Kissing Comfort Page 23

  It was the rhythm of the Barbary Coast’s activity that forced Bode to hold back the men until dusk. A widespread foray into the saloons and cheap groggeries during the daylight hours would have attracted suspicion, especially since the Demeter Queen was known to be leaving the harbor in the morning. As difficult as it was to wait once their plans were in place, there also existed the hope that Newton and Tucker would be contacted for the payment of ransom. It was what the police wanted them to believe. It made their slow advance on the Coast seem more prudent than cowardly. By nightfall, there was no police presence left. Bode understood their reluctance to remain anywhere on Pacific Street between Montgomery and Stockton. Even traveling in pairs, the police were targets. His men were not; they were marks.

  Bode encouraged the crew to make a thorough sweep of each establishment they entered, but at the same time, not appear to linger. He instructed them on what to look for and how they might be able to identify the Rangers from the rest of the riffraff. He described what the Rangers had been wearing at the time of the attack, and because they feared no one in the Coast, the probability was high that they were still wearing the same black hats and jackets. Bode explained that the Rangers would organize themselves into some kind of hierarchy wherever they were gathered. A leader would always emerge in any group, and if Bode’s men were fortunate, they’d see this shift of power happen in front of them.

  Bode made it clear he wasn’t sending them out to find Comfort. She was the proverbial needle in the haystack. What he wanted from them was information, and to get that, they had to listen . . . everywhere.

  Not long after Tapper Stewart came back to the Demeter Queen with what he’d heard, Jimmy Jackson and Dennis Plant arrived slightly breathless with a similar story to report. Another hour passed with no one returning to the ship, but shortly after midnight, two teams of men arrived within minutes of each other. What they’d learned was from different sources and filled in the gaps of the earliest reports. If the information they’d received could be trusted, then it was both better and worse than Bode expected.

  Comfort Kennedy was alive, but if her captors had their way, she wouldn’t survive until morning.

  Exhausted from the lingering effects of the chloroform, her efforts to keep warm, and the futility of continuing to plot her escape, Comfort slipped into sleep. She had no sense of how long she slept, but it was no surprise to her that she woke ravaged by thirst.

  She sat up and used what she hoped was a clean part of her dress to swipe at her eyes. Her eyelids felt thick and puffy, and her lashes were matted as if she’d been crying in her sleep. Lifting her head, she pretended she could see the ceiling of her prison and beyond it. Something was different than it had been before she slept, and she was so fuzzy-headed that it required several minutes for her to realize what it was.

  Quieter. That’s what she finally decided had changed. Not quiet, not by any means, but the ribald cries were less wildly boisterous, the laughter less raucous, and most notably, there was an absence of feminine voices.

  No women? That not only struck her as odd; it tripped a shiver that began at the base of her neck and traveled all the way to her toes.

  She set her palms hard against the wall behind her as something scraped the floor above. It was the carpet that was being moved, she thought. It thumped and rolled, thumped and rolled. Her heart hammered. It roared so loudly in her ears that she almost didn’t realize that the room above her was falling silent. The last piano chords were dying. Fiddle strings twanged hard and then ceased to vibrate. If there was laughter, it was a low rumble. There was shuffling, some footsteps, but the customers were no longer crossing the room from the door to the bar.

  Were they gone? Or were they waiting?

  She scrambled to her feet as the overhead door was thrown back. She shielded her eyes from the lantern light, though it wasn’t particularly bright. After so many hours in darkness, a single candle flame would have been as blinding as the noonday sun.

  Stepping as far away from the opening as she could, she was already cornered when a ladder was thrust through the hatch. No one came down. Instead, she was invited to come up. The first invitation was rough, but relatively polite. The second time there was profanity. It was the third summons, which included a threat to throw a fookin’ net over her and haul her up like the fookin’ baggage she was, that made her leave her corner and take hold of the ladder.

  When she looked up, she made out two men standing above her. One of them held the lantern. The other, indeed, held the fookin’ net. They both wore black derbies. Twisting her skirts in one hand to lift them, Comfort gripped a rung and began to climb.

  Before her head cleared the opening and she could look around, two pairs of hands, neither of them belonging to Lantern or Net, grabbed her under the shoulders from either side and lifted her out with enough momentum that she expected to be tossed to the floor like the day’s catch. They didn’t do that, preferring to dangle her several feet above the hatch until one of them kicked it closed and they could set her firmly on top of it. Her knees would have buckled if they hadn’t maintained their bruising grip on her arms.

  The concert saloon had exploded into a cacophony of shouts, cries, fist thumping, and stomping the moment she cleared the hatch. The piano player pounded out dramatic chords, and the fiddler plucked his instrument in earnest. The tables she could see were crowded with men. Since she was in the middle of the saloon, she supposed the ones behind her were crowded as well. Men stood two and three deep along the perimeter. If there was a door, it was either at her back or being blocked. It was the same for the windows.

  Someone thrust a glass of stale beer at her mouth. She set her lips mutinously even though she was so parched she wanted to down all of it. She was given no quarter, and the hold on her arms didn’t ease. While she tried to twist and avoid the crush of the glass against her lips, fear that she’d be forced to swallow her own teeth made her open her mouth. Someone’s fingers yanked on her hair. A comb fell out, but she never heard it hit the floor. The crowd was so loud now that she couldn’t distinguish her thoughts from their voices.

  The moment her head was pulled back, the glass was tipped and beer poured into her mouth. She gargled and spat and felt some of it slide over her chin, run down her neck, and soak through the ruching of her shell pink bodice. Most of it, though, went down her throat. There was a brief moment of respite before a second tall glass was put to her. She thought of a fledgling eager to take food from its mother. Except for her open mouth, she was not at all like that. She stamped hard on the toes of her captors, kicked sideways at their knees, and more by accident than design, literally bit the hand that fed her when fingers strayed too close to her teeth.

  Her efforts were encouraged and applauded by the men who’d come specifically to see this entertainment, but the ones holding her were not so appreciative. After the third glass of beer was emptied, she took an open palm slap to her left cheek and then a backhanded one to her right. She tasted blood and saw stars.

  “The bar! The bar! The bar!”

  The cry started with a few men at the back of the room who wanted a better view of the proceedings and was eventually taken up by nearly everyone else. Their coarse, drumming chant shook the building. Comfort dug in her heels, but the floor was slippery with spilled liquor and damp sawdust, and there was no purchase to be had. Her show of resistance incited the crowd and angered her captors. She was lifted again, this time only the few inches necessary to make it appear that she was floating. The alcohol was already clouding her senses, making her think she might be floating in fact. Chairs and tables scraped the floor as men scrambled to make way for her.

  Her captors also served as her protectors, at least for as long as they had to carry her, and they roughly pushed aside the hands that tried to paw her breasts or finger her gown.

  Someone was already standing on the bar when she got there. The man was dressed exactly like the men who held her, but he was clearly the
one they were answering to. He carried a silver-knobbed cane that he tapped lightly against the top of the bar, indicating precisely where he meant them to place her. Partly because she was feeling the effects of the alcohol, and partly because she refused to assist their lift, they had some difficulty hoisting her as high as the bar. The man standing on top of it didn’t lift a finger to help them.

  The chanting was so loud now that Comfort’s heart had taken up the rhythm and her head had begun to swim. She faltered a little as she was set in place and found her footing only after the man with the cane casually gave her his elbow. He made the offer with such mannered ease that he might have been escorting her to dinner.

  He raised the cane above his head. The silence was immediate and profound.

  “You all know me,” he said in a voice thick with an Irish brogue. “And if it’s not me you’re knowin’, then it’s me reputation. I deal fair, but I deal hard, and I give no man a thing he hasn’t earned . . . or stolen.”

  There was some laughter; a few glasses pounded the tables.

  “So what I have for you tonight is a lottery. You buy a ticket, you buy a chance. More tickets, more chances. That’s the way it works. Everyt’ing on the up-and-up. There’ll be no high bidders takin’ it away from you that can’t spare a few dollars. If you have a ticket, you have reason to hope.”

  There were murmurs of approval and a few whistles. Someone shouted, “Hear, hear!” Comfort closed her eyes. She swayed.

  The man gave his cane a little wag, and the room quieted again. If he felt Comfort still swaying, he let it pass. “There’s more,” he told them. “While our lovely bird is entertaining the first lucky winner, we’ll be selling tickets for the second go round. Fresh start. Fresh chance. Alas, our lovely bird will not be as fresh as she once was.”

  “Soiled dove,” someone called out.

  Comfort repeated the words in a vaguely singsong fashion under her breath. “Soiled dove. Soiled dove.” Perhaps it was the name she would take for herself, the one she would answer to when men put down their money and asked for her. How long would it be before she no longer recognized herself?

  The man set the cane down firmly, stopping the low tide of laughter before it reached the bar. At his side, Comfort also fell silent. “There’ll be a third lottery. A fourth. I’ll wager now that her well will go dry before the money does.”

  “I’ve got just what it takes to pump a dry well.”

  This time the man inclined his head, appreciative of the ribald humor. “T’en I hope it doesn’t go to waste. My boys will be comin’ around to collect your money. Yours and everyone else who wants a chance. We’ve got tickets stamped blood red for the first drawing, blood red being appropriate to the occasion, to my way of t’inking. Twenty dollars each, my good and not-so-good friends. Twenty dollars could get you the best ride of your life.”

  Bram woke to the sound of someone scratching at his door. “For God’s sake, come in,” he called. “Christ, what time is it, Travers?”

  “It’s not Travers, sir. It is I. Hitchens.” The butler held up the lamp so his face was illuminated when he poked his head in the room.

  “Well, I see that now. It doesn’t change the basic question.”

  “It’s midnight and a bit.”

  Bram nearly knocked the laudanum off his nightstand as he waved Hitchens in. “Bring the lamp closer. You look like a specter holding it out that way.”

  Hitchens approached the bed. Without being told, he lighted the lamp at Bram’s bedside. A moment later, he reached in the pocket of the jacket he was wearing over his nightshirt and robe and held it up for Bram to see.

  “What have you got there?” asked Bram.

  “You had a visitor at the door just minutes ago. He asked to see you.”

  “What? At this hour?” Bram put a hand to his forehead. “You sent him away, didn’t you? Tail between his legs?”

  “Not quite, sir. He left, I made certain of that, but it seemed telling him to go was not unexpected. He insisted I deliver this.”

  “You didn’t have to keep your promise,” Bram said dryly. “It could have waited until morning.”

  “I thought that myself, but he must have guessed, because the very next thing he said was his intention to wait across the street, and if he didn’t see my lamp lighting this room he’d know I lied, and then he’d come back. I think he meant he would wake the household if I didn’t come up here.”

  “I see.” He held out his hand. “Then you better let me have it. Take your lamp over to the window while I read. Just so there’s no mistake.”

  “Very good.” Hitchens moved to stand at the window, his back to Bram. He could make out very little except his own reflection in the glass. If the visitor was standing across the street where the Chinese girl sometimes did, he couldn’t see him. He estimated the passing of several minutes and thought that Bram must be rereading the note. It wasn’t more than a single sheet of paper folded into quarters. There could only have been a few paragraphs.

  He turned when Bram called to him, instantly alert to the fact that something was deeply wrong. “Yes, sir. What can I do?” Bram was pulling at his leg, trying to free it from traction. Hitchens hurried over, set the lamp down, and yanked Bram’s hands away from the splints. “No! Stop. You can’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “Damn it. Let go.” Hitchens’s grip was surprisingly strong. “Let. Go.”

  Hitchens hung on. “I’ll fetch your mother.”

  Bram sagged against the bed. He eyed Hitchens with deep hostility. “I just bet you would, too.”

  “Certainly. I don’t threaten.”

  “I need Travers. Bring him here. Don’t wake anyone else, and don’t tell Travers anything except that I want him. You can go then, and I expect that you won’t be speaking to anyone about this. I need to know you’re clear on that.”

  “I understand,” he said gravely.

  Bram waved him off, gritting his teeth when the butler took his leave in precise, even steps, demonstrating that while Bram could order him about, there were limits to the speed at which things would happen.

  A quarter of an hour passed before Samuel Travers limped into the room. Bram didn’t waste any time with explaining the situation to his valet. He said, “Get my brother.”

  Sam’s cheeks puffed as he blew out a lungful of air. “And tell him what? That you can’t sleep?”

  Bram kept the note fisted. Sharp edges of the crumpled paper dug into his palm while he considered the words that would get Bode’s attention. “Tell him that I’m not only lying in bed. Tell him I need him. Do you have that?”

  “You’re not in bed and you need him. I’ve got—”

  “No. That’s not it. I’m not only lying in bed. You must say that. Exactly.”

  “You’re not only lying in bed.”

  “And I need him.”

  “And you need him. Is that all?”

  “You know where he lives?”

  “Certainly.”

  “At this time of night, you’ll need my key to get into the office. It’s in the top drawer of my bureau.”

  “I know where it is,” Travers said. “I didn’t know that you did.”

  Bram ignored the barb. “Just hurry, old man. Don’t bother coming back if he’s not with you.”

  After Comfort was escorted down the length of the bar and back again, she was whisked away by the pair of strongmen and half led, half carried to the concert saloon’s second story. A door in the middle of the hallway opened, and she was shown through it. The men backed away and closed it, but she didn’t hear them leave. The only woman she’d seen all evening was waiting for her by the room’s sole window. As soon as the door shut, the woman dropped the shabby curtains in place and turned to her.

  “Suey Tsin,” Comfort said, as if there was nothing at all odd about seeing her maid in this place. Her stomach lurched suddenly. She was dizzy and the room was tilting. She closed her eyes and pressed her thumb and forefinger a
gainst them until she saw small points of light. It was a long moment before she dared look again, and this time she saw the truth. “Not Suey Tsin.”

  The Chinese woman didn’t speak. She pointed to the bed, where a gauzy batiste gown lay draped over the foot. Through a series of gestures, she indicated what Comfort was meant to do with it.

  Comfort understood the gestures well enough, but she wasn’t so drunk that she was going to comply. She gave the woman a start when she pushed past her and headed for the window, but she wasn’t strong or steady enough to keep the woman from yanking her back. Comfort stumbled over her own feet and sprawled backward on the bed. She thought she would be sick. Apparently the woman thought so, too, because she produced a chamber pot from under the bed and held it out for Comfort to use.

  Comfort recoiled and turned her head away. The odors emanating from the pot were so noxious that she buried her face into a pillow and swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. She waved the woman away and didn’t sit up until she heard the pot being pushed under the bed again.

  She didn’t know how she’d mistaken the woman for Suey Tsin. The similarities started and ended with the fact that they were Chinese. The woman was half again as wide as her maid, and her shoulders sloped forward as though her back was fixed in a position of obeisance. There was no compassion in her sloe-eyed watchfulness. The expression there wasn’t inscrutable, merely implacable.

  The woman picked up the gown from the foot of the bed and pushed it at Comfort. She communicated her expectations through the same series of gestures, but this time she pointed to the door and imitated the strongmen on the other side. Comfort understood that she was being threatened. She could dress herself or be dressed. She reluctantly chose the former.

  Her fingers were slow and clumsy. She could sense the woman’s impatience, but except for the gesturing meant to hurry her, no help was offered. The woman snatched and flung at the door each article of clothing as Comfort removed it. Comfort had only her stockings, shoes, and chemise left to take off when a tremendous roar from below shook the floor. She dropped back on the bed as her stomach lurched. The building shuddered with the thunderous clapping and foot stomping. Glass rattled in the window beside the bed.