1
October 1888
TACOMA, WASHINGTON TERRITORY
MURDER, MAYHEM, AND MADEMOISELLES is the promise on the cover of this week’s National Police Gazette. The bold-type headline arcs over a woodcut of a woman in an undone robe who’s sprawled on the floor of a railway station. How she got there in the middle of the night is a mystery. Alma flips past the illustrations and the serials to the sports section, the pink pages leaving newsprint on her fingers. Fox, the publisher, doesn’t often bother to supply sense in his articles, but they’re enjoyable all the same, once she’s eaten up the boxing coverage and updates on other blood sports.
Alma’s office is dim-lit and quiet, a low fire in the stove and a single lamp glowing on her desk. Once Dos Santos arrives with the day’s profits, they’ll snuff the lights and join the others at the bar. She’s started on gin and tips the enamel cup in a slow circle as she scans down the columns of bouts and results, clicking her tongue at a dollar lost there, five won there, another god damn upset for Pat Killen. How many times will she lose money on that son of a bitch, he used to be fire, he used to be golden.
Dos Santos is at the door. Tall and elegant despite the rain dappling his glasses and dripping from his chin.
“Moisés,” she says, holding out the gin. “¿Cómo va?”
“Uneventful,” he says, in Spanish, closing the door behind him. He digs around in his peacoat, pulls a few papers and an envelope from his breast pocket. He hands the papers to Alma and takes the gin she’s offering in return. “Five boxes of the best ladies’ cosmetic powder off Michigan. Everything accounted for inside. Holt’s man was on time to take it.”
“Ladies’ cosmetic powder, huh?” Alma glances over the stamped card and list. “I never would have credited Blanchard with such imagination.”
The list is the expected product: six hundred pounds of opium from King Tye refinery. There are check marks along the right margin, corresponding to the received and tallied cargo. The stamped card is from her railroad middleman, Gideon Holt; the private signal that he received the disguised tar and bore it across the invisible, sacred line of the Northern Pacific Railroad’s property, where it will disappear into the massive N.P.R. warehouses and then into loaded trains. Alma opens the final item: an envelope with the total amount for the delivery. It’s packed thickly with bills. Trade has been hot, with an unusually heavy stream of raw gum opium pouring into Victoria from the east. To keep up with it all, Alma’s crew has gone from moving two shipments a month to an almost weekly cadence, and cash is flowing in. Alma’s running the business with clean efficiency, and she’s doing it all as Jack Camp, stevedore and boss of a hauling outfit.
She counts the money twice, then locks the envelope into the top drawer of her desk.
“All’s well?” Dos Santos says, already snuffing out the fire in the potbellied stove.
“Everything’s here,” Alma says, double-checking the drawer’s lock and dimming the lamp. “Just how I like it—fast and easy.”
“You’re getting lazy in your old age.” Dos Santos wipes soot off his hands, laughing. “You used to be pleased when you had messes to clean.”
“Damn it, you’re right.” Alma throws a soft-handed jab at his shoulder as she passes him, heading for the coatrack. “What’s next for me? Losing my teeth?”
“Your teeth, your sight, your animal drives.”
“Oh yeah?” she says. “You’re years ahead of me and I still see you perk up like a dog when your man comes around.”
They’re near the door, grinning, Dos Santos’s teeth red in the last glow of the coals, when there’s a heavy knock. Alma’s hand goes to her gun but it’s not there—she doesn’t take it out to the bars, it’s too risky to have on her in a fistfight, and she gets into those more often than not for the fun of it. Dos Santos doesn’t carry at all. Alma juts her chin at him—get back, is the silent order—and takes out her knife instead. All the boys are at the Monte Carlo already, and even if they weren’t, they wouldn’t wait to come into their own office.
A knock again.
“Camp. You in there?”
She knows that voice. Opens the door, quick, still wound tight and ready. It’s Jumbo, Harry Morgan’s bouncer, a giant man with a ham-colored face and knuckles the size of shooter marbles.
“What the hell?” she says, not letting him in, but waving behind her to Dos Santos in a signal to stand down.
“There’s trouble,” Jumbo says. “At Board of Trade.”
“Isn’t that your problem, and not mine?” Alma says. “Seeing as you’re the bouncer.”
“Mr. Morgan said to come find you, and quick.” Rain is sluicing down the man’s thick shoulders, down the soft planes of his jaw. “There’re bodies.”
“That’s damn sure not my problem,” Alma says.
Dos Santos passes her out of the office and she steps into the rain, too, locking the door.
“He said you’d say that,” Jumbo says. “And I’m supposed to tell you he’ll make it your problem.”
He delivers this threat meekly, head down. He’s seen Alma whip a bigger man to the ground more than once, and he’s no brawler, anyhow. He’s just big enough that most men assume he’ll pummel them and behave themselves accordingly. Alma’s more concerned with what the hell Harry Morgan is thinking, trying to shove her around. The balls on him to send his man with a summons like this—that alone makes Alma mad enough to see what this is about.
“I’ll meet you there,” she says to Dos Santos, who nods and lopes away up Railroad Street. And to Jumbo: “This had better be fucking good.”
She starts walking and Jumbo follows, a big panting presence at her side as she strides up the hill, the road all slick mud and rutted puddles. The bars and saloons that line the road are bright-lit and bustling, steam fogging up their windows, piano music spilling out into the street. Board of Trade’s front door is flanked with torches that give its gilt sign a gaudy carnival sparkle. Alma passes through the fires and their familiar wash of kerosene heat.
The place is packed with men. Alma lets Jumbo force a path through the crowd toward Harry Morgan’s office, taking all the elbows and mutters for them both as he heads to the back of the saloon. Once they’re in the back hall Alma barges ahead. Morgan’s office is a boxy, low-ceilinged room, done up in shades of burgundy and brass. Alma stops in the room’s center, her arms crossed over her chest, still irritated by Morgan’s threat and this forced invitation. She lets her glower, her prickly energy, take up space.
Morgan sits behind his desk, backed by the dusty, stuffed figure of a capuchin monkey that’s mounted the wall. An ill-fitting gray suit hangs from Morgan’s shoulders. He looks small and unremarkable, not at all like Tacoma’s finest peddler of sin: this saloon and its attached gambling hall, a variety theater with busy back rooms, girls and punks, horse racing, tar—you want it, he’ll have it. He’s also tight with the county sheriff and pays to sit quietly inside the penumbra of the law, helping his associates do the same. But the thing Alma likes most about Morgan is that he’s in love with the poppy. Their friendship usually works like a charm: she keeps him supplied with top-shelf opium, and Morgan extends the glow of police immunity to her, should she need it. He’s also a reliable source of news about what the Tacoma law is up to. Morgan has no hold over the N.P.R. men or the stevedores’ unions, though—that’s where his usefulness falls short. That and when he gets a hair sideways, like this, and thinks he tells her what to do and not the other way around.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Harry,” Alma tells him. “Sending Jumbo over to strong-arm me. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot the messenger.”
The bouncer hulks, ashen and silent, at Morgan’s side. The capuchin monkey has a red cast to its glassy black eyes and a little red fez set on its head. She’s never liked the thing, or how it’s stuffed to look like it’s clinging to the wall, about to spring off.
“You’re lucky he found you,” Morgan says. Despite his summons, he doesn’t seem to have a lot of spit, tonight. His cheeks and forehead are pale against his thick black beard.
“I disagree,” Alma says. “You all interrupted my night off. Next time you have body problems, ask a police officer to help. You pay them enough to do any damn thing. Why drag me into this?”
“You’re the man who’d know what to do in this case, I thought.” Morgan uncaps a flask and takes a swig, the filigreed silver glinting in the lamplight.
Alma pulls out her cigarettes and box of matches as she waits for the rest. Morgan sighs.
“They injected,” he says, and Alma’s skin prickles. “Morphine, looks like. And they used too much.”
Alma blows out a long breath of smoke. Things are starting to make sense. It’s bad these deaths are morphine-related. She runs the drug business in this town, and Morgan’s choice of words aside, this is indeed something that could be a problem for her. So far there hasn’t been much fuss in Tacoma about drugs, save for that unlucky Ferndale bust, and she’d like to keep it that way. Whether liquid or gum, another high-profile mention of opiates in Tacoma will just make her job harder.
“I couldn’t call Chief Dillon,” Morgan says. “He’s a friend, not a saint. He’ll look the other way for some skipped prostitution fines, but for two dead men? No. Christ, I’m already being called to court for this liquor license bullshit and he’s covering for me there.”
Alma rubs at her jaw, the heat of her lit cigarette grazing her top knuckle. She’s still angry Morgan called her, but he didn’t have many better options.
“He’d have to loop in the coroner,” Morgan continues, his face getting redder. “Narcotics would come up. The anti-vice committee would never drop it, and they’re just looking for another reason to shut me down. I’d be ruined—and I might remind you of the benefits you derive from me having a standing in this town.”
“Settle down,” Alma says.
Morgan pulls at his flask again.
“Only the three of us know about this, yeah?” Alma says.
“And Rose,” Jumbo says.
“Who’s Rose?” Alma cocks an eyebrow at him.
“She’s new,” Morgan cuts in. “She took care of their room tonight.”
“They still in there?” Alma says.
Morgan nods.
“We’ll pay them a visit,” she says. “But first, tell me what happened.”
“I saw them come in, around eight,” Morgan says. “Three men wanting a private room for a card game. I had Rose get them settled. They ordered a high-end bottle of whiskey and some fine cigars.”
“Three men? A minute ago you said there are two dead men.”
“I’m getting there,” Morgan snaps. “They were back there for a good couple of hours. Rose was busy with someone else most of that time. When she checked in, two were dead and the third had vanished. He’d taken their money. No one saw him go, but you saw it out there—it’s a Saturday night. Been at capacity since nine o’clock.”
“Any of the three regulars?”
“I’d never seen them before,” Morgan says, and looks back at Jumbo, who shrugs. “Not sailors. Maybe they came down from the mills, but those boys tend to find their amusements in Old Tacoma.”
Alma claps her hat against her thigh, flicking cigarette ash over the floorboards. She has to get this buttoned up. Business is good, prices are high, and apart from some trouble with her contact on the Canada side, her network of buyers, suppliers, and paid-to-be-blind officials is humming along. She doesn’t need two overdoses gumming up the works.
“All right,” she says to Morgan. “Take me to the room.”
Morgan leads her through the winding halls that make up the hidden belly of Board of Trade. Some connect to the back gambling hall; some shoot out into the private courtyard behind the building. Some are dead ends only, with a door or two into private rooms. Morgan opens one of these, revealing a cramped space, about six by six feet. Alma wrinkles her nose at the smell, outhouse and butcher’s block, as they crowd inside and pull the door shut. The room is dimly lit by a single candle lamp mounted on the wall. Two men are laid out, one on a cot and the other on a lined-up row of chairs. They’re dressed in workmen’s clothes, denim and stained cotton, sturdy boots.
“I thought you said they injected,” Alma says, her jaw tight. The room’s so small that she and Morgan are corralled together, his side brushing hers as he breathes rapidly, both of them within arm’s reach of the two dead men.
“They did.” Morgan’s voice is muffled by the handkerchief he’s clapped over his nose and mouth. “See the bottles, there. The needles. That one’s still holding his.”
“Then why does it smell like there’s a gallon of blood in here?”
Morgan shrugs, revulsion plain in his eyes, in the way he’s leaning as far toward the door as the room allows.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” he says. “As soon as Rose found them we closed this room up and called you.”
Alma steps forward, inspects the bodies more closely as her eyes adjust to the faint light. The man laid out on the chairs has a syringe in his right hand. His left sleeve is rolled up past the elbow, a red-streaked needle mark in the crook of that arm. There’s a dark, pungent stain on his jeans along the middle of his thighs: he voided his bladder as he slipped into the no-return coma of a morphine overdose. Alma’s heard about it but never seen it herself. The blue nails and blue cheeks; breaths so slow they come once every fifteen seconds, the lungs struggling like butterfly wings underwater. Thinking about it makes her jittery. She handles one form of the stuff most every day, and it’s easy—it’s almost necessary—to forget what it can do.
The syringe in his hand is one of the cheaper models, a brass-and-glass design available at most chemists. Something odd about his hand catches her eye. She moves closer, dropping into a squat, and the toe of her boot skids down in the shadows. Alma reaches out instinctively to steady herself, swearing, and the first thing she grabs is the other dead man’s arm. It’s cold but not stiff yet.
Down here, blood’s copper tang overwhelms the smell of urine. The second man is laid out on a plank cot. Alma lets go of his arm, peers into the darkness under the cot. A gleam; that offal reek: the floor under the cot is glazed with blood.
Copyright © 2024 by Katrina Carrasco
