A Wanted Man Read online

  Taking a step closer, Julie reached for the instrument that was standard issue to Salvationist recruits.

  Will shook his head and held it out of her reach. “Stay there,” he ordered, before turning on his heel and heading toward the grand parlor that was home to the poker and billiard tables, roulette wheels, bar, and the stage used by singers and dancers hired to entertain the customers.

  “Wait!” She stopped him in his tracks.

  Will looked over his shoulder at her, raising his eyebrow in silent query.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Into the saloon.”

  She moved as if to follow him, but Will waggled a finger at her. “No ladies allowed.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What you’re supposed to be doing.” He flashed her a wicked grin. “Collecting on behalf of the Salvationist movement, contributing to its fight against sin.”

  Will strolled into the grand parlor, tambourine in hand. The room was nearly empty. There were fewer than a dozen customers, five of whom—Adams, McNamara, Dennison, Littleton, and Royce—were engrossed in a poker game that had begun the night before. Will smiled as he approached the table. He greeted each player by name before he thrust the upturned tambourine at the closest man.

  “Hey, Keegan,” Dennison protested, “what the hell? Did you just roll out of bed?”

  “Yes, I did, and I’m taking up a collection.” Will tapped him on the shoulder with the tambourine, frowning at the racket it made.

  “You have a run of bad luck or something?”

  Will shook his head. “It’s protection money.”

  All five cardplayers looked up from their cards. “Who do you need protection from?” Adams asked. “Rival business owners?” He laughed at his own joke.

  “‘Bringing in the Sheaves.’”

  Reaching into his stack of cash, Adams dropped a silver dollar into the tambourine. “Ante up, boys.”

  The other four players followed suit. Will thanked them, then made his way around the saloon, soliciting donations of protection money to keep the Salvationists at bay.

  He returned to Julia Jane Parham with thirty-one dollars and twenty-five cents in coins and currency in her tambourine. He let her have a good look at the money, but kept a firm grip on the instrument and the cash. “I managed to collect a little over thirty dollars in contributions for your group.”

  “Oh, how lovely . . .” She reached for the tambourine.

  Will lifted it above her reach. “Not so fast. I want a guarantee that there’ll be no singing or saloon smashing by your group of soul savers for at least a month.”

  “A month?” Julie widened her eyes at the notion. “That’s bl—”

  “Business.”

  “You collected thirty dollars in under”—she glanced at the big clock hanging on the wall above the second-floor landing—“ten minutes.” She did some quick arithmetic. “That works out to be three dollars a minute. There are one thousand four hundred and forty minutes in a day. Thirty days in a month . . .” She looked at him. “That works out to be . . .”

  He couldn’t miss the gleam in her eyes. “A good deal more than I’m willing to pay.”

  “But you’ve plenty of money. You collected thirty dollars in ten minutes. . . .”

  “Thirty-one dollars.” He stared down at her. “We’re all suffering from aching heads. We were feeling generous.”

  “But . . .”

  “My dear Miss Parham, eight dollars is more than the average man earns in a fortnight. That’s fifty-seven cents a day. The offer on the table is thirty-one dollars and twenty-five cents for a month free of singing and smashing.” He narrowed his gaze and firmed his mouth. “Which roughly works out to be over a dollar a day. Double the average workingman’s wage. Take it or leave it.”

  “A week,” she countered.

  He quirked his brow at her once again. “Surely you jest. . . .”

  “Two weeks.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “That’s more equitable.”

  “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

  “A week and a half.”

  “The bird in the hand is about to become another bird in the bush. . . .”

  Realizing he was quite capable of carrying out his threat and that she was about to lose money the Salvationists needed in order to continue ministering to the city’s less fortunate, Julie capitulated. “Very well.”

  Will bit the inside of his cheek once again to keep from smiling. Little Lady Spitfire didn’t like losing. Neither did he. So he decided a bit of clarification was in order. “Very well what?”

  “I’ll accept the bird in the hand.” She forced the words out.

  “In return for what?”

  “A month free of singing and smashing by Salvationists at the Silken Angel.”

  “I’d like that in writing,” he said, knowing he was pushing his luck, but curious to see her reaction.

  “Absolutely not!” She didn’t disappoint him. “My word on the matter should suffice, and it’s my word or nothing.”

  Will lowered the tambourine and presented it to her. “Agreed.”

  Taking the cash and coin, Julie turned away from Will and stuffed the money into the inside pocket of her uniform jacket.

  He stepped back, allowing her a moment of privacy to secure her cash before he spoke. “All right, Miss Parham, time for you to go . . .”

  Julie deliberately misunderstood. “I haven’t seen the rooms upstairs.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why not?” she protested. “The Silken Angel is a first-class business establishment with public rooms above stairs.” She gave him another sharp look from beneath her lashes. “Or so I’ve heard.”

  “I don’t know where you got your information, but my upstairs rooms are open only to the male public.” He returned her glare with a look of appraisal. “You don’t qualify.”

  She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I’m curious.”

  “I’ll bet you are,” he drawled, in a voice husky with meaning.

  “And I’ll bet the rooms are marvelous.”

  “You would win that bet,” he said, “if you were a gambling sort of woman. If the Salvationists allowed such a thing.” He shot her a speculative look. “The rooms are marvelous. Compared to what you’ve been subjected to on Mission Street, I’ve no doubt they are palatial. But my rooms are open only to males. Unless I miss my guess, you’re a lady.”

  “What if I were new to San Francisco and desperate for a roof over my head?” The tambourine clattered as she propped her hands on her hips.

  “You have thirty-one dollars and twenty-five cents in your pocket, and the Russ House Hotel is down the block. Their rooms are almost as marvelous as mine. You’ll be fine.”

  “I am in desperate need of employment, and I’ve heard that you allow females to work above stairs.”

  “You were misinformed,” Will said. “And I don’t believe you’re desperate for work. You’re a missionary. They may pay you only a pittance, but they furnish room and board and see that you have plenty of work to keep you busy. Idle hands and all that . . . And even if it were true, I’m sure your crusading would keep you too busy to hold down a real job. You have thirty-one dollars and twenty-five cents in your possession, and in any case, you don’t qualify.”

  “It’s Salvationist money,” she protested. “Not mine.”

  “You’re a Salvationist. It’s yours if you need it. Unless, of course, you were forced to take a vow of poverty when you joined the movement . . .”

  “I’m a missionary, not a nun. And in any case”—she used his favorite phrase—“the Salvationist movement welcomes members of independent means and charitable contributions.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” Will replied. “Now, be a good little girl, Miss Parham, and take our generous charitable contribution back with you to Mission Street or the Russ House and stay out of saloons—especially my saloon.” He shoul
dn’t touch her. He was a gentleman and there were rules against such behavior, but since he’d already broken most of them, Will ignored the edict warning him not to make contact with any part of her person. And he did his best to ignore the frisson that ran up his arms as he took her by the shoulders and gently turned her around and nudged her toward the front door. “There are plenty of souls for you to save in the city without invading saloons. This is no place for a young lady.”

  “What about the young ladies upstairs?” She turned back to face him.

  “What young ladies? This isn’t a convent or a boarding school. As far as I know, there are no young ladies upstairs,” he said. “Only me.”

  “Surely, you don’t . . .” She blushed to the roots of her hair and began to sputter. “I mean . . . this is a saloon. . . . There must be females. . . . I never imagined that a man would . . .”

  He was sure there were a great many things a gently bred young lady never imagined. What went on above stairs in most of the other saloons and bordellos in San Francisco was just the beginning. And Will had no doubt that she was a gently bred young lady, despite the fact that she’d dared to enter his establishment. He’d seen the look of fascination on her face when she’d found herself pressed against his naked chest. And although she seemed completely unaware, Will recognized the spark of electricity that arced between them. There was no mistaking that jolt of sexual awareness, just as there was no mistaking her vocal inflection. Miss Julia Jane Parham was a proper English miss who had undoubtedly grown up among the cream of society. She had no business marching around the Barbary Coast unescorted—no business marching through this part of town at all, escorted or otherwise. She might be wearing military-style dress and soldiering for God, but that mannish, unbecoming frock was no protection from the dangers of San Francisco’s waterfront. What the devil were the Salvationists thinking to turn an innocent loose on the city streets? To send her into saloons—and worse? Were they that bent on finding new converts to do God’s work?

  He didn’t much like the idea of sending her out onto the city streets alone either, but he couldn’t keep her at the saloon. The best he could do was get her out of here before the bulk of his customers began arriving. If the Salvationists weren’t worried about sending a lamb into the lion’s den of iniquity that was San Francisco, he wouldn’t worry about it either. “You never imagined what, Miss Parham?” He watched her, a teasing light in his eyes. “That a man might live above his place of business?”

  “You live upstairs?”

  “I do.”

  “Alone?”

  Will tapped her on the nose with the tip of his index finger. “That, my dear Miss Parham, is none of your business. . . .”

  “Saving souls from a life of sin and degradation is my business,” she informed him.

  “Then go about your business elsewhere.” He turned her around and headed her toward the front door once more. “There’s no one upstairs but me, and my soul is long past saving.”

  Chapter Three

  “I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.”

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Without quite realizing how it happened, Julie found herself standing on the rough boardwalk outside the Silken Angel Saloon. Will Keegan gave her a jaunty little wave as he pulled the heavy wood-and-glass doors together and turned the key in the locks, locking his customers in and her out.

  The word closed was lettered in bold black in English and the Chinese equivalent on the milky glass for the public to see. A small sign tacked to the doors advised deliverymen to go around back. Julie realized that when the doors were closed, the Silken Angel was closed. Following the advice left for tradesmen, she headed toward the alley that led to the back of the saloon.

  “Clever girl,” Will Keegan murmured when she arrived in time to have the back door closed in her face and locked as well. “But not quite clever enough.”

  A sign above a bell at the back door read: RING BELL FOR SERVICE. Julie reached up to do so, only to find the clapper had been removed. She recognized his triumphant chuckle moments before he lifted the blue checked curtain covering the small back-door window and held up the clapper. “Clever and resourceful. But like I said, not quite clever or resourceful enough . . .”

  “You had an unfair advantage,” she called, raising her voice loud enough to carry through the door.

  “Insider knowledge,” he called back. “And I intend to keep it, just as I intend to stay inside and keep you outside.”

  “You can’t keep me outside forever.”

  “I can try,” he told her. “And get high marks for the effort.”

  Julie stamped her foot in a show of frustration. She hadn’t come thousands of miles in search of her friend to be thwarted the first day of her search. Turning on her heel, Julie lifted her skirts and hurried back through the alley to the front of the Silken Angel.

  The doors were still locked. She rattled the handles anyway, then banged her tambourine against her hip. “You haven’t heard the last of me, Mr. Keegan,” she promised.

  “I have until the end of the month,” Will replied.

  “I promised not to sing inside your establishment,” she announced. “I didn’t promise not to sing outside it.” Taking a deep breath, Julie began singing at the top of her lungs, “‘Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves. We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves. . . . ‘”

  “Don’t you know any other songs?” he called out.

  “Of course,” she called back ever so sweetly, “but I also know that this one is your favorite.”

  She thought she heard him laugh, but she couldn’t be sure above the sound of the tambourine. So she increased the volume of her song before stomping her way down the boardwalk toward the Salvationist headquarters on Mission Street.

  * * *

  “YOU GONNA STAND THERE STARING OUT THE WINDOW ALL day, Keegan?” Littleton called. “Or you gonna pull up a chair and join us?”

  Will stayed at the window watching until Julia Jane Parham was safely out of sight and out of earshot before turning to face his cardplaying regulars. “Thanks, but no thanks, gentlemen. Now that I’ve bought a little peace and quiet, I’m going back to bed for an hour or two.”

  “You bought?” Royce reminded him. “We anteed up into that psalm singer’s tambourine.”

  “I saw your five and raised it by twenty,” Will told him. Which meant the remaining seven customers contributed the rest—including the change Jack, the bartender, had left lying on the bar.

  “You put in twenty dollars?” Royce asked.

  “I did.” Will nodded. “And it was worth every penny, Royce.”

  Royce scratched his head. “This place will be swarming with every psalm-singing, umbrella-swinging, vote-wanting female in the city once word gets out that you paid one of them to go away.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” It would be interesting to see whether Julia Jane Parham kept her word or if she made a return visit before the month was out.

  “It could get a mite expensive if it does,” Royce warned good-naturedly. “But I reckon you can afford it.”

  “I can as long as you keep playing poker here every Friday and Saturday night.”

  * * *

  THANKS TO WILL KEEGAN, JULIE HAD MORE THAN MET HER daily collection quota.

  It wasn’t a set rule, but the Salvationists encouraged each member do his or her best to raise enough money to buy one soul a day’s worth of food. Julie’s contribution would help buy food and pay for shelter for dozens of needy souls. She had succeeded in her first attempt in soliciting donations because Will Keegan had collected the money for her, but Julie had failed miserably in her attempt to make it to the second floor of his saloon—the floor almost every saloon in town reserved for the working girls.

  Julie sighed. She supposed it was too much to ask that after joining the Salvationists and traveling thousands of miles from home, she would find her friend on her first foray into the city’s saloon districts
. Or that she would find her in the nicest saloon she’d come across.

  While the other Salvationist recruits had joined the movement to minister to the sick and needy while spreading William Booth’s message throughout the world, Julie’s motives had been less altruistic. She had joined in order to secure passage on a ship bound from Hong Kong to California and to gain entrance to San Francisco’s infamous Barbary Coast without drawing attention to her search for her dearest friend. In Julie’s experience, ladies were protected and barred from all but the safest and most mundane of places, while lady missionaries were allowed to work and live in the most exotic and notorious locales. Julie had managed to find herself a sponsor and been recruited into the Salvationist movement in order to keep the vow she’d made to her family housekeeper.

  Lolly had lived and worked in Parham House for as long as Julie could remember. She had come to keep house for Julie’s father, Commodore Lord Nelson Parham, a widowed naval commander, and to take care of his infant daughter. La Ling had lost her husband and his parents when cholera swept through their village. Only she and her baby, Su Mi, survived. When she recovered, Lolly had sought work in the city and been hired first as wet nurse for Julie, and then as housekeeper to Commodore Parham. Julie’s first attempts at imitating her father’s crisp British aristocratic pronunciation of La Ling’s name had come out as “Lolly,” and Lolly she had remained.

  Julie and Su Mi had suckled at the same breast and had grown up as close as any two sisters—with one exception: Julie was the English daughter of a wealthy naval commander. Su Mi was the daughter of Chinese peasants. With her father and his family dead, responsibility for Su Mi’s welfare had fallen to her mother’s brother. As head of the family, her uncle had arranged Su Mi’s marriage to a man who had brought her to California. Su Mi’s uncle had trusted the young man and believed him honorable when he promised to marry Su Mi as soon as they arrived in California. But word had reached Hong Kong that the man who was to be Su Mi’s husband had sold her to a woman, along with three other would-be brides, to be used as prostitutes in San Francisco.