“I wondered why the neighbor was keeping tabs on your deliveries.”
“She suspects me of voodoo.” Delphine rolls her eyes. “And she’s not the only one. I keep the place bleak as a nunnery, ruin my knees kneeling at church, and the backwoods creatures still chatter.”
Port Townsend seems an uneasy perch for Delphine. As a dark-skinned woman with a fortune, she would be singular anywhere, but San Francisco’s riot of faces and colors and languages provided a lively background into which she could disappear. Apart from its small Chinese community and a smattering of tribespeople, Port Townsend is white as a sheet. Alma misses the city’s urban churn. And she’s only been away a fortnight, while Delphine’s been stuck up here in the wilderness for years. She must be bored. And lonely.
“Oh, for our glory days in the city,” Alma says, though she is thinking of their nights.
“This is no San Francisco,” Delphine says. “But the profits—they are fine.”
“They’ll stay that way. I guarantee it.” Alma bows, despite her outfit, and lets herself into the hall.
5
JANUARY 25, 1887
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH SAMUEL REED
WHEREUPON THE FOLLOWING PROCEEDINGS WERE HAD IN THE JEFFERSON COUNTY JAIL, PORT TOWNSEND, WASHINGTON TERRITORY, ON JANUARY 25, 1887.
LAWMEN PRESENT: CITY MARSHAL GEORGE FORRESTER, OFFICER WAYLAN HUGHES
TRANSCRIPTION: EDWARD EDMONDS, ASSISTANT DEPUTY COLLECTOR, U.S. CUSTOMHOUSE
OFFICER HUGHES: Have you been in town long?
MR REED: No.
OFFICER HUGHES: When did you arrive?
MR REED: A few months ago. Jesus. Can I have some coffee?
OFFICER HUGHES: In a bit. What brought you here?
MR REED: Nothing special. Looking for work.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: You gave your last place of residence as 2118 Grove Street, Chicago.
MR REED: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Look, can’t you draw that curtain? The light’s in my eyes.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: That’s the idea.
OFFICER HUGHES: Chicago, huh? You’ve come a mighty long way to look for work.
MR REED: I saw a Northern Pacific paper about jobs out West. Thought I’d try my luck.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: You hit the jackpot in Port Townsend?
MR REED: Doesn’t look like it, does it?
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Don’t take that tone with me, son.
MR REED: I’ll be sweet as cream candy if you tell me why I’m in irons. And get me some coffee. Or hair of the dog. I can’t hardly sit up straight.
OFFICER HUGHES: A few more questions first.
MR REED: Might have to puke …
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Wonderful.
OFFICER HUGHES: If you need a bucket, we’ll get you one. Where are you staying in town?
MR REED: Wherever I can afford.
OFFICER HUGHES: And who’s your employer?
MR REED: I don’t want to say.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: You don’t want to say.
MR REED: I don’t want him to think I got him in trouble.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: That’s a damn strange worry to have now.
MR REED: You don’t know my boss.
OFFICER HUGHES: Leaving his name aside, what do you do for him?
MR REED: Uh, he’s got me on the docks, mostly, with some other hands, working nights.
OFFICER HUGHES: And were you working last night?
MR REED: Yeah, I was … wait.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Think of something?
MR REED: Is she why I’m here? Oh, Christ. I didn’t—
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Jackson! God damn it. Jackson, get a bucket. Don’t you dare—Aw, hell. These are new boots.
OFFICER HUGHES: Jackson, bring a mop, too. Sorry about your boots, sir.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Smells like a god damn sewer.
MR REED: I told you I felt sick.
OFFICER HUGHES: Reed. You said she. She’s why you’re here. Who is she?
MR REED: (inaudible) … no. No.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: You better sober up quick, son, or I’ll whip you into shape.
OFFICER HUGHES: Reed. Who’s she?
MR REED: Oh, Christ … Her name’s Sugar.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Sugar?
MR REED: Yeah. Sugar Calhoun. She’s done nothing good for me since the day I met her.
OFFICER HUGHES: How do you know Miss Calhoun? Or is it missus?
MR REED: Miss. She got hold of me when she came into town.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: You knew her already?
MR REED: We were in Chicago together. A while ago.
OFFICER HUGHES: You were lovers?
MR REED: (inaudible)
OFFICER HUGHES: What’s that?
MR REED: I said that’s none of your business.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Everything is our business in here.
MR REED: I don’t see what it’s got to do with—
OFFICER HUGHES: These are simple questions, Sam. May I call you Sam?
MR REED: Nobody calls me that.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Answer the questions.
MR REED: Can I have a drink? I feel awful sick. Water, anything …
MARSHAL FORRESTER: No.
OFFICER HUGHES: Just answer some questions, and we might be able to find a drink for you. Sir, we could probably find him a drink.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Sure, I’ll find him something.
MR REED: All right. All right! No need for that.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Do as you’re told.
OFFICER HUGHES: Walk us through when you got to town, when Miss Calhoun arrived, how she found you, and so on.
MR REED: I got here a few months ago, like I said. Early November? I don’t know the day. Came in by boat from Seattle, which was a hardship. I get real sick in boats. So I came in, sick as a dog, and slept it off at a cheap place by the docks. The next morning I went to look for work. Found a spot on a loading crew.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: A loading crew where?
MR REED: On Union Wharf, by the freight warehouses. Sometimes we’d shift to Quincy.
OFFICER HUGHES: And you worked there for a while?
MR REED: Yeah. The job got me through that cold snap at New Year. A week, week and a half after that—
OFFICER HUGHES: A week after New Year?
MR REED: Yeah. I was finishing my shift and the foreman said I had a letter.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Did you regularly get correspondence at the docks?
MR REED: What?
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Letters.
MR REED: No. I thought it was a mistake. No one knew where I was, or where I was working. I’d told some fellows in Seattle I was headed here, but they wouldn’t write a letter.
OFFICER HUGHES: Who was it from?
MR REED: Sugar. She didn’t sign it, but I’d recognize her hand anywhere. I had no idea she was in town.
OFFICER HUGHES: This wasn’t a pleasant surprise?
MR REED: Pleasant? She sent me a piece of blackmail! That’s why the blessed thing wasn’t signed.
OFFICER HUGHES: What did the letter say?
MR REED: It was an invitation to meet her. An order, more like. If I didn’t show, she said, she’d spill dirt on me from Chicago days. She said, if the sheriff didn’t scare me, she knew plenty of men in Port Townsend who could sort me out.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Do you have a record in Chicago, Reed?
MR REED: No.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Oh yeah? Jackson! Jackson, run down to the post office and get a telegraph off to the Chicago bureau. Checking up on Samuel Reed, of that city, last known residence 2118 Grove Street.
OFFICER HUGHES: And get us some whiskey.
MR REED: You’re wasting your time. I don’t have a record.
OFFICER HUGHES: Sam, the letter. What happened after you got it?
MR REED: I said nobody calls me Sam.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: I don’t care what anyone calls you. Do you understand this is a murder investigation? I can stri
ng you up in the courtyard and say you did it, and who’s going to question me? Not Officer Hughes.
OFFICER HUGHES: Sir—
MR REED: That’s not legal.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: Oh, now you know all about the law?
MR REED: That’s not legal, and you care about things being legal. Why else would you have that fat fellow scratching away in the corner and keeping notes?
MARSHAL FORRESTER: He’s the customhouse’s man. Not my problem. Right now I care about being legal about as much as—
OFFICER HUGHES: Sir, I’d like to get back to the letter from Miss Calhoun.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: All right, Hughes. Go on, then.
OFFICER HUGHES: What happened after you got her letter?
MR REED: I went to meet her. She had me spooked. I’m trying to make a fresh start here. I didn’t want any trouble.
OFFICER HUGHES: Where did you meet her?
MR REED: At her place of business.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: And what business is that?
MR REED: Some rooms on Water Street.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: A whorehouse?
MR REED: That’s not what she’d call it.
OFFICER HUGHES: Is Miss Calhoun employed there?
MR REED: She runs the business. She rents rooms over a feedstore. The letter said to go to number four. She was waiting inside, looking just as good as she had back in the city. I wasn’t glad to see her but she looked good, I can’t say I didn’t notice that. And the room all done up the way it was. Red carpet on the floor, red blankets on the cot, gold lamps.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: I bet what happened next is none of our business, too.
MR REED: You’ve got it wrong. She had me sit down, gave me a drink. Wanted to talk about home a little.
OFFICER HUGHES: Did she say how she’d found you?
MR REED: She’d been out with one of her girls and saw me loading a boat.
OFFICER HUGHES: What did she want?
MR REED: After some chitchat she got down to business. Said she needed a man for a few jobs, a man with talents, and wasn’t it grand we were in the same town again. She gave me an address on Quincy and said I needed to get her a set of keys to the door.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: You used to be a safecracker, Reed? A hotel thief? What?
MR REED: I don’t break the law anymore. I told you. I told her. But she reminded me of her pals here. She reminded me if I wasn’t worried about the police, I ought to be worried about the men she knew who’d knife me in a tavern, or catch me at work and drown me in the bay.
OFFICER HUGHES: So this wasn’t a friendly reunion.
MR REED: No. But she wasn’t all threats. She gave me a bag with twenty dollars in it and said I’d get twice as much when I handed over the keys.
OFFICER HUGHES: Sixty dollars for a key job?
MR REED: A fortune.
OFFICER HUGHES: And you accepted.
MR REED: How could I turn that down? It’s as much as I’d make in a month.
MARSHAL FORRESTER: You’re a real son of a bitch, Reed. You take her money, do her jobs, and two weeks later, you kill her.
6
JANUARY 13, 1887
Alma takes the snow-dusted stairs to Wheeler’s back office. Only this time she’s walking, not being dragged. She likes the view better from up high.
Her knuckles crack against the door’s cold wood. A creaking of locks, then Conaway is glaring down at her, his bruised eye black in the hallway’s yellow light. His meaty hand coddles the ribs she dented with her boot the night before.
“Evening.” Alma’s spine is taut, her bound chest out. This posture puts a hitch in her breath where the men knocked her around, but she’s not wilting. She wants him to know how little their blows meant.
“Don’t you fucking talk to me,” he says.
He lets her inside the hall—vanilla-sweet air, that plush blue carpet—but does not make way for her to pass.
“You want to take my knife again?” She shoves past him, aiming up at his bad shoulder. “So I can make you give it back?”
“Little piece of shit.”
He grabs her by the collar, but Alma is ready, her knife out and nipping at the fat over his liver. She fists his shirtfront. Bars her forearm across his throat to plow him into the wall. Leaning up, she crowds her face toward his. He is sour with cheap tallow pomade and popping sweat.
“Touch me again and I’ll do it,” she says. “I owe you a few bruises but I’m happy to add interest.”
Conaway’s hoarse breaths, the way his body softens around her blade, have Alma eager to get to the main event. She wants to see Wheeler. She is restless to kick up the spark that flared between them. Delphine doesn’t want her to have fun, but Delphine’s not here, in this narrow hallway, with the whole cold night outside and Wheeler burning in his office.
“Fuck off, Camp.”
Conaway’s throat works against her forearm, his voice lowered in defeat. She sheathes her knife.
“Next time get out of the way when you let me in,” she says.
What is he good for, exactly, this beefy cringer? If he’s the best Wheeler can find, Wheeler’s not looking hard enough. Alma walks away from the man toward the bend in the hall, filling the cramped space with her bandy swagger. She is taking notes for renovation. Replace Conaway with a fighter. Get rid of the bloodstained carpet. Keep the high-class liquor.
At the dogleg she slams into a man coming from the opposite direction. He is tall, with sandy hair, ruddy in the hands but pale faced.
“Sorry, excuse me,” he says, pulling away from her and clutching his cap to his chest. A dark film coats his knuckles.
“What’s the fucking hurry?” she says.
His eyes flick over her nervously as he angles his body aside. He smells of fresh sawdust. The smearing on his hands is not blood; from the strong whiff Alma catches, it is pine pitch, or varnish. He’s a carpenter. Or a boatbuilder. And he’s come to the back office—he’s here on smuggling business. Alma makes note of his face before letting him by.
The man hustles down the hall, pulling on his cap. Conaway is taller than him by a few inches. As their forms eclipse the door, Alma imagines being that tall, having that much bone and muscle to sling around. The damage she could do with longer limbs. Champion brawlers, men like Sullivan and Dempsey, combine size with speed. But scrappers take you by surprise. She likes her advantage.
Wheeler’s door is open. He sits at his desk in his shirtsleeves, hands busy in a mess of papers. There is ink on his fingers, whiskey in the glass beside him.
Before he sees her, Alma makes a sketch of the room, adding to her impressions from the previous night. A rectangular space with Wheeler’s desk in the center, backlit by the fireplace. A shuttered armoire to her left. And a discreet corner door that faces Washington Street—a link to the Clyde Imports office. Convenient.
“Boss.”
He looks up, and it is a distant glance—cold, uninterested. Disappointing.
“Shut the door,” he says.
Alma lopes deeper into the room, playing Camp straight, all business, saving her slippage for when she needs to win a point. But Wheeler is already watching her more closely as she approaches. She realizes she does not have to loosen her mask at all: he is searching her for traces of the governess he knew, searching her face and torso, inspecting her clothing and the set of her hips. Here’s your liability, Delphine—send a woman in man’s clothes to Wheeler and he frays like a cheap pair of socks.
He locks his fists together before his chin. His movements are controlled, but Alma reads a tightening in them, a bearing down on some unwanted thing. Get yourself together, his hands say. She holds back a grin.
“What’ll it be?” she says.
“I want the name of Sloan’s man in my warehouse.”
“That wasn’t the deal.” Alma shakes her head. “You said you’d have a job for me first.”
“You’re in my office. We’re doing this my way.” Wheeler unlaces hi
s hands, pushes a scrap of paper across the desk. A line of text—an address. His fingers leave faint smears of ink on the paper. He might be sweating. “I want the man’s name. Then I’ll tell you what to do with that.”
“I don’t know what name he’s using.”
“Don’t be coy. What does he look like?”
Alma pushes at the back of her cap so it slumps low on her forehead and hides her eyes. She needs a minute to think. Give up Sloan’s man and she gives up her leverage. Her last high card is Delphine’s name, but once that’s in play, Wheeler will be even more careful around her, and she needs him to lose his composure. If he’s making mistakes, she can report them to Delphine, undermining him as deputy. And if Wheeler’s involved in the tar thefts, he might let something slip about them, too.
“Take off your cap when you’re in my office,” he says. “Show some respect.”
“Yes, sir.”
She whips off the cap. Tucks it into her back pocket. Her eye twinges, the puffy skin around the socket alive to every current in the air. Wheeler’s gaze catches on it, on her purpled jawline. There’s that stutter she is hoping for—the momentary blankness on his face, the minute clench of his lips.
“You should see my leg,” Alma says. She pushes a hand through her shorn hair to better showcase the bruises dappling her cheek.
“I don’t want to see any god damn part of you.”
“All right, boss.”
Wheeler glowers at her, stiff shouldered, pugnacious. He’s losing patience, but she makes no move toward his desk, toward the address perched on its polished edge.
“At Sloan’s, they called him Pike,” Alma says, working out this new angle as she speaks. “He’s on your loading crew—I saw him carting crates from Orion to the Madison warehouse.”
She can still invoke Delphine, if she must. But if Wheeler brings Pike in for questioning, there’s much to be learned when Pike talks. It will show her Wheeler’s methods. How far he’s prepared to take such an inquisition. His questions will help her flesh out the extent of the Sloan problem, and how that figures into the missing tar. How Wheeler figures into the missing tar, maybe.
“I’d like to help bring him in,” Alma says. “We have a score to settle.”
“No.”
“No? Remember, if I don’t work for you, I work for your friend at the railroad trust,” she says, and is not surprised when his pistol thumps onto the desk.
The Best Bad Things Page 5