Hop Alley (15 page)

There was little to be gained, I thought, by explaining that if someone did indeed have to pay, then in fact it was my trusty old housekeeper that belonged at the end of the noose, rather than any member of Denver’s Chinese populace. Seeing that the conversation could serve no further useful purpose, and hoping to prevent him calling to his comrades to the south, I continued sawing and with the other hand pointed Patrolman Heinecker’s Colt at the man’s balls.

“He’s coming down, and if I hear another sound out of you, I’m going to ventilate your ball sack, you understand?”

I thought I might have to make good on the threat, but at the sight of the gun barrel pointed at his middle he gave a disgusted little wave and ran yelling across the muddy street to crash his fist into a window. It was hard to see but I heard the smashing of the glass, followed by a bellow of pain.

“Ahhh, son of a
bitch
!”

Then I heard him slumping down onto the planks of the sidewalk as the final strands of the rope parted and the old man fell into a heap at the foot of the lamppost, and I
regretted not having plotted an easier descent for him. Except for the drunk with the bleeding fist, who sat weeping and cursing me and the old man both, my action had gone unnoticed; there was no other objection when I picked the man up and slung him over my shoulder to a nearby building, one of a number that had been spared destruction by the fire brigade’s muddying of that part of the street.

A door opened unbidden as I reached it and the magus and I were pulled into its dark interior amidst a cacophony of voices muttering and whispering hoarsely in what I assumed to be Mandarin.

“The old man’s still alive,” I said.

“You go,” an angry voice shouted at me from the darkness.

“You hear? He’s still alive. I’m going to go over and get a doctor I know,” I said, though to be honest I thought even Ernie Stickhammer might require the persuasive qualities of Patrolman Heinecker’s revolver to get him to tend to a Chinaman in the middle of the night, with a riot in progress scarcely half a block away.

“No doctor. Chinese doctor. You go now.”

My eyes had begun to adjust to the light of the room, and I saw that the old man had been removed, and that I was in the company of six or eight Chinese; remarkably, all of them looked as elderly as he or even older. One of them opened the door and another shoved me out.

The door shut quietly behind me, and I saw the drunk sitting in the same spot as before, mumbling to himself and still making sad sounds. I didn’t think he’d seen me exiting the building, but as I passed by him on my way away from the disturbances he looked up.

“Say, you son of a bitch, wha’d you do with our chink?”

I put the revolver to his head and pulled the hammer back. “Go home,” I said, and he rose to his feet and stumbled away from me, babbling incoherently, and I looked over at the group of young Chinamen. The old man’s nephew looked at me impassively, and a different patrolman had replaced Heinecker, who still lay on the ground where he had fallen. Thinking about that as I headed back home I hoped that meant I hadn’t killed him.

SEVEN

H
OP
A
LLEY
, L
AID
W
ASTE AND
C
APTURED ON
G
LASS

I
had not thought much of the girl I’d left behind to go to war since returning from that war under somewhat questionable circumstances and finding that she had married another man and died in childbed, which indicated, I suppose, that my love for her was not as eternal and pure as I’d thought. That I was secretly relieved to be free of her does not make me proud, but the fact that it had been years since she’d crossed my mind must have been a sign that our union would have been an unhappy and impermanent one.

On the night of the riot, though, I dreamt of her. That she was alive in this dream and that we were standing on a Denver sidewalk was all that I recalled upon awaking, and that I was shouting, “I
deserted
for you,” so loud my throat was raw as I sprung from bed, winded and swinging my fists at the empty air. I would not sleep again that night.

The house was silent but for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer, which showed the time to be after four. I dressed myself and roused Lemuel.

“What the hell?” he asked.

“Wake up, lad,” I told him. “Time to earn your pay.” He lay there, bleary, and I did most of the work loading up the chemicals and the dark tent, then packing up the stereographic camera.

“What’s all that for? How are you figuring to take pictures at night?”

“Won’t be nighttime for much longer.” Before we got to the front stairs Mrs. Fenster met us in the foyer, candlestick in hand.

“You’re awake,” I said.

“Fancy sleeping with you howling like you were. Where are you going in the middle of the night?”

“Going to teach the boy how to work in the field.”

“Put all that down,” she said, “and at least get you some breakfast. Sun won’t be up for hours, and there’ll be no use in him slopping muck onto the glass before that.”

With some reluctance I allowed as how she was correct, and the boy and I sat at the table. Neither of us said a word until his auntie brought the coffee in.

“I suppose you’re wondering what we’re off to record in the light of the dawn,” I said.

The question hadn’t entered his mind, and now that it was raised he remained incurious and indifferent, but I told him just the same, explaining what we were about to document, and he nodded his understanding.

“I seen some of that last night. There was burning and yelling, and some of the harlots wanted to go take a gander at it and some of ’em wanted to bar the doors.”

His aunt betrayed no reaction to that last statement as she brought in a plate full of bacon fried to black, and we didn’t speak as we ate. When we were finished I sent him around to the livery for the wagon, which we loaded up and drove to Hop Alley.

The morning fog made the residual smoke from the inferno hang low, and blended with that from the city’s hearths the air at the site of the riot was acrid and damp. Hopping from the wagon near the streetlamp that had served as the old magus’s gallows I found the drunk who’d tried to keep me from cutting him down. He was unconscious, smeared with the mud he lay in, and he reeked of various effluvia. I touched him with my foot to see if he was alive; he grunted but didn’t wake.

The street was unpopulated and silent, its calm so different from its normal frenzied activity that I wondered whether
every single Chinese in town hadn’t been taken into custody. Above me, though, someone quietly closed a second-story window and latched it, and behind another window opposite that one I spied a face glaring at me in the faint foredawn light; as our eyes met it withdrew, ghostly, into the darkness of the room.

I decided to start with some of the burnt-out buildings across the street from the one I’d taken the old man into, and by the time I had set up the camera and dark tent the sun was rising. As it crested the horizon it cast a dramatic ray on a charred interior beam of the building before me; on its ruined facade was a large sign with Chinese characters running down its left side and the word L
AUNDRY
to their right. Its interior appeared to be a total loss.

Once three views of the ruined laundry had been committed to glass I ventured inside of it. The flames had already been put out by the fire brigade when I’d arrived that night, and the blackened timbers had grown cold. There was that particular sharp, smoky smell of an abandoned campfire, and of the laundering facility itself very little remained but some galvanized tubs full of water and ash and burnt wood. I took down a sign from the wall and laid it artistically on one of those tubs as though it had fallen there, and setting up the tripod I yelled for the boy to bring me some fresh plates.

When I had done with them Lem took them to the dark tent as I poked around the room searching for another angle
bright enough for a sharp image. I thought I had found one when the boy returned empty-handed.

“There’s a whole bunch of Chinamen standing over there ’cross the street looking awful mad,” he said.

Stepping outside I saw that this was so, and rather than risk starting another riot I ordered the lad to begin packing up. There were six or seven of them, of varying ages, and they stared at us without consulting one another or indicating what their intentions were. They did not appear happy at the sight of me traipsing through their ruined quarter like a Roman tourist at Herculaneum, and presuming what’s more to take pictures of it, and for a moment I felt an unaccountable sense of shame. I made a great show of moving the crate over to the wagon, and they watched as we packed up the dark tent and shoved everything onto the back of the wagon. Their eyes were still on us as we rode away, and they looked no more content for seeing our receding backs.

I
LIKED THOSE
pictures more than any I’d made in a long while, and I printed up a set of proofs that very afternoon. By eleven in the morning the sun had burned off the fog, and not much later I sat up on the roof enjoying Old Sol as they came up. I had Plato’s
Last Days of Socrates
with me, but I had read it a dozen times before and wasn’t overly annoyed when the boy broke my concentration.

“It’s that one-armed fellow again, got a package from back east.” He hesitated before continuing: “He mentioned he’d like you to make it quick this time.”

“Tell him I’ll be with him presently,” I said, and the boy, looking nervous, went back downstairs. I examined the prints with greater care than was really called for, then set about a lazy inspection of the four corners of the rooftop. Having determined that they remained structurally sound and properly tar-papered I lazily mounted the ladder and descended into the foyer, where the disrespectful son of a bitch sat fuming.

“I’m sure you think it a fine joke, keeping me waiting.”

“Beg pardon?” I said, all innocence.

He shoved a package in my direction. “That’s eighteen dollars and thirty-five cents, payable upon delivery.”

“What’s it consist of?” I asked, knowing perfectly well that it contained a six-inch lens I had ordered eight weeks prior.

“How would I know what’s in it? Look at the sender’s name.”

I squinted and shrugged. “McAllister Photographic Supply Company, Philadelphia. Never heard of them.”

“All right,” he said, and he tucked the box under the stump of his missing arm and strode toward the staircase.

“Hold up, there,” I called. “I’ll pay.”

“No, sir, Mister, there’s obviously been some kind of mistake made.” He was at the top of the stairs now, turned my way, smirking. “Good day, sir.”

I did need that lens, and I was willing to let him win the game at this point. “All right, I was having you on. Now give me the package.”

The smirk became a sneer. “I’ll by God eat the eighteen dollars myself before I’ll let you have it.”

I reached out for it, thinking to snatch it from its perch between stump and rib, and he beat me to it with his remaining hand, the stump flailing like a dodo’s useless wing. “Sorry,” he said.

“See here, a joke’s all it was.”

His face was getting redder, and the scars showed white against it. “If you think costing me time on my route is a joke, friend, you’re sadly mistaken.” He stood there at the top of the steps, holding the box like a baton. It was a foot long, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine and stamped F
RAGILE
, and he made as if to toss the thing down the stairs.

I rushed him, and instead of throwing it he brought it across my jaw with great force and a loud crack. The pain was sufficient to bring me down to my knees. “Eighteen dollars and thirty-five cents, please,” he said, and I rose to my feet. My left hand to my jaw, I was preparing to sneak a right uppercut when Mrs. Fenster came out of the kitchen to see what the trouble was.

“Imagine what the folks will say when they hear how you beat up a one-armed cripple,” she said, wiping her hands dry on her apron.

“Who’s a cripple?” the fellow said. “Anyway, I hit him.”

She gave me a warning glance and turned on her heel, and chastened I held my hand out for the package. Reluctantly he gave it over.

“Hey,” he said when I opened my jackknife and cut the twine. “You have to pay for that first.”

“I’m checking for damage before I accept delivery,” I said. “If you don’t like that, you can go back and tell your employer how you broke the damned thing smashing it across the customer’s mandible.”

The lens appeared to be in good condition, brass barrel undented and all elements intact, so I paid the man, who left without another word. My jaw had begun to throb, though oddly it wasn’t quite at the point where he’d hit me, and probing the teeth with my tongue I pinpointed the trouble spot at the lower left bicuspid. I hoped the pain was temporary and wouldn’t require a trip to the dentist’s for an extraction, for I had all mine still and was rather proud of the fact. When Mrs. Fenster served her midday meal I avoided the left side except for the bread pudding, and I thought it might be all right.

C
OME THE TAIL
end of the afternoon I had made a goodly number of prints of the Hop Alley views on albumen paper, and I ordered the boy to begin mounting them. I needed to make
the trip to Golden that evening, but not for the usual reason. Not only for that reason, in any case; I had been brooding all afternoon over the prospect of taking over Priscilla’s maintenance. In the light of day it seemed a nightmarish proposition, an invitation to catastrophe, and it was only fair to tell her so now, if not in those precise, indelicate terms. Probably she’d already decided against it anyway, but in either case I had to retract the offer before its potential acceptance.