The Salem Witch Society (33 page)

“Well, that fire was set, all right. From all the talk, it came out there was some old hag what lived there. She spooked the neighbors something awful. So a bunch went and smoked her right out.”

“But no one died in the fire?”

“Don’t think so. Maybe some talk of someone hurt or missing. Don’t remember a body being found, but then we weren’t the first ones there, and we didn’t stay too long neither.”

“Odd you don’t remember a detail like that. Whether someone died in a fire,” Grey said.

“You know, Lean, your friend here’s even funnier than you. And you’re about as funny as having a bad case of the shits in church. It weren’t even our fire, and what you’re talking about is a police matter anyhow. Now
that I’m thinking on it, maybe you guys aren’t so late after all. Some copper did came around asking about it. What was his name?” He thought on it a moment, then shook his head. He let fly another lung deposit and called out to a fireman busy inside the bay, polishing the engine. “Hey, Moran, remember back about twenty years ago that fire across the bridge? Little shack round by the creek down to Back Cove. What was the name of the cop who came around after investigating that?”

Moran stomped over. He was a stocky man, a few years younger than Cobb, judging by the scattered specks of black that remained in his own full face of hair. A well-chewed stub of a cigar worked its way to the corner of his mouth. “Cap Tolman. A real prick.”

“Don’t know him,” said Lean.

“Before your time, probably,” Moran said.

“Cap? He was a captain?”

“Nah.” Moran grabbed a hold of his cigar and gestured with it as he spoke. “He took a bullet in his kneecap. Ate him up pretty good. Got to where he couldn’t talk about nothing else. He was done not long after.”

“Still around?” Lean asked.

“Used to see him sometimes down around Gorham’s Corner in the whiskey shops.”

Cobb issued another productive clearing of his throat. “Last I heard, he was taking his time dying down at some Chinaman’s place by the wharves.”

“Yengee Lee’s opium den,” Grey said.

Lean knew the place, and the proprietor. Decades ago the Asian man’s youthful passion for the American ideal of liberty and his dread at sharing a name with the Confederate commander had prompted frequent and heavily accented proclamations of his support for the Union. Thirty years later he was still known as Yengee Lee.

“We’ll try there tonight,” Lean said.

“For what it’s worth, Lean, maybe you’d better go by yourself.” Cobb nodded in Grey’s direction. “Nothing against yourself, mind you, but
he doesn’t care much for other races. Only goes down to the Chinaman’s place because they take care of him on the cheap.”

Lean saw a flash of annoyance on Grey’s face, and he thanked Cobb for the information. At the corner of Congress Street, they waited for a rail car to pass.

“We’ll both go all the same,” Lean suggested.

“Information is the only thing that’s important, not any imagined slight to me. If he’ll speak more freely to you alone—so be it.”

“Fair enough, if it doesn’t bother you,” Lean said.

“Yes, how I cringe at the thought of missing what is sure to be a brilliant conversation with some opium-addled bigot.”

Lean tried to suppress a smile. “Like I said, so long as you’re not bitter about it.”

L
ater that night, Archie Lean spent several minutes repeating his promises that he was only looking to speak with Cap Tolman and had no business with, or plans to arrest, any other customers on the premises. Only then did the panel at the rear of the apothecary slide back to reveal a door that led down a short flight of stairs. His guide let him into Yengee Lee’s opium den and pointed toward a vague figure huddled near one corner of the room.

It was a poorly lit space with no visible windows. Some candles were set in sconces along the walls. There were a few mirrors and several other decorations, mostly hanging rolls of pale yellowish rice paper, with simple strokes depicting birds or the outlines of misty mountains or green-lined hillsides with Chinese characters running down the side. There were close to twenty habitués, some alone, others in small groups. These customers came from every corner of the city, every station in life. Lean passed a ruined man in a tattered suit sitting just feet away from a banker in a finely tailored morning coat.

Each layout
had all the smoker’s needs: a foot-and-a-half-long pipe, a bowl, spoon, dross box, and tray. Small, elaborate oil lamps with glass chimneys burned at each layout. Most of the patrons were lying on their sides on woven bamboo mats set atop the low bunks, wide benchlike platforms that lined the walls. A few more bunks, littered with large square pillows, were set in the middle of the room.

Lean settled onto a low stool across from Cap Tolman, who was half reclining on a padded bench against the wall. His unfitted sack suit was missing a button and showed signs of excessive wear. Lean garnered something resembling a smile of recognition when he mentioned he was a police deputy. He spoke quietly, trying not to be overheard. The closest habitué was a thin man with graying hair who had passed out facedown on his own bunk. A gold watch had slipped from the man’s pocket and dangled from its chain. Lean knew that the man’s property was safe among this morally vague collection of souls. Despite the sundry vices the others might practice in the outside world, there was an unspoken code of honor, a mutual amnesty, that governed their conduct within these hazy confines.

“I’ll cut right to it, Tolman. I need to know about a woman called Old Stitch.”

After a minute Tolman’s jaundiced eyes focused, and he gave a shake of his head. “I’ve cooked up the card. How ’bout you get him to roll up some pills for me, and we’ll have ourselves a talk.”

“Fair enough. I’ll spot you the next bit of dope.”

“Hey, Yengee,” called Tolman, “another quarter for me.”

Through the haze of blue-gray smoke, Lean watched the house cook at work. The deputy had a basic understanding of the process. The raw opium was already prepared, the cook having shredded it, then boiled it down to separate out the pure opium. The essence obtained, the cook then kneaded that residue in a shallow pan, and the resulting concoction, thick and black, was a fermented pastelike substance known to the users as dope.

“The witch woman who lived on the East Deering side of the cove, not far from Tukey’s. They burnt her out back in ’71.” Lean saw a
glimmer of recognition in Tolman’s eyes. “What was her real name?”

“Dunno. Black Lucy, she was called then. But even in those days, her hair was going white. She weren’t even that old to look at her. And not a bad bit of mutton—worth the dollar, anyway. I had a taste of that once or twice myself. A good ride too, if you didn’t mind her two little shit-heel runts peeking through the cracks in the walls the whole time.”

Tolman smacked his parched lips, then reached for a small porcelain cup of tea on the layout in front of him. He grimaced after taking a sip. “Don’t know how these pigtails drink that piss water.”

“What happened? The fire,” Lean said.

Tolman’s eyes moved to the steady light of the oil lamp. He picked up his spoon, using it to scrape at the resin inside the bowl. He dumped the resulting dross out into a little box that sat on top of the polished teak tray.

“Smoke. I could see it coming cross Tukey’s. Nothing like the Great One in ’66, mind you. You could see that forever and a mile.”

“What did you see there at Black Lucy’s?”

“Dying down to the wisps by the time I got there.”

“But what about her? You see her after the fire?”

“Not for a long time. She showed up later a couple other places, but she’d never last long afore they’d run her off again. I even heard she joined up with one of those red-Indian shows. Ended up back there, rebuilding that old shack by the cove.”

The proprietor appeared with two small black pellets presented in a lichee nutshell, which he set down after collecting Lean’s money.

“What for? Why’d they run her off?”

“Why? She was a damned witch. Why the hell wouldn’t they? Hell, that old whore’s lucky they never did worse after what she did.” “What did she do?”

“Killed a woman with her medicines. She peddled all sorts of poisons. For getting men, getting babies, getting rid of ’em. Woman died. Baby she was carrying too. That’s why they went down there with fire. Eye for an eye.”

“Who burned
her out?”

Tolman shrugged. He set one of the pellets atop the knoblike bowl, where it settled into place in an indentation at the center of which was a small hole.

“No one was ever arrested?”

“Hah! There were whispers, but no one would ever talk. And we didn’t ask too hard either. She was no use to no one. And her boys, neither.” Tolman leaned forward, holding his bamboo pipe at an angle and just far enough over the oil lamp so that the heat wouldn’t be too great, igniting the opium, burning it away. Instead the low, steady flame vaporized the drug into a dense blue-white cloud. There was a sizzling gurgle as Tolman drew the smoke into his lungs. After a moment he sat back, and his eyelids began to droop.

“What about the boys?” Lean asked.

“What about ’em?”

“Ever see them around after?”

“They never found the second one.”

Lean sat up straighter. “You mean they really did kill one of her boys? There was never a report.”

Tolman shrugged again. “No one ever complained. Not even her. Besides, that fire burnt fast and real hot. No body left to raise a stink over.”

“Still,” said Lean, “murdering a child …”

“Only a kid for a few more years. He’d have been a whore’s son and a thief forever after that.”

There was a long lapse in the conversation, and Lean started to wonder whether Tolman had drifted off. “What about the other one? There were two boys.”

“Hmm? Oh, we found him later, hiding in the woods. One of the orphanages claimed him.” Tolman’s eyes opened again, but his voice was starting to fade, the words coming more slowly on each other’s heels.

Lean bent forward, his head hovering over the lamp, rich with the scent of sesame oil. Tolman’s words filtered through his mind, spinning all around like silt from a sandy lake bottom that, once stirred up, refuses to
settle back into place. “Has someone gone out and killed Old Stitch,” Lean whispered to himself, “for revenge—even after twenty years?”

“Twenty years?” Tolman’s eyes had gone wide. He was suddenly seized with a look of intense purpose. “It’s no more’n a day when you’ve got that pain inside you. Gripping so tight you can’t think of nothing else.”

“This woman,” Lean said in a low, calming voice, “the one who died from Black Lucy’s medicines. What was her name?”

“No.” Tolman shook his head. “A moment can ruin you right down to the bone. Years slip by while the pain eats its way down into you. Him that did this to me”—he nodded toward his wasted leg—“if he was here now, I’d kill him with my bare hands. Tear him away like he tore me.”

“Her name,” Lean urged.

The color went out of Tolman’s face, as though his last rant had drained him down to nothing. The old veteran’s eyes flickered, and the lids sank almost shut, leaving two slits of white like twin crescent moons lying on their backs.

“Tolman! What was the woman’s name?” Lean shook him by the shoulders. “Look at me. Come on, man! What was her name?”

A hand, firm but not threatening, took hold of Lean’s arm. “Come along, Deputy. You risk a spectacle. And no amount of pleading will raise this Lazarus from his opium tomb.”

Lean stared into the aged face. It took a moment to recognize him as the passed-out man who had been laid out in the nearby bunk with his gold watch dangling. As Lean stared, the man’s stooped shoulders straightened slightly and the squinting eyes relaxed. The man’s dull expression sparkled with a renewed vitality. He winked at Lean, turned, and exited the room. Lean hurried after him, through the curtained entry, up the narrow staircase to the pharmacy, then out into the steamy July night.

He caught up with the man in an alley around the corner. “Damn it, Grey! These masquerades of yours are giving me fits.”

“No time for hysterics, my good man. Tolman has laid our work out for us.”

“You heard
well enough, I assume, that he never revealed any names.”

“Exactly. And so we must attach the name ourselves.”

Lean followed him to a waiting hansom cab. “And how do you plan to do that?”

“Your excitement, or the opium smoke, clouds your mind, Lean. We live in a city still gripped by the memory of its own near death. Fires in Portland do not escape mention in newspapers. The same is true of pregnant ladies who die under mysterious circumstances.”

L
ean closed his eyes and listened to the clock in the parlor finish chiming seven. He thought back over the day. A visit to the records room at City Hall, followed by two hours thumbing through dusty fire-department reports, provided the date of August 8, 1871. The brief entry held little else of use. No name was attached to the property at Back Cove. There was only a mention of two engines dispatched from Portland, one building lost, and no surrounding damage. After verifying the date of the fire at Old Stitch’s place, he’d telephoned the information to Grey, who undertook the next stop in their search: the newspaper morgue of the
Eastern Argus.
That had been lunchtime, and Lean was beginning to fixate on the clock. Each minute that ticked by was like the gentle strike of a small hammer, tapping a coffin nail into his hopes that their efforts would prove worthwhile.

Lean reached across the table for the packet that had arrived in the evening post. He slid out a single page. On top was a brief note from Grey:

The photograph showed a single page of elegant handwriting that had the appearance of an antique journal or manuscript. Lean picked up the photograph and read: