by Pam Crooks
“Never seen a drug store as fancy as this one,” he muttered.
“Nor have I,” Carleigh said, her gaze touching on the shelves filled with patent medicines for every malady imaginable.
The druggist glanced up from his pill-counting and smiled.
“May I help you?” he asked, well-dressed in his broadcloth suit and tie.
Carleigh explained her discomfort and asked what he might suggest for it.
“Laudanum, of course.” He chuckled. “A wonderful remedy. What would we druggists do without it?” But he grew serious again. “There was a time when pharmacies sold several hundred gallons of laudanum a year. Treated everything from teething babies to diarrhea. Now, it’s far too regulated. Why, if you only knew the duties pharmaceutical companies must pay to have the opium imported!”
Trig leveled him with a cool glance. “You disagree?”
“Well, sir. The fees the Government has imposed have gotten out of control. Little wonder so much of it is brought into the country by illegal means.”
“Seems to me it’s the use of the opium that has gotten out of control,” Trig said, frowning. “The number of addicts and opium dens in the state of California alone is shocking. The Government has had no choice but to try to keep the drug from entering our shores by pricing it out of existence.”
“Opium has been abused, there is no question.” The clerk reached for a tall brown bottle. “Still, it is our industry that must help pay the consequences. Quite literally, I might add.”
“The solution lies with the men who work hard to thwart the smugglers and their crimes.”
The druggist filled a smaller bottle with the liquid laudanum and capped it. His glance lingered on Trig. “You seem quite informed on the subject, sir.”
“Yes.” Trig inclined his dark head with a smile. “I’m in the smuggling business myself.”
The druggist appeared so taken aback, Carleigh couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. She followed the conversation between the two men with fascination and knew Trig’s affiliation with the Customs Service as a special agent enforced his convictions.
The druggist cleared his throat loudly. “Obviously, smugglers evade the duties we were just speaking of. It would not be difficult to do, given our fair city’s close proximity to Mexico and access to ocean waters. If you know what I mean.”
Trig smiled. “I think I do.”
When the prescription was complete, the druggist advised Carleigh of the benefits and dangers of the laudanum and assisted her in taking a prescribed dose right then and there, to ease her persistent headache. Trig paid the bill, then took her arm to leave. Carleigh expressed her thanks and tucked the bottle of laudanum into her hand bag.
Outside, Carleigh blinked in the morning sun. She set Spencer down and looped his leash around her wrist. Slipping her hand in the crook of Trig’s elbow, they fell into a leisurely stroll down C Street.
“What sounds good to you?” he asked, his mood far better this morning than it had been last night, when his thoughts had absorbed him into the early morning hours. “We have the whole day to spend at our leisure.”
Until Esteban sent word of her mother, anyway. If it were up to Carleigh, she would go to Tijuana right now to wait on his doorstep.
But before she could voice the words, Trig stiffened and abruptly turned her, forcing her toward the window of a hardware store, her back to the street. He picked up Spencer and slipped him inside his coat, then stepped behind her, shielding her from view.
“What is it?” Carleigh dared to lift her head just a little to see who—or what—he saw.
“Liko Kwan.”
Her pulse tripped in sudden trepidation. He sat astride a chestnut mare, his stance alert in the saddle. Beneath the flat brim of his hat, his black eyes slid over anything that moved.
If not for Trig’s quick thinking, he would have spotted them, and Carleigh shivered in relief. He drew up at the opulent St. James Hotel and dismounted, paused a moment and glanced around again, as if he sensed their presence somehow.
The doors opened, and another man stepped out, a short, stocky Chinese, well-dressed with a queue hanging down his back. He appeared to have been waiting for Kwan’s arrival.
“They’re heading for the Bay,” Trig said. “You feel up to following them?”
“Yes, but why?” she said, though her instincts told her it was far safer to avoid the man than risk him seeing them.
“Anyone who can afford to stay at the St. James and knows your father’s henchman can only be up to no good.”
Carleigh’s brows furrowed. “So you suspect something about the man Liko is with?”
“Just call it a hunch.” Trig handed her Spencer. “Hold on to him. And keep him quiet.” He urged her away from the hardware store. “Keep your head down. We’ll follow at a discreet distance. Be prepared to duck into a doorway or alley if they suspect we’re tailing them.”
Carleigh had never done anything of the sort before, and apprehension hummed in her veins. What if Liko discovered them following him and attacked her again?
Trig, however, seemed to have none of her misgivings. He was an expert at sleuthing; he knew when to walk faster and when to hold back; when to walk on the same side of the street and when to cross over. Liko and his companion never knew they were being pursued.
Suddenly, a horseman galloped at full speed down the rough pavement of Broadway Street. A crowd had begun to gather the closer they drew to San Diego Bay. An unmistakable trill of excitement filled the air.
“What is it?” someone called out.
“The Great Republic. She’s just in from China,” the rider replied.
“There she is,” Trig said, dragging his gaze from Liko and his companion to point to the huge steamer on her way up the harbor. An American flag, flanked by another belonging to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and the yellow dragon flag of China, flew proud in the breeze.
High, closed gates held back a vast crowd of Americans, Europeans and Asians. Vehicles of every description jammed together in anticipation of the steamer’s arrival. A stern-looking police officer stood at the gate, and Liko’s companion handed him a card; the officer nodded and let both men through.
Trig urged Carleigh faster through the throng of people. Upon reaching the serious-faced policeman, he withdrew a badge bearing the circular seal of the U. S. Treasury Department.
The officer’s eyes sharpened with interest. “The Customs Service, eh?”
Trig gave him a curt nod. “Who was the Celestial you let through? The stocky one?”
The officer pulled out the card he’d been given. “Says here his name is Sam Kee. He’s a Chinese merchant.”
“For who?”
“Kwong Fong Tay--.” The officer stumbled over the wording.
“Kwong Fong Tai and Company,” Carleigh corrected. “I’ve heard of them. They’re from San Francisco.”
The officer nodded, still studying the card. “Yep. ‘Frisco.” His gaze lifted. “You got something on ‘em?”
“Maybe. Mind if we go through?” Trig asked, already heading for the gate. Carleigh suspected he would have refused to take ‘no’ for an answer.
“Reckon you can. Them heathen Chinee are probably smuggling the poppy. They all got their fingers in it somehow.”
He opened the gate, and Trig took her hand, bringing her through with him.
“Pompous idiot,” Carleigh said, annoyed. She thought of Luann, an upstanding American citizen, as fine a person as could be found, in this country or abroad. “There are many good Chinese who have nothing to do with opium.”
“I know, sweet.” His fingers tightened over hers in understanding. She detected a flash of pain in his features before it disappeared. “Opium smuggling has even affected the innocent.”
On the wharf, it was less crowded. An assortment of vehicles waited, among them hacks sent to carry someone important to their destination, as well as United States Mail and express wagons. A group of
uniformed custom house officers waited for the steamer to dock, along with an entire watch of San Diego police, garbed in gray uniforms and armed with clubs and revolvers. In addition, there were several dozen Chinese merchants, consignees of the cargo the Great Republic carried.
Liko Kwan and Sam Kee joined the group. They hovered together in deep conversation, and Trig drew close, keeping them constantly in his sight.
“You ever hear your father talk about Kwong Fong Tai and Company before?” he asked suddenly.
“No,” she said. “But he’s received packages from them in the past. I’ve seen them in his office.”
“What kind of packages?”
“Gifts.” She shrugged, never having questioned them before now. “Art work. Silver pieces. Jewelry and such. Why?”
He didn’t answer, but she knew by the grim set of his jaw that he filed the information away.
A half mile distant, the Great Republic, already positioned for docking, surged forward, its wheels beating the bay into a foam. The crowd seemed to hold its breath en masse while she slid into her berth alongside the wharf. Her wheels reversed, and she stopped.
Cheers rose up from the crowds beyond the gates.
“She’s magnificent!” Carleigh breathed, caught up in the reverie, her love for ships holding her fascinated at this one. Since Papa was prone to seasickness, it’d been Pierre who had taken her boating whenever he could, and from the time she had been tall enough to reach the ship’s wheel, she had reveled in the feel of the wind on her face and the ocean’s spray on her skin.
On the main deck, Chinese immigrants, many of them unaccompanied young women and very likely carrying false papers, gazed in silent wonder at their new home. Carleigh could only imagine their relief to arrive after their grueling two-month long journey across the ocean, and she hoped America proved to be the land of their dreams.
For many of them, she knew sadly, it would not.
Luann often lamented the women’s fates, how they would disappear into Chinatown brothels, living lives nothing short of sex slavery, despite the Government’s attempts to prevent it. Customs officers, men like Trig and Gif, fought an endless battle to prove the authenticity of the immigrants’ papers and explanations of their presence in America, for the officers knew deportation back to China was far preferable to the hell they would live in America.
A sudden, unexpected pride swelled within her for Trig. For all he did for his country.
For what he was doing, even now, for her and her mother.
Her head angled to study him. His profile spoke of power and strength. Of compelling masculinity.
Of honor.
She could fall in love with a man like Trig Mathison.
Perhaps she already had.
As if he sensed her thoughts of him, his head turned and their gazes met. Her pulse faltered at the sweet shock of it, and she couldn’t resist reaching up to caress his lean cheek.
That dark-eyed gaze of his dropped to her mouth. She ached for a kiss, knew that he wanted it, too. He slid the pad of his thumb gently along the fullness of her lower lip.
The Great Republic’s gangway planks lowered with a loud creak and shattered the spell he wove around her. A handful of Americans emerged first from the cabin. The customs officers inspected their baggage lying on the wharf, then chalked their names on each one to mark their approval.
After the Americans disembarked, a young Chinese woman appeared on the gangway. Hardly more than four feet tall, clad in a tunic of sky-blue satin, with wide loose trousers of darker blue, she hesitated, looking neither right nor left. She wore a wreath of flowers in her hair, puffed fashionably and held with gold and silver skewer-like ornaments. She kept her almond-shaped eyes downcast; fans kept much of her face hidden from the crowd’s curious stares.
Sam Kee strode up the gangway to meet her and bowed. He took her arm, leading her the rest of the way down to the wharf. Her entourage of servants and family members followed.
“She is his bride, I think,” Carleigh said softly, standing up on tip toe to see better. “She appears very wealthy. Their parents would have arranged for their marriage when they were very young. Now that she is of age, she has come here to be wed.”
Bracelets and bangles of silver and jade encircled the young woman’s wrists and ankles and clinked musically with her every step. Sam led her to Liko Kwan and appeared to introduce her.
A horde of Chinese men, mostly in their twenties, trod next down the gangway. All of them were dressed in clean blue cotton blouses and baggy trousers. Their foreheads were shaved, and their glossy black hair was braided with silk into long queues. Carleigh recognized them as coolies, or laborers, who would work in any one of a variety of low-paying industries. They carried long bamboo poles across their shoulders. Baskets attached at each end contained their meager possessions.
A dozen or so Chinese girls followed. Though they wore tunics and trousers like other Chinese women, theirs were obviously of poorer quality; their cheeks and lips were painted a gaudy red. On their heads, they wore checked cotton handkerchiefs, the chevron of prostitution.
Ignorant of morals and the contracts they signed in China, they would service their masters in a slavery more horrible than any human being should endure. After an indelicate search by the officers, their purchasers delivered them into the charge of sallow old hags, dressed in black and carrying rings of keys at their waists.
Carleigh’s heart ached for how these girls would live. Would they ever know the warm intimacy a man’s love could give them? Would their lives always be so hopeless?
Policemen shouted directions and swung their clubs to direct and divide the Celestials into small groups while the customs officers searched their baggage and person for smuggled goods. Patient and silent, each group squatted near their baskets and waited.
A one-masted sloop had slipped into the wharf next to the Great Republic. In light of the excitement and sobering curiosities the giant steamer provided, Carleigh hadn’t noticed its arrival. The ship was small, unpretentious, and her glance would not have lingered upon it but for the passengers it carried.
Prisoners, clad in chains about their wrists and ankles. A half-dozen in all, their heads bowed, their bodies beaten and weary. Armed guards urged them onward. From the distance, Carleigh couldn’t hear the clank of the prisoners’ irons nor could she see their faces, but she felt their despair as if it were something horrible she could hold in her hand.
Would her mother have endured the same despair? The same horrors?
Carleigh’s heart squeezed at the pain of it. She blinked at sudden tears and turned to avoid watching them. But one more appeared, and she turned back.
The prisoner wore a hooded cloak that hid all sign of his identity, and he moved slowly from the weight of his shackles. He used a cane to keep himself upright, and Carleigh didn’t want to think of the atrocities he must have endured.
How had he survived it? How could anyone?
“They’re leaving,” Trig said, staring at Sam Kee and his young bride.
Carleigh dragged her attention to the throng on the wharf. A policeman, detailed as the couple’s escort, waved his club back and forth amongst the crowd, parting a path for them to leave in a richly-appointed carriage. The bride’s servants and family members followed in separate rigs.
And though Trig and Carleigh searched frantically through the congestion of bodies, bamboo baskets and merchandise cluttering the planks, Liko Kwan was nowhere to be found.
He stood in the shadows at the far end of the wharf and watched while dock workers unloaded the massive tonnage of cargo the Great Republic carried, crowding the area with everything from pickled duck eggs to firecrackers, assorted sundries and silks and porcelain ware.
And scores of plain wooden crates.
The crates captivated him most of all.
“Our delivery has arrived, it seems.”
Liko glanced at Sam Kee. “You were quick to circle back.”
; “Yes. My driver knows how to be discreet.”
“Your bride-to-be?”
“She has gone on to the hotel. I will join her after our business here is complete.”
Liko slid his attention back to the dock. “She is beautiful.”
“Yes. I am pleased to have her.”
But not as beautiful as Carleigh. Or as courageous.
The injury to his nose was a testament to that. Beautiful Carleigh was a fighter. He hadn’t known that about her until she hit him.
Hurt him.
She would understand when he did the same to her.
He preferred a woman who knew what she wanted and set about to get it.
Not unlike himself.
Too bad it was her own mother she set about to see.
“Jorge Esteban had a visitor last night,” Kee commented, his hands clasped behind his back, his shrewd, almond-shaped eyes moving over the activity before him.
Esteban. Liko recalled the man, a small trader in the business. But one who had been in it a long time. “Is that supposed to interest me?”
“His visitor was asking about a woman named Blue Belle Lamont.”
Liko’s stomach sank to his toes.
Mathison.
He kept his features expressionless. “What about her?”
“He convinced Esteban to have her brought to Tijuana.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
Liko’s pulse quickened. Mathison worked fast. How much time did Liko have left? Could he get to Carleigh again before Belle arrived?
He had to.
“Reginald must be desperate by now,” Kee commented.
“He is.”
“Most unfortunate.”
A uniformed customs inspector approached them, a clipboard in his hand.
“Mr. Kee.”
“Hawthorne.”
“Beautiful day, sir.”
“It is.”
“The merchandise you were expecting has arrived. Is everything satisfactory?”