Bordello Walk

by Melissa Bowersock

  “Sure.” He got out of the car and pulled his peacoat up around his neck.

  “Then tomorrow,” she said, “we can start our research.”

  She didn’t notice that Sam made no reply.

  ~~~

  SIX

  In the morning, they took advantage of the motel’s free breakfast and used the time to plan out their day.

  “Okay, we need to go to that Mine Museum first,” she said, scanning her notes. “We can find out there how to access the archives.”

  Sam heaved a sigh. “Lacey, I can’t.” She looked up at him, her eyes wide with surprise. “It’s too hard,” he said. “I can’t spend hours up there. You go. I’ll stay here and see what I can find online.”

  She searched his face, that face she loved: the warm copper skin, the angular lines, the obsidian-black eyes. Eyes that had a new vulnerability to them. A new fear.

  She reached across the table and threaded her fingers between his. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe we shouldn’t have come.” She swallowed. “We could still turn it down.”

  He was already shaking his head. “No, we committed to it and we’ll finish it. I can do it. I just have to pace myself. I’ll go when I need to, but I can’t spend all day up there.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I know this isn’t how you thought it would be. Maybe I just… overestimated myself.”

  She pulled his hand to her lips and kissed the back of it. “We’ll make it work.”

  Back in their room, Lacey got out her laptop and set it up for Sam on the round table in the sitting area.

  “I’ve got a ton of bookmarks on my browser for helpful sites,” she told him. She clicked on the dropdown box to show him the extended list. “Until we get some names and dates, though, I’m not sure how far you can go.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I can read up on the history and see if anything clicks.” He tapped the book Lorraine had loaned them. “Can I keep this today? You don’t need it, do you?”

  “No, go ahead. I’m guessing I’ll have plenty to read at the museum and, hopefully, at the archives.”

  “I’m sure,” Sam agreed. “Okay. We’ll start our two-prong attack and see what we can find.”

  Lacey pulled her pack up on her shoulder by the straps. “If you run into anything you want me to check out, just call,” she said.

  “I will.” He stepped closer and put both hands on her shoulders. He stared into her eyes. “We can do this, Lace. Don’t worry.” He leaned down and brushed a kiss across her lips.

  “I know,” she said, smiling brightly. “I’ll call you when I start back.”

  “I’ll be here,” he said.

  ~~~

  SEVEN

  She told herself not to worry about him as she drove toward Jerome, but still bit her lip and caught her attention drifting away from the drive at hand.

  Focus, she ordered her errant brain. At least until she got to her destination.

  She was proud of herself for not needing Sam’s map, and retraced the path to Jerome without a hitch. It wasn’t difficult. Highway 89A West to 89A South, then up the twisting, turning road. Instead of turning off to Lorraine’s house, she went straight through to Main Street.

  The Mine Museum was on the corner of Main and Jerome Avenue. She scored a parking spot only half a block away and looked around town as she walked back. In full daylight, it was easy to see the appeal. The storefronts in the business district all harked back to their frontier origins with catchy names and rustic wooden signs. With the rugged mountain rising up behind the town and the brilliant blue sky overhead, it wasn’t hard to imagine the Wild West town in its heyday.

  Above her, perched at the top of Cleopatra Hill, the Grand Hotel sat like a queen on a high throne. The five-story building was cream-colored with red roof and trim, built in a mission style, and overlooked the entire town. Seeing it as it was now, she couldn’t quite conceive of it as a hospital; it had made the transition well. The only things that hadn’t transitioned well were the ghosts that walked the halls.

  Directly across from the Mine Museum was the Connor Hotel, and Lacey guessed that was a building that had seen plenty of history. It looked old and musty, yet was still in use. The Mine Museum itself was easy to spot; it was a corner building with two huge half rounds of some gigantic metal wheel thrusting up from the sidewalk, one on either side of the corner. Probably some piece of mine equipment, she thought.

  She pushed through the door and stepped inside.

  The front room was a gift shop, crowded with all sorts of touristy things: rustic signs, figurines, t-shirts, tumbled rocks, designer soap and jewelry. At a short back counter, a man was busy writing something, and next to him was a door with a sign proclaiming the Mine Museum, Admission: $2.00.

  “Good morning,” he said finally, shoving his paperwork aside.

  “Good morning,” Lacey said. She stepped up to the counter.

  The man looked close to her own age, mid-thirties, but was much taller and quite lanky. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt but no name tag.

  “My name is Lacey Fitzpatrick,” she said. She handed her card to him. “I’m a private investigator and I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”

  The man read the card quickly, then glanced up at Lacey. “About what?”

  She smiled to mitigate his concern. “Ghosts,” she said simply.

  The man returned her smile and handed the card back. “Jerome has plenty of those,” he affirmed, “but you may want to contact one of the ghost tour outfits. They can tell you all about the local legends.”

  Still smiling, she shook her head. “No, I don’t want a tour. My partner is a medium, and we’re working to eradicate three ghosts from the Crystal Slipper building. I’m hoping you can help me identify them.”

  The man regarded her silently, and Lacey wondered how many woo-woos and crackpots he encountered. She kept her expression friendly yet serious.

  “What do you need?” he asked finally.

  She released the breath she’d been holding. “As I said, I’m trying to identify the ghosts. They all seem to be… working women. Prostitutes. One died in a fire, and we understand that building was destroyed twice, once in 1894 and then again in 1898. Is there a record of the people who died in those fires?”

  He still seemed to be making up his mind about her, and mulled over her question. “Lorraine Kraft hired you?” he asked.

  Lacey nodded. Of course in a town this small, everyone would know who owned what property.

  “Well,” he said, “the archives are in another building, the old Episcopal Church on Clark Street.” He glanced at his watch. “You can go there and access quite a bit of information on the visitor computers, or you can submit a request for a research project. We normally acknowledge research requests within twenty-four hours.”

  There was no way Lacey was going to sit on her thumbs for twenty-four hours. “I’ll try the computers,” she said. “Can you give me directions?”

  He nodded. “Clark Street is the next street up the hill. There’s a stairway across the street that’ll take you up there, then turn left. You can’t miss it.”

  Lacey smiled grimly. People in small towns loved that phrase, “You can’t miss it,” which was easy for them to say when they knew every brick and tree in town. She hoped, this time, it was true.

  “Thanks,” she said. She slid her card back into her pack and headed out the door.

  Next street up. She saw the stairs immediately, just across the street, and noted the height they reached. Jerome was situated on the side of a mountain, and each succeeding horizontal street looked to be about forty feet above the one below. She hiked her pack up on her shoulder and, looking both ways, crossed the street to the stairs.

  She quickly realized that living in LA at close to sea level was not the best training for navigating Jerome. Halfway up the stairs, she remembered that Jerome sat at 5,200 feet, and the combination of the mile-high elevation and the
almost infinite stairs began to tell on her. Three-quarters of the way up, she stopped to catch her breath, and could already feel the burn in her thighs. She’d be sore tomorrow.

  After a moment’s rest, she pushed on up the rest of the way to Clark Street, and turned left. Ah, yes, there was the church. The man had been right. It rose up imperially above the street. No, she couldn’t miss it.

  Mounting the stairs—more stairs!—to the front door, she couldn’t help but admire the building. It was old, she was sure, but had been lovingly preserved. She finally gained the front portico and pushed through the door.

  Inside, the entry area was separated from the archives by a long counter. She saw no one, heard only the hushed, closed space that still felt like a church, or a library. She was very aware of the scuff of her shoes as she walked to the counter.

  Still no one appeared; she heard no sounds from the back area. A silver hotel bell sat on the counter. She tapped it once, sending out one light ping.

  Almost immediately she heard responding noises through an open doorway: a chair being pushed back, light footsteps.

  A woman emerged. She was fortyish, rather thin, with a cloud of curly brown hair. She wore a long, flowered skirt and a buttoned-up cardigan sweater.

  “Can I help you?” She smiled a greeting, her hazel eyes huge behind her glasses.

  “Yes. I’d like to do some research and I understand you have computers I can use. I’m trying to identify some prostitutes that died in the Crystal Slipper building around 1900.”

  “Oh, all right.” The woman looked as if she were mulling that over, then made a decision. She nodded once. “Let me get a gentleman who can help you. Hang on.”

  She disappeared back into the office from where she’d come, and Lacey heard murmured conversation. After a few moments, the woman returned with a man in tow. He looked slightly older, maybe fifty, and wore a western shirt. His cowboy boots clacked on the tile floor.

  “This is our resident expert on prostitution,” she said with a mischievous smile. “Zane Dick.”

  He stepped forward and put a hand out to Lacey. “And no remarks about my name, please,” he said lightly. “I’ve heard ‘em all.”

  Lacey could imagine. She returned his smile and liked the laugh lines that crinkled at the corners of his eyes. She shook his hand.

  “I’m Lacey Fitzpatrick, and I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said.

  “And you’re researching ladies of the night in Jerome?” As he talked, he walked down toward an opening at the end of the counter. He slid through and guided Lacey to another room on the far side. The door was open and as they walked through, Lacey saw two desks with computers set up.

  “Either one,” he said, waving at the work stations.

  Lacey went to the nearest one. “Do you want to drive?” she asked.

  He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Let me make sure it’s set up,” he said. He took the chair and shook the mouse to bring the computer to life. A password screen appeared and brightened. He tapped in the characters.

  “We don’t usually get folks in first thing in the morning,” he said, hitting the enter button. “Now, you’re wanting to identify...?”

  “Ladies that died in the Crystal Slipper building. One died in a fire, one died just outside, frozen to death, and one was shot in the forehead by a man.”

  Zane looked around at Lacey with raised eyebrows. “Pretty specific. But you don’t know their names?”

  “No. Or exactly when they died. We understand the brothels were moved off of Main Street about 1905, so they had to die before that.”

  Zane nodded, clicking his way through some navigation screens. “We’ve had a lot of fires in Jerome over the years,” he said.

  “The owner of the building said it burned in 1894 and 1898,” Lacey supplied. “Would a newspaper account have listed the people who died in the fires?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Zane said. “The newspaper at the time was the Jerome Mining News.”

  Lacey watched over his shoulder as he typed in a search string, hit the submit button and a handful of suggestions came up.

  “You know,” she said, “as grateful as I am for you doing this for me, I hate to take you away from your work.”

  Zane shook his head, not looking up as he clicked on a link. “This is one of those things that would probably take me longer to explain than to just do it. And we’re not busy right now, so…”

  Thinking more about it, he turned to look up at Lacey. “Unless you want me to leave you alone…”

  Lacey smiled. “Hey, I’ll take all the help I can get. I just didn’t want to intrude on your work time.”

  “Not a problem,” he said, going back to the screen. “Here you go. The fire was on 9/11, 1898. How’s that for irony? And it basically destroyed the entire town.”

  Lacey pulled the chair from the second desk and set it next to Zane’s so she could view the screen. “Any list of the dead?”

  “Here’s a partial. This says some bodies were unrecognizable, charred so badly. An undertaker—talk about irony—a dry goods clerk, a bawdy woman—”

  “Is that a prostitute?” she asked.

  “Yeah. That’s a nice way of saying it. Hmm. Looks like we need to look at later editions, after they identify the bodies, if possible.” He retraced his steps to the list of possible articles and clicked on another one. “I’ll bet that was a job,” he muttered.

  Lacey silently agreed. In her time on the LAPD, she’d seen some horrendous damage to human bodies. She never got used to it.

  “Okay, here,” Zane said. “Dry goods clerk… undertaker… sporting woman Mai Oui Schulter.” He turned to Lacey. “Must be French.”

  Lacey dug in her pack for her notebook and a pen and wrote down the name. “Does it say she died in that building? The Crystal Slipper?”

  “Mmm, no,” Zane said, scanning the article. “It doesn’t mention addresses at all, since the entire business district burned. But that’s the only sporting woman mentioned, so it must be her.”

  “Sporting woman,” Lacey repeated cynically. “There sure are a lot of euphemisms for that profession.”

  “Well, you have to remember,” Zane said, “until after the turn of the century, prostitution was an openly accepted part of society. The population was eighty percent men to twenty percent women, and the mine owners wanted to keep their miners happy—to a point. Prostitution was a necessary evil.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Lacey said. She looked down at the name. It was a start, but not much of one. She got a sudden idea. “Are there census records for this time? Either 1890 or 1900?”

  “Sure.” Zane turned back to the computer. “Let me pull those up.”

  Lacey tapped her notebook with her pen. If they could get a list of all the women at that address, that would certainly help.

  “Okay, here’s 1890. Proprietor: Linda McKinney. Shows an Al Kunz listed as a ‘boarder.’” He snorted. “The rest are listed as ‘courtesans.’ You want me to read the names?”

  “Please,” she said. She squinted at the grainy image on the screen, but the handwritten entries were a tiny scrawl.

  “Shorty Stewart, Michelle Schulter, Moonlight Mozelli, Queenie MacKenzie and Helen Altus.”

  Lacey jotted the names and noted the same last name as quoted in the article. “So what’s with these names?” she asked. “I’m guessing Mai Oui is Michelle, but Shorty? Queenie?”

  Zane turned toward her. “Many of these women took nicknames or aliases. They may have not wanted their families to know what they were doing, or could have been fleeing the law in eastern towns. Coming out west, it was pretty easy to make up a new name and start a new life.”

  “But wouldn’t the census be wanting legal names?” she asked.

  He laughed. “They may have wanted them, but may or may not have gotten them. The census-takers weren’t in any position to demand documentation, or to verify it if they did. They were simply recording what they w
ere given.”

  “I see what you mean,” Lacey said. “Okay, so 1900?”

  Zane pulled up the next record, searched for and found the address.

  “Here we go. Irish Rose McKinney, proprietor, Al Kunz, boarder, then simply listed as ‘sporting’ are Cookie Brooks, Shorty Stewart, Moonlight Mozelli, Helen Altus, Ruby Mills and Susan Springer.”

  Lacey nodded as she wrote. A few new ones to replace some that were missing, including Michelle. “I suppose there was quite a bit of turnover in this profession,” she surmised.

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “The women came and went. If the mines began to play out in one area, or a new strike was made in another area, they might move on to green pastures, so to speak. You have to remember that they might keep everything they owned in a single carpet bag.”

  What a life, Lacey thought. Casually lived and, often, casually ended.

  “Do you want the 1910 census?” Zane asked.

  Lacey shook her head. “No. All three women were gone by then. They all died there on Main Street.”

  “Lorraine tell you that?” he asked.

  She smiled grimly. “No. My partner is a medium. Lorraine hired us to clear the ghosts out of the building, and Sam was able to sense how each died.” She glanced down at the plethora of names. “Once we find out their real names and what their stories are, we can help them let go.” She looked back at Zane and saw some uncertainty in his eyes. “I’m sure you see all kinds of ghost-chasers around here,” she said.

  “We do,” he said, nodding. “So who do you work for?”

  She shrugged. “We work for ourselves. For our clients. And for the ghosts who can’t move on by themselves.”

  He frowned. “You’re not with a TV show or…?”

  “Nothing like that,” Lacey said quickly. “We’re paid by the people who hire us, and we don’t publicize what we do. We don’t view these tethered spirits as entertainment. We just want to free them.”

  Zane considered that, his gentle brown eyes reflecting his deep thought.