Although he could have extended his domain to almost any corner of the country that he desired, he was unable to purchase the northeast corner of the block of Nob Hill bounded by Jones, California, Taylor and Sacramento Streets. He had acquired all the other lots that made up the block for his mansion, but a stubborn German undertaker, Nicholas Yung, would not sell his corner.
Crocker consequently had constructed on three sides of the Yung property a fence 40 feet high, closing off Yung’s sunlight and views except for a narrow frontage on Sacramento Street. Eventually Yung moved his house to another part of the City but would not release the property, so Crocker left the fence standing.
The spite-fence has become one of the landmarks of Nob Hill and has come to signify the arrogance of the rich in general and the Railroad millionaires in particular.
Denis Kearney’s Workingman’s Party was viewed by Nob Hill as anarchistic. Kearney’s Irishmen often gathered at the spite-fence as the focus for their rage against the Railroad moguls who had amassed fabulous wealth and who had discharged an army of Chinese after the completion of the Railroad, contributing to the post-Railroad depression and to general unemployment. It is claimed that Crocker had his tower fitted with slots for pouring boiling lead down on the heads of besieging Communists, but, although the Sandlotters’ rallies began at the spite-fence, the rioters usually drifted downhill to sack Chinatown. The hot-lead slots have so far not been put to use.
“That is adequate,” Bierce said. “Now go through and take out half the adverbs.”
“There are only three.”
“Remove two.”
Miss Penryn announced Mr. Beaumont McNair. Beau strode into the office, with his gold-leaf beard, his arrogant chin, his close-set eyes, his well fitted jacket and his affected manner of walking, as though testing the floor with the stretched-out toe of his gleaming boot before trusting his weight to it.
He halted, gazing at the chalk-white skull on Bierce’s desk. Bierce rose. I did also.
“Good morning, Mr. McNair.”
“Good morning, Mr. Bierce. Redmond,” Beau said, with a dip of his head in my direction.
I produced a chair and he seated himself with some style, this young man whose pleasure it was to draw cunts on the bare bellies of whores and who was, in fact, obsessed with low women.
“There was an incident last night,” Beau said, chin up, eyes fixed on Bierce. “An intruder.”
Bierce glanced once at me but only nodded to Beau.
“Someone broke in,” Beau said. “Marvins pursued him but lost him. There was a window open.”
“The ghost,” Bierce said.
Beau looked startled.
“Mr. Buckle told us there was a permanent ghost.”
“Well, yes,” Beau said.
“This was when I was in conference with your mother?” Bierce asked. “If so, Mr. Redmond observed the ghost leaving the house. He thought it was you.”
Beau looked confused and irritated.
“Have the police been notified?”
Beau removed a linen handkerchief from his pocket and patted his forehead. “My mother thought you should be advised first.”
Bierce leaned back in his chair with his fingers knitted together over his vest. “Someone hates you, Mr. McNair.”
“I understand that. And I understand that you and my mother came to some meeting of the minds last night. She is prepared to meet your condition, Mr. Bierce. I am to inquire if you will come to us this evening and present your solution to these matters. She believes that you will require that others be on hand also.”
“I shall present you with a list. Tom, if you would write down these names for Mr. McNair.”
I did not much like taking orders in Beau’s presence, but I brought out notebook and pencil. Bierce dictated. I wrote. It was not the Elite Directory of San Francisco, but it was not entirely different.
With his list in hand. Beau McNair remained standing, scowling. “I must speak with Redmond,” he said.
“I’ll just take these to the typewriter,” Bierce said, flourishing a sheaf of papers. He left us there.
“I will ask your intentions towards Miss Brittain,” Beau said.
I still ached from last night’s frustrations. “My intentions are not intentions,” I said.
“That is very glib,” Beau said. “I say, I demand to know your intentions!”
“I am telling you I have no intentions. Miss Brittain is engaged to marry a man named Marshall Sloat.”
“Her mother is worried that you have formed an attachment to Miss Brittain. She does not wish any complications.”
His coat fit him so prettily it weighed on me. I said I didn’t consider that any of his business.
“I speak for Mrs. Brittain, and I will speak frankly. Miss Brittain belongs to a station in life to which you cannot aspire.”
I blew out my breath to keep calm. “I wish you would come down to the True Blue Democracy Club and explain your meaning,” I said.
His face was pinched and schoolmasterish. He looked at me as though I was being purposefully stupid. How I disliked him, Amelia’s half brother.
“We call folks who live on Nob Hill ‘instant Aristocrats,’ ” I said. “Is that what you mean? For instance, your putative father went to the Washoe and found a bonanza, while mine found nothing but borrascas. Is that the difference?” Mine, in fact, had been euchred by his.
I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t, “Aristocrats go to whores and draw all over their bellies. Is that the difference?”
His face turned a dangerous red. “How dare you?”
“You don’t want to try tricks like that here,” I said. “San Francisco whores are tough.”
He stared at me with his mouth open. “Damn you!”
“No, damn you!” I said. “For the spoiled presumptuous twit you are.” I was aware of pushing this into something from which I could not withdraw, which pleased me.
He glared at me down his nose. “I demand satisfaction!”
I laughed at him. “Manhole covers at twenty feet?”
“Damned fortune hunter!”
“Bare knuckles in the basement,” I said.
I led him downstairs into the basement and through the door into the cellar next door, where there was an empty storeroom lighted by dusty clerestory windows that gave onto California Street.
Beau stripped out of the beautiful jacket. He’d had some boxing instruction. He danced around me, feinting lefts and rights while I took off my coat. I felt heavy, lumpish and poisoned.
He danced toward me. I knocked him down. It is easeful to your inner furies when you have bashed someone on the jaw, but the demands and responsibilities of the Brittain family were not Beau’s fault.
He bounced up again. The second time I knocked him down he managed to pop me on the nose, and I felt the claret starting.
Sprawled on the floor he gazed up at me as I mopped at my nose with my handkerchief. He pronounced himself satisfied.
He climbed to his feet, massaging his jaw and moving his shoulders in a manner distasteful to me.
“You know what the Morton Street whore who identified your photograph said?” I said.
“What is that?”
“She said there was a client of Esther Mooney’s who didn’t have a dingle. He used some kind of leather dildo. He might have been the one that killed Esther. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”
“Certainly not! The police—”
“Did they ask to see your dingle?”