The Best Bad Things Read online

  “You work for Sloan?”

  This voice. She knows it.

  Alma blinks away vertigo. She hangs between the men, lungs sucking into motion at last, so her own herky-jerk inhales fill her ears.

  “You’re going to tell me if you work for him,” the man before her says, and she places the familiar smell: vanilla tobacco smoke. “If not Sloan, then whoever it was that sent you to nose around my warehouse. I’m busy; you’re a bother. Quit wasting my time.”

  She does not have a strategy for this. As she cobbles one together, the man steps forward, grunts an order. Another punch to the stomach blots her mind with shadow. She wheezes, folding inward as far as she can strain with the two men wrenching her arms.

  “Take off his cap,” the man says. “So he can look me in the—”

  Her cap flops onto the floor, leaving her damp forehead chilled. She doesn’t look up. Maybe he won’t recognize her.

  The silence tells her he does.

  She makes blank her face and raises her chin.

  Nathaniel Wheeler stands three feet away. He is pale, staring, but even as she watches, he tucks away his shock-loosed corners: he closes his mouth, hardens his eyes. Brings a hand to his already-straight necktie and smooths it flat.

  “Wait outside,” he says to the men.

  They don’t obey at once, though the huge man’s grip slackens.

  “Put him down, and wait outside,” Wheeler says again, louder.

  Him. Wheeler has preserved her cover. Maybe her luck is back. The corners of her mind are busy mashing together fact and fiction. In ten seconds she’ll have an alibi to suit this new geography.

  The men at either side of her let go. One of them—the old bastard, she’d wager—shoves her forward. Her shredded knees drag over the carpet and she chokes down a gasp.

  The hallway door closes. Wheeler comes to stand over her. She eases up into an unsteady crouch. He offers no help. As she levers herself to standing, her right ribs crunch into a knot of fire.

  “Alma?” Wheeler says, when they are face-to-face. “Jesus Christ. What the hell are you doing?”

  2

  JANUARY 10, 1887

  Two Days Earlier

  The chophouse smells of burnt blood, butter, burgundy wine. Four tables share the lavish back room, where Alma is the only woman, though her plain gray dress and unadorned hair have drawn little attention. She spears a slice of veal, determined to eat despite the corset crushing her stomach.

  “More potatoes?” Nathaniel Wheeler lifts the laden spoon, its knobbed handle flashing in his fingers. “You have a splendid appetite.”

  “Oh, yes, please,” she says.

  He is no shy eater himself. He has put away oysters, turtle soup, two sizable chops, boiled potatoes, string beans, a bottle of wine, and now a splash of liquor.

  After he serves her, he swirls the tawny film at the bottom of his glass, a delicate motion for so robust a man.

  “Take this whiskey, for example,” he says. “It could not be made here. A distiller must have his own water, his own barley. You cannot transplant water from the Bailliemullich Burn.”

  “You miss home very much,” she says.

  “Aye. It’s been twenty years.” He wipes his hands with his white linen napkin, lays it alongside his plate. “Tell me about the colors of Queen’s Park, in the autumn. When you were leaving.”

  His parched-blue gaze is distant. What does this wistful man have to do with opium? Perhaps he is nothing more than he claims: an importer of British and Canadian goods. Yet there are small oddities. The way his eyes narrow when she abruptly reaches into her handbag. That fighter’s swagger in his walk, the way he holds his chin, both hint at a different temperament. When she called on him at his brass-and-varnish company offices, he apologized for the smoke next door, but Alma was almost certain the gunpowder smell was wafting from his shirt cuffs.

  “The trees along Pollokshaws Road were gold shot with red, and on clear afternoons the moss caught the sun in emerald splendor,” Alma says, catching herself on the word emerald, where her broad Scots accent almost falters. “Closer to town everything smelled of peat smoke and malt from the Loch Katrine distillery.”

  She is reaching for names and places and barely finding them. It has been almost twenty years since she lived in Glasgow, and her last trip to visit Uncle William was in the summer of 1880, back when the Women’s Bureau was still in operation.

  “The greenhouse at the Botanic Gardens,” he says, “has it survived?”

  “It has. When I left, they were showing orchids, brought all the way from the Merina Kingdom.”

  He sips at his drink. Smooths down his mustache with thumb and forefinger. At the start of the meal he had seemed agitated. Faintly angry. Now he is mellowed, contemplative, but it is not due to the alcohol—there is no slur in his voice, no slump in his posture. Another edge she was hoping for, blunted.

  “You are kind to indulge me,” he says, taking his hand from his face and smiling.

  The expression makes him look younger, thirty rather than forty. He is handsome, in a rough-cut way; successful; a Scotsman. Someone she might not have lamented a match with, if her uncle had kept her pliant and bridled. Now the thought of marriage and its drudgeries makes her squirm. Her corset bones creak. God damn this costume. She is weighted with draperies, pinned with dead curls, forced to sit straight as a stick. Dressed in her own clothes, she could sprawl. Share Wheeler’s fancy liquor. No one would expect Alma Rosales to mince on about leaves and flowers, and with not a drop to drink.

  “Your company is a balm,” he says. “This has been a trying week. Some trouble this afternoon, and then the trustees considering … But I won’t bore you with all that again. Did you make your trip to the beach below Crow’s Nest?”

  Another swerve from the useful to the inane.

  “I filled an entire hatbox with shells,” she says. “It will break my heart to leave them when I repack. Though while I was there, a policeman was asking about some cargo that washed ashore. He spoke of smugglers. Is it true? Are there smugglers about, in such a fair town?”

  Wheeler hesitates. Will he speak candidly? She leans forward, fingertips on the white-clothed table, every bit the piqued young innocent. But the room is not in her favor. It intrudes upon them: a man in the opposite corner bellows a laugh; a waiter appears with a silver tray of coffee, plum pudding, apple pie.

  “There are plenty of rough men on the waterfront,” Wheeler says, when the room settles back into its candlelit, velvet-curtained quiet. “Thieves. Charlatans. Those who would … mean you harm. Lark about on the beach all you like at midday. But when you’re alone, you must keep to your lodgings after dark.”

  If Wheeler was a smuggler, and his ingénue companion showed an interest, would he not permit a hint of darkness to lure her closer? Alma has parried with crooks and robbers. Even the closest of them delights in his exploits, in recounting how a particularly intricate job was carried off. Yet Wheeler is dampened by her curiosity. He is frowning. He stirs cream into his coffee, pale eyes fixed on the filigreed spoon.

  “I worry…” he says, then clears his throat. “If you are free tomorrow night, I hope you will join me again.”

  His voice has lost that momentary blur of emotion.

  “That is, if your uncle does not appear and call you away to Tacoma.”

  “I’ve had no more news of his accident.” Alma bites her lower lip. “My telegraphs have gone unanswered.”

  Wheeler reaches across the table, rests his fingers on her knuckles. It is the first time their skin has touched. Alma calls heat to her cheeks. After a few shallow breaths she lets her hand unfurl under his. Wheeler’s gaze flickers. The thick vein at his throat is tapping faster.

  “Come, hen,” he says. “He will be fine. Let me take you to the pier we are building, I think you will enjoy seeing it.”

  She collects the pink roses he greeted her with, and he helps her to stand. His jacket smells of vanilla tobacco s
moke. As she pulls on her gloves, he stays close beside her, warm, one hand hovering at the small of her back. An eager creature. Not her usual taste, bland as he is. But in the dark of the carriage he will be a hot mouth, she hopes. Maybe he will unlace her stays and let her breathe.

  Outside, a fiendish wind sends clouds galloping past the moon. Union Wharf’s lamps burn yellow against the blur of bay and sky. Men throng the doors of the Central Hotel across the road, a churn of suits and cigars and gem-topped stickpins. Wheeler pulls Alma’s arm tighter into the crook of his elbow. She leans into him, ducking her head, letting him think she is shy about being seen together or nervous about their outing. In fact, she is hiding her face from the gentlemen at the Central. She is nearly done with Wheeler—he’s not her opium smuggler, and it wouldn’t do to have her next mark see the pair of them climbing into a carriage. Her vision is clipped by the brim of her hat: sidewalk planks glimmering with frost; her polished boots; the fine gray wool of Wheeler’s coat sleeve.

  At the corner he hails the waiting carriage. He hands Alma up into a cab lit by faceted lanterns. Wood paneling agleam. A plaid lap blanket folded neatly in one corner. She slides toward it, her skirts quick over the leather cushions. Wheeler takes a seat on the same bench, though he leaves a modest gap between them. She is growing impatient with these genteel maneuverings.

  “Will the new pier serve trade for your railroad trust?” Alma asks, making her last attempt to steer their conversation in a more useful direction. Outside, the horses’ shoes thump a drumbeat in the mud. “The South Port Townsend Line?”

  She muddles the name despite having heard it more than a few times, waiting to see if Wheeler will correct her or become impatient. Instead, his reflection softens into a smile. He must think her very much the foolish girl she is playing: the untaught governess abroad for the first time. The wealthy man and the silly maid in a nightfall carriage. The wolf and the lamb. Alma stifles a yawn.

  “I have not yet secured a place in the trust,” he says. “If I do, my fortune in this town is assured.”

  He does not seem tired of repeating this. He likes to talk of money, of his fine imported woolens and liquors, of his waterfront warehouse and his commercial success.

  “It’s a delicate thing in these last few days of negotiations.” He places his palm on the bench between them. “If I am successful and you have not been called away, we might celebrate together. The occasion would require the hiring of a yacht, or something just as decadent.”

  “Oh, a yacht!” Alma smiles at him. “I’ve never been on a yacht. Is it true you can sail to Canada from here?”

  Her questions are becoming sloppy, almost too obvious. After three days of solicitous attention he has said nothing relating to opium, and she is taking shots in the dark.

  He is closer now, his solid thigh an inch from hers on the quivering leather. In another private room, with another man, she might tear open his starched collar, press her body onto his. But Alma Macrae is apt to blush. Alma Macrae will not even take her gloves off as an invitation. So she tamps down her velocity, just as she tamped down her thirst for wine.

  Wheeler is moving fast enough, anyhow. He sets his hand lightly on her knee. There is a fresh cut on his middle knuckle. Pink skin that might be the beginnings of a bruise. The iron-banded lanterns throw webbed shadows over the outstretched length of his arm, the sharp line of his nose, the sheen of his inner lip.

  “Alma.” His voice quiet, constricted. “May I kiss you?”

  She clasps the flowers in her lap. The smell of pulped greenery and broken roses rises.

  “Yes,” she says.

  His fingers tighten on her leg, neatly trimmed nails scritching over twill. He turns toward her, their limbs knocking with the motion of the carriage, and brings his other hand to her chin. Gentle, his thumb sweeps over the bone. This tenderness alarms her. He is no wolf after all; there is no abrupt pawing at her breasts, no thrusting tongue. Alma has no experience with a man handling her with care. She does not much care for it.

  His mustache pricks her upper lip. As she opens her mouth, the carriage hits a rut. Their teeth crack together. Wheeler pulls back slightly.

  “Never mind the railroad—you should join a trust for improving the roadways,” she quips, and he laughs, a husky chuckle.

  “I will take that into consideration.” He leans into her again, runs his forefinger down the line of her throat. “This is not too fast?”

  “No.”

  Three days of work, of shadowing him, wasted. He is no more than a lonely man who longs for his old country; its water, its women. But he has paid for her fine dinners. Sketched her a cameo of Port Townsend. Now his palms are hot on her bodice. His clean-shaven jaw smells of sweet clove balm. He pulls her closer, his dark brows tilting inward. She lets the flowers fall from her lap.

  3

  JANUARY 12, 1887

  How are you going to play it? The warehouse. The opium. Or: fogged carriage windows, smell of wet wool, his powerful fingers in your pinned-on hair. No. The railroad trust? What of Sloan’s man sneaking? A traitor, somewhere. How are you going to play it, how are you—

  Like this.

  Alma leans on the chair beside her. The movement fires her inner right pectoral, already wrenched raw by Wheeler’s men. She allows herself to flinch, her face to tighten with pain. Wheeler’s gaze slides off her—is he squeamish?—and he walks away, to the sideboard behind his desk. The narrow table is massed with decanters. He pours a drink, yet no glass rattles. Nothing spills. Maybe he’s not as shaken up as he seems. But there was that moment of recognition. Turmoil in his eyes.

  “I can’t even look at you in those clothes.” He hunches over the liquor bottles, thickset shoulders bunched, knuckles white on the white marble.

  “You must be surprised,” she says.

  In a hurry to keep him talking, Alma uses Camp’s voice before she thinks better of it. At the sound his head twitches toward her, but he does not turn around. While he’s looking away, she makes a quick scan of the office: sober blue wallpaper, hearth against the back wall spilling heat. An imposing desk at the room’s center, its dark wood littered with a deep loam of papers. A second door in the far corner.

  “I’m also very angry,” he says. “I want to know what you’re doing here, like that. I want to know now.”

  There’s her free ride, over.

  “I’m a detective,” she says, and now she’s committed to her cover story. “I was hired by one of your business partners.”

  Wheeler’s long drink of whiskey hitches.

  “You know I can’t name names,” she continues. “But my client wants to make sure you’re not involved in anything illegal before cosigning with you on Judge Hamilton’s railroad trust.”

  This is good. Close to the truth, in a way. Close to Wheeler’s fears. Now all those dinner conversations, which she’d shucked aside as a waste of time, must be remembered. Wheeler’s allies; his enemies. How joining the trust would cement his place among Port Townsend’s property barons. Wheeler is not satisfied with merely owning an import company and its warehouse.

  Of course, during their dinners, he neglected to mention his second warehouse, and how it’s being used to move black-market tar.

  Wheeler finishes his whiskey, pours another. He is of middle height, stocky; built like a prizefighter. In his private office he is stripped down to a tailored shirt and vest. Rolled-up sleeves reveal muscled forearms. His black hair, slicked back, is tinged silver behind his ears. Alma admires how he almost slipped past her. She’d classified him as a provincial businessman, one of any hundred found in the West, and a bore. In fact he is far more interesting. There’s a keen mind in that fighter’s body.

  “A detective,” he says, with a brittle snap of laughter. Then, shaking his head: “And no more Scottish than the Young Pretender.”

  “Maybe. And maybe you’re more than an everyday businessman.” She shifts her weight off her right knee, which is shot with pain and oo
zing, a warm drip down her shin inside her trousers. “I heard that warehouse is full of opium. Now I find it belongs to you.”

  Her voice wants to fall into rhythm with his, pick up scraps of his Scots accent. She allows it to dip into a brogue on certain words. This will keep him off-balance. Keep him focused on reconciling the timid Glaswegian governess he courted and this new version of Alma—the bloodied scrapper, cap knocked off and bruised as a trampled apple.

  “Opium’s not illegal.” Wheeler pushes away from the sideboard, makes a sneering survey of her. “You can buy a can at Sing Tai’s for nine dollars.”

  “Unstamped opium is,” Alma says, pleased that her guess about the warehouse’s contents yielded an evasion, not a denial. “Either way, I’ll be sure to include your knowledge of the going market price in my report.”

  Not even a twitch of his mustache. Despite her wandering accent he is recovering himself. He is becoming hard to read.

  “What else will you be reporting?”

  “It depends.”

  “Is this where I’m meant to get out my pocketbook?” he asks, clapping his glass on the sideboard.

  “I’m not after a bribe,” Alma says. “I’m after a job.”

  Now she needs a little luck. She’d had a plan for Sloan, who respects blood and money and the ability to extract both. Roughing up his guards might have given her enough currency to gain entrance to his organization. But she does not know what Wheeler respects. The way he’s looking at her suggests he doesn’t think much of detectives.

  “I’ll tell my client you’re clean if you give me a place on your crew.”

  “You want to be a warehouse guard?” Wheeler raises an eyebrow as he rolls down one sleeve, then another. His fingers eclipse the tiny cuff buttons. “They make about ten dollars a week. You after that big money?”

  “I’m sure you have work that pays more.”

  “You’re not sure of anything.” He carries his whiskey to the desk, a massive block of polished oak, its edges carved with trailing vines and tight clusters of grapes. His black leather chair creaks beneath him. “But you’re going to haul your pack of lies, and anything else I say in here, to your client and use it to slander me.”