Love Under Fire

Leo takes a job at a nightclub, telling the people who hire him that he is a country boy who ran up debts he cannot pay. On one of his first nights he gets on the wrong side of the floor supervisor and, almost by accident, does the general manager a favor. She runs the club and has a reputation for being severe. She also has a chronic illness, and Leo, who has quick hands and an unusual memory, treats it with acupuncture, which is how he earns her trust. The debts are part of a cover story. Leo is twenty, a top student at the police academy, and the club belongs to one of three men who between them run a criminal organization. He was sent in to help bring the whole thing down. Inside the club he picks out a fake policeman, wins a gambling contest against a rival gang, and handles enough trouble for the owners that he is made the club's vice president. The boss above the general manager takes a liking to him as well. He and the general manager fall in love, and on both sides it is real. Around the same time Leo notices that the things that have happened to him since his first night in the club fit a pattern, as if someone has been arranging them, and he starts trying to find out who. He gathers evidence and works out a plan for taking the organization in one sweep at the harbor. He knows that if it works the general manager loses everything, and that she will find out then that he is a police officer.