It was madness, I know, to do that, but he'd been like a brother once, and in the last few days we'd all walked through hell.
It was only later that I heard the whole story—or rather, heard some, read about parts of it in the papers, and guessed the rest, but by then he was gone and I was stuck.
It seems that on the Friday night after the quake, a cop had seen him going into a house whose residents had been ordered out just ahead of the fire. There were actually two cops together, but they split up when they heard the distinctive crash of a breaking window on the next street. One went to investigate that, the other followed GF, and when the cop came through the back door after him, GF panicked and bashed him with the fireplace poker. It killed the man, or anyway GF assumed it did, but instead of just running away, he thought he'd conceal the evidence by burning the house. What was one more burning building when the whole city was up in flames?
But being GF, a couple of problems came up. The first was that the bottle of gasoline GF found in the pantry and poured around the floor didn't just burn when he set a match to it, it went up like high explosive, shooting GF out of the house and scorching off all his hair. The other problem was, the fire shifted and didn't eat up that street, so after the fire died down, there was one house burned among a bunch still standing. And in that house was a dead cop with a broken skull and a fireplace poker lying next to him.
GF had buttoned the box of money inside his shirt to leave his hands free when the gas went off in his face, and when he picked himself off the ground and found he could walk, he did so. Eventually he more or less passed out, and was taken to a hospital tent, but as soon as he came to on Saturday he figured it wouldn't be healthy to be a scorched man with a box full of money.
So he came to me.
And I bought his way to freedom, leaving me with a tin box so badly dented that I understood why the hospital workers hadn't looked inside—when I dug it up, I had to use a hammer and screwdriver to get it open. It had money in it, but only about $1700, and some of that had what looked to me like blood on it. Talk about your blood money.
The other thing it had was a band of cloth with a red cross painted on it. Dressed as a rescue worker, GF had gone in and out of houses under the pretense of looking for injured people, when all the while he'd been robbing them blind.
I felt wild when I held that cloth in my hands and realized what it meant. Then later, I got to thinking about the problems I had, and I began to feel even worse. I was stuck with the damned box. If I gave it to the authorities and told them the honest truth, I thought that I'd probably be charged—if not with the actual stealing, then at least with aiding a felon. If I took the box away and threw it off a ferry, I risked getting caught with it red-handed, and wouldn't that be fun to explain? Plus, if I got rid of it and GF came back to shake more money out of the Russell tree, I couldn't use it as a threat to get rid of him—surely there'd be his finger-prints or something in that box that would—I started to write “hang him,” which is a little too close to the bone. But I couldn't leave it where he'd put it—what would stop him from sneaking in one night and digging it up? I could take it down to the Lodge and drown it in the lake, but something about introducing that box into that setting made it feel somehow polluting.
So in the end I talked it over with my friend—I should say, my true friend—PA, and he agreed that it would be best if we just buried it again quietly and said nothing. But not in the same place—we talked about where to do it, and he had a fellow in to do some mumbo-jumbo over it, and we hid it deep, where only he and I know.
A year or so later, the gardener uncovered another box, this one with pictures of chocolates on the front. It had money in it, too, and jewelry. It also had a gun. PA and I buried it in the same place as the first, but without the gun—that I did get rid of.
The whole thing was just a disaster, and it didn't even end with seeing the back of GF. I told my wife about it a few weeks later, which I probably shouldn't have done—she always had some odd notions about GF, from the very first time I'd brought her home, she'd never taken to him, never liked having him around. When she heard about what he'd done, and that I'd buried his stash, she became convinced that he would return one night and do something to us, maybe even threaten the children, to get it back. I got quite hot at that, the idea that I'd be friends with such a man—it still seems to me that robbery and panicked manslaughter in the midst of anarchy is a far cry from cold-bloodedly threatening friends, but my wife is as strong-minded a person as I am, and we had words. It took me years before I could talk her into coming home again.
So there's my story. I haven't seen GF since, although I think he's been around, because once in 1910 we found someone had been digging where he'd buried the two boxes. For all I know he's dead, but I wrote a letter to his half-sister last week, saying that if he was still alive and she was in touch with him, I wanted him to know that around the end of October, the U.S. government would “know the details of an incident that took place in 1906.” The events of those days have been allowed to fade somewhat, but it was murder, after all, and it wouldn't be too hard to figure out who GF was, if they wanted to come after him. I thought it only fair to warn him that the U. S. of A. might not be a comfortable place for him.
Like I said, he was my friend, once, and frankly I don't know that we weren't all pretty insane those days of the fire.
I've also told PA all this, and he agrees it's best. I'll try to keep him out of it as best I can, and I've long since removed all mention of him from my official documents, my will and such, even though he had nothing to do with it until it was all over.
So there it is, my life of crime. I may be over-scrupulous in revealing this, but I would not care to be put into a position involving the security of the nation with this vulnerable point in my past. If it alters the judgment of my superiors as to my fitness for the proposed position, so be it.
Yours sincerely,
Charles David Russell
October 1, 1914
San Francisco
ADDENDUM:
I leave next week for Washington, D.C., and will take the above with me to present to my superiors. I shall bury a copy with the two tin boxes as well, less for insurance than by way of explanation, should someone ever come across the incriminating contents and wonder.
The day after tomorrow, I'm going down to the Lodge, to close it up for some time. Most people here believe the war will be over in a few weeks, but I have been to Germany, I know the strength of her people, and I do not think so. I do not know if I shall ever see my beloved lake again, and I have a sentimental wish to visit it one last time before I go. My wife says she has too many things to do here in San Francisco, but I hope that she will reconsider and that she and the children will join me at the place where we have spent so many blissful days of family unity and pleasure.
I have had no word from the man I called GF, nor from his half-sister, although considering the disruption France is currently undergoing, I do not suppose that is surprising. Well, I have done my best by him, and can only hope that his life since we last met has been lived in a manner to recompense his sins.
As for my own, we shall soon see.
Signed,
Charles Russell
BOOK FIVE
Russell
