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This one is for
CarlMarrs—
high-school heartthrob,
long-time friend,
and
the man who makes things happen.
The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.
—EDWIN TOMS, GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA
Birth Announcement
Melun, France
from the Melun Journal, 13 Juin 1875
née à Léon Marc Louis Beauchamp et femme,
une jeune fille,
Léonie Angélique Josephine Beauchamp
DAWSON CITY
DECEMBER 24, 1897
She walked out on stage wrapped in fifty yards of sheer white chiffon, a pair of high-heeled shoes with jeweled buckles, and nothing else.
There was a second of stunned silence in the packed, smoky saloon, before deafening and prolonged approval threatened to raise the roof
She waited, a faint smile on her face, for the first roar to moderate and pitched her voice to be heard. “Good evening, gentlemen, and welcome to the Double Eagle’s Christmas Eve auction.” Her voice was husky, with the slight hint of an accent she tried to control. She let her smile broaden, giving it her special up-from-under and through-the-lashes look, part Madonna, part whore, all woman, and added, “I’m the best present you’ll ever find under any Christmas tree you ever saw.”
This time the stage literally trembled beneath her feet, and she gave a fleeting thought to all the gold dust spilled on the floor this night, now being shaken through the cracks in the floorboards. It wouldn’t go to waste. Japanese Jack and Big Ben Bentson would crawl beneath the building the next morning to sweep it up and add it to the night’s till. Likely she wouldn’t see her percentage, but at the moment she couldn’t allow herself to be distracted by that realization.
Big Ben was the owner and Japanese Jack the bartender of the Double Eagle Saloon, doors open around the clock at the corner of Front and York Streets in downtown, boomtown, gold town Dawson City. The Double Eagle was the biggest building in Dawson, the first to add on a second story. It had a long mahogany bar that matched the mahogany wainscoting, eight mahogany gaming tables, a polished brass footrail that matched the brass spittoons, large, elaborate paintings of reclining nudes lit by tiered crystal chandeliers, windows made of stained and beveled glass, and a dozen rooms upstairs with thick carpets, many more mirrors, and furnished with suites in the very latest style. A cleaning staff of a dozen kept the place spotless, although they kept leaving to stake claims in the search for their very own Eldorado.
They were all men, the cleaning staff. Women could do so much better, selling dances for a dollar, a pint of champagne for eighteen dollars, an hour in one of the rooms upstairs for considerably more. Big Ben got fifty cents on the dance dollar, three-quarters of the price of the pint of champagne, and she never told anyone what the split was on the third.
She had been headlining there for the past year, specializing on stage in the Flame Dance that kept two hundred yards of chiffon in the air at one time, and specializing in what one reporter called “the long, juicy waltz” in the clubrooms upstairs. At the end of fourteen months, she had twenty-seven thousand dollars in the bank. She was twenty-two years old, although she admitted to nineteen, and it was her great good fortune that she looked even younger than that. Most laboring men Outside, of any age, were lucky to earn a dollar a day.
She could have kept working for years, especially here, where men outnumbered women six and seven to one, but she had plans, big ones. One more winter, one last contribution to her savings, and she would be ready to move on.
She looked around the room, at the sea of faces upturned to her, and felt that thrill of power she always felt at being the center of so much concentrated male attention. The chiffon began in a spiral of fabric at her ankles and finished up in a graceful swath around her shoulders, the loose end draped over her bare arm. So closely bound together were her feet that she could take only tiny, mincing steps, which was just as well given the height of the heels on her shoes. Big Ben had wanted her to go barefoot, but she knew what the heels did to the line of her legs, displaying their graceful and well-turned length to best advantage, making a man imagine them wrapped around his waist.
One miner had fought his way forward to the edge of the stage. He was ragged, bearded, and smelled as if he hadn’t bathed since the river froze over. He looked hungry, and so very hopeless. She gave him a special smile all his own, inviting everything, promising nothing. She was a whore, but she was an honest whore. She gave value for money received, so long as the money was received. That didn ‘t mean she couldn ‘t be kind.
“It’s going to be a long, cold, lonely winter, boys,” she said, and there was a shout of agreement. She walked down to center stage and out onto the catwalk thrusting into the room, the little mincing steps causing her breasts to shimmy. The tuft of hair at the vee of her legs was a shadowy patch beneath the chiffon; she put a little extra into the roll of her hips to underline just what was on the auction block that evening.
“For me, too,” she added, pouting, and they howled like wolves on the scent.
Again she felt the thrill, a flush of power that began somewhere low in her belly and spread up her torso and down her limbs. A faint film of perspiration broke out over her skin, and a commensurate low, prowling growl rose from the crowd. She performed a three-quarter turn and paused to cast a roguish glance over her right shoulder. “We have a saying here in the north country, boys. I know you’ve heard it. The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” She winked a violet eye at one man standing in the back, watching her over a glass of Big Ben’s watered-down whiskey. He was a regular of hers, a banker who was as conservative with his own money as he was acquisitive of others’. He hadn’t liked the idea of his favorite dance partner taking herself out of circulation for the entire winter, but then he wouldn’t be bidding this evening, either. She had no doubt that he was ready to take her evening’s earnings in deposit, however, just as soon as it had been paid over and Big Ben’s commission deducted. She let one hand skim suggestively down her cocked hip, reminding him of what he ‘d be missing. His eyes narrowed against the smoke of the cigar clenched in his teeth, and she laughed her husky laugh. “I’m sure you ‘11 agree, these goods aren’t the least bit odd.”
Big Ben and Japanese Jack had been priming the bidders for the last week with announcements of the auction, including tantalizing hints as to exactly what skills and services the highest bid would bring. The flyers were papered all over town and every claim from Log Cabin to Circle City. The always needy miners of the Klondike had been quivering for days at the prospect of the Dawson Darling dancing the slow, juicy waltz just for them for six exquisite months. No one would notice the dark or the cold with the Dawson Darling waiting in his bed.
“Here I am, gentlemen,” she said. “It is generally held that my looks are pleasing and that my figure is good.” She waited for the chorus of agreement and was not disappointed. “What are my terms?”
She tossed the end of chiffon over her shoulder, where it trailed behind her like the train of a wedding dress as she walked downstage again. She came to the end of the catwalk and met the fierce blue eyes of a tall blond man standing near the double doors. In a room full of men who wanted her without reservation, the biting intensity of his look gave her pause, but she rallied and held his gaze, a definite challenge in her own. “Terms? Well, I’m willing to sell myself tonight to the highest bidder, to act as his wife in word—”
she paused delicately “—and in deed—” there was another roar “—for the next six months, from this night, December 25th, until June 25th.”
“Start the bidding!” yelled one man who had yet to look above her chin.
“Yeah, stop talking and start bidding!”
“But,” she said, raising one white, well-tended hand without breaking away from the stare of the blue-eyed stranger, “I reserve the right to accept the next lowest bidder if I do not like the highest.” Her eyes lingered on the Greek, who looked at her out of cold, acquisitive eyes that held no lust for her personally, only for the money she could make him when he put her to work in one of his cribs.
“You’ll like me all right!” someone yelled.
“The man who buys me must provide a decent cabin and a good stock of food. I’ll cook for him, and I’ll clean for him, and I’ll—”she paused “—dance for him,” and again, she was forced to wait for the noise to subside.
“But understand this,” she said, smile vanishing, and there was something in her expression that caused all comment to pause. “The man who buys me, and lifts a hand to me . . . ”
“I’d like to see him try!”
“We’d fix him for you, Darling, never you worry!”
She waited, and then repeated, “The man who buys me, and lifts a hand to me, will have attended his last auction on this earth. Am I understood?”
She looked at the Greek, whose calculating expression didn’t change. She waited long enough for her words to sink in, and smiled again to take the sting out of them. “You’ll want to know,” she said, dropping her voice, “I’m not exactly an iceberg.” She turned, contriving so that the top fold of chiffon covering her breasts slipped down to be caught and held, barely, by her nipples.
No one looking at her doubted that she was telling anything but the absolute truth.
Into the dead silence that had fallen, she said softly, “So here I am, boys. Ready and willing.” She smiled, making a slow, graceful pirouette, caressing the faces in the crowd with a warm, welcoming gaze. “What are you waiting for?”
Big Ben had a hard time getting them quieted down after that. The bidding opened at one thousand. It was at five thousand thirty seconds later, offered by a squat, dark man with a matted bush of greasy hair and a mouthful of rotted teeth. She repressed a shudder and paraded down the catwalk again. “Now, boys,” she said, laughing, “that last bid was only five thousand. Aren’t you going any higher than that?” She paused at the edge of the catwalk and put up a hand to the thick auburn hair tucked into a graceful swirl. When the hand came down, it traced an invisible line from throat to breast to waist, to settle again on her hip.
“Sure, girlie,” called out an Irishman with a handlebar mustache and a white, wide-brimmed hat, “I was only waiting for the pikers to drop out. Ten thousand, and that’s only two days’ cleanup on my claim!”
“Twelve!” the squat man growled.
“Thirteen!” yelled a man in spectacles and bib overalls with a watch chain made from gold nuggets hanging from the front pocket.
“Fifteen,” the Greek said, his voice as flat as his eyes. There was neither lust nor longing in his tone, only a look that calculated how much she could earn for him when he turned her out. She repressed a shiver, and reminded herself that she had right of first refusal.
“Sixteen,” the banker snapped. She met his eyes, startled. He shrugged. She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Sixteen,” he repeated, looking faintly irritated at the sound of the word forced out of his own mouth.
“Seventeen,” a new voice boomed, and she looked up to lock eyes again with the tall blond man at the door. “Seventeen thousand dollars,” he said again. His voice was deep with no trace of an accent. Second-generation Swede, perhaps? He was strong-featured rather than handsome. His face was impassive, but she sensed that he was angry. She didn ‘t know why, but it made her chin come up.
“Seventeen-five!” the squat man snapped. His eyes were little and cruel and calculating.
“Eighteen,” the tall man said imperturbably.
The squat man swore in a foreign tongue—Italian?—and said in a rising voice, “Nineteen!”
“Twenty,” the Greek said.
Everyone else seemed to have dropped out and were now swiveling their heads among the three bidders. There would be a fight before the evening was over, and they all knew it. Lust and blood lust, thwart one and the other stepped in.
She wasn’t going home with the squat man, but she had a good idea of what six months of her exclusive attention was worth, and it was more than twenty thousand dollars. “The last bid stands at twenty thousand, boys,” she called out into the silence, and when they turned to look at her, she shook her head once. The single pin, artfully placed, loosened itself, and her hair tumbled down in a thick, gleaming fall to her waist. “I know you can do better than that.”
One auburn strand fell forward to curl around her breast. The crowd watched it, mesmerized. Someone gave a little moan. Someone else swore not quite beneath his breath.
“Twenty-five,” the man at the door said.
The room fell silent. He drained his mug and said into it, “Oh hell, what’s the use of wasting time.” He looked up to run a possessive look over the Dawson Darling and said, “Thirty thousand dollars.” He smiled, showing strong white teeth. He didn’t seem angry anymore.
She couldn’t help herself. She had always had a weakness for good teeth. She smiled back.
The Greek said nothing. The banker looked as if he were performing a complicated mental calculation. The squat man saw her smile and screamed, “You crooked, dirty whore!”
He struggled to reach her and was thwarted by the crowd, as protective of her now as they had been avaricious before. With a sudden change of direction, he rushed the man at the door, and this time the crowd parted eagerly before him so that his opponent was grabbed up in a crushing grip immediately. The tall blond man struggled and got one arm free to fend off the hands reaching for his throat.
“I break him! I smash him!” the squat man shouted. His arms quivered, muscles bulging. He lifted the tall man so that his feet dangled a foot above the floor. The tall man went limp. Everyone watching expected to hear the snap of the tall man’s spine.
Instead, when the tall man went limp, the squat man’s grip slipped, and the tall man smashed him instead, one large-knuckled fist to the squat man’s jaw with a force that laid the squat man flat on his back on the floor, out cold. The tall man almost went down with him, then caught his balance and remained on his feet.
There was a roar of approval and a surge toward the tall man, who held up one hand, and such was his presence that they halted. “My name’s Sam Halvorsen,” he said, looking across the room to where she stood on the catwalk, skin gleaming through white chiffon and auburn curls. “You going to exercise your right to the next lowest bidder, ma’am?”
She could barely speak around the lump in her throat. “No, Sam,” she managed to say. “I am not.”
The crowd, silent again, parted before him as he walked to the edge of the stage. She didn’t have to look down that far and realized he was even taller than she had thought. He held up one hand, and she placed hers into it, only to give a startled shriek when he yanked on it, jerking her off balance. She fell forward, and he caught her neatly in his arms.
He grinned at her. “We’ve only got until June 24th,” he said. “Time’s a-wasting.”
And, carrying her easily, he shouldered his way out of the bar.
1
I’M WATCHING YOU.
That’s all?” Jim Chopin said.
Darlene Shelikof handed over a manila file folder, and Jim leafed through half a dozen similar missives, all on eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch sheets of plain white paper folded in thirds.
He held one up to the light and read the watermark out loud. “Esleeck Emco Bond, twenty-five percent cotton content.” He lowered his arm. “Available by the ream from Costco at six-
seventy-nine a pop, the last time I looked.”
“Can’t you tell something from the writing?”
He shuffled through the sheets again. “Looks like he—or she—used a black Marksalot.”
I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.
“The big block printing is an obvious attempt to disguise the handwriting.”
ABORTION IS MUDRER.
“I take it Anne’s pro-choice?”
“She started the family-planning clinic in Ahtna.”
“That does tend to make the nuts fall from the tree.” He held the letter closer. “Probably printed with the left hand, or whatever hand is not their hand of choice in writing poison-pen letters. Also, he can’t spell.”
YOUR HUSBANDS CUTE.
Jim’s eyebrows went up. “Is he?”
Darlene smiled. “Not as cute as you are, Jim.”
His smile was swift and predatory in return. “Why, Darlene, I didn’t know you cared.” Even to himself the words sounded formulaic, and tired as well, and he looked back down at the file. Well, hell, he was tired. It had been a long week, what with a rape in Slana, a death by arson in Copper Center, and a suicide by cop in Valdez that he would have missed if he hadn’t had to overfly Cordova due to weather and overnight on the Valdez chief of police’s couch. He focused on the papers in his hand.
YOUR DAUGHTER WEARS HER SKIRTS TOO
The writer had written in letters so large he or she had run out of room before finishing his or her thought, and had had to add “SHORT” in smaller letters in the lower right-hand corner of the paper.
STAY HOME AND TAKE CARE OF YOUR KIDS.
“Ah, a traditionalist,” Jim said.
The seventh letter was more direct, RUN FOR SENATOR AND ILL KILL YOU.
He held it up so she could read it. “This the one that made you bring them all in?”
She nodded. “They’ve been coming in one at a time ever since she announced. Then last week, we got two.”
Singing of the Dead Page 1
