Goodey's Last Stand: A Hard Boiled Mystery (Joe Goodey) by Charles Alverson

find out who had punctured Tina D’Oro. I didn’t think I’d find out in this nest of tiny Chinese delinquents, so I told Fong I’d see him around and left the apartment There was somebody named Irma—Miss Irma Springler—who, I thought, might be interesting to have a talk with.
    I came down the front steps, intending to walk over to Broadway and Columbus. I pointed my nose in that direction, but as I was passing Lum Kee’s shop, I heard a loud hissing noise. I knew it wasn’t me, so I looked in through the doorway. There was the old crook himself lurking in the shadows and sounding like a leaking gas main.
    “ Sssssss , Mr. Goodey,” he said, making a beckoning motion. “One moment, please. Come in, come in.”
    He hadn’t called me Mr. Goodey since he’d decided I wasn’t needed anymore, and I’d decided I still liked the apartment. “What do you want, you old bandit?” I asked, walking into the shop. Lum Kee was standing behind the counter, wringing his hands like the mother in East Lynne. He was obviously suffering great mental pain, I was pleased to see.
    “Mr. Goodey, Mr. Goodey,” he moaned, “I’m so glad to see you back. You must help me. That nephew of mine.”
    “What about him?” I asked, prolonging the torture.
    “He’s trying to ruin me,” the old fraud crooned, “filling my lovely apartment with the dregs of Grant Avenue. Drug addicts, prostitutes, gangsters. You must help me get him out. I’ll do anything you say. I’ll even reduce your rent if only you’ll help me.”
    “How much will you cut my rent if I give Fong the bum’s rush?” I wanted to find out just how anxious Lum was.
    His bright little eyes clouded over with cunning. I could almost hear the figures brushing past one another as they tumbled through his head.
    “If it will help,” I said, “I’ll wait while you go get your abacus.” He didn’t even hear me. The magic subject of money had wafted him to a different, higher plane. But he was coming back again, and he fixed me with an eager look.
    “Ten dollars a month,” he said as if he were offering me the Kohinoor diamond, gift wrapped. “I’ll cut your rent to $120 a month if you persuade my nephew to move somewhere else. That’s a very good deal, Mr. Goodey. An apartment like that—those marvelous views—is worth at least—”
    “Two twenty-five?” I asked. “Do you think that would be a fair rent to charge, say, someone from out of town, someone from across the sea who didn’t know what a rotten little fleabag like that was worth? Let’s say a not-so-distant relative who’d come to San Francisco to become a man of God.”
    Lum Kee’s mouth went hard. He knew I had tumbled his little con. He didn’t say anything, just crossed his flabby old arms across his ink-stained black vest and stared at me.
    “Honestly, Lum Kee,” I said, “I could understand you trying to cheat me, not only an infidel dog but a copper. But to try to do your own sister Pansy’s youngest boy, that really shocks me.”
    “One fifteen,” he said, cutting through my bullshit in the only lan guage he trusted, “and I’ll paint the whole apartment for you. That’s my bottom offer.”
    “Don’t tempt me to tell you what to do with your bottom offer, Lum Kee,” I said. “The kid stays, and you get the same old $130 a month. If he wants to raise turkeys up there, it’s okay by me. I’ll take that extra ninety-five bucks you charged him out of next month’s rent, and if you think you can get any place waving that phony contract around, go ahead and try it.”
    I left him leaning against his counter, making a mouth like a broken piggy bank, and started walking downhill toward Broadway. I didn’t expect Lum to accept defeat gracefully, but he’d be quiet for a while, thinking up a counterattack. God knows what he’d come up with next. Maybe a typhoid epidemic.

 
    8
    It was getting well on toward evening as I reached Broadway and turned toward the hub of North