Chapter Twenty Eight

Shifting for better balance atop the wooden packing crate, Paul Sinclair carefully kept a firm grip on the nearly empty whiskey bottle. Tilting it up to take a slug, he noticed that starlight pinpricked the sky. The clouds were gone and so was the moon. It would be another hot day. He swiped a hand across his mouth and wiped it on his trousers. He knew that he looked like he’d slept in his clothes. As if he could sleep.

What the hell am I doing here, he wondered. Chicago was where he belonged, not in this dinky town with tree stumps dotting the pastures across the river. He returned his gaze to the small coastal steamer tugging against its anchor chain about fifty feet out from the wharf’s edge. He imagined a tiny cabin, the two women packed together, maybe tied up. He hoped not tied up. No point in it. The captain’s preparations would keep them secure. The cabin had a sturdy lock and a bolted porthole. He stared at that porthole. Was she staring back at him? He squinted, trying to see, but it didn’t help.

Another swig and he commenced speaking, slurring his words but not caring. She couldn’t hear him after all. “You’ll be all right Miss Rebecca. Especially now that you have your sister with you. She’s a tough one. That was a clever trick, he congratulated himself. She went right for it. She loves you, your sister does,” he assured the invisible Rebecca.

They loved each other, those two gals. And he, damn him to hell, he’d used their love against them. It had been a simple, one-man job to move both women from the whorehouse to the ship. He’d simply moved them one at a time. First Rebecca, telling her she had to dress like a whore and walk beside him acting like his doxy. If she refused, gave warning or tried to run, he told her, the people in the whorehouse would kill Rachel. Rebecca had done as instructed, walking beside him dolled up like a tart, though anyone looking at her closely would have seen it was an act. There was a quality to her than couldn’t be painted over.

Once Rebecca was securely onboard, he’d gone back to fetch Rachel who was definitely the more feisty sister. She too had performed as instructed though his forearm still ached where she’d dug her nails in while smiling sweetly at him.

He had to admire her spunk. She wasn’t as gentle as Rebecca. In fact, she reminded him strongly of his sisters. His sisters. Once his sisters had loved him, too. Their shrieks and games in the summer evenings, their laughter when they’d ganged up on their spoiled baby brother. Still, all three had cried when he’d left for the seminary. But, they’d also been proud of him. His memory roamed across their faces. They were ten years older—probably married, maybe mothers by now.

A seagull squawked overhead, the sound jerking his eyes toward the river, back to the porthole. “I hope you get to be a mother, Rebecca. You’d be a good one. I can tell.” Who was he kidding? Where she was going, Panama, she’d be lucky to survive—he’d seen the numbers. The men digging the canal were dropping like flies from malaria, yellow fever and who knew what else.

Yah, who was he kidding? Even if Rebecca managed to live, the other loathsome diseases would likely end any hope of her ever having children. That was the way of prostitution. That hygiene society had it right. Even if she did bear a child, it would likely be blind. He’d seen it happen. More than once.

Whoa, his damn bottle was empty. “I probably shouldn’t be drinking to excess within your sight, Miss Rebecca. A gentleman doesn’t do that. Hah! You know I’m not a gentleman. Though you’re a lady, no doubt about that.” He lifted the bottle to salute the porthole. “Yup, a real lady,” he repeated forcefully as he threw the bottle into the river.

But he wasn’t done confiding in the imagined Rebecca. “You know, I figured that once you were on your way so to speak, that I’d be on my way as well. I planned on heading back to Chicago, where I belong, leave this experience behind me. But ‘ole Farley says I have to stay on a bit longer. Help Cobb see this god awful business through to the end or thereabouts. He wasn’t exactly clear, our Mister Farley.”

Sinclair leaned forward as if to impart a secret, even though the ship was far outside of hearing range. “I don’t really like Farley. He’s a cold hearted bastard with cold eyes and when you shake his hand, it’s cold too. And it’s not the weather. It’s hot here. Not as muggy as Chicago, though. I don’t miss that. Anyway, about Farley. I never took part in a labor fight before. Can’t say I’ll ever do it again. Don’t like it. I used to think my grandma worked too hard on the farm. But those laundry ladies, they work even harder. It’s a helluva job. Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

Sinclair lifted his bowler from his head and dropped it on the crate beside him. For a bit, he was quiet, letting the river air cool his face and ruffle his hair. Heaving a sigh, he turned back toward the porthole. “Whiskey’s gone. I’m going to have to. . .”

Wait. Had he heard a step? Holding his breath he looked north. Maybe it had been a rat. But, no. there was definitely a second step, this one closer. No rat then. He slid off the crate and crouched behind it. His eyes strained to see. There! A figure, stood at the corner of the building, not forty feet away.

It was a woman, he could tell because a skirt covered her legs. She stepped closer until she was just twenty feet away, staring out at the ship. He recognized that walk. He knew that profile. He’d been following it for weeks. “What the hell is she doing here?” he muttered, but he scrunched lower and froze in position until her boots moved off leaving the only the sound of wavelets slapping against the timbers beneath his feet.

Fong and Sage, dressed in working man’s garb, slipped out of Mozart’s. Once outside, they strode separately to the North End, keeping each other in sight the entire way. It wouldn’t do to walk together. Many would notice, some might turn threatening.

At last they met up in the hallway of Fong’s fraternal organization. There another man waited, no doubt he was one of Fong’s so-called cousins. He spoke quickly in Chinese to Fong, who nodded then responded with a single word that sent the cousin out into the street.

“Come, we go,” Fong said, gesturing to Sage. “Farley’s two men met ten other men at train station and took them to hotel here in North End. Then all went to restaurant for dinner. After that, all men went to saloon. They are still in saloon. We go and try to bag our two.” With that, Fong was out the door and on the street, setting off at a fast pace with Sage trailing behind.

Reaching the Slap Jack saloon, Fong stepped into the dark doorway of a job shark storefront while Sage opened the saloon’s door and stepped inside. There was no mistaking the operatives’ and their ten guests. The party took up an entire corner of the place and were so boisterous they drowned out every other sound in the place. It took Sage but a second to figure out exactly who the newcomers were.

The ten fellows from the train were strikebreakers, rather than management operatives like the original two. There was a difference. The strikebreakers were rougher men, big, with meaty hands. They telegraphed power, violence, and a low level of intelligence, exactly what would intimidate peaceful picketers. In contrast, the operatives exuded sneakiness, a characteristic essential to their function.

Sage cursed quietly as he waited for the beer he’d ordered. Then he picked up the drink and ambled over to an empty table near the rowdy group. Once seated, he made a show of sipping his beer and checking his cheap pocket watch every few minutes, as if he were waiting for someone who was late.

The men in the corner were so arrogantly drunk, they had to be incapable of suspicion. Their loud voices could be heard clearly by anyone in the room. “Woo hoo, sure is gonna be a mighty fine pleasure manhandling a bunch of women for a change,” one chortled. “Any of them lookers?” a particularly ugly cuss asked one of Farley’s operatives.

That fellow shook his head, saying, “Nah, mostly they’re pale and stringy.” Sage felt his blood surge. Any woman would be pale and stringy if she worked sixty hours a week in a steam laundry.

After the strikebreaker’s initial outburst the talk around the table turned to bragging about past victories against union members and the pain they’d inflicted. Without having to feign disgust, Sage abruptly drained his glass, stood and left the saloon as if angry that his friend failed to show. Since he knew who the two operatives were, he wasn’t about to sit there and listen to them crow. He’d rather wait outside with Fong.

An hour later, Farley’s men stumbled out the saloon door and staggered toward their boarding house. Fong and Sage trailed behind. When the two came abreast of a dark alley opening they charged, moving as silent as twin sharks through water. Neither man put up much resistance because each one had left his coordination and reaction time back in Slap Jacks.

Without saying a word, Fong and Sage twisted the men’s arms up behind their backs and shoved them toward the dead end of the alley. There, Fong held his captive in a one-handed grip while he rapped lightly on a plain door set into the brick building’s wall. The door immediately opened to reveal a Chinese man standing on a stair landing. He silently pointed toward some descending wooden stairs.

Sage and Fong walked the men down the stairs, ignoring their grunts and squeals of pain. At the bottom was a wooden-walled storage room. It had a door opening into the larger basement beneath the building. Once the four of them shuffled across the threshold, they were in Portland’s infamous underground.

As he stepped into the dusty dark, Sage experienced no surge of fear. It had taken some time but it seemed he had left behind his childhood fear of dark, underground spaces that he acquired in the Appalachian coal mine. After spending considerable time in Portland’s underground, he’d managed to conquer his fear. Of course he wasn’t fooling himself. Merely thinking of a cave or mine set him to twitching. .

The four of them shuffled through dust so dry it raised clouds in the air. Following the lantern held aloft by their Chinese guide they quickly reached the cell. It stood in a corner with brick walls on two sides. The two other sides were bounded by closely spaced iron bars, just like those found in the city jail. Days past, crimps used the cell to imprison shanghaied men before sending them on to their doom. Last year Sage wanted to destroy the cell but Fong talked him out of it. He’d promised that his cousins would make sure no shanghaier ever used it again.

Fong and Sage deposited their charges in the cell and slammed the iron door shut before the men understood what was happening. Sage and Fong stepped away, taking the lantern’s light with them.

“I’m thinking they might be too drunk to answer any questions.” Sage said.

“Maybe should try anyway. They not talk, we come back later,” Fong responded.

Returning to stand before the cell, Sage told them, “You men want to be released, all you have to do is answer a few simple questions,” He was careful to keep the light aimed at their eyes and away from his face. This was a kidnapping after all.

The smaller fellow seemed alert compared to the other bigger one who was sitting in the dust, his back against the brick wall, his mouth lax and gaping. “And exactly what are the questions?” asked the more alert one.

“First of all, do you know where Farley’s keeping the Levy women?”

The fellow blinked. “Who?” he finally asked.

“Rebecca and Rachel Levy. Your boss has taken them. He’s hiding them somewhere. We want to know where.”

“Rachel Levy’s that gal working at the Sparta Laundry, ain’t she?” the fellow asked.

“That’s right. She was kidnapped last Saturday night.”

The fellow shook his head. “I don’t know nothing about no kidnapping. Farley hired us to work with the drivers. He ain’t said nothing about no kidnapping.” The fellow’s tone was emphatic and rang true.

Sage and Fong exchanged a glance. “Okay, then,” Sage said. “How about the other fellow Farley hired? The one who wears the bowler hat all the time? What’s his name? Where does he stay?”

The man sitting in the dirt stirred and struggled to straighten up. “Alfred,” he slurred warningly.

“His name’s Alfred?” Sage asked, amazed the man would be so compliant.

“Nah, my name’s Alfred,” the standing man said. “I don’t remember nothing about any fellow in a bowler hat,” he added. This time, there was a sly twist to his lips, accompanied by a narrowing and juddering glance of his eyes to one side. He was lying.

It being just hours before dawn, Sage was beyond tired and without patience. He looked at Fong and said, “I suggest we leave these fellows right here to think about their answers. Maybe come back in a day or two to see if their memories have improved.”

Fong nodded and, without another word, he, Sage and the only light in the basement moved silently away from the cell, leaving the two captives behind in the pitch black dark.

Mae knew her boots were dragging but she didn’t care. She’d started in the North End and walked the entire length of the waterfront. She trod down every dock access, studied every ship, trying to figure out which one might hold the Levy women. There’d been a lot of ships.

After all that walking, she realized that some ships could be eliminated based on distance alone. For example, it made no sense that they would have moved the two women all the way south, far from the North End. Too many chances someone would notice them during the move. And, Mr. Fong had assured her that not a single covered van, wagon or coach had left the North End without his cousins knowing who or what, was in it. That eliminated any ship south of Burnside Street, the North End’s border.

Her footsteps slowed as she pondered the ships she’d seen berthed along the river north of Burnside, near the brothel where they’d kept Rachel. There’d been far fewer tied up along that stretch—six total. She sent her mind roaming across those six ships. Two were out because they were river boat tugs. A couple were huge ships in the midst of loading which meant they were busy hives of activity. So many people bustling about made them unlikely prisons for the two women. That left the remaining two. Which one could it be?

Mae let her mind still. Not trying to decide between the two, just letting her thoughts drift back and forth between them. Then a question came to her. One of the ships, a small coastal vessel, wasn’t actually tied to the wharf. Instead, it had dropped an anchor out in the river. Why? There’d been room at the wharf, so why not tie up there? Besides, the boat was falling apart, its paint splotched, its mast rusty and stains were trailing down its cabin’s side. She was no sailor and hadn’t lived in a port city but a few years. Still, even she could see the ship’s owner must not have money for upkeep. So, he needed money and might be tempted to do anything to get it. She realized one more thing. That small coastal steamer was the ship closest to the whorehouse where they’d imprisoned Rebecca. She took a deep breath as certainty took hold. That was the ship.

Minutes later she was at Mozart’s kitchen door and soon on the third floor. She checked Sage’s room. He wasn’t there or in the attic. Going into her room, she noticed her note was gone. That meant he’d noticed she’d moved back from across the river and knew she gone to look at ships. All she had to do was scratch the name on a second note and he’d know where to find her. Quickly she scrawled “Maggie Jane,” set her hairbrush atop the note and hurried back downstairs. She had to get back to that ship, keep an eye on it until Sage could get there with Fong and some men.

She slipped out the kitchen door, locking it behind her. As she moved rapidly down the empty street, Mae’s mind traveled far ahead of her feet. That focused intent was why she failed to sense the other person who followed her onto the wharf—the person who suddenly yanked her back against his chest and slapped a wet, cold and stinky rag over her nose and mouth.