The Best Bad Things

by Katrina Carrasco

Wheeler and Hamilton have parted ways at last, Wheeler heading into the fund-raiser, passing under the roses and lilies garlanding the school’s door. Alma walks up the path, letting herself be hustled along by the flow of eager sailors, intent on their hot coffee and lunch. The drowsy scent of daylilies sifts down at the top of the stairs. A snowfall of pollen, shaken loose by the tramping of boots, men’s voices. Inside, the building is warm, sweet breezed as a greenhouse, a big open room set up with long tables. Flowers on the trestles and the walls. A throng of men at the back beside a spread of salads, cakes, silver coffee urns.

  Alma steps out of the press as it flows toward the food. Delphine is here. Her black dress embroidered with glittering jet beads. She stands beside a wreath of pine and ribbon, in conversation with Judge Hamilton and two men Alma’s not seen before. One of the men has hair the color of an old copper penny, a mustache long and bowed out in the Western style. The other wears a somber suit, charcoal gray and flawlessly tailored; a pale tie at his pale throat; a silver beard cropped neat.

  She walks up to a sailor who’s setting match to cigarette, ten feet from the foursome, and takes out one of her own.

  “Can I get a light?” she says.

  The man obliges. He is lean under his oilcloth coat. His knuckles are dark with tar, as are his hair and temples. Alma nods over her cigarette in thanks.

  “Food looks good,” the man observes.

  “Uh-huh.”

  And then they can be silent, standing together in that linked space made by match and tobacco, the best way Alma’s found to make friends in unfriendly places.

  “I’d say you’ve outdone yourself, Mrs. Powell.”

  Hamilton hovers at Delphine’s side. The other men lean in, too. The cowboy holding his cattleman’s hat at his thigh, his gray-suited companion fingering a silver watch chain. Such is the allure of Delphine’s body, her face: she draws people to her. Sometimes they come under a misapprehension. They see a brown-skinned woman and think they will have power over her. Or they see her body draped in riches and think they can help themselves to both. In San Francisco, Delphine was respected, revered by thieves and admired by the lawmen she paid off to protect her business. But she doesn’t hold the same sway here. Alma watches the three men crowd around her, a pinch of unease in her chest.

  “I hope this is the start of a wonderful enterprise,” Delphine says, allowing the judge to lace her gloved hand through his elbow. “A service all the good workingmen in this town may benefit from.”

  “If they’re at the bethel, they’re not getting into liquor on Water Street.” The cowboy’s accent matches his handlebar mustache—the chaw-stained drawl of the Arizona Territory or its neighboring deserts. “That makes my work easier.”

  “Why, you don’t need my help, Marshal Forrester.” Delphine’s voice is breathy, sweet. “You and your officers do a fine job.”

  “Thank you for saying so, ma’am.” He taps his hat against his chest, cutting the sketch of a bow.

  “I wish I could persuade you to share your golden touch with Tacoma,” the man in the dark suit says. “We have a penchant for iniquity in my town, and we are in dire need of charitable souls such as yourself.”

  A Tacoma man. Alma studies him with closer interest. He looks to be about forty-five. Money aplenty, judging from his fancy getup and the thick silver rope of his watch chain.

  “Mr. Pettygrove, if you bring me a project, I will assist you with it,” Delphine says. “I’m afraid I know nothing about Tacoma or how my husband’s estate can best be used to help there.”

  “Now, sir, don’t be looking to claim the favors one of our town’s most esteemed residents,” Forrester says, and places one booted foot between Delphine’s skirts and Pettygrove. “Mrs. Powell, when will the bethel open its doors?”

  “Father Martin just visited.” Delphine raises her chin, holding her space against the marshal’s incursion. “He reports the rooms inside are almost ready, and the funds from today should help provide our first supplies—blankets and other bedding, basics for the kitchen.”

  “Wonderful.” The marshal edges closer to Delphine, covering the movement by tucking his hat behind his back and adjusting his weight.

  “Mr. Powell’s memory could not be honored better, I believe,” Hamilton says, looking at Forrester, and whatever was intended by the words seems to work: Forrester stiffens, pinches his lips under his mustache. Pettygrove fiddles with his watch chain, casting an eye back toward the food tables.

  “My dear husband had a powerful call to do good works,” Delphine says. “I pray for him every day. And I intend to apply his generosity wherever the town may have a need. And perhaps in your town, too, Mr. Pettygrove.”

  Alma’s cigarette is finished, along with her patience for this conversation. Delphine has these men on the hook, that much is plain. The marshal needs to mind his manners. Otherwise, Delphine seems in full control of the situation. Alma admires the simplicity of her cover: a wealthy widow, living a subdued life, paying tribute to her late husband through charitable works. The last person anyone would expect to tie to an opium ring.

  Alma nods farewell to her smoking companion. At the back, the trays of food are ravaged but still offer sweet rolls dotted with walnuts, ham sandwiches, cherry pies. She takes two ham sandwiches and a sugary turnover. It’s full of raisins and currants. Eating sweet, then salty, in alternate bites, Alma wanders to a table, says hello to the men sitting there, slides onto the bench. A priest walks among the tables, speaking to the seamen. The periphery of the room is crowded with silks and furs. A ring of wealthy men and their wives, drawn back, whispering as they watch the hungry sailors devour lunch, like visitors taking in feeding time at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

  She lets her gaze trickle over their faces until she finds someone staring back at her: a young man, black hair combed down in muttonchops to meet the ambitious beard he’s cultivating. Black eyes. Silver shine at his collar, at his cuff links. She keeps her eyes on his. Takes a huge bite of ham sandwich, letting her eyes drift down his pearl-buttoned coat, slow, then back up to his face. He is still watching her. He undoes his coat, tucks the front panel of it aside to get at a vest pocket and pull out a watch, though he does not look at the time or let his coat droop back into place, displaying the fine dark fabric over his hip, his side body. Alma swallows. Winks at him.

  Something about Jack Camp is just right for this town. She’s not sure whether it’s the people here, or whether it’s her. She hasn’t lived this long as Camp before, only donned his clothes and mannerisms for a few fights, for a few nights at a time. To do more was a risk in San Francisco, where too many people knew her as Alma Rosales. She liked that way of moving through the world. The satisfaction of it, especially on dark corners: toughs thinking a black-clad small woman meant easy pickings, and the way their faces would twist when she unsheathed her knife or wielded her knuckles. The feel of wearing her own hair, long: the pleasure of combing it out, of sitting naked in bed and rolling her neck, so strands tickled over her rib cage, her shoulders, her low back. Molly, the woman who sometimes warmed her nights; Angel, the man who sometimes did the same.

  Alma likes moving through Port Townsend as Camp, too. She’s had far more fun than she expected on the distant spit of land. And these men who look at Camp. They intrigue her. A new kind of game. Not as urgent as the one she’s playing with Wheeler—he is a special kind of gunpowder to her spark—but a rough one, a test of her bound body, a performance that would go beyond the surface and into the realm of touch, shadowed alleys, hot mouths.

  The bearded gentleman puts his watch away. Points at the door with a slow open-close of his eyes. She starts on the second ham sandwich.

  Then Delphine crosses her line of sight, shed of her attendants. Watery daylight glosses her upswept hair. Alma tracks her progress across the room, and not all the rich women on the other side are smiling. Two in particular make no attempt to hide their faces as they whisper. Alma lip-reads enough to take their mean
ing—she’s heard it before. Quadroon. Colored upstart. How dare she.

  Delphine glides up to the woman in blue-striped silk, who Alma first saw on the steps. The woman is willowy, flushed. She holds a teacup and a silver spoon. Ting, ting.

  “Thank you all for coming today, and for your contributions.” The woman’s voice has a faint quaver. “And let’s give a toast to Mrs. Conrad Powell, whose generous donation made our luncheon possible, and also made the bethel possible—this good woman is doing the Lord’s work and watching out for her neighbors.”

  Gloved applause from the Upper Town folk, hearty cheers from the sailors. Delphine smiles and nods to the room in general, lovely despite her somber clothes. Alma huzzahs along with her table. That is good work. The Lord, indeed.

  Then the priest is beside the two women and starts yammering on about charity, and Delphine withdraws from the center of attention. Alma is getting restless, ready to leave. Kopp has already vanished—to start collecting five thousand dollars, she hopes. Hamilton stands with Pettygrove and a yellow-haired woman in a violet dress. Hamilton offers her a glass of some fizzy beverage as she leans on his arm, pale and limp as a wilting iris. The marshal is at the food tables, picking walnuts off a sweet roll. And Wheeler? He’s nowhere to be seen, not in the corners or in the dwindling knots of gentlemen. Her fancy bearded fellow gone, too.

  A punishing stretch of time while the priest leads a prayer and it will be too noticeable to slip out. Once he’s sketching a benediction over the crowd, she slides off the bench, ambles to the door. Drooping daylilies crest over the lintel, heavy scented, morose. And there are Wheeler and Edmonds. Just outside, sharing a cigarette in the rain, which has thickened as the clouds dropped lower. Edmonds has been crying. Wheeler watches Alma walk past. With his eyes on her, Wheeler takes a long drag on the cigarette and offers it to the collector, whose thick black curls drip as he hangs his head.

  * * *

  Coming in from the purple hatbox hall. Nell’s bedroom smells of lamp oil and her perfume, with an undertone of burnt hair. Gold strands tangled around the little iron by the hearth. Her blue dress laid out on the divan under the window.

  “Sorry for the mess.” Nell scoops a few pairs of stockings off the bed, her dressing gown clinging to her thighs, her hips. “I didn’t know you’d be stopping by.”

  “I was in the neighborhood.” Alma holds out a bunch of daisies, rain-dappled and dripping, her eyes on Nell’s haunches. Restless after two hours of drinking overpriced gin at the Delmonico. Kopp sent his rich friends away without mentioning Wheeler, as he had promised, but she stayed to watch him booze and gamble and stumble upstairs, just to be safe.

  “Jack, you’re always in the neighborhood.”

  All of Lower Town is contained in nine blocks, so this is true enough. But the Delmonico is just around the corner. Nell’s fingers brush hers as she collects the bouquet. Alma leans against the wall by the door while Nell dusts off a cut-glass cup and sets the daisies inside.

  “Quite a change from tuberose.” Nell sits at her dressing table, holds a few pins with her lips as she twists up and secures a curl by her ear. “Innocence, after yesterday?”

  “Funny thing. The florist was fresh out of dogbane and winter cherry, despite the season.”

  Nell goes still, her arms raised, a lock of hair in her fingers. Her eyes wide on Alma’s in the mirror. Nell turns around. One forearm drifts to bar across her chest, pull her gown closed.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Alma says.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I just want to know how much it paid. Fucking me.”

  “It didn’t pay anything.”

  “Then why’d you do it?” Alma shrugs against her bandage, wanting a pain she can manage. She didn’t know how much Nell’s betrayal meant until now, standing here again. Her pride wounded. How naked she allowed herself to be. “What’s he giving you. I know he’s at The Captain’s all the time. Is there something going on there?”

  “You’re not talking about Nathaniel.”

  “No. You gave him my name. My cover. After I was good to you. After I made you spend.”

  Nell’s face goes pink, her throat. Fine eyebrows knotting. She stands from her chair.

  “I didn’t give your name to anyone,” she says, and her voice is hard with anger. “You’ve made a mistake. So stop a moment—”

  “Then how did he—”

  “Stop a moment, Jack,” Nell says. “You sound like you’re working up to a froth, and I’ll tell you, if you insult me, there’s no taking it back. I do not accept mistreatment. And I do not accept apologies.”

  The weight of just those insults pressing at Alma’s tongue, sugar dishes and open thighs and all the rest of the ugliness that’s jabbing at her, and for once, for once, she keeps them down. Leans hard against the wall. Sharp exhale that almost sounds like a laugh. She’s starting to like Nell too much.

  “Then how did he know?” she says, wrung out, quiet.

  “What happened?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “I understand that. We’re in the business of secrets.” Nell crosses the room, stands warm and near and sweet smelling. “How’s your arm?”

  “Hurts like a son of a bitch.”

  “You took off your sling.”

  Closer. Alma shifts her feet wider, one small twitch of each boot, and Nell comes between them. Silk gown slipping open, gauzy chemise underneath. Her nipples rising under its thin cloth.

  “You did make me spend.” Hot breath on Alma’s ear, curled hair brushing Alma’s lips. “I was hoping to persuade you to do it again.”

  Alma’s good hand sliding between silk and soft cloth, body heat, the supple rise of Nell’s hip bone. Wet mouth on Alma’s neck. Nimble fingers on her belt buckle. She closes her eyes.

  “I think that can be arranged,” she says.

  * * *

  No one on the Quincy steps. The door locked. Snowflakes drift over her outstretched sleeve, lamplight yellowing the denim. Hollers from Water Street. A bristle of nerves. She clumps down the stairs, takes the long way around Adams, since Wheeler is so careful with his set of double entrances. Such a transparent precaution. Yet it might have its uses—it’s plenty to fool someone like Kopp. The Clyde Imports window is dark. She knocks on the glass.

  Nothing, nothing. Then a flare of light at the back. Her shoulders loosening so quick it jolts pain through her bad arm.

  A dark shape weaves through the filing cabinets, crosses into the band of streetlamp shine on the carpet inside, and it’s Wheeler and she’s glad to see him. Rosales, you are going soft. Stand up straight. Lock the jaw. Toughening up so much that when he opens the door, she growls, pushes in.

  “Where’s Conaway?”

  “At the warehouse.” He locks the door, his nostrils flaring when he faces her. “It’s just him and Fulton, and they each need a shift to sleep.”

  “Right,” she says.

  “Were you at Nell’s?”

  “Yeah.” Her shirt smelling of perfume. Her hands licked clean, though musk lingers.

  Wheeler stands angled toward the office’s back door. A line of hearthlight from the jamb cuts sharp and red over his torso, his cheek. His jaw working. Crosshatched shadows at his forehead.

  “What did you learn at the fund-raiser?” he says.

  “I have a lot to tell you. And quick.”

  He waves at the inner door. The back office is warm, air vanilla-tinged. On the desk a cigar wafts smoke. Whiskey mellows beside it. He is such a creature of habit. Though Alma is pouring gin as she thinks this, and she has her own pathways cut, too: her usual chair, her usual drink, the usual urge to amble up to Wheeler and see if she can get his hackles up.

  “Kopp was an hour away from selling your name to some waterfront businessmen,” she says, capping the decanter. Her hand steadier than yesterday. “I got him in time.”

  “To whom.”

  “A man called Weiss. And his friend—short
, fattish, graying muttonchops. At the bar Weiss called him Richard.”

  Wheeler leans against the front edge of the desk, thumb tracing an arc along the side of his whiskey glass. One polished shoe twitching.

  “Weiss’s brother,” he says. “A banker.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Weiss is a competitor of mine,” Wheeler says. “Runs an import business of his own. He’d see me ruined if he had the chance.”

  “Yet another man out to get you,” Alma says. “Is this town unusually cutthroat, or do you just have trouble making friends?”

  This is too much, somehow—a throwaway jab that hits Wheeler hard. He stiffens, a flinch of motion. His eyes narrow. Alma doesn’t want him angry, not now; she needs his cooperation.

  “I told Kopp Benson’s turned sour on him,” she says. “That started him talking. It seems Benson was recommended to him by someone. Kopp was under the impression Benson could bring him into the business.”

  “And they’ve been at this for months?”

  “It explains the missing tar. Benson was being careful, starting slow, and Kopp was getting impatient. He only just found out you’re involved, he said—that’s why he came here.”

  Wheeler isn’t moving closer so she crosses the room to him. Sets her drink on the desk at his hip. Left hand clenching in and out of a fist, the pinkie finger slow to wake out of numbness.

  “We have to shut him up,” she says. “He’s coming here on Monday. I don’t think he should be allowed to leave.”

  Wheeler looks down at her left hand, its pulse of motion.

  “Still giving me trouble,” she says. “Kopp was the one who set up the Seattle side. He’ll come here, give us the last missing piece. And then…”

  “He knows too many people,” Wheeler says. “If he was that close to selling my name to Weiss, maybe others, it will look bad for me if he turns up dead. My reputation is not completely sterling.”

  Alma thinks of Wheeler walking just behind Judge Hamilton. His touchiness about lacking friends. Maybe he’s run into more problems with the trust.

  “It’s sterling if you’re on the trust,” she says. “Right?”