Abner opened the Rolls’s rear door, pulled down a jump seat, and stood back. Butler got in and sat down. He turned to Cromwell’s sister. “Maggie, you look positively stunning, good enough to eat.” He left it there, seeing the fearsome, hostile look in Cromwell’s eyes. He greeted Cromwell without offering his hand. “Jacob, good to see you.”
“You look fit,” said Cromwell as if he cared.
“In the pink. I walk five miles a day.”
Cromwell ignored him, picked up the speaking tube, and instructed Abner where to pick up Marion Morgan. He turned to his sister. “What saloon on the Barbary Coast do you wish for us to mingle with the foul-smelling rabble?”
“I heard that Spider Kelly’s was quite scrubby.”
“The worst dive in the world,” Cromwell said knowledgeably. “But they have good bands and a large dance floor.”
“Do you think it’s safe?” asked Margaret.
Cromwell laughed. “Red Kelly hires a small army of husky bouncers to protect affluent clientele like us from harm or embarrassment.”
“Spider Kelly’s it is,” said Butler. “I even took my mumsy and dad there one evening. They truly enjoyed watching the mix of unsavory people who frequent the place. We sat in the slummers’ balcony to watch the lowlife cavort.”
The Rolls stopped in front of an apartment building on Russian Hill just off Hyde Street on Lombard, a fashionable but affordable district of the city. This area of Russian Hill contained the homes and meeting places where intellectuals, artists, architects, writers, and journalists engaged in lofty arguments and discussions—but mostly socialized and partied.
Marion did not stand on protocol. She was waiting out front, on the top step of her building. As the Rolls eased to the curb, she descended and then stopped as Abner opened the door for her. She was dressed in a short jacket over a blue blouse with a matching skirt that had a simple elegance about it. Her blond hair was drawn back and twisted into a long braid with a bow at the back of her long neck.
Cromwell stepped out and gallantly helped her into the backseat. The chauffeur pulled down the other jump seat in which Cromwell, in a courtly manner, seated himself. “Miss Marion Morgan, may I present Mr. Eugene Butler. And you’ve met my sister Margaret,” he said, using her proper name.
“Miss Cromwell, a pleasure to see you again.” Marion’s tone was gracious but not exactly filled with warmth. “Likewise, Eugene,” Marion acknowledged sweetly with familiarity.
“You know each other?” asked Margaret in surprise.
“Eugene…Mr. Butler…took me to dinner some time ago.”
“Two years,” Butler said good-naturedly. “I failed to impress her. She spurned all my later invitations.”
“And advances,” Marion added, smiling.
“Ready for a hot night on the Barbary Coast?” asked Cromwell.
“It will be a new experience for me,” said Marion. “I’ve never had the courage to go there.”
“Remember the old song,” said Margaret:
“The miners came in ’forty-nine,
the whores in ’fifty-one.
And when they got together,
they produced the native son.”
Marion blushed and looked demurely at the carpet on the floor as the men laughed.
A few minutes later, Abner turned onto Pacific Street and drove through the heart of the Barbary Coast, named after the lair of the Barbary pirates of Morocco and Tunisia. Here was the home of gamblers, prostitutes, burglars, con men, drunks, derelicts, cutthroats, and murderers. It was all there, debauchery and degradation, poverty and wealth, misery and death.
The infamous coast boasted more than three hundred saloons, wall-to-wall, within six city blocks, fifty of them on Pacific Street alone. It existed because of crooked politicians who were bribed by the saloon, gambling house, and brothel owners. The reputable citizens of the city complained publicly about the den of iniquity but averted their eyes because they were secretly proud of the distinction that their fair city of San Francisco more than equaled Paris, which bore the enviable reputation as the wickedest city in the Western Hemisphere, as a carnival of vice and corruption.
And yet the Barbary Coast was glitzy and glamorous, with loads of ballyhoo and skulduggery, a veritable paradise for people of honest means to go slumming. The unsavory who ran the dens of sin—in most cases, men—relished seeing the swells from Nob Hill enter their establishments because they had no scruples charging them exorbitant prices for admission and liquor, usually thirty dollars for a bottle of champagne rather than the going rate of six to eight. Mixed drinks in most saloons were twenty-five cents and beer a dime.
Abner slipped the Rolls through the revelers wandering the street and pulled to a stop in front of a three-story building that served as a hotel upstairs—in reality, a brothel, called a cow yard, which housed fifty women in rooms, called cribs. The main floor was for gambling and drinking, while the downstairs basement had a stage for bawdy shows and a large wooden floor for dancing. They stepped from the car, with the men in the lead to shield the ladies, who stared with fascination at a flashy uniformed barker on the sidewalk.
“Step right into Spider Kelly’s, the finest drinking and dancing establishment on the coast. All are welcome, all will have the night of their lives. See the wildest show and the most beautiful girls to be found anywhere. See them kick their heels over their heads; see them sway in a manner that will shock and amaze you.”
“I like this place already,” said Margaret gaily.
Marion stared and clutched Cromwell’s arm tightly and looked up at a sign largely ignored by the clientele that read NO VULGARITY ALLOWED IN THIS ESTABLISHMENT.
They entered a large, U-shaped entrance lobby decorated with framed panels of nude women dancing amid Roman ruins. A manager decked out in an ill-fitting tuxedo greeted them and escorted them inside. “Do you wish to go downstairs for the show?” he asked. “The next one starts in ten minutes.”
“We would like a safe table away from the riffraff,” said Cromwell in a demanding tone. “After we’ve enjoyed a bottle of your finest champagne, we’ll go downstairs for dancing and the show.”
The manager bowed. “Yes, sir. Right this way.”
He escorted Cromwell’s party through the crowded saloon up to a table on the slummers’ balcony Butler had mentioned overlooking the main floor of the saloon. Soon a waitress wearing a thin blouse cut low across her breasts and a skirt that came well above her knees, showing an ample display of legs in black silk stockings held up by capricious garters, brought a magnum of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne, vintage 1892. As she eased the bottle into an ordinary bucket filled with ice, she brushed against the men and gave each an earthy smile. Margaret returned the smile, letting the waitress know that Margaret knew that besides serving customers in the saloon she also worked in the cribs upstairs. Surprised at seeing a Nob Hill swell dressed in a revealing outfit, the waitress gave Margaret a lewd look.
“You know, dearie, a redhead like you is in high demand. You could name your own price.”