CHAPTER 20

 

Sage called upon the Baker Theater’s owner and found the man sweeping out the lobby. Despite what appeared to be a serious hangover, the man was agreeable to Sage’s request. Afterward, returning to Mozart’s, hungry for a leisurely breakfast in the kitchen, Sage found Ida Nickerson back at her stove, handling meal preparations with her customary cheery efficiency.

By one forty-five that afternoon, Sage once again stood beneath the Dunlop’s mansion’s portico fighting the fleeting thought that he was once again the country cousin come calling with cow dung on his shoes. The butler, however, didn’t toss him out. Instead, he ushered Sage into the drawing room where Arista stood, one hand on the oak mantelpiece, her delicate face rice-powder smooth and faintly rouged. She looked ethereal in a lilac dress, the muslin clinging to her slender frame. Her unguarded look of pleasure at seeing him triggered a snip of shame that he pushed aside.

Gently mocking a continental gallant, he raised her hand to his lips and smiled as engagingly as he knew how. She laughed at his game, listening to his excuses with an arched eyebrow. “I apologize for disturbing you before the hour appropriate to your receiving at-home calls. But, I must speak to you before your first callers arrive,” he said.

Arista tilted her head, giving him a lopsided smile, “Oh, my goodness, doesn’t that sound intriguing. Come, take a seat, John. Such a titillating introduction to your visit. First, though, we’ll talk of other things until the tea arrives. Actually, my women’s club is gathering here soon, so I am glad you came early.”

“Ah. What good works have the ladies of the club adopted this season?” Such clubs were a rising trend across the country. Apparently bored with unrelenting leisure and uncountable possessions, upper class women had begun involving themselves in civic affairs. Nothing so crass as attacking whiskey barrels with upraised axes. That harridan role was left to other women. Rather, the upper class woman had begun wielding her domestic axe against the attitudes she found in her drawing room, parlor and likely the conjugal bed chamber. Her efforts had won laws creating separate prisons for juvenile delinquents. Current among the Portland women’s low key crusades was the demand that ownership plaques be placed on all downtown buildings. The intent was to make public the names of the men who owned the brothels. The irony inherent in that particular crusade threatened to make him smile. More than one of the fervent do-gooders would be in for a rude awakening when they saw their own family name affixed to these buildings. Lucinda’s throaty chuckle seemed to echo in his ear.

Arista remained oblivious to Sage’s ruminations. “We’ve taken up the foundling home,” she told him, as if this act was on par with “taking up” knitting or maybe tennis. “They find such dear sweet babies abandoned on its doorstep. It horrified us to learn from the home’s superintendent that many of these innocents arrive malnourished and addicted to opium.” Her face twisted and she asked with real wonder, “How can a woman do that to her child?” He remembered then. Arista had lost her only child a few years ago. A sharp jab of compassion nearly knocked Sage off course. For an instant the thought flitted through his brain that if Arista knew the truth, knew what he was trying to do, she would agree to help him. It took some effort to check his impulse to tell her. That revelation wasn’t his risk to take. Matthew’s life depended on Sage being successful. More importantly, unless he was reading the signs wrong, there was every likelihood Arista’s husband was up to his knees in some dirty business. He just didn’t know what. So subterfuge it was, the necessary evil. Still, that didn’t mean Sage had to like it.

“I suppose it’s an act of love,” he managed to answer her question.

“Love? I must say, John, you have a most peculiar view of what constitutes motherly love.”

A flash of exasperation shoved guilt aside but he kept his voice kindly. After all, as his mother would say, “Can’t blame a man for not knowing how to milk a cow if he’s never seen one.”

“Arista,” he said, “It’s fortunate that you’ve never had to face terrible choices. Opium is less expensive and easier to come by than food. Poor mothers sometimes ease their baby’s hunger pangs with a dose of opium.”

She wasn’t having any of it, indignation lifting her chin high. “Why ever do they place themselves in that position in the first place? The mothers must get themselves addicted,” she punctuated her statement with a grimace and shake of her head.

“Some are addicted, most aren’t. They’re poor, Arista. Dirt poor. Most of them start out as innocent, inexperienced country girls. Newspaper ads asking for housekeepers or nurses or companions to the sick lure them into the big city. I’m sure you’ve seen those advertisements. The ones that say,‘Young girls wanted—good wages.’”

She nodded, her eyes turning thoughtful.

“Many of those ads are deliberate lies. Once the girls are here, their need for food and shelter makes them easy prey for the procurers. Other women find themselves in dire straits overnight. One day they are respectable married ladies packing lunch pails for their husbands. The next day, they are widows or abandoned wives with too many mouths to feed.” She needed to see, really see. “Arista, you’ve seen the countless sickly faces of these women on the street.”

She seemed to be thinking, maybe remembering, but she only said, “John, it surprises me to know that a man of your station would know about, let alone think of, such things.” Admiration warmed her words.

The thought that he intended to take advantage of this well-meaning woman made him hesitate. She was already key to his plan for finding those responsible for Steele’s death. Did he also need to play the missionary? Still, this woman and her friends were in a better position to force social change than he was. That’s what his uncle would say. When Sage had been eight, he’d been watching his uncle toss pebbles of varying sizes into the black depths of the tailings pond. Together, they’d counted out loud the seconds it took for the ripples to stop. The biggest pebbles had the longest effect. That lesson had stayed with him. So here was Arista, sitting in her fine house, imbued with social influence in the small pond that was Portland, a fairly big pebble in her own right.

“Let me explain about the opium,” he began. “We can thank England for that. Since pillaging China, our English relatives have distributed opium all along the Pacific lands. A small bottle of liquid opium, just so,” he spread thumb and pointer finger to form a two-inch gap. “It costs less than one meal and lasts a lot longer. Some may become addicted, but some use the drug to soothe hungry bellies. Still mother’s love, Arista, desperate in a way you and I cannot imagine.” At the sight of her stricken face, Sage hastily corrected himself, “One, I cannot imagine anyway. You, I think, know it.”

Arista fumbled for a handkerchief, turned away and carefully blotted the corners of her eyes. The tick of the pendulum clock on the mantel seemed to grow louder, as he regretted the wound he’d just given her. She’d lost her only child, a son, to diphtheria the year before.

But when she swivelled back to face him, her face was composed and resolute. “John, I had no idea. You must think me an ignorant boob. Those poor women,” she said. A spasm of pain washed across her face, empathy she could feel despite her privileged life. She smiled ruefully. “So what you’re telling me is that we’ve misjudged these poor women. Well, I thank you for that. The other ladies will hear of it when we meet today. Maybe we should do something to help the mothers of these babies as well.”

A heavily laden tea tray arrived and was placed upon the low table before the sofa by a silent maid who quickly departed. At last it was time to talk about the purpose of Sage’s visit. Given the empathy and kindness she had just displayed, he found it difficult to lay out his scheme, knowing he was hiding the most crucial fact from her–that he was laying a trap for her husband and his friends. “I am here to ask you a favor,” he said. Her finely shaped eyebrows raised in expectation and he continued, “In New York, the finer restaurants host private after-theater parties for their special patrons and the performers. I’d like Mozart’s to introduce this custom in Portland. Day after tomorrow, Thursday evening, following the premiere performance at the Baker Theater, I want to host a little gathering. It would, of course, be gratis to those attending. I hope to determine whether it may be a custom that catches hold with the more select people and thespians in the city.”

“Oh, what a wonderful idea!” Arista said, clapping her hands together, her eyes shining. “I think our crowd will love it. So cosmopolitan. How do you want me to help?”

“I’m hoping you’ll urge people to attend the event. The individuals you invited to your soirée are the very type of people I want to attract. My thought is to invite them, with perhaps a few other guests, as well as the performers from the theater. I hope you’ll urge acceptance of my invitation when you speak with the ladies this afternoon and give me a list of those I should invite. The invitation will be of such short notice that people may think it unseemly to accept.”

“Oh, you’ll have no trouble attracting the ladies to your little event, John. No matter how short the notice. Although I suspect your real interest is directed more toward their husbands’ fat wallets.”

Sage laughed. “Arista, you understand me completely. The restaurant is ideally located for an event of this sort—it’s just a few blocks from at least two theaters. If our after-theater parties become fashionable, Mozart’s will certainly benefit financially.”

Arista twisted her lips in mock distaste but the sparkle in her eyes meant she was on board. They spent some minutes discussing the event–listing who to invite and what to serve. When the butler appeared to announce that the first women’s club guest was arriving, Sage tucked the list into his coat pocket and took his leave. Arista would do her best to advance his plans. Still, he left her mansion carrying shame over the way he’d maneuvered her into helping him out.

 

* * *

Two hours later found Sage once again leaning against the sun-warmed bricks along Burnside Street, the tattered flannel shirt and faded denims soft against his skin. He watched as McCurdy’s storefront slowly emptied itself of gaunt-faced job seekers. Each time a man slouched out, his face reflected a mixture of anger and relief. Anger at the high cost of getting a low paying job. Relief that wages were at last in the offing.

Inside, McCurdy sat on his stool behind the counter, cleaning his fingernails with a small knife. He glanced up and then straightened. “Oh, boy! It didn’t take you long to get fired. I suppose you want me to find you another job? It’ll cost you extra. You messing things up means I won’t get any business from that timber boss for awhile. You didn’t even stay the week. He’ll want his money back.” Despite McCurdy’s chiding tone, the involuntary lick he gave his lips said that what he really foresaw was another two-dollar fee finding its way into his till.

Sage reached the counter and leaned an elbow on its scarred, unpainted surface.“Plunkett didn’t fire me. I quit. Here’s something to make up for my leaving Plunkett’s early,” He said, tossing a silver two-dollar coin on the counter. “Now you ain’t been hurt at all, have you, McCurdy?”

McCurdy’s mouth went slack in surprise. Taking a gulp that bobbled his Adams apple, he said, “Ain’t nobody ever done that afore.”

“How’d you like five of them?”

“Ten dollars! Are you fooling with me? Where’d a swamper get ten dollars to give away?”

“Don’t matter about where the money comes from, McCurdy. What matters is whether you’re willing to give me some information and keep your lip buttoned about me asking.”

McCurdy narrowed his eyes, his normal rat-like cunning taking hold. “What kind of information are you talking about?” He strove to sound disinterested but his fixed gaze on the coin gave him away.

Sage covered the coin with his palm. “No. It’s either ‘yay’ or ‘nay.’ You decide. Whatever you decide, you’ll have to live by it. Ten dollars or nothing.” Sage leaned across the counter so that his unwavering dark blue eyes were within inches of McCurdy’s alarmed mud-brown ones. “But I should warn you. You might suffer certain consequences if you decide not to talk.”

McCurdy stepped back. His eyes drifted down to the coin that lay uncovered once again on the counter. “Four more of those? Okay, I’ll answer your questions and won’t tell nobody. But what if I don’t know nothing?”

Sage straightened, “Oh, you will. You see, my questions are about your friend Clancy Steele.”

“Clancy? Clancy—he’s dead,” the other man’s confusion was real.

“Where was he living when he died?”

That question seemed to ring no warning bells in McCurdy’s mind, though he bought time by planting his butt back on the stool and striking a match to a cigarette before answering, “He stayed up at a rooming house on Hoyt, at the corner of Eighteenth. Been there awhile,” the words rolled out lazy as the smoke dribbling from his nostrils. Sage fought the urge to punch the man’s face.

“Who’d he work for?” he snapped instead.

“Why, the railroad. Everybody knows that.”

“He also worked for other people, didn’t he?”

“Well, he done some work for one of them timber companies. Sometimes he’d work special jobs, but I don’t know nothing about that. We wasn’t what you’d call friends, more like business acquaintances. He’d didn’t tell me none of his secrets.”

“What happened on his last trip to Frisco?”

For the first time during their exchange, McCurdy’s face closed, a tic in his cheek suggesting he was trying to suppress a reaction. Sage saw the fingers around the cigarette momentarily tighten.

Sage reached across the counter to grab and twist McCurdy’s shirt front until the collar choked the man’s scrawny neck red.“Don’t try to bluff me, McCurdy. I already know some of what happened on that trip. You don’t tell me the truth, I’m going to know it and I won’t like it.”

McCurdy twisted his lips to one side as if itching his nose with the motion and jerked loose. Smoothing down his shirt front he said, “Clancy didn’t tell me exactly what happened. But I figured like maybe he got hold of a paper that could make him rich. I tried to make him tell me what he got but he wouldn’t.”

“If he took a paper off that train, where would he hide it?”

“I’ve been thinking of that since the morning I heard he was dead. Only place I thought of was his rooming house. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get in to see his room.”

 

* * *

Sage rode the trolley car up to the corner of Eighteenth and Glisan. From there he walked a block farther north until he stood in front of the only boardinghouse at that intersection. It was a drab, three-story building, its footprint on the lot enlarged over time by cobbled together additions that tilted off its every side. It must take endless work just to maintain just one floor of this old rambler, he thought. Wonder how many servants the landlady keeps? Not enough, he answered his own question upon seeing the paper scraps snagged in the drooping rose bushes that lined the walkway. Someone had stuck a handwritten “Room to Let” card inside the window next to the door.

Sage knocked on the faded door. A woman of sufficient height and heft to join ranks with the longshoremen opened the door. An apron wound about her thick waist and more frizzy graying hair tumbled out of the bun atop her head than she had tucked into it.

“You here about room?” Her East European accent was thick but the phrase still rang familiar. He’d heard it asked in a multitude of variations.

“Are you the landlady?” he asked. At her nod, he answered her question,“Not exactly, ma’am. May I have a moment of your time?”

Disappointment changed her face, anxiety deepening its lines. Sage glanced at her hands and spotted a worn gold wedding band on her right hand. She’s a widow then. An infant’s wail sounded in a room somewhere near the end of the passage that seemed to stretch clear to the back of the house alongside the stairway to the second floor. An outraged toddler shrieked and older children started yelling. The woman shot a glance behind her, then turned back to him. “I got five of them to raise, all under ten years,” she told him.

He smiled sympathetically. “Please, ma’am, it will only take a moment. I promise I will make it worth your while even though I’m not interested in taking the room.”

The woman sighed heavily but stepped out of his way, allowing him passage into the house. To one side was the parlor, spartan but clean. A card table stood near the potbellied stove so that her roomers could play their games in relative comfort.

“I wanted to ask if you’d let me look at the room you have for rent. I understand it was Mr. Steele’s room.”

He strained to understand her response, the words larded with that accent. Then he caught the rhythm. “So many people, they come to see that room but no one want to rent. Maybe I should charge a nickel a peek, like nickelodeon.” She wrinkled her nose. “No one would pay. Nothing to see. The police have already been here. Took most of his things. Only old clothes left. Vultures, in this country just like back home. When you knocked I was going to clean upstairs while children ate.” She paused, looked at him quietly, taking his measure. Then she shrugged and picked up a dust mop leaning against the stairway newel post. “You might as well come along. Instead of nickel, maybe you help me flip mattress? My back, it is always hurting.”

Seeing his smile she turned away and began climbing to the second floor, gesturing for him to follow with a flip of the rag in her hand. Dutifully, he trailed her broad backside and the soft squeak of her thick-soled shoes up the stairs.

She opened a door right at the top of the stairway. “This is room. There is mattress. You grab other end?”

Once the mattress was flipped, she headed for the door. The noise below had increased to the caterwauling stage. “You look around, mister. Please, do not take things. I must go see to noisy children,” she said and was gone. The noise downstairs increased to a shrill crescendo.

Sage waited in the middle of the room until the woman’s heavy footfalls faded. Sunlight slid past the worn weave of a blue gingham curtain, dust motes raised by the mattress flip drifting through its beam. A four-dollar iron bedstead was centered against the wall opposite the door, effectively bisecting the square room. On one side stood a small bedside table, a wardrobe, and a dresser with a chipped ceramic water pitcher sitting on its stained top. On the other side there was a mostly empty bookshelf and a naked clothes tree. He stepped closer, noting that the shelf’s few books were religious in nature. Probably the only kind of proselytizing the tired landlady has time for, Sage mused.

Your typical short-term-tenancy room. Despite being flipped, the mattress center still sagged. Countless bodies had left their indent as they sought respite in sleep. That was it for the room’s contents. If this house has an inside commode, it’ll be a shared one down the hall.

Sage began with the wardrobe and drawers. There were two well-worn suits, while the dresser’s top drawer held an undisciplined jumble of grimy throwaway collars and cuffs. The wardrobe contained only working clothes; stained winter underwear, heavy work trousers, and dingy shirts. The leavings of an unremarkable life–but then, what would a searcher determine about Sage’s life from the room where he sleep? Not that much more, Sage thought.

Despite upending drawers and wiggling underneath the bed to stare up through the bedsprings, Sage found nothing but a single dust ball that he slipped into his pocket least the landlady suffer mortification at its presence. He found no paper of any kind.

 

When Sage quit the room, he followed the children’s chirping voices down into the kitchen. There a gaggle of tow-headed children sat on chairs, crawled about on the floor or in the case of the youngest, sat tied by dishtowel to a chair, its small fist jammed into an even smaller mouth, its eyes wide and observing. The landlady stood at an ironing board, a wicker basket of clothes on a chair at her side. In one hand she held a heavy iron. Close by another iron was heating on the cooking range. More tendrils of sweaty hair curled out from her bun. The flush on her cheeks and the soft white glow of her skin hinted at the girl she must have once been.

The smell of fresh baked bread made Sage’s mouth water but he took care not to look at the loaf cooling on a nearby rack. People like this woman tended toward generosity. He stepped closer, saying, “Excuse me, ma’am. You said that others have looked at the room. Who were they?”

“The police come just after poor Mr. Steele he was killed. Next his brother, he comes.”

“Are you sure it was his brother?”

“That is what he says to me. Afterward, I think he not look like Mr. Steele. Courteous fellow, but he smelled strong.”

“Smelled? What kind of smell? Like he needed a bath?”

“Oh, no. He look cleaned. He smell like medicine. It is a name I cannot remember. I use it for the children’s chests.”

“Do you mean he smelled of camphor?”

“Yes, that’s it. Camphor.” She apparently liked the word because she said it again. “Yes, he smell like ‘camphor.’”

“Did he carry anything away with him?” More than likely the mysterious “paper” had walked out the door and was either back with its owner or ash.

She was shaking her head. “No, I think that he did not. He came very soon after Mr. Steele died. I had no time to look over Mr. Steele’s things after police left. So I stayed there. Watched like hawk.” She felt the need to explain her zeal, “I worry that the Steele family might say I took something so I watch that man, I do.”

“Was he just looking at everything or did you think he was looking for something in particular?”

She stopped pushing the iron to and fro for the first time. “Let me think.” There was a pause while she thought. “He was looking for one thing. He poke under the drawer paper and wiggle under mattress. Funny places to look for your brother’s things, I think.”

“Did Mr. Steele ever mention a brother or any other kin?”

She shook her head. “To me he never said nothing like that. I don’t know about his family.”

A stooped old man walked slowly into the kitchen, red suspenders tight across his narrow shoulders. She smiled at him. “Ah, Mr. Goldberg. This gentleman is . . .” She looked at Sage.

“Hello, my name’s John Miner,” Sage said, stepping forward to shake the older man’s gnarled hand.

“Mr. Goldberg, he maybe tell you something. He sometimes played the cards with Mr. Steele.” She looked at the elderly man. “You miss Mr. Steele, I think, Mr. Goldberg.” She returned her gaze to Sage. “The two of them take turns making up stories about growing up on a farm. They are silly stories sometimes. I do not think all of them were true.”

The old man laughed and turned bright, interested eyes in Sage’s direction. “So, you are wanting to know about our Mr. Steele, is that so?” he asked.

“I’m trying to find out if he had family here. I need to speak with them if he did.”

The old man raised a hand to stroke a wrinkled, sparsely whiskered chin. “I’m thinking there was a wife and a couple of kids hereabouts. Saw the two of them arguing on the front porch a while back. Overheard her saying the kids needed clothes and that she needed money for a ticket to ride back home to them that night. That led me to thinking she was his wife, ‘cause why else would she be asking for money from him just like he owed her? I thought she lived nearby because only the suburban railways ran that late in the afternoon.”

The old man might be slow moving, but his brain worked fine.“Do you recall when it was that you saw Steele talking to this woman?”

“Spring, early on, I think. Air still had the nip of mountain snow fields to it. I peaked out the curtain. Remember thinking she looked mighty cold and tired. One of those worn-out women. Wondered why he didn’t ask her in.”

Sage said goodbye to the amiable old man and the harried boardinghouse landlady after sliding a silver dollar onto the table. They’d given him much to think about. Sage wanted to track down that smelly man. Either there were excessive numbers of camphor-scented men in town, or else the same man kept turning up in interesting places-like across from Mozart’s, in dark alleys and now here at Steele’s boarding house. Also, there was the woman Mr. Goldberg had seen. Who was she? Where was she?