Free Rebecca Hagan Lee by Gossamer Page A

Chinatown. Augusta Bender had a certain reputation as a successful madam and for offering shelter to petty thieves and “day ladies,” ladies who lived in furnished rooms or boarded with respectable families, but who had no visible means of support, fine ladies who offered themselves as companions to gentlemen, who left their photographs and calling cards with the madams of local brothels and prostituted themselves for a living without their families and friends being the wiser.
    But the police waiting at Bender’s weren’t looking for
day ladies.
They were looking for a thief. A thief namedElizabeth Sadler, who was wanted for burglarizing a very important guest at the Russ House Hotel.
    Elizabeth was returning to the boardinghouse after lunch from another morning spent on an increasingly futile quest for a job whose requirements did not include taking off her clothes, painting her face, or dancing a lewd version of the can-can when Jennie, the youngest of Mrs. Bender’s girls, intercepted her two blocks away.
    “The police are waiting at Bender’s,” Jennie told her. “They’re there to pinch you for stealing some rich gent’s handkerchief.”
    “What?” Elizabeth was appalled.
    “The police plan to nab you and take you to the jug.”
    “For stealing a handkerchief?”
    Jennie nodded. “You got to run. Hide. Until they go away.”
    But Elizabeth suspected there was nowhere to run or to hide. If the police were looking for her, they’d find her. And while jail was a real possibility for the act she had been flirting with all morning, Elizabeth didn’t intend to go meekly to jail for the theft of a handkerchief. If she were going to jail, she’d only do so in the name of justice. Owen’s justice. Her justice. She looked over at Jennie and asked, “What’s the quickest way to the Red Dragon on Washington Street?”

    THE POLICE FOUND her there—at the Red Dragon—forty minutes later. They arrived to find Lo Peng and three other Chinamen restraining her. Lo Peng hurried over to the officers. “Arrest her!” he cried. “Arrest the crazy missy. She break up my shop. She wreck the place.”
    And she had.
    Elizabeth smiled with satisfaction. Her hair had come undone from its neat chignon, the pins scattered across the floor. Her bonnet had been ripped loose and crushed in the struggle, and she was missing a button from the bodice ofher dress. But the wrecked interior of the opium den was a sight to behold. Elizabeth had oftentimes suspected that she harbored a first-class virago deep inside her, a virago she kept hidden beneath her calm, capable facade, but she hadn’t been certain of it until she crossed the threshold of that horrid little opium den and began swinging her parasol. It had taken three men to subdue her as she’d overturned berths and gaming tables, crushed paper lanterns, and shattered pipes, bowls, and lamps. Elizabeth had raged through the den of iniquity that had cost Owen his life and felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction at seeing it in a shambles.
    But the police had eventually shown up at the Washington Street address and Elizabeth had been summarily dragged kicking and screaming out of Lo Peng’s establishment and hauled to jail with the sounds of a dozen shouting Chinamen ringing in her ears. She was charged with disorderly conduct, assault, and petty larceny, and escorted to the courthouse by the same policeman who had helped her locate Owen’s grave.
    She jumped in her seat as Judge Clermont banged his gavel on his desktop and called the next case. “Miss Elizabeth Sadler.”
    “Here, your honor.” Elizabeth raised her hand.
    “Rise and approach the bench.”
    Elizabeth did as she was instructed. After rising from her seat in the third row, she made her way down the aisle to the front of the courtroom. The matron from the city jail went with her and kept a firm grip on Elizabeth’s left arm as they stood before the judge.
    “Elizabeth Sadler,” the judge intoned,