Interface

Ten

The office at 858 Bush Street was just large enough for a steel safe as squat as a hydrant, a table, a desk, three straight-backed chairs splattered with the paint of ancient refurbishments, and a bottled water dispenser. The single door opened on the garage floor. Beside it was a tall square inset table with a stool in front of it. The table was just large enough for a time-punch machine and a cumbersome antique cash register loaded with silvery curliques.

The office itself smelled of oil and gasoline and dampness and old socks. Walter Hariss was behind the desk; with his pearl-grey hand-stitched suit and two-dollar cigars he was as incongruous as Spode in Woolworth’s.

“Missed him?” he demanded. Anger reddened his firm round face.

“We kept the fucker in the city,” grunted Kolinski.

“All he has to do is rent a car—”

“No driver’s license, according to Fargo.”

Hariss shrugged meaty shoulders under expensive tailoring. Restless, he stood, went to the door, peered out into the garage. He could see the dark polished length of his Cadillac, with the top of Gus Rizzato’s head showing behind the steering wheel.

“Steal a car, then?” he suggested.

“And drive it where?”

Hariss turned back. His expensive arm waved to indicate the wide world. Kolinski shook his head emphatically.

“Can you think of anywhere more vulnerable, once somebody’s got a make on you, than behind the wheel of an automobile on a freeway?” A rare sunny smile twitched his lips. His arms came up holding an imaginary machinegun. He sprayed the room with it as his mouth said, “Phtoo-phtoo-phtoo-phtoo-phtoo-phtoophtoo,” then added “Fwoom!” His eyes watched the car rolling and burning.

“We don’t have the manpower to cover all four freeways out of this city,” objected Hariss.

“Docker doesn’t know that.”

“And if we did spot him — what about our dope? What about the hundred-seventy-five gee?”

“Docker can’t take the chance that we won’t cut him down.”

“Then what will he do? You know a fugitive’s psychology better than I do, this is a new—”

“You’re a fucking delicate flower, I know. He’ll hole up. Head for an airport. Rent a private plane...”

“Fargo said he’s got all the small airfields in the bay area covered.”

“You trust that fucker.” It was said in a tone of amazed disbelief.

“Did I say I trusted him?”

Hariss might have elaborated on his methods of safeguard against Neil Fargo’s possible perfidy, but a woman had come to the door with a ticket in her hand. Kolinski looked past her, saw the door of the restroom shut and the light on, so took her ticket himself and ran it through the time-punch. His deceptively Neanderthal features were pleasant.

“Ninety-five cents, ma’am,” he beamed.

He gave her back her nickel and handed the ticket to the only car-park attendant who was on the floor during the slack midday hours, and who had just emerged from the john. He was a black-haired kid with a wiseass face, wearing a white jacket grimy around the cuffs and creased across the seat from sliding in and out of cars. He went off to the vertical manlift to the upper floor where her car was stashed.

The woman wandered vaguely toward the cigarette machine. After staring thoughtfully at her back for a moment, Kolinski went back into the office.

“Nice ass on that broad.”

“We’re out a quarter of a mil in heroin, and you’re staring at women’s backsides.” Hariss’ voice was filled with distaste at the wanton vulgarity.

“A woman’s ass might find us Docker if he’s holed up in town.”

Hariss listened intently as the angular bony man told him what Robin had come up with concerning Docker and his sexual habits. Listening, Hariss could not stay still: he perched on the corner of the desk, sat behind it, stood, fidgeted, cracked his knuckles all together with a swift palms-out shoving motion of both interlaced hands.

“How sure are you of Robin?” he asked finally.

“She didn’t make it up, if that’s what you mean. She supplied details about Docker himself.”

The woman with the nice ass got into her Saab and left. The dark-haired boy headed for the candy machine beside the office door.

“I meant, how sure are you that she won’t get the information and then hold out on you?”

Kolinski’s eyes gleamed as if with remembered lust. “No way. I own that bitch.”

“I hope so,” said Hariss equably. “Remember, I am playing for much higher stakes in this than a kilo of heroin. Roberta Stayton is my entrée to her father’s commercial empire.”

“I’ve told you before and I say it again, Walt, that old bastard is nobody to mess with. I worked for him—”

“I didn’t,” said Hariss drily. “Through your persistence and vindictive nature, we... possess Stayton’s daughter. He does not yet know this. Once he does, he will not know who I am until I have been legally granted... certain rights in Stayton Industries.”

“He knows who I am.” Kolinski’s voice was glum. “All he has to do is see me.” He suddenly slammed a frustrated fist into his open palm, and his voice became a rant. “Goddam that fucking Docker! It was all so easy, right now we should be counting hundred-dollar bills...”

“Do you really think Docker planned this alone?”

“There isn’t anybody else.”

“There’s Neil Fargo.” His heavy features were judicial; he looked like a man who would make laws rather than break them. His eyes became suddenly murderous without a muscle changing in his face. “If Fargo is mixed up in this hijack...”

“He ain’t been breaking his ass to shower us with information, has he?” Kolinski checked his watch. “One phone call, to say Docker doesn’t have a car or driver’s license — and it’s goddam near two o’clock...”

Hariss nodded, a somewhat worried look on his face. He drummed thoughtful fingers on the desktop. The dark-haired youth started into the office, munching his candy bar, checked at whatever he saw in their faces or sensed in the room’s atmosphere, and went away hurriedly.

A look that could almost have been fear flitted across the grey-haired importer’s heavy features.

“There’s something else, Alex.”

“About Fargo?”

“About Docker. A... pattern of erratic behavior that... that’s worrisome. We have assumed that Docker, realizing the exchange point between the money and the heroin was our weakest spot because we worked through agents rather than being there ourselves, decided to take both the money and the heroin. Correct?”

“Correct,” said Kolinski.

“Then let us follow his actions for the last six hours. Before Addison arrives, he attacks and kills Marquez. He now has what he supposedly wants. Does he leave? No. He waits for Addison, knocks him cold — but does not kill him also. Why?”

“Leaving him for a fall guy for the Marquez murder,” said Kolinski promptly.

“He needed no fall guy until he was seen. Nobody except Neil Fargo, up to that point, knew what he looked like. Now Addison does. Then he goes into Franklin Square, talks with a junkie there, and sends him up to the flat also. Then, almost assuredly, he phones a tip to the police about the dead body in the flat.”

“Setting up another possible fall guy.”

“Except Addison is still alive to testify the junkie isn’t the killer.”

He paused to light a cigar, turning it evenly in the flame of his lighter. He talked around the rolled, saliva-wet leaf, then used it as a pointer to jab home his points.

“See what I mean by worrisome? It makes no rational sense. He acts as if he is high on something himself. Supporting this theory, my police informant has told me that there was a broken ampule of speed on the bathroom floor.”

“Did you ask Fargo if Docker is hooked on anything?”

“When he first mentioned Docker, he said he’d been a North Vietnamese POW for a couple of years. He might have gotten habituated to painkillers subsequently in a military hospital. But that’s academic; this isn’t: does Docker attempt to leave San Francisco?”

“He does,” said Kolinski. “First at Greyhound—”

“Does he? At Greyhound he acts like a man out of control, attacking Rowlands with the utmost ferocity. Then he coolly convinces two witnesses he is a Mafia enforcer. Later, he shows up on Market Street and makes himself very conspicuous in an encounter with a hippie panhandler. He makes himself obnoxious in a First Street bar. He makes flip remarks in a peep-show emporium—”

“As if he wants to be spotted,” muttered Kolinski. For the first time, his face reflected some of the concern apparent in Hariss’ voice.

“Exactly. Incredible stupidity, one would say at first glance. After all, he has what he wanted: the heroin and the money which was to be used to buy it. Why attract attention?”

Kolinski said haltingly, thinking it through, “But then when he is spotted, he pulls some sort of very cool switch to disappear completely and leave us running around in circles...”

“As if he’s laughing at us,” said Hariss. “Why? Is he indeed erratic, or is he playing some sort of game? And where is he? And why hasn’t Neil Fargo come up with anything further—”

The phone rang.

Kolinski picked it up, spoke his name into it, listened. He cupped the receiver with his hand and turned to Hariss. “Neil Fargo. He’s got news about Docker.”