Hop Alley (12 page)

My imagination began to feed me little ugly thoughts about Mrs. Fenster’s nocturnal outings, and her involvement with the old Mandarin, and I thought it best to distract the policeman from the similar thoughts that must have been percolating in his head. “Mrs. Fenster, I hope you haven’t neglected to offer Patrolman Heinecker a little drop of something.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said, carefully separating each word in an exclamation of contemptuous disbelief rather than an apology or request for clarification.

“Patrolman, would you care for a glass of whiskey?”

He made noises as if to decline, then accepted. Beneath Mrs. Fenster’s baleful eye I fetched a glass and the bottle and poured him three fingers myself. This might have been overdoing it but I sensed that was his usual dose, and he had a look of great peace as I handed it to him.

“That’s awfully kind of you, Mr. Sadlaw.”

“I’m told he was quite a brute, is that so?” I looked over at the boy, who watched the proceedings from the doorway of the studio, and at Mrs. Fenster, who would, I hoped, deny my claim.

“He was a sweet, gentle man, my sister’s husband, and I’ll not have you slandering him,” she said to my great pleasure. She daubed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“Still, what my friend Banbury—you know him, the editor of the
Bulletin
, where the dead man worked—Banbury told me he was a thug and a ruffian, with any number of people might have wanted him dead.”

Mrs. Fenster wisely kept quiet this time, and the copper spoke next. “Matter of fact, we talked at some length with Mr. Banbury, and he agreed we ought to take a look at the two sisters. We said, Oh, we’re going to do just that.” My eye happened to be on Lem when the cop added, “He also thought we might have a word or two with the addled son, the one works for you.” The boy slowly closed the studio door, and Heinecker remained oblivious to his presence. He was halfway through his glass and seemed quite content.

“Still, it’s not much of a loss, is it? You’re right, what we’re hearing is what a mean, quick-tempered son of a bitch he was, begging your pardon, Mrs. Fenster, including how he cracked the boy’s arm a few nights ago. Is that right? It was the boy’s sister who told us that, a little tiny girl, and she seemed more relieved than grieving at her papa’s passing.”

“It’s true, the boy’s arm’s broken.”

“Is he here?”

“I sent him to the depot to pick up a parcel. Don’t know when he’ll return.”

Heinecker knocked back the rest of the whiskey, and I would have offered him another glass but I didn’t want to seem too eager to see him off his stride. “That’s fine. I’ll be back by
tomorrow. Meantime, you keep an eye on the woman and the boy.” He rose and headed for the door with his cap even more askew than before, and he walked with his fingers outstretched to meet the wallpaper. Going down the steps to the front door he had both hands on the left-hand balustrade, and he had to wait for a half a minute before opening the door to the exterior. The citizens of Denver were by no means unaccustomed at that time to inebriated policemen, but I hoped I had pushed his drunkenness to the point where a complaint might be made. Still, if he didn’t return, one of his colleagues would, and before I spoke to Mrs. Fenster about the whole business I wanted to verify something.

I went to my room and opened the bottom drawer of my dresser. At its bottom was a bundle, wrapped not in the canvas sheet I had used, but in a piece of gunnysack. I placed it on the bed and unwrapped it; inside was a wooden case with a lock, and within that my long-ago trophy the Baby Dragoon. When I had put it away it was pristine, cleaned and oiled and polished and damned near as pretty as the day it left the Colt factory, or at any rate prettier than the day I took it off an insolent drummer in my Cottonwood saloon. Today it lay before me, cleaned after firing but hastily and not well, a whiff of Lucifer’s domain lingering in its barrel. I placed it back in the case, wrapped it back up in the rough cloth, and replaced it in the drawer, then sat down for a long think about what sort of discussion I was going to have with my housekeeper.

H
ALF AN HOUR
later I returned to the gallery and found her sweeping the floor. She stopped to face me, perfectly impassive, as though daring me to make a mention of her crime, or what she had used to commit it.

“Mrs. Fenster, in the future if you wish to borrow any equipment, photographic or otherwise, please be so kind as to ask. In addition, the Colt was not returned in the same condition in which it was borrowed, and I would be grateful if you would return such items to me directly rather than attempting to slip them unnoticed back into place, improperly maintained. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Sadlaw,” she said with more formality than was her habit.

The bell downstairs tinkled just then, and the old woman hastened down the stairs to answer it. I had a portrait sitting scheduled, and I went into the studio to make certain the boy was hard at work preparing the equipment and plates rather than cowering in the dark at the thought of the policeman come to arrest him and his auntie. I found him busily scouring the plates I had laid out, having seemingly forgotten Patrolman Heinecker.

T
HAT EVENING
I took my horse and carriage out and rode to Golden with the Baby Dragoon in its case next to me. Though there was no way of proving that this particular revolver was the
one that was used to slaughter poor comatose Hiram Cowan, I preferred not to have it in the house to tempt Mrs. Fenster, who might decide she had other scores to settle. Priscilla emitted a little coo of surprise when she opened the door and found me on her threshold with a box in my hands.

“Oh, a present.” She reached for it, and I pulled it away.

“It’s not. It’s just something I’d like to keep here for a while if that’s all right.”

She was disappointed and didn’t mind exaggerating it. “What is it, then?”

“Never you mind, just let me keep it here for a few days.”

She pouted and turned away from me, though she’d already let me into her parlor. “I don’t see why I should do anything nice for you,” she said.

I handed her the laudanum bottle, which she accepted joylessly. “That’s not the same as something pretty.”

I slid my arms around her waist from behind and cooed into her ear. “I promise next time I’ll bring you a little something, how’s that, Cilla dear?”

“I surely don’t know,” she said, turning to face me and pulling away. I followed, assuming that we would be heading up the stairs, but she stopped me with a hand to my chest. “Not so fast, Mr. Sadlaw. Would you like some tea?”

“Tea?” I repeated stupidly. “Not really, thank you.”

“Fine, you be seated and I’ll be along presently.” I sat on the canapé where I’d screwed her half a dozen times and
tried to understand what she was up to. Perhaps I did presume too much; this was the first time I’d ever visited where there’d been any sort of activity intervening between the door opening and sexual congress. There was a book on a side table within reach, and I opened it.
“The Pilgrim’s Progress,”
read the title page; I hoped this was a family heirloom and not another sign that she’d found religion. To my great relief I found that it was a very old edition, and cheaply printed. Its pages, likely unopened since the middle of the last century, cracked and separated when I opened it, bits of their edges flaking onto the parquet, and guiltily I flicked them underneath the canapé.

After a few agonizing minutes she returned with a tray laden with porcelain teapot, cups, saucers, and creamer, and silver sugar bowl and spoons. She set them daintily down onto a small table and poured me my undesired tea, the very model of the genteel, sophisticated lady. She referred to me politely as “Mr. Sadlaw,” and if not for the fact that the participants were an unchaperoned and possibly still-married woman and a man of decidedly murky matrimonial status, the tableau might have been one from any well-heeled Denver home of quality. Naturally this pastiche of gentility had the unintended effect of making me want to despoil her there on the hearth rug, and I suppressed the physical result of that arousal with difficulty as she made small talk about an imaginary husband and children, who would be joining us presently. That she might have been describing the actual family she’d left behind in Iowa did not occur to me then,
nor did the thought that the distinctions between fantasy and reality might, for poor Priscilla, have begun to blur.

When she had tormented me sufficiently she returned the tray to her kitchen. “Now then, Mr. Sadlaw, you had something you wanted to leave here. Shall we go upstairs and find a good secure place to put it?”

I merely nodded and followed, docile as a randy schoolboy.

A
N HOUR LATER
it was dark and she lit a lamp next to the bed. “There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you,” I said as she ran her brush through her freshly disheveled hair.

“Ask away, though I may decline to answer,” she said.

“Banbury says you’re a fine singer.”

“That’s a statement, not a question, Mr. Sadlaw.”

She stretched as she brushed, her back arched and her
poitrine
extended upward, and I thought that an observer might be forgiven for suspecting that she practiced this enticing pose in the mirror. “And that you accompany yourself very ably on the pianoforte.”

“Another statement,” she said with a sidelong glance that set my prick once again athrob.

“Why do you never play or sing for my benefit?”

“The brush stopped and she set it down on her nightstand, then placed her right palm tenderly on my cheek. “Oh, my poor dear. You are a darling, but Mr. Banbury takes care of me in
ways that you don’t, and it wouldn’t be right for me to share my musical gifts with anyone else. You do understand, don’t you?”

I wanted to laugh but worried that she might bludgeon me. “I ought to tell you something,” I said, feeling for a moment quite fond of her. I knew I oughtn’t, really, but I gave her an accounting of Banbury’s plan.

She was quiet, and she didn’t cry as I’d been afraid she might. “That son of a bitch,” she said under her breath. “If he thinks he can cast me off like that.”

“What’ll you do?” I asked.

“I’ll do what he makes me,” she said, and I didn’t ask her to elaborate.

“According to Banbury, you could easily sing on the stage.”

She gave me a look of unvarnished, venomous umbrage. “Take to the stage? Is that your opinion of me, after all we’ve shared?”

“I meant the legitimate stage, my dove, nothing low or unworthy of you.” I made a mental note to ask around Denver about positions for experienced seamstresses. Then impulsively I said something, regretting it even as I heard the words coming forth from my tongue. “Why don’t you move in with me? There’s plenty of room, and Mrs. Fenster does all the housework. We can tell people we’re married.”

“Well I’ll be goddamned if I’ll pretend to be anybody’s wife that lacks the balls to actually marry me,” she said, and I thought maybe I’d go down and get her a couple of spoonfuls of laudanum. She softened quickly on her own, though. “Oh,
Bill, I don’t mean it’s not a sweet thing to offer. I’ll just have to think about it. I’m used to my solitude, you see.”

“Suit yourself,” I said with no small amount of relief.

She got up quickly and dressed, and hurried down the staircase to the parlor, where I heard her remove the tea tray to the kitchen. I put the case on the top of her placard whose small filigreed ledge obscured it from view. When I returned to the parlor she was seated on the canapé. “I suppose you’ll be going now?” she said, and I thought I heard in it an unprecedented plea to stay and pass the evening with her.

“Expect I will be,” I said, unable to imagine what we would do now if I were to remain; play cards, perhaps, or draughts, or sing songs. The prospect of inviting a woman to move into my house, when all we’d ever done together was screw, struck me now as extravagantly foolish. Without making any further reference to my offer I stepped outside into the cold night.

“Remember,” she said as I stepped onto her front landing, “next time you owe me a present.”

I tipped my hat to her and got into my carriage and headed in the direction of town, troubled by my lack of self-restraint. How could I have imagined that a conjugal residence with laudanum-addled Priscilla could end in any manner other than pure disaster?

I had long since established to my own satisfaction that I was not well-suited to domesticity. Back in Kansas I’d abandoned my sweet, randy Danish wife, Ninna, to live in town and
run a saloon, leaving my farm and Ninna to the ministrations of a hired man. And when I left Kansas, with the law at my heels and the blood of Maggie’s husband on my conscience, I’d brought Maggie along, she whose beauty and intelligence were far beyond what a feckless, loafing philanderer such as myself merited; and yet within three months of our settling down in Greeley I left her, too, ostensibly to prospect for silver but in fact with the singular goal of getting away from the Greeley Colony and its prim, teetotal utopians, whose number now included my own Maggie, no longer just playing at being my legal wife but believing it herself.

I rarely contemplated the unhappy period of my leaving her, temporarily and then for good, but my rash proposal to Priscilla brought that gloomy time back to me, and I had to remind myself for the first time in a long while that I was well off in her absence.