They would all end up in the same position in the end; Paul never could figure out why they didn't just resign themselves and make the best of the situation. If a girl played her cards right, she could end up a madam with a house of her own, or even married to a client. But she had to be smart and she had to learn how to play the game quickly, before her looks went. And she had to stay away from drugs and drink, or her looks would go even faster.
"So we've got a weeper, hmm? Well, maybe she'll turn out to be a fighter, too." He preferred it when they fought; they often thought that because he wasn't built like a prizefighter, he couldn't overpower them, and it increased his pleasure to prove them wrong.
It was his job to break them like untamed horses; to prove to them that not only did they have no choice in their new profession, but that he was infinitely worse than any customer they were ever likely to service. The unspoken threat was that unless they proved tractable, he would get them.
He was popular as a breaker because be didn't need to slap the girls around and possibly damage them to break them. He had an infinite number of ways to hurt them that didn't leave any marks. Some of them used nothing more than words; he couldn't use those on the Chinese girls, but his Spanish was as fluent as Alonzo's, and it was words he most often used on the Mexican's girls. By the time he was through flaying them with his tongue, they were convinced that they had brought this life of sin upon themselves, that they were already so black with sin that God had turned His back upon them.
He would pay for this privilege, of course; the exclusive use of a girl wasn't something easy to come by on Pacific Street. But the cost was a fraction of what such a privilege would have demanded in a House. He would be only the second man to touch these girls, which vastly reduced the all-too-real risk of disease.
The girl looked up quickly as he opened the door, which had neither latch nor handle on the other side. She had been kneeling—obviously praying—as far from the bed in the corner as possible. In the light from the single dingy, metal-barred window, her face was swollen and tear-stained, and she tried to cover her nakedness with her hands. That was all there was in this tiny closet of a room; the naked girl, the undraped, iron-framed bed bolted to the floor, and four bare walls with bare wooden floor. There was a single gaslight, too high on the wall for her to reach.
He smiled. He would try words, first.
"Hello, little whore," he said, in clear Spanish, his voice smoother than honed steel and just as cold and sharp. "I am your master now."
The first session had gone quite well; Paul was pleased as he gave the special knock that alerted Diego that he wanted out.
"Well?" the little Mexican asked, as he closed the door on the semi-conscious girl.
"Five or six days, Paul said, truthfully. "Not more than that. Today she cried, tomorrow she might fight or weep more; maybe the day after, too. Then she'll begin wearing down, and she'll have it in her head that she's dirt and there's nowhere else that would have her but a whorehouse. She'll probably start drugging once she gets into a House, though. The religious ones usually do."
Deigo shrugged. "Not our problem," he said, dismissively. "Whoever paid for her can worry about that. We'll be seeing you for the next week, then?" He held his hand out, palm up.
"Probably." Paul counted out enough cash to cover the week, then some over. "I'll need the usual."
"The usual," was for Deigo to dig up well-used clothing in Paul's size, send it to the Chinese laundry, and have it waiting here for him. Even if Cameron "followed" him here, the man's fastidious nature would never allow him to keep a more direct eye on his Apprentice. And the moment Paul left here on errands of his own, clad in shabby clothing that had never come within Cameron's reach, there was no way the Firemaster could trace him further.
Besides, as long as du Mond's own clothing remained here, Cameron would probably assume he was with the clothing, if not in it.
"It'll be waiting," Diego replied, without interest. He and his employer had no curiosity about why Paul used their establishment as a way-station. That greatly endeared them to him. Add in the fact that this place was within walking distance of the Nob Hill apartment, and it was altogether an arrangement to du Mond's liking.
But for the moment, with all of his needs satisfied, it was time to get back to his gilded cage. He bade the Mexican goodnight, turned up his collar against the damp and chilly night air, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets to foil petty thieves. Although it was near midnight, the establishments of Pacific street, from the meanest tavern to the Hippodrome, were barely getting warmed up. Some of them were even decked out in electrical rather than gas lights. He wondered what the Coast would look like when electrical lights became cheap enough to use for signage and shook his head.
It was a lengthy walk, but not bad for a man in the physical condition of Paul du Mond. He strode east, watching the traffic around him with a wary eye and wondering what secrets some of those faces held.
One day, soon, he would have the power to find out. And San Francisco herself, the biggest whore of them all, would have a new master.
When he had a number of errands, Paul always solved the difficulty of finding a cab by hiring one for the entire day. They were Cameron's errands, so Cameron's money might as well pay for them. He ran the more mundane chores first, and they took him all over town before it was finished. Among those was the list the Hawkins girl had supplied, and he took some savage amusement in wondering what her reaction would be if she ever learned it had been him who had purchased her requested supplies—
She'd probably faint from embarrassment alone. He'd like to see her embarrassed, or better still, humiliated. He'd imagined her prim little face superimposed on Lupe's last night. He'd like to have a chance to break her. Damned women, thinking they had a right to careers, taking money out of a man's pocket to do so, getting ideas about equality...
Perhaps he'd have the opportunity, if things worked out properly. She was an orphan; there'd be no one to miss her or inquire after her if she vanished.
Among his errands, he contrived to drop a message in a certain tobacconist's when he bought his own Cuban cigars. Tonight, after Lupe, he would find out if there was an answer to that message.
Meanwhile, the day plodded along like the weary cab-horse, straining its way up the hill of time towards noon, then straining to keep from tumbling headlong down the other side. Why anyone had ever chosen to build a city here, in this maze of hills and valleys, was beyond him. The inhabitants suffered from enough back and foot ailments to keep every purveyor of quack medicine in the country happy. There were no real places to leave a carriage, and even if you found one, it wasn't one where he'd want to leave a horse standing for long. The cable car system that ran up and down the Slot on Market Street had been invented because the life of a trolley-horse in San Francisco was a fraction of one in any other city. They had dropped dead in their traces all the time before the mechanical traction device took over their chore.
Paul, of course, did not have to walk unless he chose, nor suffer the press of the Great Unwashed on the cable cars unless he wished to. He always hired cabs with strong horses with some draft-blood in them; horses that were up to a long day of traversing the streets.
He had stopped by the tobacconist's early; on impulse, on the way back from the final errand of the day, he had the cabby stop there again.
Much to his pleasure there was already a reply to his message—a single slip of paper with three words, none of which would have given the game away even to Cameron. Twelve, the usual. It could have been someone's order, picked up by accident, for boxes of cigars or cigarettes, or any other product the tobacconist sold, which was precisely the point.