“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” said Scully. “They bother you much?”
“They do it to all of us who marry Chinamen. As if a girl had no say in who she wanted to marry. They hate that a white woman would marry a Chinese, so they say we did it because we’re addicted to opium. What’s wrong with marrying a Chinaman? Mine works hard. Comes home at night. He don’t drink. He don’t beat me. Of course, I’d floor him if he tried. He’s a little fellow.”
“Doesn’t drink?” asked Scully. “Does he smoke opium?”
“He comes home for supper,” she smiled. “I’m his opium.” Scully took a deep breath, looked around guiltily, and whispered, “What if a fellow wanted to try to smoke some just to see what it was like?”
“I’d say he’s playing with fire.”
“Well, let’s say he wanted to take the chance. I’m not from around here. Is there a safe place for a fellow to try it?”
The woman put her hands on her hips and stared him in the face. “I saw you give that cop much too much. Do you have a lot of money?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve done very well by myself, but it’s time I cut loose. I really want to try something new.”
“It’s your funeral.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s how I see it. But I’d pay the extra to go to a place where they won’t knock me on the head.”
“You’re standing right in front of it.” She indicated with a toss of her head the opera house. Scully looked up at the tall windows on the second story.
“In there? I was just in there hearing the opera.”
“There’s a place for high rollers upstairs. You can try your opium. And other things.”
“Right here?” Scully scratched his head and pretended to gawk. His detective work had brought him pretty close. But without her, he’d have been looking all week. Just went to show that good deeds were rewarded.
“You go up to the balcony like you was intending to hear the opera. Climb all the way to the back and you’ll see a little door. You knock on that, and they’ll let you in.”
“Just like that?”
“For Chinese there are only two kinds of people. Strangers outside, family and friends inside.”
“But I’m a stranger.”
“You tell them Sadie sent you and you won’t be a stranger.”
Scully smiled. “So you played with fire?”
“No,” she laughed, and slapped him on the shoulder. “Go on with you. But I know some of the girls.”
Scully bought another ticket, climbed to the balcony, turned his back on the screeches coming from the stage, climbed to the top, and knocked on the door she’d told him about. He heard a peephole slide open and grinned the unsure grin of a man way off his own territory. The door opened a crack, secured by a strong chain.
“What do you want?” asked a thickset Chinese.
Scully glimpsed a hatchet handle protruding from his tunic. “Sadie sent me.”
“Ah.” The guard loosed the chain, opened the door, and said solemnly, “Enter.” He pointed the way up carpeted stairs, and John Scully climbed into air that was dense with sweet-smelling smoke.
At first sight, the Van Dorn detective did not have to feign a country bumpkin’s astonishment at the very large space bathed in golden light. It had a canopy ceiling of red cloth, and every inch of the walls was covered in curtains, hanging carpets, and painted silk panels depicting dragons, mountains, and dancing girls. Furnished with elaborate carved wooden furniture and illuminated by colored lanterns, it looked, Scully thought, like his idea of the throne room of a Peking palace, minus the eunuch guards.
Deadly-looking Hip Sing hatchet men dressed in dark business suits stood watch over the faro wheel, the fan-tan tables, and the pretty girls carrying opium pipes to customers lounging on sofas. The girls, who wore clinging skirts slit high as their knees, were white, though those with dark hair were made up with greasepaint to look Chinese. Like the streetwalkers had told him, genuine Chinese women were scarcer than hens’ teeth in Chinatown.
The customers lolling half conscious in the smoke were a mix of yellow and white men. He saw prosperous-looking Chinese merchants, some in traditional Mandarin jackets, others in sack suits and derbies or boaters. The whites included Fifth Avenue swells and wealthy college boys, the sort who relied on their father’s checkbooks to clear up their gambling debts. Most interesting of all were a couple of pug-ugly gangsters in tight suits and loud ties that Scully would bet a month’s pay were Hell’s Kitchen Gophers.
How long had they all been here? He’d stood outside for hours and hadn’t seen a single one of them enter. Obviously the joint had another entrance from some street other than Doyers. He’d been waiting outside the back door while they went in the front.
A white man sat up on his couch, clapped his derby on his head, and swung his feet unsteadily to the floor. As he stood, their gazes met. Scully almost dropped his teeth. What in hell was Harry Warren doing here?
Both detectives looked away abruptly.
Had Harry, too, heard the same rumors he had ferreted out? No, Scully recalculated. Harry Warren would have been shadowing the Gophers. That’s how he got here. The gang specialist didn’t know about the Hip Sing-Gopher alliance yet. He had just followed a Gopher and ended up inside, failing to put two and two together. Scully was miles ahead of Harry and his so-called experts, he thought proudly. Before he was done he’d beat the New York Van Dorns in their own hometown.
Two girls came his way.
One was a shapely dark Irish lass made up like a Chinese. The other was a petite redhead, a dead-swell looker, with blue eyes so bright they flashed in the dim lantern light. She put Scully in mind of Lillian Russell in her leaner years. Although that could be the effect of her enormous hat, with its upswept brim, or a natural reaction to the intoxicating clouds of pungent smoke, or the heavy coating of paint and powder slathered thick as an actress’s makeup on a face that didn’t need any cosmetics at all.
The redhead dismissed the dark girl with a curt nod.
Scully’s pulse quickened. Young as she was, she acted like she might be the madame of the operation. The Hip Sing boss’s girlfriend he’d been hunting.
“Welcome to our humble establishment,” she said, reminding Scully of a Chinese princess on the vaudeville stage. Except her accent was pure Hell’s Kitchen. “How did you happen to find us?”
“Sadie sent me.”
“Sadie does us great honor. What will be your pleasure, sir?” Scully gaped like a blue jay from the sticks as if overwhelmed by the possibilities. In fact, he was a little overwhelmed. She was talking business like any madame worth the name, but she was gazing into his eyes as if offering herself. And herself, the dazzled Scully had to admit, was quite a cut above the usual fare.
“Your pleasure?”
“I always wanted to try a little opium.”
She looked disappointed. “You could get that from your apothecary. Where are you from?”
“Schenectady.”
“Can’t a man of your means get opium in a pharmacy?”
“Sort of afraid to at home, if you know what I mean.”
“Of course. I understand. Well, opium it will be. Come with me.” She took his hand in hers, which was small, strong, and warm. She led him to a couch half hidden by drapes and helped him get comfortable, with his head propped on soft pillows. One of the painted “Chinese” girls brought a pipe. The redhead said, “Enjoy yourself. I’ll come back later.”
30
THE GOPHERS GOT ONE OF MY BOYS,” HARRY WARREN telephoned Isaac Bell at the Knickerbocker.
“Who?”
“Little Eddie Tobin, the youngster.”
Bell raced to Roosevelt Hospital at 59th and Ninth Avenue.
Harry intercepted him in the hallway. “I put him in a private room. If the boss won’t pay for it, I will.”
“If the boss won’t pay, I will,” said Bell. “How is he?”
“They kicked him in the fa
ce with axheads in their boots, cracked his skull with a lead pipe, broke his right arm and both legs.”
“Is he going to make it?”
“The Tobins are Staten Island scowmen—oysters, tugboats, smuggling—so he’s a tough kid. Or was. Hard to say how a man comes out of a beating like that. Near as I can tell there were four of them. He didn’t stand a chance.”
Bell went into the room and stood with clenched fists over the unconscious detective. His entire head was swathed in thick, white bandages seeping blood. A doctor was sliding a stethoscope incrementally across his chest. A nurse stood by in starched linen. “Spare no expense,” Bell said. “I want a nurse with him day and night.”
He rejoined Harry Warren in the hall. “It’s your town, Harry, what are we going to do about this?”
The gang expert hesitated, clearly not happy with the answer he had to deliver. “One on one they don’t mess with Van Dorns. But the Gophers outnumber us by a lot, and if comes to war, they’re fighting on their own territory.”
“It already has come to war,” said Isaac Bell.
“The cops won’t be any help. The way the city works, politicians, builders, the church, the cops, and gangsters divide it up. Long as nobody gets so greedy that the reformers take hold, they’re not going to bother each other over a private detective getting beat up. So we’re on our own. Listen, Isaac, this is odd. It’s not Tommy Thompson’s way to take on trouble he doesn’t have to. Sending a message telling us to back off? You do something like that to a rival gang—the Dusters or the Five Pointers. He knows you don’t do that to the Van Dorns. He’s as much as admitting he’s taking orders from the spy.”
“I want you to send a message back.”
“I can get the word passed to people who will tell him, if that’s what you mean.”
“Tell them that Isaac Bell is wiring his old friend Jethro Watt—Chief of the Southern Pacific Railroad Police—asking him to dispatch two hundred yard bulls to New York to guard the Eleventh Avenue freight sidings.”
“Can you do that?”
“Jethro is always spoiling for a fight, and I know for a fact that the railroads are getting fed up with their freight trains being robbed. Tommy Thompson will think twice before he hits a Van Dorn again. The SP’s cinder dicks may be the dregs but they’re tough as nails, and the only thing they fear is Jethro. Until they get here, none of our boys go alone. Two Van Dorns or more on the job, and careful when they’re off duty.”
“Speaking of alone, I bumped into your pal John Scully.”
“Where? I haven’t heard from him in weeks.”
“I shadowed a Gopher lieutenant into Chinatown. Dead end. He spent the day smoking opium. Scully wandered into the joint tricked out like a tourist.”
“What was Scully doing?”
“Last I saw, lighting a pipe.”
“Tobacco?” Bell asked, doubting it.
“ ’Fraid not.”
Bell looked at Harry Warren. “Well, if you could survive it, Scully will, too.”
THE TRANSATLANTIC STEAMER Kaiser Wilhem der Gross II thrust four tall black funnels and two even taller masts into the smoky sky at the edge of Greenwich Village. Her straight bow towered over tugboats, the pier, and fleets of horse-drawn hansom cabs and motor taxis.
“Right here is fine, Dave,” Isaac Bell said into the speaking tube of a brewster green Packard limousine provided by Archie Abbott’s wife Lillian’s father. The railroad tycoon was unable to meet his beloved daughter’s ship, as he was steaming across the continent on his private train—on the trail, Bell assumed, of an independent railroad to fold into his empire. Bell, who had urgent reason to speak with Archie, had offered to stand in for him.
“Pick me up on Jane Street after you get them loaded.”
He stepped out onto the cobblestones and watched the gangway. Not surprisingly, the newlyweds were first off the ship, guided ashore by solicitous purser’s mates and followed closely by a pack of newspaper reporters, who would have boarded the ship at Sandy Hook to greet New York’s most exciting young couple. More reporters were waiting on the pier. Some had cameras. Others were accompanied by sketch artists.
Bell, who preferred not to see his face on newsstands while investigating in disguise, retreated from the pier and waited on the street of low houses and stables.
Fifteen minutes later the limousine slowed, and he stepped nimbly aboard.
“Sorry about all the hoopla,” the blue-blooded Archibald Angell Abbott IV greeted him, clasping his hand. They had been best friends since boxing for rival colleges. “All New York is dying to see my blushing bride.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Bell, kissing the beauteous young Lillian warmly on the cheek before he settled on the folding seat that faced the couple. “Lillian, you look absolutely radiant.”
“Blame my husband,” she laughed, running her fingers through Archie’s thick red hair.
When they got to the limestone Hennessy mansion on Park Avenue, Bell and Archie talked in the privacy of the library. “She’s radiant,” said Bell. “You look beat.”
Archie raised his glass with a shaking hand. “Revels all night, cathedrals and country-house parties all day, then more revels. One forgets how energetic one was at nineteen.”
“What did you learn on the ship?”
“The Europeans are all looking for a fight,” Archie replied soberly.
“All worried the other guy will throw the first punch. The British are convinced there will be war with Germany. They know that the German Army is immense, and the German military has the Kaiser’s ear. Ear, hell, the Army and the Navy have the Kaiser’s heart and his blessing!
“The Germans are convinced there will be war with England because England will not tolerate an expanding German Empire. The British know that defeating the German Navy would not guarantee victory, whereas the defeat of the British Navy would spell the end to England’s overseas empire. If that weren’t enough, the Germans suspect that Russia will attack them to derail a revolution by distracting their peasants with a war. If that happens, the Germans fear, Britain will side with Russia because France is allied with the Russians. So Germany will force Austria and Turkey onto their side. But none of these idiots understand that their alliances will cause a war like no one’s ever seen.”
“That bleak?”
“Fortunately for us, none of them want the United States as an enemy.”
“Which is why,” Bell said, “I wonder if England and Germany are attempting to make the United States think the other is their enemy.”
“That’s precisely the kind of byzantine talk I heard on the ship,” said Archie. “You have an evil mind.”
“I’ve been hanging around the wrong crowd lately.”
“I thought it was that Yale education,” said Archie, a Princeton man.
“Courting the United States to be their ally, England and Germany could each secretly be maneuvering to make their enemy look like our enemy.”
“What about the Japanese?”
“Captain Falconer claims that anything that loosens the European footholds in the Pacific will embolden the Japanese. They’ll stay out of it as long as they can and then side with the winner. Frankly, he seems possessed by a fear of the Japanese. He saw them up close in the Russo-Japanese War, so he thinks he knows them better than most. He insists they’re brilliant spies. Anyway, to answer your question, we’ve had a Jap under surveillance for a week. Unfortunately, he gave us the slip.”
Archie shook his head in mock dismay. “I go away for one little honeymoon, and the detective business goes to hell. Where do you suppose he is?”
“Last seen on the railroad ferry into New York. We’re combing the city. He’s the best part of the case. I need him badly.”
“GOT THE REPORT on Riker and Riker,” Grady Forrer reported when Bell got back to headquarters. “On your desk.”
Erhard Riker was the son of the founder of Riker & Riker, importers of precious gems and precious metal
s for the New York and Newark jewelry industries. The younger Riker had expanded the company since taking over seven years ago when his father was killed in Boer War cross fire in South Africa. He shuttled regularly between the United States and Europe on luxury transatlantic ocean liners, favoring the German Wilhelm der Grosse and the British Lusitania, unlike his father who had patronized older, more staid steamships like the Cunard Line Umbria and North German Lloyd’s Havel. One fact caught Bell’s eye: Riker & Riker maintained its own private protection service both for guarding jewelry shipments and escorting Riker personally when he himself was carrying valuables.
Bell sought out the head of Research. “Are private guard services common in the gem line?”
“Seem to be with the Europeans,” said Grady Forrer, “traveling the way they have to.”
“What sort does he hire?”
“Pretty-boy bruisers. The sort you can dress up in fancy duds.”
A receptionist stuck his head in the door. “Telephone call for you, Mr. Bell. Won’t say who he is. English accent.”
Bell recognized the plummy drawl of Commander Abbington-Westlake.
“Shall we have another cocktail, old chap? Perhaps even drink it this time.”
“What for?”
“I have a very interesting surprise for you.”
31
POLICE! POLICE! DON’T NONE OF YOUSE MOVE!”
The door from the opera house balcony through which John Scully had entered the Hip Sing opium den crashed open with a loud bang and knocked the heavyset Chinaman guarding it into the wall. The first man through was a helmeted sergeant broad as a draft horse.
The Chinese gambling at the fan-tan table were accustomed to police raids. They moved the quickest. Cards, chips, and paper money went flying in the air as they bolted through a curtain that covered a hidden door. The Hip Sing bouncers scooped the money off the faro table and ran. The white players at the faro wheel ran, too, but when they pawed at other curtains they found blank walls. Girls screamed. Opium smokers looked up.