Bierce squinted at the sunny doorway of the saloon, stroking a finger along his mustache. “Someone is trying to get Beau hanged,” he said. “Whores on Morton Street where Beau was seen, then Beau’s particular whore on Stockton Street. If it is another progression, the young woman to whom he’s engaged is certainly endangered.”
“The engagement is broken off,” I said. “But the Slasher may not know that.”
“Could she be thought of as his whore also?”
“She could not!” I said through my teeth.
“I don’t know why it is impossible for young men to believe that young women have just about the same slippery morals they have,” Bierce complained.
I clamped my jaw closed. I had an engagement with Amelia on Sunday!
“A lecture from the prof,” Nix said.
“Cynicism is the mother of invention,” I said.
“The father of wisdom,” Bierce said.
“The first refuge of scoundrels,” I said, at which he smiled, for it was his own twist on Samuel Johnson’s aphorism.
“Let us think of it this way,” he said. “All the women of San Francisco are in danger until we can discover what this madman is about, and stop him.”
When Nix had gone he said to me, “How is your piece on Senator Jennings progressing?”
“I haven’t got much yet. Am I to include the fact that he was a Spade named Jackson and a San Francisco jailbird?” And the owner of a Battery Street saloon called the Washoe Angel, which had displayed the portrait of Highgrade Carrie as Lady Godiva.
“Everything you can find out. We will expect a response to that,” he said, squinting at the lump on my head.
When I got home again there was a message from my father ordering me to meet him for supper at Malvolio’s Restaurant in the Montgomery Block. I sat on my bed feeling dread like an iron harness. I got a towel from the rack and set out for the baths. My bruised feet burned.
Malvolio’s was on the corner of the Monkey Block, white napery and Italian waiters with handlebar mustaches and steamy smells coming out of the kitchen when the doors were opened. The Gent sat at a table across the room. His black hair was brushed straight back, and his high-color drinker’s face set in a grin as he rose to shake my hand. He embraced me with one beefy arm holding me against his muscular corporation. He had a bottle and a glass of red before him, and he motioned to a waiter to pour a second glass, which the man did with the flourish of one who knows a big tip is forthcoming. The Gent had the quality of impressing lesser mortals with his greaterness. What a fine millionaire he would have made!
“How is the Bonanza Trail these days?” I asked, wondering right away why I had said it. To try to get some edge on him? He had something to say to me, as I ought to have something to say to him.
But he was simply not the Slasher, even if he was E. O. Macomber. He had never known how to carry a grudge.
“It is about petered out, Tommy. Or I am, one.”
“Surely not!”
“Probably not,” he said, grinning. “I have a line position, Tommy, working with the Legislature.”
Carrying the boodle for the SP. “That’s fine,” I said.
He touched his glass to mine with an upswing that included the other diners at Malvolio’s, who probably felt cheered by it.
“Course I don’t see it that San Francisco’s heaven-on-earth,” he said in a low voice. “Sacramento’s got as much interest, I’d say. Sacramento’s easy, Son. Life’s easy there. Good restaurants, fine people, the Governor, Senators, Representatives.”
“Hot too,” I said. “What is it these days, a hundred some?”
He frowned at me, the Sacramento-supporter in him challenged. “Weather’s not everything, my boy. You’ve got that fog down here, can’t even see sometimes. Murders too. The Morton Street Slasher! You know what causes that? People leading pissant lives, dissatisfied, hating everybody and everything. You don’t get that in Sacramento.”
I said I was glad to hear it. In fact, the State Capitol might be in Sacramento, but the SP Capital was at Fourth and Townsend in San Francisco.
“When did you come down?”
“Last night on the Evening Express. Lot of grand people aboard. Ollie Fenster, Rudy Buckle, a bunch from the Bank of Nevada. We played some poker. Those fellows are paying for this fine supper!” He laughed fatly.
“Got quite a lump there,” he said, nodding at my head. “Some San Francisco footpad take after you?”
“I think it was a copper,” I said, and we both laughed at my fine joke.
I thought of the Gent as one of the owners of the Jack of Spades Mine, and of four other properties. He had said he had been euchred in Virginia City, but he had not said it as though he carried any freight of old hatred. Money had always been a casual thing with him. He had scraped together the funds to traipse off to the latest Bonanza camp, to buy speculative stocks, liquor and fine Sacramento meals for his boomer friends and fancy women, while my mother cut pieces of cardboard and canvas into soles to stuff inside our shoes to stop the holes, and hand-me-downed our clothes.
Probably his attitude was that if Nat McNair and company had not euchred him out of a share of the Jack of Spades Mine, someone else would have.
Menus were distributed. The Gent set them aside and ordered antipasti, gnocchi, venison ravioli and clam linguine. We munched on radishes and olives.
He glanced at me keenly. “Hear you are working for that low-grade newspaper,” he said. “I tell you. Son, I was proud of you when you were a firefighter. You’d’ve made Chief.”
“Maybe,” I said, nodding.
“Working for Bitter Bierce,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s he like, I wonder?”
If I said, “Bitter!” we would have a laugh together, but it was as though he had tossed me a floater that I could knock out of the park. If I told him how much I admired Bierce it would cut him to the bone. Or maybe he would consider that I had tossed him a floater to knock out of the park in his innings, hinting at what a disappointment to him and my mother I had been, quitting the Fire Department to run errands for Dutch John and Ambrose Bierce.
“Well, he goes after every crook, sham, cheat and humbug, crooked preacher and porkbelly politician without fear or favor.”
“Lot of them in this town,” the Gent said.
“Yes, sir.”
The Gent refilled his glass and passed the neck of the bottle over mine, which was still brimmed.
“I’ll be surprised if Aaron Jennings doesn’t go after him.”
“Do you think so?” I said.
“Aaron’s a gentleman. Lives in the City here. Plump sweet wife and a couple of half-grown kits. Used to be a judge, you know. A fine legislator. Man to ride the river with.”
“I’m writing a piece on him for The Hornet.”
“They’ve got you writing pieces?” I strained to hear the emphasis on the “you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Serving dishes heaped with food arrived in a cloud of smells and an officious waiter shifting plates and glasses to set them down. My father beamed at the beneficence he had ordered and scowled when he remembered the subject of the conversation. He heaped our plates with a silver serving spoon. I was so tightened up inside I wondered if I could get anything down. My head throbbed as some kind of reminder.
“How do you go about ‘writing pieces’?”
“There are files at The Hornet, and files at the Chronicle and the Alta and the Examiner. I go through them and put things together.” And there were facts that were not in any files.