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.