Hers the Kingdom (79 page)

     "I went to prison for smuggling," was his abrupt reply, "opium smuggling."

     She chased a vegetable around her plate with her chopsticks, concentrating on the act. "Were you guilty?" she asked.

     "I've done a great many things in my life that I regret," he told her.

     She looked directly into his eyes then, and she said, "Please tell me about gambling now. The lecture."

     He did as she proposed. "There are four games—or 'actions'— in Chinatown. Fan Tan, Mah-Jongg, Pai Gow, and the lottery. Fan Tan is a bean game—that is, each player takes a handful of beans and puts them in a pile. The croupier removes four and takes bets on if the remaining number is odd or even. Pai Gow is like dominos— spectators tend to bet on the players, not the game. Mah-Jongg you probably know. And the lottery operates like all lotteries, with two drawings each day. I sometimes think everybody in Chinatown plays the lottery. The drawings are in Oakland—the Chinatown squad ran it out of San Francisco. So runners take the slips over each day on the ferries. The police give them a merry chase."

     He told her stories he had heard from men on the police squad, and from Chinese who ran the numbers, about the adventures and misadventures of the Oakland run. By the time he finished, the mood between them had been reestablished and Kit decided she would not mention his past again, that it was not important to her.

     When they came out of the restaurant the sky was dark and the lights of Chinatown glittered. "It's like being in a foreign country," she said. They strolled silently, she listening to the guttural snips of conversation around them, now and then translating. At the door to a soda parlor they paused and looked in. Several young women sat at a Mah-Jongg table.

     "Is it common for women to play in such a public place?" she asked, and his hesitation made her look at him sharply.

     "Are they prostitutes?" she whispered.

     He nodded. At that precise moment a man sat down at one of the tables. Connor would have moved on, but Kit pretended to study a calligraphy brush in the store window, so she could watch. She saw the man strike up a conversation, then the woman rose and walked out of the store. In a minute, the man followed.

     "She's . . . she's not a woman," Kit said in a strained voice. "Dear God, she's no more than a child . . ."

     "I told you it wasn't pretty," he said roughly. Then, in a softer voice, "Someone bought that girl for three or four thousand dollars in the old country. She is quite an investment, so now she must work to make a return for her owner."

     She is
owned?
But it can't be legal. My God, Connor, we had a Civil War about slavery . . ."

     "The law simply does not protect the Chinese in this country, that's about the long and short of it."

     "No," she said, angry, "there has to be someone . . ."

     "There is one person. Her name is Dina Cameron, she's a good Scotswoman at the Presbyterian Mission House. They call her 'Lo Mo' in Chinatown—the Mother. I suspect she's managed to get fifty or so of the girls out of their bondage. The Chinatown police cooperate with her, but she is the only one who is actively fighting the slave trade."

     "Do you know her?" Kit asked.

     He seemed surprised. "As a matter of fact, I do."

     "Will you introduce me?"

     "Why?" he asked, but before she could answer he saw something. Propelling her by the arm, he led her up a flight of stairs to a second-story balcony, and from there into a large room crowded with people.

     It was a mixed group, including whites and a few women. The men made room for Connor at the table. She did as he had instructed, and stayed close by his elbow.

     From a large jar of beans, he gathered a handful of beans. Fan Tan, she thought. Connor put a ten-dollar bill on the table in front of him. Everyone waited in silence as the men placed their bets.

     At the last moment, one man put a tightly folded bill on the table in front of him. The chattering started up and stopped as quickly; Kit had not been able to understand the burst of talk.

     Connor lost, as did the man who had put down the tightly folded bill. While Connor turned away, leaving his bet on the table, the other man insisted on replacing his bet with another bill from his pocket. The croupier began to shout. Kit felt Connor's hand on her back, moving her toward the door. When they were in the street again she asked, "Do you know what that was about?"

     "If the man had won," Connor explained, "he would have opened that folded bet to show maybe a one-hundred-dollar bill inside."

     "Would they have paid?"

     "No, no more than they want to allow him to replace the bet on the table with a bill from his pocket. But winning or losing, in this case, isn't the point. What you saw was one tong harassing another's game. It is a way of creating trouble, maybe starting a tong war."

     "How will it end?"

     "In bloodshed, probably. A killing, not today but one day soon."

     "Were we in danger?" she wanted to know.

     "No," he said, "I wouldn't have taken you there if I thought there might be trouble. One thing the Chinese hired murderers— they call them highbinders—don't want is a white witness. They
can get away with murder so long as they only kill each other."

     'That's grotesque," she said.

     "It is," he agreed.

     They walked back up the hill in silence. At Sara's door he looked at her closely and asked, "Are you sorry you asked for a tour of Chinatown?"

     She shook herself then. "No, not at all," she said, "in fact, I believe I've found what Porter has been after me about."

Kit sat in the ill-smelling foyer in the brick building on Stockton Street, waiting. The room was overheated, and she was sorry she had worn a wool dress. Finally, a young Chinese woman came in and motioned to her to follow. "Sit here," the girl said, nodding toward a straight-backed chair placed in front of a desk piled high with papers and assorted paraphernalia. After another long wait, when Kit was beginning to wonder if the girl had made a mistake, a tall, big-boned woman came thundering into the room, calling to someone who was out of sight. She saw Kit, but she made no motion that could be taken as greeting. She began to rummage through a stack of papers on the desk, obviously looking for something. After a while she gave up, sat down and said, "Connor says I should see you, and I always do what Connor tells me to do. What do you want?" she demanded.

     "I want to learn about the slave trade in Chinatown—the girls who become prostitutes," she answered.

     "Why?" Mrs. Cameron asked, voice booming.

     "Because I'm appalled at what I saw the other night—a child prostitute—and I want to see if there is some way I might help."

     "You want to volunteer, is that it?"

     Kit was beginning to feel uncomfortable. She could feel herself flush. She hoped Mrs. Cameron would not notice the wave of red that would soon appear at her neckline.

     "I want to do something if I can be effective, Mrs. Cameron. If I can't, obviously I would not wish to take up any more of your time."

     Dina Cameron let out a large groan then, and leaned back in her chair. "I just remembered what Connor told me about you. I'm sorry I gave you my standard society lady reception."

     "I'm sorry, too," Kit said, wanting but not daring to ask what Connor had said, "perhaps Connor told you that I speak the Cantonese dialect. I thought that I might be able to help by translating . . ."

     Now Mrs. Cameron sat up straight, and she looked sharply at Kit. "He didn't tell me you could speak the language—Mandarin too?"

     Kit nodded.

     "Then you could be of help. But first I've got to tell you something—you hear me out, and then you decide if you want to have anything to do with the mission. The work that needs to be done is not amusing. What you will see is the underside of Chinatown, the dirt and the poverty and the degradation. It is sordid, repugnant, something a young woman like yourself perhaps shouldn't see. The smells are as bad as the morals. The girls—well, they are stupid, dirty creatures without the vaguest notion of what freedom means. A bar of soap, a bath, food twice a day, and a bed of their own where they can sleep and not have to open their legs to any man who asks, that's their idea of heaven. That's what I try to give them."

     "I would like to be of help," Kit said.

     "Come tomorrow and the next day, and the next, if you can stand it. Then tell me if you want to sign on—but promise me you will tell the truth. And don't be afraid to say if your stomach won't take it. Stronger men than you have been done in by Chinatown."

     Kit smiled and offered her hand. The big woman shook it and smiled back, and Kit couldn't help but notice how it transformed her face.

     Almost as an afterthought, Dina Cameron asked, "How do you happen to know Connor?"

     "He's a friend of my godmother's," she told her.

     "He's a rare good man," the older woman said, "a rare man."

Kit sat soaking in the bathtub, her head back and her eyes closed, trying not to doze off. Porter was in the adjoining dressing room, sitting on a little stool, and talking to her through the open door.

     "You mean you actually went into the girl's room when she had a customer?"

     "She was supposed to have given that up," Kit answered wearily, not opening her eyes, "I wasn't expecting her to have company."

     "What were they doing?" he wanted to know.

     "What do you think they were doing? Use your imagination, then turn that upside down."

     "God!" Porter said, "So what did you do?"

     "I used some of those wonderful new Cantonese words I told you about—the man didn't even bother to pull on his pants."

     "And what about the girl? Was she contrite or what?"

     "Lord no," Kit laughed, "she was amazed that I should be angry with her. After all, the man was a friend of her uncle's cousin, and therefore she could not refuse him . . . I should see how impolite it would have been. The Chinese are terribly polite, you know."

     "And that's the sort of thing you do every day?" Porter asked.

     "No, sometimes I get to fight with a girl's 'benefactor'—her owner. I do the talking, but Mrs. Cameron backs me up, towering and glowering. She is a wonder . . . bigger than life . . . literally and figuratively."

     Porter coughed. "You never told me what Mother had to say about your decision to stay on and work at the mission. You must have heard from her by now."

     "As a matter of fact, I received an eight-page letter from her just yesterday. I was certain I was in for a long, well-reasoned argument on why I should return. Instead, it was a complete resume of her most recent court battles. Seems she is back in federal court this time. Her new lawyers assure her she has a strong case, that she should 'take it all the way to the Supreme Court.'"

     "How many times does she have to hear that?" Porter said, mildly, considering how vehemently he disagreed with Willa.

     "It was only at the end of the letter that she said she was disappointed, but would accept my decision to stay on in San Francisco for the time being. She said my work at the mission sounded 'extremely interesting.'"

     Porter chuckled. "I wonder if she would think so if she could see how dragged out you're looking." He cleared his throat then, and although Kit couldn't see him she knew he would be leaning back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. It was what he did when he had a prepared speech. "I've been thinking," he began, and she knew she was right, "you need some fun in your life—and a better class of people. I mean, all you do is associate with slavers and Chinese prostitutes and that monstrous big Scotswoman. I decided to organize a social outing. It's all arranged."

     "A social outing? You, Porter Reade, have organized a
social outing?
I don't believe it."

     "It's true," he called, "we're going to a dance."

     "What do you mean 'we'? You don't even know how to dance," she said, incredulously.