“Any idea where Maureen might have gone?” Jason stood at the door to the priest’s room of the second floor of the rectory, wearing a pair of flannel pajamas that belonged to the late Father Milligan.

“Truth is, she’s a troubled young lady from a broken home,” Sister Mildred admitted while wringing her hands. “Her father was hittin’ the bottle, and hittin’ the poor lass’s mother, too. He was gone for long periods a time, leavin’ the mom and the young’uns with nothin’, and the woman had a nervous breakdown. Then Maureen starts actin’ out, hanging out late, gone boy crazy. So I brought her here ta the shelter so’s I could keep an eye on her, but it’s been a struggle. Ain’t been easy ‘t all.”

“Let me get dressed.” Jason dashed into his room and changed into his suit, the one with the bullet holes in the left pocket. He slipped the sap into his right jacket pocket, and a .38 snubbie into the left. He put the other snubbie in his right front pants pocket, and the palm sap in the left.

After putting on his fedora, he stepped outside and marched down the steps, across the lawn to the dormitory building. Followed by Sister Mildred, he walked through the ground floor, which was a gym with a boxing ring in the center of the room, plus an assortment of heavy bags, speed bags, double-end bags, medicine balls, and jump ropes lining the walls. Looking up at the ropes surrounding the canvas boxing ring, he wondered if he was ready to step up into the ring and hoped he didn’t end up embarrassing himself and discrediting the shelter by getting his butt kicked.

Jason went up the stairs to the men’s dorm and flipped on the lights. “All right, everybody, I’m sorry to wake you up, but it’s about Maureen. She’s gone, and Sister Mildred and I are worried about her. Anybody here have any ideas? Any? And nobody’s making any judgments. It’s about her safety, and we’re past the point of niceties.”

In his time working with the men of the rescue mission, he noticed that they roamed far and wide, and although they might be drunk, they were still keen observers. Knowing the men at a shelter was like having a network of invisible spies spread out across the city, who witnessed everything, but drew scant attention from those they watched.

The men rubbed their eyes as they sat up in their bunks, squinting because of the bright lights overhead. Many of the men had been asleep long enough that they were fully sober.

“Anyone seen Maureen anywhere?” Jason asked. “Her aunt and I are worried about her.”

One of the men toward the back of the room waved his hand. “I might a seen her go into a tenement on Fairlead, above Kerry’s Pub. It’s a rough patch there, though, run by the Rowdy Murphys.”

The Rowdy Murphys were one of the many Irish gangs in the city, and although the Irish were a group of people who grew up drinking and fighting, the gang took it to a whole new level, a crazy, dangerous level.

“Thank you, Brother Jack.” The sister said with a nod, but her brow furrowed even deeper with worry. She turned to speak to Jason. “The father had a car that ya can drive. It was his one luxury.”

Jason followed the short, heavy sister, who trudged down the stairs. She led him to a garage beside the rectory, where she motioned for Jason to help her lift the hinged door. Going to the work table at the side of the room, she reached into a small drawer and removed a set of keys.

“You drive,” she said, and started to move around to the passenger side.

“Sister Mildred,” Jason said loudly to get her attention. “It’s pretty dicey there, and I’m going to be smashing teeth. I can’t afford to be worried about you.”

“I can take care a me self,” she protested.

“How many guns do you have?” Jason asked. “And other weapons?”

The nun reluctantly closed the passenger door and stood back. “I’m just worried. Go ‘head and do what ya gotta do.”

Jason hopped into the driver’s seat and backed up the car, then entered the road and sped off in the direction of the tenement that Brother Jack mentioned. He saw the rotund figure of Sister Mildred step out of the garage and watch him as he sped off, still wringing her hands. The further he drove, he saw the buildings become a little more rundown, a little grittier, until he reached streets where laundry hung outside apartment windows, and raggedy children ran around the sidewalks. At the sight of Kerry’s Pub, he turned the car around in a three-point turn.

After wrapping his scarf around his lower face to conceal his identity, Jason got out, and was approached by a young tough, a redheaded, freckled teen who was missing an upper front tooth.

“I’ll watch yer car fer a nickel, make sure nothin’ happens ta it,” the kid said, sizing up Jason as he spoke. He held out his hand expectantly.

The young man’s offer to watch his car was an implied threat—if Jason didn’t cough up a nickel he was going to come back to find his car smashed up, but Jason was not about to give the young tough a nickel and have him take off into the tenement complex. Jason pulled out a dollar, which caused the young man’s eyes to grow wide.

“I’m looking for a young, slim redhead, hardly out of her teens,” Jason told the ruffian. “I’m coming back here with her, and if you’re still here, and the car is untouched, this dollar is yours.”

“Ah yeah,” and the young man’s face twisted into a leering smile. “She’s a sweet piece of a…”

“Watch it,” Jason cautioned him, and fixed him with a stern look.

The young tough looked around him, not wanting to get identified as a rat. “Upstairs. Right above the pub on the third floor. Ya might want ta gimme the dollar now, ‘cause ya might not make it back out.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Jason assured him. “I’ll be back.”

Reaching into his pocket, Jason removed his sap and held it low behind his right thigh. His left hand gripped the .38 snubnose revolver in his left jacket pocket, which was full of burnt holes at the front end where he’d emptied the revolver into the chest of the mandrill at the speakeasy. Jason was prepared to do it again.

He climbed up the steps, and teens smoking and drinking from a clay jar gave him questioning looks. One of the hoodlums stepped in front of the stairway to block it off.

“Ya gotta pay up if you wanna go upstairs.” The kid glared at Jason with his arms crossed over his chest, which he puffed out to make himself look larger and intimidating.

Without breaking stride, Jason launched a straight kick with his left foot, landing with the toe of his wingtip into the groin of the young tow-headed youth, who yelped and crawled over the steps as Jason hurried through the door.

The foyer was full of kids running around screaming, and one man sat on the floor, leaning his back against the wall, sleeping off his whiskey. The elevator reeked of urine and vomit, so Jason strode past it to the stairs, not to mention he didn’t want to come up to the third floor and find himself in an enclosed space, surrounded by the Rowdy Murphys. Jason moved up the stairs briskly with short steps, passing several drunks slumped against the railing, a young couple making out, and a toddler peeing in one of the corners.

Jason came out onto the third floor, and was about to step into the hallway, when the lights went dim, and he lost track of who he was or where he was for a moment. When he came to, he was on the linoleum floor on his hands and knees, and a kick caught him in the ribs. Some hoodlum had clubbed him the moment he entered the hall, dazing him.

Jason knew the Irish, and their fondness for cudgels and beating out someone’s brains, so he’d resorted to an old trick that Irish stick fighters used during the “faction wars,” where gangs of men armed with shillelaghs, sometimes as many as several hundred strong, squared off in senseless battles that left many men dead or permanently brain damaged. The trick was to stuff straw under one’s hat to serve as crude protection against blows to the head, sort of a low-budget helmet. In this case, though, Jason wrapped a towel around his head before putting on his hat, and the trick had saved him. He was dazed, but if it weren’t for the towel under his hat, he would have been knocked unconscious.

The next kick shot up toward Jason’s exposed ribcage, as a group of toughs approached, excited at the prospect of stomping someone. Jason rolled away from the kick, and swung with the sap, striking the thug’s inner shin with the bulging mass of depleted uranium, which caused him to howl in pain. Jason came up to his knees and swung the sap backhanded, smashing the inner knee of the tough’s other leg, and he crumbled to the floor. Once the ruffian dropped to his knees, he and Jason were eye to eye, and Jason saw the sawed-off pool cue that the guy clubbed him with.

“Try this,” Jason shouted in anger, and threw the sap across the hoodlum’s temple, not caring if he killed the punk or not.

The pool cue dropped from the tough’s hand and rattled on the floor, followed by the guy hitting the floor face-first, but the other three ruffians were nearly on top of Jason, eager to join in the stomping of an outsider. As Jason rose to his feet he threw the sap upward, catching the thug on his left with a flat-end blow to the crotch. As he doubled over, Jason used him as a shield against the other two, who corrected and re-approached Jason. Now that Jason was on his feet, he dodged one haymaker and struck with the sap against the back of the young tough’s skull, sending him headlong onto the floor. The third ruffian tried to kick Jason’s groin, but Jason twisted to the side and chopped with the thin edge into the guy’s thigh, which made his leg go numb. Jason then brought the sap up in a rising powerhouse blow that blasted the man’s face and knocked him onto his back.

A door opened, followed by a guy in his twenties looking out with a scarred face. Jason took off at a run, and slammed the door with a front kick, throwing it into the tough’s face and knocking him backward into the room. Momentum carried Jason into the apartment, where the walls were lined with chairs and couches full of members of the Rowdy Murphys, all of whom had glassy eyes.

From the corner of his eye he saw one of the toughs, who was raising a bottle of whiskey to his lips, suddenly stare in surprise. Maureen lay on the couch with her head in the guy’s lap and her blouse unbuttoned, not to mention her skirt hiked up to mid-thigh. Spying the hooligan’s rough hand on Maureen’s thigh, Jason swung the sap with all his might, shattering the bottle and sending whiskey and shards of glass into the tough’s face. The spray of glass and booze swept out, blowing into the faces of two other ruffians seated next to the couch.

It was a free for all, and Jason was vastly outnumbered, but he was in a righteous fury. He threw the sap into the mouth of the guy who held Maureen in his lap. The blow to the mouth wasn’t deadly, but it was an ugly, vicious blow that tended to demoralize anyone else who might want trouble and took the fight right out of a man. The mist of booze descended on Maureen, rousing her from a stupor. Jason threw the sap left and right, then crouched down low to avoid haymakers targeting his head, while blowing through kneecaps.

Jason came out of his crouch, when someone caught him from behind in a bearhug. Whoever held him was a huge man, with a strong grip that threatened to crush Jason like a toad under a truck’s tires and send his guts out of his mouth. Jason struck down with the sap, aiming for the hulking man’s thigh, but the lug twisted away from the blows, and the two of them danced.

The .38 special revolver was still in Jason’s grasp. He slipped his finger over the trigger as the big lout behind him threw him around, and other gang members tried to get in free shots while Jason’s arms were pinned to his side. Jason twisted his hand and aimed backward. The little snubbie boomed in his pocket, which flared outward in a burst of fire. The room was still, as the toughs immediately recognized the threat of a gun. The big brute holding Jason relaxed his grip, and a whine escaped his lips as he staggered backward clutching his gut. It looked like the slug had entered at the side of the bladder and exited through the inner thigh after plowing through his pelvis. The hulking man couldn’t stand and sank to his butt on the floor.

“Wha?” Maureen asked sleepily, sensing that something had just happened, but wasn’t certain exactly what.

Jason drew the snubbie out of his pocket and aimed it at the toughs, who backed away from him. He dropped the sap into his coat pocket. “Get up, Maureen.” He curled the fingers of his free hand upward. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”

She was slow to rouse herself, so Jason was forced to help her up with his right hand. He crouched down at the knees and threw the drunk beauty over his right shoulder, all the while keeping the revolver at the ready in case anyone tried anything. He wheeled around quickly to make certain no one closed on him, but the sudden motion caused Maureen to vomit, and send her half-digested spaghetti splashing over the floor and the back of his pants leg.

“Yer dead, fuckin’ dead!” the gang leader yelled, pointing a trembling finger at Jason, but he mumbled the words due to the fact that several teeth were knocked out. His face was cut and bleeding from the spray of broken glass that Jason sent into his face.

Jason thought of the punk putting his filthy hand on Maureen’s thigh, and he shot the tough in the gut. Was it because Jason wanted it to be his hand on Maureen’s freckled white thigh? He dismissed the thought—he had work to do.

Jason went through the open door, aiming his gun at anyone who might appear in the hall, but the residents knew not to interfere in the gang’s business, so they stayed inside with their doors locked. Jason hurried down the stairs, past the spot where the toddler peed, past the drunks, and down to the ground floor, where the hoodlums he passed on the way up started to close on him, until they saw the gun in his hand.

Grateful for the fact that he was in good shape, Jason dashed to the car, still carrying Maureen over his shoulder. The redheaded kid with the missing tooth looked up in surprise, but quickly opened the door so Jason could drop Maureen into the passenger seat. Jason pulled out the dollar bill and handed it to the guy, whose eyes grew wide. Jason got behind the wheel and sped off, when a group of hoodlums came out to the street and a shotgun boomed.

They were home free, except for one problem: Maureen stretched out and put her face into his lap.