coercing, deceiving, deterring, killing, or saving that person except as authorized by the project directors. She can’t take out her mollie knife, can’t tear down these bars, can’t free these girls from their loathsome slavery. Like Li’l Lucy, they’re on their own.
Zhu snorts, disgusted. There’s one person, and one person only, she’s authorized—ordered to help in 1895. And that’s Wing Sing. She tours the alley, examining every prisoner at every barred window.
“Wing Sing?” she murmurs. “Is Wing Sing here?”
“I Wing Sing.”
Zhu studies the swarthy, broad-cheeked girl. She must be Mongolian. Definitely not the girl she met in Golden Gate Park three months ago. Zhu was certain she’d recognize Wing Sing again but now, with every strange new face, her confidence falters.
Another voice, “I Wing Sing!”
And another, “I Wing Sing!”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “No. No.”
She flees Spofford Alley. The fortune-teller gives her a reproving look, then shrugs. She trudges on to Bartlett Alley, to Brooklyn Alley, to Stout. Always the same shacks, the barred windows, the grim little faces posed behind those bars reciting fee scales in a birdlike monotone.
So many slave girls. But Wing Sing is nowhere in sight.
Zhu rejoins the shuffling throng on Dupont, her heart heavy. Maybe Wing Sing is dead. Maybe three months of a life like this has killed her.
“Careful, Z. Wong,” Muse whispers.
With a start she sees them before she registers Muse’s warning, her intuition sounding off alarm bells. They shoulder their way through the crowd, striding directly toward her, the wiry fellow, the fat man, and the eyepatch. Hatchet men. Their hands purposefully shoved in their jacket pockets as they march behind an elderly gentleman in a gold-embroidered cap and an air of self-importance. The Big Boss, he’s got to be. The other men on the street yield to their entourage.
Zhu stands back, too. Yet instead of striding away in the opposite direction like she ought to, she hesitates, drawn by curiosity. The eyepatch approaches, his good eye peering about with uncanny acuity. She tries to shrink back into the shadows, but he zeroes right in on her. She yanks the fedora over her brow, dons the tinted spectacles, pushes them up her nose so the lenses cover her eyes.
Too late.
He practically pounces on her, backing her up against a shop window. “Jade Eyes,” he says in an ominous whisper.
“Excuse me, sir, but I don’t know you,” she says, lowering her voice as best she can. He stands so close she can feel the hard curve of the grip of the gun tucked in his waistband.
“Oh, you know me,” he says. He taps the frame of the spectacles with a long fingernail. “Jade Eyes, that’s what the girl called you.”
“Act friendly,” Muse whispers in her ear. “Ask him where the girl is.”
Great advice from her monitor. At last.
“We. . . .we are all strangers here in Gold Mountain, aren’t we,” Zhu says. She tries a little smile. “All far from our homeland, from mother China. You and me and Wing Sing.”
“So we are,” he says, a glimmer of surprise lighting up his eye. He looks her up and down, checks out her sahm, the fedora, the sandals. He shakes his head, and then an astute look springs into his eye.
Okay. Maybe he’s not such a thug and a murderer. She takes a deep breath. “Sir, I’m looking for Wing Sing.”
“Why?”
“I need to talk to her.”
“Why?” he says again. The wiry fellow and the fat man gather behind him, peering over his shoulder. The Big Boss waits, annoyance creasing his brow.
“She’s my friend.”
The eyepatch shrugs. “She got no friend. She our girl. We pay gold.”
“I’ve got money.” Zhu fumbles in her pocket for her coins. Jessie gave her a double eagle after their tiff at breakfast. Mr. Parducci tipped her another bit for the large order of wine. “How much for her?”
The eyepatch laughs when he sees her coins. “We pay two thousand in gold for her, Jade Eyes. She sixteen. And pretty. Pretty girl earn much gold for Chee Song Tong.”
Zhu gasps. Two thousand dollars in gold for Wing Sing! Zhu has earned exactly fifteen dollars over the past three months as Jessie’s bookkeeper while her services pay off the hundred in gold Jessie paid for her indenture. She shoves the coins back in her pocket, feeling ridiculous. “It’s just that I miss her. I want to talk to her.”
“Talk of what?”
“Talk of mother China. Talk of family.”
“Ah.” Now an unexpected sheen clouds the eyepatch’s eye. Then he frowns, tosses words over his shoulder