Beth Henderson - Wicked

Belle smiled softly. “Mamas like to brag, Miss Lilly. I know I woulda if my man had let me keep my babies.”

Having learned more about Belle’s past than she had cared to, Lilly knew there were no words to comfort the young woman for her loss. “Well, nevertheless, I thought it quite uncivil of her,” she said, as her hand found the correct package. “Here you are. Happy birthday, Belle. I hope you like the photograph I chose.”

“You sure took a passel of them,” Belle said, eagerly accepting the cabinet card. “I was beginning to think I was so ugly your picture box was refusing to have anything to do with me.”

She had taken a lot of photographs, Lilly agreed silently. Some showed Belle with unsightly bruises that even a heavy hand with powder could not conceal. In preparing the cabinet card as Belle’s gift, Lilly had spent hours studying proof sheets until she found an image she felt Belle would cherish.

“Oh, Miss Lilly!” The words were a sigh of appreciation. When Belle glanced up from the carefully posed photograph, her eyes were swimming with unshed tears. “You made me look beautiful again,” she whispered, as if she had doubted such a feat could be done.

“Nonsense,” Lilly declared stoutly. “You know very well that while a painter can improve the looks of his subject, a photographer can only reproduce what nature has given a person.”

“I’m gonna take this with me when I go, and treasure it all my years,” Belle promised.

Lilly glanced up from buckling her satchel closed once more. “You’re leaving the Coast? When?”

“Soon as I have a talk with a certain gent,” Belle announced brightly. “See, I know something about him that he don’t want known.”

“You’re planning to blackmail someone?” Lilly gasped. “But, Belle, you can’t do that. It’s wrong.”

Belle’s smile faded. “And what these men do to me every day ain’t?”

“I didn’t say that,” Lilly said. “It’s only that—”

“You and me’s from different worlds, Miss Lilly. You just visit in the Coast. I live here, and there ain’t no gettin’ out unless it’s with a handful of twenty-dollar gold pieces.” Belle carefully placed the cabinet card in the pocket of her skirt. “I aim to get me some of those and clear out while I got the chance.”

Lilly had been privy to conditions in the Coast long enough to know that leaving the neighborhood was the dream of nearly every woman there. A dream that would never come true for most of them. But Belle was gambling with fate and, as Lilly had learned in the weeks she’d spent there, in the Coast fate always won.

“Be careful, Belle,” she urged. “Whether it’s right or wrong, what you are planning to do is most definitely dangerous.”

The prostitute smiled wanly. “Don’t worry ’bout me, Miss Lilly. I’ve seen this man enough to know he values his reputation even more’n he loves money. I’ll be fine and I’ll be gone. There can’t be nothin’ better’n that.”

“You’ve talked to this man already then?” Lilly asked.

Belle shook her head. “Not yet. I know where to find him later tonight, though. Once he pays me, I’ll be on the first train out of town and startin’ my new life.”

And if he decided not to pay her? Lilly wondered if Belle had considered such an outcome. Despite her own feeling of foreboding, she realized reasoning with the determined woman would be difficult. Perhaps in Belle’s place she would have been just as reckless, just as willing to gamble with the future.

Taking the initiative, Lilly quickly hugged Belle and was pleased when, after a slight hesitation, the woman returned the gesture. “Then I hope your new life is everything you want it to be,” Lilly said.

“Thank you, Miss Lilly. I just know it will be.” Belle giggled nervously. “It can’t help but be better than this, can it?”

A truer statement Lilly had yet to hear, but it didn’t lessen the fact that Belle’s plan was fraught with danger. She wished briefly that she did not have other photographs to deliver, that she hadn’t promised a group of newsboys to take their pictures that day. Still, Belle had far more experience in dealing with men than she herself had, Lilly admitted. Or was likely to have. No doubt the young woman knew exactly what she was doing.

Lilly shouldered the camera once more. “I wish I could stay longer but…”

“I understand,” Belle assured. “Thank you so much for my photograph.”

“It was my pleasure. I hope the rest of your birthday is just as pleasurable,” Lilly said as she turned to retrace her steps down the alley.

“It will be, especially when I show my photograph to the other girls,” Belle called.

Lilly gave a quick wave, then rounded the corner onto the street, and Belle was lost to sight.

Belle’s plan continued to nag at Lilly. She’d barely taken a dozen steps, threading her way through the bustle on Pacific Street, when she decided nothing was more important than convincing Belle that blackmail was not the answer to her prayers. Despite the weight of the camera, she’d walk home, forgoing the luxury of an omnibus in order to spend her fare on tea and cakes for Belle. Somehow Lilly would find a way to convince the prostitute that there were other, less risky ways of leaving behind her life in the Coast and beginning anew without a grubstake gained through blackmail.

Her decision made, Lilly turned back quickly to catch Belle and issue her invitation. With a few strides she rounded the corner, her serviceable dark brown walking suit making her blend in with the shadows that cloaked the nearly deserted alleyway.

Belle hadn’t gone inside yet. Her head was bent as she admired the cabinet card Lilly had given her. She seemed unaware of the man who slipped from the building behind her.

He was a lanky fellow, although not overly tall. As he was without a hat, Lilly saw that his dark hair thinned away from his brow, leaving a V-shaped section that he wore combed back and slicked with brilliantine. His clothing could well have been chosen for the setting, for while his trousers were a muddy gray-green shade that rivaled the alley floor, the coloration in his shirt nearly matched the brickwork of the surrounding buildings. He was cleanly shaved, and moved with a sureness of step associated with sobriety—something not often seen in the Barbary Coast.

Growing aware of his approach, Belle turned slightly, dropping the hand that held her likeness so that the cabinet card was hidden from him in the folds of her skirt. Because Belle showed no fear of the man, Lilly was totally unprepared when he moved swiftly, the hitherto concealed knife in his hand slashing across the young prostitute’s throat.

Paralyzed with shock, Lilly stared at the tableau, the man cradling his victim almost tenderly as she sagged limply in his arms. The photograph dropped from Belle’s hand and fluttered gently away into the shadows.

Deegan Galloway stood across the road from the undertaker’s parlor at Number 16 O’Farrell Street and decided the funeral trappings were tasteful. Or as tasteful as the flamboyant citizens of San Francisco, rich from mine and railroad stocks, could make them. Ostentation was de rigueur, for it was the end of an era. Norton I, self-styled Emperor of the United States, was dead.

If the lines of mourners and the bountiful floral tributes were anything to go on, the old eccentric would be greatly missed. For years he’d been living on the generosity of San Franciscans, consuming gratuitous meals in restaurants, having his portrait taken free of charge, his clothing supplied—all his needs seen to without the bother of earning a cent himself. A good number of times in the past, Deegan had envied Norton his delusions and the great care the people of San Francisco took to nurture them. That had been before he himself became the California-based business agent for his best friend, the wealthy English baron, Garrett Blackhawk, and gained the instant and quite comfortable bank account that went with the position. Fortunately, very little work or responsibility went with the job, which made it the perfect employment for a feckless fellow like himself. But then, after all the adventures they’d shared during the past two years, Deegan figured Garrett knew him too well to expect much of him when it came to honest labor.