Boon by Ed Kurtz (smallest ebook reader txt) 📗

Thirteen.

I went right ahead and sobbed into my hands.

“I wasn’t ever in no orphanage, Edward,” she said, her voice small and soft.

“Boon,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

But by Christ, I grasped all that death so much better. All that killing. In a grim and gruesome way, it made more sense than ever, now.

“Boon.”

“Well,” she said, the syllable sharp and loud. “That’s a lot of years gone.”

“Gone, but not forgotten.”

“No.”

“Or we wouldn’t be here.”

“We wouldn’t,” she agreed.

“And I ’spect we’ve a job of work to do, ain’t we?”

“My mother.”

“Your mama,” I said. “What’s the joint we’re after?”

“Willocks said they call it the Palace.”

“Nice name,” I jeered.

“Ain’t it.”

“Tonight?”

Boon set her jaw and raised her chin, her eyes dry and narrowed and dark.

She said, “Right God damned now.”

Chapter Thirty

The Palace was anything but nice, though perhaps a great deal nicer than dozens of other dives, dance-halls, and deadfalls Boon and I had visited over the years. Unlike most of what I’d ever seen in Arkansas or Texas, the Palace’s main operating area was below ground, in the cellar. Coupled with Boon’s agonizing story of her youth in the bagnio, I was coming to understand that much of San Francisco’s underworld was, in fact, under the world.

The ceiling was low and the room large, with a long mahogany bar running along one side, a platform upon which a trio of musicians played on the other, and a space cleared out in the middle for dancing. Pretty waiter girls cavorted about, as naked as the law would allow, serving drinks and sitting on the laps of sailors, pimps, and not a few very young boys in slouch hats with knives and brass knuckles on their persons. We descended by way of a narrow stairwell, and I saw as soon as my eyes adjusted to the dim light that there was a mirroring stairwell across the broad space. One of the waiter girls was leading a piss-drunk Chileno by the hand up those stairs, which was all the explanation I needed as to its purpose.

We met no resistance on the street, at the Palace’s door, when we arrived at dusk. I could hear the piano and fiddle from below, contrasting obnoxiously with a dozen other groggeries, hooch dens, concert saloons, melodeons, and flat-out whorehouses that crowded Stockton Street and its numerous alleyway tentacles. At the front of the tumbledown building under which the Palace operated, a man with an unruly nest of dark, curly hair in an oversized frock coat and purple trousers stepped between us and the door and reached a hand into his coat.

We have had it, I thought. This was for God damn sure a Pinkerton agent, and we were recognized on the spot.

“Damn,” I said, and I crouched to pull the knife from my boot.

But Boon stayed my hand.

“Go no further, friend,” said the man, and he thrust a dodger at me. “The Palace has everything you could ever want, just through that door. Fun and frolic, song and dance, fine pisco punch, and the prettiest girls in the Barbary Coast.”

I took the dodger without much thinking about it and, turning my eyes down to the paper in my hand, read:

SPICY! SPORTY!

THE THRILL OF THE BARBARY COAST!

YOU ARE INVITED TO VISIT

THE PALACE

UNIQUE OF ALL COMPETING ESTABLISHMENTS

INCOMPARABLE AND BEYOND RIVALRY

COME AND SEE

BEAUTIFUL GIRLS – PLAIN TALK – CHARMING FORMS

OR REGRET IT ALL YOUR LIFE!

“Ain’t restricted, partner,” the hawker said. “You can even bring your China girl in there with you.”

I said, “Oh,” or something to that effect, and the man turned his leering gaze on Boon.

“You likey, China girl? Likey drink and dance?”

He pantomimed both activities, raising an invisible glass to his lips as he shook his hips and waggled his eyebrows. This time around, it was me who stayed her hand, as I was sure Boon needed a gentle nudge to remind her that now was not the time to start a fracas.

Instead, she said, “Sure, partner. Me likey just fine.”

The hawker tilted his head, looking for all the world like a confused hound dog, and we pushed past him to the door, into the vestibule, and down the stairs to the Palace proper.

The only other Oriental person I could spy down there was a slight man with a long queue trailing down his back, industriously sweeping up stamped-out cigars and cigarettes between songs. Pimchan was nowhere to be seen.

“Get yourself a drink,” Boon whispered to me. “Wouldn’t do not to. And remember, I belong to you.”

I must have made a face, because she frowned at me and shook her head.

“You know what I mean, Splettstoesser.”

“I surely do, Angchuan,” I said.

She brought her hands together at her stomach, hidden in her sleeves, and dropped her head as she trailed me to the bar. Proud and tough as she was, I reckoned it must have pained her to play the role. As for me, I was just glad to be getting a little firewater in my belly.

Recalling the hawker on the street, I asked the bartender about pisco punch.

“Tastes like lemonade,” he said, “but kicks you in the ass like a bronco.”

“That right,” I said.

Boon cleared her throat.

“Ain’t for casual tipplers,” cautioned the bartender.

“Not me, friend,” I said with a wink. “I’m a lifelong dyed-in-the-wool drunk. Set me up.”

He did, with a shrug and a smile. And I was damned if it didn’t taste like lemonade, only better on account of that promised kick. For the first time since our arrival, I was starting to like San Francisco, at least a small bit. I made a sound in my throat to indicate my satisfaction with the libation.

“Remember why we’re here,” Boon said.

“We’re here,” I said. “But your mama ain’t.”

“My eyes work fine.”

“Reckon Willocks lied?”

“We’ll see.”

I knocked back the rest of the punch and set the glass on the bar. The bartender said, “Another?”

“Just beer,” I said.

He looked gravely disappointed, but waddled to a barrel, pulled the bung, and poured me a draft. I drank it