The Body Snatchers Affair

18

Madame Louella’s fortune-telling parlor was one of several such establishments on the section of Kearney Street north of Market. There were a number of fortune-tellers doing business here, as well as such other charlatans as hypnotists, clairvoyants, astral seers, astrologists, phrenologists, even an alectromancer with cages full of roosters — all operating cheek by jowl with saloons, painless dentists, postcard sellers (which no doubt included the French variety sold from under the counter), auction houses, cheap clothing stores, and shooting galleries. During the evening hours the area was packed with crowds of citizens taking part in the nightly ritual stroll along what was known as the Cocktail Route, from the Reception Saloon on Sutter to the Palace Hotel Bar at Third and Market and scores of watering holes in between. Here, flaring torches and Salvation Army band music and the cries of sellers and pitchmen created a carnivallike atmosphere that would last for several hours.

This evening’s bacchanal was in full swing when Sabina arrived shortly before seven o’clock. She had walked the “Ambrosial Path” before, most recently on the trail of a vicious woman pickpocket at the beginning of what she and John termed the Bughouse Affair — one of the few women to do so who was not trolling nymphes du pavé. As a result she moved swiftly through the crush of humanity here, ignoring the entreaties of the hawkers and the bold stares and bolder comments of well-dressed men and street characters alike, many of whom were deep in drink.

Her destination, a narrow storefront on the block between Bush and Pine, was flanked on one side by a charlatan who billed himself as “The Napoleon of Necromancers” and on the other by MRS. BRADLEY, FASHIONABLE CLOAK MAKING. A large sign above the entrance proclaimed:

Sabina detoured around a lady of the evening touting her charms to a well-dressed businessman and climbed a short flight of stairs to the second floor. The fortune-teller’s door was covered with symbols — stars, planets, fog formations — that Madame Louella claimed were native to the Gypsy tribes of Transylvania where she’d been born. This was a patent fabrication. Sabina knew for a fact that the woman had been born Louella Green in Ashtabula, Ohio, where she’d been a problem child — truancy, shoplifting. When a band of confidence tricksters temporarily posing as patent medicine drummers had passed through on their way west, she had persuaded them to take her along. It was from them she’d learned the Gypsy fortune-telling dodge.

A bell above the door tinkled as Sabina entered the narrow anteroom with its three wooden chairs, all of which were empty. The odor of incense, meant to be exotic but in fact decidedly unpleasant, dilated her nostrils. The black curtain, decorated with more “magic” symbols, that separated the anteroom from the inner chamber parted almost immediately and Madame Louella’s turbaned head poked out. Her professional smile changed shape when she saw Sabina.

“Ah, good,” she said in her deep, almost masculine voice, “you received my message. Come in, dearie, come in. No one else is here. Let me just lock the door to insure our privacy.”

The rest of the woman’s large body appeared, draped as usual in her flowing robe of a somewhat tarnished gold color, emblazoned with a different set of cabalistic signs in black and crimson. The turban was gold as well, with a large blue jewel, obviously a cheap paste imitation, set into the middle of it like a third eye. Strands of none too clean curly black hair straggled from beneath the cloth.

She produced a key from somewhere inside her robe. “Not that this is necessary,” she said mournfully as she locked the door. “Business has been dreadful lately, I might even say nonexistent. Not a fortune to be told in three days, and only two the entire week. It’s an affront to a woman born with Romany blood in her veins and the gift of peering through the mists of time to what lies ahead—”

“Your spiel is wasted on me, Louella, you should know that by now.”

“Have you no sympathy, dearie? The fortune-telling racket really has been poor of late.”

“A sign of the times.”

“Yes, and not likely to change in the forseeable future.”

Madame Louella cackled at her little joke, one Sabina had heard before, then resumed her mournful pose as she led the way through the black curtain into her “fortune room.” The enclosure was small and dark, the walls painted black and unadorned, the single window thickly curtained to keep out light and mute the sounds of Cocktail Route revelry on the street below. It contained nothing other than a table draped in black cloth and two facing chairs. On the table sat one of the largest crystal globes Sabina had ever seen, treated with some sort of phosphorescent chemical that made it appear to emit an eerie inner glow, the room’s only illumination.

The fortune-teller’s chair was large and pillowed; Madame Louella sighed again as she lowered herself into it. “How much will my finder’s fee be?” she asked when Sabina was seated across from her.

“That depends on exactly what you have to tell me.”

“Ten dollars’ worth, I should say.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’m in arrears on my rent, dearie. Living hand to mouth.”

Sabina doubted that. Madame Louella may or may not have few customers wanting their futures told, but as part of the thriving network of information sellers she made enough to keep her rent current and her larder reasonably full.

“Business first. Your message said you’d know the whereabouts of Artemas Sneed by seven o’clock.”

“And so I do. One of my friends” — Madame Louella’s word for her coterie of informants — “brought the information shortly before you arrived. I had to pay him five dollars for his efforts.”

Sabina doubted that, too, but she made no comment.

“I shouldn’t tell you how he came by it, but I will,” Madame Louella said in an obvious effort to curry largesse. “He shared a cell with Artemas Sneed for two years in San Quentin, and by chance encountered him a few nights ago in a Barbary Coast deadfall. It took him most of the day to find out where Sneed is living.”

“And that is?”

“A rooming house on the waterfront. The name and address are surely worth ten dollars.”

“If in fact the information is correct.”

“It is. My friend guarantees it.”

“Secondhand guarantees are not always reliable,” Sabina said. “I’ll let you have five dollars now and five more after Sneed’s lodgings have been confirmed.”

“Oh, now, dearie…”

“I’ve always been fair with you, haven’t I?”

“Yes, but given my financial difficulties, it’s a hard bargain you drive.”

“Hard times, hard bargains.”

Madame Louella heaved another of her sighs. This was an old game between them, a form of haggling that the fortune-teller seemed to enjoy indulging in. Sabina didn’t, but patience and a firm stance eventually brought the desired results.

“Very well, then, Mrs. Carpenter. But I’ll have the first five dollars in advance, if you please.”

“Done.”

Sabina produced a five-dollar gold piece from her bag and Madame Louella made it disappear as quickly as if she were performing a conjurer’s trick. Her thin mouth stretched in a satisfied smile; in the glow from the crystal globe, her eyes had an unnatural brightness in her round, pale face. Not for the first time in these surroundings, Sabina was reminded of nothing so much as the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.”

“The Wanderer’s Rest,” Madame Louella said. “Number one-twenty Davis Street, room three.”

“Using his real name?”

“Yes.”

“How long has he resided there?”

“Not long, according to my friend. Less than two weeks.”

“And how long has he been out of prison?”

“About the same length of time. Paroled for good behavior.” Madame Louella cackled, a sound that made her seem even more witchlike.

“What is he doing for money?”

“He told my friend he had irons in the fire.”

“Irons in the fire, that’s all?”

“Wouldn’t admit to anything else.”

“In which deadfall did your friend encounter him?”

“He didn’t say. I’ll ask him … for another two dollars.”

“Greed is the devil’s handmaiden, Louella.”

“Phooey. Shall I ask him?”

“Only if it becomes necessary.”

Sabina got to her feet. Madame Louella remained seated, peering up at her. “Will you bring the other five dollars tonight?”

“If I can. More likely it will be tomorrow.”

“Are you heading off to find Sneed now? Yes? Well, be careful, dearie. Very careful in that neighborhood at night. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Or your five dollars.”

“Ah, you know me so well. Or my five dollars.”

The driver of the hack Sabina hailed on Market Street was dubious about her destination. “Are you sure that’s where you want to go, lady? Davis Street’s a fair rough place after dark.”

“I’m sure. I may or may not be there long. Will you agree to wait for me?”

It was plain that he disliked the idea, but the offer of double the amount of the fare convinced him and brought his reluctant promise. She sat back as he cracked his whip and set them in motion, her bag with the derringer’s comforting weight on her lap.

Both the cabbie and Madame Louella were right about the neighborhood, though it was not as rough as it had once been. Part of the section of the northern waterfront stretching from Pacific Avenue to Filbert Street, it contained warehouses and lodging places that had once catered exclusively to sailors off, or awaiting service on, the multitude of ships anchored in the Bay. During the Gold Rush era and for many years afterward, John had once told her, the area had been second only to the Barbary Coast as a hotbed of shanghaiing; crimps and boardinghouse masters had worked hand in hand to drug, rob, and consign hundreds of sailors to venal ship captains who then forced them to labor at sea under harsh conditions for no pay. One of the most notorious of the shanghaiers, an evil old woman named Miss Piggott, had operated a saloon and lodging house on Davis Street, Sabina remembered. Nowadays, with the practice of shanghaiing on the wane owing in part to the activities of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, the rooming houses in the district were no longer such treacherous places, though they accommodated riffraff such as Artemas Sneed as well as able-bodied seamen.

John would have had a howling fit if he knew she was on her way to Davis Street, alone after dark, in the hope of confronting a likely dangerous ex-convict. A fool’s errand, he would have called it. Stephen would have agreed; he had often chastised her for being fearless to the point of recklessness at times. Well, perhaps this was something of a reckless undertaking, but she was determined to get to the bottom of the business with Carson and Artemas Sneed as quickly as possible.

John’s protectiveness toward her was not the same as her dear late husband’s, of course. Or was it? Neither underestimated her ability to take care of herself, or possessed the old-fashioned chivalrous notion that women should at all times be kept out of harm’s way; and John, too, genuinely cared for her. Once she’d believed his feelings were motivated by seduction alone, but she was no longer convinced of it. It was entirely possible that he fancied himself in love with her, that he yearned to occupy the empty space in her heart Stephen’s death had created — a prospect which made her uncomfortable in the extreme.…

She forced her mind free of such speculation as the hansom rattled onto the Embarcadero and north past the Ferry House. John and their complicated relationship seemed to be creeping into her thoughts more and more of late, but this was hardly the time to be worrying about such matters.

Another ten minutes had passed when the driver made the turn onto Davis Street. This was the first Sabina had seen of the area at night and it did indeed appear mean and dreary. It was lighted by street lamps, some with broken globes, but so palely that the shadows beyond their reach were thick and black as ebony. The long bulky shape of a warehouse loomed along one side; on the other stood rows of two- and three-story board-and-batten structures, all lodging houses except for a saloon on the corner of the next block — rat-infested firetraps dating back to the Gold Rush era. Lamplight glowed behind a few windows, diffused and dulled by grime- and salt-caked glass. The street was deserted, only a scattered few pedestrians abroad on the boardwalks.

The Wanderer’s Rest turned out to be the third rooming house beyond the saloon. When the driver drew up in front, he stayed on the box; not for him the gentlemanly act of helping a lady passenger alight in this neighborhood. He leaned down as Sabina stepped out into a shivery wind off the Bay, nervously asked for half the agreed-upon fare. She refused; if she paid him the half, he might not wait for her.

She turned away from his protest, drawing her cape tightly around her shoulders, and hurried along a cracked brick path leading to the Wanderer’s Rest. The faint, tinny sound of a badly played piano came from the corner saloon; a pair of angry voices rose briefly inside the lodging house next door. Otherwise the night was quiet. A scrawny cat darted across in front of her and disappeared into the shadows as she mounted rickety steps to the entrance.

The door, fortunately, was unlatched. Sabina stepped into a gloomy, gaslit vestibule heavy with damp, stale air; two closed doors faced each other on either side of a staircase leading to the upper floors. Sneed’s room, number 3, would be on the second floor. She lifted her skirts and made the climb slowly to minimize the creak of warped stair risers.

The hallway was so poorly lit that she had to peer closely at the first door she encountered to make out a crudely painted numeral 3. A thin strip of lamplight shone at the bottom of the door, indicating that the room was occupied. She slid her hand inside her bag, grasped the derringer’s handle, then laid her ear close to the door to listen. No sounds came from within. She drew the Remington and tapped its short barrel on the panel.

The door was off its latch; she heard a faint creak and another thin strip of light appeared along its vertical edge. There was no response to the knock, nor to a second. Sabina held a deep breath, raised the derringer, and pushed the door inward with her free hand.

What she saw brought a sharp release of the held breath. Yes, the room was occupied, but not in the way she’d expected. The man lying curled on his side on the bare floor, a patch of blood gleaming on the front of his linsey-woolsey shirt and eyes open wide in a sightless stare, was quite plainly dead.