by S. L. Stoner
Solomon was still graciously greeting guests so Sage signaled a waiter and ordered lunch. May as well prove his mother right—she’d like that. Around him, the room was nearly full. In one corner, a demanding group of men kept the waiters hustling. It would be a while before Solomon could break free.
It was Monday morning and Mae was trying not to be alarmed when she saw that Rachel was absent from her cuff and collar mangle. Cobb probably called for a negotiation meeting, she assured herself. That assurance flew out the window when Cobb charged into the washroom with a stranger in tow.
Cobb looked like he was prancing on his toes, glee elevating him above the floor. He gave the bell hanging by the office door a vigorous clang—signaling that they should quiet all machines and gather around. Next to him stood a well-groomed fellow with brown hair, narrow in the hips and too darn poker-faced to be trustworthy.
“This gentleman here,” said Cobb, “is your new foreman. His name is ‘Mr. Sinclair’. I expect that you will show him respect and do exactly as he instructs. No back talk. He’s not a weak-kneed softy like the last fellow.”
None of the women smiled a welcome. Mae understood. They had little hope that Cobb’s handpicked foreman was anything other than a toady and probably a bully as well. “Birds of a feather,” Mae muttered under her breath. The woman standing beside her nodded.
An awkward silence followed the introduction until Cobb said, “Well, I told Mr. Sinclair that there’s to be no union talk during working hours. Keep your minds on your work, instead of on making trouble,” he said before scooting back into his office, no doubt relieved to escape the stares of his unhappy workers.
The new foreman took a few minutes to gaze about him, looking like a duck who found himself in a chicken coop. As the women returned to work, Sinclair began wandering around the washroom, pausing beside each work station but saying nothing. The faces of the workers he observed stayed blank except for a grim clamping of their lips.
When the foreman reached the shaking table, Mae paused to watch. She wanted to see if he exchanged any special looks with the new laundry worker, Caroline. There was nothing. In fact, it seemed as if Caroline deliberately averted her gaze. Well, even that could be a sign they knew each other.
Mae sighed and went back to ironing her ruffles and laces. Another new face at a bad time, she thought. But that concern was quickly replaced by a sharper one. Where was Rachel? Did she quit? Was she fired? Or, had something worse happened to her?
Chapter Six
“Easy as shooting a duck in a barrel,” he told himself, one side of his mouth lifting in a smirk that he quickly suppressed. He narrowed his eyes and studied the laundry workers. A few were females who, with clean-up and paint, could definitely be little moneymakers. Like that gal now locked in the whorehouse. Not that a lock was needed. The laudanum guaranteed she’d give no trouble.
The boss and the client were happy. He patted the roll of bills in his pocket. He’d made his report Saturday night and, right away, Farley handed over the $300. That’s why he liked working for the man—no dickering. You do your part, he delivers on his.
“Say, Sinclair,” Farley had said, “You have any interest in earning a few more dollars before you hop the train back to Chicago?”
When he said, “Yes,” his boss laid out the new plan that had him working as a foreman in the Sparta Laundry, reporting directly to the client. So here he was, shop foreman, the man in charge. Sinclair gazed around the washroom, the steam coating his neck before trickling down his spine. Damn good thing he wouldn’t be working here all that long. This must be what hell feels like, he thought as he wiped his neck with a clean handkerchief.
Sure enough, he’d be seeing hell if the creaky old prior’s predictions were right. But what did that old man know, locked away with his moldy old books behind six foot high walls? Not the real world. Not Paul Sinclair’s world, that was for sure.
He stepped closer to a table where the women stood snapping wrinkles out of wet clothes. He remembered to spread his lips in a smile only to have it freeze when not a one of them returned it. He let the smile slide away. You’ll be sorry, you stupid cows, he thought to himself. I’ll be writing down every one of your names. That’s what Cobb wants. A list of enemies.
He stepped over to one of the machines that pressed shirts. The woman at that machine looked up at him and smiled. “Don’t work so fast,” he said as he patted her shoulder, winked and moved on. He’d made her promise to keep their friendship secret, saying Cobb wouldn’t stand for his new foreman being close friends with a union member.
That should keep the silly girl happy, he thought. Let her keep thinking that, because she told me the foreman quit, she’s the reason I got this job. He glanced back over his shoulder. Maybe he should rescue her from this hell hole. For sure, he could talk her into going back to Chicago. She’d jump at the chance to elope with him, believe any story he told. They always did. Every damn time. At least in a whorehouse she wouldn’t be working so many hours in the sweltering heat. That work took place in the night. Besides, if she did fall for it, he’d get even more money in his pocket.
Sage leaned back in his chair, his stomach pleasantly full. He was sipping his second cup of coffee when Angus Solomon came to stand beside his table. It was one of their customary meeting places—the single table next to the kitchen door and screened from the other diners by a tall palm. The location allowed Solomon to stand with his back to the dining room while they talked. He always remained standing. It would never do for the hotel’s black maitre’d to actually sit down with a patron. Instead, his demeanor always made it look as if he were merely engaged in polite small talk. As far as they knew, the nature of their actual relationship remained a secret from all except Solomon’s wait staff. Sage had seen their sharp eyes glance in their direction more than once.
“Mr. Adair, it is always pleasant to see you. Has business or happenstance brought you here to grace us with your presence?” Solomon said in a soft Carolinian drawl.
From the sparkle in those brown eyes, he could tell Solomon was ready for their next joint adventure. They had worked together since the beginning, the elegant Carolinian and Mozart’s owner. Solomon, operated a hotel for black train porters at the same time he managed the dining room of the city’s most exclusive hotel. Both jobs put him in an ideal position to discover information about newcomers to the city. While this was a whites-only hotel when it came to the patrons, it made a point of hiring blacks to perform the establishment’s menial tasks as well as provide high-toned service in the dining room. This segregation benefitted their missions because the hotel’s guests and bosses rarely noticed the “help,” while the help noticed everything.
“We are in need of your assistance once again, Mr. Solomon. We’ve received information that there is an undesirable visitor in the city. His name is James Farley and he is supposedly from New York. We think it likely that he is staying here at the hotel. Do you think you could find out?”
Solomon smiled broadly. “Why Mister Adair, if that fellow is registered under his own name, confirming the information will be easy. But, since you have his name, even you could inquire at the front desk as to his presence here in the hotel.”
Sage nodded. “That’s right, I could. But it might get back to him. And we can’t have him knowing that we are interested in his activities just yet. We think he’s in town to help the owners in a labor dispute that’s brewing. And, we’re almost positive he won’t be here alone. He hires spies and thugs—both men and women—to do dirty work on behalf of the bosses, including getting rid of union leaders, one way or another. He also imports scabs to cross picket lines to take the workers’ places. All and all, he’s an unsavory character,” Sage said repeating the additional information Leo Lockwood had sent by messenger earlier that day.
Solomon understood because even as he nodded agreement, his lips tightened in disgust. Sage continued, “So, we need to confirm he’s here, as well as discover who
else is working with him. His toughs won’t be staying at this hotel because they’d stick out like sore thumbs. But I bet they’ll sneak down the hallways in order to meet secretly with him in his room. They’re the ones we need to identify and follow. And we have to do it without Farley learning what we’re doing.”
Solomon wasn’t surprised at the request. It wasn’t the first time the Portland Hotel’s workers had gathered such information. In fact, their help had been invaluable more than once.
“May I ask which labor dispute our investigation would specifically aid?” Solomon asked.
“You know about the laundry workers wanting a nine-hour day?” he asked and, at Solomon’s nod, he continued, “We think the laundry bosses have brought Farley and his pals to town. Plus, we know they plan to act soon because their leader, Cobb, has said so. It’s our thought that we’ll be better prepared to respond if we know in advance exactly who they are and what they are planning.”
“I know about the steam laundries,” Solomon said. “A few of us, have obtained employment running the laundry washtubs. They are very brutal places to work. From what I’ve heard, even nine hours are too many hours to work in that environment. I am thinking my colleagues will feel privileged to ascertain the information you seek, provided such information is available.”
“If you do find something out, please send a message to Fong at Mozart’s. He’ll come see you at your hotel. He has men who will follow Farley’s little helpers.”
That request brought a grin to Solomon’s face. For some reason, the tall black man and the small Chinese man had formed a strong friendship. No doubt, Angus Solomon looked forward to working with Fong Kam Tong again.
He’d glided away. Sage thought about Solomon saying that black men worked in the city’s steam laundries. It was rare for black men to work alongside white men performing the same job. The fact that they did, was an indication of the undesirability of running wash tubs. Only that could explain such an exception to the customary workplace segregation.
Rachel Levy was still missing when the noon whistle sounded and the women filed out the door. Mae thought about the morning. The oddly cheerful Cobb had never returned to the washroom. The new foreman had continued his rounds, saying nothing but stopping at every machine to observe and show his teeth like a hungry shark. Mae didn’t trust him or his phony smiles.
The women ate their meager lunches in the adjoining empty lot beneath the willow’s shade. It was hot and no whiff of air cooled the sweat on their backs and brows.
Mae didn’t wait for everyone to settle before she raised the question that had nagged her the entire morning. “Where’s Rachel today?” she asked the union representative’s closest friend. “Is she sick? Or, did Cobb fire her?”
Everyone paused in their fussing to wait for the answer. “I don’t know,” said the woman, Beatrice, “I waited for her this morning as long as I could. We meet every work morning on the same corner but she never showed up. The last time I saw her was on Saturday.” Worry creased the woman’s brow. The other women murmured in dismay.
“She would tell you if she was fired, wouldn’t she?” Mae pressed, trying to figure out if there was any explanation for Rachel’s absence. As she asked the question, fear prickled her backbone.
“Sure she would,” responded Beatrice. “We’ve always expected Cobb would fire her. Especially after she told off that delivery driver, L.D. Warder. But even if Cobb fired her, she still would have met me and told me so I could tell everyone else. Her plan was to ask the Trade Council for money to live on so she could keep working on our negotiating team and start meeting more regular with the workers from the other laundries. She’s been told that the Council would agree to pay her.”
The woman took a deep breath and said, “There is absolutely no way Rachel Levy would walk away from us.” That declaration triggered vigorous nods of agreement from the other women. They believed in the woman they had elected to represent them. They were certain that she would not let them down.
Mae’s sense of foreboding strengthened. She knew their faith in Rachel was not misplaced. As she chewed her simple sandwich of bread, cheese and ham, Mae looked around for the familiar figure of the ragpicker. He was nowhere in sight. Maybe he was following Rachel. Maybe he knew where she was and what she was doing. She tried to hope, though she feared it was more likely Herman was still trying to find the missing woman. She fought the urge to run off to find Eich and Sage, to sound the alert, to start the search for the missing woman. She forced herself to stay put, despite knowing that it would be hours before she could get word to her partners that Rachel was missing.
Lunch was mostly a silent affair, though they briefly discussed the new foreman, with the general agreement being that he was “smarmy” and couldn’t be trusted. The only dissent came from Chrissy, the young girl who ran one of the shirt mangles. She timidly said she thought Sinclair “very handsome” but stayed silent when one of the older women warned her to stay away from the man until they knew him better.
During this discussion, Mae noticed that the new girl, Caroline, said nothing. But, as usual, her dark eyes were sharply observant. She was obviously taking in every word that was said. And, likely noting who was saying those words.
When one of the women suggested they all pray for Rachel’s safety, Mae noticed that Caroline was quick to duck her head and tightly clasp her hands in prayer. Whether her show of piety was sincere or an act, Mae couldn’t tell. Her musings can to an abrupt end when the shrill steam whistle summoned them back to work.
Chapter Seven
She heard the groan before she felt it rasp her throat. Next came the realization that her thoughts were dragging, as if wading though deep water. And, her head ached with a steady throb. After that, the itching started, she raised an arm but saw no bites or insects. Still her skin needed scratching. Suddenly realizing she was near naked, clothed only in a thin cotton sleeveless shift, she yanked the tattered blanket to her chin despite the hot and stifling air.
The room she was in was dark except for the dim blades of light forcing their way through the curtain. It hung inside boards nailed across the single window. Why would someone nail boards over a curtain? An ordinary door was set in one wall. With a groan, she forced herself to slide her feet to the floor and sit up. Nausea swooped through her and her aching head turned dizzy. She gritted her teeth, rose on wobbly legs and made it to the door. When she got there, the door knob turned but the door wouldn’t open. She’d been locked in. Why was she locked in?
Making her way back to the iron cot, she eyed the meager furnishings—a narrow woven wire cot, a scarred wooden fruit box, and chipped ceramic chamber pot in the corner. Her blouse, skirt and shoes were nowhere in sight. Only her jacket, with its enameled rose lapel pin, was on the chair. She slipped it on despite the heat.
Sitting on the cot, she fought to remember how she’d ended up in this place. It was like she was telling herself a story with pieces missing. She remembered leaving the laundry. It had been so hot. She’d been looking forward sitting on the shaded porch tacked onto the back of the boarding house. Because it stood on stilts over the ravine, it was a few degrees cooler than their room. She thought that maybe she’d sit in the wicker chair and read a little before drifting off to sleep. It was such a luxury to be lazy on her free afternoon.
She never made it to the boarding house. She was certain of that. What happened after she dropped Rachel’s lunch off at the laundry? A recollection of Danny’s face brightening with pleasure upon seeing her meant she’d walked as far as the pencil stand. She always stopped to speak to him because he reminded her of her cousin Bennie—simple but sweet to the core, incapable of deceit. After that, she’d walked on, wanting to get out of the beating sun, to get home. She remembered the alley. The two-story building on its south side had cast it into deep shade that was a welcome relief.
She tried to remember what came next. There’d been hurrying footsteps, the jolt of being yanked ba
ck against someone’s body, something wet, cold, stinky covering her face, smothering her as she gasped for air. Then nothing. Now she was here. Someone had brought her here.
A tin pitcher of water sat on the fruit box beside a tin cup. She poured the water into the glass. Even in the dim light, she could see it was murky. Still, her tongue felt sore and dry, like cotton coated it. She was so thirsty. Against her better judgment, she drank the brackish water before lying back to ponder her situation.
Just before her thoughts stilled, a terrifying thought knifed through her headache. What happened to her, everything, from being grabbed off the streets and jailed in a room with her clothes missing, all of it exactly matched the newspaper stories she’d read. Cautionary tales they been, warning about the dangers of falling victim to white slavers. Had they stolen her in order to turn her into a prostitute? A strange lassitude overtook her limbs and her thoughts drifted into such vivid dreams that she no longer cared about the answer.
Sage stood at Mozart’s podium, smiling graciously at the customers arriving for the noon hour dinner when the street door opened slowly and an intense Chinese face peeked in. Once the man saw Sage notice him, he closed the door. It was one of Fong’s cousins with an urgent message. Urgent because, otherwise, the messenger would have knocked on the kitchen door and waited for Sage to be fetched.
Sage signaled for Homer, Mozart’s head waiter, to take Sage’s place at the podium. By now, Homer was accustomed to these abrupt and inexplicable departures and willingly stepped in to perform Sage’s role without a hitch. Casting a final glance at the elegant dining room, Sage grabbed his homburg and made his apologies to the waiting patrons.
