Port Hazard by Loren D. Estleman Page B

Perfect in Its Object of Affording
    LAUGHTER FOR MILLIONS!
    A Host of the Best
    DRAMATIC, TERPSICHOREAN AND MUSICAL
    TALENT WILL APPEAR
    Emphatically the
    MELODEON OF THE PEOPLE
    Unapproachable and Beyond Competition.
    Â 
    The dodger was printed on the kind of paper that could not have associated with The Honorable D. W. Wheelock’s personal stationery. Its coarse fibers were tinted an unappetizing shade of apricot and the edges of the dull black letterpress characters had bled, making them muzzy and hard to read. The character who had thrust it into my hand was of a piece with the stock: short and round, buttoned into a loud checkered vest, a morning coat two sizes too small, and loose trousers belted just under his armpits, with yellow gaiters on his black brogans and a deer-stalker cap. He patrolled the boardwalk in front of the theater, accosting passersby with a nasal bray touting the wonders to be found inside and shoving the sheets into their midsections; forced to defend themselves, they grabbed at their bellies and wound up holding a dodger. No one got past him without one while Beecher and I were watching, and the traffic was heavy.
    The Bella Union was three stories of frame construction—painted, not whitewashed—on the northeast corner of Portsmouth Square at the foot of Telegraph Hill, with shutters on the windows designed to repel invaders and vigilantes. Its name was painted in neat block letters across the false front, and the structure itself appeared as solid as a bank or a county courthouse. Natives referred to it as “The Ancient,” which in a city that burned over every few seasons applied to anything more than ten years old. Neither fire nor scandal nor the cicada-like cycle of Community Cleansing could eradicate it. It kept coming back like a nest of yellow jackets.
    We entered a cavernous saloon, whose gaming tables and long bar were already crowded at late morning, drinking under a glittering canopy of upended flutes, snifters, and cordials and waiting their turns at faro, vingt-et-un, and a seven-foot-tall Wheel of Fortune, the biggest I’d seen outside Virginia City. The place was a dazzle of gaslight and highly polished surfaces, which made a gaudy setting for the dingy sailors’ jerseys, miners’ overalls, and dusty town coats that filled it. The bouncer, whose hair slickum and tailored coat did no more than necessary to disguise the fact he was a pugilist, gave us no expression at all from behind his blisters of scar tissue when we asked where Mr. Wheelock might be found until I gave him my name. Someone had prepared him. He ducked his head and directed us to a stairwell half hidden behind a box containing a mechanical man who told fortunes.
    On the way past the box, Beecher glared at the painted figure inside. It looked like Judge Blackthorne in a turban. “Reckon he’s real?”
    â€œCost you a nickel to find out,” I said.
    â€œI didn’t come here to get robbed.”
    â€œTry to blend in anyway.”
    The walls of the stairwell had been freshly painted; not a rare thing to find in a combustible city, but scarce enough in slap-bang Barbary. A floral carpet covered the steps, through which we could feel the buzz of brass from the band tuning up in the theater behind the saloon. That was The Ancient’s bread and butter: the little stage where buffoons recited jokes from Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang and pretty danseuses in tights and short ruffled skirts performed cartwheels to Parisien cabaret tunes penned in New York tenement houses, and the curtained booths where breathy Southern belles with granite eyes inveigled inebriated customers to buy champagne and claret. Where the transaction went from there was strictly between the belles and the customers and the little man in the immaculate black cutaway who collected the take at the end of the evening. You could leave your money at the tables all over town, but when it came to