GRAND OPERA HOUSE
APRIL 17, 1906. 9:50 P.M.
The Grand Opera House filled with the mournful sound of a clarinet, wafting over the audience like a gull gliding on the ocean breeze. A staccato violin deepened the tender entreaty to a phrase of resignation and foreboding.
The audience straightened, necks straining as though the extra few inches might bring them closer to the magic unfolding before them.
Caruso stepped to center stage to intercept Carmen, now his fugitive love. From inside his tattered shirt he pulled the faded flower Carmen had given him on first meeting. "La Fleur que tu m'avais jetée," Caruso sang. The flower that you gave me. He ignored Olive Fremstad, digging into an emotional well.
"I felt but one desire," I whispered, "one desire, one hope."
"Te revoir, O Carmen, oui, te revoir."
"To see you again, Carmen," Hunter recited in perfect unity as I watched him through my opera glasses. "To see you again."
Caruso soared from baritone depths to heavenly notes seemingly beyond the range of the male voice. He told Carmen how the scent of the flower, her scent, had sustained him during his lonely, desperate hours in the brig after abandoning his post for her. He begged Carmen to return to his arms.
All around the Opera House, people held their breath.
I caught a quick glimpse of Kaitlin, a tear streaking her face. "Carmen, O ma Carmen." Caruso's plaintive cry dissolved into the melancholy notes of a French horn.
I dropped my notebook and leapt to my feet with the audience, all cheering madly.
Caruso, breathless and stunned by the response, waited for his Carmen to respond.
The music and drama heightened the aching in Lincoln's heart. He squirmed in his chair backstage as Fremstad's Carmen stepped forward to challenge the distraught Don Josè.
Lincoln jumped when a hand touched his shoulder.
Tommy nodded for Lincoln to follow him. The two men squeezed through the props and pulleys until they found a quieter spot near the dressing rooms.
"Mr. Rolf sent me down. He just got word," Tommy said. "The cops may have spotted your daughter at Tessie Wall's place on the Barbary Coast."
Lincoln tensed. "And just what kind of place is Tessie Wall's?"
"Ain't the kind of place a man wants to find his daughter. Neighborhood's rough, don't cotton much to strangers. Once the show's over . . ."
"Let's go now," Lincoln demanded.
Lincoln followed Tommy through the stage door onto Mission Street, where the Rolls sat at the curb.
He climbed into the passenger seat as Tommy gave the crank a whirl and jumped behind the wheel. They thundered down Fifth Street, crossing Market with bone-rattling jolts as they bumped over the four sets of trolley tracks.
Tommy wheeled onto Jackson Street, working the bellows of the brass horn to clear unsteady prowlers from his path. He slammed the Rolls to a halt in front of an ornate Victorian and honked again.
A Negro doorman peeked through the leaded glass door, and then signaled to someone inside. Moments later, a heavy-set woman wobbled down the steps.
"Evening, Miss Tessie," Tommy called. "Adam got a message you might have seen a young girl we been lookin' for."
Tessie eyed Lincoln as two women in corsets, black stockings, and garters appeared at the front door.
She can't be in a place like this, Lincoln thought. Then he remembered Kaitlin exposing her breasts to Rusty for a dollar. He passed Kaitlin's photo to Tessie.
"She looks different now," Tessie mused. "Redhead, cut real short. I sent her away. I've seen too many runaway schoolgirls in my time. I run a clean business."
"Where's she now?" Tommy demanded.
"One of the other girls sent her to a saloon where they ain't so particular. The Boar's Head down on Battery. Poor kid looked awful desperate."
Tommy eased the brake and the Rolls lurched forward. The throbbing of the engine echoed off the buildings as Tommy worked the horn. The closer they got to the waterfront, where a sea of masts bobbed at anchor, the darker and dirtier the streets became. Lincoln had seen dangerous streets in St. Louis and Kansas City where he hunted rustlers and bushwhackers, but nothing as unnerving as the malevolence infecting the Barbary Coast.
Tommy wheeled onto Battery Street and jerked to a stop before a bar with a half-fallen sign that read THE BOAR'S HEAD.
A wary Lincoln stepped onto the wooden sidewalk in front of the faded exterior, which appeared ready to collapse into the garbage-strewn street at any moment. He watched Tommy push through the creaky swinging doors. Lincoln hesitated a moment, then followed.
The stench of bad cigars, cheap whiskey, and syrupy perfume assailed Lincoln's nostrils. Men as scarred and mangy as alley cats pawed garishly-painted women who had been reduced to lumpy residues of femininity. A singer screeched and someone pounded what may have been a piano. A dozen men lining the glass-topped bar stared at him as though examining their next good meal.
Lincoln inched closer to the bar. Beneath the filthy glass top was a display of black, decaying human noses that had obviously been gnawed free of their original owners. Each was denoted by a small brass plaque with names and dates of acquisition, all under the heading "the Whale's Scrapbook."
Tommy shouldered through the crowd, shoving aside clawing whores. After questioning several of the saloon's wobbly denizens, he moved to the end of the bar and had a whispered conversation with the bartender. The man pointed toward a curtain.
Tommy nodded for Lincoln to follow him.
They pushed through the shredded curtain, stopping abreast of an enormous, tattooed bouncer. The dimly lit hallway had a dozen stalls, each covered by a filthy curtain. A chorus of grunts and squeals filled the air. In one stall, Lincoln could see a soldier, green wool breeches down around his campaign boots, rooting atop a woman whose stocking-clad legs were wrapped about his naked rump.
"You got a new girl, come down from Tessie's place?" Tommy asked the bouncer. "Tall redhead, Kansas farm girl, sweet lookin'."
"She busy. You wait one minutes," he answered in a Polish accent, arms crossed in front of his chest. "Nice beeg teats I like. You wait."
Lincoln grabbed Tommy's beefy bicep. "My daughter would never set foot in a place like this."
"Young girls, they come to town, no family, no money. Ain't nobody starts out like this, Sheriff. More of 'em winds up here than the opera." Lincoln stared about, trying to catch a glimpse inside the stalls. "Up to you, Sheriff. We can stay or we can go," Tommy offered. Lincoln nodded. Tommy handed a gold coin to the bouncer, who bit it and nodded his consent. Tommy started down the hallway, followed close by Lincoln, whose hand enveloped the butt of his Colt.
Lincoln watched as the soldier groaned and arched his back. The whore's plump legs shuddered convulsively and a short-heeled shoe thumped to the floor, revealing a silver dollar-sized hole in her black stocking. His head swooned at the thought of Kaitlin doing the same, a wave of fear dulling his senses.
He never saw the heavy oak dowel that hit him.
Halfway to the floor, the bouncer's second blow caught him behind the right ear, an inch from where the first had landed, the sickening crack echoing down the hallway. Lincoln collapsed on the dirty floor as the grunting from the stalls continued unabated.
Tommy knelt over him, and in the dim red light saw the blood trickling from the side of Lincoln's head. "Don't kill him, you dumb bastard. He's worth ninety dollars alive."
"He live okay." The bouncer removed Lincoln's gun belt and the gold coins from his pocket, then shouldered him like a side of beef. He carried him to the end of the hallway, kicked open a door, then threw the limp body down a chute.
At the bottom, someone dragged Lincoln across the dirt floor, leaning him against the wall with four other unconscious men.