Interface

Fourteen

Neil Fargo waited for the traffic to pass before jaywalking across Franklin Street from the Seventy-Six station on the corner of Pine. Behind him, Emil called in his heavy Hungarian accent, “Dammit, Fargo, what you think? You think rent a stall entitles you—”

Neil Fargo, on the far side of Franklin, paused to wave back at him as if at a good joke, went on. His long legs covered ground rapidly without any semblance of hurry. At Bush he turned three doors uphill to his office, which was upstairs over a laundromat, and a beauty shop managed by an Oriental woman with whom he had slept several times and who ran a small book on Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields in season.

When he started to open the street door to his office, it didn’t open. His thumb reflexed twice against the latch before the message got through. He stepped back two paces and a snub-nose .38 appeared in his right fist. The fist was sufficiently large to make the gun look as if it were made out of licorice. He obviously had not been wearing it when he had been frisked at the Hall of Justice some two hours before, which meant he had left it in his Ford Fairlane before entering the cops’ domain.

Now he thumbed back the hammer as his left hand sorted out the office key, inserted it, turned it delicately. The lock was well oiled, so Neil Fargo was inside with no sound.

He left the door ajar behind him, went up the inside edge of the otherwise rather creaky stairs, moving with a grace and silence unnerving in such a large man. His head very gradually rose above the level of the floor. This allowed him to see between the two-by-two wooden posts which supported the railing along the edge of the stairwell.

Pamela was sitting at her desk with her head in her hands. He stood there for quite thirty seconds, observing her, before she drew a deep shuddery breath and raised her head. She wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye with an oddly defiant gesture, turning her head in the process so she was facing the stairwell.

Her eyes were red and puffy, at first glance blackened horribly by a multitude of blows. The eyes widened. She threw a hand up to her mouth and screamed.

Neil Fargo was already racing up the stairs, going by her in a smooth deadly rush to smash wide the door of his office. He swung quickly, kicked open the door of the restroom so viciously that his toe splintered the wood, stepped around the cheap copy machine against the rear wall which might have sheltered a crouching figure. Still in the same motion he thrust the gun, butt forward, into its belt holster on his right hip.

The sequence had been so swift that the girl was still exclaiming, “Oh! It’s you! Oh, thank God!” as the gun went back into its spring holster.

Pamela came out of her chair and into his arms as he stepped over the pile of coffee-ruined files. She was a full foot shorter than Neil Fargo, so he had to stoop to hold her. He patted her shoulder, the back of her head, crooned soft words, his voice and movements remarkably gentle. His face, over the top of her head, was absolutely murderous.

“It’s okay, doll,” he said in a monotone. “It’s all right now, nothing more’s going to happen, it’s okay, doll, nothing more...”

She was crying again. She got out, “Oh, Neil, I’m... I couldn’t help...” She curled against his chest like a kitten, looked up at him from tear-stained eyes. “I couldn’t... He...”

He released her, squeezed her shoulder warmly with one hand while pulling her down into her chair with the other. He clattered down the stairs to slam the front door. He started back up, frowned, then turned back to twist the lock-knob so it shot home the bolt with an unmistakable thud. Then he went back upstairs.

Pamela had found her purse and mirror. Seeing him from the corner of her eye, she even found a ruefully tentative smile. She shook her head at the image of her own puffy, flushed face. The black marks under her eyes were from tear-streaked mascara, not from fists.

“Party’s getting rough,” observed Neil Fargo cheerfully.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t... When he left, I locked the door, I was afraid he’d come back... and I wanted to call you down at the assessor’s office, but...”

“Afraid who’d come back? Docker?”

“Docker? Oh, no, it wasn’t... It was that terrible man who drives... the one who...”

“Peeler?”

“Yes.”

“He put his hands on you?”

She met his eyes, her own miserable, quickly looked away again. Neil Fargo nodded as if she had answered his question.

“He rape you?”

Shock registered in her face. She blushed. Finally she looked down at her hands flat on the desktop, fingers spread, and shook her head.

“Oh, no, Neil, he.... It was questions he...”

The detective hooked one haunch over the corner of her desk, swung his leg from the knee in a hypnotically soothing rhythm.

“We’ll do something about him, doll,” he said placidly. He leaned toward her slightly. “Do you think you might be up to telling me what he wanted? What he said and did? Everything?”

Pamela told him everything, her face forlorn. She stumbled over any detail about the way Rizzato had put his hands on her. The very omissions were quite graphic. Her telling took less than three minutes.

“Before Rizzato got here, had anything more come in on Docker’s car that he got? License plate or anything?”

“Oh! License plate!” she cried. Excitement momentarily displaced the revulsion on her features. “The same man who called about the car originally called back and said the license was—”

“Before Rizzato got here, or after?”

“After.”

“And you bore up well enough to get the information, even after he had slammed you around? You’re a wonder, doll.”

The wildness, which had started to enter her eyes again, died in a flush of delight at the frank admiration in his voice. She said, “The license is 636 ZFF. Mercury Montego rented this... Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly, breaking in on herself.

Neil Fargo’s foot stopped swinging. “What, doll?”

“Just a few minutes ago, another call! A man spoke Roberta Stayton’s name, and then gave me an address—”

Neil Fargo banged his fist lightly on the desk in glee. “That’s the way, doll!”

“She... The address was on Jones Street...” She was rummaging paper on her desk. “I think it’s a Tenderloin hotel...”

Neil Fargo had gotten rigid. He said softly, “Five-one-seven Jones?”

She had found her paper. “Five-one...” Her face fell. “How did...?”

“The FarJon Hotel,” he said bitterly. “I just found out at the tax assessor’s office that Alex Kolinski and Walter Hariss are owners of record and also pay the taxes on the FarJon Hotel at five-one-seven Jones. We’re breaking our butts looking for Roberta Stayton, and those...” He stopped over the word he had been going to use. “And they have her at their fingertips.”

“Ha... have?”

“She’s hooked, doll. On H. Hooked hard.”

“You didn’t put it in any of the reports.” She looked almost hurt.

“Verbal only, direct to Stayton. That’s what I was telling him this morning. His executive secretary snoops all his files, so I didn’t want to put it on paper.” His eyes had gotten thoughtful. “The FarJon! I know the place, a real dump, equal proportions of whores and old farts you have to move from chair to chair with a shovel. If I’d known those mothers had her there...” He stood up briskly. “Well.”

He pointed at the telephone.

“Call yourself a taxi, doll, go home. I’ll lock up when I leave.”

“Neil, I’m all right. Really. I—”

“Home with you, doll. Have your mother give you a glass of sherry or something.” He frowned abruptly. “The informant who called, did he identify himself?”

The girl got a surprised expression through her tears.

“Neil, it... it was... it was that man! Docker.”

“Docker?”

“I know it’s silly, but I... really, I told you, he has this mushy voice like... like loose teeth. I... it was the same voice as this morning! I’m sure it was.”

Neil Fargo started to say something, then merely leaned down and took her dainty pointed chin in one huge paw, squeezed it gently.

“Call yourself a taxi, doll, put in an expense voucher for it. I’ll wait until the cab gets here. I’ve got some thinking to do anyway.” His face was set and cold. He added, almost to himself, “About just how much else I don’t know.”

“Neil...”

But he had turned and gone into his private office and had sat down behind the desk. He left the door open but his action had discouraged further talk. Five minutes later the taxi honked below the window. He went back into the outer office. Pamela was pulling on her coat. She made a hopeless gesture at the room.

“I should clean up this mess...”

“I’ll have the janitorial service do it,” said the detective.

At the head of the stairs she paused hesitantly again.

“Neil, shouldn’t... shouldn’t somebody call Mr Stayton and tell him we think we’ve located his daughter?”

“I have to make sure she’s there first, doll. Besides, you don’t know that old bastard. He’d be down there trying to get the hotel condemned or something. This is going to take handling. You go on home.”

As soon as the outer door had shut behind the girl, Neil Fargo went directly to her phone, picked up, dialled. He drummed impatient fingers on the desktop through two rings.

“Hariss? I just dropped by my office. Pam tells me that your driver was around to ask a few questions.”

Surprise smoothly entered the importer’s voice. “Gus? Gus wouldn’t go off on his own like that, Neil.”

“I know.”

“Well, now you mention it...” Sly laughter danced around the edges of his words. “Yes, I guess I did tell him to drop around at that. Wanted him to ask your secretary where you might be reached. You’ve been pretty hard to get hold of today.”

“I thought we had a business arrangement,” said the detective in curiously flat tones. The laughter abruptly went out of Hariss’ voice.

“We do, Fargo. Do, not did. You try to back out—”

“Since we have a business arrangement there’s nothing I can do about you at the moment, Walt. But sometime along the line I’m going to be wondering why Roberta Stayton happens to be living in a hotel that you own, with me knowing nothing about it even though you know I’ve been hired by her old man to find her. But—”

“Now, Neil, there’s a reason—”

“But even that can wait. This can’t. I want you to go out and tell that little cocksucker you call a chauffeur that he doesn’t work for you anymore.”

“What?”

“That he doesn’t work for you and that his ass is going to be out of San Francisco by tomorrow morning.”

“That’s the most ridiculous—”

“Because if I see him after tonight, Hariss, see him on the street, see him in your office, see him anywhere, just lay eyes on him, ever, I’m going to kill him. You got that?”

“If you think—”

“I mean dead, Hariss.” The very flatness of his voice lent absolute conviction to the words. “He put his slimy fucking hands on my secretary. Not busted ribs, not a broken arm, not a ruptured kidney. Dead. Dead and buried. I’ll be in touch.”

He slammed the receiver down on the hooks. He was breathing deeply and harshly. His hands were shaking. Almost immediately the phone began ringing. He stood, pulled back on his topcoat, walked out of the office and away from the ringing phone without even looking at it. He locked the office, went back across Franklin Street to the Seventy-Six station where he parked his Fairlane.

He maneuvered the metallic blue car out of the slot in which it had been buried, just as Emil slapped a calloused, grease-rimed hand against the fender. Neil Fargo stuck his head out of the open window.

“I’m in a hurry, Emil.”

“Fargo, what you do now?” He waved an arm at his precious parking slots as if Neil Fargo had not spoken. “What I do the man who rents the stall shows up, huh?”

Neil Fargo made a suggestion concerning Emil and the car which belonged to Doctor Follmer, the stallholder, that was quite impossible even though the doctor’s car was a compact. Emil was still cursing the detective in his broken English when the blue Fairlane drove off. The garageman stared after him with bushy eyebrows drawn down angrily. Then he gave a sudden laugh, and shook his head fondly.

“One crazy bastard,” he said in admiration.