A Barricade in Hell by Jaime Lee Moyer Page B

sidestepped two men carrying a heavy crate into a curio store. Straw sifted through the rough pine slats, leaving a trail on the sidewalk. “But my taste runs more to Collier’s or Ring Lardner in The Saturday Evening Post . I get my fill of detectives and crime on the job.”
    Gabe smiled, grateful Jack was talking again. The car ride from the station house had been much too quiet. “Henderson is still new at this. Give him five years, and you won’t be able to pay him enough to read detective stories.”
    Chinatown’s streets were always busy, even at 10 A.M. on a Tuesday. Early-morning delivery vans lined the curbs, unloading crates of live ducks, chickens, and tubs of iced fish outside restaurants and markets. Sacks of rice, weighing fifty pounds or more, were handed down from truck beds and carried inside. Men on bicycles wove around motorcars, and women weighed down by shopping bags or small children darted across traffic.
    The scent of incense wafted from open windows, mingling with the clouds of tobacco smoke that formed around the heads of old men standing on street corners. Other scents filled the air as well, a sweet, sickly odor seeping out of alleyways and drifting up from boarded-over basement windows.
    Gabe stopped, staring down an alley and aware of the hostile glares from a group of young men near the opening. Memories of a nighttime raid in Chinatown when he and Jack were rookies flooded back. More than half the men they’d pulled out of that reeking maze of narrow hallways and closet-sized rooms were so deep into opium dreams, they didn’t know they’d been arrested. He hadn’t been able to get the smell out of his uniform.
    That he’d forgotten, even for a little while, baffled him. He’d had nightmares about the stench in those rooms for weeks afterwards. “Jack … do you smell that? I couldn’t place it before, but now I’m positive Archie Baldwin’s clothes stank of opium.”
    â€œChrist Almighty. That new guy over in vice, Haskell, claims all the dens were shut down.” Jack paled, his always-fair skin suddenly bleached of all color. He took a step into the alley. “Archie was gone for three days. No wonder he can’t remember what happened to Amanda or where he was. He’s damn lucky to be alive. Christ!”
    More young men, all of them well muscled and rough, moved away from sheltered doorways and niches along the alley and toward Jack. The group near the mouth of the alley moved closer as well. Gabe took his partner’s arm and hustled him down the street.
    â€œIt’s one more thing to question Baldwin about. Assuming he ever regains his memory.” One more piece of evidence that might damn Archie Baldwin as a murderer. Gabe looked over his shoulder. The young men from the alley clustered around the mouth, watching, but showed no interest in following them.
    Certain things had changed since the 1906 fire destroyed Chinatown. Tongs no longer waged open warfare and the days of the highbinders were over, but there were still places Gabe wasn’t willing to venture and risks he wasn’t willing to take. Captain Haskell could claim to have Chinatown under control all he wanted. That didn’t make it so. The men he’d spotted watching him and Jack made him doubly cautious. Two outsiders—two cops—could still disappear without a trace.
    For that matter, so could an heiress. Chinatown might hold more secrets they needed to unearth beyond how Mr. Sung and his granddaughter died. That thought disturbed him, as did the prospect of needing to search for Amanda Poe in hidden rooms and basements along the maze of side streets and alleys in Chinatown. He wouldn’t wager much on their chances of finding her alive.
    Gabe took note of the shops on either side of Grant and the names of the side streets near the alley. He’d bring the entire squad if he and Jack were forced to come