The Best Bad Things

by Katrina Carrasco

  “Ah Tong is a business partner,” Wheeler says, as they turn a corner and walk toward a building hung with red signs. On the stoop men crouch out of the rain, smoking and chatting. “So no rough talk. Meaning, if you have any opinions about Chinamen, keep them to yourself.”

  Closer to the building, its front door hung with bright banners runneled with water. She can’t read the calligraphy. But the men on the steps are speaking Taishanese, the tongue of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Alma bends her ear to their voices, testing herself. Without context, she only catches a few words—Gee’s vegetable garden, newspaper—and wishes she’d found more time for afternoons with Zhu Kang, who taught her most of what she knows of the language. She would trade cans of tar for liquor, their little transactions done under the table, and he would grow flushed in the forehead and tease her about her pronunciation until their shared bottle was empty.

  The wooden steps creak under Wheeler’s boots. The gathered men go quiet, stand up, disperse into the street. Inside it’s warm, the walls stocked with imported goods. Incense, chilies, bitter tea—that first breath takes Alma back to the city, its lanes and shortcuts. A young man sits at a wooden counter in the back. Wheeler crosses the room, ducking under low beams hung with samples of silk, bundles of dried garlic. Alma follows, taking time to inspect the shelves: sheaves of paper, bags of rice, a generous display of opium cans arranged by price. Some small-time names she doesn’t recognize. Stacked atop them, Wah Hing and King Tye, brands from the organization’s partner refineries. Then a sparing arrangement of Fook Lung, a premium line out of Hong Kong.

  “I’m here to see Ah Tong,” Wheeler says, taking off his hat.

  “Good day, Mr. Wheeler.” The young man’s accent thickens the words. He is handsome, his skin pale against a black cotton smock as he leans into a bow. “I will tell him you have arrived.”

  He disappears behind a patterned curtain. A handful of small bronze weights are heaped on the counter beside a set of scales. Alma swirls them together with the tips of her fingers. Clicks and tings, smooth coolness. Wheeler’s promotion nags at her. She wants to know what he’s getting. Delphine’s bed? Or a placement that will benefit the ring? Maybe a new outpost in Tacoma, where he said they’re paying through the nose for some rich middleman to cart tar from the steamboat docks to the railroad depot. Tacoma is a weak spot, as Alma sees it: too much product moving through, not enough trusted people on the ground to move it.

  “Where’s this promotion taking you?” She pinches a weight, taps it against the counter.

  “Up.”

  She huffs out a laugh, raises an eyebrow.

  “No shit,” she says.

  Wheeler folds his arms across his chest. The lifted set of his chin, in profile, signals satisfaction. He’s got her curious and he knows it.

  “How about Edmonds?” she says, to take him down a notch. It can be a long and tricky business, getting a new collector in line—testing if he’ll take bribes, or if he’ll only be persuaded by blackmail. “Any progress there?”

  “Yes, actually.” He turns to her, his blue eyes dark in the ruddy lamplight. “Despite the inconvenience of your arrival, I remain good at my job.”

  The young man reappears, beckons them to follow. Alma steps through the curtain last, its textured cotton catching at her shoulders. At the end of the hall is a cramped room hot with brazier char. A writing desk in one corner. Three chairs arranged around an oval table. An elderly man standing beside it, his body soft in the middle under a black silk blouse.

  “Thank you for your visit, Mr. Wheeler,” he says, bowing. His accent is faint, more of a carefulness in pronunciation than an inflection on the words themselves. “Please, sit.”

  “This is Camp,” Wheeler says, a flick of his hand indicating Alma while also instructing her, too, to take a seat. “He’s part of the business now.”

  “Mr. Camp.”

  “Jeen gawl hain gain awl ney,” Alma says.

  Wheeler stiffens beside her. Ah blinks, his mouth twitching toward a smile.

  “Ney gong hoy san wa?” he says.

  “Nit awr. Hok gin. M’haul yee thu, ngoy yiaw maan maan gong.”

  “Speak English, god damn it,” Wheeler says.

  He is glowering at Alma. She lifts an eyebrow, a flicker of insolence only he is meant to see, while across the table Ah apologizes. Movement behind them, hot air shifting, and the young man comes into the room carrying a tray. He places teacups on the table; a glazed teapot; a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers; a plate of rice cakes, thick and glistening. Pours tea for Wheeler, then Alma, then Ah.

  “I have a shipment coming over,” Wheeler says.

  The young man tilts up the bottle of whiskey. At Wheeler’s nod, he pours two glasses and sets them before Alma and Wheeler, with the bottle standing between. Then he tucks the tray under his arm and leaves.

  “In two days’ time,” Wheeler says, once the three of them are alone. “The landing will be at Cape George, at night, between eleven and one o’clock.”

  Alma’s understanding of this meeting shifts. Ah is not set to handle a shipment of opium. He is the man who takes charge of Chinese brought over by the night boat from Victoria. This is one of the organization’s side businesses, a profitable scheme given the number of men who want to enter the country but are barred by the Exclusion Act. McManus crews a special cutter—courtesy of Peterson’s boatyard—that can hold fifty crates of tar or fifteen close-packed bodies. She lifts her teacup, glazed clay searing the pads of her fingers, hot water searing her lip. Bitter, pungent. An echo of the city that’s not entirely pleasant.

  “I will make arrangements,” Ah says.

  “Don’t send them through Tacoma.” Wheeler sips his whiskey, his steaming tea untouched. “With the troubles there they’ve got a close watch on the waterfront.”

  “Seattle has been better.”

  “Agreed.”

  Wheeler stands, sets his hat on the table as he finishes his whiskey. Alma tosses hers back in a single gulp.

  “If Camp comes without me, in future, you’re to follow his instructions as you would mine,” Wheeler says. “He’ll bring the papers tomorrow.”

  Ah bows to him, then to Alma. She and Wheeler leave the small room. The air of the hall is distinctly cooler. No sign of the young man at the counter. In the street the rain is turning to sleet. Thick drops sluice off Alma’s cap brim as she and Wheeler walk south. Away from the bay. Past a sprawling tack store and stable, where the air is thick with ice, with water, smells of wet leather and hay.

  “What did you say to that man?” Wheeler’s voice is just audible over the rush of rain.

  “He asked how well I speak Chinese,” Alma says. “And I told him, well enough.”

  “That’s a useful party trick.”

  Alma looks at him sidelong, amused.

  “If you’re trying to give me a compliment, I’d say you made it about halfway.”

  “Then I was far too kind,” he says, the thinnest thread of humor in his voice.

  He stops under the shelter of an awning, deserted but for a few trays of wilted greens, rain spattered on their leaves, their root smell rising into the air. From his coat pocket he withdraws a slim silver case. This is the first time she’s seen him with cigarettes. She digs out her box of matches, strikes one, holds it up for him to lean in to. Her hands are perfect, completely transformed into a workingman’s. Blunt nails rimmed with dirt. Bruised knuckles, raw scrapes. Over the flare of the tobacco Wheeler’s eyes are close to hers, red-lit, watchful. She still makes him nervous. But this is as close as he’s allowed her all morning.

  “What are these papers I’m delivering?” She flicks the match into the mud.

  “Travel certificates, for the Chinamen.”

  “Are they made by our own talented Miss Roberts?”

  “I take care of it,” Wheeler says, sharp.

  “All right.”

  Alma holds out her hand, and to her surprise he passes her the cig
arette instead of ignoring her. She takes a deep drag, gives it back. Lets her attention drift over the street. Gray blur of sleet, men hunched in drab coats, shivering horses. No one out except those who must be, the laborers and hungry boys and a few tribeswomen huddled on a covered cart, staring into the rain.

  “Benson’s at the Quincy warehouse,” Wheeler says, tossing away the cigarette as he leaves the shelter of the awning. “He’ll show you how things work there.”

  “Our excursion is already over?”

  At the end of the block is the Upper Town staircase, which Alma climbed in her shabby disguise to see Delphine. Wheeler walks toward it, and the thought of him with Delphine skitters past again: Wheeler striding toward the front door like a proper guest, his overcoat dripping onto the pink camellias, onto the red bricks; taking off his hat at the steps; taking off his jacket inside; taking off his tie, his obsidian cuff links, in Delphine’s private parlor. Her perfume in his nose.

  “I’m afraid you can’t come to my next appointment,” he says, one hand on the railing. “It’s for gentlemen only.”

  “Sounds boring.”

  “A bit. The food makes up for it.”

  The moment takes an unfamiliar shape: the rain a veil between them, Wheeler almost smiling, their conversation almost casual. Almost friendly. Alma touches her cap, glimpsing what things could be like, if she stopped jabbing and he stopped coiling up against her. Not as much sport that way. But maybe a better understanding.

  “Come in tomorrow morning,” he says.

  She waits for him to climb the first flight of steps, then ambles off in the direction of Quincy Wharf, which takes her past the office. Driscoll is posted at the side door. He is red at the cheeks and ears, his nose streaming. He stamps his feet.

  “Christ, it’s cold,” he says, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  “Want me to bring you some coffee?”

  “Would you?”

  “Give me five dollars,” Alma says, and laughs as he kicks a spray of icy water toward her.

  “Go on, Camp.”

  Driscoll is back in good graces after his extraction of Sloan’s tar. During Alma and McManus’s postdelivery report to Wheeler, McManus made special note of the younger man’s performance: ducking out the back, neatly replacing the trunk he’d opened. And Driscoll had spoken warmly of McManus while the crew waited for the night boat. They seem too different to be friends—one sealed off and seething, one quick to smile, restless, ready with jokes—but something is tying them together. Alma likes Driscoll just fine. She’ll like him even better if it makes McManus jealous.

  “I’m supposed to give something to Nell Roberts,” she tells Driscoll. “Who is she and where do I find her?”

  Benson can wait. The icy wharf, the Quincy warehouse’s dim rows of liquor crates, sound like a chore. Alma has better things to be doing on this cold and free afternoon. Maybe Nell has news about Delphine. Or maybe she’s just in the mood for company.

  “You lucky bastard.”

  “Is she pretty?” Alma says, wanting to hear about Nell from the kid, wanting to see her through someone else’s vision.

  “Like a Christmas pudding.” His brown eyes narrow, go hungry. “All sweet and soft.”

  “I’ll give her your regards,” Alma says, winking.

  “She doesn’t know me.” Driscoll shakes his head. “I try to catch a word when she stops by the office. She works at The Captain’s sometimes, but I’ve never gotten a dance with her. And she keeps a seamstress shop.”

  “Where’s that?” Alma says. “The boss told me to be quick about it.”

  “At Tyler and Washington. It has a blue door.”

  “Good man.”

  She leaves him sleet-laced and shivering. Winds her way back toward Tyler Street, stopping at a flower store, stopping again to take off her cap and smooth down her hair in a druggist’s window. ELIXIRS is written across the glass in gold script, and against the lettering her reflection is clearer. Straight dark hair falling over her forehead. Her left eye and jawline still faintly bruised. The clean bandage around her neck just showing over the high collar of her shirt. She looks like a tooth-and-nail brawler. She looks good.

  A few more blocks and she’s at the corner Joe led her to, two days before. At the front of the corner building is a blue door, with a little brass-plated sign beside it reading SEAMSTRESS, TAILORING, NEEDLEWORK. Nell’s list of talents grows. And this is a clever cover for Delphine. She can come down to Lower Town as often as she likes if she’s visiting her dressmaker. It’s a classic setup. Hannah would have approved: she had been with Pinkerton’s agency since the war, when the Women’s Bureau got its start, and had met Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew, whose seamstress sewed secret correspondence from the North into the hems of Van Lew’s gowns.

  Alma keeps walking, following a hunch. Yes. Here is the alley where Joe stopped. The door with a tarnished handle that leads into a private home, where Delphine and Wheeler waited in a parlor. That was Nell’s parlor. This entrance lines up with the blue door, in a straight shot through the building, suggesting Nell’s home and business are connected.

  Back around to the front. Her knock shakes water droplets along the bright blue wood. Footsteps sound within. The door opens a sliver. Inside is warm dimness, laced with honeysuckle perfume. A shawl-draped shoulder. A tumbled lock of hair on the rise of a collarbone.

  “Miss Roberts.” Alma takes off her cap, holds up a clutch of roses.

  “Why, Mr. Camp.”

  Nell’s eyes are not painted. She has not used drops, and her pupils are tiny against the daylight, showing hazel irises intensely green at their centers.

  “Pardon the surprise,” Alma says. “But it’s urgent.”

  “Come in.”

  Nell is wearing a striped wash dress, not one of the stiff-bodiced gowns Alma has seen her in before. In the faded pink fabric Nell’s body is softer, its curves less defined. At the high waist of the dress, fabric clings close to skin.

  “I’m here on official business,” Alma says.

  The shop is tiny, barely eight by eight feet, with a beige chair by the door and a neat table topped with a sewing machine. The walls are papered in striped cream. A filigreed iron brazier glows in the corner opposite the chair.

  Nell brings the bouquet to her nose, smiling. Her hair is bound loosely at her nape. She traces her fingers over the flowers, pulling back the petals to reveal the sprig of dill concealed at their center.

  “Official business?” Nell says, one eyebrow lifting.

  The set of her mouth, her wry glance, tell Alma she has read the message in the flowers: orange roses for fascination, dill for lust. An arrangement that verges on insulting in its forwardness. But Nell does not drop the flowers or hand them back: she takes them to the sewing table and lays them beside the gleaming machine.

  “Papers for Ah Tong,” Alma says.

  “Oh. Those aren’t quite ready.”

  “I’m happy to wait. I have the afternoon off. And the evening. All night.”

  “You can bring me saucy flowers as much as you like, Jack, but that doesn’t mean they’ll get you anywhere.”

  Nell locks the front bolt. Three steps take her across the room, skirts swishing, to the inner door behind the sewing table.

  “I’ll be right back,” she says.

  Alma steps forward, as if to walk after her.

  “Sit down,” Nell says. “You’re in my home, and if you don’t mind me, you won’t be welcome anymore.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Alma sinks onto the beige-cushioned chair. In the opposite corner a glass-faced cabinet is stocked with spools of colored thread, a rainbow behind etched panes. Her reflection in the glass is shaped by pleasing angles: broad lines of her shoulders, strong slopes of her thighs. She considers the inner door. Nell’s living quarters, and a link to the alley where Joe first led her. Set up like Wheeler’s offices: a respectable front, and a back end to conceal more unusual traffic. Yet at the center of
this building is a bed, where Nell sleeps; a stove, where she warms her milk and puts tea on to boil.

  “I wasn’t expecting company.”

  Nell backs through the door, a wooden tray in her hands. She sets it on the edge of the sewing table: a little pot of beer, a few wedges of cheese, a green apple. Going out again, she returns with a sheaf of papers and a glowing lamp.

  “I’ve done five of the six.” She pulls a pair of spectacles from a drawer under the sewing machine. “I didn’t think they were needed until tomorrow.”

  “They’re not,” Alma says. “I just wanted to see you today.”

  Nell waves the eyeglasses at the tray of food, their wire rims flashing in the lamplight. A smile tugging at her mouth.

  “Eat, won’t you?”

  “I’m staying seated until you tell me otherwise.” Alma’s cap is on her knee, its rain-soaked twill dripping onto the carpet. “I’m not looking to break the rules.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe that.” Nell nudges the tray an inch toward Alma, watching as she stands and picks up the beer, the apple. “You’ll fit right in with the boys, all spit and steel. Like that McManus.”

  “Has the bastard given you trouble?”

  “None of them dare to.” Nell hooks on the spectacles, turns up the lamp wick. “They confine themselves to saying good evening and leering.”

  “Wheeler wasn’t too happy about me coming here.” Alma shines the apple on her sleeve, its skin squeaking over wet denim. As her teeth crunch into sweet flesh, she keeps her eyes on Nell. “He’s got a jealous streak.”

  “Jealous?” Nell looks up from her papers, her pen lifted off the page.

  “I don’t think he trusts me to behave myself,” Alma says, washing down the apple with a swig of beer.

  “Do you mean to say he’s watching out for my chastity?”