GRAND OPERA HOUSE
APRIL 16, 1906. 10:50 P.M.
I excused myself before final curtain, having repeatedly declined Adam Rolf's invitations to a late supper at the Palace Hotel.
I hurried down the marble stairway as a smattering of polite applause succumbed to the jangle of hoots and catcalls over the execrable Queen of Sheba.
Once outside, I hailed a cab. "The Conservatory of Flowers."
"Lady, you sure? Ain't nothin' in Golden Gate Park this hour 'cept perverts and jack-rollers."
"Funny, I thought I just left them. Now let's go."
The horse clopped down Mission to Van Ness, and then up Fell Street toward Golden Gate Park. As we passed through the Panhandle, I looked back over my shoulder. Through the row of streetlights a motorcycle trailed behind me, a reassuring sight.
All night, I had tried to gauge Rolf's disposition. The lascivious attention he normally paid his female guests was missing, while he examined the faces of their husbands with a focused scrutiny.
Tommy, standing sentry a few feet from his boss, seemed more alert than usual, self-satisfied almost to the point of smugness. It made me wonder again if Pierre's death was indeed suicide or more of Tommy's handiwork.
Rolf knew he had been betrayed, he had made that quite clear. But he made no mention of the scope of it, offered no specifics. I was treated as almost a confidante. It was a relief, though marginal at best. I knew it could change at any moment.
I headed toward my rendezvous with Hunter Fallon, reasonably certain that wherever my affidavits were, they were not yet in the hands of Adam Rolf. I finally convinced myself that Pierre had committed suicide, the only way he could not have betrayed me before his death.
I settled back for an invigorating jaunt through the park, a welcome tonic. My thoughts turned to Hunter and I felt my poor heart, weary from all the turmoil, skip a beat.
The Hansom stopped before the glass-paneled Conservatory of Flowers, bathed in a lemonish light from the triple-headed gothic lampposts.
I paid the fifty-cent fare, and following a brief struggle with his edgy horse, the driver headed back toward the city. I pulled my wrap around my shoulders and waited excitedly for Hunter to arrive.
He started to lean the motorcycle against a lamppost, stopping in mid-motion to stare at me.
"My God, Annalisa. I don't think I've ever seen a woman more beautiful than you."
"It's the dress and jewels."
"I'm sure that's all it is."
"Officer Fallon. Are you flirting with me?"
"How nice of you to notice."
I put my gloved hand on his arm. We walked along the side of the Conservatory of Flowers, the spring air soft and perfumed.
"Does Rolf suspect you?"
"I don't think so. It makes me wonder if he really does have the papers. When his blood is up, he has difficulty masking his anger. Maybe the papers did spill out when the seal man was in the water."
"No," Hunter said. "The clasp was lying in the seal man's blood. The top was clean but the bottom was soaked in blood. That indicates they tore it off and threw it on the ground after they shot him. If Rolf doesn't have the papers, my guess is Kelly or one of his goons does."
He frowned, regretting that he may have alarmed me.
"Forewarned, forearmed, Hunter. I didn't make it this far deluding myself." I looked up at the moon, low above the firs and cedars.
"My God, you are beautiful, Annalisa."
"You said that earlier."
"I might say it a few more times."
"Sometimes that's all men see in women."
"This would not be one of those times."
Hunter looked away, the first time I noticed a touch of shyness. He was not sure what to do and neither was I.
"We better get you a change of clothes and go back to my father's place so I can keep an eye on you. I still have work to do."
I reached for his hand. "Are you sure you want me there?"
He held my gloved hand between both of his, rubbing it slowly. "I am quite sure."
I took his arm as we returned to the Waltham. Gathering my dress was a more formidable effort this time, but I managed to collect it well enough that it was not a potential danger.
I climbed on behind him, squeezing a little tighter this time.
In seconds, the park was flying by in a blur. We sped through the Western Addition and across Market Street, me in gown and jewels, he in goggles and leather, a sight even by San Francisco's standards.
In minutes, I was coughing up soot outside my building at Fifth and Folsom Streets.
"You'll have to wait outside," I told Hunter. "No men in the building with a single woman, not even the lobby, after six."
"Even a cop?"
"Especially a cop."
I stared at him for a long moment, nervous and excited about spending the night in the same house. Then I wheeled and headed quickly for the entrance.
I pushed through the creaking door and walked past the front desk, where my landlady Loretta sat reading the Police Gazette, her eyes bulging and her lips moving with each lascivious detail.
I skipped carefully up three flights of narrow steps to the dimly lit hallway, where I slid my brass key into the plate beneath the doorknob.
I crossed the cramped room, the only illumination the moonlight streaming through the single window. I pulled open the sticky sash and stuck my head outside.
"Officer Fallon! Excuse me, Officer Fallon!"
I took a flower from the vase on the windowsill, inhaled its waning fragrance and dangled it outside the window, calling down, "I would like to offer this rose in appreciation of your chivalry."
"Il fiore che avevi a me tu dato!"
"Well, now. It's not often one meets a policeman who quotes Bizet. It's so downright—operatic of you."
Hunter circled clown-like beneath the falling flower, caught it, and pulled it through a buttonhole in his leather jacket.
I turned back inside, produced a stick match from an alabaster holder and struck it. The slight flame illuminated the face of a man towering above me, bearded, cadaverous, a long scar down the right jaw. A glint shone off the keen edge of a very long knife raised above his head.
I gasped and dove away.
"Hunter!"
The knife just missed my ear, shearing the puffy shoulder of my gown. As I fell, the tip caught the edge of my dress, a foot from the hem, pinning it to my desk.
"Hunter, Hunter!"
As the man struggled to free the knife, I kicked him in the shin with all my strength. He recoiled and staggered backward.
Hunter had already bolted through the front door and was two strides from the stairwell when Loretta spotted him.
"Hey, hey, you can't come in here!"
He ignored her and charged up the steps.
I struggled to stand, my feet entangled in my clumsy gown. I ripped the dress free of the knife seconds before the intruder dislodged it. I crawled backward, kicking furiously as he advanced. He raised the blade again, his gaunt, scarred face ghastly in the moonlight. I realized who he was.
"HUNTER! HUNTER!"
My hand touched a wooden footstool as Scarface limped toward me, raising the knife. I gripped the stool with both hands and smashed his knee.
He screamed and toppled toward me like a fallen tree. I rolled away and struggled to my feet near the window.
"HUNTER!"
Hunter made the third floor and ran toward the sound of my cries. He smashed through the door, head over heels, landing on his knees to point the long barrel of the Colt at Scarface.
"Show me your hands or I'll kill you."
Scarface, his back to Hunter, turned slowly, his left hand above his head, his right hand hidden.
"Both of 'em!"
Scarface eased his body toward Hunter. In his right hand was a small revolver, the muzzle pointed at my chest. The sound of the hammer cocking froze us.
"Well, Junior," Scarface growled. "Looks like we got ourselves a Mexican stand-off."
Hunter eased to his left for a better look.
"I wouldn't be janglin' around too much, sonny. My thumb slides off'n this trigger, your sweetheart misses out on her next birthday."
Hunter stopped in his tracks.
"There's two more cops waiting for you downstairs. Drop that thing real slow."
"Funny, I only heard one motorcycle, seen two people gettin' off.
Now, I'm gonna back out slow. My gun on her, yours on me. Real civil like. I hit that door, I'm gone. Be smart, everybody walks."
He backed away, one eye on Hunter, his gun steady on me.
Hunter moved aside slowly, his father's Colt no more than five feet from his adversary.
"Don't move, Annalisa."
"That's right, pretty lady, don't get fancy on me."
Hunter, arm extended and shoulders sideways, pivoted as the tall man stepped backward through the splintered door and into the shadowy hallway.
"I see your cherry face in the hall, sonny, I'll blow it clean off. Then I'll finish your lady friend real nice like. Understand?"
"You go ahead, run. We'll meet again soon. I promise."
Scarface offered a chipped grin and bolted down the hallway.
Hunter sprang to the doorway after him, crouched low and leaned his head out. A slug splintered the wall two feet above his head. He ducked back inside as boot heels thundered away.
"You hurt, Annalisa?"
"I'm furious."
Hunter grabbed a kitchen towel and carefully wrapped Scarface's abandoned knife.
"Grab some things, Annalisa, and let's move before he returns with reinforcements."
Within minutes, we passed through a gauntlet of cackling neighbors inquiring into the ruckus.
We emerged on Folsom and climbed back on the motorcycle, this time with me clutching a cloth sack full of clothes and balancing my gramophone, its brass horn as large as my torso.
I remember little of the ride other than clinging tightly to Hunter.
A few minutes later, we were in his wine cellar, leaning over his makeshift crime laboratory. Hunter produced a straight razor and started shaving a graphite pencil. He blew the powder gently onto the handle of Scarface's knife.
"Greasy hands make better fingerprints," he said.
He sliced inch-wide slips of white stationery paper and rolled each one onto the prints, then examined them with a magnifying glass. He compared them with the bloody impressions from the boiler room of Byron's launch.
"This really works?"
"The Persians and Chinese have been using fingerprints for centuries. An Englishman named Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin, developed this system ten years ago. Last month, the Army started fingerprinting soldiers to identify them if they're killed in battle. That's how backward we are in San Francisco."
He abruptly put the magnifying glass down.
"I got 'em. Scarface was in the boiler room; he probably helped Gamboa with the seal suit and then left. Someone was trailing in another boat, they picked Gamboa up after he killed my father, took him to Angel Island and killed him to cover their tracks."
"How do you know there was another boat and he didn't just swim to Angel Island with that seal suit on?"
"The inside of my father's portfolio was dry. If Gamboa had swum any distance, it would have been soaked and the papers ruined. Rolf wanted those papers; he'd never risk a man having to swim San Francisco Bay.
No. Gamboa hid below, and then he came up top and hit my father with a blackjack and cut his lifeline. He probably used an Eveready to signal a chase boat, swam a few strokes with the portfolio overhead to keep it dry. He would have killed Anthony as well, but Anthony never saw Gamboa anyway. This was Adam Rolf’s doing. Shanghai Kelly could never concoct a plan like this on his own."
"What about the blood samples you took from your father and the boat?"
"Every part of us is unique: hair, teeth, fingerprints. One thing you find at crime scenes is blood. I just took it for future reference, in case we make a breakthrough and I can use it for evidence. What we have to worry about now is who knows your identity."
"Scarface and Kelly obviously do, but I still don't think Rolf does. Your father told me Kelly kept a man locked in his basement for two weeks once, a clerk who was supposed to testify against Rolf for extorting money on some big sewer contract. Kelly kept raising the price. When Rolf agreed, Kelly cut the man's head off as a present. That's why Scarface brought that big knife."
"We need to catch Kelly passing those papers to Rolf if we're going to pin the murder on them," Hunter said.
"Preferably with my head intact." I don't know why, but I smiled. If I had any doubts about my feelings toward Hunter, they had vanished.
I walked over and kissed him.