Oddments

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In his twenty years as a detective, Quincannon had visited a great many strange and sinister places, but this May night was his first time in an opium den. And not just one — four of them, so far. Four too many.

Blind Annie’s Cellar, this one was called. Another of the reputed three hundred such resorts that infested the dark heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Located in Ross Alley, it was a foul-smelling cave full of scurrying cats and yellowish-blue smoke that hung in ribbons and layers. The smoke seemed to move lumpily, limp at the ends; its thick-sweet odor, not unlike that of burning orange peel, turned Quincannon’s seldom-tender stomach for the fourth straight time.

“The gentleman want to smoke?”

The question came in a scratchy singsong from a rag-encased crone seated on a mat just inside the door. On her lap was a tray laden with nickels — the price of admittance. Quincannon said, “No, I’m looking for someone,” and added a coin to the litter on the tray. The old woman nodded and grinned, revealing toothless gums. It was a statement, he thought sourly, she had heard a hundred times before. Blind Annie’s, like the other three he’d entered, was a democratic resort that catered to Caucasian “dude fiends” — well-dressed ladies and diamond-studded gentlemen — as well as to Chinese coolies with twenty-cent yenshee habits. Concerned friends and relatives would come looking whenever one of these casual, and in many cases not so casual, hop-smokers failed to return at an appointed time.

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