The Best Bad Things

by Katrina Carrasco

  He looks at his mate, who shrugs and takes Alma’s seat on the opium crates.

  “What’s your name?” she says as she leads the young man to the back of the shed. A few boxes are stacked in the shadows, and a large burlap sack.

  “Evans.”

  “If you can manage those, I’ll haul this along,” she says, nodding at the sack.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Evans is compact but strong. He squats and lifts the three stacked crates all at once, grunting, his cigarette flickering red in the sleet. Alma takes the bag by two corners and drags it backward, bumping heavily over the plankboards. When they come out of the deep shadows, two men are outside Hoop & Barrow, staring at them. The paid witnesses: waterfront men given five dollars apiece to watch what happens on the pier that night and then go tell the cops about it. Alma stops, lets go of the bag. Takes off her cap to wipe her forehead. Beside her, Evans stops, too. Sets down his load.

  “You like working for Sloan?” she asks him, drawing deep on the cigarette, so the flare of it lights her face. The men by the saloon are still watching.

  “He pays all right,” the boy says, working on his own smoke. “Always lots of girls around.”

  “Good times.”

  She picks up the edges of the bag. Nods at him to start walking. It takes them a few minutes to reach the wharf’s southern edge.

  “I’ll manage from here,” she says. “And if you get tired of Sloan, you come talk to me. All right?”

  The boy shakes her hand, slouches back toward the woodshed and his companion. Alma squints into the sleet, sees a muted, flashing light. The scow’s dark lantern. Barker is ready and waiting.

  She checks the wharf is empty, save for those two pairs of eyes by the saloon, who’ve now come closer. They’re getting a good look. Stooping, she unties the top of the bag. Her own auburn wig spills out, let loose and wild, half covering Kopp’s face. His mustache shaved, his eyes slivered white at the bottoms. The wig is cold in her fingers. She pulls the bag down farther, so Kopp’s shoulders are visible, pale against the green frills of Nell’s dress. In plain view of the witnesses, she stands over the body. Lights another cigarette. Ice chips collect in the darkly curled wig, in the lined grooves of Kopp’s throat, in the flower-decked neckline of the dress.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Kopp,” she says, around her cigarette. “Or should I call you Miss Calhoun?”

  She takes a deep lungful of smoke. Imagines Grove and Kennedy, in two days’ time. Piecing together how things went down, after they collect the note she left them at the French Hotel and read through Samuel Reed’s transcribed confession. Their subsequent report to Pinkerton: a high body count and a river of illegal tar, all linked to Port Townsend’s smuggling kingpin, Barnaby Sloan.

  Alma flicks her cigarette into the water. Picks up the body by the waist, so the head flops over her shoulder, the curls trailing down her back. It was a nice touch, to disguise Kopp this way: one of Wheeler’s additions to the plan. Not only will it conceal Kopp’s murder, but it adds a woman to Sloan’s list of victims. The police will take Sugar Calhoun’s slaying as the height of barbarity. They’ll think Sloan is a monster. Hanging will be too good for him.

  The scow, with Barker at the helm, bumps against the dock. It’s a macabre dance over to the pier’s edge. Alma steps down into the boat—a moment of lost balance, her weight altered perilously by the body—and then she’s laying Kopp into the stern sheets, green dress dark against the sailcloth.

  She covers the body with a loose edge of tarp. Tucks the six hundred dollars into one stiff palm, where Barker knows to look for it.

  “All yours,” she whispers, and Barker, a dark shape at the tiller, grunts his understanding.

  Alma climbs back onto the dock. Walks past the crates Evans carried; they’re unmarked, mere props, full of old rope ends. A whiskey double is waiting for her at Chain Locker. She’ll need it—she’s got to stay awake until the morning, stay warm outside the bar, so she can be there, frowsy and red eyed, when the cops show up looking for the gray-capped, gray-coated man who was last seen loading a woman’s body into a boat on Union Wharf.

  33

  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: What is it? Come in, Jackson. Hurry up.

  OFFICER JACKSON: Nothing on Samuel Reed from the Chicago bureau, Marshal.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: I’ll be damned.

  OFFICER HUGHES: All right, very good, Jackson. Close the door, won’t you.

  MR REED: I told you. I’m not a bad man.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: You were just roped into working for one.

  MR REED: That’s right.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: And you didn’t find it in yourself to break away.

  MR REED:… No.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: So you’re a weak man.

  MR REED: That’s not … fine. Yes. Yes, I am.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: Honest at last.

  MR REED: I said I would be.

  OFFICER HUGHES: Enough! You said after Loomis died, Sloan started killing the others? What others? What are you talking about? Who were these people?

  MR REED: It started with the stevedore who shot Loomis. Sloan tortured and killed him as revenge. At the cannery. I was there. It was … it was god-awful, sir.

  OFFICER HUGHES: And the other man you mentioned … Lowry? What was the trouble with him? Did Sloan go after him, too?

  MR REED: Like I said, Lowry was courting Sugar. And Sloan didn’t like that. Sloan told Lowry to knock it off. After all, she was the competition for his cathouse, with her own girls, and Sloan didn’t trust her.

  OFFICER HUGHES: And Lowry stopped seeing her, after he was warned?

  MR REED: No.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: Something tells me all this didn’t work out well for Lowry.

  MR REED: Sloan was angry with him, but Sloan needed him. Lowry had come up from San Francisco, at the beginning of the year. He used to work with dope down south, I heard, and talk was that he was helping Sloan set up a line to there.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: Maybe Sloan will lead us to some other scum down California way.

  MR REED: Maybe. Anyhow, after Sloan killed the stevedore, Lowry came to me. In my room at the boardinghouse. He said Sugar had told him I might help their cause. That’s right—their cause! She’d convinced him to betray Sloan. I couldn’t believe it. He seemed like a more levelheaded man than that.

  OFFICER HUGHES: So Lowry and Miss Calhoun joined forces against Sloan?

  MR REED: Yes. Lowry told me he was in love with Sugar. He said she was scared, after the stevedore’s death, that Sloan would come after her next. Lowry said he’d protect her. He’d die protecting her.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: What did he want you to do?

  MR REED: He wanted my help to get Sloan arrested. The same thing Sugar had asked of me, a few days before. He said he’d go with me to the police so we could testify.

  OFFICER HUGHES: About Sloan’s opium?

  MR REED: About everything. The opium, the shanghaied men, the murdered stevedore. Lowry said Sugar told him I might still have a conscience, even though I’d turned my back on her. That I might still care for her, a little, after the old times … care enough to help her and her girls stay safe.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: But you didn’t care.

  MR REED: I did. I do.

  OFFICER HUGHES: Did you agree to help?

  MR REED:… No. But it was lucky I didn’t start agreeing. During our chat Sloan passed by, real quiet, and stopped outside the doorway. He heard what Lowry was saying.

  OFFICER HUGHES: You didn’t warn Lowry to stop talking?

  MR REED: What could I say? What c
ould I say, god damn it? Sloan nearly bled me to death and there was no getting away from him! Kept me in his damned house, on his damned crew, for weeks! And he just stood there in the shadows by the door, staring at me like the god damn reaper, while Lowry whispered his own death sentence! I knew Lowry was finished. I wasn’t going to hang myself, too. Not after seeing what Sloan did to that stevedore. He kept that man alive for ten hours in the cannery. Ten hours, just screaming. I can’t get it out of my mind. God help me.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: All right, Reed.

  MR REED: (crying, inaudible)

  OFFICER HUGHES: Sir. We’ve got to move on Sloan. This is insanity.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: Reed. Reed. What happened to Lowry?

  MR REED:… He’s dead.

  OFFICER HUGHES: When was he killed?

  MR REED: Yesterday. I wasn’t there. I heard about it from one of Sloan’s men while I was drinking at Chain Locker.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: What happened?

  MR REED: Sloan took him and his cousin out into the strait. Chained them and tossed them overboard.

  OFFICER HUGHES: His cousin?

  MR REED: Lowry had a cousin. They came to town together. It was sweet … they’d meet every day at a café to see each other. My guess is Lowry didn’t show yesterday, so she went to Sloan’s boardinghouse looking for him. At the worst possible time.

  OFFICER HUGHES: She? This cousin was a woman? Sloan drowned another innocent woman?

  MR REED: Yes. Lowry told me her name, once … Anna? Alma? I can’t remember. Poor soul. Her and Sugar … I should have done something. I know it. I know I should have done something.

  OFFICER HUGHES: My God.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: All right, Hughes. I’ve heard enough. I want Sloan in shackles and confessing within the hour.

  OFFICER HUGHES: Yes, sir.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: I’m looking forward to this. Aren’t you?

  OFFICER HUGHES: I look forward to justice, sir. Properly served.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: Then you’ll just have to look away while I enjoy dispensing it.

  MR REED: Please. Can’t you let me out of here? I told you everything.

  OFFICER HUGHES: No. You’re a key witness. The key witness.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: We’ve got to have you on the stand, son.

  MR REED: He’ll kill me. Oh, he’ll kill me, just like he killed Sugar and Lowry and Lowry’s cousin … They turned on him and now they’re dead. He’ll never let me walk out of here after ratting on him. Please.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: Make sure you put on your good uniform before we leave. You’ll want to look sharp for the papers.

  OFFICER HUGHES: The papers?

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: We’ll be on the front page for weeks. Maybe even in Peoria.

  MR REED: Please! You’ve got to let me walk.

  MARSHAL FORRESTER: That’s enough. Edmonds, we’re done here.

  34

  JANUARY 25, 1887

  Forrester hauls Alma up by her jacket. Gray oilcloth pulling hard on her bad shoulder, her tensed neck muscles. She’s not wearing as many layers as she would like over her binding cloth. But to yank her collar sideways enough to show the cops her wounded deltoid, she needed to go without a vest. Her legs are shaky, cramped from sitting in the splintered chair after spending the night in a sleet-filled gutter. She leans on the table as blood seeps back to places it ought to be. The light creeping through the barred window is soft and blue.

  “Jackson! Get that new cell two open.”

  Forrester’s hoarse bellow pummels her eardrum. He must be thirsty for his bourbon with the way he played his part today. Almost too farcical. But he followed Nell’s instructions to the letter. In the corner Edmonds is packing his things away, straightening the thick stack of papers covered in shorthand. His fingers dark with ink. A splotch on his doughy jaw, too. He was the natural choice to record Reed’s confession: locked down hard by Wheeler’s blackmail; handy with pen and ink; his transcript imbued with authority because, as a customhouse man, he’s a federal government employee. Hughes is rising from his chair, shaking his head, his blond shock of hair stiff and bristled as wheat chaff.

  Alma raises her shackled hands, knuckles bleariness out of her eyes. Her lashes are sticky with tears. She didn’t have to dig deep when performing Reed’s final breakdown. Guilt, more regret than she expected, twists in her gut at the thought of McManus. How she left him to be taken apart. And Driscoll: she thought of him, too, while crying, and had to stop before she lost control of her act.

  “You’ve got to let me go,” she says to Forrester, swallowing hard. “Sloan sees me here and I’m a dead man.”

  Fist still locked in her jacket, he steers her toward the door. His big, rangy body smells of raw leather. Fucking cowboys. Most of the Pinkerton’s agents out West are his brethren, loose limbs, loose drawls, lips tobacco-fattened. Happy to take all kinds of liberties with their policing, especially when it comes to nonwhite bodies. He jostles Alma and she bites back a sneer.

  Into the hall and they are alone. A short passage lit by a high window and a partially open door at the middle, before a dogleg turn. The jamb is sunset lit, facing west—the door leads to Washington Street. Alma glances up at Forrester. Starts to tense for when he lets her run.

  “Jackson!” he yells.

  And he’s still walking, pulling her past the open door and toward the dogleg turn.

  “Forrester,” she says, quiet. “Forrester, you have to let me walk.”

  “Shut up.”

  He shakes her, hard. A spike of pain in her shoulder. A cold squeeze in her gut. He’s got to let her walk. That’s the plan. Fulton won’t come in until he sees her leave. If she can’t get out on time, Sloan will be dragged in, and god damn it, if he sees her, he’ll start yelling Jack Camp and Wheeler this and Wheeler that, and it’s all over. Her performance as Samuel Reed, ruined. Wheeler’s name tarnished. All gone to hell, when they’re a half inch from everything working just so, in tune with the perfect plan.

  Jackson comes around the bend, fuzz faced, staring. He curls a soft hand through her elbow, taking her from Forrester. Taking her toward the stairs down to the cells. No.

  “Marshal—”

  “I hear another god damn word, I’ll put Sloan in with you when he arrives,” Forrester says. “What do you think about that?”

  “No,” she says, voice raw, face clenching, and there’s no feigning here. If Forrester’s gone bad, it is over. It is over. They are fucked.

  Jackson guides her down the wooden steps, their boots rattling the boards, and in the damp lower level she could push him, bash his head against the wall and make a run for it. Samuel Reed is a wanted man anyhow. The open door five yards away. But they are just reaching the stone floor at the bottom, she is readying her fists, her balance, when more boots sound on the stairs. It’s Hughes. One hand on his gun, a squinched focus in his eyes, his lined forehead. He watches as Jackson removes her shackles and puts her into a cell. Clicks shut the padlock.

  “Please, he’ll kill me,” she says, the iron bars cold and rough under her palms.

  “We won’t let that happen.” Hughes shakes his head, taking the keys from the younger officer.

  “You’ve got to let me walk. You’ve got to let me walk!”

  Her voice rising into a shout as the men climb the stairs, a fraying shout because what went wrong with the plan? It was so good, it was airtight, and someone put a hole in it. Wheeler? No. Delphine? Why? Nell? She did have to prep the marshal, who played it perfect until the end. But she wouldn’t …

  Gut heave, forehead pressed to cold iron. Spin of faces. Betrayals. You trust them, and then they can fuck you.

  Boots on the stairs.

  Alma reins in her breathing. Scuffed leather boots appear. Long legs. A silver-etched belt buckle. It’s Forrester.

  “You lied,” he says.

  He walks to her cell, boots clicking on stone. Flicks something small toward her. Metal glint. Metal tinkle on the floo
r.

  She kneels to collect it. A lockpick. Her lungs unfold.

  “You are a safecracker. We missed that when we frisked you,” Forrester says, quiet, nodding at the pick. “The hall door’s open for another five minutes while Hughes shifts uniforms—then we head out for Sloan’s, and the night watchman arrives. He’ll put your man Fulton in here. I’ll leave Sloan in Fulton’s keeping, once we bring him in.”

  “You scared the shit out of me,” she says, already reaching around to fit the pick into the padlock.

  “How was I supposed to let you walk after that?” Forrester says. “Come in here telling a list of sins a mile long and then you think you can just move out?”

  The padlock clicks open. Alma keeps her hands on it, her eyes on Forrester.

  “I can just move out,” she says. “That was the deal. Now remember, no wanted posters for Reed. Persuade eager young Officer Hughes that it’s not worth the trouble.”

  “Fine.” Forrester’s thin mouth is tight with distaste. He doesn’t like dealing with her.

  “Blame Sloan’s murder on me,” Alma says. “Fulton knows that’s the plan; he’ll leave quiet when you come back and find Sloan dead. Say I murdered Sloan and then escaped. You’ll still be a hero, what with catching Sloan and putting an end to his crime spree.”

  “I don’t know what you and Miss Roberts are up to,” Forrester says. “But your friend Wheeler is in a bad spot. If you go through all this trouble just to hang, I don’t give a good god damn, but don’t string her up. She’s a fine woman.”

  “What do you mean about Wheeler?”

  “This isn’t the first time his name’s come up lately,” Forrester says, knuckling his nose. “And most conversations can’t be redacted.”

  He climbs the stairs. Alma waits for him to clear the top. Maybe Kopp did squawk. Maybe she didn’t catch him quick enough at the fund-raiser or watch him close enough that evening at the Delmonico. The padlock drops heavy into her palm. She opens the cell door and rebolts it, the pick gleaming on the floor inside. Another fire to put out. But the plan moves on. They can see to Wheeler’s damage control after Sloan is trussed for slaughter.