The Best Bad Things

by Katrina Carrasco

  “The boring side.”

  “Call it what you like,” he says. “Product doesn’t move without money, and when accounts aren’t squared away, money has a way of vanishing.”

  Alma didn’t think this far ahead. She’d thought of Delphine. Of new grounds to tramp over. Of rain, and salt water, and a desk to rest her boots on. But the desk will be in Tacoma. And it will be more than a footstool—there’s paperwork to be done on it, long periods of sitting still, less work for her fists and more for her fingers, tallying, writing, scratching away at columns of numbers. Good Christ. In the city she’d been all motion, all action: running deliveries; scaring merchants into deals that didn’t serve their best interests; checking in on product at the docks, at the dens. The deputy job is starting to feel less like fun and more like work.

  She turns the envelope around so she can read the writing across the front. Wheeler’s neat, blocky script: August 1886.

  “Next you’re going to tell me I have to wear a suit.” She makes this sound like a hardship, but she’s not put off by the idea. She’d left a fine-cut number behind in Chicago, sold to a tailor’s shop for ten dollars to help cover her train fare out West.

  “You’re a poor clerk, remember,” Wheeler says. “When you’re not covered in blood, you’ll fit in just fine.”

  “You shine up nice,” she says.

  He brings a hand to his tie and smooths it straight. Does not move away.

  “All the prices and duties, filed along with their shipments.” He nods at the envelope in her hands. “And what we really paid, including bribes.”

  Alma folds open the stiff envelope, slides out the top sheet. Rows of inked points of origin and numbers. A bookkeeper’s sweet dream. It makes her eyes glaze over.

  “Fascinating.” She tosses the open envelope onto a nearby end table, setting the lamp perched at its center asway. A few of the neatly ordered pages shake free and drift to the carpet.

  “You’re a worry,” Wheeler says.

  “I’m good at the ground work,” she says. Delphine wants her to study this, but Alma’s still thinking she’ll hire someone. Nell could keep accounts well enough.

  “You’re good at making messes.”

  With a deep sigh she kneels to collect the fallen papers, then fits them back into the envelope without bothering to check the order. Wheeler takes the packet from her and shuffles the contents back into neatness.

  “By the way,” he says. “You owe me ten dollars.”

  “I didn’t place that bet. And it was for five.”

  “It was placed in your name. Plus the five-dollar loan you took out the day before yesterday.” He grins, pale gleam of teeth, and she is warming to him, to his willingness to spar. “See? The benefits of accounting.”

  “I don’t have it.” She makes a show of digging through her pockets, so his gaze is dragged down to her hips. “I’ll bring it to the fight.”

  “Who said I’m giving you the night off?”

  “You going to try and stop me?” she says.

  She hops onto the edge of the desk behind her, tapping her heel against the wood paneling, getting restless, getting curious. He is standing only a few feet away, one thumb rubbing over the edge of the envelope in his hands, the toes of his shoes pointed toward her even though his body is not.

  But he moves off. Replaces the envelope in the cabinet and locks the drawer. The keys jingle into his pocket. His jaw working, just slightly, on the obscured side of his face.

  The front bellpull sounds. Alma slides off the desk, startled, and they both look toward the glazed window.

  “What are you doing here?” Wheeler mutters.

  Dom Kopp, the railroad man, stands outside in a garish white coat, straightening his lapels and fiddling with his gem-topped walking stick.

  “Shit,” Alma says. “He’s seen me before. In a dress.”

  “Go back to the office,” Wheeler says.

  “No. I want to listen in.” She holds her hand out. “The keys.”

  He hesitates for a bare second before pulling them out, then gives the bunch to her by a long silver key. As he walks to the door, she fits it into the filing cabinet, pulls out a fat stack of envelopes. At the little desk in the corner, farthest from the light of the windows, she empties an envelope onto the table. Fans the papers wide with one hand and pulls her forelock low over her forehead with the other.

  “Good morning,” Wheeler says as he opens the door.

  “Are you Wheeler?” Kopp says.

  “Yes, I am.”

  Wheeler’s tone is cool. He does not stand aside from the door, and Kopp peers around him into the office, catching sight of Alma at the back but not lingering on her, his gaze moving on to the gleaming cabinetry, the fine brass fixtures on the walls. He is a slight man, shorter and narrower than Wheeler, with a fussy mustache and bristling blond hair.

  “Good morning to you, Mr. Wheeler. My name is Kopp. I’ve come with a business inquiry.”

  “What kind of liquor are you in the market for?” Wheeler doesn’t move. “Or is it woolens.”

  “Woolens? No. No, I am in the railroad business.” Kopp is nervous, fidgety; he taps his stick on the sidewalk in rapid little thumps. “Representing the interests of the Northern Pacific here in Port Townsend. I’m surprised you have not heard of me.”

  “I stick to my own sphere of commerce, Mr. Kopp.”

  “Seeing as you just signed on to Judge Hamilton’s trust, the railroad is your sphere of commerce, sir.”

  This news is only a day old, and Kopp doesn’t sound too pleased about it. Snow collects on his white lapel. His rings glitter against the body of his walking stick, just below the bulbous yellow stone at its head.

  “You’ve had more luck than I with that circle,” he continues, craning to see around Wheeler again. “Hamilton is dead set on it being a private venture. Though the Northern Pacific would bring ample funding to the line. Might I come in?”

  “You’re welcome. Have a seat.”

  Wheeler waves at the square table closest to the door and takes the chair facing Alma. Kopp sits opposite, claps his hat onto the tabletop. He glances back at her, to where she is busy scribbling gibberish onto a neat sales receipt while keeping an eye on the two through the dark fall of her hair.

  “This is … delicate business,” Kopp says, quiet but not so quiet that she has to strain to make out his words. A man not practiced at being inconspicuous.

  “My clerk is hard of hearing,” Wheeler says. “Anything you have to say is between us.”

  “Well then. Ah. Well then. How to bring it up lightly?”

  Kopp is a changed man from when she saw him at the Cosmopolitan. He was happy enough to lord it over poor friends and workingwomen, but now that he’s faced with a well-to-do businessman, he is high-strung, nervous, repetitively clearing his throat. Wheeler folds his hands on the table. A solid presence as Kopp twitches.

  “I heard you’re the man to speak to about certain, ah, imported product.”

  “Liquor,” Wheeler says.

  “No, not your damned liquor,” Kopp snaps.

  Wheeler does not move, yet he seems to grow larger. Alma studies the set of his body. Decides he does it by filling his lungs deep and forward, so his rib cage and shoulders expand up and out.

  “Speak to me like that again and I will call you to answer,” Wheeler says.

  Kopp, on the other side of the table, has gone pale, his cheeks pinched. But it’s not fear. His lips are peeling back from his teeth, his eyebrows set in a hard line. He is furious.

  “I’m here to do you a favor,” he says. “The railroad is coming and they have tasked me with locating the best sites for new lines. Your little trust might be attractive to Northern Pacific stockholders—but your smuggling won’t be. And that’s where I come in. I don’t want to crush a decent opportunity. I’m willing to work with you, to protect your business and keep it from the railroad’s attention, if you cut me in on the profits.”


  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Wheeler says. “But you look absolutely unsteady. I must ask you to leave.”

  “I’ll give you time to come to your senses, man.” Kopp stands, snatching up his walking stick and hat. “I can offer you security. Don’t be a fool.”

  “Good day, Mr. Kopp.”

  A final, white-lipped glare. The door slammed so hard the bell jangles. Wheeler watches Kopp stalk down the street, then stands, slow, and turns the lock.

  “Wonderful.” Alma sets down her pen. There is ink on her index finger, a long line tracing from the edge of her nail. “We have a new problem.”

  “This is Sloan’s doing.” Wheeler comes to the back of the office. When he sees the paper on her desk, deeply streaked with ink, he shakes his head and gives her a baleful stare. “What is the matter with you?”

  “I was bored,” she says, then surprises herself by going on, in a less needling tone. “It helps me think. Moving. And I couldn’t walk around, so.”

  “Just! Just leave them there.” He flattens a hand over the papers when she starts to stack them.

  She looks up at him along the length of his sturdy arm. He is so often two things at once, with one face slipping close under the other, flashing to the surface in a breath, in a twitch of muscle. The fastidious merchant and the cold enforcer. The dour bookkeeper and the tight-grinned fighter. This duality calls to her. He is self-contained and controlled in ways that intrigue. But will he also be smart when his own men come into question?

  “Conaway. Fulton. Driscoll. Benson,” she says, looking up at him, watching the tightening of his jaw. “McManus. Those are the men who know you. What are the odds, the honest odds, that one of them is talking to someone he shouldn’t be?”

  “It’s Sloan behind this. He’s been meeting with Kopp.”

  She stares at him, hard, in silent question.

  “It’s one of the concerns I’ve been following,” he says.

  “And you were planning on telling me when?”

  “When I was sure. Now there’s proof enough, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Why would Sloan mess with us when he’s just gotten cut into the trade?”

  “Because he’s uninformed,” Wheeler says. “He thinks he can weasel his way in, undermine me, and reap the spoils. He doesn’t know how things work—how we’re supplied, and why.”

  The Families. Delphine’s contacts in San Francisco and the source of her premium opium. The Families are rumored to hold vast wealth in Hong Kong, in Macao. One patriarch, in particular, is said to have a special connection with Delphine, maybe based off an old favor from her fencing days, maybe off something else. Joe Hong, one of this patriarch’s younger sons, with Delphine for years as a companion and translator but maybe also as a watchman, someone at her side ensuring the Families’ interests are protected. Alma doesn’t know much more; she’s not sure how much of what she does know is true.

  “So Sloan tips off Kopp; they pressure you into a deal. That’s bad.” She stands, comes around the little table. “That doesn’t answer our missing-product question, though. Unless Sloan and Kopp also have a friend among your men.”

  “I’ve not yet found anything suggesting that,” Wheeler says, lifting his chin.

  “It’s one of the concerns I’ve been following,” she says. “And I learned something very interesting yesterday, while you were meeting with your wealthy friends.”

  The memory of McManus and his woman fizzes in the air, nudging her to take a step closer, tilt her face toward Wheeler’s exposed neck. They are two feet apart. “Take me to Seattle,” Mary had said to McManus, as she slid her hand down the front of his body. Sing Tai’s Seattle-sourced tar.

  “Have you heard anything linking Kopp or Sloan to Seattle?” she says.

  “No.” The vein at Wheeler’s throat tapping faster.

  Damn.

  “Wait,” he says. “Of course. Kopp has been collecting pledges of land there, for his railroad schemes. There and in Irondale, south of town.”

  Irondale again. The location of Peterson’s second boatyard. McManus’s second visit to keep the boatbuilder quiet. Everything McManus does is starting to seem suspicious.

  “There’s been strange tar coming out of Seattle lately,” Alma says, getting warmer, craving movement as her theory gathers weight, gathers velocity. As Wheeler leaves his mouth open, wet flicker of tongue behind his canines. “Wah Hing, sold at half price to Sing Tai at auction, in Seattle, two weeks ago.”

  “The missing product. From December.”

  “Has to be. We don’t sell there.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten pounds,” she says. “It’s not everything. But I think I know who’s moving it.”

  Another step. This is as close as he’s let her come since she lunged at him. And his hands are not in fists. If he’s done holding back, she hopes he won’t be gentle about it.

  “Tommy?” he says as his eyes skip off hers, over her shoulder. He pulls away with a backward lean in his upper body.

  McManus steadies himself against the doorjamb linking the offices. Frowning as he watches them. His face is pallid but unmarked because Alma, too, knows how to hide punches. It’s under his clothes where he’s pulped and purpling, ribs, sternum, the outside of his bad knee. She waits for him to speak, to fly out at her, but he ignores her entirely, keeping the weight off his bad leg.

  “Stopped by Ah Tong’s,” he says. “Made sure he got the delivery all right.”

  “You don’t look so good, lad,” Wheeler tells him. “Everything square?”

  “Eleven men, all accounted for.” McManus is sweating, broad forehead beading with moisture, breathing not quite at ease. “But he’d had visitors.”

  “Of what sort.”

  “Sloan’s men tried to sell him some Wah Hing. Twelve dollars a can.”

  “Greedy bastard,” Alma says. Sloan’s price is absurdly high, but at least he is attempting to sell. Their trap is closing.

  McManus’s eyes flick over to her. His mouth splits into a crooked sneer, showing pale, crowded teeth.

  “I’m not fucking talking to you,” he says.

  “Give it a rest.” Wheeler moves past him into the other room. “What did Ah Tong say to turn them down?”

  “Not much. They broke his nose and two of his fingers.”

  Wheeler stops halfway to his desk.

  “God damn it,” he says.

  “You sure you didn’t help break them?” Alma walks toward the door, aiming to push past McManus, but he is following Wheeler toward the desk, his left boot dragging heavily.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Remind him who he answers to,” she persists, coming nearer. “Like you did with Peterson.”

  “Camp. Enough.” Wheeler lowers himself into his chair.

  “That Pike bastard wasn’t the end of it.” McManus angles his body so he is speaking only to Wheeler, his back to Alma. “The altered bills, the missing product—he’s got another man in. I spoke to each of the crew last night, and they didn’t give me much, but with more time—”

  “You’ll what?” Alma says, stepping forward so she is in McManus’s space, and closer than he is to Wheeler’s desk. “Siphon off more tar and take it Seattle? To fund your honeymoon?”

  “Seattle?” Wheeler says, and the seed she planted earlier is rooting in, his face darkening.

  “He’s got a woman, and she wants to go there,” Alma says, and beside her McManus goes rigid, his throat working. “Very persuasive, too. She didn’t get on her knees, but—”

  McManus’s boot catches on the carpet as he lunges toward her. He stumbles, falls against the desk, his hand and hip thumping hard into wood.

  “I’ll rip your throat out,” he says, and the look he gives her is pure murder, his blue eyes fierce and bloodshot against his waxen skin.

  “Tommy—”

  “He’s trying to turn you against me,” McManus says to Wheeler, breathing hard, brogue thickening as his
voice grows urgent. “He’s a fucking plant from Sloan. Mind how he turned up, keeking around the Madison spot just like Pike was—”

  “Get a hold of yourself.” Wheeler glares at him. “Are you drunk? Talking nonsense, falling down.”

  McManus closes his eyes. Shifts his body against the desk with stiff movements. Once his back is to Alma again, she doesn’t bother to sneer.

  “My leg’s bad today,” he says.

  “Who’s this woman?”

  McManus shakes his head.

  “Who’s this fucking woman? And what does she want in Seattle?”

  “She wants to get away from her husband,” McManus says, quiet.

  “Jesus Christ. As if there’s not enough—”

  Knocking at the office door. Wheeler calls out, sharp, and Driscoll enters.

  “Brought the post.” Driscoll’s grin falters as he registers the brittle tension in the air, as he gets close enough to take in McManus’s pallor, his pained slump against the desk. “All right, Tom?”

  McManus nods, not looking at him.

  “I can bring you some coffee. Sir, would you like some coffee? Camp?”

  “No, lad,” Wheeler says.

  “Run and get us a packet of cocaine, would you,” McManus says.

  “And a gin nip?” Driscoll sets the mail on the edge of the desk.

  “Aye.”

  “Back in a tick,” Driscoll says, and lets himself out.

  “You’ve got that pup trained well,” Alma says after the door closes. “And he’s the one who let Pike into the Madison warehouse. Funny, that.”

  “Camp. Take this to Ah Tong with my apologies.” Wheeler unlocks a desk drawer, pulls out some silver coins. He scribbles a note and folds it around the money, then tucks the square into an envelope. “I know a bonesetter if he needs one.”

  “You got it, boss,” she says.

  “Sit down, Tommy.” Wheeler points at the chair opposite his. “You and I are going to have a chat.”

  19

  JANUARY 7, 1887

  Twelve Days Earlier