Parlor Games A Novel

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN



SAN FRANCISCO—APRIL 1890



I have never been so mortified in all my life. Dear Lord, I prayed, may Maman never learn of this. The police officer searched us—right in front of Juan, the doctor, Miss Winters, and four gaping girls—and discovered Juan’s diamond cuff links in Sue Marie’s not-so-secret dress pocket. Then he carted Sue Marie and me off to the Tenderloin precinct jail and photographed each of us in front of a white wall. By the time we were marched into a ten-by-ten cell with only a sink, toilet, and two bunks, I was so angry I could have boxed Sue Marie’s ears. Her shenanigans had led to nothing but complications for me. The last thing I needed was that scoundrel Reed Dougherty getting wind of this arrest and using my past to seal a conviction against me here.

We were the only prisoners on our side of the cell block, though I presumed that men inhabited the block beyond ours. Looping one of my arms around a cell bar, I watched the lone guard on duty retreat through the door at the front of our corridor. I scowled at Sue Marie. “They’ve got a photograph of me.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, eyeing the keyhole and removing a pin from her hair. “They don’t have your real name.”

“Pictures don’t lie, you fool.”

“They took my picture, too.” She wriggled her tortoise-shell hairpin around in the lock, but with no results. “You see me squawking about it?”

I took my metal hairpin out, bent one of its prongs to a ninety-degree angle, and handed it to her. “You and your stupid schemes. Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone?”

Sue Marie stuck her hairpin onto the top of her messed-up hair and poked the one I’d rigged into the lock. “Because he was nothing but a skinflint.”

“We never talked about fixing his drink.”

Sue Marie smirked. “Did you think I was planning a church picnic?”

“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have gone along with it.”

“Oh, quit playing holier-than-thou. You’ve been complaining about him for months.”

“That was no call for knocking him out. Or stealing his cuff links.”

Sue Marie extracted the hairpin from the lock and spun around toward me. “At least you’re done with the piker.”

I gasped. “And jail is better?”

“Maybe better than a whorehouse,” she said, plunking herself down on the bottom bed.

“Sometimes I wish I’d never met you,” I said, glaring at her. My affection for Sue Marie was quickly being supplanted by annoyance with her exceedingly poor judgment. “And don’t think you’re getting the bottom bunk, either.”

The next hour, between the guard’s occasional comings and goings, we bickered like a couple of old maids. But picking the lock was getting us nowhere. So we wised up and figured we were in this together and had better find a way out of it together. Besides, putting up with the stench of urine and clammy concrete walls for even that long was enough to turn us as agreeable as honeymooners.

When the guard, a young, pink-complexioned fellow with sandy hair and freckles, swung around again to check on us, Sue Marie played as if she were passing out, and I asked if he could please bring us a moist cloth. The guard returned and poked a soggy rag between the bars. Once I’d revived Sue Marie, I asked his name.

“Warren, Benjamin Warren,” he said.

“Thank you for helping us, Benjamin.” I reasoned I could get away with calling him by his first name, given the barely discernible blond whiskers poking out on his boyish face.

“Think nothing of it, miss.” He shuffled his feet, as if uncertain whether to leave or stay.

I faced him square-on. “I suppose you’ve seen all kinds of outlaws.”

“I could tell stories like you’ve never heard,” he said, nervously fingering his buttons.

“Oh, tell us a story,” Sue Marie said, coming to life on the lower bunk.

He leaned his shoulder against our cell. “Hmm. Well, last year we had a fellow in here who kidnapped a baby girl and tried to get the father to hand over a sack of gold for her.”

I widened my eyes and gripped the bars. “What happened? Did you save the baby girl?”

“It took some smart police work, but they got the little girl back. The crook’s over in Alcatraz now.”

“Alcatraz?” I poked my face against the bars. “They don’t put girls in Alcatraz, do they?”

“Nah, just men.”

“What’s going to happen to us, Benjamin?” Sue Marie asked.

I glanced over my shoulder, took in the dreamy-eyed look she was giving Benjamin, and frowned with disapproval. I didn’t trust her to handle this. She must have gotten the message, because she slumped back against her pillow.

“Can’t tell,” said Benjamin. “Don’t get many girls charged with theft.”

“And it was all a big misunderstanding,” I said. “It’s not right we’re here.”

“Then what were you doing with his wallet and cuff links?”

I looked steadily into his face. “He planted those things on us.”

His eyes got as big as silver dollars. “Why would he do that?”

“Think about it,” I said. “If we had robbed him, why would we fetch a doctor when he passed out?”

He shook his head. “Well, I sure am sorry. I suppose the judge’ll get it all sorted out.”

I latched woeful eyes on him. “That Guatemalan has money coming out of his ears, and he wants us locked up.”

Benjamin screwed up his face. “No foreigner’s going to get away with that.”

“But he is, Benjamin,” I said, remembering my father telling me that a man’s name is the sweetest sound to his ears. “We’re being railroaded.”

“Why would a coffee seller want you in jail?”

I looked down at my feet and shuffled them on the cement floor. Raising my head, I motioned Benjamin closer and said in a soft voice, “You can’t tell anybody, Benjamin.”

“Tell what?”

“The reason.”

“Why not?”

I reached my right hand between the bars and clutched the folds of his coat arm. “Because my life—and my friend’s—would be in danger.”

He cocked his head. “Well … all right, then.”

Standing statue-still and pleading with my eyes, I let the words break out in a fury, as if they’d been sealed up against their will. “He and I were engaged. When I found out he has a wife in Guatemala, and one in New York, too, I called it off.”

“Really?”

I pursed my lips and nodded.

He swallowed, as if trying to get the truth down, and then said, “You have to tell the judge.”

“No.” I reached my other hand through the bars so I could grip both his arms. “He told me if I ruin his reputation I’ll pay with my life.”

Benjamin looked down at my hands.

I clenched him tighter.

He cupped one of his hands over mine. “You really think he’d kill you?”

Sue Marie started crying. Finally, she remembered how to act.

“I know he would. Benjamin, you have to help us.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Please, you’ve got to let us out. If we don’t get out of San Francisco, we’ll never be safe.”

“I don’t want you to get killed, but I’ve got a job to do.”

I sank to my knees and ran my hands over his hips and down his legs. Circling my arms around his calves, I looked up at him through the bars. “Our life is in your hands.”

He crouched down and took my hands in his. “I got it. I can tear up the booking sheet.”

“Oh, God bless you, Benjamin,” I said, standing and reaching out to stroke his cheek.

He smiled, undid the keys from his belt, and opened the cell door, mumbling, “A bigamist. If that don’t take the cake.”

“Thank you, thank you,” I said, throwing my arms around him and then stepping back and looking up into his eyes. “Benjamin, could you destroy our photographs?”

Sue Marie grabbed my arm. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“Oh, no,” he said, swinging the cell door closed. “That’d be impossible.”

“Never mind that,” said Sue Marie, yanking me forward.

A door banged from the front of the precinct. Benjamin stiffened and perked up his ears. “Somebody stopping on his beat. Quick, this way.”

Benjamin motioned us to follow him, and we headed down the corridor toward the back of the cell block. “Here. The transport door.”

When we reached the door, he gripped the knob and hesitated. “Say, you weren’t pulling my leg, were you?”

I flattened my back against the wall beside the door, ready to spring out. “No. And I’ll tell you one more thing: Juan Ramón doesn’t even run a legitimate coffee business. He’s a spy for Spain.”

Sue Marie and I vamoosed out of the Tenderloin precinct station, out into the wee, dark hours of morning. The city’s lumpy landscape lay before us, spotted with the blinking lights of gas lamps. We made a beeline for Lillie Winters’s house, our feet pattering over the damp brick streets and echoing against eerily quiet buildings.

We fetched a ladder from the carriage house, and Sue Marie climbed it and let herself into her bedroom. From the top step of the ladder she dropped her suitcase to me. We put the ladder away and hurried over to Juan’s apartment to retrieve my suitcase. Then we hustled down to the docks, keeping to side streets all the way. We walked the length of the docks, nosing around for a quiet corner, and settled behind a row of empty shipping bins. With suitcases for pillows and coats for blankets, we slept until wakened by cawing seagulls.

Business hours could hardly come soon enough. Once the port offices opened, we booked passage on the only ship sailing that day, the Emperor of Peking. I can’t say as I relished the prospect of journeying to China, but with larceny charges hanging over our heads and the police likely keeping an eye out for us, we had no alternative. At least we had enough money for the crossing and, I hoped, a new start in Shanghai.