Belle Cora: A Novel (85 page)

“Oh God, Charley, let’s hope not.”

“Sure, let’s hope,” he said.

On the way out, I left the militiamen behind me for a moment, impulsively thanked Billy Mulligan for his goodness to Charley all these months, and clasped his hand—putting into it a note that read “$10,000.”

EVERYONE KNEW THAT THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE
was busy recruiting members; already, twice as many had joined as last time, and it was going to be a lot bigger. That night I got messages to Baker and McDougall, asking them to get me in touch with men who were likely to be accepted as vigilantes. With their help, within a few days I had three vigilantes on my payroll, but none of them were very high up in the organization, and they could not tell me much or do anything to influence events.

Morning and evening editions of each of the town’s newspapers contained the latest news about James King. Half a dozen doctors were working on him. Edward’s paper, the
Herald
, published an editorial roundly condemning the idea of reviving the Committee of Vigilance. By the next day, every businessman in town had removed his advertising from the paper, and the vigilantes were burning stacks of it in the streets.

The
Alta California
and the
Bulletin
—now, supposedly, edited by Thomas King—published the preamble to the committee’s otherwise secret constitution, which said that the citizens of San Francisco had no security of life or property and their rights had been violated because of election fraud. A paramilitary junta led by a few of the town’s richest men was the only way the people’s will could be manifested.

SOON THE NUMBERS OF THE VIGILANTES SWELLED
to the thousands. The city bristled with rifles, bayonets, and marching men. I was woken by the sound of their boots rhythmically stamping the wooden planks of the streets. I raised my window. I observed their newfound pride. A great many of them had become unemployed or had been forced, by the recent business slump, to take jobs they considered beneath their dignity. Now they were part of a force that had, without a struggle, usurped the regular government and was able to shut down gambling hells, open jails, and hang men.

The leaders were millionaires. They thought of themselves as righteous men, and they needed to make a lot of excuses whenever they did anything violent. But in the ranks were men of assorted character, as may be found in any army.

The committee claimed the right to search any house it wished without a warrant. On Friday morning two days after Casey shot King, a detachment of ten vigilantes pounded on the door of my house on Pike Street. I looked out the window of my bedroom and saw them. When Niobe opened the door, they pushed her aside and walked in, carrying rifles and pistols. I was downstairs just as they entered. The parlor filled with the stink of chewing tobacco, body sweat, and whiskey. Big and little, fat and thin, bearded and clean-shaven, they looked around as though to say, So this is Belle Cora’s place.

A fellow with long blond hair, wearing stained breeches and a faded blue shirt too small for his fat belly, sat on a divan and began stroking the red satin fabric and squeezing a cushion with his dirty hands. “Stop him, that’s expensive,” I said to another man, who seemed to be the leader—he had given orders to the others. He had a short mustache and a neat little chin-puff beard, and a resigned-looking expression, as though he had learned not to expect much of people. “Off the sofa,” he said, and the fellow in the too-tight shirt rose, taking his rifle. “Stand by the door,” said
the leader, and announced generally, “We’re searching the house. Let no one leave.” He gave orders, calling his men “you”—“You by the clock … You with your hand on the rail”—telling them to block the doors front and back and to let no one out, and telling each man which floor to search. He did not use a single name. Could it be because they had been organized so recently that he did not know the names of his own men?

“What are you looking for?” I asked, worried that it must be Lewis and glad that he wasn’t here. He was keeping watch on the jail, along with my lawyers and assorted other members of San Francisco’s Law and Order Party, who opposed the vigilantes.

“Shut up,” said the world-weary man.

“What is the name of your company?” I asked—the Vigilance Committee was organized on military lines into companies and battalions. He didn’t answer. “Who sent you?” I asked. “What’s your name?”

With a blank expression on his face, he rammed the butt of the rifle into the middle of a big mirror. He examined his work, cocking his head skeptically, and struck again. Cracks spidered from center to frame; long, knifelike shards hit the carpet. They weren’t looking for anybody.

Jacqueline began walking briskly toward the hall. A man held a rifle to block her path.

I knew then that they weren’t looking for anybody. I knew what they were here for.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We got off on the wrong foot. Why don’t we talk it over upstairs, you and I?”

“That’s better,” said the sad-eyed man. He followed me up the stairs. I turned just once to say, “Girls, show these boys a good time,” and then he kicked me and I fell on my face. I rose without complaint. He kicked me down again, and after that I understood what was wanted: I crawled.

The house resounded with thuds and crashes as furniture was toppled, china vases were smashed, and doors were kicked in. By the time I reached the landing, there were also cries and unheeded shouts for help.

They left after about two hours. My driver, Neil, and the pianist, Mr. Rice, the only men on the premises, had been badly beaten while trying to help us. Neil, it was found later, had two broken ribs. Mr. Rice had lost two teeth. The women had been beaten and kicked, and been taken more than once, by different men, in different ways—the servants Niobe and
Adelia along with the rest of us. Two of the girls, another maid, and the cook could not be found.

In a crooked piece of mirror I examined my face. The worst of the bruises were in places Charley would not see. I gathered up the women. Some stumbled aimlessly from room to room in the rags that had so recently been their finery. A few I found weeping, and a few methodically taking drink after drink of whiskey and rum and whatever route to forgetfulness was near to hand. Everywhere were pieces of glass, spilled liquor, broken chairs. I sent Antoinette to fetch a doctor. I spoke to each of the girls in turn. I told them that I would arrange for them to go to a hotel in Sacramento City until things in this city had settled down. We went to the kitchen. I made coffee, and we had hard-boiled eggs and bread and ham, but not all of the girls could eat, or keep the food down once they had eaten.

One of the girls had mentioned overhearing the men carelessly calling each other by name—first names only. I found a pen and nib and a bottle of ink and made a note. I decided to ask the rest if any of them had overheard names, but the ones I asked first became so upset that I decided to postpone these questions until we were all feeling a little better.

You may wonder if such an ordeal was less upsetting for us than it would have been for women who do not sell their caresses. I don’t know how one would confirm such a theory. Certainly even fancy prostitutes must expect to undergo harsh experiences eventually—some at the very beginning. My girl Marianne had been introduced to this life by a man who had kept her in a locked room, raping her, beating her, and letting his friends use her every day until she was tame enough to be let out. Though it had happened thousands of miles away, and years ago, I had more than once known her to give a start and look for a place to hide, thinking she had seen him in the street or in our sitting room.

As for me, and my feelings, I must have had a lot of them, but all I remember is that I didn’t want Charley, helpless in a jail cell, to hear one word about any of this and I wasn’t ever going to tell Jeptha.

Our regular doctor came. A few days earlier, he had joined the Vigilance Committee. He could not deny the evidence, but insisted that the men who had done this must have been impostors. I saw no purpose in arguing.

We swept and cleaned. The two girls and the cook who had escaped came back and apologized. They had hidden in an outhouse behind a saloon, too frightened of the vigilantes to go for help. At first, wanting everything to be just as it was, I forgave them, happy that they had been spared. But after thinking about it some more, I changed my mind and told them they must take their things and leave.

Lewis returned, bringing news, which he forgot to tell me when he saw the wreckage and I explained its cause. Frightened of his reaction, I followed him as he rushed through the house. He demanded that each of its vacant-eyed inhabitants tell him where Jocelyn was; one after another they shrugged or said they didn’t know, or stared at him without answering. He went to her room and stood in the doorway. The mattress had been dragged halfway off her bed. On the floor was a broken terra-cotta pot, its dirt, a potted palm, puddles of piss, an oil painting, and a nightgown. Both the painting and the nightgown bore the muddy prints of three different pairs of boots. I whispered soothing words to him, words I do not remember, while he walked rather more slowly down the stairs. He found Jocelyn at last, sitting at the kitchen table in a fresh dress, drinking whiskey. He held her and kissed her. She was unresponsive. Finally, she returned his gaze, reached out her hand, and patted his cheek. “Tell me their names,” he begged her. When she said she didn’t know any of the names, he looked, for a minute, as if he was ready to throw his life away in a reckless attack on the vigilante headquarters.

“Lewis, I’m going to find out,” I said, gripping his shoulders. “They won’t be able to keep their names a secret. There were too many. Some of them will brag. You have to be patient and take my advice. If you go after the men who hurt Jocelyn, the others will gang up on you. And if you kill anyone, even in a fair fight, while the committee is in charge, they’ll hang you.”

“I’m not just going after the ones who hurt Jocelyn,” he corrected me, taking a seat on a torn sofa and playing absentmindedly with a tuft of exposed horsehair. “I’m going to kill all of them.”

In his right hand, he held the rock he had possessed since he was a boy of six. It was the size of a baseball, partly smooth, partly jagged, identifiable by its shape and by a cross of some darker mineral set in a white patch.

“Well, Lewis,” I said, as you might say to a young boy who has voiced a
laudable but unrealistic ambition, “that’s a big job. If we want to be able to finish it, we’ll need to plan well. We’ll need to use our heads.”

Naturally, I assumed I would be able to reduce his plans to more manageable dimensions after a little time had passed.

Then he told me the news. The governor of California had met with William Tell Coleman, the head of the Vigilance Committee. He had promised that Casey and Cora would be tried by an honest judge and an honest jury, and agreed to let a company of vigilantes into the county jail, supposedly to prevent Casey and Charley from escaping. In return, Coleman promised that his men would not do anything hasty—that, in particular, they would not kidnap the prisoners. Since there was nothing else I could do, I hoped that Coleman would keep his word.

I sent letters to the newspapers by messenger, complaining that vigilantes had forced their way into my house, insulted my girls, and stolen the equivalent of two thousand dollars in money and valuables. A story in Saturday’s
Alta California
said that an “angry mob” had forced its way into Belle Cora’s house, damaged property, and frightened its residents. The editors, though understanding the community’s fury, deplored their lawless behavior; it would be absurd if the Vigilance Committee had to divert its resources to the protection of houses of ill repute.

No man from the newspapers or the police came to my house to ask the girls what had happened to them, and I thought it was just as well. I did not want Charley to know; besides, girls as expensive as mine do not admit to being raped.

I had the house cleaned and arranged for the girls to go to a hotel in Sacramento City. That night, when I went to see Charley, I was turned away.

ON SUNDAY, THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE
broke its promise to the governor. Thousands of men surrounded the jail. The muzzles of two mobile cannons were directed at its entrance. Vigilantes in top hats and frock coats, holding rifles, stood on a nearby roof. Others, with rifles and bayonets, controlled the street. They cleared Broadway and brought a coach pulled by two horses. Crowds watched from windows and from rooftops. Lewis, Edward, and I stood on the top of a building on the corner of Sacramento and Front Streets. We saw William Coleman and another man go into the jail and come out a half-hour later. Ten minutes
after that, a murmur arose from the crowd as Casey walked out, under close guard and shackled.

There was a strong wind coming in from the bay that morning. One of the vigilante guards lost his hat and couldn’t break ranks to fetch it. As Casey climbed into the waiting coach, he turned to look at the hat skidding and spinning and flipping end over end down the street. A man closed the coach door. One horse raised its tail, the other dipped its head, the whip flicked, the coach moved slowly, and armed men walked behind it.

“They didn’t take Charley,” I told my brothers, and we all tried to comfort each other with that thought; but a few minutes later, they came back for him. His head was tilted down as he came out of the jail with a vigilante at each elbow. Once he looked up, but his back was to me. All around me, people were saying things that I could never forgive. I threw my arms around Lewis’s neck and whispered, “Not now. Patience. Patience.”

The headquarters of the Committee of Vigilance was only two blocks from my house. I thought about that, how near Charley was, as I lay awake at night in my room, which was sparsely furnished now, with pale rectangles on the walls where ruined pictures and dressers had been removed. In the meantime, a sort of trial was under way. Over the course of two days, the executive committee read the records of the earlier trial, debated the evidence, and took a vote. Some said murder, some said manslaughter. Two voted to acquit. According to the committee’s rules, a majority was sufficient for hanging.