The Best Bad Things Read online

  Alma is not the only one wearing a mask. In the office Wheeler is sealed shut. He keeps his fists curled, his voice ironclad. Gone is the mannered gentleman who showed her around town. That Nathaniel Wheeler had life stirring in his eyes: mirth, homesickness, charm. Or was that a mask, too? It is difficult to pin down the wriggling truth of a man, to dissect what he lets slip from what slips out unbidden.

  Alma readjusts her stance, painfully, inhaling hard, and this time Wheeler’s pale gaze doesn’t slide away. She is losing her advantage.

  “You’ve seen my work,” she says. “I surprised you, and I nearly took out two watchmen. I would have if that old bastard fought fair.”

  “All you’ve proven is that you’re a problem.”

  Wheeler opens a desk drawer. He pulls out a black-lacquered Colt .45 and sets it on his papers, barrel pointed at Alma.

  “Your men took my knife.” She can’t appear cowed by the gun, but she can’t stand there much longer—her right knee is throbbing, the muscles of her thigh beginning to quiver as she holds it in place. “You’re going to shoot me while I’m unarmed?”

  “You ought not to have trespassed.”

  “I guess I wasn’t listening when you warned me about the waterfront.” She calls up his words from two nights before; puts back on the heavy brogue, the timid intonation she’d used while posing as a governess. “Nae place for a wee lass without a chaperone.”

  And there: a flicker across his face. A momentary confusion. That’s going to be the way in, the way to get that heavy black barrel back in its drawer and get him on her side. She’s got to be Alma in Camp’s clothes.

  This is not as easy as it sounds.

  Start with the voice. Switching wholesale into the broad Scots she’d used as Alma Macrae is too much artifice. She must use her own voice with some of Camp’s grit thrown in. She must rehinge her body. Loosen her mouth, her shoulders. Tuck her hips under her rib cage, a movement that sends twisting pain along her kneecap into her shin. Hardest of all is the mental shift: what will show in her eyes after she drops them to the carpet and concentrates.

  “Can I sit down?” she says, and looks at Wheeler under lowered lashes.

  “Don’t fucking do that,” he says.

  This is the first time he’s spoken so coarsely. He is off guard again.

  “Maybe this is how I really talk.” Alma grins, dried blood flaking on her chin. “You said you wanted to get to know me better.”

  Wheeler takes a sip of whiskey, keeps the glass at his lips even after his throat has stopped working. If he’s hiding his mouth, he hasn’t got control of it. She’s getting to him. Maybe.

  “Who hired you?” he says.

  “I won’t answer that.”

  “Yet you’ll sell him a lie to work for me.” Wheeler taps his tumbler on the desk, click, click, the glass sounding a high note, as if on the verge of cracking. “He wants me ruined, which is unpleasant but understandable. But what do you want?”

  “He’s shy about paying me. It happens a lot.” Alma nods at her filthy clothes, at what Wheeler knows is under them. “I’m tired of it. Seems like I could make better money another way.”

  “I don’t need the services of a woman,” Wheeler says. “I do all my own bookkeeping, and while I might take a lady to dinner, I won’t be accused of gauche hiring practices for taking a lady as a secretary.”

  Alma laughs. He holds up a hand to silence her.

  “And you will not work for me like that,” he says. “No. No, certainly not like that.”

  She needs to get him closer. She needs to pick at the little seam that appeared when she asked to sit down. To see her dressed in men’s clothes gives Wheeler too much room to think. To stand beside her, smelling her skin, feeling the warmth of her body, will take that room away so she can break past his resistance. He finishes his drink, and there—that’s how she’ll draw him from behind his desk.

  She locks her jaw. Growls an exhale. Without asking his leave she pushes off the chair and hobbles toward the sideboard, her right knee grinding.

  “Excuse me, madam.”

  His choice of words, the real indignation in his voice, are amusing to a corner of Alma’s mind—the corner not stunned by pain and the anger that pain calls up.

  “You leave me to stand for ten minutes on a half-cracked leg, you owe me a fucking drink,” she says.

  This is too much of Camp. Her voice is too deep, too harsh. But the unsteadiness in her knee is worse than she expected. A patch of carpet, deep-piled, shifts under her boot. Don’t fall. Almost there. Another determined step, rasp of chair legs behind her, and Alma is at the sideboard, tumbler in hand, when Wheeler grips her by the upper arm. Bonefire in her knee as he yanks her around. But now she can lean into the marble, decanters clinking with the impact of her hip. She can lean into Wheeler.

  “Don’t speak to me like that in my own offices,” he says.

  His face is inches from hers. In her work boots they are much of a height. He smells strongly of liquor, of sweetened tobacco. Spiced-clove aftershave. His fingers dig into the meat of her biceps. He has left the gun on his desk.

  “I need a bit of whiskey,” Alma says. “To clear the blood out of my mouth.”

  She lifts her right arm to draw the stopper. Wheeler holds her left immobile, but not with the punishing tightness of his first approach. His hand flexes, slackens, closes; signaling uncertainty more than it does a warning. His breath uneven. The tips of his ears red. His line of sight tangled in her shirt buttons where her binding cloth tamps down her breasts.

  Yes. He likes her in Camp’s clothes.

  Here’s something Alma has not seen in years. Not since the summer she first used the name Jack Camp. Heat seeping from the Chicago sewers. Borrowed clothes ready in a bundle under her boarding-school bed. Climbing over the rusted gate at midnight to where Ned waited, spark-eyed, so she caught the current and lit up like a filament. Brick stairs yellow under lanterns down to where men stomped, calling out bets in blackened voices as hats flew into the ring. Sweat and elbows all around her in the crowd; bodies banging against her clumsily bound breasts; in her gut, the fear of being unmasked warring with animal pleasure as the boxers in the pit dripped with blood. Later she threw her slouch cap on Ned’s cot, popped free the buttons of her trousers, and at his open collar the pulse was jumping.

  She remembers this. She is ablaze with remembering.

  Wheeler’s neck is flushed, too. She looks away from him toward the sideboard’s spread. Pours out a nip. Whiskey washes over her tongue and she remembers the taste of his skin. His hip is so near hers that the ridge of his leather belt presses into her flesh. As she drinks, she finds his eyes again.

  “You going to hold my arm all night?”

  Wheeler flinches. What deep recess have her words reeled him up from?

  “Some teetotaler.” His hand drops to his side. “And that sad business about your uncle—all a lie, too, I take it?”

  He does not step away, despite the harsh tone of his words. The space between them is alive with tension. Alma adjusts her right foot to ease her knee. At the movement Wheeler’s eyes dart to her boot, then wander up along her bloodied trousers, her purpled knuckles. Now is the time to press him, when he’s taut and wanting the better part of his judgment.

  “You’re not keen on me telling bad things to my client,” she says. “And you’re not going to shoot me. So take my offer, and put me on your crew.”

  “Stick to your detective work.” He raises his chin, but his eyes keep slipping along the front of her shirt.

  Her detective work requires her to find Port Townsend’s top opium importer. Wheeler has the perfect setup: an unlisted warehouse on Madison Wharf and an import business to provide a constant flow of liquors and textiles from overseas, while untaxed tar creeps along for the ride. Then there was the wagonload of crates Sloan’s man helped transfer from the Victoria steamer the night before, which led her to the Madison warehouse in the first place.
/>   Sloan. Of course. The old-timer who dragged her into the office mentioned him, and it’s clear he and Wheeler are not friends. The man she saw at the warehouse is working for both Sloan and Wheeler—and Wheeler may not know about that.

  “Give me something I can sink my teeth into,” she says, trying this new tack. “I’ll take the dirty work your men can’t handle. Anything. Hell, send me after Sloan.”

  Wheeler crowds into her, that fighter’s grace lighting through his body as he grabs her collar. She tightens her grip on the tumbler, the closest thing to a weapon she’s got. Its cut glass prints a spangling pain into her just-roughened palms and fingers.

  “What do you know about Sloan?” he says, breath hot on her face.

  Alma’s heart is kicking fast, whiskey fizzing in her belly, in the big veins of her torso and thighs.

  “I saw one of his men working in your warehouse,” she says. “And I’m guessing you didn’t invite him.”

  She swallows, moving the skin of her throat against his knuckles. He seems to realize, belatedly, that his hand is jabbing into her windpipe. He lets go. Steps back, mumbling an oath that sounds like an apology. Alma licks the insides of her teeth, pleased. She took a chance swing with this Sloan angle and hit a weak spot. Yet she is disappointed, too. She wants to brawl with Wheeler, call his blood out. Or pick up where they left off on that carriage ride and add fists and vinegar. But she has a deal to make.

  “You want to know who it is, you give me a spot on your crew,” she says, straightening her mangled collar. “And I don’t mean guard duty.”

  Wheeler’s breathing settles. He pulls his shoulders back, resets his body.

  “It’s heavy work.” He pours whiskey into a fresh glass, waves the decanter at her legs. “I don’t think you’re in the condition to do it.”

  “I’ll patch myself up,” she says.

  “Fine. Who is Sloan’s man?”

  “I get to work first. At least one shift.”

  He laughs—a thin chuckle, but it’s the most he’s given her all night. He even holds out the whiskey. She offers her glass and he tips some into it, fine amber-colored liquor, better by far than what she’s willing to pay for.

  “My men will keep you on a short lead,” he says. “No problems. No second chances.”

  “Understood. I’ll tell my client you’re clean,” she says. “I go by Jack Camp.”

  Wheeler does not move to shake her outstretched hand.

  “What’s your real name?” he says.

  “Alma Macrae, if you go back far enough on the family tree.”

  “Your real name.”

  “While I’m working for you, my name’s Camp,” she says. “That’s all the men will know, and all you need to.”

  Wheeler frowns. The corners of his eyes are red, recalling Alma to the late hour. Deep lines run along the sides of his mouth. Now that they’ve finished dancing, he looks tired. This gives him a certain softness, renders him human and more like her dinner companion—save for the gun waiting on his desk. He had to know that would give him away. Businessmen with clean hands pay others to wield weapons.

  “Don’t look so worried, boss.” Alma raises her glass in a salute. “You’re lucky to have me in your corner.”

  “Boss, is it?”

  Wheeler takes his drink back to his gleaming desk. He puts his pistol in its drawer. Turns up the long-chimneyed lamp and shuffles through his papers.

  “Be back here tomorrow night, at eight o’clock.” He scribbles a note, tucks it under a ledger. “I’ll have a job for you. And get your knife from Conaway. He’ll be in the hall, brooding.”

  “Yes, sir,” Alma says.

  She finishes her drink, stops by the door to collect her cap from the carpet. Stooping sends hot wires through her ribs and knee, but it won’t serve to show she’s injured anymore. So she only grunts, quiet, and fixes her cap on low to hide her tearing eyes.

  “I won’t treat you like a lady,” Wheeler says. “If you fuck me over, I will kill you.”

  Alma nods, solemn, but her insides are leaping. She’s got a solid candidate. And other parts are leaping, too: blood and skin and electricity. I won’t treat you like a lady, he says. Good. Don’t.

  4

  JANUARY 13, 1887

  In the dry-goods store women line up at the counter. Cooks and house girls from the hill stand beside matrons of Lower Town, their wash dresses cut from calico or dreary wool. Their baskets are piled with spools of thread, tinned fruit, paper packets stuffed with mother-of-pearl buttons. They whisper about the latest casualty on the waterfront, a man who drifted ashore under Quincy Wharf, shirtless, throat opened from ear to ear.

  “He only had two fingers left on one hand,” Alma’s neighbor says. “What they did with the others we cannot know.”

  “Oh, my Lord.” Alma’s voice is shaped into a worn Southern drawl. She wears her shabbiest dress and a straw bonnet. Her skin is powdered into sickly pallor, and the sweet smell of French chalk tickles her nose.

  The line moves forward. She hobbles to follow it. The bruises from her run-in with Wheeler’s warehouse guards are ripened to full purple. Her eyes ache. After leaving his office she cased the place. Saw how the guarded door on Quincy worms into the corner building that houses Clyde Imports, wrapping all of Wheeler’s business in a neat brick-walled parcel. Then she slept hard for a few hours and was up at dawn to scratch out a ciphered letter to the Pinkerton’s agents. Operative under deep cover, she’d translated. Contact must be limited and brief.

  Jingling from the shop’s doorbell. The boy she sent to the post office tumbles in, crimson cheeked and smelling of brine. He holds an envelope.

  “Thank you, dear,” Alma tells him.

  She places two pennies in his open palm, letting her pale-painted fingers tremble around the coins. Good. Her letter was posted, and here’s a letter received.

  At the counter she asks for a pound of sugar, still using the voice of a Savannah missus, and settles the letter under the loaf. Outside, low fog echoes with cart clamor, shouts of oyster vendors, hammer clang. Gulls and a tarry seawater stench signal the unseen bay. A man sweeps the Delmonico Hotel’s front steps, where Alma dined with Wheeler. She keeps her chin tucked as she passes its glazed doors, her powdered face shadowed by her bonnet.

  In each knot of pedestrians she considers stopping to read her letter. She does not. Even in this thick-drawn costume, she does not feel as concealed as she would like. Now that Camp is in play, she does not want to compromise his identity by switching disguises. Camp is known. Alma Macrae is known. And she must be invisible when she ascends to Upper Town.

  A flight of brick stairs connects the waterfront to the wealthy neighborhood perched above. Alma’s right knee, tightly bandaged, creaks as she climbs. She enters the fog. Cottony air sticks in her throat. Then: blue sky. Keen winter sunlight. The last few steps lead to a cobbled street bordered with lawns. All around are pastel dwellings, multistoried, with fine glazing on their ground-floor windows. A housebreaker’s picnic.

  She listens for footsteps. Waits for the prickling of her upper vertebrae that signals she is being followed. There is birdsong, the ships’ bells below muted by fog. Solitude. On a bench by the stairs she pulls out the envelope.

  Inside is a ten-dollar banknote wrapped around an embossed sheet of paper. A message is scrawled in green ink:

  Thank you for the gift. Your kindness will be remembered. With gratitude, F.V.

  The Pinkerton’s agents have taken her bait. The cipher is working.

  She drops the letter into wet grass, toeing it down until the paper is soaked, the ink a green smear. She tucks the money into her skirt pocket. The envelope, made out to J. Jones, needs more careful treatment: tearing away the stamp and the address, she stuffs these scraps into one boot, then kicks the crumpled envelope into a bush as voices drift up the stairs.

  Two aproned women rise out of the mist. One holds a wicker basket; the other, a great spray of orange flowers. When t
hey have walked uphill a ways, Alma stands from the bench. Recalls her instructions: First, go left on Jefferson until you pass the church. Then take a right on Polk, past another church, this one made of stone. Go left again on Clay.

  As promised, here is the house.

  It sits tucked into the corner of a broad square lot. Two stories, painted white and lemon yellow. Angles sharp as kitchen knives, with new copper edging the roof.

  Alma passes the front walk, a span of bricks bordered by winter camellias, and continues on to the line of flagstones leading to the servants’ entrance. She stops to fuss with her basket, using the pause to scan the vacant lawns and the neighbors’ curtained windows. A flicker of cloth darkens the glass next door. With a small noise of interest, she approaches the back of the house.

  Three raps bring a small woman in a starched apron. She is pink faced, spotless. Warm air scented with roasting poultry wafts from behind her. Alma’s stomach burbles. The woman takes in her poor clothes, her pallid skin, and shuts the door to a meager crack.

  “I’ve a pound of sugar for the mistress,” Alma says.

  “Sucre?”

  “It came at an excellent price.”

  “Bon. Bon, entrez.” The woman drops her eyes from Alma’s face and allows her inside.

  The kitchen is stifling after her cold walk. She removes her bonnet, careful of her pinned-on hair. The woman hurries into a hallway. Alone, Alma tosses the bonnet and basket onto a counter. In the hearth a spitted chicken drips over flames. Fat pops and spatters. If the bird were already plated, she would tear off a chunk with her teeth. She prowls around, stops at a plate of glazed rolls cooling by the window. Alma eats one in huge bites, bruised jaw clicking, icing sticking on her fingers. When she licks at the sugar, her tongue lifts away talc, too. The French chalk smells sweet but tastes medicinal.

  The woman returns to usher her through a passage full of dark furniture. There are no paintings on the pale walls, no carpets on the wooden floors. A large ebony crucifix is the only decoration.