hair is cut like a slant’s, though? And,” he said, pulling a canvas bag from one of the shelves that lined the walls of the gruesome little room, “he was wearin’ these when they found him.”
Jewell inspected the contents: heavily wrinkled black trousers and an equally bedraggled red tunic, both of Oriental design and obviously made of silk.
“No shoes, no hat, no other possessions?”
“He’d washed around in the lake for a while, captain.”
“These clothes are not much to advance upon. Aside from arranging for a burial up on Capitol Hill, I’m uncertain as to what other service I or my office can be of in this matter.”
“Lovely fabric, silk,” the little man said.
“I hardly think-” Jewell began.
“Strong,” the morgue attendant went on as if he hadn’t heard. “Holds a design or a dye better than most other fibers. Oh, I’ll allow that it shrivels right up and looks an ungodly mess if it’s gotten too wet, just as this Chink’s togs have. But look.” He held up the red silk of the dead man’s shirt for Jewell’s inspection. “It’s even got the poor soul’s laundry mark right here inside the collar.”
“A pauper’s grave over in Lake View is the only place this is headed.” H.M. Porter looked at his new gold watch, wound it, then returned it to the pocket of a vest so expansive, ten dead Chinamen might easily have hidden within it.
H.M. (short for “Hamilton Menander”) Porter, a Treasury Department agent of countless years’ service, and for exactly two more days head of the territory’s Immigrant Inspection Division, stretched his considerable bulk backward in the chair he’d had shipped west by Sears, Roebuck, and Co. the previous year.
“Dead Chinaman; in the water since the great fish swallowed Jonah. No one’s reported a Chinaman missing; ergo, no one cares.”
Jewell stood staring out the window of the single-room clapboard building that had housed the territory’s sole Immigration Inspection office since it had ended its previous incarnation as a dry goods store the previous winter. Like nearly every other Seattle street, Seventh Avenue was unpaved, rutted, and prone to turn into a morass when it rained.
But that spring of 1889 had been unseasonably warm, especially for Seattle. Many an old-timer had remarked upon the unlikely pleasant weather they’d been having. Now the first week of June, Seattle’s infamous late-spring rains showed no signs of reasserting themselves in their wonted seasonal patterns.
When Jewell had arrived in the city only a short three months before, the street on which their window faced had been home to the usual assortment of rivulets, puddles, and wagons stuck here and there in mud up to the axle. And “puddle” was too tame a word, a poor choice of descriptor for the standing rainwater that by turns eroded and covered the byways of Seattle’s primitive urban grid. Horses had been lost in them. Pigs had gone squealing in them. Drunks had been fished from them. Children had been known to drown in the intermittent quagmires that dominated Seattle’s streets.
Looking out upon the sunlit street from the musty confines of what was rapidly beginning to feel like a prison to him, Jewell balked at the thought of even three more days spent shuffling papers. He might as well just be locked up in the iron cell that occupied one corner of the building, the place where illegals were held while awaiting deportation. After Porter’s retirement things might be different, but at the moment, two days felt like an eternity.
“It’s a laundry mark, sir,” Jewell said. “How long might it possibly take to pursue it in the Chinese community?” He looked from the street over to where Porter sat waiting out the remaining hours until his retirement. “Besides, they’re Chinese. Just where would they have been able to go to report one of their number missing?”
Porter reached for his new watch again, looked longingly at it, as if willing the minutes to go by more quickly. “Immigrant Inspectors are not to involve themselves in local civil matters.”
“Perhaps you ought to have thought of that before you sent me down to collect the body, sir.”
Porter gave a sigh so violent that for a split second Jewell thought he might be having a seizure. Looking at his watch a third time, the older man said, “If only Clute were here. He’d know what to do.”
Clute, who had an answer for everything. Clute, whose efficiency and commitment to his profession had allowed Porter to commence his life as a pensioner a couple of years early in everything but name. Clute, who understood and respected the Celestials who Immigration Inspectors were supposed to be encouraging to return to their homes in China. Clute, who had left his letter of resignation on Porter’s desk and promptly vanished.
“But Mr. Clute isn’t here, Mr. Porter. I am. In scarce two days’ time you’re to be pensioned off. In the three months I’ve been here you’ve had me hard at it, mastering the intricacies of our particular bureaucracy. This is an opportunity for me to gain some experience working outside of our office, while I still have you as a source of advice. Your sagacity and good counsel will be sorely missed once you’ve returned home.” That last part was sheer flattery. Porter had done little over the past three months save arrive late, take long lunches, and leave early. “Why not make the most of this opportunity while I still have you here?”
At first Jewell thought he might have overplayed his hand. Porter sat there staring at his watch for a number of heartbeats. At length he asked, “Where’s the body, anyway?”
Jewell blinked once while Porter’s question registered. “They need a day to release it. Paperwork, I was told.”
“You’re hell-bent on following this up, aren’t you, lad?”
“In this man’s shoes I would want my mother to know what became of me.” When Porter said nothing, he continued, “It’s the Christian thing to do, sir.”
Porter gave a loud rumble that might have been a chuckle or it might have been a grunt. “The Chinese,” he said slowly, “seem to know very little of either Christianity or sentimentality. In China, life is a cheap commodity. This fellow’s family likely wrote him off the day he set out for
When Jewell began to thank him, the older man cut him short.
“I can spare you the rest of today and tomorrow morning, but nothing further. Do I make myself clear?”
Jewell savored the feel of the sun on his face as he headed downhill in the general direction of Chinatown. No clouds today; the sky bright blue. Off away to the west across the Sound the jagged snow-capped peaks of the Olympics showed themselves. Gulls reeled and swooped overhead, looking for their next meal.
Taking the Skid Road, Jewell wove his way in and out of the foot and wagon traffic to be expected on so glorious a June afternoon. Known alternately as “the Mill Road” and “Yesler’s Drive,” the Skid Road was the first (and, to that point, only) paved street in town.
Built at public expense at the direction of former mayor Henry Yesler in order to more easily get freshly cut logs downhill to his huge sawmill on Front Street, the Skid Road ran straight down Seattle’s steep western slope all the way from the timberline where it crested First Hill to the fill-dirt of the waterfront. Surprisingly, Yesler’s primitive plank pavement did its work, serving as the “skid” that gave the avenue its name, and keeping logs being sent down the hill from sticking fast in the ever-present Seattle mud.
Such a reliable thoroughfare quickly sprouted residences and businesses running along both its sides. The Skid Road already boasted saloons, general stores, two millinery shops, a carpenter, a tinker, a hostelry, a cobbler on the corner of Fifth, and, at the foot of the hill, the elaborate cornice work and hand-carved facade of the three- sided, three-story Occidental Hotel stood on the corner where James Street dead-ended into it right in front of Yesler’s massive mill.
This growth had made the Skid Road the anchor of Seattle’s burgeoning downtown, and had spilled over onto neighboring streets, such as the spot a block to the north where the significantly pious whitewashed bulk of Trinity Church rose. As far as Jewell knew, Chinese were not welcome within. Furthermore, not a single business lining Seattle’s busiest street was Chinese-owned.
The first Chinese to come to the area during the labor shortage of the late 1850s had been welcomed by
