Free Port Hazard by Loren D. Estleman Page A

through America and out the other side.”
    I said. “You’re telling us you’d know if someone was walking around with one of these in his pocket.”
    â€œThere’s nary a thing Nan don’t know what goes on between here and blue water.”
    â€œWhat about the Sons of the Confederacy?”
    She twisted a lip. “I’d swap a week’s peck to see one of them Nob Hill noddles try on Barbary. There’d be rebel red from Murder Point to North Beach.”
    â€œI was told they’re thick here.”
    â€œI ain’t saying you can’t spot ’em, all got up in lace goods and lifting their roofers to the mollies as like to give their active citizens some sun. Past dark they don’t show their nebs outside the Bella Union. Sons of the Confederacy, my aunt’s smicket. They couldn’t make war on Queen Dick.”
    â€œThey’ve done a fair job of making war on peace officers,” I said. “Is that the same Bella Union where Daniel Webster Wheelock hangs his hat?”
    â€œThere ain’t but one.” She took my measure from under her eyelids, one of which drooped a little like a broken window-shade. The powder she used by the pot hadn’t quite eradicated an old scar that ran diagonally across its top. “What’s your business with Cap’n Dan?”
    â€œI heard he’s the man to see in Barbary.”
    â€œThat’s no packet, though you’ll not see him without he gives it his benison. He posted the cole to the Commodore to start the Slop Chest. He’s also the cove what sent the squint-eyed ponce and the slubber de gullions what set fire to the place.”
    The stubborn fog had found its way into the hallway through the gaps between the boards. I held up the double eagle. “I like to listen to your Irish. Where can we go to hear more out of the draft?”
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    Her private quarters was three times the size of the room where Beecher and I had left our bags, which didn’t make it spacious. There was a barrel stove for heating and cooking, a pair of mismatched chairs, one with a broken-cane seat, a cornshuck mattress on an iron frame, and a portrait of Nan’s late husband, the Commodore, who had been twice her present age when it was painted and looked like just the kind of old walrus who would undertake to support a woman not yet born when he sprouted his first gray hair. The cut of the men’s clothes in the doorless wardrobe—a number of sailors’ jerseys and a full-dress suit—bore out Axel Hodge’s boast that he was the keeper of Nan Feeny’s knees. A seam in one wall showed where the back bar opened into the saloon. The room might have belonged to the master of the ship, if the Slop Chest had been a ship instead of a facsimile thrown together from the corpses of genuine vessels. The carpenter in charge was incapable of building anything that would float in a gentle pond.
    Sitting up on the bed with her high-laced ankles crossed and peach brandy in a cordial glass in her hand—Beecher and I declined an invitation to join her in the sticky-sweet beverage—our hostess lowered her guard sufficiently to modify her language and, more revealingly, offer her colored guest a cigar from the Commodore’s private stock, which she kept fresh by storing the boxes in a cupboard with fresh bread. He accepted it and made himself as comfortable as possible on the chair with the broken seat, puffing up gray clouds that found their way out through the spaces in the siding. Because the place was as private as a cornrick, we kept our voices low and Nan got up frequently to rewind the crank on a phonograph with a morning-glory horn the size of Joaquin’s head. “Beautiful Dreamer” drifted out of the opening, interpreted by a tenor with bad sinuses.
    Nan, for all her stature and presumed experience with strong drink, became candid under the influence of the peach brandy. We