The Best Bad Things

by Katrina Carrasco

  Eight o’clock and the crowd in the Cosmopolitan’s gaming parlor burns with gaslight and gin. Black hats, black jackets in a smoky patchwork. Hothouse spots of color from the faro players’ pink shirts. Onyx and diamond and gold cuff links glitter. Jewel-toned dresses. Fewer women are in the hotel than Alma expected, making her cover sparse, making her stand out more than she would like. But the five or six good-time girls roaming the room are blessedly garish, bosoms powdered, grins dripping with carmine. They draw more attention than Alma, even in her pink dress and finely curled chestnut wig.

  One woman drapes herself over a man’s shoulder, fingers loose his wallet as he fondles her breasts.

  “Three queens.” This from the man seated next to the fellow who’s being robbed. As the table groans, curses, the woman lifts a discreet haul of paper notes out of the wallet and slips them into her skirt before dropping the wallet back in place.

  “Three queens, gentlemen.”

  The winner rakes money toward himself in a clinking pile. He wears bristly blond sideburns and a vain man’s mustache, curled, tumid with wax. An expensive brocade vest, deep blue. The gem topping his walking stick could mortgage a Nob Hill house in the city. He’s been jolly all night, but now the color in his cheeks has built up to a crimson blaze. Dom Kopp is in a damn fine mood, and when he next goes to the bar for a refill, Alma will follow him.

  “Evening, ma’am.”

  A tall man in a red cravat comes up beside her, places a warm hand on her elbow. She stills the urge to flinch—in her pink taffeta she is toeing the line between lady and lady of the night, and this is not the first bucko at the hotel to try to buy her company.

  “Good evening to you, sir,” she says.

  His coat is not of good cloth; the rough cotton shows its seams in the yellow light. He’s not a real moneyed man, or a flash investor—not like her lucky mark at the poker table, who’s throwing down a fistful of notes on the next hand.

  “May I offer you some champagne?” The tall man holds out a glass.

  “Thank you, but no,” Alma says. “I’m trying to understand how the game works, and I don’t want to be any more muddled than I already am!”

  She nods vaguely at the faro and poker tables, together, as if unaware they are separate contests.

  “Well, I’d be happy to help you puzzle it out,” the man says, his hand still on her arm.

  He launches into an explanation of poker geared toward a child’s understanding. Alma fixes on a faintly baffled expression—widens her eyes, parts her lips, tilts her face up toward him but not so far that she loses sight of Kopp, who is frowning at his table, tossing away his cards in disgust—and makes small coos as the man explains how each hand bests the next.

  Kopp taps his fingers on the felt, rings flashing. He’s a railroad man, she’s heard; he’s spoken of it at this hotel, and at the Central, where she first saw him the previous night. A promoter with ties to the Northern Pacific Railroad, he is in town to drum up excitement about a local line—and secure some cash to help fund it. Yet other rich fellows seem to regard him as faintly unsavory, and that is what interests her. He greets old-money men—those in beaver coats and subdued silks—with brassy familiarity, and they draw away, their smiles strained. During her brief surveillance, he has asked three men for pledges of land for the tracks. Two of those men turned him down. Strange, when the whole Northwest has railroad fever, now that the Northern Pacific is fifty miles away from completing a direct transcontinental line to Puget Sound. Kopp has cash; he has connections to the coming railroad; and, still, something is making his rich acquaintances nervous. Alma hopes it’s tar. Or at least a whiff of the black stuff: a link to those who sell it in town.

  Her cravat-wearing companion is smiling down at her expectantly.

  “I’m afraid I’m more confused than ever,” she tells him.

  Kopp is raking in more winnings. Collecting his glass, his money. Standing.

  “Excuse me.” She detaches herself from the man. “I think I left something at the bar.”

  He starts to follow her and she ignores him, slipping through the maze of coats and chairs, the warm press of bodies doused in a liberal assortment of colognes. By the time she’s made her way to the other side of the room, he is no longer behind her, lost in the crowd. Kopp is at the well already, his legs not quite touching the ground from his perch on a velvet stool. She is aiming for the polished notch of open counter to his left when two people converge on him: a blond woman in a crimson dress, and a tall, sallow man with thinning hair slicked back, the black strands showing sharp against white scalp.

  The woman lays her hand on Kopp’s arm. He leans to her ear. His hand rises between them, chucks her chin playfully, skims the tops of her breasts when he drops it to his drink. Alma hangs back, waiting, aware she is not in a good place among the currents in the room: too far away from the bar to be waiting for a drink; too close to a faro table, whose men glance up at her curiously; on a bare patch of carpet in a bustling room where she is already standing out too much in the crowd. The three people at the bar are playing a silent drama: the woman has Kopp’s attention, his smile, but the man on his right is leaning in, whispering, all but tugging on Kopp’s sleeve.

  “Damn it, man,” Kopp says, loud enough that Alma catches it.

  The woman raises an eyebrow, pouts. Wafts her fan beneath her chin, so the follow-me-lads curls hanging to her shoulders sway. Her jaw is sharp, her body lean. Not the type to snag Alma’s attention—but her mouth, the low neckline of her dress, are intriguing.

  Kopp says something to the woman, who snaps her fan shut and sweeps away. Alma counts to five and then approaches the bar.

  “A sherry cobbler, please,” she tells the bartender.

  Kopp glances at her, but his gaze doesn’t stick. As the barkeep muddles sugar into wine, Alma trains her ears on the conversation between Kopp, beside her, and his anxious comrade.

  “You’re wearing me out with your excuses, Max,” Kopp is telling the man.

  “I’ve tried—”

  “You promise one thing, then another, but when do you deliver?”

  Alma can’t see Kopp’s face, turned away as he is, but she can just make out the side of Max’s. His eyes are watery. He blinks, slow, as Kopp talks at him. Gulps down his drink.

  “You don’t deliver, and I’ll tell you why.” Kopp drains most of his champagne, waves his glass at the barkeep while snapping his fingers. “You don’t have the stuff to talk to that friend of yours and tell him you need the money.”

  “I need that money, you know I do,” Max says, voice low and cracking.

  “Then go light a fire under him. Tell him to stop stalling and get to work,” Kopp says, not bothering to keep his voice down. “First September, then December—a whole lot of promises, and no results. And now he’s still got cold feet, and you come to me and whine that you need money? Don’t talk to me, sir. I’ve got money because I’ve got luck, and with luck on my side, I’m about ready to step over you and take myself straight to your reluctant friend and tell him if I don’t see an immediate return on my investment, I’ll report—”

  “Don’t! Come on, now, don’t.” Max has one hand on Kopp’s sleeve.

  Kopp shakes him off, picks up his glass, the last of his champagne catching the light in a fizzing slice of gold.

  “I’m heading to Irondale tomorrow,” he says. “When I get back, I expect good news.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Max says.

  Kopp sniffs, sips his drink. His friend looks between his own glass, empty, and Kopp’s. The pile of cash Kopp has sitting within the curl of his arm, crossed by the polished length of his walking stick.

  “Can you lend me a few dollars?” Max says. “For the tables?”

  “Going to turn your fortunes around?”

  “God willing.”

  “Here, you creature.” Kopp dumps some change into the other man’s long palm. “Spend it or save it, that’s my last donation to your cau
se.”

  Max takes the money, pockets it greedily. He drifts to the center of the room, near where Alma was standing, and she can almost see the same currents she felt working upon him: he moves a touch toward the faro table at his hip, then starts toward the exit, then takes a half step toward the nearest poker game. She leaves him to his confusion. Scoots a hair closer to Kopp, so their sleeves are touching.

  “Your luck is golden tonight,” she says, waiting to see how best to play it—how best to calibrate her attentions to his appetites.

  “You girls sure are on the prowl, aren’t you,” he says, glancing over at Alma and grinning. But he is already leaning toward her with his upper body—as much as he’s willing to belittle her for it, he is game for the attention. His champagne-sugared breath on her face.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she says. “I was watching you at the poker and thought I’d congratulate you on your winnings.”

  “They have added up.” Now he is turned toward her on his velvet stool, switching his drink from left hand to right. She waits for him to reach for her, but he is looking her up and down, his forehead wrinkling.

  “A bit buttoned-up for a ladybird, aren’t you?”

  She looks down at her collar, the regrettable lack of bosom shown by her dress. Sees a way to keep Kopp’s attention—a flash, hard-to-please type might take this bait.

  “You don’t like it?” she says. Then, dropping her voice, her chin, letting her cheeks color, she says, “I hoped it would be all right. I’m new.”

  “New?”

  And that’s done it. He is turned all the way toward her, his tweed-encased thighs parted. A twitch of interest at his mouth. A twitch of interest at his groin.

  “I’ll leave you for the other girls,” she says.

  He lets go of his drink entirely. That’s a first.

  “Hold on, sweetheart.” His fingers settle at the crook of her arm, his thumb stroking over her inner elbow, where the skin under the pink taffeta is thin and soft. “Let me buy you a drink.”

  The bartender slides her cocktail onto the counter. She smiles at him, at Kopp, and Kopp tosses him a coin.

  “That’s on me,” Kopp tells the man.

  “Thank you,” Alma says, and lets Kopp pull her closer, his knees nudging against the sides of her bodice. She bites her lip.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Annabelle,” she says.

  “This really your first night, Annabelle?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Call me Dom.” He lifts her chin, his fingers warm, papery. “No, call me Mr. Kopp.”

  He picks up her cocktail, puts it in her hand.

  “You drink that up, now,” he says. “And then we’ll find somewhere cozy to get to know each other better.”

  “All right, Mr. Kopp,” she says, and smiles around a mouthful of crushed sugar and ice.

  20

  JANUARY 19, 1887

  An hour to the fight and Chain Locker is wild. The storeroom is cleared for action, outfitted with a roped-off ring. There’s already a press three-deep around it, every logger and dockhand suddenly turned expert on the size of the ring, on the height of the ropes, on the chosen referee, a fellow from Seattle and therefore suspected of a healthy bias against the Tacoma man, the two cities being longtime bitter rivals. Men stream back and forth through the jointed middle of the building, where a windy hall only a few feet long connects storeroom to saloon. A sour throng of bodies obscures the bar.

  Alma and Driscoll shove through the crowd to a scrap of counter, holding their space with hard shoulders and elbows. She adds her voice to the general howl, clamoring for the attention of Clay or one of the two barmen he’s hired for the night. He’s going to make a fortune and so is his liquor supplier—Clyde Imports.

  “Four whiskey doubles!”

  Driscoll catches a bartender first and hollers the order, high color in his cheeks, high excitement in his eyes. The man slaps four tumblers onto the wood, drains the last of a bottle into them.

  “We’re never going to get them back in this mess,” Alma shouts in Driscoll’s ear. “Better drink them ourselves.”

  He gawps and she pushes two dimes into his hot palm.

  “On me,” she says.

  The barkeep takes the coins. Alma scoops the glasses toward the little space of bar top they’ve carved out, hands one to Driscoll, and picks up another.

  “Fuck Tacoma!” she roars, lifting the tumbler, and the men pressed around them holler back, gleeful baritone agreements, whistles, stamping on the floor. The electric sizzle of being plugged into a crowd—voices and muscles and hot cloth on hot skin—jangles through her as she shoots back the whiskey. It’s vile, cheap trash but fiery as she needs, and after Driscoll empties his glass, they take up the others and clink them together, drain them in unison.

  Now the night feels like a proper rager. She slings an arm over Driscoll’s shoulders and they barrel back toward the storeroom. The crowd is thinner at the joint between the buildings. Ten feet below, the bay slaps against wharf pylons. Sunset stains the water reddish, an upward glow that glitters through gaps in the floorboards. Driscoll is laughing and warm against her side, jostling against skin worn raw by the edges of her binding cloth—a rasp of pain within the many layers of Camp’s clothes, shirt, vest, and jacket. If the kid notices her bound chest, Alma is practiced with an excuse: sore ribs needing bandaging. But excuses, worries, all burn away with the whiskey and the approaching fight.

  “You bastards,” Conaway says when they return to him and Barker empty-handed.

  “Can’t carry nothing through all that,” Alma says. “Go try it yourselves.”

  “Five cents a double?” Barker leans against the wall into the shadow of Conaway’s bulk, takes a long pull from his flask. “I don’t pay those kind of prices.”

  “You’ll be at the bar howling like the rest when that runs out,” Conaway tells him, nodding at the flask.

  “Sure enough.”

  “I heard the Tacoma cunt’s seven feet tall.” Driscoll is restless, eyeballing the crowd, peering at the ring with its knotted ropes, its clean sweep of boards. “A beast.”

  “Mac’ll have him,” Barker says. “I’ve seen him fight three times. He’s got dynamite in those fists.”

  With one ear on their chatter, Alma glances around the storeroom. She’s searching for Sloan or his boys. And a gray overcoat. She wants to see Wheeler. Will he show up with McManus, as the men are expecting, or alone? Either way, when Wheeler arrives, she will angle her way over to him. She wants to watch the fight while he is watching her.

  Driscoll slumps onto her, giddy at some joke Barker made. He is heavy with muscle, smelling of whiskey and sweat.

  “Fuck off, kid.” She shrugs him away, laughing.

  This company’s all right. Not a bunch of hard cases, save for McManus. Delphine’s San Francisco crew would knife you in the stomach while shaking your hand. Six years of knowing them, and she never lost the feeling of walking on thin ice. But the Port Townsend men are making this a soft landing. A few punches exchanged, a few nasty words, then a week later they stand together in a bar, bantering, jostling, passing around Barker’s flask of gin.

  A commotion at the doorway. Two men call out, “Make way,” carrying in low stools for the fighters, sponge buckets slopping water. Space around the ring is filling, the crowd thickening to five deep at the middle of the ropes.

  “You going to be able to see back here?” Conaway asks, smirking down at her.

  “I could stand on you again and gain a foot,” she shoots back, and he laughs, full throated, showing tobacco-laced teeth.

  “You’re a son of a bitch, Camp.”

  “I know.”

  Barker’s flask is empty, a small catastrophe. He and Driscoll thread their way toward the jointed hall, their promises to bring back enough for everyone met with jeers. Then, in the doorway: McManus. He is grimacing, badly limping. And he’s not alone. Two steps behind him, eyes sha
dowed by a dark hat, is Wheeler. Driscoll stops to greet them while Barker forges onward, disappears into the dim hall. Alma’s tongue flicks against the backs of her teeth.

  Look at me, she thinks, staring hard at Wheeler. Look at me.

  Instead, he takes off his hat. Nods at Driscoll. He is far better dressed than most of the crowd, and enough men notice and clear the way that he moves in a little pocket of space, around toward the opposite side of the ring from where Alma stands with Conaway.

  Now Conaway’s height comes in handy. When Wheeler appears ringside opposite, Alma waits for him to see the guardsman, who is conspicuously redheaded, six inches taller than most of the men around them. Wheeler’s eyes track, catch. Drop to hers.

  She raises her fingers to her cap. Twitches up one side of her mouth.

  He gives her the same curt nod he gave Driscoll. The bastard.

  “There’s the boss man,” she tells Conaway. “I’m going to go say good evening.”

  “I’m drinking your whiskey,” he says.

  She pushes through the crowd, snapping back at a few overeager men who try to start trouble. As she nears the hall, a wave of sound echoes through it. Cheers and clapping signal the arrival of a fighter. On tiptoe she peers through shoulders toward the door, where a burly man in a plain brown coat ducks into the room, flanked by three other fellows. The floorboards jump with the welcome he’s given. It must be Mac, the local hero. He comes to the corner nearest Alma, shakes hands with a thickset man in denim—the referee.

  It’s fight time, and she’s stuck in between her good viewing spot and Wheeler, with a growing stream of men pushing through the hall in the wake of Mac.

  She muscles through the reeking crowd—an elbow to her side, a cigarette end flaring too close to her left eye—and then is on the other side of the corner, a lucky gap opening that she squirms through to the ropes. She is ten feet from Wheeler, with a clear view of him over a triangle of clean, freshly sanded boards.

  Look at me, she thinks, and this time he does: he looks right at her, eyes narrowed, a tight grin flickering there and away. She raises her chin.