by A Wanted Man
“Are you certain?” He was relentless. “Is there anyone or anything you left out?”
“No,” she insisted. “I’ve told you everything.”
“Except who Su Mi is and why you followed her here.”
Chapter Twenty
“Act honestly and answer boldly.”
—DANISH PROVERB
Su Mi?” Julie tried to sound surprised and innocent, as if the name were unfamiliar to her, but Will Keegan knew better.
“Yes, Su Mi,” he replied. “The name you’ve been crying out in your sleep for the past three days. The person for whom you’ve been searching.”
She was so surprised she couldn’t speak. Julie opened her mouth to deny that she might have uttered Su Mi’s name in her sleep, but no words of denial came out. Her mouth was a swollen, perfect O.
Will watched a mix of emotions cross her face—fear, denial, shock, resignation. “That’s why you’ve been running around Chinatown pretending to be a Salvationist and a laundry girl, isn’t it?”
His voice was so gentle and understanding Julie couldn’t pretend any longer. “I cried out for Su Mi?”
He nodded. “You were feverish and in pain. Either the willow bark or the laudanum or the trauma brought on the nightmares. In them you called out for Su Mi. In English and in Cantonese.” He raked his fingers through his hair and managed a wry smile. “That’s how I knew you spoke more than a few words of Cantonese. That’s how I knew you were fluent in the language.”
“As are you,” she whispered. “Apparently.”
Will inclined his head in her direction, but didn’t confirm or deny her suspicion before changing the subject. “Who is Su Mi, and what is she to you?”
Julie took a deep breath, reluctant to give up any more of her secrets.
So Will took the bull by the horns. “You won’t be going anywhere for a while,” he told her. “Not with a fever, a stab wound, a badly sprained wrist, a black eye, and a battered face.” He didn’t spare her feelings in naming her injuries. “I’ll wager you’re as weak as a kitten. And at any rate, you can’t go out as Julia Jane Parham, Salvationist missionary, even if the doctor deems you able to walk around—and he isn’t ready to do that yet. You can’t run around Chinatown dressed in your Chinese laundry girl disguise, and your Jane Burke disguise won’t work no matter what color wig you put on as long as you bear identical marks from the beating Julie Parham took.” He stared at her, his light brown eyes boring into hers. “Face it, Julia Jane: You can’t leave my bedchamber until you’ve healed, and that will take weeks—not days.”
She sucked in a breath that sounded suspiciously like a sob, but Will didn’t relent. He couldn’t. He had to make her understand that she had to trust someone—and she’d chosen to trust him or she wouldn’t be tucked into his bed right now. “Can Su Mi afford to wait? Does she have weeks to spend waiting for you to be well enough to find her? Or do you have compatriots among the Salvationists helping you search?”
“No Salvationist compatriots,” she admitted after allowing long, silent moments to pass while she weighed the consequences of telling him about Zhing Wu’s help in her quest to locate Su Mi.
“Are you going to let pride prevent you from finding your friend?” He fought to keep from giving in to the frustration he was feeling at her stubborn refusal to tell him everything. “You need my help, Julie. I’m willing to give it, but I have to know what I’m looking for and what I’m up against.”
“Su Mi—” She broke off and quickly turned her head so he wouldn’t see the tears forming in her eyes. Dear God! Su Mi. If one of Li Toy’s henchmen had done this to Julia, what might happen to Su Mi at the hands of similar men? How was she ever going to find her in time to save her now?
“Su Mi?” Will repeated.
“Su Mi is our housekeeper’s daughter.” She spoke so softly Will had to strain to hear her.
“And?”
“Three—no, four months ago, her maternal uncle arranged her marriage to a young man from a suitable family. Su Mi’s uncle paid the dower, signed the contracts, and gave her into the hands of her husband-to-be, who was bound for the Flowery Flag Nation. The marriage was to take place when they reached California. Su Mi was thrilled to be given to a young, handsome, and prosperous man, thrilled to become his bride. But weeks later, we heard that the young man Su Mi was to marry had taken three other brides with him to California. We learned that he wasn’t a bridegroom, but a bride broker, and that he was selling the girls he had pledged to marry into slavery in California.
“Su Mi’s uncle is terribly distraught at the idea that he arranged for his niece to become a longei.” Julie deliberately used the word she’d chided Zhing for using, because she knew Will would understand how desperate the situation was for Su Mi. “And Lolly, our housekeeper and Su Mi’s mother, is devastated. She made me promise I would come here and find her daughter. I couldn’t refuse,” Julie admitted. “Lolly was my wet nurse before she was our housekeeper. Su Mi and I grew up as close as or closer than sisters.” She looked up at Will. “She’s family.”
“Why you?” Will demanded. “Where is your father? Why didn’t he come after Su Mi?”
“He would have if he’d known about it, but he’s aboard his ship and at sea. The fleet is patrolling international waters off the coast of mainland China,” she explained. “With Papa gone, there was no one to do what had to be done except me. So I joined the Salvationists and came to San Francisco to find Su Mi.”
Will’s heart lodged in his throat. Julia Jane Parham, a mere slip of a girl, had promised to find her close friend and surrogate sister, even though doing so meant traveling thousands of miles to a foreign land and the worst part of an international city in order to search. In a city like San Francisco, filled with hundreds of Chinese prostitutes, it was like searching for a needle in a haystack. There were girls in private households, girls in parlor houses and boardinghouses and brothels, and hundreds of girls confined to the public cribs.
Julie had barely scratched the surface. Northern California cities like Sacramento and Stockton also had large populations of Chinese prostitutes, and the northern mining towns had their own communities catering to prostitution.
Trying to locate one lost girl amid hundreds was a Herculean task for anyone, especially a lone young woman, even if she had more courage and determination than a battalion of soldiers.
Swallowing the lump in his throat, Will lifted her hand from its resting place on the bed. “You don’t have to carry your burden by yourself, Julie,” he said softly. “Jack and I are here and we can help you. You’re not alone anymore. . . .”
“I wasn’t entirely alone,” Julie told him. “I had Zhing Wu.”
“Who is Zhing Wu?” Will wanted to know.
“Zhing is the widowed daughter-in-law of Mr. Wu, the owner of Wu’s Gum Saan Laundry. She collects and delivers laundry to the Salvationist mission. That’s where I met her.”
“And where you got the idea of disguising yourself as a laundry girl.” Will immediately grasped the nature of the relationship.
“I tried to gain entrance to the boardinghouses and the parlor houses in Chinatown by going as a missionary, but they wouldn’t let me in.”
“Whoa. Hold it.” Will held up his hand to stop the flow of words as he got a vivid mental image of Julia Jane Parham wrapped in moral outrage and dressed in her Salvationist uniform, marching up to the front door of the Lotus Blossom or the Jade Dragon and ringing the bell. “Tell me you didn’t march up to the front door of the boardinghouses and parlor houses in Chinatown.”
“Of course I did,” she replied, confirming his worst fears. “At first. I managed to get inside a few houses, but they threw me out. And the others barred their doors against me. Then I noticed that the laundry girls were allowed inside where I was not, so I struck a bargain with Zhing Wu.”
Will groaned. “What kind of bargain?”
“I pay Zhing to let me collect and deliver laundry in her place
.” She waited for Will to chastise her for taking advantage of the Chinese girl. He didn’t, but Julie felt she should justify her actions anyway. “The money I give her helps her and Mr. Wu, and the work I do at the laundry helps as well.”
Will turned her hand palm up, then ran the pad of his thumb over the calluses marring her tender skin. Her hands were those of a lady who had lately been performing manual labor. “You’ve been helping in the laundry because laundry girls are allowed in every business and residence in the city.” Will was awed, once again, by her determination and her ingenuity. Julia Jane was willing to do whatever she had to do to find her friend.
“Not every business,” she said.
“For example?” He expected her to name another one of the city’s brothels, but Julie’s answer surprised him, and Will had thought he was long past surprise.
“The Russ House Hotel.”
“What about the Russ House?”
“Laundry girls aren’t allowed inside the Russ House,” she answered matter-of-factly.
Will frowned. “Then who does the laundry?”
“One of the Chinese laundries, but the Russ House requires that the laundry girls or laundry men come to the back of the hotel and ring for a bellboy. The bellboys collect the laundry and hand it over to the laundry girls at the back door. And when the laundry girls deliver the clean laundry, they ring for the bellboys, who collect and deliver it to the guests’ rooms so the laundry workers never set foot in the hotel or violate its ‘no Celestials’ policy.”
“The Russ House Hotel has a ‘no Celestials’ policy?”
“Yes.”
“You’re certain?”
“Very.” Julie nodded, then removed her hand from Will’s massaging grasp in order to cover a yawn. “The desk clerk explained the policy to me quite clearly, first as Jane Burke and then as myself.”
“Mmm.” Will lapsed into deep thought.
Julie yawned once again.
This time Will noticed. “I’ve tired you out.”
She didn’t demur or dispute his statement, but slid down beneath the covers.
Will reached out and fluffed her pillows for her. “Go to sleep. We’ll talk again later. And don’t be afraid. I’ll be here to keep you safe.”
Julie closed her eyes and sighed as Will Keegan lifted her hand once again and pressed a gentle kiss on a callus on her palm, followed by a similar kiss on the tender lump on her forehead. “Will?”
“Hmm?”
“Can you help me find Su Mi?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But I keep a private ledger with the names of the girls Li Toy and the members of the San Francisco Saloon and Bordello Owners’ Association have bought or sold at auction since I’ve been here.”
That roused her a bit. “A ledger? Su Mi may be listed in it!”
“She might,” Will said. “But the names in the ledger are only a fraction of the girls coming into port. . . . There are many others I know nothing about. Not to mention the girls who di”—he caught himself before he reminded her that any number of girls died at sea and never made it to port—“didn’t dock in San Francisco, but went to other ports.”
“But you’ll look in the ledger? You’ll try to find her?”
“I promise I’ll do everything in my power to find her for you.”
Chapter Twenty-one
“Never promise more than you can perform.”
—PUBLILIUS SYRUS, 1ST CENTURY B.C.
The regular monthly meeting of the San Francisco Saloon and Bordello Owners’ Association took place in the basement of the Lotus Blossom.
Will Keegan sat at a table with the association ledger open, pen in hand, waiting for Li Toy to appear and for the meeting to start. If this meeting followed the course of the others, the madam would boast about the success of the last auction and announce the estimated date of delivery for the next shipment of girls from Kwangtung province and, if he was lucky, the name of the ship arriving in port.
Will doubted he would be that fortunate. Madam Harpy played her cards close to her chest. She hadn’t revealed the name of the ships in the past. Providing too much information might reveal the names of the ship’s captains willing to smuggle girls from China, and a leak to the tongs from within the owners’ association would be disastrous for her. The fact that she had to hire men to protect her from the tongs was particularly hard for the madam to swallow. The tongs liked to charge saloon and bordello owners forty dollars per girl in protection fees to prevent the girls from being stolen for ransom, and they charged the establishments’ customers another forty dollars a month to keep from being assaulted, robbed, or beaten after each visit. Li Toy refused to pay the tongs who were trying to take over her business unless it was absolutely unavoidable. But she couldn’t prevent her customers from regularly doing so. She spent her protection money on paid hatchet men hired to protect her and guard her assets—including her best customers—from street thugs paid by the tongs who would rob them of their purses and their purchases.
She arrived ten minutes late for the meeting, resplendently dressed in a pale lavender cheongsam. “Apologize for lateness. Unavoidable problem with new employee from another house. Must change dress before coming here.”
Her admission surprised Will, who had never heard Li Toy apologize to anyone for anything. The fact that the ruthless little madam changed her dress before the association meeting brought an ironic smile to his lips. In some ways, the madam was no different from any woman he’d ever known. A portion of her six-thousand-fifty-dollar profit from her last auction had undoubtedly gone to increase and enhance her wardrobe.
One might say it was tradition for Li Toy to appear at the first San Francisco Saloon and Bordello Owners’ Association meeting following each successful auction dressed in new finery. Will didn’t know whether it was meant to signify an increase in her profits or to announce that a new cargo of girls was on its way.
Apparently, Li Toy appreciated beautiful clothes the way Will’s mother had appreciated pretty shoes. Constance Grace Keegan had been a missionary to her core, married to a missionary, who believed in God, John Knox, hard work, sacrifice, and lovely, well-made shoes. His father used to say that in his mother’s case, there should be an eleventh commandment forbidding the worship of shoes. Yet his father had indulged his mother’s weakness for elegant footwear. Where other mothers might covet a new bonnet or a new dress to wear to church, his mother hadn’t objected to wearing cast-off dresses sent to the mission by society ladies, or a refashioned bonnet, as long as she had the most fashionable shoes to wear with them.
Will supposed Li Toy enjoyed showing off her new dresses at the association meetings the way his mother had enjoyed showing her new shoes off at Sunday services by shortening her skirts just enough to allow her shoes to be seen and admired—even envied. His mother never boasted, never said a word, but everyone in the church knew Mrs. Keegan was wearing new shoes.
Will grinned at the incongruity of comparing Constance Grace Keegan to the ruthless madam Li Toy. John Knox or God or both would surely strike him dead for it.
“You like?” Seeing Will’s grin, Li Toy sidled up to him.
Will swallowed his smile. Jack had teased him for months about Li Toy’s penchant for him. And he had found it humorous, but there was nothing funny about the way Li Toy was looking at him now. Or the way she was preening in front of him. “The color is very becoming.”
“That mean you like?” She pirouetted to give him a full view of the dress.
He knew she was fishing for compliments, but praising her for her looks was beyond him. Li Toy might have been pretty once, but that was at least two decades before he was born, and while Will had sympathy for her struggles to survive squalor and starvation in China, and humiliation and depravity as a prostitute in California, he couldn’t sympathize with or admire what she’d become. He thought of little Tsin and her sisters and cousins instead. Still, he knew better than to make an outright enemy o
f her. “The dress is lovely.”
She smiled at him, showing teeth stained from chewing betel nuts. She wore a lotus blossom in her hair, adorned with lavender-colored tassels that matched her dress. Her usual decorative chopsticks were missing. “I wear just for you, Keegan.”
The tips of Will’s ears turned red, though to his credit, he didn’t blush like a schoolgirl, or show his embarrassment in any other way. Several of the other saloon and bordello owners snickered at Li Toy’s obvious flirtation, and, hearing them, Madam Harpy rounded on them like a falcon diving for a mouse. “Why you laugh? Because Keegan likes? Bah! You no gentleman like Keegan. His women special.”
A frisson of something akin to fear mixed with dread spread over him from top to bottom as his words from the night of the auction came back to haunt him. Will distinctly remembered implying that the difference between Li Toy’s girls and his was that she believed girls were worthless. He believed the seven girls he’d bought at the auction were special—worth every penny he paid for them and more. He believed they had great value—to him, to themselves, to the world.
The unintentional consequence of his revelation to Li Toy was that Madam Harpy liked him more because of it. And Will wasn’t comfortable with her affection. He was, in fact, most uncomfortable and uneasy with it. Will shifted in his seat, tapped his pen against the table, and called the meeting to order.
Treating the association as legitimate made it easier for Will to attend to its business. This morning his attention was turned to the monthly reports of payments paid to different groups throughout the city who were on members’ payrolls for a variety of reasons.
Opening his ledger, Will prepared to record the amounts. Although he was capable of writing in Chinese characters and was proficient with an abacus, he didn’t reveal those talents to the members of the association, because he was supposed to be a normal English gentleman who wouldn’t have those skills. “Old business,” he announced, before glancing at Li Toy. “Ladies first.”