“If you have proof, why are you sitting on it?” Alma says. “You don’t need me or a railroad trust or anyone else to ruin Wheeler for you.”
“I don’t have proof.” Beckett shakes his head. “I let pass an old sloop he used, then his new cutter. And steamer cargoes, when instructed. But I never saw anything. I never inspected his boats and cargoes, or their duty-paid stamps, too closely. That was the whole point. And I can’t go to the law outright—I took my cut and let that tar into the country untaxed. I’d be in prison the minute I opened my mouth.”
A splash in the surf jerks at Alma’s attention. She wheels around, pistol raised. Empty beach. Curls of sand corkscrewing in the wind. Out in the water a bird flares gray wings. At her feet Beckett breathes fast and ragged. She scans the wrack-scattered shore again before turning back to him.
“I need something solid on Wheeler,” she says, adjusting her finger on the pistol’s trigger. “Not the allegation of an anonymous ex-collector that he moved a lot of opium.”
“That’s all I know,” Beckett says. “Isn’t it enough? I just used the word smuggler in my note to the police, and they moved on his boatbuilder quick enough.”
“You gave Wheeler’s name to the police?”
“No.” He shrinks away from her, his staring eyes swollen with tears. “No, I only said they might find something interesting at Peterson’s.”
“Who?”
“Bill Peterson. He owns the yard on Tyler Street Wharf. He builds Wheeler’s boats—builds them special, is the word.”
Bill Peterson. The big man in the office hallway with varnish on his knuckles. No wonder he was so skittish—he’d just been visited by the cops. Alma hopes he knows how to keep his mouth shut. Beckett sure as hell doesn’t. The man is talking himself into an early grave.
“Is there something interesting at Peterson’s?” Alma says.
Beckett wipes his nose on his sleeve. Curls into himself, gangly arms folding around gangly legs. Shivering. He is closing off, his gaunt face twitching, not meeting Alma’s eyes. Maybe he’s finally realized she has no cash for him tonight. Or realized, too, that Wheeler can’t pay him if Wheeler’s in jail.
“I was just trying to spook him,” Beckett says. “I want the money I’m owed.”
“Give me more names,” Alma says.
“I only ever communicated with Wheeler.”
“What about Dom Kopp,” she says. “You two have been spending time together at the gambling tables.”
Beckett’s shaking intensifies into jerky heaves. He leans forward. A gush of vomit splashes into the sand. Alma grits her teeth, her own stomach set to churning by the stench of bile.
“Kopp,” she says, nudging the man’s shinbone with her boot.
“I helped him bring in building materials,” Beckett says, coughing. “Railroad ties, pig iron. I fixed it so he didn’t have to pay duties. Now I’m in hard times, and I hoped he’d help me out, too.”
“Did he bring in tar?”
“No.” Beckett drags up his shirtfront, smears it over the wetness on his chin.
“Who else,” Alma says.
“I helped a lot of men out—”
“Who else connected to Wheeler’s business.”
“That’s it.”
Alma raises her pistol, sneering. Beckett puts his hands up.
“It’s true!” he says. “God damn it! There are his two henchmen, McManus and Benson, but everyone knows they work for him. Other than that I don’t know, I swear.”
“You’re lying.”
Alma holsters her pistol and pulls out her knife. Beckett starts to scramble off the driftwood. She twists a fist into his puke-dampened shirt. Shoves him back down, ignoring the ache in her shoulder and his whimper of pain.
“If Wheeler finds out I talked to you, he’ll kill me,” Beckett says, sobbing into his knotted fingers. “He’ll kill me and my girl.”
“He’s not going to find out.” Alma holds her knife level with his eyes. They are huge and bloodshot in the slice of steel. “Forget about him. You’re talking to me.”
7
JANUARY 14, 1887
The cipher is growing familiar after several dispatches. It has two simple pieces, which is a tacit insult: evidently Pinkerton does not want to task her with something complex, like the Vigenère. Alma flips through the codebook, a worn, green-jacketed copy of Verne’s Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon, until she finds the word smuggler. Page 112, line 36, word 10. Her mind scrolls through the alphabet as she applies the Caesar Six, then fits the letters to words in her little note about a friend’s birthday.
Honeyed morning light falls over her hand as she writes, Quite by coincidence, Lottie purchased—The ink shines on the page as it dries. Someone is brawling upstairs: the distinct sound of a chair smashing. Never a quiet moment in this boardinghouse. But all is calm in Alma’s room. Almost peaceful. She works without pause, running through the cipher in her head with each new word. A dull ache throbs over her rib cage. She puts a palm to her body, warming the bruised flesh, feeling the mewls of her empty stomach.
We devoured a boat-sized gingerbread—She laughs quietly at the line. It is rare to be fanciful. Rare, and a pleasure. The letter is loosely based off a real party. The Women’s Bureau agents crowded into Hannah’s apartment in the worst freeze of winter, huddling around the iron stove to share a bottle of applejack and admire Alma’s new pearl-handled bowie knife.
Her missive to the Pinkerton’s agents is nearly finished. A final word: 17, 20, 3, something starting with k …
A knock. Her pen skips across the neatly written page. Cursing, she picks up her pistol and pinches back the hammer. She points it at the door from her chair.
“What?” Her voice is roughened into Camp’s. She is still wearing his clothes after her midnight visit to Beckett.
“He wants to see you.”
“Who’s he?” she says.
“God damn it, Camp.” The voice is closer to the door’s wood, pitched low. “He wants to see you.”
Alma scrambles out of the chair. Scoops her papers under the blanket while kicking a petticoat under the cot. Wheeler has not contacted her at the boardinghouse before. She hasn’t given him the address.
She unbolts the top latch, then the second one, her gun level with her eyes as she peers into the hallway. Conaway waits outside. He flinches when he sees the barrel.
“You’re to report to his offices,” he says. “Now.”
“Shit.” Alma stuffs the pistol into her belt. It’s not yet eight o’clock. After being up with Beckett all night she should not be awake. She raises her hands, using the motion to check her skin for ink marks before feigning to rub sleep out of her eyes.
“What’s the rush?” she says, though she doubts Conaway knows anything beyond his instructions.
The big man shrugs. Behind him, in the hall, there is an indistinct mumble, a long splatter. Some rum-blind drunk is pissing on the floorboards.
“I’m on my way,” she says.
Conaway stands there heavily, his nose wrinkling as outhouse stink drifts along the corridor.
“Unless you’re meant to drag me with you, get out of here,” she says. “The boss wouldn’t want us seen together if we don’t have to be.”
“Right.”
He does not seem convinced, but Alma shuts the door in his face. Double bolts it. The room feels too hot. She wipes sweat off her palms before pulling back the blanket. Her letter to Pinkerton is ruined, slashed with a dark spray of ink. She will have to copy it fair again later.
Wheeler’s summons troubles her. His knowledge of her boardinghouse troubles her still more. He must have had her shadowed, something she never detected though she was looking out for such surveillance. And then ordering Conaway, the bumbling lout, to come fetch her. With this Wheeler is sending a message: all his men are not so inept. The caged feeling she had on the beach rises again—that Wheeler has some larger game, and she is being wedged into a corner. She twi
nes her hands together. Cracks her knuckles one by one. What if he is turning on Delphine? What if Alma comes to the crisis point and gives Delphine’s name, and it does nothing?
Stop it.
Alma unknots her hands. Flexes them steady. She folds up her papers. Presses them into the false bottom of one of her lady’s shoes, then replaces the shoe in her suitcase, which she kicks under the cot. As she crouches over the chamber pot, bruised knee aching, she runs a hand along the binding cloth pinned over her breasts. It is tight enough.
Outside, her breath prickles with frost in her mouth, on her teeth, before drifting into air still blushed with sunrise. Wheeler’s offices are three blocks away. She strides through the shadows of new waterfront buildings, all constructed in the modern style Port Townsend favors: high gables, square windows, painted scrollwork in ivory and yellow and robin’s-egg blue. Her nerves rattling. Her pistol banging against sore ribs. Each time she turns a corner she slaps the wall beside her, the fresh bricks dripping red runoff into the street and leaving scratches on her palms.
Conaway is smoking on the back steps when she arrives.
“He’s busy,” Conaway says, opening the door. “Wait until he calls you.”
“You told me to hurry.”
“Now I’m telling you to wait,” he says.
The familiar blue carpet. The hall’s dogleg turn. At Wheeler’s cherry-varnished door she leans against the wall. There are muted sounds inside, but no clear voices. A thump. Maybe someone else is getting a beating. For such a discreet operator, Wheeler sure is bringing in lots of bodies.
Her heel taps out a jagged rhythm on the carpet. She cleans her nails with the snubbed tip of her knife, blade gleaming against her thumb. She is working at a speck of dirt when a laugh comes clear from the office. A woman’s laugh.
Alma slips the knife into her vest. She stills her foot, tilts her head toward the jamb.
Conaway clumps down the hall to peer around the corner.
“Get away from the door,” he says, but his bite is blunted and he seems to know it.
She flicks her cap brim at him, insolent. The knob jiggles. She steps back, waiting for the door to open, for the woman to appear. It can’t be Delphine. Unless there’s some other game afoot for which Alma doesn’t know the rules. This puts a sick twinge in her belly. She keeps her face empty, her hands in her pockets. Just a scruffy man lounging against the pale wallpaper. Ready for most anything.
A click. The door swings back to reveal a woman in a yellow muslin dress, cream skinned, gold haired, ample bodied. She holds a green velvet cloak. Her breasts overfill the gathered front of her gown. Alma’s mouth opens.
“Don’t be tiresome,” the woman says over her shoulder. “That was never set down in writing.”
“We’ll discuss it later.”
Alma can’t see Wheeler, but from the sound of his voice he’s at the back of the office, near the liquor board. She wouldn’t be looking at him anyway. Her lips hitch into a crooked grin. She tilts her hips out.
“Ma’am,” she says, wanting the woman’s attention.
The woman glances at her, and the pout she was directing at Wheeler slides off her face, replaced with a coy smile. Her teeth are pale against carmined lips.
“And who are you?” she says.
“The name’s Camp.” Alma takes off her cap, presses it to her chest. “I’m mighty pleased to meet you.”
“Mr. Camp, enchantée.” She holds out one gloved hand. A painted fan dangles from her wrist. The air around her smells of honeysuckle and sex. Alma bends over her warm fingers, glad for the chance to hide her eyes. Is this Wheeler’s wife? It seems unlikely when he took Alma out to so many dinners, made no secret of her on his arm. Alma kisses the offered glove, inhales its unmistakable scents, and is jealous, lust-shot, still buried in the shadow valley of the woman’s bosom.
Footsteps. A low exhalation.
“Get into the office,” Wheeler says from the doorway.
“Nathaniel Wheeler.” The woman pulls her hand from Alma’s and sets it on her hip. “I’m sure you are not speaking to me in that tone.”
“No,” he says. His collar is open. He is not wearing a jacket or tie. The hair at his temples curls out of its pomaded sweep. “You’re on your way. Camp.”
He crooks a finger at Alma, but she can’t catch his eyes before he walks back into the depths of the room.
“I think I’m in trouble,” she tells the woman, grinning, voice husky.
“Have you done something terrible?” The woman’s fan quivers under her chin and her eyes flutter wide. Her lashes are darkened with charcoal. Thin rings of hazel surround huge pupils; she doesn’t seem disoriented, and if it’s not opium or drink, it might be belladonna. This is not a wife’s trick. This is not a wife’s dress. Wheeler might pay the woman for her time.
Alma has money, too.
“I’m a bad man,” she says, taking a step closer.
“So are all his associates.” The woman snaps her fan closed, traces its gilded side along her chin. “You’ll have to show me why you’re special.”
Another step. Her nose full of sweet musk. Alma is the shorter of the two. She brings one arm up to brace herself against the wall, the warm round of the woman’s bare shoulder brushing the underside of her sleeve. The tempting stretch of her neck inches from Alma’s mouth.
“How about I show you a good time like you’ve never seen.” She tilts her face up so her vision is filled with golden eyes, with golden curls.
“God damn it.”
Wheeler is at the door again. Alma shifts her gaze to him. He is rigid, glaring, one hand clenched around the jamb. She hopes he’s been standing there for a little while. Watching her lean into his company.
“I look forward to seeing much more of you, Mr. Camp.” The woman slips out from under Alma’s arm and draws on her green cloak, the velvet releasing another waft of honeysuckle blossoms. To Wheeler, she says, “I’ll consider a price. It won’t be cheap.”
Inside the office Wheeler paces behind his desk, hands clasped at his back, dark brows lowered. The outline of the corner door is etched in sunlight. When he walks before it, the edges of his cotton shirt catch the glow. His jacket is crumpled on the floor by the liquor board. The room smells of the woman, of sweat and other drippings.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he says after Alma closes the door.
“Just being friendly.”
“You don’t touch her,” he says. “You don’t get near her again.”
“What’s her name?” Alma tucks her cap into her pocket, flicks her tongue over her lower lip. “I could just eat her up.”
Wheeler slams a fist onto his desk. The sound snaps through her, sets her skin tingling. She waits for him to shout, to unravel a notch, but instead he goes quiet. Goes locked down and hard with that maddening restraint of his. He flattens his hand against the wood, the gold ring on his middle finger clicking on impact.
“You didn’t follow instructions,” he says. “Last night.”
Alma shifts her weight from one foot to another, thrown.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she says.
“I told you that if you went too far with Beckett, you were supposed to toss him in the bay, not leave him in bed.”
“I didn’t rough him up that bad,” Alma says, thinking of the ex-collector, his greasy tears on the moonlit beach.
“‘That bad’? That bloody bad?” Wheeler gives a wheeze of a laugh, shaking his head. “You leave the man with his tongue cut out and his head nearly severed off his neck, and then you stand here and tell me you didn’t rough him up that bad? Jesus Christ.”
“Now wait a god damn minute.” Alma is starting to breathe faster despite bearing down hard on her lungs. “I didn’t do that.”
“I understand you want to move up in my organization.” Wheeler comes to stand before her. There are nail marks on his neck, at his open collar. A smear of carmine on his left earlobe. “But you won’t get
far acting like a butcher.”
“I didn’t kill Beckett,” Alma says.
“Oh, but you did.”
For an instant, Wheeler’s look of cold disapproval melts into amusement. Then, with the grim scowl back on his face, he collects his jacket from the floor. He shakes it out. Shrugs into it. Knots on his necktie. When he is buttoned up and presentable, his sweat-crimped hair smoothed down, he opens the door at the back of the room and waves Alma through.
She emerges, blinking, into the Clyde Imports office. It is a narrow space, half the size of Wheeler’s private quarters, crowded with filing cabinets and framed price lists. At the front is a large glazed window. A woman stands before it. Alma squints at her, belatedly realizing a child is at her side.
“That’s him,” the woman says.
Alma’s vision evens out. Her shoulders stiffen. Now she understands Wheeler’s trap.
It is the woman from Beckett’s boardinghouse. She wears the same brown dress. The same ghastly child clings to her hand.
“He’s the one that came in late last night, skulking around, sir,” the woman says.
Alma hears Wheeler come up behind her and does not struggle when he grabs her collar. He is good. He has got her good.
“He left with Mr. Beckett in the wee hours, and I did not see them return.” The woman points at Alma, her voice rising. “This morning I went to check on a smell that poor man’s neighbor was complaining of, and the Lord save us! I’ve never seen such a horror!”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Wheeler says. “I may call on you again, if the marshal requests it.”
“Good day, Mr. Wheeler.”
The woman sweeps the hem of her dress along the floor in a curtsy before dragging the child to the door. A burst of cart clatter and chattering fills the office. Then silence. Wheeler’s knuckles are hard against the back of Alma’s neck.
“So you see, it was you that killed Beckett—there are witnesses,” he says.
He guides her back toward his office. Taps her side with his free hand, where her pistol hangs heavy at her ribs.
The Best Bad Things Page 7
