, became the nation’s twenty-fifth president, three weeks from his forty-third birthday.

“Teddy’s all right,” Johnson declared. “A mite green, but plenty of grit. You ever need help from Uncle Sam, I’ll not hesitate to knock on his front door.”

On September 29, several off-duty special policemen walked out of the Thalia, a dive on Kearney Street. They had been drinking for several hours. Some passersby recognized them as strikebreakers, and taunted them. Out of nowhere, other men came running with fists cocked and clubs raised, and the specials drew their pistols. The regular police refused to respond to the riot alarm.

Mack’s face went white when he read the names of those killed and wounded. Knocked down with a bullet through his left leg was one Alonzo (Lon) Coglan, a special formerly employed as a San Francisco detective.

In answer to the Thalia riot, the union called a mass meeting at Metropolitan Hall. Four thousand chanting, shouting workingmen jammed every seat and squatted in the aisles. Mack donated half the rent on the hall, and watched the rally from backstage.

The young socialist writer London gave a fiery speech. Next came Father Peter Yorke of the San Francisco Archdiocese. The priest was an Irishman from Galway and delivered his jeremiad in lilting English, pounding the podium repeatedly.

“They bring in university students and call it free enterprise. But they are rich men’s sons, working not for themselves but against the common man…” There was cheering and foot-stomping. The floor shook and the gas mantles rattled.

Mack got a start. In the wings at the opposite side he recognized Diego Marquez, shabby and somewhat wild-eyed, Felicia clinging to his arm.

“What’s he doing here?” Mack whispered to London.

“I’m told he’s an old friend of Yorke. Wanted to speak but they wouldn’t let him. Too extreme even for this crowd.”

“…a union of rich men attempting to crush the unions of poor men,” Yorke thundered, waving his arms. “But they will fail. Because we are strong. We are steadfast. There will be no compromise. There will be no negotiations. There will be no retreat.”

Every throat roared. Mack saw Diego Marquez staring at him and he lifted his hand to acknowledge him. Marquez hugged Felicia to his side, swaying back and forth. Drunk? His glassy stare met Mack’s and slid away. Mack understood. Marquez was ashamed of being rejected.

A moment later, when Mack looked again, Marquez and the girl were gone.

Rain poured down on the sagging planks of the wharf, water streaming over the five-foot-high sign on the sloping roof above the loading dock.

CHANCE PRODUCE COMPANY

SAN FRANCISCO—SACRAMENTO—ODESTO—FRESNO

The warehouse sprawled along one side of a finger wharf jutting into the Bay. Only half the wharf frontage belonged to Mack, that nearer the Embarcadero. The warehouse at the outer end belonged to Oscar Himmel. To reach it, draymen had to drive past Mack’s building.

In front of Mack’s loading dock, blocking the wharf, half a dozen sodden pickets straggled around and around in a circle. Rain soaked and blurred their cardboard placards:
WORKERS TOGETHER; NO SCAB LABOR; UNION STEVEDORES ON STRIKE
.

Suddenly came the sound of iron wagon tires and hooves and a line of four wagons turned into the head of the wharf. A picket ran up the dock stairs, darted past some empty crates, and flung the door open.

“They’re here, Mr. Chance.”

It was two days after the Thalia bloodletting. Mack had heard through Haverstick that he was to be a target. He struggled into his coat and dashed outside, the Shopkeeper’s Colt in its holster under his coattail.

He ran down onto the wet wharf as the first two-horse wagon approached. In addition to the driver it carried three passengers, tough-looking men in rain slickers and derbies. He recognized one, who stood directly back of the driver with the arrogance of a Roman charioteer. Buck Float was his name. He had worked for Mack for three months and was a Spanish-American War veteran; he’d complained of war nerves to justify frequent absences. He disappeared one Friday and never came back, though Mack had already decided to fire him. Buck Float was a heavy man with blond brows and a nose like a ripe beet. He wore a soiled duster and automobiling cap.

The creaking axles, grinding iron tires, hooves clopping on the planks, were the only sounds beside the rain. Mack saw no weapons but felt sure the specials had them.

He strode to the open side of the wharf. The water was greasy green, full of floating fruit rinds and paper trash. There was just enough room between this wharf and the next for a small vessel to dock. Way up at the head of the wharf Mack noticed someone watching, a small man in an overcoat and soft hat. Except for a brushy mustache, his face was a blur, but Mack thought he recognized him by his diminutive size. The man stepped into the lee of a shanty and from there continued to observe the advance of the wagons.

Mack moved between the worried pickets and the first wagon. The driver reined his horses and shoved the brake lever with his boot. Rain leaked off the hat brim of a special with his hand plunged under his gleaming slicker. Waiting. Just waiting…

“No traffic on the pier,” Mack said. “We’re honoring the strike.”

“Get out of the way,” Buck Float said. “These wagons belong to Oscar Himmel and we’re going down to his warehouse to pick up a load. I’m deputized to protect Himmel’s property.”

“Doesn’t matter. Turn around,” Mack said. Rain ran down his face and collected in his hair, setting up a maddening itch. He wanted to glance up to the sign on the roof of the loading dock, but didn’t dare.

The men with Buck Float stood up. Float’s duster blew open and underneath it Mack saw a nickeled gun in an old holster. Buck Float tugged it to free it up.

“Chance, everybody knows you’re in bed with these dirty communists. But Mr. Himmel won’t allow you to infringe on his rights. We’re duly deputized and we aim to see you don’t.”

“Don’t push this, Buck. I’ve no quarrel with you anymore, or with any of these men, only with the people who hired you.” Mack’s palms prickled; fear made his belly hurt. “Leave peaceably. I don’t want trouble.”

“But you got it,” Buck Float said with gleeful fervor. His hand flashed out with the nickeled pistol. Mack gestured upward to his right.

“Those men on the roof don’t want trouble either, Buck.”

The driver and specials turned as one. Two warehousemen with shotguns were balancing on the sloped roof at each end of the tall sign. They’d been hiding behind it.

The rain struck the roof and ran off, splashing the wharf and leaking through the cracks. A wagon horse busily dropped horse pies under his tail. Buck Float raised the nickeled gun to shoulder height, aiming at a man on the roof. Mack snatched his Colt out and steadied it with both hands.

“Don’t.”

Buck Float lowered his muzzle an inch or so, studying Mack over his gun arm. “I don’t b’lieve you got the balls to pull that trigger, Chance.”

“You try me, Buck. Come on.”

“I’m turning around,” the first driver blurted. “I ain’t dyin’ for Himmel or any other nabob. Sit down, Buck.” Buck Float clenched his teeth. “Buck, damn you, I’m leavin’.” Float delivered himself of some obscenities, and jerked the nickeled pistol down.

Mack lowered his revolver to waist level. The men on the roof held their positions as the driver executed a wide turn in Mack’s loading bay and passed the other three wagons, which, one by one, turned around in the dock. Mack let his shoulders slump. His gut hurt fiercely.

He waved the men off the roof and trudged toward the door, his shoes squeaking and leaking water. He’d forgotten about the small man still standing in the lee of the shanty, watching.

“Quite a little stand-off,” Johnson said early the next day. “All the papers got the story. Most ain’t very complimentary about you.”

“I’m used to that.”

“I’d of been there with you ’f you hadn’t been so damn secretive about it.”

“I didn’t want anyone hurt, least of all my friends.”

“You don’t seem too pleased about trouncin’ that crowd.”

“Nobody trounced anybody. We turned them back with loaded guns and an ambush. I had to do it, but I didn’t like it. I’m guilty of using the same tactics as Shoot Low Sullivan. It solves nothing.”

Johnson shrugged to say maybe, then tugged a scrap of paper from his vest. “Took a call on the downstairs phone while you was up with Alex. Gentleman named Roof. Asked you to meet him at the Pup. I wrote it down.” He showed the scrap:
PUP— 7PM—ROOF.

“Ruef—that’s who it was,” Mack exclaimed.

“How’s that?”

“There was a man watching down at the wharf yesterday. I thought I recognized him from a distance. Abe Ruef.” He spelled the last name. “He’s a lawyer. You don’t follow local politics—”

“Hell no. A politician’s just a road agent with a stiff collar an’ a church membership.”

“Something in that,” Mack agreed. “Ruef cuts quite a figure. He’s a Republican. Or was.”

“One of you boys that’s always suckin’ hind tit, hey?”

That was true; San Francisco politics had been dominated for some years by Democrats and reform independents. Mack explained, “Ruef’s worked in the party a long time. This spring he made a move to take control from Crimmins and Kelly and organized a splinter group, the Republican League. The league got whipped in the August primary. I voted against them because they struck me as a bunch of opportunists. Ruef immediately started promoting a new party. Which says to me he’s chiefly interested in promoting himself.”

“What kind of party?”

“Labor. Ruef and Izzy Less from the barbers’ union are the organizers. They’ve already pulled in most of the waiters, hack drivers, cooks, and beer-bottlers. Ruef says they’ll put up candidates in the fall election. He’s a tough little bastard. Knows the town well—he grew up here. His father started the Meyer Ruef Dry Goods Company down on Market. Ruef went to Berkeley and Hastings Law College. I wonder what he wants out of me?”