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“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?”
