likes mustaches well enough and just about every fashionable gentleman wears them these days. Upstairs is her private parlor. She doesn’t have to live at the Parisian Mansion, not anymore. She can afford door maids to handle the traffic when she’s not there.
“I have a caller, Mr. Heald. You heard the bell.”
“Jessie, please. Have pity on me.”
Pity. Sure and Jessie Malone has pity for no one. Still, she sinks to her knees in the smoking parlor, grunting when her joints complain. She should not have to do this anymore, truly she should not. But there’s the boodle for certain persons in the mayor’s office. Perhaps Mr. Heald, being such a dear friend, may persuade those persons that her civic contribution is adequate and need not be increased.
She tugs at the buttons on his trousers.
Gentlemen, pah. Like most of his Snob Hill associates, Mr. Heald is a fool and a coward. A deadbeat when it comes to the behavior she expects of him. Allowing tong men to carry on in full view of law-abiding citizens.
Tong men—hatchet men, highbinders, the boo how doy—all words for the same wretched creatures. She knows why they made a fuss in the park, all right. The ragged Chinese girl is likely to fetch up to two thousand in gold, if she’s fifteen or sixteen. Well, the biz is the biz. Jessie doesn’t give two hoots about that. No, the outrage is that hatchet men were troubling a consumptive-looking lady in a veil and a smart gray dress. A lady, on the Fourth of July!
Jessie trembles with anger, but she finishes her work. Mr. Heald, thank goodness, is done quickly. She glances up. He’s got that sagging look he always gets through the jowls after he’s done. She dabs a handkerchief to her lips, and he helps her to her feet. Suddenly she’s weary of him, of him and all the gentlemen she has ever serviced. They’re not even human beings to her anymore. She needs a drink.
“That will be the usual for the pleasure of my company, Mr. Heald,” she says primly.
Not a moment too soon. She hears voices murmuring, Li’l Lucy conversing with the caller, and he answering. A man, of course. Jessie checks her face in one of the mirrors and peers out the door of the smoking parlor. She glimpses gray gabardine, a blue vest and necktie, an expensive bowler. He inquires about lodgings in a charming accent. She spies his hefty trunk and a collection of baggage he’s vigorously stacking in the foyer. Sure and he’s a vigorous one, she can see it from here. Young and vigorous, brown curls tumbling down his neck.
“Now, Jessie,” Mr. Heald says, pulling her back to him. “If truth be told, I thought this was for friendship, not the usual.”
“If truth be told, Mr. Heald, it’s always the usual.”
Jessie whips out her pink lace fan and stirs up a breeze in front of her flushed face. A drink, a drink, she needs a drink. She runs to the window, leans out, and yells, “Mariah! Mariah!” The maid is on the roof, keeping a lookout for stray rockets with a broom and two pails of water. On the Fourth of July in ’93, a rocket landed on the eaves of Hunter’s Resort on Water Street in Sausalito and damn near burned down the entire business district. Jessie has no intention of losing this house, a very fine three-story Stick-Eastlake with extra gingerbread and a proper paint job that cost her an arm and a leg. “Get down here, Mariah, we’ve got company. And bring me some champagne.”
“Ah, now I see,” Mr. Heald says, straightening his vest. “You’re still angry about those Chinee hoodlums, eh? Now, Jessie. Chinee business is no business of ours. Why, you ought to know that. You are the Queen of the Underworld. Why should a little discombobulation like that put you off your feed?”
“The Queen of the Underworld is never off her feed, Mr. Heald,” she answers tartly.
“Well, then. I expect such tenderheartedness from my. . . .that is, from the ladies of the Western Addition. Not from the Queen of the Underworld, eh?” Mr. Heald’s eyes glisten at Jessie’s self-proclaimed title, which is as much a flattery to her as a titillation to him.
“Oh, you expect, do you, Mr. Heald? Well, the Queen of the Underworld says there is a place for sin and a time for sin. And that time and that place is not during my Fourth of July promenade