Free The Bughouse Affair: A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery by Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini Page A

Strongheart.
    The din rose as a shill for Dr. Wallmann’s Nerve and Brain Tonic stood in his red-and-yellow coach to extol the alleged virtues of the product. “This miracle tonic,” he intoned, “cures all bilious derangements, including but not limited to dyspepsia, costiveness, erysipelas, palpitations of the heart, and persistent and obstinate constipation, and drives out the foul corruption that contaminates the blood and causes decay. It stimulates and enlivens the vital functions, being as it is a pure vegetable compound and free from all mineral poisons. It promotes energy and strength, restores and preserves health, and infuses new life and vigor throughout the entire system.”
    Sabina smiled ironically as she passed by. The only thing Dr. Wallmann’s tonic promoted was drunkenness, since its central ingredient, as was that of most such patent medicines, was alcohol.
    The crowd of onlookers was largely composed of men; the women among them were for the most part prostitutes strolling in pairs and wearing flirtatious smiles, or the wives and lady friends of men too poor to afford the luxuries of the Cocktail Route. There were relatively few unescorted women, and those Sabina encountered were the wrong age or size or facial structure, or not outfitted in the sort of concealing hat and dress the pickpocket favored.
    On a platform at the back of one of the wagons, a dancer draped in filmy veils was peforming. Unfortunately for her, during an awkward pirouette, the veils slipped and fell open to reveal her scarlet long johns—an accident that elicited howls of laughter from the watchers. At another wagon nearby, a salesman began expounding upon the virtues of Sydney’s Celebrated Cough Killer, only to fall into a fit of coughing, which resulted in more derisive laughter. In the group that stood watching him was a lone woman in a rather large hat. Sabina moved close enough to determine that the face under the hat’s brim was elderly, with age-fissured cheeks and gray hair. She moved on.
    Wide-brimmed hat with bedraggled ostrich feathers: a badly scarred young woman whose affliction made Sabina flinch. Toque draped in fading tulle: red hair and freckles. Another feather-bedecked chapeau: porcine, with a double chin and heavily rouged cheeks
    The proprietor of a small, tawdry freak exhibit urged Sabina to surrender five cents for the privilege of viewing a deformed infant preserved in formaldehyde. She declined—not at all pleasantly.
    Extravagant hat with many layers of feathers and a stuffed bird’s head protruding at the front: long blond hair and an unblemished chin.
    A pair of temperance speakers warning of the evils of drink and painful death from diseased kidneys and handing out tracts to support their claims. No, thank you.
    Yet another bird-themed hat. What was the fascination with wearing dead avian creatures on one’s head? The woman beneath the brim looked not much healthier than the bird that had died to grace her headpiece.
    Another pitchman tried to entice Sabina to buy a bottle of something called the Kickapoo Indians Tape-Worm Secret. An emphatic no to that, also.
    In front of the next wagon, a single woman wearing rather baggy clothes and a green hat with a wide brim drawn down low on her forehead caught Sabina’s eye. The woman seemed less interested in the miraculous electrified belt filled with cayenne pepper whose purveyor was claiming would cure any debilitation, than in the faces of the men grouped around her. Sabina’s blood quickened. She moved closer—close enough to recognize the large blue glass Horner hatpin overlaid with gold that decorated the green hat.
    The woman evidently found none of the men around her suitable prey. She moved on at a leisurely pace, her gaze roaming all the while. Sabina followed a few paces behind.
    The pickpocket stopped to listen to the Salvation Army band. Paused again in front of a shill exalting the virtue of White’s Female Complaint Cure. Accepted