The Best American Mystery Stories 2016

Evan Lewis The Continental Opposite

From Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

Judging by the old man’s hands, I’d have tagged him at sixty. The confidence and economy of his movements might shave ten years from that, but the truth was in his eyes. Those eyes had seen Lincoln shot and Caesar stabbed, and were probably watching when Cain killed Abel. Now they were watching me, and chilled me down to my toenails.

I decided that thinking of him as the “old man” was an understatement. At that moment, forever and always, he became the Old Man.

My letter informing the grand pooh-bahs of Continental Investigations that the head of their Portland bureau was in bed with the Mob had brought this stocky old coot to my door, and I’d brought him here to the Boom Boom Room. In this bright new year of 1953, our fair city boasted eight burlesque clubs, seventeen gambling hells, and forty-three houses of ill repute. As the sole establishment qualifying in all three categories, the Boom was pretty much our Grand Central Station of crime.

The Old Man fished a pack of Fatimas from his pocket, got one burning, and examined me sourly through the smoke.

I could imagine what he saw: a punk kid, just back from fighting Commies in Korea, playing at the gumshoe game. A punk kid who’d accused his boss — a man with thirty years of crime-fighting under his belt — of betraying his own kind.

I picked up my drink, Dewar’s neat, and rolled some over my tongue. It tasted clean and strong, the opposite of the way I felt.

“You’ve made serious allegations,” the Old Man said. “Have any evidence to keep them company?”

He read the answer on my face.

I slumped in my chair, wishing the bigwigs had sent somebody — anybody — else.

He’d told me his name, but warned me not to use it, and with good reason. It was dynamite. In detective circles, this Buddha-shaped relic was a legend. Scuttlebutt said he’d been a real fire-breather during Prohibition — particularly around San Francisco — and the list of swindlers, yeggs, and killers he’d brought to justice would fill a rogues’ gallery to the brim. But sometime in the forties the Continental had put him out to pasture, and he’d spent the years since killing a vegetable garden, sneering at golf courses, and not catching fish. The agency’s call to investigate my claims had come just in time to save him from a life of perpetual bingo.

Still, the guy intimidated me. I’d never met anyone so confident, so self-contained, so utterly uncaring of other people’s opinions. The last thing I wanted was this all-knowing, all-seeing Master of Detectives judging my every move.

I fished for a way to begin. “How well do you know Portland?”

The Old Man’s shoulders rolled in a noncommittal way. “We’ve cuddled,” he said, “but never kissed.”

At a table near the stage, next to a placard reading THIS WEEK ONLY — LADY GODIVA AND HER PRANCING PALOMINO, five men eyed each other over cards. I pointed my forehead at them.

“That bruiser with the gold teeth and glass eye is captain of the North Precinct. The slick gent sporting the five-carat pinkie ring is our illustrious mayor, and likely our next governor.”

The Old Man gave that the attention it deserved: a shrug.

“But here’s the kicker. The mottle-faced man peeking at the mayor’s cards runs the East County slot-machine racket. The bozo in the rainbow bow tie collects twenty percent every time some john buys a jane. And the sharp-nosed lad with the pince-nez has slaughtered more men than Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson combined.”

The Old Man shrugged again, but this one lacked conviction.

I went on. “This town is a disease. It gets into the blood and rots people from the inside out. And my boss is no exception. He’s taking orders from the local crime lord.”

The Old Man’s lips grew thin as knife blades. “And who’s that?”

I was about to name him when a thin citizen with undertaker eyes and a waxed mustache appeared at our table, a highball glass in each well-manicured hand.

He was Nick Zartell, owner of the Boom Boom Room, and one of the five or six most dangerous men on the West Coast. He was also the reason I’d left home at sixteen and joined the army as soon as they’d take me.

I said, “Times must be tough, Nick, you waiting your own tables.”

He grinned without humor, displaying the points of sharklike teeth. “Evening, Pete. This your grandpappy? Must be past his bedtime.”

The Old Man’s eyes glinted like bullets.

“It’s his birthday,” I said. “He just turned a hundred and fifty. Something on your mind?”

“Thought maybe we had something to celebrate,” he said. “You here to accept my job offer?”

He placed one of the drinks carefully on the table in front of me, lifted the other to his lips and downed it.

I turned a tarnished silver ring around my finger, rubbed a thumb over the smooth jade stone. The ring had been my father’s, and was all that remained of him.

I pushed the glass away. “Not today.”

Zartell nodded at the stage. “You staying for the burly-que? You’d make your ma proud.”

A coolness washed over me. “She’s here?”

“Not today. But she’d hear about it.”

From him, no doubt. And it would give my mother great satisfaction to know I was as human as the next chump. It was a satisfaction I was determined to deny her.

I was hunting a suitable comeback when the Old Man wrapped a stubby hand around the highball glass, made the liquor vanish, and let out a prodigious belch.

Zartell waved the fumes away. “That geezer needs a shot of Geritol,” he said, and left.

We watched until he passed behind the bar and oozed through a doorway.

“I take it,” the Old Man said, “that you and Nick are well acquainted.”

“He wanted to be my stepfather once, but my mother gave him the air.”

“A woman of discriminating tastes.”

“Not so much,” I said. “She lived with him six years before doing it.”

If the Old Man had any thoughts on that subject, he kept them to himself.

“Thought you’d like a look at him,” I said. “He’s the local crime lord.”

The Old Man did something with his lips that sent spiders crawling up my back.

It was even scarier when I realized it was a smile.

Rain soaked my hat and made rivers on my overcoat as we strolled down Salmon Street toward the Portland home of Continental Investigations, Inc. Next to me, the Old Man remained relatively dry. Wide as he was, he had a way of sliding between the raindrops. There was no justice in it.

I said, “Sure you want to do this?”

“We’re doing it.”

The old guy had never met my boss, Harold Abernathy, and wanted to size him up.

“How do I introduce you? As my grandfather?”

“Uncle.” There was acid in his voice.

“How about a name?”

He considered that. “Tracy will do.”

“Can I call you Uncle Dick?”

He curled a lip. “Make it Sam. Better yet, Samuel. Now spill the dope on Abernathy and Zartell.”

I spilled.

For the past three months, I explained, I’d been collecting envelopes from Zartell and placing them in the fat greasy hand of my boss. Zartell insisted I be the go-between, claiming he didn’t trust his own men with cash. That was probably true enough, but the real reason was he liked reminding me my side of the fence was no cleaner than his. Three weeks ago the envelopes got fatter — much fatter — and I knew something big was coming. That’s when I wrote the agency.

Next time Zartell phoned, I was ready. Abernathy took the call in his office, and I beat it down to the furnace room, where a certain loose pipe funnels sound from the boss’s heat vent.

“I didn’t get much,” I finished up. “I heard Abernathy say, ‘That Chinese gentleman is no baby to fool with. This will require extra funding.’ ”

The Old Man’s eyes gleamed. “And this Chinese gentleman?”

“Abernathy dropped no names, but I’ve had my ears peeled since.”

We had half a block of silence before the Old Man said, “I knew your father.”

That stopped me flat. My father, known as Slippery Ed Collins, had been a rumrunner during the Roaring Twenties, and worked himself up to Zartell’s lieutenant by 1939, when pieces of him started turning up along the banks of the Willamette River. One of those pieces was a bloated hand wearing his trademark jade ring. My entry into the crime-fighting business was based at least in part on a desire to even up with the universe.

Five paces ahead, the Old Man turned, saying, “I can’t believe he named you Peter.”

I believed it, but I’d had twenty-odd years to get used to the idea. In underworld slang, “Peter Collins” meant “nobody.” To my father, it had been a great joke. To me, it was more an indication of what I’d meant to him.

I said, “How’d you know him?”

“Put him away once,” he said, “for an armored car job.” And despite my cajoling would say no more.

After a stop at a newsstand, where the Old Man shelled out a quarter for a pulp magazine, we risked our necks in the rickety elevator serving Portland’s venerable Victory Building. Emerging on the third floor, I led him past the offices of a cut-rate secretarial service, an unlicensed accountant, and a shyster lawyer, stopping at a glass-paneled door.

The inscription — CONTINENTAL INVESTIGATIONS, INC. — brought a grimace.

“That new moniker,” the Old Man said, “is the bunk.”

I pretended to agree. But hell, the detective agency had been operating since the Civil War, establishing branch offices in every major American city — and plenty of minor ones too. If the head hawkshaws back east wanted to update their image, it was no skin off my butt.

I laid a hand on the latch. “Here we go, then. Through the looking glass.” And through we went.

Harold Abernathy, a neckless toad of a man with four eyes and three chins, squatted behind his desk, one hand in the drawer he thought hid his bottle of Canadian Club. He removed the hand, threw me a scowl, and examined the fat Old Man like something he’d found on the sole of his shoe.

I said, “Chief, meet my Uncle Sam.”

The Old Man’s cheek twitched, but he stuck out a paw and smiled like a halfwit. “Samuel Tracy,” he said. “Young Pete here’s been singing your praises up, down, and sideways. Makes you sound like the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes.”

Abernathy ignored the paw, saying, “I trust you gentlemen will excuse me. I have a lot to—”

“Say no more. I understand perfectly.” The Old Man slid into the chair facing Abernathy and said, “I was in the detective game myself, you know, after a fashion.” He tugged a rolled-up copy of Smashing Detective from his pocket and smoothed it out on the desk. “Used to write for rags like this back in the day. Pure flapdoodle, of course, but the readers ate it up.”

Abernathy gave up getting a word in and slumped back to wait out the storm.

“I’m contemplating a comeback,” the Old Man said, “for a better magazine, of course — probably Collier’s — and doing it up right. I mean to show folks how a real sleuth works, and you’re the perfect model. What do you say? Mind if I make you famous?”

Abernathy’s eyes said he was sorely tempted. His mouth said, “My apologies, Mr., uh, Tracy, but agency rules strictly prohibit such self-aggrandizement.”

“See, Unc? The chief isn’t one to toot his own kazoo. You can write about me instead.”

This produced snorts from both men. Miffed, I pried “Uncle Samuel” out of his chair, shooed him into the outer office, and stuck my head back through Abernathy’s door.

“Anything cooking?” I asked, hoping for something Chinese.

“If you value your job,” he said, “keep that old dodo away from me.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Shut the damn door.”

Two days passed. Two very long days, in which the chubby ex-op grew ever more cranky. I spent the second day in the office, wondering what had possessed me to get into the bloodhound business.

What I came up with was this: After my father died, Nick Zartell became a fixture around the house and began grooming me to join his crew. My mother, herself the daughter of a racketeer, was all for it. I wasn’t. So when the army wanted soldiers for Korea, I was first in line. They made killing Commies sound like a worthy endeavor, but as it turned out, the Commies were just people, and just like us except they lived in huts instead of duplexes. Still, the army taught me to shoot, and I’d hoped to employ that newfound skill as a member of the Portland police force.

But things had changed. Or maybe I had. I returned to a town ruled by graft and fear, so riddled with corruption that the police force was little more than a private army protecting the rackets. Still, I was determined to fight crime, so I signed on with Continental Investigations. At the time it seemed a swell idea, but in light of recent developments I might as well have followed the paternal footsteps.

I was still moping when Abernathy said, “Get in here, Collins. And close the damn door.”

When I’d done both, he said, “You familiar with Hung Lo’s Hop House?”

Hung Lo ran the deadliest of the local tongs, and his opium den was reputed to be the most profitable. It was also reputed to have the best police protection money could buy.

“Sure,” I said. “Ma always took me there for my birthday.”

“Fine,” he said. “That’s fine. Well, you’re going back. In fact, you’re going to become a regular customer.”

At one time Portland’s Chinese temples, restaurants, joss houses, and fan-tan parlors had been sprinkled all over the downtown area, rubbing elbows with like-minded Occidental establishments. These days they huddled together in an area north of Burnside, between Broadway and the Willamette River.

Smack in the middle of that new Chinatown sat the Gilded Duck Restaurant, the legitimate face of Hung Lo’s business empire.

Parked across Fifth Avenue in my Studebaker Starlight coupe, the Old Man and I argued. Or, to be more precise, I argued while he ignored me.

“I don’t need you nursemaiding me,” I said.

“What kind of mileage does this machine get?”

“I know what I’m doing. I’ve been undercover before.” That was a lie, and I half expected him to call me on it.

Instead he said, “Never owned a car myself, but Dinah Shore’s been hounding me to see the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet.”

I’d filled him in on the job, or at least the version of the job Abernathy had fed me. The grieving parents of a spoiled wastrel who’d been driven to wrack and ruin — and finally to suicide — by his cravings for Hung Lo’s hop had hired the Continental to see justice done. With the fix in, there was no chance of police intervention, so the clients insisted we bust the place open and spill its dirty secrets all over the newspapers. The public outcry would force the cops to act.

My assignment was to make myself a fixture in the joint, at least for a few days, so when the time came I’d be on the inside to bop Chinamen on their skulls and open the gates for the Continental army.

Trouble was, the Old Man insisted on tagging along. He wanted the dirt on Abernathy and Zartell and figured he was the guy to ferret it out. This was Wednesday, and the raid was set for Saturday night, so he’d have to ferret fast.

The result was that he followed me into the Gilded Duck, followed suit when I slipped the waiter ten dead presidents, and followed the two of us down three creaky flights of stairs into Portland’s fabled underground.

Legend had it the tunnels beneath the streets had once been used to shanghai recruits for smuggling ships, and during Prohibition they’d been a fine place to hide hooch. Now, with crime running wide open, the underground had been pretty much abandoned to opium dens and the white slavery racket.

I wriggled my nose against a hundred unnamed and unnameable smells as the waiter led us through a maze of dark passages and ancient doorways. Sometimes we had concrete underfoot, sometimes wooden planks, and sometimes bare earth. After several conks on the noodle from low-hanging pipes, I wised up and crouched to half my height, inching along like a crab. This gave the Old Man a smirk; he was short enough not to stoop. We turned this way and that, scuttling through a dozen more passageways before halting at a red door I’d have bet my pants was less than fifty feet from where we’d entered the underground.

Following a Chinese variant on shave-and-a-haircut-six-bits, the door opened and the waiter released us to the care of a pinch-faced kid in gold silk pajamas.

At my shoulder, the Old Man said, “Let me. I know how to talk to these people.”

He shuffled past, bowed his head, and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “This low-born mongrel,” he said, “begs entry to your palace of heavenly delights.”

Pajama Boy rolled his eyes at me. “Your friend’s seen too many Charlie Chan movies.”

“He’s no friend of mine,” I said. “If you hear of any crew vacancies, feel free to shanghai him.”

After the exchange of a week’s worth of junior detective pay, our host led us down a hazy hallway, past a small office where a bald man hunched over a desk, and finally to a dim-lit room lined with bunk beds. Half the beds held immobile shapes that might once have been human beings. The air was heavy with the scent of crushed flowers and unwashed bodies.

Spotting a vacant bed, I made for the bottom bunk, but the Old Man barreled past me, insisting I climb up top. I got my revenge by stepping on his ear.

Almost immediately a skeletal man in a tasseled hat shuffled out of the gloom bearing two wooden trays. Each held a long-stemmed pipe and a small oil lamp. The Old Man had told me what to expect, and the extent of his knowledge made me wonder how he’d come by it.

The idea was to load the pipe with a small dose of hop called a “pill,” then hold the bowl over the lamp’s glass chimney until the drug was vaporized. To avoid suspicion, we’d each have to burn a few pills, while taking care not to inhale.

I tried one.

Though I didn’t inhale, there was no escaping the smell — a sharp, flowery perfume that made me gag. I lay back on the bunk, trying to relax, but my thoughts kept returning to the Old Man.

It occurred to me that if Fate had assigned me an opposite number, this guy was it. Aside from the fact we both were — or had been — Continental operatives, we were as different as two male humans could be.

I was young. He was old. I was tall. He was short. I was thin. He was fat. I was at the beginning of my career. His was already over. I believed in concepts like hope and justice. He’d surrendered to the harsh realities of judgment and law. I trusted my feelings and wasn’t afraid to act on them. He considered feelings a nuisance. If he accidentally experienced an honest human emotion he’d probably dig it out with a pocket knife. My greatest fear was I’d turn out just like him.

I burned a couple more pills.

This business of not inhaling was all well and good, but the flowery scent was so thick there was no escaping it. Before long I was sitting on a cloud, bouncing Lauren Bacall on one knee and Veronica Lake on the other.

That’s when the Old Man kicked my bunk and whispered, “When the ruckus starts, watch the Chinese.”

I did my best to keep Lauren and Veronica from scooting off my knees, but both vanished and I was left saying, “Huh?”

“The Chinese, dammit. See where they go.”

I chased the brains around in my skull, wondering what he meant, and was still chasing when someone shouted, “Fire!”

That someone was the Old Man. He was a ghostly bear blundering about in the darkness, yanking dreamers from their bunks and creating pandemonium.

Watch the Chinese, he’d said. See where they go.

Slipping to the floor, I joined the befuddled mob and spotted one of the employees swimming against the tide. I moved to intercept him, but at the rendezvous point found nothing but bare wall.

I was scratching my head when the bald gent squirted from his hall office and danced past me. I felt a breeze at my back, turned, and watched his shirttails disappear into a gap in the wall. I followed the shirttails. They led me down a narrow tunnel.

Three crooked passageways and two flights of stairs later, I emerged into the basement of a Chinese laundry.

So this was what the Old Man wanted me to find. An escape route.

I was grateful, but not nearly grateful enough to worry what had become of him.

As it happened, he was fine. I found him camped on my doorstep Thursday morning when I left for work. A purple mouse clung to his face beneath his right eye, but he appeared otherwise unscathed. The bad news — or good, depending where you sat — was that he’d been spotted as the false-alarmer and was no longer welcome at Hung Lo’s.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop him from following me to the office and regaling Abernathy with more of his mystery-writing claptrap.

Abernathy escaped him long enough to say, “We’ll need extra guns for Saturday’s party. See what Seattle and Spokane can send us.”

Borrowing men from other Continental branches made sense, since I was one of only three operatives on Portland’s regular roster.

When I told the Old Man he practically salivated. “That’s my meat,” he said. “Leave it to me.”

Another night of pretend opium smoking — this time solo — went by before I found out what that meant. The occasion was a Friday-morning powwow in the Old Man’s hotel room, attended by four men twice my age.

“Mike, Alec, and Rufus,” the Old Man said, shooting the first three with his finger. He nodded at the fourth. “And we’ll call him Bob.”

I didn’t like that so much. “Don’t they have real names?”

“Sure,” the Old Man said. “But names are overrated.”

He then pronounced mine, producing a round of sniggers, but whether his pals considered it his joke or my father’s I couldn’t tell.

There was a lot of talk about people I didn’t know, places I’d never been, and cases I’d never heard of. I smiled when they laughed and frowned when they swore, trying to be one of the gang, but I might as well have been wearing short pants and a beanie. The only one who addressed me directly was Mike, and that was to offer me bubblegum.

I learned things, though, including that all four belonged to the San Francisco branch, and had ridden the red-eye up the coast. All knew the Old Man well enough to kid him, but only to a point. Beyond that they treated him with the deference due a powder keg.

At last the Old Man explained the job, saying that Abernathy was too damn cozy with Nick Zartell, that we were putting both men under the lens, and that they may or may not be cooking up something involving opium. The Old Man wanted all the dirt that could be had on all concerned, and he wanted it ten minutes ago. One way or another, he said, we’d be participating in a raid on Hung Lo’s Hop House, but how we’d play it was yet to be determined.

When Alec asked the source of the dirt on Abernathy, the old Judas nodded my way, and if the heat in those men’s eyes had been real I’d be nothing but a soot stain on the woodwork. To his credit, the Old Man then launched into a barnburner of a speech starting with Rally ’round the flag, building up to Win one for the gipper, and bringing it home with a taste of Give me liberty or give me death. And it worked, after a fashion. By the time he finished, three of the four were able to look me in the eye without spitting. Clearly, they hated corruption in the ranks only slightly more than the rat who squealed about it.

The number of women who’d visited my apartment could be counted on one hand — with three fingers change — and the last had promised to return when hell got frosty. So when I keyed myself into the dark living room and smelled perfume, I knew something was up.

I had a fistful of .38 when I snapped on the lights and said, “Show yourself or eat lead.”

“My God, Petey. Have you been reading Mickey Spillane again?”

A middle-aged woman with sharp features and a sharper figure emerged from my bedroom. She wore a red dress decorated with poker hands and a hat that belonged in a birdcage.

I put the gun away, saying, “Why the long face, Ma? No skin magazines under my mattress?”

“You needn’t be nasty,” she said. “I was worried about you.”

“And lizards have wings. Did Zartell send you?”

She peered at the sofa, brushed off an invisible speck, and perched on the edge. “What does a girl have to do to get a drink around here?”

I shrugged out of my overcoat, mixed up her favorite — gin and bitters — and filled her hand with the glass.

“Now give. What do you want?”

“You know how I feel about Nick,” she began.

“Sure,” I said. “Same way you feel about dung beetles.”

She smiled and sipped her gin. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“I’m sorry for that, Petey. I’m sorry for a lot of things, but I can’t undo them.”

“You were saying what brought you.”

“You’ve been spending time at Hung Lo’s. Don’t ask me how I know — I have my sources. And men from San Francisco have been nosing around the Boom. I know what you’re up to, Petey, and I want it to stop.”

I mulled that a moment. She’d always had her sources. Barmaids, strippers, hookers, women from every class of lowlife who worked on the periphery of the rackets. To their bosses they were just part of the scenery, but their eyes and ears let my mother put the squeeze on men of all stripes. What I hadn’t known was that she had contacts in the Chinese community too.

I said, “What am I up to?”

“You’re going after Nick. God knows why, but I won’t have it. You’re both too important to me.”

“You’re telling me Nick’s involved with Hung Lo? I thought they were enemies.” I knew better than to expect information from her, but it cost nothing to try.

“I’m telling you, Petey, I don’t want you going up against him. Promise me you won’t.”

I tried to see around all the angles. Had Zartell sent her to find out how much I knew? Was she really worried about me — or him? Or was I somehow a threat to her own operation? The possibilities waltzed me around until I was dizzy.

I said, “No promises.”

She stood, clamped hands on my lapels, and shook me. “Promise me you won’t hurt him, and won’t give him cause to hurt you. You’re both lousy, and I don’t really have either of you, but you’re all I’ve got. Can’t you understand that?”

I could, sadly, but I wasn’t telling her that.

“No promises,” I said. “But I’ll tell you this. Zartell’s not the target. As long as he doesn’t interfere he’ll come out smelling no worse than he smells already.”

“Is that what your fat little overseer told you?”

That stopped me. She knew about him too?

“I suppose you think you can trust him. Others have thought that, and most of them are dead.” Her eyes glistened. For a moment I thought she might cry. “You’re a bastard. Just like your father. Just like Nick. And just like every other man I ever met. To hell with all of you.”

And while I stood there empty of words, she left.

Next morning I told Abernathy the auxiliary had arrived. He bought the story that Seattle and Spokane had no operatives to spare, but was half inclined to take the train fare from Frisco out of my salary. His chief concern was that I’d lined up a newshound to accompany our raid. Once we pried the lid off Hung Lo’s, he wanted publicity and plenty of it.

“Not to worry,” I told him. “I have just the guy.” And I did. A high school pal of mine was now a cub reporter for the Oregonian, and I hoped to hand him a pip of a story. It just wouldn’t be the story Abernathy expected.

“We pop the cork Saturday at midnight,” he said. “Just in time for the respectable element to get the news with their Sunday funnies.”

I spent the rest of the day trying to guess the Old Man’s intentions and finished up dumber than when I began. That night at Hung Lo’s I was hard-pressed not to inhale.

On Saturday afternoon the Old Man called another chinfest at his hotel. The attendees were Mike, Alec, Rufus, Bob, and me.

“We got the lay on this Zartell bird,” Mike said. “He’s a tough nut, but his number-two man looks ripe for shelling.”

“That would be Jablonsky,” I said.

Mike looked at me like I’d puddled on the carpet.

“Name’s Jablonsky,” he said. “From what we could pick up, all his brains are in his biceps. Guy’s got ambition, though. Told one of his floozies he plans to wrangle his own racket someday.”

The Old Man said, “Know where we can lay hands on him?”

They did.

Thus it was that at eight-thirty that night I slouched behind the wheel of my Studebaker in a convenient shadow behind the Boom Boom Room. The Old Man filled the seat beside me. He’d declined all invitations to explain his plan.

“Watch,” he said, “and grow wise.”

At 8:52 Jablonsky banged out of the Boom’s back door and craned his neck as if expecting to see something. The only thing to see was an old panel truck near the door.

When he peered into the truck’s cab, Mike and Rufus stepped out of the shadows with guns in their fists. Jablonsky’s hands rose and he allowed himself to be prodded into the back of the truck.

I said, “How’d they know he was coming out?”

“We forged a note from a skirt he’s been chasing. Said she was waiting to slip him some sugar.”

“That’s lesson one,” I said. “What’s next?”

My education resumed in a dark hotel room, one that did not belong to any of our party. Mike and Rufus had Jablonsky on a sofa in the adjoining room, and stood shooting words at him.

The Old Man and I watched through a partially open doorway.

“It’s a frame,” Jablonsky whined. “A lousy, stinking frame.”

Mike said, “You know that, and maybe we do too. But the grand jury won’t. And because counterfeiting is a federal rap, Zartell’s pet prosecutors and judges can’t help you.”

“Bull. No one would think I’m dumb enough to walk around with stacks of funny money in my pockets.”

Rufus smiled benignly. “You’re right. No one could think you’re dumb. Not you, the guy who got three years in stir for parking a getaway car in his own driveway.”

Jablonsky’s sneer was something to look at. “Since when do feds dish out the third degree in a fleabag hotel?”

“See?” Mike said. “You’re not all dumb. We got a proposition for you.”

Jablonsky’s eyes grew sharp. “I can’t stop you from talking.”

And he didn’t.

The proposition, as delivered by Mike, was that if he ratted out Zartell, they’d send the racketeer up for a long stretch and leave Jablonsky free to take over the operation. The alternative was far less enticing.

“We know he has something going in Chinatown tonight,” Rufus said. “Something with the head dick at the Continental agency. We want the whole lay.”

“And for that you’ll give me Zartell’s rackets? Hell, you should have said so.”

Jablonsky gave them the whole lay.

Zartell, it seemed, had been horning in on the smuggling end of the opium business. Being a greedy soul, he had a yen for the retail end as well, and wanted Hung Lo’s hop house empire. Hung Lo was too well protected for Zartell to show in a takeover, but if an outside outfit like Continental Investigations happened to send him to prison, no one could blame Zartell for filling the void.

When Jablonsky ran out of details, Mike said, “Sit tight while I call Mr. Hoover.”

He slipped into the adjoining room, closed the door, and looked proud as a bird with a worm.

The Old Man wiggled a finger at me. “You’ve learned enough for one day. Go hold Abernathy’s hand while he gets ready for the raid.”

I consulted my watch. Nine-forty-seven. I had plenty of time before reclaiming my bunk at Hung Lo’s.

I said as much.

The Old Man’s flat stare lay heavy on me. “Did that sound like a suggestion?”

I kept hearing my mother’s words. I suppose you think you can trust him.

“Tell me this,” I said. “That stuff about taking Zartell down was just for Jablonsky’s benefit, right? Just a way to get the goods on Abernathy.”

The Old Man looked at me so hard I thought his eyeballs would crack. Finally he said, “Go.”

I went. But all the way to the office, I wondered what I wasn’t supposed to know.

Abernathy was in a snit because his reinforcements were out doing God-knows-what instead of hanging around waiting for pearls of wisdom to drop from his lips. I assured him they’d arrive soon, and he assured me my job depended on it. I was pretty sure he was right.

My two fellow Portland ops were on hand, pretending to look interested as they cleaned their guns and counted their ammunition. Though I’d worked with them half a year, I knew neither man well, and neither showed any inclination to remedy that.

I knew their names, but rarely had occasion to use them, and had taken to thinking of them as Mutt and Jeff. Mutt, as you might expect, was lanky and slope-shouldered, while Jeff had stubby legs and no more hair than a billiard ball. They might have been good detectives once, but their time with Abernathy — five and eight years respectively — had taken its toll. Mutt spent afternoons snoring on a bench in the Greyhound station, while Jeff could usually be found holding up a stool at Kelly’s Saloon. I’d never been able to decide if they were on the take with Abernathy or just rotten on their own hooks.

In any case, I’d never trusted them, and wasn’t starting now. If the Old Man wanted them clued in, he could clue them himself.

Knuckles on the door announced the arrival of a big-eared, wide-mouthed young man with a notebook in his pocket and a camera in his hand. This was my old pal Harvey, now penning obits and lost-dog stories for the Oregonian.

“This had better pan out,” he told me. “I cancelled a date with Loose Lucy Morrelli to join this shindig.”

We were still commiserating over this misfortune when Mike, Alec, Rufus, and Bob ambled in, and Abernathy called a council of war.

“Pete has to leave,” he told the crowd, “so we’ll start with him.” He tossed me a smug look. “Your part is simple, kid. When both of Mickey’s hands point straight up, take the gun out of your pocket and persuade Hung Lo’s lackeys to answer the knock at their door.”

Averting my red face, I slipped out into the hall.

And tripped over the Old Man, who was listening at the keyhole.

We both went down, but he bobbed up none the worse, while I lay stunned. The old guy might be shaped like a teddy bear, but he was tough as a grizzly.

He helped me up, saying, “Keep your wits handy tonight.”

“Should I expect surprises?” I tried to adopt the look of someone worth confiding in.

“Always.”

“What are your plans for Zartell?”

He did that horrible thing with his lips.

“You remind me of your father,” he said.

“Is that good or bad?”

He remained as inscrutable as the Sphinx.

“With any luck,” he said, “our problems should be over tonight.”

“I don’t believe in luck.”

“It happens,” he said. “But not as often as people like to think.”

It was probably nerves talking, but the fisheye Hung Lo’s doorman hung on me seemed fishier than usual, and the .38 felt like a Tommy gun in my pocket.

Reclined on my moldy mattress, I tried to convince myself all was swell. Tonight’s doings would expose Abernathy for the snake he was, and he’d soon be residing in the state pen. The agency’s honor would be restored, and I’d be the shining knight who made it all possible.

But a niggly little feeling kept after me, telling me all was less than swell. There was something the Old Man wasn’t telling, and there had to be a reason. Maybe he didn’t trust me to keep my mouth clamped. Maybe he thought I’d disapprove. Maybe he even thought I’d gum the works.

What was that chubby codger up to?

Time went so slowly I feared my watch had stopped and held it close to my ear. It was still ticking, but I was certain whole generations were born and died between each tick.

By the time midnight arrived I was lost in a secondhand opium dream and thought the pounding I heard was some sinner banging on the gates of heaven. But men shouting unheavenly things in two languages brought me out of my bunk with my pistol in my hand.

My big moment had arrived.

The Chinese half of the shouting came from the reception area, so no one bothered me as I cat-footed down the hall and peered out at the shouters.

Four celestials in gaudy pajamas clustered about the door, debating matters with their hands as much as their mouths.

I followed my gun into the room, tried to point it at all four at once, and said, “Hoist ’em!”

They might not have understood my words, but they understood my gun. They hoisted ’em.

The pounding on the door continued apace, accompanied by English demands for admittance.

I edged to one side, bared my teeth to show I meant business, and herded my hosts away from the door. While they jeered and jabbered, I fumbled with the locks and tossed aside the two-by-four barring the entrance. Then I flicked the latch and stood aside to admit the troops.

Alec and Rufus entered first, followed by Bob and Mike. They stepped aside two by two as Mutt, Jeff, and Abernathy paraded in, leading Harvey the boy reporter.

Abernathy set fire to a Cuban cigar and let the Chinese get a look at him.

“You boys,” he told them, “are screwed.”

While they goggled, he clarified: “You savvy screwed? Pinched. Busted. Behind the eight ball. Up the Yangtze without a paddle.”

They goggled some more.

“Somebody put the nippers on ’em,” Abernathy ordered. “The rest of you start gathering evidence.” He raised a hand, rubbed thumb across fingertips. “Especially the folding kind.” Then he strode down the hallway toward the office.

Mutt and Jeff were on the move when Bob and Rufus clamped hands on their shoulders, drew them close, and started whispering. Alec did the same to Harvey.

I looked a question at Mike.

“Time to amscray,” he said softly. “Zartell and his goons are on the way.”

My niggly feeling grew into a full-body funk. My mother’s face rose before me, scowling.

No promises, I told it.

“Who invited Zartell?” I demanded.

“Answers later,” he said. “Time to go.”

Mutt, Jeff, and Harvey were already convinced and retreating out the door after Alec, Rufus, and Bob. I followed far enough to see them scatter into every tunnel but the one leading back to the Gilded Duck. That one was full of bobbing flashlights and tramping feet.

Mike made to slip past me, but I swung a hip and pinned him to the door frame.

“Answers now,” I said, “or we greet the goons.”

He struggled against me, swore like a stevedore, and said, “We gave Jablonsky a message for Zartell. Told him Abernathy and Hung Lo had gathered evidence against him and stored it here in a safe. He’s coming for it.”

I tried to digest that. It gave me a bellyache.

“There’s more,” Mike said. “The Old Man tipped Hung Lo that Abernathy and Zartell were staging a raid. This place is about to become a war zone.”

The flashlights came closer. I could now make out shapes among the shadows.

“And what happens to Abernathy?”

Mike swore some more. “What do you care? You’re the one put the evil eye on him.”

The bellyache spread through my body. He was right, and maybe that’s why I cared. I wanted the bastard canned — or maybe caged — but trussing him up for slaughter was out of my line.

Shouts from the Zartell crowd announced they’d seen us. Their steps quickened.

Mike said, “Happy? Now we’re dead too.”

The four Chinese had done a disappearing act. I grabbed Mike’s lapel and hurried after them. He growled, but offered little resistance. The approach of Zartell’s army was loud behind us.

Down the hall we went. The smoking lounge looked much the same, except that several beautiful dreamers had stumbled out of their bunks.

I kicked the secret panel open, pushed Mike through, and said, “Tell the Old Man I wish him a short and sour life.” Then the wall clicked shut and I went in search of Abernathy.

Gunfire erupted in the outer room. Above the din, a high-pitched voice screamed orders in Chinese. Hung Lo’s troops had arrived.

I found Abernathy in the small office, rifling a desk. One hand clutched a wad of greenbacks.

“There’s more here,” he said. “There must be. Help me look.”

I lunged across the desk, grabbed his tie, and hauled him toward the doorway.

The hall was full of men — Zartell’s men, firing back toward the entrance. They blocked our route to the secret exit.

Abernathy kicked my shins, tried to bite my hand.

“Behave!” I batted his nose with my gun barrel. “In case you don’t know it yet, both sides want to boil you in oil.”

Bullets zipped up and down the hall. Muzzle fire illuminated passing hatchets and knives. Men yelped, grunted, screamed, swore.

Abernathy quivered so hard he made my teeth rattle.

“We have to surrender!” he cried.

“Be your age. They’re taking no prisoners.”

But the idea stuck in my skull. Maybe he had something.

I put my lips close to the doorway and shouted, “Wait! Hold it!”

The barrage slowed to half its fury, a mere ten shots per second.

“We give up!” I roared. “We surrender!”

My reasoning, such as it was, went like this: the Chinese would think the Zartell faction was folding, and Zartell’s men would think the surrender had come from one of their own.

The shooting dwindled to single pops and bangs. While everyone’s brains were scrambled, I yanked Abernathy into the hall, pushing through the gangsters in search of the exit.

Gangsters, as a rule, don’t like to be pushed. They pushed back, cursing as they did, and Hung Lo’s men assumed the cursing was meant for them. We were still a yard and a half from the panel when the battle resumed.

Gunpowder scorched my cheek. A knife blade stole my hat. Lead thwacked into meat all around us. Abernathy squalled like a baby. A bullet slammed into my hindquarters, and I felt like squalling too, but I kicked and clawed my way through the dead and dying, bruised my shoulder on the secret panel, and shoved Abernathy through.

The only sensible thing was to follow. I wasn’t Zartell’s keeper. I’d resented him my entire life, and for all I knew, he may have been responsible for my father’s death. The world would be a better place without him. The only sensible thing was to let him die.

I stood there telling myself these things until my mother’s face swam up again.

No promises, I repeated.

But I kicked the panel shut and bawled, “Nick! Where the hell are you?”

A flying tomahawk took away part of my ear. Before I could check how much was left, a heavy slug tore through my leg. I sat down hard, damning Zartell, my mother, the Old Man, and half of mankind.

When I tried to get up, it was no-go. I damned the rest of mankind and had progressed to the animals and little fishes when a dark shape loomed above me.

“Hello, Pete,” the shape said. “You rang?”

I thumped the wall with my foot. “Secret panel.”

Zartell leaned against it, trying twice more before he found the sweet spot. The air buzzed with lead and cutlery, but nothing touched him. He bent, grabbed my ankles, and dragged me through. The door clicked shut behind us.

“I suppose I should be grateful,” I said.

“You should at that, but I know it’s against your nature.”

He hauled me up and duck-walked me down the passageway. Muffled explosions hurried us on our way. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought it was Chinese New Year.

I awoke with a head full of visions and a snootful of disinfectant. In the visions, I saw myself stagger into the basement of the Chinese laundry, saw the astonished face of an old woman boiling shirts, and collapsed as Zartell scurried away. The disinfectant represented the here and now, where I lay sidesaddle on a hospital bed.

My leg and hindquarters hurt like hell.

From a chair beside the bed, the Old Man studied me as if measuring my neck for a noose.

I broke the silence. “My ass hurts.”

“Thanks to you,” he said, “so does mine.”

Lacking a suitable reply, I said, “Where’s Abernathy?”

“In the wind. Trying to outrun Zartell’s bounty hunters and Hung Lo’s hatchet men.”

I did my best to look displeased.

“Feeling pretty full of yourself, are you? I wouldn’t. When they catch him, he’ll wish he’d died in the opium den.”

“If they catch him.”

“When. And you may have won a reprieve for Zartell, but his time is coming too.”

I had no more argument in me. “What about Mutt and Jeff?”

“They have their walking papers. They’ll never work for the agency again.”

I felt the noose slip around my neck.

“And what about me?”

The Old Man tugged the pack of Fatimas from his pocket, shook one free, scowled at the NO SMOKING sign above my bed, scowled at me, and lit the cigarette anyway.

A shape darkened the doorway and a man strode in.

I said, “Hello, Mike.”

He grinned at the Old Man. “You tell him yet?”

“No.” The old guy scowled at me some more.

The noose tightened.

“I saw three alternatives,” the Old Man said. He ticked them off on his fingers. “One — fire Abernathy and let him leave unpunished. Two — have him arrested and drag the agency’s name through the muck. Or three — make the problem go away permanently.” He grimaced as if the words pained him. “You saw a fourth option, and acted on it.”

My ears stretched. This resembled the beginning of a compliment.

“Disobeying orders was rash,” the Old Man went on, “and it was stupid. But you caught a break, and your stupidity paid off, at least in the Abernathy matter. Saving Zartell was something else entirely.”

So much for the compliment.

“What he’s trying to say,” Mike put in, “is that you remind him of himself when he was a fine young hellion. And if the worst that happens to you is getting shot in the ass, you might live long enough to become a decent Continental op.”

“I’m already a decent op,” I told him, “but I’m nothing like old Beelzebub here, and never will be. If he has an ounce of human feeling in him I’ll butter my hat and eat it.”

The Old Man did that terrible thing with his lips.

“Your hat is safe enough,” he said. “As to how different we are, it may interest you to know I once had a mother. She even tried to tell me how to do my job.”

I held his gaze until my gums began to bleed.

“So what’d you do?”

“Framed her on a bunko rap. She got three to five in Joliet.”

I was deciding whether to believe that when he said, “Mike is transferring up from San Francisco. He’ll be training you.”

My brain did a somersault.

Mike executed a mock bow. “Charmed, I’m sure.”

“I still have a job?”

“It won’t be all wine and roses,” the Old Man said. “This office still needs a manager. And this town needs someone to shave its fur and dig the leeches out of its hide.”

I stared at him, hoping I’d misunderstood.

I hadn’t.

“The agency gave me the option of staying retired or becoming your new boss. Guess which I chose?”