A-Splendid-Ruin(79)

“Miss.”

When Shin arrived, she looked as tense and strained as I felt. It was not reassuring. We spoke little as we walked down the hill and into Chinatown with its trophy hunters gleefully pulling teacups from still warm embers and men exclaiming over bits of cracked jade and soldiers watching as they leaned idly on their rifles. We passed a charred telephone pole bearing an order for every able-bodied man and woman to serve on work crews—an unbelievable irony, given that not only did Chinatown provide most of the domestics and low-wage workers in San Francisco, but also because the many whites here were digging not to clean up or to help rebuild this part of the city, but to steal whatever they could from it. I felt uncomfortable and ashamed. I could not look at Shin.

We went a twisted route, through a break in a wall, down a passageway made of other broken walls, this way and that, until it seemed some secret route like those rumored to lead to subterranean grottoes in Chinatown—Dens of Vice and Degradation! The earthquake had given the lie to those stories, though the tour guides still found them irresistible. Before long Shin stopped where a street had partially fallen in, creating a cavern beneath. Rugs had been strung up to turn the shallow cave into a shelter. Shin stepped carefully down a slide of gravel and refuse, and I followed, slipping as stones rolled beneath my boots. There, where a carpet flapped before a makeshift entrance, sat a man I recognized from the opium den, the one with the scarf, who had called for Joe. Shin spoke to him in Chinese. He only grunted a reply. She gestured for me to come with her and dodged beneath the carpet.

Inside, a candle spilled a wavering light. It smelled of dirt and stone, smoke and damp. The small space clung to the ash and destruction of Chinatown; the air was gray with it. The corner held a tumble of blankets and clothing, but the walls were lined with stacks of items, some scorched, others cracked, obviously relics retrieved from the ruins, and again I thought of all those people carting off their baskets of melted bronzes and blackened china. Then I saw that these items were marked with price tags. Souvenirs for sale. Obviously China Joe meant to compete with other San Franciscans in profiting from Chinatown’s destruction.

A wooden box, a pull wagon, and a chair served as the only furniture in the cramped space. Sitting on the chair was China Joe, looking impatient.

He listened as Shin spoke to him, again in Chinese. Then he held up his hand, stopping her midword, and looked at me. The candlelight made his already high cheekbones sharp, and buried his dark eyes. He considered me in a way that made me shiver. “Goldilocks’s cousin, hmmm?”

I nodded, momentarily stripped of the ability to speak.

A half smile. “Ah yes. You ran from me before I could give you what you needed. Poor frightened little hen.”

That he remembered me was unnerving.

“Chen Shin says you have something to offer me. She says we will all help one another, yes?”

I glanced at Shin, who nodded. I had no idea what I could offer him, but I said, “I hope so. Yes, I think so.”

“Tell me what you want, little hen.”

“Remember who you are.” “The Sullivans have stolen from me, and I want back what’s mine.”

“Ah,” Joe said. “Yes, I see.”

It was only when he reached for it that I saw the book beside him. It was large and fully stuffed. He pulled it into his lap and opened it. The pages had pockets, each pocket full of papers, or photographs, or letters—I could not tell exactly. He leafed through it until he found what he wanted, and then he set it in the bed of the wagon between us. He gestured for me to look before he sat back again.

I glanced at Shin, who watched without expression, and then I looked down at the book. The pocket on the page had Chinese characters in black ink. They meant nothing to me, of course, and no one bothered to elucidate. The pocket bulged with papers. When I looked at him in question, he put out his hand as if to say, Go ahead.

I reached for the corner of one of the papers shoved within it and pulled it loose. It was the size of a check, a bit smaller, and written in English. I, Goldie Sullivan, do promise to pay China Joe twenty dollars. It was dated and signed by both her and, I assumed, Joe. It was not the only one. There were dozens, all for different amounts. Some higher, some lower. I did not need to look at all of them to know that it was a great amount of money.

It was more debt than I could possibly have imagined. “This is for opium?”

“So many secrets,” he said softly. “Not just opium, little hen. Gambling. She loves to gamble, your Goldilocks.”

The story of Goldie’s engagement returned to me. Stephen Oelrichs, taking her to Ingleside, teaching her to gamble. His words to me at the Anderson soiree. “Stay away from China Joe.”

The paper between my fingers smelled of sandalwood and tobacco smoke. It was crisp and thin. A blocky, inked red stamp took up one corner—again, Chinese symbols.

I took a deep breath and pushed it back into its pocket. I closed the book, nauseated. “And my uncle?”

Again, Joe flipped through the book. This time when he set it before me, the papers inside were not IOUs, but invoices bearing my uncle’s signature, as well as a ledger showing dollar amounts, names, and accounts. “I don’t understand. What are these?”

“Evidence of graft, bribes.”

“Corruption,” Dante LaRosa had said.

“Sullivan Building wrote many false invoices to build city hall,” China Joe went on. “They exchanged cheap materials for those the city paid for, and bribed those in charge to look the other way. Where did the money go, little hen, hmmm? Now, people see that walls promised to be solid brick were filled with sand and trash. The great pillars were only shells. Now they ask questions. They want to know who to blame.”