Fallen Women

by Sandra Dallas

  “Nurse Fish, I should like a cup of beef tea.”

  “I’ll talk to Cook,” Lillie had replied gravely, putting the back of her hand to Beret’s forehead. “And I’ll ask her for two pieces of chocolate cake.” And so the two had played at patient and nurse until Beret was better.

  * * *

  It was longer than she’d hoped before Beret met again with Mick McCauley. He was on his way out of the station when she arrived. “I’ve made an appointment to see Joey Summers.”

  Although she knew she could not accompany the detective, she was still disappointed. She did not like being cast aside.

  Mick didn’t seem sorry and he added, “There’s plenty for you to do. The names and addresses of police departments in a dozen cities are on my desk for you. You can write the letters we talked about.” Then he softened. “That won’t be as interesting for you, but it has to be done. Police work can be tedious, you know.”

  Beret had not come to Denver to write letters but she agreed it was necessary. So she went to the detective’s desk and found the list, along with police department letterheads that Mick had left for her. Ignoring the stares of the officers around her, she settled herself on the chair and opened a bottle of ink, then picked up the pen lying next to it—Mick’s pen, she thought, wondering how many police reports he had written with it. She dipped the pen into the ink and began to address an envelope, but the nib was dull, and the ink spattered. She might as well write the letters at home where she had decent writing materials. So she collected the list and stationery and left the room.

  “You want me to take you back to Mrs. Stanton’s now?” Jonas asked. He had insisted on waiting for her, saying because her aunt was ill, she would not be needing the carriage.

  “No,” Beret said suddenly. She paused, thinking. Detective McCauley would be furious with her, for going off on her own, but she didn’t care. After all, he had excluded her from the interviews with the Summerses. So if he could proceed by himself, so could she. Beret gave Jonas an address on Holladay Street.

  Jonas turned around and stared at her. “You know what that is, miss?”

  “Of course I do. Do you?” Remembering what the detective had told her about Jonas, Beret regretted her tone. The driver didn’t need her scorn. And why wouldn’t he know the address? After all, his mother had been a harlot. “I will be perfectly safe, Jonas. I have you to protect me.”

  “You ain’t going to, you know…”

  At first, Beret didn’t understand, and when she did, she laughed. “Join the House of Dreams? Of course not. I merely want to question one of the girls.”

  “The madam ain’t goin’ to let you in.”

  Beret shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  “Mrs. Stanton’ll be mad as a turpentined cat.”

  “Well, don’t tell her, then.”

  When Jonas dipped his chin, Beret didn’t know if he agreed with her or was merely underscoring his objection. It didn’t matter. Beret would worry about Varina’s anger later. Jonas slapped the reins against the horses’ backs, and they rode along in silence.

  When they arrived at the House of Dreams, Beret sat in the carriage for a moment, gathering her thoughts, wondering if she should send Jonas to fetch Elsie. But she wasn’t sure she could trust him and decided to go herself. After all, this was her investigation. She watched as a man went up to Miss Hettie’s. The door was opened, then shut, leaving the man outside. He knocked again, but the door remained closed, and he walked away. When the street was deserted, Beret allowed Jonas to help her down from the carriage, then went to the door herself and lifted the heavy knocker. She had not seen who had opened the door a few minutes previous and hoped it was Mae. If Miss Hettie answered, Beret would have to think of some excuse for calling.

  But it was indeed Mae, surprise and then consternation on her face. “What you doing back here? Miss Hettie throw you out on your pretty rear end she find you standing here,” Mae said, balancing a stack of towels on the door frame.

  Beret held out her hand with a gold coin in it. “Tell Miss Elsie I need to speak to her. There is another coin for her. I’ll wait in the carriage at the end of the block.”

  Mae didn’t reply, just braced the towels and pocketed the money. Then she shut the door. Beret got back into the carriage and told Jonas to drive down the street. The two sat for more than twenty minutes, and Beret was about to abandon her plan when Elsie emerged from the House of Dreams and sashayed down the street, looking as if she were going for a walk. When she reached the carriage, she glanced back at the whorehouse, then jumped inside.

  “You’ll get me in trouble if you come around asking for me the way you done,” she said, pouting. “I expect you to pay me more than you did last time for all the trouble you put me to.”

  “That depends on what you tell me,” Beret said.

  “Well, I already told you everything.”

  “No, you didn’t tell me who supplied my sister with drugs.”

  Elsie looked away, as if trying to recall something. “I never said she was a doper.”

  “Well, you are.” Beret grabbed the girl’s arm and pushed up her sleeve to expose the needle marks.

  “Hey, you got no right. That’s none of your business,” Elsie said. “I ought to go tell Miss Hettie.”

  “Go ahead. But if you want me to pay you, you’ll tell me who was responsible for my sister’s drug habit.”

  Elsie shrugged.

  Beret shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She reached over to open the carriage door for Elsie.

  “Wait a minute. I said I don’t know where she got her drugs. Hell, I don’t even know if she was a doper. You ask me, I’d say no.”

  Beret stared at the girl a moment, wondering if that were true. Perhaps she’d been wrong when she suspected her sister of taking drugs—suspected Teddy of plying her with them. After all, she had no proof, and Mick had said nothing about it. But maybe that was to protect Beret’s sensibilities. “Where do you get yours?”

  “You want to buy some?” Elsie looked sly. “I expect I could get them for you.”

  “Certainly not. Detective Sergeant McCauley and I will want to interview the person who sells them.”

  “Oh, Mick,” Elsie said fondly, and Beret was surprised at the stab of jealousy. Had the detective and the prostitute been intimate? That was not beyond reason. After all, Mick was a virile young man, and single. At least Beret thought he was single. He had never mentioned a wife. Moreover, he had worked the tenderloin, and many of the policemen assigned to the district sampled the wares. But what Mick McCauley did was none of her affair. She was nothing more to him than the sister of a murder victim. She blushed at her presumption.

  “Would she have gotten them from her mac?” Beret asked, keeping her voice calm when she mentioned Teddy. That was a foul charge even for him. But the more she thought about it, the more she blamed him.

  “Maybe.” Elsie shrugged. “Or maybe she bought them from Chinaman Fong down in Hop Alley off Wazee Street, but I never saw her go there. She never said nothing about him. If she was a user, I bet somebody gave them to her.”

  “Is Chinaman Fong your supplier?” Beret asked.

  Elsie looked away and didn’t answer. “I got to go. There’s hell to pay if Miss Hettie catches me with you. She’s got a mean temper, and she’d let loose on me if she found out I was talking to you.”

  At that, Beret’s heart softened, and she wanted to put her arms around the girl, to tell her that she could get out of the life, that she could go someplace where she’d never be mistreated again for stepping out of line. But she knew the girl would scorn her. It was the crib girls and streetwalkers who wanted out, not the well-paid bawds at a place like Miss Hettie’s. What could Beret offer that would compare with the excitement and the money Elsie made at the House of Dreams? In five years, if she lived that long, the girl would look for a way out, but not now. Like most parlor house girls, she believed she was there temporarily and would quit when she met a m
an who would take her away. Or perhaps she dreamed of saving enough money to set herself up in some profitable business, a millinery or flower shop. Beret peered out of the carriage. “I believe it’s safe to go.” She handed two coins to the prostitute and opened the conveyance door.

  Elsie looked around before she stepped out, then she said, “Don’t you come around again asking for me. You want to see me, you send Jonas.”

  Beret was about to ask how Elsie knew Jonas’s name, but she held her tongue. It wasn’t surprising the girls knew Jonas.

  * * *

  Elsie had not given Beret an address for Chinaman Fong, but Beret assumed Jonas would know it. She watched until Elsie was safely inside the House of Dreams, then told the driver, “I would like you to take me to Hop Alley.”

  Jonas stared at her. “I ain’t doing no such thing.”

  Beret was tired and annoyed at Jonas’s stubbornness. “Then I shall go there by myself.”

  “You don’t know where it’s at.”

  “I will stop men on the street and ask them for directions. Would you prefer that? Or perhaps I should go into the House of Dreams and inquire. I wonder what Mrs. Stanton would say about such a thing.”

  Jonas stared at her a long time. “You a snowbird?” he asked at last.

  “I am not. I do not care to purchase cocaine—or opium or morphine, either. I want to question Chinaman Fong to find out who gave drugs to my sister.”

  “She wasn’t no doper, Miss Lillie wasn’t.”

  “How do you know?” It crossed Beret’s mind that if Lillie had taken drugs, Jonas could have been the source for them. He certainly knew his way around the tenderloin. But more likely, it was Teddy. She wanted it to be Teddy.

  “I know’s all.” His little ferret eyes were almost black, and he didn’t blink as he stared at Beret. “Miss, you coming here to Miss Hettie’s can cause talk, but you go to Hop Alley, asking all your questions, you likely to get killed. That ain’t no place for a lady.”

  Jonas’s warning gave Beret pause. He was right. Drug dens were as dangerous as any place in the underworld. She had been inside them in New York, had seen the addicts lying on filthy benches, sucking the bamboo, as it was put, eyes unfocused or closed, smiling at their dreams. The waste of lives had made her sick. The addicts weren’t dangerous, but the proprietors were—unctuous men with their greedy eyes, their hands clasped loosely, ready to grab weapons from under their robes. Beret knew of a mission worker who had been stabbed a dozen times when she’d tried to rescue a young girl from such a place. Beret would be safer if Mick were with her. But there was no proof that Lillie had been an addict or that Teddy was her supplier, only Beret’s suspicion. Mick had shown little interest in finding out if Lillie had taken drugs. He might even order her not to go to Hop Alley. So finding out the truth was up to her. Beret wished she had the little pistol that she sometimes carried for protection, but she had left it in New York. How could she have known she would need it in Denver?

  “I take you home, miss,” Jonas pleaded.

  “No,” Beret said. She sounded resolute, although she was unsure of herself. The decision to talk to the Chinaman was foolish, but she would not turn back. She needed proof that Teddy had given her sister drugs. “The sooner you take me there, the sooner we can return to my aunt’s home, and she will never know.” She hoped Jonas wouldn’t report the stop to Varina. She didn’t want to trouble her aunt.

  Jonas stared at Beret with his unblinking black eyes for so long that she was afraid he would refuse to drive her to Hop Alley, but at last, he turned on the seat and flipped the reins across the horses’ backs. He drove a few blocks, then stopped at an alley. “Fong’s the third door, the red one. I take you,” Jonas said.

  Beret hadn’t considered that Jonas would accompany her, and at first, she felt relieved, because she’d begun to think that visiting Hop Alley was not a good idea after all. Jonas knew Denver’s underworld better than she did, and he was a scrapper. He’d be good protection. But she didn’t trust him. He might tip off the Chinaman with a word or a gesture. For all she knew, Jonas was in the man’s employ. “No,” she said curtly.

  “It’s dangerous in there.”

  Beret shook her head. “I have to do this alone.” She opened the door of the carriage and climbed out, telling herself as she started down the alley that she had experience dealing with such men as Fong and that New York’s tenderloin was likely to be far worse than Denver’s. But she wasn’t convinced, and although she held her head high and walked briskly to the red door, she was frightened. Without knocking, she entered the building.

  The room was dark, and Beret stood a moment in the doorway letting her eyes adjust to the dim room, which was smoky, sweet with the smell of opium. The walls were lined with bunks, where men and women lay either smoking pipes or caught up in the happiness of dreams. The men she could see were Chinese. White men, except for gamblers and pimps, usually preferred other drugs, Beret knew, and Chinese women rarely smoked opium. She recognized a prostitute she had seen at the café near the police station, and there were two white women, society girls, by the look of them, lying on the bunks with their bamboo pipes, giggling. Smoking opium must be as popular among certain upper-class women in Denver as it was in New York.

  A Chinaman closed the door softly behind her, bowed, and asked in his singsongy voice if she wanted an opium pipe.

  “I’ve come to speak to Chinaman Fong,” she said in a voice that was stronger than she felt. In fact, she was tempted to return to the carriage and even took a step backward. She had only suspected that Lillie had taken drugs, and now Beret wasn’t sure at all. Drugs might have played no role at all in Lillie’s turning out. But she had to know, and she had to know if Teddy had gotten them for her sister.

  The man demurred and gave Beret a sad smile. He was so sorry, he said, Chinaman Fong was busy, too busy to see a pretty lady, but he could sell her an opium pipe, very good price.

  Beret took a deep breath then said in a loud voice, “Mr. Fong. I wish to see you.”

  The man winced and patted her arm. “No, no,” he said.

  “Then I shall ask louder,” Beret told him.

  “You wait,” he said, and disappeared through the smoke into the back of the room. In a moment, he returned and bowed. “Follow,” he said, and Beret made her way down the aisle between the opium addicts until she reached a small room and went inside. The door closed behind her.

  Two men sat on stools before a huge wall hanging of embroidered flowers and dragons. Only one of the men was Chinese. He was large and fat, with a stringy ginger-colored mustache that drooped on both sides of his mouth. The white man was small, sickly looking, a doper most likely, and he moved his hands nervously, playing with a cord that he knotted and unknotted. The room was dark, lit only by an oil lamp and the light from a small window encrusted with dirt, and Beret could not see the white man’s face. Neither man stood.

  “You come to buy opium, morphine?” Fong asked.

  Beret shook her head. She had not considered what to say and for a moment was at a loss for words. She glanced nervously at the man behind her.

  “Cocaine?”

  “No.” The men would be curious but have little tolerance for prevaricating. Beret decided to be direct. “I am not here to purchase anything, Mr. Fong,” Beret said. “I am after information. I should like to know who purchased drugs for Lillie Brown.” She hoped Fong would believe she was aware the drugs came from him and would not deny it, but the moment the words were out of her mouth, Beret knew they were wrong. The man was unlikely to tell her anything.

  Fong smiled at Beret and said in respectable English, “I don’t know no Lillie Brown.”

  “That’s the whore got killed at Miss Hettie’s,” the small man told him in a faint voice.

  “Quiet, Mr. Sapp.” Fong shrugged and said to Beret, “Such sorry business. You with the police, lady?”

  Beret was tempted to say she was, to explain she was working with Dete
ctive Sergeant McCauley, but she thought now that Fong wouldn’t give out the intelligence she wanted if he was aware the law was involved. She knew that about the Chinese. They wanted no trouble. She shook her head. “Miss Brown was a friend.” If Beret admitted Lillie was her sister, the man would be similarly inclined to withhold information for fear she would report him.

  “Mr. Fong don’t sell drugs,” Sapp said. He was nervous, twisting the cord around his hand.

  Beret scoffed. “Of course he does. Where do those people in the next room get their opium? This is an opium den, and I have it on good authority that the women on the row and their pimps purchase their supplies here. Mr. Fong just offered to sell me something.”

  “I asked if you wanted,” Fong said. “Who says I sell?”

  Beret narrowed her eyes. “Please don’t play me, sir. The question is not do you deal in drugs but what drugs you sold to Lillie Brown’s mac.”

  “You in the business?” Sapp asked and coughed, sending a yellow glob of sputum to the floor.

  Beret thought of saying she was, but the men would know the prostitutes and madams on Holladay Street, so she only shrugged.

  “You will go to the police with your information,” Fong said. It was not a question.

  “I will if you don’t give me the answers.” Beret knew that she’d made another mistake. She was in no position to threaten the men. She had never before been this foolish, walking into an opium den by herself. Nobody knew she was there, except for Jonas, and she had ordered him to remain outside. Besides, she wasn’t sure she could trust him. She remembered the two white women in the foreroom, but they were in drugged stupors, unlikely to hear her cries. Beret began to perspire from both nervousness and the small airless room. The opium smoke that seeped through the wall made her nauseous. She wanted only to get away safely now.