Synopsis
Volunteering at a local soup kitchen, Polo gets to know Scratchy, a self-described "sidewalk architect." With a Food for Vets sign in hand, Scratchy spends his days at his "office," a freeway off-ramp in downtown San Francisco, where certain drivers are exceptionally generous. Scratchy asks Polo to check the license-plate numbers of the charitably minded individuals, and Polo comes up with a multimillionaire shipowner and a mysterious ex-CIA agent. But before he can give Scratchy the information, the man is dead, the apparent victim of a hit-and-run.
The police have little interest in the accidental death of a homeless man, so at the urging of the soup kitchen's operator, Father Tomasello, Polo decides to investigate. What he finds takes him up against the Dragon Head of the Chinese Mafia, whose connections with the shipping magnate and the ex-CIA agent threaten not only Polo but his friends and family, too.
Reviews
Going down smooth and easy, the ninth Nick Polo adventure (following Vintage Polo, 1993) begins when a street person named Scratchy asks the San Francisco PI to check out three license plate numbers. Soon Scratchy is killed in a suspicious hit-and-run accident, leaving behind a lot of cash and a near-perfect fake Rolex watch. The license plates lead Polo to a member of the city's board of supervisors, a powerful Chinatown gangster and an ex-CIA agent whom Polo knows from his days on the police force. It's pretty clear that Scratchy died because he stumbled across some kind of smuggling operation-and that Polo will tie together the three suspects into a tidy little bundle. Nonetheless Kennealy keeps a firm grip on his readers with a smart pace and a light, intelligent tone that's never cute. We're also treated to intriguing lore about investigative procedures in the electronic age, scenic and historic bits and a lively background romance.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
As a favor to his homeless acquaintance Scratchy, Nick Polo agrees to run down a few license plate numbers without knowing why. Big mistake. By the time Polo has identified the three drivers Scratchy was interested in--would-be San Francisco mayor Lester Maurence, Chinatown gang boss Henry Lee, and dirty-dealing ex-cop Al Davis--a car has backed over Scratchy, Polo's already started to get phone threats suggesting what a good idea it would be if he forgot about the case, and (just to make sure he takes the hint) his longtime tenant Mrs. Damonte is nearly killed in a not-so- mysterious fire at his place. The police aren't likely to find the perps anytime this century--the inspector on the hit-and-run is indifferent, the sergeant on the arson inept, and a pair of cops from Internal Affairs interested mainly in harassing Polo--so Polo determines to run down his only lead: a world-class fake Rolex that Scratchy pawned for $650 the day before he died. The search will lead Polo from friendly drinks with his Uncle Dominic, a prudent bookie, to an evening's brisk exercise with his burglar friend Hootsie; but since Kennealy (Vintage Polo, 1993, etc.), as usual, isn't much interested in coming up with murder suspects, the ending won't elevate your pulse rate dangerously. A little of this, a little of that, not too much of anything: a middling entry in this middling series. Watch out for Polo's incessant editorial asides, though; he's in danger of getting as sententious, in his good-humored way, as Andy Rooney. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Scratchy, a San Francisco streetperson, asks private eye Nick Polo to run a license plate for him, contending that the car's owner is an especially generous supporter of his panhandling enterprise. It's good business, after all, to know your best customers by name. Polo, who volunteers at a soup kitchen Scratchy frequents, is skeptical but complies. Before he can relay the message to his client, Scratchy is dead, the victim of a hit-and-run driver. The plate Scratchy gave Polo traced to one Henry Lee, the Chinatown godfather, prompting the sleuth to keep poking around. When an arsonist torches Polo's home and nearly kills Mrs. Damonte, Polo's tenant and surrogate grandmother, it's obvious Scratchy's death was no accident. The ninth Polo mystery is a typically solid entry in the series--well written, plausible, and featuring, in Mrs. Damonte, one of the most enjoyable supporting characters in the genre. Kennealy is a real-life private eye so the details of surveillance and information gathering lend credibility to his mazelike plots. Wes Lukowsky
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