She fairly flies up the stairs like a spring chicken. Dinner with a handsome young foreign-looking gentleman at the Poodle Dog, where all them Snob Hill gentlemen go to dine on some of the finest French food in town. How tongues will wag when she strolls in with Mr. Watkins. She yells for Mariah, who has mounted her watch on the rooftop again.
Mariah wearily climbs in the window, softly cursing. Sure and Jessie knows them Snob Hill gentlemen. When they get a gander of her with the likes of Mr. Watkins, they’ll be panting at her door to see what new tricks she’s learned. If she’s going to stand the pup for dinner, she may as well reap whatever harvest she can from his company. The biz is the biz.
“It’s advertising,” she tells Mariah, who helps her shimmy off the pink silk frock. “It’s the American way.”
“I’d watch out for that young gentleman, if I was you.”
“Sure and I’m watchin’ him,” Jessie says gleefully. The ladies in France are tightening the goddamn waist? “Relace my corset, Mariah.”
“Please, Miss Malone. Madame De Cassin has pleaded with you to go see the doctor about that pain.”
“Relace the corset. Tighter. Tighter!”
Mariah does and when Jessie cries out, Mariah feeds her another dose of Scotch Oats Essence. Then they pour her into the mauve damask evening dress with lace festoons, garlands of pearls, and crystal pendants on the bust. Jessie finds her blue diamond earrings and filigree necklace, pulls on opera-length mauve satin gloves. She fills her handbag with two hundred dollars in gold coins. When the Queen of the Underworld goes out of the town, she goes with plenty of gold. Then she saunters downstairs to Mr. Watkins.
He’s waiting in the foyer, spruced up and spiffy in a black wool Prince Albert suit, an ivory silk shirt with a thin red pinstripe, a red silk vest, a red silk French necktie, and black leather boots. He’s slicked down his thick brown curls so they fall behind his ears almost to his shoulders and donned a black silk top hat.
“You’re a daisy, darlin’,” Jessie says.
“You’re a picture yourself, my Queen,” he says and offers his elbow.
They stroll out the door of 263 Dupont Street into the dust and clouds of gunpowder, the stench of spilled rotgut. The frenzied celebration of the Fourth of July carries on well into the deepening dusk. Drunken brawls ring out from every corner. Squealing horses rear and bolt. Wives scream and cry and plead with their husbands to come home. Men lie passed out pie-eyed on the street or stagger in chortling packs, arms entwined over each other’s shoulders. The street hookers flirt, poxy and crude. Jessie sniffs with disdain. Them chits are as many classes down from Jessie as Jessie is from a Snob Hill lady. Maybe more.
She hails a hack just as Mr. Jackson’s elegant hansom is trotting up Dupont Street. Abundant silver trim gleams on the fine mahogany leather. Jessie hesitates, her idle flirtation with Mr. Watkins forgotten. Mr. Jackson is a good john, regular and always very flush. An aging Silver King, he was once a rival of one of Jessie’s beaux. Now he patronizes Jessie’s parlor as much as he patronizes the girls on Sutter Street, if only for petty revenge. Is Mr. Jackson headed her way? She cranes her neck.
Then suddenly a black brougham careens through the intersection, slamming broadside into Mr. Jackson’s hansom. Horses shriek and kick. The drivers leap down from their seats and seize the horses’ bridles, trying to calm the beasts. Mr. Jackson dismounts from the hansom, seizes his driver’s horsewhip, and confronts the offending brougham and its occupants.
They spill out, three tong men dressed all in black, their queues coiled at the napes of their necks. They wear black slouch hats and black slippers. A wiry, tattooed fellow with a knife tucked in his belt begins to berate Mr. Jackson in a high, excited gibber. A fat man with diamond rings scornfully surveys the gathering crowd. And a third man, tall and gaunt, a black eyepatch over his left socket, barks orders at his driver.
Them’s the hatchet men Jessie saw in the park! And there, crawling out of the brougham, is the tall, thin lady in gray silk they accosted, towing the squalling Chinese wretch by her elbow. Mr. Jackson’s driver and the driver of the brougham shout at each other, curse and argue. The brougham driver swings his fist at Mr. Jackson’s driver, and Mr.