Hop Alley by Scott Phillips Read Free Book Online Page A

bonhomie that suggested bad news. I led him into my office and sat him down, and the boy brought us coffee in china cups.
    “Sales are down,” he acknowledged as I eyeballed my earnings. “Even atrocity pictures aren’t moving like they used to do. I bet we didn’t sell ten of your scalped buffalo hunter in the last six months.”
    According to my statement only seventy-three dollars and thirty-five cents were owing to me for the six months covered, less than what I still owed him for views of Paris and Rome and the land of the Hottentots I’d ordered on his last visit.
    “I don’t suppose I’ll be making an order then, this time.” I handed him the statement back.
    “Wait.” I turned back to find him rifling the sample case. “Let me show you something before you say that.”
    He handed me a single view, which I placed into the stereopticon. Pressing my eyes to the lenses I was treated to the sight of a naked woman leering at the camera, one hand demurely resting at her shoulder and the other stimulating her unusually hirsute genitalia. The look of wanton depravity on the woman’s face and the artless explicitness of the pose set this view apart from the typical nude views sold in the back rooms of saloons and cigar stores and whorehouses, or, for that matter, from the ones I’d taken years before of Maggie. I was sad at the thought of those images I’d left behind in Cottonwood and apoplectic at the notion that someone might have found them, might at this moment be pulling them from a similar sample case somewhere for under-the-counter sale to slack-jawed, masturbating yokels unworthy of her glance.
    “Not interested,” I said.
    “I was just showing you, is all.” He took the view back and replaced it in the case’s hidden compartment. “I sell a hell of a lot of these extra-dirty French views out of the cathouses, and ifI could get a few of some local gals who don’t look like they’re about to keel over from the last stages of the clap, in some real inviting poses, I could sell even more. I’d really like to start vending them under the counter in some of the finer galleries, like yours right here.”
    “Good luck,” I said. “You won’t be the first one who’s tried.”
    Augie noticed the boy standing in the doorway before I did. “What do you want?” he asked with some belligerence.
    Poor Lemuel cowered and shrank into the corridor, extending his hand to me. In it was an envelope. “Fellow just brought this by,” he said. “Urgent message for you, Mr. Sadlaw.”
    He scurried out as I opened the envelope, which bore neither postage nor return address. Inside was a single sheet of stationery bearing the engraved flag of the Denver Bulletin , reduced to fit the page.
              Sadlaw ,
              Meet me at the Charpiot Hotel at noon for luncheon .
              R. Banbury
    I shoved the envelope and the letter into my desk drawer. It was a quarter past eleven. “Sorry, Augie, I’m being summoned. You’ll have to come back later.”
    “Fine, I’ll head on down to Market Street and have a look at some of those whores.” His eyebrows rose and fell dementedly, and he seemed to expect me to be impressed.
    “You go and have yourself a good time,” I said.
    “I’ll leave you these and come back for your order tomorrow.”
    I nodded as he pulled the samples and a catalogue from his case and set them on my desk, though I had no intention of making an order with so many sets of views unsold in the display cases.
    A FTER INFORMING M RS . Fenster that I would not require any lunch, I descended to the street and strolled to my engagement at a leisurely pace, not particularly concerned about punctuality. The sky had remained low and dark gray, the day as cold as it had been at dawn, and I regretted not having put on a heavier coat. I arrived at the Charpiot shortly before noon and didn’t see Banbury in the dining room. I told the maître d’hôtel whom I was meeting