"What are you talking about?" Steve took another step into the office, a puzzled smile lighting his face.

Shaking his head with a pleased and bewildered grin, Mike raised his eyes from the desktop and chuckled. "Oh, ah, nothing… You, ah, you can go… go on your date." He waved ineffectually towards the door with his right hand. "I've gotta get outa here myself."

Shaking his own head, continuing to smile as he studied the older man, Steve crossed to the corner of the desk. "No no no, you're not gonna leave me hanging…"

"What do you mean?" Mike asked, all innocence.

With a low dry chuckle and cocking his head, Steve's eyes narrowed. "You can't just say 'That's it' and tell me you figured something out about our Mr. Laudanum and then just send me on my way without telling me. What is it?"

Still smiling cryptically, Mike glanced down and swallowed heavily. "Look, ah, I have some digging to do before I say anything. I could be totally wrong about this and I want to make sure I know what I'm talking about before I open my mouth and make a complete ass of myself." He closed the file he had been reading and started to roll his sleeves down. "So you go on your date, and I'll fill you in tomorrow if I think I'm right about this, okay? Is that a deal?"

His features contorting in a peeved and almost petulant scowl, Steve studied the older man who got to his feet behind the desk, continuing to grin under raised eyebrows. "Deal. But –" he said forcefully, raising an admonishing finger, "I want you to tell me anyway, even if you think you're wrong. Okay?"

With a curt nod and a chuckle, Mike snapped, "Okay. Now get outa here, go have fun."

Steve took a step towards the door again and stopped. "Where are you going?"

"The library," Mike said with a laugh as he shrugged his suit jacket on.

# # # # #

Mike shouldered the front door of his house open, leaning across the threshold to set a stack of books on the floor then turned to start the long trek back to the car. The second trip involved a smaller pile of books and a large paper bag that he balanced on top.

Less than ten minutes later he was sitting at the kitchen table with his reading glasses on, one of the books propped open in Jeannie's cookbook stand on the far side of the table, a pad and pen at the ready, and an open beer can and a piping hot calzone in front of him. It was going to be a long night.

# # # # #

Putting a hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver at his ear, Steve watched his partner come through the Homicide office door and cross slowly towards his office, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. "I was wondering when you were gonna drag yourself in this morning," he chuckled, rewarded with a scowl as the older man gingerly slid the wet topcoat off and hung it on the coat rack.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Mike said through another yawn, "but has it really been raining every day for the last month?"

Sergeant Norm Haseejian looked up from his desk across the room and laughed. "Nah, it just seems like it."

Trying to shake off the lethargy, Mike slowly circled his desk, putting the .38 in the drawer before taking off his suitcoat and dropping it over the back of the chair. Steve finished the phone call and got to his feet, laughing quietly as he crossed to the inner office in time to see his partner slump wearily into his chair and yawn once more.

"Did you get any sleep last night?"

Mike shook his head, more to keep himself awake than in answer. "I think I fell asleep at the kitchen table as the sun was coming up… I'm not sure."

"And you thought I was gonna come in with half a head," the younger man muttered as he sunk onto the guest chair. "Please don't tell me you spent the night in the library? I didn't think that was allowed." He chuckled and watched as the older man stared at him in feigned annoyance, a look he knew so well.

"No, smartass, I took the books out and brought them home."

"You have a library card?"

"I have a badge. Works just as well."

Steve laughed. "So, are you ready to tell me what little nugget I unlocked for you last night?"

Mike nodded, yawning again. "After a coffee," he managed to get out. "I seriously need one of Norm's paint-peeling coffees this morning."

"I heard that!" came the affronted voice from the bullpen and everyone laughed.

"I'll get it," Steve chortled as he got up and crossed back out to the coffee table, fishing a couple of dimes from his pocket and dropping them into the kitty can. When he returned to the inner office, Mike was sitting as he had left him, with his eyes closed. Steve put one of the mugs on the desk with a loud thud and Mike jerked involuntarily, his eyes snapping open.

"Oh, ah, thanks," he mumbled, putting both hands around the mug and bringing it to his lips, pausing briefly to inhale the strong aroma before taking a big gulp. Steve flinched slightly; the coffee was very hot but Mike didn't seem to notice.

Closing his eyes and lowering the cup, Mike sighed loudly. "God, I needed that."

Trying not to laugh too loudly, Steve took a sip of his own coffee before asking, "So what was it I said that set you off on your…" he was about to say wild goose chase but thought better of it, "…your odyssey last night?"

"You don't remember?" Mike took another big gulp of the questionable coffee.

"I said you were crimping my style… what on earth –?"

"Crimp," Mike said sharply. "Most people would've said 'cramping my style' but you said 'crimp'. Why?"

Steve's brow furrowed and he inclined his head. After a few seconds of silent thought, he shook his head. "I have no idea. I think I've always said crimp. It's right either way, I'm pretty sure."

Starting to smile, Mike nodded. "Oh, it is. But it was your choice of 'crimp' that did it for me."

"Why?"

"Well, you're not old enough to remember, and before you say anything remotely sarcastic, neither am I," Mike said with a pointed stare, "but crimps were a big part of San Francisco history… along the Barbary Coast."

Steve cocked his head and his eyes narrowed. "Are you talking about what I think you're talking about?" he asked slowly.

With an almost enigmatic smile, Mike nodded. He knew the younger man was a curious and voracious reader and would no doubt have knowledge of the seemier side of The City's past.

Steve leaned forward slowly and put his mug on the desk, meeting the older man's eyes evenly. He knew only too well that his veteran partner did not engage in flights of fancy; this would be a carefully considered theory that he knew he would need to evaluate.

But still….

He leaned back slowly, letting his eyes drift upwards, and he started to shake his head slowly. "Mike, you can't be serious… I mean, do you actually think there's a Shanghai bar operating in San Francisco again… in this day and age…?"

Mike's smile never wavered, and now he nodded slowly and deliberately. "Yes, I do." He gestured vaguely towards the bullpen. "Close the door, will ya?"

The younger man got up and, stretching to his left, got his fingertips on the knob and flipped the door closed before sitting again.

"I did a lot of reading last night, about the crimps - James Kelly, Johnny Devine….. the bars… the streets…. They preyed on men who were alone, who were down on their luck, who had no family and no friends. Men that nobody would miss if they just… disappeared."

"Yeah but, Mike, those were the days when you could kidnap someone and put them on a ship and send them to China or god knows where and they couldn't jump ship or they'd drown or be eaten by sharks or whatever… And if I remember correctly, the invention of the steamship effectively killed the Shanghai business, didn't it?"

"It did," Mike agreed with a curt nod. "But Steve, think about it. Everything fits. We've got the body of a guy who no one seems to care is missing, let alone dead, his body is found loaded with whiskey, absinthe and laudanum, which actually is the… cocktail, or whatever you want to call it, the crimps used to use to incapacitate their marks before kidnapping them –"

"But we found Mr. Laudanum floating in the ocean…"

"I know, but maybe he jumped overboard in an attempt to get away." Mike took a deep breath, then held up a hand when Steve opened his mouth to speak again. "Hear me out, Steve. What if… let's just say I'm on the right track here, for arguments sake, okay?" He stared at the younger man, eyebrows arched.

Slowly Steve nodded. "Okay, for arguments sake…"

"You know as well as I do that this city attracts a lot of lost, lonely, vulnerable people who come here for all kinds of reasons. They came here in the sixties for the peace and the love and a lot of them stayed and a lot of them still arrive every day. You know that." The younger man nodded. "And a lot of them are alone, they're runaways or drug addicts or people with a past they just want to get away from… people that no one will miss now or in the future.

"And there are still a lot of ships out there, ships from other countries, some of which never go into port anywhere, who need a continuous supply of manpower to keep them going. The pay is lousy or non-existent, the working conditions are sub-human… So what do they do? They use slave labor… they use what they can get.

"So suppose someone here thought, well, Shanghai'ing worked before, why wouldn't it work now? As long as they can get their hands on able-bodied men that no one cares about, that no one'll miss, it's an all-night market in this city, isn't it?"

Steve had sat back slowly, allowing his partner's studied and well-crafted explanation to sink in. The more the older man talked, the more plausible the seemingly wild speculation had become.

Mike could see that the logic of his argument was beginning to find fertile ground. A small smile began to build again. "I want you to do me a favor, Steve. I want you to get in touch with the Coast Guard and the police departments in all the counties up and down the coast around here and ask them if they've had any unidentified bodies wash up in the past year or so. If I'm right about this, our Mr. Laudanum might not be the only poor bastard who didn't want to spend his last days as slave labor aboard ship somewhere in the middle of the ocean."