The Best Bad Things

by Katrina Carrasco

  “One hundred dollars.”

  “You’re telling me you bought Wah Hing for ten dollars a pound,” she says, almost laughing. He must be lying, after all—and not lying well, either, by claiming he got the stuff at such an obscene discount. “Show me the receipt.”

  He kneels behind the counter, rummages. As he stands, he hands Alma a neat bill of sale, marked January 4, 1887. Ten pounds of Wah Hing, at ten dollars a pound. Stamped by the auction house. She stares at the paper, the various official seals, the embossed stationery.

  “I was surprised by the price, myself,” Sing says. “I took a risk in buying it; other merchants thought it was counterfeit. But I stand by the legality of my purchase. I also have documentation of my trip to the Seattle auction, sir, which I will take to the marshal in my defense, if you provoke me further. I will not be accused of smuggling.”

  Damn it. Sloan hasn’t been here. Stranger still, the partner refinery only produces Wah Hing for Delphine, and Delphine doesn’t sell to Seattle. Not at auction, especially—too much publicity—and never at such cut-rate prices. Wah Hing goes to Portland at eighteen dollars a pound; to San Francisco at twenty-two.

  Sing’s product didn’t come from Sloan. And it was sold before the most recent theft. There’s only one other source: it could be part of the forty-five pounds lost en route to Tacoma in December the previous year. Or it’s fake.

  “My apologies,” Alma tells Sing, and counts out eleven dollars. “I spoke out of line. I’ll take that can.”

  At the window display she inspects the can’s paper label for signs of tampering. Behind her, conversations pick up again, too low and blurred to untangle. If the can has been doctored, it was flawlessly done, down to the die-cut stamps on its brass sides. She flips out her knife, slices along the seal. It smells like Wah Hing—sweet and pulpy, toasted-hazelnut richness. Looks all right, too: a solid dark lump. Pure Patna tar.

  The flash of metal against glass draws her gaze to her shadow figure upon the pane, square can held at her ribs. Past her reflection, the dimming clouds, a crowd of men on the Seamen’s Bethel stoop, builders carting lumber up from the sawmill to the opera house that’s under construction on the next block. Close behind them, a familiar gait. Shoulders up. Dragging limp. It’s McManus.

  He walks toward Sing Tai’s. Alma tucks her chin so her cap shadows her eyes, though the sunset glaring on the window should keep her masked enough. She slides the tar into her jacket pocket. Her exit from the store is timed to match when McManus is passing. He continues south, toward the Upper Town stairs, but as she watches from the corner of the building, he cuts into an alleyway that threads behind Sing Tai’s.

  Wheeler doesn’t sell here. There’s no reason for McManus to be paying a call.

  She walks to the mouth of the alleyway. Narrow, all dim, all still, after it swallowed him. In between the buildings, out of the wind, the air smells of lye and steam, the pitchy smoke of pinewood fires. At the end of the short passage an old woman is elbow deep in a wash bucket. Hair tied back in a calico cloth. Face spotted and deeply lined. She works silently, stares right through Alma as if she were a ghost, her eyes wet and white clouded.

  “M’on, aah paw,” Alma says as she passes, and the woman’s head tilts upward—not her eyes, but her ear.

  “M’on, lhain sang,” she says.

  Leaving the woman to her washing—her wrinkled skin bright pink under the water—Alma follows the bend in the alley, now listening closely under the snaps of hanging laundry, under the hiss of steam that billows through slatted windows set just above her head.

  “Not today. He needs help in the store.”

  It’s a woman’s voice, close by, quiet. Alma flattens herself against the wall and inches forward. This is a bad place to be sneaking. No corners to hide in, all the flapping sheets giving an illusion of space, of distance, but the alley is barely four feet across with no breaks in the walls. A few snowflakes drift through the narrow opening overhead. She edges into sight of a closed door. An escape route. Maybe.

  “Pretend you’re unwell. Anything.”

  Alma stiffens. McManus’s voice is so close it sounds like he’s whispering to her. She turns her head. Presses her cheek to the wall her shoulder blades are already pressed to, and peers through the thin gap between the next hanging sheet and the clapboards. Three feet away are McManus and a Chinese woman. She is young. Black hair in a glossy bun, bare throat pale against the gray silk of her jacket. Jade bracelets on her wrists.

  “We are too busy,” she says. “Sing will look for me.”

  McManus bends to press his mouth to her hands. Pushes aside her bracelets, her long sleeves, to kiss the blue-veined flesh of her inner forearms. So this is Mary. Not at all who Alma was expecting. And if she’s in the alley behind Sing Tai’s store, worried about a man called Sing looking for her, it’s likely she’s the shopkeep’s relative. Maybe his wife. Bold, McManus.

  “Tom. No.”

  “For God’s sake.” His voice is muffled against the swell of her breasts. “When? If not now, when?”

  “Take me to Seattle,” she says, her lips at his ear. Her bracelets clink as she drops her hand between their bodies to palm his groin. He groans, eyes closing, head tipping back onto the peeling wall.

  “If we stay here—”

  “Oh, God, Mary—”

  “If Sing finds out—”

  “I can’t take you there,” he says, arching into her touch. “Not now. Not when we’re—oh, Christ.”

  Each hitch in their breathing sounding clear. Steam from the windows falling over Alma in a hot pall that chills once it hits her skin. Her body quickening even as she sneers to see McManus laid so bare. Even as she stacks the pieces together into an unsteady whole: McManus is bedding Sing Tai’s wife; this links him to Sing’s store, which is buying tar out of Seattle; McManus’s crewmen usually do the ride-alongs to Tacoma on steamers that stop in Seattle; he’s talking to Mary about running off to Seattle; and someone is operating out of Seattle and selling the business’s custom-made tar on the cheap. None of this looks good for McManus.

  Mary has her hand in his trousers now. His chin still lifted. Clinking jade. She nuzzles along his reddened neck, its thick jugular pulse. The movement tilts her head toward Alma. Mary gasps, her bracelets quieting, staring at the ground at Alma’s feet. Shit. She’s seen Alma’s boots under the edge of the sheet.

  McManus is flinching away from the woman, turning to follow her gaze. Alma pushes away from the wall before he can see her face, but holds her ground. Squares her boots toward his shadow darkening the sheet. He thrusts back the cloth. Falters when he meets her eyes.

  “Word to the wise, honey,” she says to Mary, over his shoulder. “Find yourself a new ticket to Seattle, because I’m tearing this one up.”

  18

  JANUARY 19, 1887

  Another snowy morning, the streets gauzy with refracted light, building eaves festooned with crooked icicles. Alma pulls open the post office door. The air inside is warm, reeky with mildew, tallow, unwashed woolens. Two men wait ahead of her. A dingy grimness seeps from the plain planked walls, the green-shaded lamps with their deep coats of dust.

  She doesn’t make a habit of checking the post herself, not when any boy will do it for two pennies. But she wants to be quick about it. She wants to get to Wheeler’s offices.

  The door opens, a cold rush of wind on the back of her neck, then another. Three men crowd in behind her. She peers into the glazing at the counter, trying to make out faces in the reflection. Strangers. Not Sloan’s men. Not McManus, though he likely isn’t walking so well this morning.

  “Anything for J. Jones?” she asks when it’s her turn before the grille.

  While she waits, she takes out a cigarette, her matchbox, so she can lean against the counter and look back at the line without simply gawping around. Over the flare of the match are seven faces. Still no one she knows.

  “This came yesterday.” The clerk slides an envelope u
nder the grille. “Special Delivery.”

  The envelope crinkles as she shoves it into her vest. Her tongue ticks over her back teeth. There’s no need for Pinkerton to send mail Special Delivery. Unless something is changing, and changing fast.

  Out into the freezing street. The bright window display of the notions shop next door. A good place to stay unseen. In the back, at a tiered table of sweets, she rips open the envelope.

  Too much delay; Prime orders move. Kennedy and Grove en route, arrival Jan. 23.

  It is not signed. It is not coded. Alma reads it again. Counts off the days between now and then. She has to try twice before she can swallow, her throat is so tight. Prime is agency slang for the president of the United States. This assignment just hit the big time.

  “Hello, Jack.”

  She looks up from the paper, queasy with the sugar pall rising from caramels and cream candy and chocolate hearts. Nell stands beside the sweets. A basket is hooked onto her forearm. She wears a ribboned bonnet. Her pale green wrap and darker green dress set off her eyes.

  “Morning,” Alma says, still stupid, still holding the letter in full view. She doesn’t know Kennedy and Grove, but she’s heard of them. They’re new agents, no friends of hers. She needs men who will listen, who will wait in Tacoma or Seattle until she’s ready for them to come to town.

  Nell raises an eyebrow.

  “I got your flowers,” she says. “At least, I think they were yours.”

  “They were mine.”

  Nell sifts through a dish of caramels, her eyes on Alma’s, her gloved fingers ghosting over the twisted paper wrappers.

  “I wish I’d been there to accept them,” Nell says.

  “I’ve got to go.” Alma folds up the letter, stuffs it into her jacket.

  “Jack, I arranged that meeting—”

  Alma leaves the candy display, its sugar haze, and is halfway to the door before she stops, processes the words that just passed between them. Nell is talking about Delphine. The meeting with Delphine. Alma just saw her, but the Pinkerton’s agents’ letter changes everything—the timeline Alma was operating on has just been cut down from weeks to days, and Delphine needs to know it. Alma takes off her cap. Rakes hard fingers through her hair.

  “Sorry, honey,” she says, returning to the corner, where Nell is selecting chocolates one by one. “Just got some hard news. I forgot where I was for a minute.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Most like.” Alma stands next to Nell, her honeysuckle scent sharp and green in contrast to that of the confections. She is only choosing candies with a pink stripe. “You going for the peppermint?”

  “Rose,” Nell says.

  “I’ll help.”

  They pick through the display, bodies close. Nell’s fingers brushing over the back of Alma’s hand more than once. Alma standing wide legged, and Nell stepping in toward her but looking down, coy. They drop wrapped candies into the basket until there’s near on two pounds of chocolate piled up.

  “That’s some sweet tooth.”

  “A few of them are a gift.” Nell winks. “But only a few.”

  “When should I be there?” Alma says, as the thick fabric of Nell’s dress drags across her trousers at the knees. “For the meeting.”

  “Tomorrow. At three o’clock.” Nell’s hazel eyes glint through lowered lashes. She adjusts the wrap over her shoulders, a waft of perfume rising from the cloth. Leaves one arm outstretched into the candies, her inner elbow an inch away from Alma’s hip. “If you want to stay for supper after, I’ll make a cake.”

  “You’d do that for me?” Alma lays her hand on Nell’s forearm, the milled-silk sleeve catching at her roughened finger pads.

  “If you promise to be on your best behavior.”

  “I know how to be good,” Alma says. She takes a candy from the basket. Unwraps it. Nell tilts up her chin. Pink lips, pink tongue. Breath warm on Alma’s fingers, pulse warm in her throat, in her low belly.

  “Don’t be late,” Nell says, after swallowing the chocolate. She reaches out to run her fingers down Alma’s biceps. Alma stands up straighter, tensing her arm so her muscles go hard.

  “Oh, I won’t.”

  Nell walks to the counter, green skirts swishing, then out the door. Once she’s gone, Alma picks up a handful of chocolates. Swaggers to the counter to pay, though by the time she steps out into the wind, the thrill of Nell’s unexpected invitation, her unexpected interest, is wearing off. The candy she unwraps on the stoop is peppermint. She drops the wrapper into the mud, untwists another as she walks over the frozen street. The Pinkerton’s agents’ arrival is a problem. If she can’t hold them off, and they come to town asking for Lowry, Alma’s hasty decision to take him out could create the disaster Delphine fears. Though it’s no secret Pinkerton is handling this investigation for the federal government—which is the one losing tax revenue to the smugglers, after all—President Cleveland’s impatience means everyone will be sloppier, looking fast for answers. They’ll find the same men she did: Kopp and Sloan. And Wheeler. And now Sloan knows Wheeler’s moving the stuff. Sloan could bring down the ring. Jesus. Even thinking the words makes her grimace, licking chocolate off her teeth.

  The sweets are gone by the time she reaches her boardinghouse. Up the ruined stairs, past the tableau of sprawled bodies on the steps, into the third-story hall. She checks her room is as she left it. Lock, books, double tie on her suitcase. Clean. She lights a candle, edges the flame along the letter until the whole page has withered into gray wisps of ash that pulse through the air. Suitcase heavy as she kicks it back under the bed, weighted with all her lady’s things, silk and lace and dead hair. With her boot still pushed into the bag, she pauses, following the scent of an idea.

  At her writing desk she takes out a sheet of paper, the Verne novel. Codes a hasty message that will be short enough to telegraph. They’ll know it’s urgent when it comes over the wire instead of through the post. She needs them to agree to wait in Tacoma. Just for a few extra days.

  * * *

  “You’re in trouble,” Conaway tells her when she comes up the stairs, wiping snow off her chin.

  “Why?” She had to go to the post office again to make sure the telegraph got off correctly. But she hadn’t seen anyone around; none of Sloan’s men, none of Wheeler’s.

  “Driscoll heard you hadn’t put money on the fight,” he says. “So he borrowed five dollars from Mr. Wheeler and laid it on the Tacoma man, in your name.”

  Alma laughs, this is so far from a problem. She guesses McManus hasn’t shown his face yet. It felt good to pummel him. To leave him wheezing in that alley, his frightened lover holding him in the sparse snowfall. Payback for the sneers he’s been directing at her ever since they met. He has spit and fire, that’s sure, but he’s not a brawler; only one of his throws landed, on Alma’s lower ribs. She was faster, stronger. Her only regret is punching the side of his bad knee. That was stupid—the hard knob of bone left her knuckles sore.

  “Little bastard,” she says. “But, hell, you and I might be raking in winnings while the others wail.”

  “That’s true. They’ve all got their money on Mac, even Fulton.” Conaway blinks away snow, chafes his reddened hands. “Well, not Benson. He’s not keen on the pugs. Says he’d rather save his coins for dances at The Captain’s.”

  “I do love a dance,” Alma says. “But those are two different itches. Sometimes a man wants to hold a woman, and sometimes he wants to watch a pair of bruisers bleed each other.”

  “I know it.”

  “Have you got a woman, Conaway?”

  “I’ve got a wife. Married six months ago.”

  “In it for the long haul!”

  “She’s a comfort.” He tucks his hands into his jacket pockets. “Her name’s Nan.”

  His smile, his bashful posture, look odd on so big a man. Alma imagines him after their scrap at the warehouse, sitting on the edge of a neat cot while a woman with gentle hands tips up
his chin to examine his swollen eye, his pummeled throat, presses a cool rag to his orbital bone and tells him to sit still. The domestic scene appeals, briefly. She walks inside, brushing powdered-sugar snow off her sleeves.

  Wheeler is not at his desk. The door to the Clyde Imports storefront is just barely ajar, a hairline crack of pale light outlining its seam. Quiet, she crosses the carpet, circling the desk to inspect the papers scattered over its top. She has still not discovered the system that allows him to make sense out of the mess. There are shipping dockets tucked under import receipts, ledger pages covered in that number-heavy cipher, a handbill for the coming opera house folded around an envelope elaborately stamped in Aberdeen, United Kingdom.

  The light on the desk changes, so she knows not to flinch.

  “If you’re looking for something, it might be faster to ask.” Wheeler’s broad frame fills the back doorway, his arms folded over his chest.

  “Letters from home?” She holds up the stamped envelope.

  “No.”

  “You said to ask!”

  He is almost smiling, an ease in his posture, his face. This is the closest he’s come to matching how she first encountered him—a pleasant gentleman, if a touch solemn, apt to let his eyes go soft, to reminisce about the old country.

  “How was your dinner?” she says.

  “Productive.” His voice pleased, his silver cuff links winking as he breathes. He nods at the mail she’s holding. “Let that be and come in here.”

  In the Clyde Imports office he has the drawers of two filing cabinets open. He waves her over to the first, which is neatly lined with fat yellow envelopes.

  “I keep the records together,” he says. “Clyde Imports’ along with the organization’s, as Benson showed you with the Quincy paperwork. This system may change, but if you’ve not dealt with inventories and expense ledgers, you can start learning those, at least.”

  “Expense ledgers?” she says, not taking the envelope he holds out.

  “This is part of the job. Tom knows it.” Wheeler shoves the envelope into her stomach, and she grabs it away from him. “You might be blessed from on high, but if you can’t do the practical side, there’s those who can.”