Buch lesen: «Wicked»

Chapter One

Lillith Renfrew frowned as she handed the requested sum to the driver of the hack. It was far more than she’d paid in the past for the journey from her home on Franklin Street to her destination, but there was little she could do about the matter. She hadn’t the time to haggle like a fishwife over the fare. As it was, her lapel watch showed that she was nearly late for her rendezvous with Belle Tauber.

The driver pocketed the coin without checking the denomination, obviously trusting her, although Lilly couldn’t say she did the same where he was concerned.

“You’ll return in an hour as I requested?” she asked, gathering her equipment. With the straps of her two satchels settled bandolier-style across her chest, one carrying plate holders, the other photographs to be delivered, she shouldered the heavy camera with its awkward tripod base.

“You bet,” the driver called, and drove off never to be seen again, Lilly was sure. It wasn’t the first time a cabby had left her stranded in the Barbary Coast. Which just went to show that such men thought nothing of leaving a proper young woman alone in the most disreputable neighborhood in San Francisco.

Well, perhaps she didn’t look as helpless as other females. Or as proper, considering she was lugging photographic equipment. What other middle-class woman would have taken up the science of the camera with the intention of making her living by it? None to her knowledge, for how many other of the gentler sex were strong enough to transport the weighty camera and equipment without help? Again, none of her acquaintance, nor of her sister’s. Nor, as they so often reminded her, of their parents’.

At times it seemed as if the members of her family had but a single theme: her inability to be like the other women of her class, which, they felt, resulted in her sad lack of suitors.

It never crossed their minds that she was just as they had created her, her tall frame similar to that of her father and brother, her unfeminine strength the result of years of nursing duties, supporting and lifting her invalid mother. Lilly’s dearth of suitors was quite a natural state of affairs, considering she had no social life outside of her parents’ narrow circle. Pouring tea for her mother’s visitors, all of whom were elderly women, or acting as hostess when her father entertained an old business associate at dinner, had yet to put her in the way of an eligible, single gentleman.

Granted, she didn’t possess the golden haired beauty that had made her elder brother and sister much sought after. Not only had she been born a decade behind Edmund and nearly nine years after Vinia, Lilly had also been overlooked when physical assets were handed out. Rather than blond curls like her siblings, she had brown hair with nary a wave in it unless she used a crimping iron. Rather than eyes that rivaled the summer skies, as her brother’s and sister’s did, Lilly thought her eyes an unremarkable, washed-out shade of blue. Kind matrons described her as handsome, for her nose was too long to be fashionable, her jawline too square and her cheekbones too high. To top things off, she had never outgrown the angularity of girlhood, being barely rounded compared to other young women her age, and inches taller than was considered desirable.

Lilly sighed deeply. She had just listed all the reasons why she was no doubt quite safe roaming the Barbary Coast unescorted. Plus her purse was rather thin. The cab driver’s extortion made it impossible for her to treat herself to a cup of tea and a pastry before finding another cab or hopping on an omnibus to take her home. If Edmund hadn’t offered to pay for her glass plates, chemicals, albumin papers and card stock, she would not have been able to supply her subjects with a cabinet card likeness of themselves at no charge.

Which reminded her of Belle Tauber, who was waiting to receive her photograph. Lilly hurried off, hoping that Belle would like the mounting she’d chosen for the picture and the double row of gold ruled lines she’d carefully added to the mat simply because it was the young woman’s birthday today. Strange to think Belle was six years younger than she herself was. Lilly would have guessed her to be ten years older, Belle’s features were so forlorn.

The young woman seated on the back stoop of her building, waiting patiently, looked so unlike the young prostitute she knew that Lilly had to blink. Belle still wore the same shabby gown, the color faded with age to a nondescript shade neither brown nor gray. Her threadbare shawl did little to protect her from the wintry air, nor did her worn shoes warm her otherwise bare feet. The change wasn’t due only to the fact that her fair hair looked freshly washed and carefully pinned up, but rather to the excitement that seemed to emanate from Belle’s whole being. She leaped to her feet and hurried a few steps down the alleyway when she spotted Lilly, her eyes glittering unnaturally, her buoyant spirits briefly restoring the beauty that too many years in her profession had stripped away.

“Oh, Miss Lilly! I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” Belle cried.

For a moment Lilly wondered if her client would for once forget the difference in their situations and hug her, but Belle recalled herself before doing so. The fact that she did hurt. Beyond their circumstances, Lilly saw little difference between them, for she, like Belle, was not her own woman. She had come to consider the soiled dove a friend in the weeks since they had first met, but Belle always kept a careful distance between them that seemed to preclude friendship.

“I am sorry to be late,” Lilly said, hastily setting the camera aside so she could rifle through her bag of photographs. “My sister knows very well how I treasure my one afternoon away from home, but when she comes to sit with our parents, she still insists on telling me in great detail about the most trivial things her youngest child has done, thus delaying me.”

Belle smiled softly. “Mamas like to brag, Miss Lilly. I know I woulda if my man had let me keep my babies.”

Having learned more about Belle’s past than she had cared to, Lilly knew there were no words to comfort the young woman for her loss. “Well, nevertheless, I thought it quite uncivil of her,” she said, as her hand found the correct package. “Here you are. Happy birthday, Belle. I hope you like the photograph I chose.”

“You sure took a passel of them,” Belle said, eagerly accepting the cabinet card. “I was beginning to think I was so ugly your picture box was refusing to have anything to do with me.”

She had taken a lot of photographs, Lilly agreed silently. Some showed Belle with unsightly bruises that even a heavy hand with powder could not conceal. In preparing the cabinet card as Belle’s gift, Lilly had spent hours studying proof sheets until she found an image she felt Belle would cherish.

“Oh, Miss Lilly!” The words were a sigh of appreciation. When Belle glanced up from the carefully posed photograph, her eyes were swimming with unshed tears. “You made me look beautiful again,” she whispered, as if she had doubted such a feat could be done.

“Nonsense,” Lilly declared stoutly. “You know very well that while a painter can improve the looks of his subject, a photographer can only reproduce what nature has given a person.”

“I’m gonna take this with me when I go, and treasure it all my years,” Belle promised.

Lilly glanced up from buckling her satchel closed once more. “You’re leaving the Coast? When?”

“Soon as I have a talk with a certain gent,” Belle announced brightly. “See, I know something about him that he don’t want known.”

“You’re planning to blackmail someone?” Lilly gasped. “But, Belle, you can’t do that. It’s wrong.”

Belle’s smile faded. “And what these men do to me every day ain’t?”

“I didn’t say that,” Lilly said. “It’s only that—”

“You and me’s from different worlds, Miss Lilly. You just visit in the Coast. I live here, and there ain’t no gettin’ out unless it’s with a handful of twenty-dollar gold pieces.” Belle carefully placed the cabinet card in the pocket of her skirt. “I aim to get me some of those and clear out while I got the chance.”

Lilly had been privy to conditions in the Coast long enough to know that leaving the neighborhood was the dream of nearly every woman there. A dream that would never come true for most of them. But Belle was gambling with fate and, as Lilly had learned in the weeks she’d spent there, in the Coast fate always won.

“Be careful, Belle,” she urged. “Whether it’s right or wrong, what you are planning to do is most definitely dangerous.”

The prostitute smiled wanly. “Don’t worry ’bout me, Miss Lilly. I’ve seen this man enough to know he values his reputation even more’n he loves money. I’ll be fine and I’ll be gone. There can’t be nothin’ better’n that.”

“You’ve talked to this man already then?” Lilly asked.

Belle shook her head. “Not yet. I know where to find him later tonight, though. Once he pays me, I’ll be on the first train out of town and startin’ my new life.”

And if he decided not to pay her? Lilly wondered if Belle had considered such an outcome. Despite her own feeling of foreboding, she realized reasoning with the determined woman would be difficult. Perhaps in Belle’s place she would have been just as reckless, just as willing to gamble with the future.

Taking the initiative, Lilly quickly hugged Belle and was pleased when, after a slight hesitation, the woman returned the gesture. “Then I hope your new life is everything you want it to be,” Lilly said.

“Thank you, Miss Lilly. I just know it will be.” Belle giggled nervously. “It can’t help but be better than this, can it?”

A truer statement Lilly had yet to hear, but it didn’t lessen the fact that Belle’s plan was fraught with danger. She wished briefly that she did not have other photographs to deliver, that she hadn’t promised a group of newsboys to take their pictures that day. Still, Belle had far more experience in dealing with men than she herself had, Lilly admitted. Or was likely to have. No doubt the young woman knew exactly what she was doing.

Lilly shouldered the camera once more. “I wish I could stay longer but…”

“I understand,” Belle assured. “Thank you so much for my photograph.”

“It was my pleasure. I hope the rest of your birthday is just as pleasurable,” Lilly said as she turned to retrace her steps down the alley.

“It will be, especially when I show my photograph to the other girls,” Belle called.

Lilly gave a quick wave, then rounded the corner onto the street, and Belle was lost to sight.

Belle’s plan continued to nag at Lilly. She’d barely taken a dozen steps, threading her way through the bustle on Pacific Street, when she decided nothing was more important than convincing Belle that blackmail was not the answer to her prayers. Despite the weight of the camera, she’d walk home, forgoing the luxury of an omnibus in order to spend her fare on tea and cakes for Belle. Somehow Lilly would find a way to convince the prostitute that there were other, less risky ways of leaving behind her life in the Coast and beginning anew without a grubstake gained through blackmail.

Her decision made, Lilly turned back quickly to catch Belle and issue her invitation. With a few strides she rounded the corner, her serviceable dark brown walking suit making her blend in with the shadows that cloaked the nearly deserted alleyway.

Belle hadn’t gone inside yet. Her head was bent as she admired the cabinet card Lilly had given her. She seemed unaware of the man who slipped from the building behind her.

He was a lanky fellow, although not overly tall. As he was without a hat, Lilly saw that his dark hair thinned away from his brow, leaving a V-shaped section that he wore combed back and slicked with brilliantine. His clothing could well have been chosen for the setting, for while his trousers were a muddy gray-green shade that rivaled the alley floor, the coloration in his shirt nearly matched the brickwork of the surrounding buildings. He was cleanly shaved, and moved with a sureness of step associated with sobriety—something not often seen in the Barbary Coast.

Growing aware of his approach, Belle turned slightly, dropping the hand that held her likeness so that the cabinet card was hidden from him in the folds of her skirt. Because Belle showed no fear of the man, Lilly was totally unprepared when he moved swiftly, the hitherto concealed knife in his hand slashing across the young prostitute’s throat.

Paralyzed with shock, Lilly stared at the tableau, the man cradling his victim almost tenderly as she sagged limply in his arms. The photograph dropped from Belle’s hand and fluttered gently away into the shadows.

Deegan Galloway stood across the road from the undertaker’s parlor at Number 16 O’Farrell Street and decided the funeral trappings were tasteful. Or as tasteful as the flamboyant citizens of San Francisco, rich from mine and railroad stocks, could make them. Ostentation was de rigueur, for it was the end of an era. Norton I, self-styled Emperor of the United States, was dead.

If the lines of mourners and the bountiful floral tributes were anything to go on, the old eccentric would be greatly missed. For years he’d been living on the generosity of San Franciscans, consuming gratuitous meals in restaurants, having his portrait taken free of charge, his clothing supplied—all his needs seen to without the bother of earning a cent himself. A good number of times in the past, Deegan had envied Norton his delusions and the great care the people of San Francisco took to nurture them. That had been before he himself became the California-based business agent for his best friend, the wealthy English baron, Garrett Blackhawk, and gained the instant and quite comfortable bank account that went with the position. Fortunately, very little work or responsibility went with the job, which made it the perfect employment for a feckless fellow like himself. But then, after all the adventures they’d shared during the past two years, Deegan figured Garrett knew him too well to expect much of him when it came to honest labor.

The money and respectable-sounding business connection were rewards, pure and simple. Deegan wasn’t sure Garrett was paying him off in appreciation for saving his life numerous times in Mexico, for steadfast loyalty under uncommon circumstances during their recent journey to England, or because Garrett had married Winona Abbot, the only woman with whom Deegan had ever considered himself in love. Deegan suspected it was the last reason rather than either of the former. Seeing his friend and his ravishingly lovely bride together and happy had certainly made Deegan only too aware of his own shortcomings where Wyn was concerned. Rather than continue to torture himself, he had not lingered with the couple when their ship had docked in Boston, but had booked a berth on the first westbound train.

Since then he had kept sufficiently busy, setting up an office and hiring an eager young clerk to man it while he eased himself back into the upper echelon’s social world. Wyn Blackhawk’s family had smoothed over the ripples his last appearance among the Nob Hill set had caused—again a reward for the small part he’d played in saving her life. In fact, the welcome he received in the best homes now was so effusive Deegan frequently wondered if anyone in town recalled that he was the same cad who’d brazenly tampered with the affections of two of the city’s young heiresses.

Deegan had become such a part of the upper crust’s world that no one had questioned the origin of the generous contribution he had made to the emperor’s funeral fund when the collection was taken up the day before at the Pacific Club.

Not bad for a boy who had once sung in saloons for his dinner, or lifted patrons’ wallets if the coins thrown on stage hadn’t added up to the amount he thought his performance deserved.

Of course, no one knew of his larcenous beginnings; they were a carefully guarded secret. Only one other person remembered those days, and she had too much to lose if the knowledge became known.

And yet, as much as Deegan had longed for the leisured life he now led, he wasn’t satisfied with it. Despite the number of invitations he received regularly, despite his popularity with both men and women among San Francisco’s wealthy, something seemed to be missing in his life.

It had taken him awhile to identify what it was, and he had been stunned at the answer: he missed the danger of his old life. Damned if he’d ever thought to miss that! But after years of living on adrenaline, endeavoring to outwit the devil himself, Deegan was finding respectability extremely tedious.

Across the way the mourners continued to shuffle past Norton’s coffin. There were so many wreaths and bouquets that the lid was nearly eclipsed in blossoms. San Franciscans had been viewing the emperor’s remains since seven that morning, and still the line of visitors seemed unchanged. Thousands, it seemed, would miss the old man.

Rather than join the sedate crowd in paying his respects, Deegan remained where he was. Norton’s funeral had dampened his normally high spirits, something very few things had managed to do in his thirty-one years. If he crossed the thoroughfare to the funeral parlor, his spirits would no doubt sink to such a level he would end the day trying to recover his savoir faire at the mercy of a local barkeeper’s tap.

“ ’Scuse me,” a man mumbled as he sidestepped a fresh batch of mourners and brushed against Deegan.

Although he hadn’t felt the lift, Deegan knew from experience that his wallet had been eased from his jacket. Surreptitiously he checked his vest pocket. Sure enough, his watch was missing as well.

The lifter was a small fellow who was dressed quietly, his dark suit and starched collar not so ill fitting as to make him noticeable, his bowler set straight rather than cocked over his thinning hair. Although Deegan hadn’t seen Charlie Wooton in nearly fifteen years, he found the pickpocket little changed.

A reckless smile curved the corners of Deegan’s mouth. It seemed that salvation, in the form of Wooton, had come to him. Rather than cry thief, Deegan eased into the crowd, doggedly following the pickpocket as the man maneuvered profitably through the mass of mourners.

Wooton put a number of city blocks between himself and his unknowing victims before entering a corner grocer’s shop and, with a brief nod to the proprietor, slid among the shoppers to the curtained-off back room. Deegan closed the distance between them until he was nearly on his old friend’s heels when the man brushed the curtain aside.

“I thought there was honor among thieves,” he murmured, catching Wooton’s arm, detaining him.

The pickpocket turned as if honestly puzzled to be so accosted. His stance was deceptive, his calm facade masking the fact that he was coiled for action, whether verbal or physical. “Beg yer pard—” he began, then broke off, a wide smile of recognition stretching his mobile face. “Damn! If it ain’t Digger O’Rourke. What in blazes ’er you doin’ in this neighborhood?”

Deegan didn’t relax his hold on Wooton’s arm or mention that he answered to a different name now. “Following you, my lad,” he answered smoothly, his voice colored with the hint of an Irish brogue.

“Me?” The pickpocket’s brow furrowed. “What the hell for?”

“The same reason anyone would follow you, Charlie. I want my wallet back. And my watch,” Deegan added.

Wooton’s face assumed an expression of innocence. “Lost ’em? Damn, Dig, that’s too bad.”

Rather than be offended by his old friend’s act, Deegan grinned and brushed at the lapels of Wooton’s suit jacket. “A real shame,” he admitted, helping himself to the contents of the man’s inner pocket. He flashed a particularly fat wallet before the thief’s eyes. “Hmm. Quite a haul today.”

Wooton tried to snatch the wallet from Deegan’s hand.

Galloway held it just out of the smaller man’s reach. “My goods, if you please, b’hoy,” he said.

The pickpocket glanced quickly around the grocer’s to see if they were being observed. “All right,” he snarled, “but in private. Not out here where a copper might see.”