A-Splendid-Ruin(78)

“Your money. If you are dead, it must be returned.”

“To whom?”

Shin shrugged. “Whoever gave it to you.”

I struggled to understand. “You’re saying that if I’m dead, my inheritance has to go back to my father’s family?”

“Yes.”

I grappled with that, with the sheer—I didn’t know what to call it.

“No one can say if you are dead or alive, and so . . .” Shin trailed off.

And so this netherworld was exactly where I should stay if I wanted to be safe. But safety was not what I wanted, was it? I wanted justice. I wanted back what was mine. I wanted revenge.

I asked, “Why are you still with the Sullivans? You know what they are. You know what they did. Why do you still work for them?”

She glanced away uncomfortably.

I studied her the way I’d studied Costa and O’Rourke, the same way I’d studied Mrs. Donaghan. Everyone did things for a reason. Everyone wanted something. “It’s not because you like the job too much to leave it. If that was so, you wouldn’t have risked it to help me.”

She said nothing.

I said, “Where are the rest of them? Mr. Au? Petey? Nick? The cook?”

She shrugged. “When the earthquake came, they ran. They didn’t return.”

“But you did.” That was the key. “You have no fondness for Goldie, and if you cared for my aunt, well, she’s dead, so she’s not the reason, either. It’s not lack of opportunity. Everyone needs a maid; you could get a job in another house easily. The others left. You stayed. Why?”

She turned her gaze slowly to me; some emotion I couldn’t read flickered within it.

“It’s because you have to.” I knew when I said it that I was right. My uncle held Shin imprisoned in some way. I didn’t know how and it didn’t matter then. If I destroyed him, then she was free. She had been my ally; I wanted her to be one again. So I simply said, “Help me, and we’ll destroy my uncle together. You’ll be free. Is that what you want?”

Shin laughed shortly and shook her head.

“Why not?” I asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”

I don’t know what she heard in my voice. I don’t know why she gave me the look she did. Grave, testing.

I said, “By all rights, I should be dead. I escaped an asylum and an earthquake and a fire. I promise I can help you.”

“Maybe,” she said slowly. “Maybe you can do it.”

“I can. Tell me what I must do.”

I did not expect what she said next, nor the chill it sent through me.

“We must see China Joe.”





China Joe. That disturbing face, the sense of danger, the fear that had sent me running. I remembered my cousin, sleepy and languid and anxious when I’d returned from the opium den. “Does Goldie still go to him?”

Shin did not look surprised that I knew. “She did. But there have been no ships and no opium. She suffers.”

It did not pain me to know that. I had meant to use Goldie’s secret against her, but I did not like the thought of China Joe, and I liked less the thought of paying him a visit. “We can do this without seeing him, surely? Why do we need him? What has he to do with you?”

“He has to do with everything in San Francisco. He knows everything about everybody.”

I truly did not like the sound of that.

Again, that small smile. “Miss Sullivan needs opium. Mr. Sullivan needs property. Who do they go to?”

“You’re saying that China Joe knows secrets about my uncle as well.”

“Mr. Sullivan wanted Chinatown gone, and China Joe with it. There is a reason for that. There are many things that do not get done without China Joe, Miss May.”

I sighed. “Very well. Do you know where to find him?”

Shin nodded. “Yes. But we cannot go now. I must get back.”

“Tomorrow then. Can you go tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she said.

But I was impatient; now that there was something to be done, I wanted to get started. I felt I had waited forever. I did not want to wait another day.

“Do not stay on Nob Hill,” she warned. “It is too dangerous for you.”

“No, I won’t.” I was nervous enough in the Fairmont.

“Meet me in Chinatown,” she said.

“There is no Chinatown,” I said grimly.

“The burned-out trolleys—did you see them?”

There had been a line of them along Pacific Avenue, nothing but twisted metal now. I nodded.

“Meet me there tomorrow morning. At eleven.” She left with a final warning: “Do not be caught here, Miss May.”

I needed no more warnings. The moment I could, I sneaked from the Fairmont, and left Nob Hill far behind me. I would be happy never to return.

I decided to look for Dante after the visit with China Joe. Better to have all the information in my hands when I met with Dante, to present him with a story he could not resist, and so I spent a sleepless night wondering about Shin’s connection with Goldie’s opium procurer, and both dreading and anticipating what I might learn.

The next day, I waited for what seemed endless hours at the wrecked cable cars. The collapsed roof of one, still bearing its clanging bell, tilted over what were left of wheels and a piece of painted side. The ones linked to it were only wheels and the metal rails that held them together, bits of flooring. I leaned against the standing brick wall of a hollowed building, rolling the gold button in my pocket between my fingers, staring up into the bright overcast beginning to show now through a lazy fog.