Chapter 19 #2
“A gentleman caller,” Wilhemina clarified, her eyes dancing, and Maggie gave a little shake of her head, mystified as well as bemused. Philip was in Berlin, and she didn’t know any other gentlemen. “He’s in the sitting room.”
Wilhemina waited in the hall, clearly dying for news, as, with some trepidation, Maggie opened the door to the sitting room.
Brendan stood in the middle of the room, his hat in his hands, his expression alarmingly somber.
“Brendan!” Quickly, Maggie stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.
He had never come to visit her before, and she had never even seen him outside the Barbary Coast. It had not occurred to her that he might come here, and the sight of him brought a rush of feeling—surprise, of course, along with happiness, and then a sudden, deep unease as she noted the look on his face.
“Has something happened?” she asked, her stomach swooping with nerves.
She could tell from the way his mouth drooped down at the corners, that something had. He wouldn’t have come all this way otherwise.
“Is it Danny?” she asked in a halting voice. “Or Da?”
Brendan’s eyes drooped further as he gave her a look so full of compassion that it nearly made her knees buckle. “I’m sorry, Maggie.”
A gasp escaped her and she covered her mouth with her hand. Were they dead? They’d gotten into trouble again, and this time it had finally caught up with them. She wasn’t even surprised, and yet…
On watery legs, Maggie lowered herself onto the sofa, her hand still covering her mouth. “You mean they’re…” She couldn’t bear to say it. “What… what has happened?” she asked faintly.
“They’re all right,” Brendan assured her quickly. “It’s not—that.” He came to sit down beside her, and for a second, no more, she longed to lean into him. “But I’m afraid they’re in trouble.”
Again. Briefly, Maggie closed her eyes.
“What kind of trouble?” she whispered.
“With a gang,” Brendan admitted. “And also with the police.”
Maggie tried for a laugh but only managed a rasping sound that threatened to turn into a sob. “Both? That’s quite an accomplishment,” she finally remarked, her voice wobbling only a little.
“Isn’t it, though?” Brendan smiled at her in sympathy, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “They had a good run of it, I suppose. They’ve been at it for almost two years.”
At what? Did she even want to know? Maggie sighed and leaned back against the sofa. She felt bone-weary, both from her ten-hour shift and the news that once again her feckless father and brother had landed in such trouble—and this time it seemed it might have consequences.
“So, what happened?” she asked. “How did they get into this praiseach, whatever it is?” She used the old Gaelic term for a mess—for it was surely a mess her father and brother were in.
Brendan let out a long sigh as he settled himself against the sofa. “I don’t know all the details, but their business at the waterfront involved a shell game.”
“A shell game?” She’d never heard of such a thing before.
“A confidence trick,” Brendan explained. “People pay to play—there are three shells or cups, with a dried pea or some such hidden underneath one. The magician, or hustler, shuffles the shells and then the poor sap has to guess which one is hiding the pea. It’s almost always rigged.”
“Rigged? How?”
Brendan shrugged. “I don’t know exactly how.
He might palm the pea or slide it into another shell, some sleight of hand that tricks the customer.
It looks like a game of chance, something a man might win once in a while, but nobody ever wins but the hustler—or somebody he’s planted in the audience, to tempt others to play. ”
“Let me guess,” Maggie remarked dryly, after she’d absorbed all Brendan said. “My father was the hustler and Danny was the plant?”
Brendan cracked a wry smile. “You’re good at this.”
“Maybe I should join them?” Maggie quipped before letting out a weary sigh that felt as if it came from the depths of her being.
She found she couldn’t be angry—not again.
She didn’t have the energy or the will, and she knew Danny or her da would never change.
It was futile to expect them to, and yet she loved them anyway—another exercise in futility, it seemed.
“You said they were in trouble with a gang and the police?” she asked after a moment.
“The problem with this kind of confidence trick,” Brendan explained, “is that people get wise to it. They had to keep moving it around—the waterfront, the Coast, North Beach, the Mission. But eventually they ran out of new places to go, new customers to pluck, and they started muscling in on a gang’s territory—they were doing the same thing, you see.
And at the same time, some cheated customer got wind of it and reported them to the police.
Although, truth be told, I think they’re more afraid of the gang, and rightly so.
Behind bars in San Quentin probably seems like a pretty safe place, from where they’re standing. ”
One of the state’s most notorious prisons, a safe place! Slowly, despondent, Maggie shook her head. “So what are they going to do?”
Brendan hesitated, and she twisted around to face him. He was sitting very close, closer than she realized, so she could see the glints of gold in his hazel eyes, the stubble on his jaw, breathe in the scent of him, the aftershave she still didn’t recognize.
“Brendan…?”
“They’ve got a plan,” Brendan finally said, his voice heavy. “They’re leaving San Francisco, Maggie. They’d have told you themselves, but they’re in hiding, down in a warehouse by the waterfront.”
“Leaving? But where are they going?”
Again he hesitated, and Maggie felt her fingers clench into fists.
“Brendan, just tell me,” she implored, her voice hitching in her anxiety.
“They’re heading north,” he told her quietly. “There’s a steamer, City of Pueblo, leaving for Port Townsend tomorrow morning.”
Maggie stared at him blankly. “Port Townsend?” She had no idea where that was.
“In Washington State. From there, they’ll go onto Victoria, in Canada, and then Fort Wrangell and finally Juneau, although they’ve got ideas about going even further north than that. Heading up somewhere to look for gold.”
For a second, Maggie could only stare. “They’re going to Alaska?” she finally asked incredulously.
“Yes.” Now Brendan looked more somber than ever, and with a lurch she realized there was more to come, and this news was what Brendan dreaded sharing. “And Maggie…” he began, his gaze steady on hers and full of both determination and sorrow, “I’m going with them.”