“Well, that visit didn’t last long,” I say.
“I’m not sure the prisoners are technically allowed to receive,” Jim says.
The sailor says nothing, just picks up the oars and rows us back to shore, taking us close to the Charlotte.
“Thank you, Jim,” I say as we reach our familiar dock. “For today. For everything.”
“Anything for Reuben’s girl,” he says. Then something in my face makes his eyes narrow. “What are you thinking, Leah?”
“I’m thinking I have one big advantage over Hardwick, but only if he never, ever learns what it is.”
Chapter Eleven
My uncle Hiram wanted to be rich because he thought it would make him important. He thought money would make people show him the respect he wanted. He had a picture in his head: politicians and businessmen asking for his opinion. A big chunk of land. A wife, servants, maybe even a daughter like me.
And everything he did, from speculating down in Georgia, to murdering my mama and daddy, to following me out to California and making me dress up and parade around his gold mine—it was all about building that picture in his head.
We all have something like that. I’ve got one, too. The picture in my head includes me and Jefferson together, neither of us hungry, in a nice cabin with a woodstove and a big bed with a pretty quilt like my parents had. It makes me blush a little to think about that bed.
Hardwick has something he wants, too. Some picture in his head that requires all this money. Something he does with the gold coins besides pile them up in banks.
So that’s why, come nightfall, Henry and I are waiting in a hired carriage outside Hardwick’s San Francisco mansion. I’m wearing a nice dress Becky picked out for me—she spent part of the day searching the best shops for wedding dresses—and the bodice makes me itch. Henry is wearing yet another new suit. I had to pay for it, but he insisted it was necessary.
Hardwick is the last fellow I care to get to know or spend any time with, but for our plan to succeed, I have to learn more about him. I have to figure out what picture he sees in his head.
I pull aside the curtain in the carriage window and take another look: adobe walls, tile roof, several sprawling wings and outbuildings, nested in a garden property, all surrounded by a wall. The only entrance is a wide iron gate. Guards shadow the gate, the orange glows of their cigars and cigarillos like stars against the night. This was once the villa of some Mexican official, and it survived the recent fire without any damage.
“I wonder how much a place like this costs to buy,” I say, not really expecting an answer.
But Henry says, “He didn’t buy it. He rents it from one of the local dons, a man who prefers to live on his ranchero than in the city.”
I can’t imagine renting a place so huge. “So he’s not putting down roots.” Just like Jim suggested.
“Maybe,” Henry says. “He’s been here less than a year. He was living in Sacramento, but when the weather turned cold last year, or maybe when they had the convention for statehood, he sold off a chunk of his interests in Sacramento and elsewhere. Shifted his operations to San Francisco.”
“How do you know so much?”
“I always come home from a night of cards poorer in cash,” he says solemnly, “but richer in knowledge.”
“I’m glad that’s . . . paying off for us. For some reason, I thought Hardwick had been here a while.”
“His interests are spread out all across the territory,” Henry says. “But his activities here have increased noticeably. Seems like he’s old friends with the new sheriff, and they figured out some deal with the auctions.”
“I keep hearing about this sheriff,” I say.
“He and his deputies used to be part of a notorious gang of steamboat robbers.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
I peek out the curtain again. Hardwick will leave his compound eventually, and we aim to follow him. Surely the guards have noticed our carriage by now, skulking here in the dark. “Do you know how Hardwick came to be here in the first place?” I ask, to pass the time and keep my mind off what might happen if the guards grow suspicious.
“He probably landed in San Francisco with the navy in 1846. He was a war profiteer, buying supplies on the cheap and selling them at marked-up prices to the army. His nickname was John Mealy Hardtack.”
“Hardtack? Like the biscuits?” We ate an awful lot of it on the trail to California. If I never do battle with those molar breakers again, it will be too soon.
Henry nods. “He bought old hardtack biscuits, usually filled with mealworms, and sold them to the army, who didn’t have a lot of other options.”
“And the sheriff—wait, something’s happening.” Beyond the wall, lanterns bob across the property. A team of horses noses toward the gate, ready to leave.
“Seems like the army is how Hardwick met Sheriff Purcell,” Henry says, dropping his voice, though I’m sure no one can hear us from all the way across the street.
“How much do you know about Purcell?”
“Not much. After the war with Mexico, he and his gang left the army and returned to their old ways, only this time they robbed and terrorized Mexicans and California Indians. Apparently that qualified him to be elected sheriff. That’s why you don’t see too many Indians here in the city, outside of the mission anyway, and the ones you do see are most likely to be Sioux or Cherokee, come west like the rest of us.”
“You found out all of this by gambling?”
“Of course,” he says. “There’s no more popular topic of conversation in all of San Francisco right now than Hardwick. Every man of money either wants to work with him, copy what he does, or avoid him like the measles. But he has an advantage, something no one can quite put their finger on.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Henry lifts the curtain and points. “I think it’s her. Most folks think he’s courting her, but no one is sure. I’d bet my first edition of the Coquette there’s more to it than that.”
Guards pull open the iron gate to let out the carriage. Hardwick, dressed in a suit and top hat, offers his newest associate, Miss Helena Russell, a hand as she climbs inside and takes a seat.
“Henry, what’s an associate?” I whisper.
He looks puzzled. “Someone who associates?”
“No, I mean, is it a polite way of saying something else? Does it mean something like . . .”
“Business partner?” he suggests helpfully.
“Prostitute? Mistress?”
“Not as far as I know. Why?”
“When Hardwick introduced Helena Russell to me, he described her as his newest associate. I’ve been struggling ever since to figure out what that means.”
“You’re not the only one.”