The Spy (29 page)

A SMALL, elderly woman in a long black dress, a warm shawl, and a straw bonnet tied to her head with a dark scarf boarded a streetcar outside the Jersey City Exchange Place Terminal. It was a slow, stop-and-start ride to the city of Hoboken. The trolley looped around the square at Ferry and River streets, and now her journey moved swiftly as she descended to the first completed of the McAdoo tubes. For a nickel, she boarded an eight-car electric train so new it smelled of paint.

It whisked her under the Hudson River. Ten minutes after boarding, she left the tube train at the first station in New York. The conductors operating the air-powered doors exchanged a glance. The neighborhood at Christopher and Greenwich streets above the beautifully lighted vaulted ceilings of the tube line was nowhere near as pleasant as the subterranean station, particularly at such a late hour. Before they could call a warning, the woman hurried past a pretty florist’s shop at the foot of the stairs—closed, with lights still shining on the flowers—and disappeared.

At street level she found a dark square of grimy cobblestones. Warehouses loomed over formerly genteel residences long since partitioned into rooming houses. She drew the attention of a thug who followed her, drawing close as she neared an alley. She whirled suddenly, pressed a small pistol to his forehead, and said in a soft male voice with a slight accent the thug had never heard before, “I can pay you handsomely to guide me to a clean room where I can spend the night. Or I can pull the trigger. I will let you choose.”

I
HAVE A JOB FOR HARRY WING AND LOUIS LOH,” SAID Eyes O’Shay.

“Who?” asked Tommy Thompson, who was beginning to think that he was seeing more of Eyes than he wanted to.

“Your Hip Sing highbinders,” Eyes said impatiently. “The high-class tong Chinamen you made a hookup with the same day I came back from the dead. Stop playing stupid with me. We’ve discussed this before.”

“They ain’t mine, I told you. I just made a deal with ’em to open some joints.”

“I have a job for them.”

“What do you need me for?”

“I do not want to meet them. I want you to deal with them for me. Do you understand?”

“You don’t want them to see your mug.”

“Or hear about me. Not one word, Tommy. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life as a blind man.”

Tommy Thompson had had just about enough. He leaned back in his chair, tipping it up on the two back legs, and said coldly, “I’m thinking it’s time to pick up a gun and blow your brains out, O’Shay.”

Brian O’Shay was on his feet in a flash. He kicked one of the chair legs, splintering it. The gang boss crashed to the floor. At the sounds, which shook the building, Tommy’s bouncers charged into the room. They pulled up short. O’Shay had the boss in a headlock, down on one knee, pointing Tommy’s face toward the ceiling, with his gouge scraping his left eye.

“Deal with your floor managers.”

“Get out of here,” Tommy said in a strangled voice.

The bouncers backed out of the room. O’Shay let him go abruptly, dropping the bigger man on his back and rising to brush sawdust from his trousers. “Here’s what I want,” he said conversationally. “I want you to send Harry Wing and Louis Loh to San Francisco.”

“What’s in San Francisco?” Tommy asked sullenly, climbing to his feet and pulling a bottle from his desk.

“The Mare Island Naval Shipyard.”

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a navy yard. Like the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It’s where the Great White Fleet ships will re-provision and get their bottoms painted before they sail for Honolulu and Auckland and Japan.”

“Eyes, what the hell are you into now?”

“There’s an ammunition magazine in the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. I want Harry Wing and Louis Loh to blow it up.”

“Blow up a navy yard?” Thompson dropped his bottle and jumped to his feet. “Are you crazy?”

“No.”

Tommy looked around frantically as if cops suddenly had ears pressed to his well-guarded walls. “What are you telling me this for?”

“Because when the Mare Island magazine blows up, you stand to make more dough than you ever saw in your life.”

“How much?”

Eyes told him, and Commodore Tommy sat down, smiling.

VAN DORN DETECTIVE JOHN SCULLY continued scouting Chinatown in a variety of disguises. He was a street peddler one day, a ragpicker the next, a drunk sleeping outdoors as a soldier in the “army of the park benches,” and an official of the city health department, which raised sufficient bribes to keep down expenses. He kept picking up hints about the Gopher Gang moving downtown. Streetwalkers talked wistfully about a high-class gambling hall and opium den that was really choosy about the girls they hired. But a Hip Sing boss’s girlfriend personally ran the joint, and she treated you on the level.

“Chinese girls?” asked a wide-eyed Scully, provoking laughter from the women he was standing to drinks on Canal Street.

“There’s no China girls in Chinatown.”

“No China girls?”

“They’re not allowed to bring them into the country.”

“Where do they get the girls?”

“
Irish
girls. Whaddaya think?”

“The Chinaman’s girlfriend is Irish?” Scully asked as if such a combination were beyond his imagination.

One of the women lowered her voice and looked around before she whispered furtively, “I hear she’s a Gopher.”

At that, Scully did not have to pretend a bumpkin’s amazement. It was so unusual as to be either impossible or evidence of a strange and dangerous new alliance between Hell’s Kitchen and Chinatown.

Scully knew he should report even the hint of a tong-Gopher coalition to headquarters. Or at least confide in Isaac Bell. But his gut and his years of experience told him that he was on the edge of a breakthrough that would solve the Hull 44 case. He felt so close to learning the whole story that he decided to let reporting in ride for another day or so.

Had the Gophers offered the girl as a prize to seal the deal? Or had she initiated it? According to Harry Warren, the Gopher women were often worse criminals then the men—smarter by a long shot and more devious. Whatever the connection was, Detective John Scully regarded it as a personal point of honor to stroll into the Knickerbocker with the whole story instead of a measly piece of a rumor.

A few days later he struck pay dirt.

He was back in blue jay costume. A clumsily tailored sack suit hung loosely on his ample frame. His trouser cuffs barely covered the tops of his unfashionable boots. But the expensive new straw boater purchased from Brooks Brothers on Broadway shading his round face and the gold watch chain glistening on the bulge of his vest sent a clear signal that he was a prosperous candidate to be buncoed.

He went inside a Chinese opera house on Doyers Street, which the newspapers had recently dubbed the “Bloody Angle” due to the short, crooked street’s reputation as a battleground for the warring Hip Sing and On Leong tongs. Somewhere on Doyers, he had heard, was the Hip Sing joint that offered beautiful girls, the purest opium, and a roulette wheel spun by a croupier who knew his business.

The detective had seen enough of opium and roulette to steer clear of the roulette. He had nothing against beautiful girls, and for some reason he could never figure out why they often took a shine to him. And when that happened, the opium only made a good thing better.

When he stepped back out on the street after watching the show for a while, a genuine blue jay was gazing up at an American flag on a pole thrust from a third-story dormer of the opera house. “Chinese opera?” he asked Scully. “What’s that like?”

“No opera I ever heard,” answered Scully. “Screeching like they needed their axles oiled. But the costumes and greasepaint are something else. They’ll knock your eyes out.”

“Any girls?”

“Hard to tell.”

The blue jay stuck out his hand. “Tim Holian. Waterbury Brass Works.”

“Jasper Smith. Schenectady Dry Goods,” replied Scully, and then he heard every detective’s nightmare.

“Schenectady? Then you sure as heck know my cousin Ed Kelleher. He’s president of the Rotary in Schenectady.”

“Not since he ran off with my wife’s niece.”

“What? No, there must be some mistake. Ed’s a married man.”

“Just thinking about it makes my blood boil. The poor girl is barely fifteen.”

Holian retreated dazedly toward Mott Street. Scully continued loitering between the opera house entrance and a bow window shielded with wire mesh. It didn’t take long for a roper to discover him.

“Say, brother, looking for a good time?”

Scully looked him over. Middle-aged, with very few teeth and ragged clothes, former Bowery Boy, no longer the violent sort but perfectly willing to deliver him to those who were if the gaze fixed on his watch chain was any clue. “What did you have in mind?”

“Want to meet girls?”

Scully pointed toward Mott Street. “Fellow that was just standing here in a straw hat. He’s looking for girls.”

“What about you? Want to see deranged addicts in an opium den?”

“Shove off.”

The roper took his expression as fair warning and headed after the man from Waterbury. Scully continued to loiter.

But so far, no go. He had not learned a damned thing more since he’d parked himself in front of the opera house. Not a sign of customers coming and going. Maybe it was too early. But these places tended to keep the drapes drawn and the game going round the clock. He hung around for another hour but got no sense that he was getting close. Ropers like the one he’d sent packing would never steer him to such a high-class joint. So he kept giving the ropers the shove while he watched to see arriving customers point the way.

An unusual sight caught his eye. Walking quickly, darting anxious glances behind her at a cop who seemed to be following, was a fair-skinned Irish girl carrying a Chinese baby. She was built as solidly as a bricklayer and had the kind of about-to-wink smile in her eye that Scully appreciated. He tipped his hat and made room on the narrow sidewalk as she hurried past toward Mott. Up close, the baby looked not entirely Chinese, not with that tuft of yellow hair crowning its head.

The cop brushed past Scully and caught up with the woman at the angle in Doyers. He peered suspiciously into her blanket. Scully ambled over, suspecting what would happen.

“I’m going have to take you in,” said the cop.

“What the bloody hell for?” asked the mother.

“It’s for your own protection. Every white woman married to a Chinese has got to show she was not kidnapped and held captive.”

“Kidnapped? I’m not kidnapped. I’m going shopping to bring supper home for my husband.”

“You’ll have to show me your marriage license before I’ll believe that.”

“I don’t carry it around with me, for God’s sake. You know I’m married. You’re just giving me a hard time. Expect me to put money in your hand.”

The cop flushed angrily. “You’re coming in,” he said, and took her by the arm.

John Scully shouldered up to him. “Officer, if we could speak in private?”

“Who are you? Get out of here.”

“Where I come from, money talks,” said Scully, passing the cop the bills he had palmed. The cop turned on his heel and lumbered back toward the Bowery.

“What did you do that for?” She had angry tears in her eyes.

“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.”