A-Splendid-Ruin(81)

Shin’s expression was desperate, pleading. This was the freedom she’d wanted. From my uncle, yes, but from something worse. Until this moment I’d not realized how tightly she was bound, or that it was not my uncle who held her, but China Joe.

China Joe said, “Send him to me. I will be waiting.”

With a flick of his hand, we were dismissed.

I was glad to go. Shin seemed equally so. Neither of us said anything until Shin paused a few blocks later and said, “I must leave you here.”

But I wasn’t ready to let her go. I could not forget the way he’d looked at her. “What did he mean when he said that Goldie would find out what happens when he doesn’t get paid?” I asked softly.

Shin hesitated.

“Tell me.” I struggled for the right words, not wanting to offend. “How did this happen, Shin? What debt do you owe him? Why must you do as China Joe says?” Then, as I sensed her discomfort, “No, never mind. You don’t need to tell me. It’s none of my concern.”

“I was brought here five years ago.” Shin stared at the men digging for bronze in the rubble. “In China, my parents were very poor. I had a brother and two sisters, both younger than me. When a man came looking to buy children, they sold me to him.”

“They sold you?”

“It was the way things were.”

“Yes, but . . . your parents sold you?”

“They could not feed me. What else were they to do? He told them I would have a better life, that there were good jobs in America, and that if I was a good worker, I could send money back to my family. Many girls from my village were sold. I was not unhappy to leave. He made America sound like a blessing. He was a kind man, who gave gifts to my parents. He said he would be a second father to me.” Again, a small smile, this time caustic. “He brought us here on a ship—me and ten other girls. When the immigration men stopped us and tried to send us back, men stepped forward to claim us as their wives.”

I stared at her in horror. “Wives? How old were you?”

She didn’t answer, but I could guess by her face. She couldn’t be older than eighteen, which meant she would have been thirteen when they’d brought her here. “Those ‘husbands’ sold us to be whores. I bit mine and ran away—he was old and lame, and I outran him easily. I hid for days, until one of China Joe’s boys found me.”

Alone, in a strange city, sold to a stranger, and then to another, and meant for prostitution, probably in the worst parts of town, the alleys of Chinatown, the warrens of the Barbary Coast. Places I knew about because everyone knew, places carefully avoided, ignored, only mentioned obliquely, “Oh, never go there!”

Shin looked at me. “He paid my debt and put me to work as his spy. Yes, I owe him.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I have been his eyes and ears for a long time, but I want to leave San Francisco. He has refused to let me go. I tried once.” She held up her hand, fingers splayed to showcase that terrible missing finger. “This is what he did. What do you think he would do if I tried again?”

“He cut off your finger?” I could hardly speak it.

She fisted her hand. Her expression told me better than words what she’d endured, the things I could not know. “He has people everywhere. But he needs what you have, a connection to a reporter. He asked me to bring you to him if you appeared again. I did not want to, because I was afraid for you, but . . . you are different now.”

I laughed shortly. “Yes, you could say that.”

“You must not disappoint him, Miss May.” Her eyes said what she did not. Or me.

Her words weighed heavily. I heard in them her disillusionment, and a bitter pragmatism. She hoped I could do this, but she would not allow herself to believe I could. It had been one thing when it was only me depending on my success. It was something else to be responsible for someone else’s future as well.

“Be careful. China Joe is not the only dangerous man. Mr. Sullivan is too. He could make me disappear. And you . . .” Shin trailed off, but she didn’t need to finish the sentence. I knew very well what would happen if Joe exposed me to my uncle’s private investigator.

But it was time now to play the game I’d schemed in the asylum. It was time to make the next move. “I’ll convince Dante to help. And when I win back my inheritance, if the Sullivans haven’t spent it all, I’ll give you some money so you can—”

“I don’t want your money, Miss May,” she said, raising her chin, and I knew that I should not have offered it.

The sounds of the city faded. Shin and I seemed to stand in a vast plain of silence.

Very quietly, she said, “Your aunt meant to cheat you too, at first, when your mother sent the letter, but then she changed her mind when your mother died. She felt guilty, I think. She talked often of her sister, and the past.”

I thought of how worn and creased my mother’s letter had been. As if it had been read and reread. As if Aunt Florence had worried over it.

“She threatened to tell you everything. Mr. Sullivan told me to give her the laudanum and wrote the letter inviting you here. Then he made me give her more and more, but I could not bear to watch her stumble and she was so confused. The less I gave her, the more she wanted to tell you. They argued all the time. I was afraid. I knew you were looking for the letter, and so I decided to give it to you. That night, I waited, but—”