The Paper Daughters of Chinatown - Heather B. Moore Page 0,35

joined the back row and repeated each word along with the others, her eyes fierce and intent on Dolly. In that moment, Dolly knew Tien was slowly becoming her ally. At last.

Shortly after the dinner hour, Dolly received a note delivered anonymously to the mission home. This in and of itself wasn’t unusual, but Dolly was wary as she read the address from the girl begging to be rescued. Right in the heart of Chinatown. She approached Mrs. Field with the note, and the woman waved it off. “Go do your rescues. I’ll not walk among the filth of Chinatown.”

So Dolly sent word to Officer Cook, and she and Ah Cheng met Cook and Riordan at the bottom of the Sacramento Street hill just as twilight deepened the sky to black.

Cook fell into step beside her as Dolly led the small group with her long strides straight to the address. “You’ve heard the news about the tong’s increased determination,” he said.

“I have,” Dolly said.

“And you’re not going to back down like they wish?”

Dolly cast him a sideways glance. “What do you think I should do, Officer Cook?”

“I think you should carry on, Miss Cameron,” he said. “You’re the new general of the missionary army now.”

A smile curved her mouth. “I like that title.”

“I thought you would,” he said in a warm tone.

She wasn’t looking at him, but she could feel his smile. A moment later, the scent of cigarette smoke ebbed around her.

Threats or no threats, she would keep putting one foot in front of the other.

They had little trouble entering the building. Cook and Riordan didn’t have to use their sledgehammers to break down doors or smash windows. The place seemed quiet, which told Dolly there might have been some warning of the raid. Slave owners sometimes had watchmen in place, and tonight might be such a case. Dolly had been in this building before with Miss Culbertson, so she was familiar with the layout. She led the squad up the back staircase to the second floor.

She stopped before the numbered door with its faded Chinese lettering. It matched the information in the note. First, Dolly knocked, and predictably, there was no answer. Then she tried the doorknob. When the door opened with no trouble, Cook said, “I’ll go in first. Stay back.”

He moved in front of her, but Dolly quickly followed. Sometimes the girl would be hidden, and if Dolly could get inside fast enough, she would glimpse the closing of a secret panel.

But there was no one in the room—at least no living person.

Hanging from the ceiling was a human form, an effigy. The long skirt, the bronze hair, and the green-painted eyes left little doubt of whom the hanging effigy represented. The swaying body might be fake, but the dagger plunged into the center of the look-alike’s chest was not.

The message was clear: this was no game or joke. Other threats to the mission home had seemed less personal, but Dolly couldn’t deny, watching the slow swing of the effigy in the garish light, that she was staring death in the face.

She drew in a shaky breath, closed her eyes, exhaled. Then she turned from the room and walked out. She had already committed herself to this work, so putting her future into the Lord’s hands was all she could do now. Come what may. Her work would go forward, threats and all, as long as she was able.

“The only entrance to the crib was a narrow door, in which was set a small barred window. Occupants of the den took turns standing behind the bars and striving to attract the attention of passing men.”

—Herbert Asbury, Barbary Coast, 1933

1903

Mei Lien could not move, and she wasn’t even sure if she was breathing. Every part of her body trembled as she huddled against the wall of the hotel room she had come to loathe. She’d been told to dress again, and the other women with their painted faces had been escorted out by the man with the pipe.

But the three men who’d inspected her body as if she were a skinned chicken at the market were still in the room speaking to Uncle. Their voices were no longer fierce whispers; now they were openly arguing about her . . . price.

Mei Lien’s stomach tumbled with nausea, both from lack of food and water and from the knowledge that not once had the word husband been uttered.

Auntie stood between Mei Lien and the men as if she were