Alma shoves into place behind him, and he’s only half fighting now. One hand wrenches tight his collar, fist against knobbed vertebrae. Her other unbuttons his trousers, fumbling inside, clutching hard, hot, his shoulders tight as she muscles him against the desk, thighs set into the backs of his, knuckles tapping the wood as she works her wrist fast, his breath fast.
Now’s the time to do it. When he’s faced away and panting, sweat gathering at his nape. When his hands are open and empty, flexing white against the white-paper-littered surface of the desk.
But he feels good, he smells good, clove aftershave and salt and musk, she’s been waiting for this for so long, she is whispering filth in his ear—“You like it when I fuck you, you like it when I’ve got you hard and aching, you like it, tell me you like it, tell me you want more”—and he is groaning, little guttural blurs of noise that draw a thread of heat tight between her thighs.
“God damn it,” he says, and the hitch in his voice has her growling, shoving him harder into the desk.
“Tell me.” She slows her fingers. Squeezes.
“More,” he says, bucking into her hand.
“What?”
“More. I said more, Camp.”
And that’s what she wanted, her name in his voice when it sounds like this, when it’s torn open and rough like this. She presses her face into the back of his neck and bites at the slick skin.
He throws her off with a shudder and she blunders into his chair, that second of lost footing made slower when he turns and her eyes catch on his sex, thick veined and weeping. Her mouth opens, hungry, but he is not waiting for play—he grabs her by the hair and slings her facedown over the desk, the full strength of his arms apparent in the force of it, the bruising way the wood bites into her thighs. She reaches down to her belt and he lets her undo the buckle, then whips the belt from her trousers and catches her hands, twisting them behind her back, looping the leather strap around them. Her muscles protest, her bad shoulder searing, but there is chill air on her thighs, fingers on her bare hips, pressure, slickness, and then he is fucking her, grunting, papers crinkling under her cheek as her body throbs.
He grabs a handful of vest and shirt, just between her shoulder blades. Yanks her up a few inches and slams her rib cage down, knocking the breath out of her. Thrusting hard as she gasps for air, for more.
“You don’t make me beg,” he says, but she did, she did, and heat coils in her, her hip bones jolting into the desk, it is good, it is what she wanted, and it’s the last god damn time. No. It doesn’t have to be. But Delphine—
“Fuck,” Alma says, hissing when he pulls out of her, leaving her cold.
He undoes the belt, hands unsteady on the buckle. Alma shakes free her arms, wincing at a spasm in her left shoulder. She flips over on the desk. Kicks off her boots, kicks down her trousers, Wheeler watching her and stroking himself, slow, his hand glossed with wet.
“Your arm,” he says, quiet, breathing fast. “I forgot.”
“It’s fine.”
She doesn’t want him to be gentle, not now. Legs bare, pulling him back to her by his loosened tie, locking her thighs around his hips, and this angle is good, “Harder,” she is saying, she slips her hand between their stomachs down to slick heat. Bites at his neck, all tensed muscle, all salt. Her fingers working her body to a tingling fever. His mouth at her ear, thick breaths, “Oh, God,” he is saying, “Oh, God.”
After, Wheeler peels his body from hers, their skins sticky where he rucked up shirts and vests. He is still breathing hard. He wipes sweat from his temple.
“Get me a drink.” Alma levers up onto her elbows. Ledgers and scribbled notes stick to the damp skin of her low back, her haunches.
Wheeler pauses. Shirt half-tucked into his trousers. Eyebrow raised. A pale patch of skin, a dark thatch of hair, are visible under the white edge of his shirttail. Alma licks salt off the side of her mouth. He follows her gaze, gives a small huff of a laugh.
“A gin,” she says, staring until he is buttoned up. She draws on her trousers, her boots.
At the sideboard he lines up two glasses. The broad strength of his shoulders made plain by the clinging of his damp shirt. Belt looped over powerful hips. That fighter’s body.
Now’s the time to do it. Now. Before she changes her mind.
Alma walks around the desk to her usual chair. Sits down, groaning, her body bruised and pummeled, small muscles and big infused with sensation, with fresh blood. She lowers her arm into the muddle of jacket and holster beside the chair. Her pistol is cold. Heavy. She watches Wheeler pour the gin and cap the decanter as she gentles back the hammer, brings him into the sight. Her hands smell of their bodies, their mingled sweat and fluids.
“Once Fulton is done, there are more of Sloan’s men I want to go after,” he says, pulling the stopper off the whiskey. “Some to recruit. Some to shut up.”
Turn around, god damn it.
“We can pay them a visit tomorrow.”
He half turns, bottle in one hand, empty glass in the other, and sees the pistol leveled at his chest. His face goes tight. His neck throbs so that Alma can almost hear his pulse.
“Alma.”
She shakes her head. She won’t tell him about McManus. It’s a gift to him, that not knowing.
“Are you going to go down swinging?” she says, her body still burning from the warmth of his. “It’s the only thing a man can do.”
Heat sparking in his eyes, his mouth peeling into a grimace, she keeps that look and its intensity to remember always, his moment of glory before he throws the whiskey bottle at her and lunges forward and she ducks, glass smashing into the desk beside her as she keeps her aim true.
Now’s the time to do it.
She pulls the trigger.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
While Alma, Delphine, Wheeler, and company are fictional, Port Townsend’s history as a smuggling hot spot is fact. In the 1880s, Port Townsend was a powerhouse in sea trade, vying with San Francisco as the busiest American seaport on the West Coast. The Port Townsend customhouse was famed for corruption, and with help from the customs officials, smugglers were making fortunes by dodging the import tax on opium, which could be as high as six dollars per pound. Newspapers speculated that the opium smuggling was a centralized effort; the San Francisco Chronicle published a piece on the purported “great smuggling ring” in November 1893:
The opium ring of the Northwest is a fearful, shadowy, impalpable something; shadowy in form, but most substantial in fact. It makes its presence known, yet is itself unknown. The subordinate members obey a system … [directed by] some prominent citizen whose reputation in the commercial and social world is untainted … [U.S. government agents] are baffled and, watch as they will, they cannot find evidence enough to bring this man to justice.
This quote, of course, helped inspire Delphine: the woman—not man—in charge. Many of the ring’s import methods and its connections to other Puget Sound cities are based on documented cases of opium smuggling. And in one famous bust (reported extensively by Tacoma’s Daily Ledger), where the Haytian Republic steamship was seized on suspicion of untaxed opium aboard, the smugglers were using an imports and shipping business to cover their activities.
The following texts and resources were foundational to my research for this book: Port Townsend: An Illustrated History of Shanghaiing, Shipwrecks, Soiled Doves and Sundry Souls by Thomas W. Camfield; Shanghaiing Days by Richard H. Dillon; Pinkerton’s Great Detective by Beau Riffenburgh; The Napoleon of Crime by Ben Macintyre; the Chinese in Northwest America Research Committee; the historical newspaper collection, especially the Daily Ledger archives, at the Tacoma Public Library; the Jefferson County Historical Society; and the Maritime Museum of British Columbia. Thank you to Stephen Li for the Taishanese transliteration.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Jeff: you were there from the beginning, and I’m so glad we’re family. To my mamá, Lily, for encouraging me to read, write, and
dream. To Kelly, for your friendship and for being the very best companion on this writing journey. To Gladys and Ivory, for always making time to visit. Thank you to my agent, Stacia Decker, for believing in this book and being its champion. Thank you to Daphne Durham, my editor, and her assistant, Sara Birmingham: your enthusiasm and keen questions made the revision process a joy, and I’m in awe of how you’ve made my words shine. To Carrie Callaghan, for a suggestion that made a tremendous difference. I am deeply grateful to Yaddo, where I wrote much of this book; my time in residence there was a gift of inestimable value. Thank you to Blue Mountain Center, where I learned so much from the wonderful community of artists and activists. To the Jentel Artist Residency Program, and Sara, Maeve, Vanessa, Helen, Thad, and Lynn. To George, Marilee, and Emma, for offering a beautiful place to work. And to Katy, Connor, and Jamón, with love.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katrina Carrasco holds an M.F.A. in fiction from Portland State University, where she received the Tom and Phyllis Burnam Graduate Fiction Scholarship and the Tom Doulis Graduate Fiction Writing Award. Her short stories have appeared in Witness, Post Road, Quaint Magazine, and other journals, and her nonfiction can be found at Autostraddle. She is the recipient of a Grants for Artist Projects award from Artist Trust. She lives in Seattle. The Best Bad Things is her first novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright
MCD
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Katrina Carrasco
All rights reserved
First edition, 2018
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71765-0
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