Opening pages of "King Kurowski and the Forbidden Temple", published in Two-Fisted Crime Tales, by James Corcoran

King Kurowski looked around the office and chewed on the sour butt of a cheap cigar. He had made a few calls, cashed in a few favors, and the results were before him - leaning insolently against his bookcase, big mud-caked boots propped up on a foot stool, a gang of rough characters ready for anything. They were chatting amiably, men who knew each other well. In all of New York - possibly in all of America - there was no finer a group of troubleshooters. These guys, Kurowski thought, were the best of the best.

Ace Bronsky was a professional killer, a tough little man out of Eastern Europe with a brace of silenced pistols and a face as hard as a block of Baltic amber. Some people had done some bad things to people he loved, once. Those people had died, one by one, and when they were all dead, Bronsky took up oil painting. He was quietly talking about police procedure with Seamus O'Malley, a retired NYPD officer who put the "beat" in beat cop. His reflexes were quicker than men half his age, his knuckles twice as scarred, and at working over two-bit plug-uglies he had no equal.

Swede Torvaldson was a big, bluff Norwegian farmer, not a scintillating conversationalist, but just the guy to have at your back if you were surrounded by Silvershirts. Absolutely loyal, refreshingly soft-spoken, Swede would go down swinging, if he went down at all. Kurowski scowled and pointed with his cigar, and Swede's boots slid sheepishly off the furniture.

Lounging on the couch was Freddie Ratkowski, the guy who worked the angles. A natural-born grifter, Kurowski had rescued him from a scam that had gone south and earned his undying gratitude. Now Ratkowski is the man who got called in when there was a deal to be made - or broken. He was deep in conversation with The Brain. Oswald "The Brain" McDoon was a master of disguise. He was a quick study in the science of "reading people", and an expert mimic. He was also a bona-fide genius, well-read in a dozen disciplines. Where he came from, or how his mind worked, no man knew.

A wiry-haired Italian was chain-smoking in the corner. He was Luigi Palermo, ex-Army intelligence, a man who could calmly improvise gruesome and effective implements of destruction out of the most random materials at hand - a flamethrower from an assortment of garden tools, a gas can, and a busted ceiling fan; hand grenades from horse manure, moustache wax, rusty nails and his own urine.

Kurowski was satisfied. It was a hell of a team. "Well," he said, "it looks like our last member is a no-show, so let's get started."

As if she had planned it, Addie Dillingham chose that moment to make her grand entrance. And it was grand, at least to the men who eyed her curvaceous form respectfully. Addie Dillingham played the hussy, but she was a straight-arrow Catholic girl at heart. With her deadly combination of heart-stopping good looks and savage eye for faults in the deepest foundation of the human heart, Addie worked wonders where brute force and simple guile had already failed miserably. She was part of the team and an equal. And she was always, always late.

"I miss anything, King?" she asked innocently, taking a seat between Ratkowski and McDoon.

"Not yet, gorgeous, but there's still time," the detective replied, casually tossing her a small statuette from his desk. "Recognize that?" he asked.

Addie turned the figurine over in her hands. "Beautiful," she said.

"Chichimec, I'd say by the fluid lines," McDoon said softly, "late Toltec or early Aztec, since it is carved out of jadeite. Probably a representation of Tlalocateuctli, wouldn't you say?"

Ratkowski rolled his eyes. "What an egghead," he muttered.

Kurowski shrugged. "Well, whatever the hell it is, it came out of a lost temple in Guatemala."

"You mean 'formerly lost'" O'Malley said. Kurowski shook his head.

"I mean lost, you wiseacre. Lock stock and barrel, along with some friends of mine from the university. And we're going to find them, one way or another…"