“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 face 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.”