Jessie thought fast. She could get away with a great many falsehoods, but claiming to be a virgin was not one of them. That kind of lie could very easily be checked by somebody like Mrs. Fitzroy!
“No ...” she whimpered. “He and I did it. Once ...”
Mrs. Fitzroy roared with laughter. “Once is all it takes! Lordy! You look good enough to eat, standing there half bare like that,” the gray-haired woman leered. “It’s a good thing for you—” and then she stopped.
“What?” Jessie asked fearfully. “What’s a good thing—”
“Never mind!” Mrs. Fitzroy grumbled. “You’ll find out, and soon enough!” She grabbed Jessie’s arm and steered her out of the room. “Come with me, I’m going to show you what the situation is, around here.”
She dragged Jessie down the corridor to an archway. Before, the archway had been open, but now, securely locked sliding doors had turned it into a dead end.
Mrs. Fitzroy rattled the locked doors. “Through here are the stairs that lead down to the front foyer, and the front door. That’s how we came in, remember?”
Jessie nodded.
“Well, we keep that front entrance for the benefit of new arrivals like yourself,” Fitzroy explained. “It wouldn’t do to have brought you in through the entrance our patrons use.”
The matron pulled Jessie back down the corridor, all the way to the other end, where there was another set of double doors, although these were unlocked.
“These doors lead to another staircase. On this floor and the floors above are rooms where the girls”—here Mrs. Fitzroy paused to tweak one of Jessie’s nipples through the sheer fabric—“entertain their clients. Downstairs we have the sitting rooms, the piano, the bars, and the kitchen. All the way downstairs, in the basement, are the opium dens.”
“What about these rooms, in this hallway?” Jessie asked.
“We let the girls sleep in these rooms when they’re not on duty,” Fitzroy replied. “Or when it’s that time of the month ... The room you were in will be yours for the next couple of days, until you’re used to things ...”
“Did you really burn all of my clothes?” Jessie asked timidly.
“Yes, indeedy! Those tawdry dresses aren’t suitable attire for one of Foxy Muscat’s girls.”
“But I’m not one of her girls!”
“Not yet, of course,” Mrs. Fitzroy sniffed. “But you soon will be. Training you is my job, you see.”
“B-but—”
“But nothing! Here’s the facts, Annie. The door you came through is closed off to you forever. Downstairs you’ll find plenty of other doors and windows, but those that aren’t locked or barred are guarded by the men Foxy keeps about the place to keep order. And even if you do manage to escape, what good will it do you?”
Jessie shrugged. “I could go to the police.”
Mrs. Fitzroy threw back her head and laughed. “Why bother? Most of the department’s top brass are regulars at Foxy Muscat‘s,” she said. “You’ve no money, Annie. And no clothes. You’d be wandering bare-naked on the street. The police would just pick you up and bring you right back here. Foxy would pay them for their trouble. And then I’d tan your hide.” Mrs. Fitzroy’s steely eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”
Jessie shuddered. “No, ma‘am,” she whispered.
“All right, then,” the matron said, satisfied. “Remember one last thing. If you do try to escape, I have a special punishment lined up for you. I have your birth certificate, remember? I know your hometown, and the rather sordid circumstances surrounding your father’s death. Run away, and I’ll send news of what’s happened to you to the Chicago papers, along with your birth certificate to prove my story. I can just imagine how all your friends—and your ex-beau—would love to titter about your fate here in San Francisco.”
Jessie hung her head, defeated. “I won’t try to get away,” she whispered.
“That’s a good girl.” Mrs. Fitzroy slipped her hand beneath the hem of Jessie’s chemise, and patted her bare bottom. “It won’t be so bad, you’ll see,” she confided. “Once you’re broken in and can begin to earn your keep, you’ll be paid a beginner’s wage, just like all the other girls have been paid. You’ll get more money as you become more accomplished. You’ll shop at the finest stores for your clothes ... You wanted to be a servant! Why, servants shall soon envy you, Annie ...”
“Then ... I can leave, for a little while, I mean?” Jessie asked plaintively, but only to stay within the confines of Annabelle’s character. Moore had told her that even the new girls were allowed their liberty, once Fitzy had explained how foolish it would be to try and run away.
“Of course.” Fitzroy nodded. “Eventually.”
Jessie spun around. “What?” she demanded. “I mean, I—” The plan she’d made with Moore called for her to meet him at a prearranged spot tomorrow afternoon!
“We usually let our girls do what they wish with their free time,” Fitzroy was saying. “But you’re a special case. You’ll be serving those clients who frequent the opium dens. Don’t worry, those men aren’t interested in anything but fondling a woman now and then.”
“I don’t understand,” Jessie mumbled, her mind working furiously. She had to meet Moore—
“No man shall have you, dear,” Fitzroy giggled, as if she’d been let in on some private joke. “Not right away, anyway. Your debut will be for the pleasure of a very special client. All of your free time will be spent with me. I’ve got to prepare you.” The matron licked her lips. “This client has certain predilections, you see ...”
Jessie stood silent. Her mind was blank. She felt helplessness sweep over her as Fitzroy opened the double doors that led to the bordello.
“Now you skedaddle downstairs,” Fitzroy ordered, pushing her through the doorway. “One of the other girls will show you how to light the opium pipes. Get used to it, child. You’re not leaving here for a while!”
Chapter 11
“She didn’t meet me,” Moore explained worriedly to Ki. “I waited for an hour, but she never arrived.”
It was the early evening of the day after Jessie had entered the bordello. Jordan Moore and Ki were sitting in the Palace Hotel’s lobby. The detective was anxiously puffing on a cigar and sipping a double bourbon. Ki was not drinking. A cup of tea, untouched, sat before him.
Keemun—a Chinese tea, Ki thought, as the trail of steam rising from the cup reached his nose. It seemed that all of his senses—and the consciousness that nested in his abdomen—had been sharpened and intensified by his long period of meditation.
“You seem awfully damn calm,” Moore grumbled.
“I spent all day yesterday, and last night, in the hotel’s garden,” Ki replied.
“All night?” Moore stared dubiously. “A cold night like last night—”
“I was not cold,” Ki interrupted. “The garden was serene.”
“Didn’t the night watchmen bother you?”
Ki smiled. “The night watchmen did not notice me, my friend.”
Moore shook his head. “I can’t believe they didn’t see you.”
“They may have seen me,” Ki said. “But they did not notice me.”
I’m in no mood for Japanese riddles, Moore thought, although what he said was, “Have it your own way, Ki. But I can’t understand how you can sit there so cool and collected, when Jessie could be in danger.”
“‘Could be,’ is correct, Jordan,” Ki pointed out.
“Just the other day, her being attacked by that thug put you in a rage,” Moore countered.
“True, but I’d blamed myself for leaving her alone to fall prey to that attack,” Ki explained. “This situation is different. Jessie chose to enter the bordello. She is ultimately responsible for her own actions. She has her own karma to live out. I am just as concerned as you are, but I refuse to jump to conclusions.”
“Well, I can’t help myself. I’m worried,” Moore confessed. “What if they’ve caught on to
her somehow?” The detective’s anxious, tired features suddenly contorted. “What if she‘s—”
“No,” Ki whispered, his almond eyes boring into Moore’s. “She is not dead.”
“How do you know?”
“I would know,” the samurai whispered. “I would feel such a thing.” He patted his belly. “I would feel it, inside.”
Moore took a long pull of his drink. “All right.” He heaved a deep sigh of relief. “I don’t know why, but I believe you.” He sat back in his chair to observe his companion. “You seem different, today. Your meditation could make that much difference?”
Ki shrugged. “Perhaps, my friend. However, I have met someone who has taught me the true meaning of serenity in the face of adversity. She is truly an enlightened being.”
“If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, good for you,” Moore smiled. “I’m kind of a changed man, myself.” He hesitated, staring into his glass.
“I think I understand.” Ki offered the detective a smile.
“Let me make sure you do,” Moore hurried on. “I meant that I’ve also met a woman who has changed me, and it’s Jessie. We were together, night before last ...” He glanced at Ki, wondering how the samurai was taking his confession. He half expected the man to lunge for his throat.
“I do understand, Jordan,” Ki replied softly. “And if you will permit me to say so, I believe that it was the lover who lost control of his emotions and panicked a few moments ago, not the professional private investigator.”
Moore nodded slowly, and Ki went on, “But all of this is quite difficult for me to discuss. Let us get back to the matter at hand.”
“Which is somehow getting Jessie out of that bordello,” Moore said.
Ki shook his head. “I think not. I think the thing to do is for me to get into the bordello.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Then clear your mind of emotion!” Ki ordered. “Think logically! There is no need to compromise Jessie’s cover merely because she missed her meeting with you. Perhaps there was some coincidental, random circumstance that has kept her inside the bordello.”
“We don’t know if that’s true,” Moore insisted hastily.
Ki was amused. “And we do not know for a fact that it is false,” he softly countered. “In any event, the two of us charging in would only further jeopardize her safety.”
“That’s true,” Moore admitted sheepishly. “And I can’t call in the police at this point.”
“Will you ever be able to?” Ki asked. “I would think that the chain of bribery forged between the bordello and the police is quite strong.”
Moore shrugged. “Something big enough, or bad enough, could sever that chain. Foxy Muscat’s payoffs only buy her clemency for her petty sins. Something major would bust that joint wide open. The police would then have to act.”
“But there is the cartel to consider,” Ki answered. “They are the ultimate owners of the bordello, and they have now allied themselves with Chang’s Tong. Surely their contacts within the city government are strong?”
“Sure they are,” Moore said. “But even those hard-won connections would vanish if we could expose our enemies by pinning a headline-grabbing crime on them. Hell, they’re vermin,” the detective spat contemptuously. “They’re insects. Shine a light on them, and they’ll scatter.”
Maybe so, and maybe not, Ki thought. He’d battled the cartel before, and considered Moore a bit rash in his estimation of their adversaries. “Jordan?” he asked. “Could you draw me a rough layout diagram of the bordello?”
Moore laughed. “Sure. I’ve spent enough time there!”
“Good,” Ki said. “I would like to bring some things to your apartment that I will need to infiltrate the bordello. I will leave from there.”
“Of course,” Moore said. “But why? I mean, the hotel is closer to the bordello.”
“You see, I shall be dressed in such a way that I could not just saunter through the lobby,” Ki remarked. “I may climb down the outside of the hotel—”
“Never mind,” Moore groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I’m sorry I asked.” He glanced up at Ki, and winked.
“I will also bring to your apartment those things I will need if we are to intercept the cartel’s opium shipment,” Ki mused aloud. “The clipper may well be due in port this very night. Jessie might tell me so.” The samurai regarded the detective. “Be prepared for action tonight, my friend.”
“Annie!” Foxy Muscat chirped in her high, reed-thin voice. “Come here, girl! I want to introduce you to a very important man!”
Jessie stood wearily up from the pillow upon which she’d been kneeling. One of Foxy’s rules required that a new girl, called an initiate, could only sit in a kneeling position while she was on duty in the bordello. As Foxy had put it, an initiate was the newest addition to the “harem,” and as such, had to maintain a respectful posture at all times.
“Quickly, girl!” Foxy scolded. Tonight she’d exchanged her crimson kimono for one of a shocking pink. “He’s in one of the opium dens!”
Oh, no! Jessie moaned silently. Here it was, just the start of her second evening in this damned place, and already it felt as if she’d been here for an eternity. Last night, after being whisked around on a bewildering tour of the labyrinthine four-story house, she’d been assigned to a few hours of duty in the opium dens—a series of rooms in the basement—before being allowed to return to her tiny bed-cell for a bit of much-needed rest.
Resignedly, Jessie followed the billowing, saillike form of Foxy Muscat out of the front parlor. The big, high-ceilinged chamber was where the clientele “got acquainted ” with Foxy’s courtesans. The parlor had wallpaper flocked with red velvet, and a long, polished mahogany bar manned by two bartenders who quickly and efficiently served drinks, hampered not at all by their shoulder holsters, which bulged beneath their steward’s jackets.
Two long, black leather sofas met at a right angle beneath a dimly flickering, crystal chandelier. Here sat Foxy’s girls, all of them scantily and seductively dressed in satins and lace, but none of them in so humiliating and revealing a manner as Jessie herself. For example, several of the courtesans wore gowns that bared their breasts, but Jessie was the only female forced into the indignity of prancing about bare-bottomed.
True to their word, Foxy Muscat and Mrs. Fitzroy were saving Jessie for some special client, as yet to arrive. They would let no man have her, although several clients had already offered exorbitant sums for the privilege.
Jessie grimaced as she walked, for her rear felt very sore. She had the bad luck to be the only initiate presently in the bordello. Accordingly, she was the only one wearing the backside-baring chemise. She’d spent close to twenty-four hours bending across aroused, semi-inebriated men in order to light their smokes or serve them their drinks, at the same time suffering their supposedly good-natured slaps and pinches upon her prominently displayed and quite vulnerable buttocks. Her bottom was spotted black and blue, and felt like she’d spent all this time on the back of a bucking horse, its saddle smacking her backside at every jump.
As Jessie left the room, she’d passed the piano player, a black man flailing away at his instrument’s keyboard. He was a friendly soul, and the only male in the place who’d deigned to smile at her, to treat her like a human being, and not some sort of creature to be poked and prodded at will.
This place had sounded so exotic and racy, when Jordan had described it, that she had laughed then, but she wasn’t laughing now. How different this place was from the geisha houses in Japan that Myobu had told her about. There, apprentices were allowed to blossom naturally. They did not ever come into contact with men until they were officially graduated.
In Foxy Muscat’s bordello, even the other women treated the initiates cruelly. Jessie surmised that it was because they remembered with shame how they themselves had been roped into their present state of affairs. Perhaps it made these women feel better about the
mselves to look down upon the newest members of their dismal club.
Well, there was one benefit to being assigned to the opium dens, Jessie thought as she stumbled down the dark stone steps, precariously balanced upon her absurdly steep high heels. The men down there had little interest in fondling women. They had little interest in anything except where their next pipeful of wretched dope was coming from.
As Jessie descended behind the madam, the stale basement air began to reek from the sweet smell of opium smoke. Purplish clouds of the stuff fogged the basement landing.
Foxy nodded to the one burly armed guard standing sentry duty at the opium dens’ entranceway. Jessie followed her in. One guard was all they needed down here; the dope made the men so docile that there were never any arguments or fights.
The clients paid handsomely for the privilege of indulging their vices in the bordello, so Foxy Muscat took great pains to offer them a much more pleasant environment than could be found in any of the Chinatown dens, where a man could smoke ten times the amount of opium for mere pennies. In Chinatown, the dens were damp, dirty, and rat-infested. They were filled with tiers of narrow wooden bunks that reached from floor to ceiling.
The bordello’s opium dens were luxuriously appointed. Fan tasmagoric murals lined the walls to inspire the dreams of the lazing smokers. The murals featured the nude forms of female water sprites cavorting in a pond, and ample-figured wood nymphs sunning themselves in sylvan glades. The smokers reclined on upholstered couches, or sprawled upon the large floor cushions scattered across the deep carpet. The dens were lit by the soft, lambent glow of candles, some of which were encased in pastel-colored glass lanterns. Beside each smoker’s place was a small charcoal brazier and a lacquered tray that held a pipe, wooden tapers, and a carefully doled-out portion of the sticky brown opium.
The dope was kept under lock and key, behind a counter manned by a surly-looking Chinese fellow. Jessie took it for granted that the man worked for Chang, and was there to make sure that Foxy Muscat did not try to sell off any of the surplus opium supplied to her by the Tong. Both the Tong and the cartel took the lion’s share of the profits generated by the huge shipments of opium. Foxy was really low man—or woman—on the totem pole. Of course, that was difficult for Jessie to remember while she was in the obese madam’s power, and forced to cater to her every whim ...
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