“Mrs. Holbrooke?”
“Yes.” The woman’s voice cracked, as if rusty from disuse.
Sabina gave her name and explained her mission. The woman made no move to take the card she extended.
“May I speak with your husband?” Sabina asked.
“My husband is dead.”
“My condolences. May I ask when he passed on?”
“Ten days ago.”
That would have been less than a week after he was robbed of his billfold at the Chutes. He had been one of the pickpocket’s first victims.
“May I come in, Mrs. Holbrooke?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. I’ve been … tearful. I don’t wish for anyone to see me after I’ve been grieving.”
“I understand. But could you tell me the cause of your husband’s death?”
Mrs. Holbrooke hesitated before answering. Then, with a sigh, “An internal infection.”
“Had he been ill long?”
“He had never been ill. Not a day in his life.”
“What was the cause of the infection?”
“The doctor didn’t know. He really wasn’t a very good physician, but we couldn’t afford a better one after the two hundred dollars was stolen. My husband died here, in my arms. I was forced to sell my jewelry-what little I had left-so he could have a decent burial.”
“I’m so sorry,” Sabina said sincerely. “May I ask why he carried so much money on an outing at the amusement park?”
“My husband never went anywhere without our cash reserves in that old beaded leather billfold of his. He was afraid to leave the money at home-this neighborhood is not what it once was. And he distrusted banks.”
Sabina was in sympathy with the former reason but not the latter. Henry Holbrooke would still be alive if he had kept their funds in a bank.
The older woman leaned heavily on the doorjamb; like Jessie Street, she gave the impression of slow disintegration. “If you apprehend the thief, is there any chance you’ll recover the money?”
Most likely it had already been spent, but Sabina said, “I’ll make every effort to do so.”
“If you do recover any of it, will you please return it to me? I ask not so much for myself, but for Henry’s memory. It pains me that I’m not able to purchase a decent marker for his grave.”
“Of course.”
Sabina took her leave. It would have been cruel to share her grim thoughts with Henry Holbrooke’s widow, but it seemed probable that the infection her husband had died from had been caused by the deep jab of a sharp and unclean hatpin. In which case the woman responsible was not only a pickpocket but a murderess.
* * *
It was just one o’clock when Sabina dismissed the hansom driver near the gates to the Chutes Amusement Park. The place was not quite as crowded as the day before, she found, either because word of the thefts had spread or because the afternoon was cloudy and there was a chill breeze swirling in from the ocean. If the hatpin dip appeared again today, she ought to be relatively easy to spot.
But she didn’t appear. At least Sabina saw no one who employed the woman’s methods of picking her marks. She may have come early and left early, or come briefly and found no potential victim to her liking during the three hours Sabina roamed the grounds. Or stayed away entirely because of the weather. In any event there was no report of a robbery at the Chutes that day. A brief conversation with Lester Sweeney in his office confirmed it.
Shortly past four by the small gold watch she kept pinned to the bodice of her shirtwaist, Sabina left the Chutes and hired another hansom to take her downtown. She was tired, and stuffed uncomfortably full of sausage, ice cream, and cotton candy, having overindulged out of frustration during her wanderings. She didn’t relish another long walk along the Cocktail Route, but since the pickpocket had successfully preyed there last night, it seemed likely to be one of her regular haunts.
Perhaps so, but Sabina saw no sign of the woman anywhere between Sutter Street and the Palace Hotel, or on the crowded Ambrosial Path where last night’s robbery had taken place. There were far more men abroad, and the women among them were noticable, but the pickpocket was adept at costume disguise. Sabina might easily have missed her in the streams of businessmen, gay blades, nymphes du pave, and adventuresome young ladies who packed the sidewalks.
At six o’clock, as weary and chilled as she was, Sabina considered going home to Russian Hill. But Stephen had instilled tenacity of purpose in her during her time with the Pinkertons, and the fact that she was after a murderess as well as a pickpocket was an added incentive to continue her search awhile longer. Her quarry, for reasons of her own, might have decided against prowling anywhere today or tonight. But she might also have decided to ply her trade in yet another place that afforded profitable pickings, such as the nightly bazaar on Market Street opposite the Palace Hotel-a place worth investigating.
9
SABINA
The open field at dusk was brightly lit by lanterns and torchlights, and packed with gaily colored wagons presided over by an array of pitchmen; phrenology and palmistry booths; the usual hodgepodge of temperance speakers, organ grinders, balloon and pencil sellers, beggars, and ad carriers passing out saloon handbills for free lunches; and a constant flow of gawkers and curiosity seekers, which Sabina joined. Music filled the air from many sources, each competing with the other. The loudest was the Salvation Army band pouring forth its solemn repentance message.
From the wagons men hawked both well-known and obscure patent remedies: Tiger Balm, Miracle Wort, Burdock’s Blood Bitters, Turkish Pile Ointment, Dr. Sage’s Catarrh Remedy, Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound for Ladies. Others offered services on the spot: matrimonial advice, spinal realignment, head massages. Sabina, who had attended the bazaar with John after moving to San Francisco-a must, he’d said, for new residents-recognized several of the participants: the Great Ferndon, Herman the Healer, Rodney 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.