Interface

Sixteen

Harsh calipers of pain that had not been there when he had talked with Neil Fargo that morning creased Maxwell Stayton’s face. The cold room’s glacial light gleamed off his grey hair.

“Yes,” he said formally. “That is my daughter. That is Roberta Stayton.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Inspector Vince Wylie.

The two men turned away. Stayton, though he was at least fifteen years older than the policeman, looked the harder, better-conditioned of the two. Wylie held the door for him. If Stayton heard the rattle of the runners behind them as the attendant slid the body back into its refrigerator drawer, he gave no indication. In the hallway outside the viewing room, he stopped. One way led to the entrance off Ahern Alley where the morgue wagons delivered their goods; the other led back to the Coroner’s business office through which they’d come.

“You are a Homicide inspector, is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In charge of the investigation of my daughter’s murder?”

“Her death. Yes, sir.”

Stayton frowned at the change of emphasis Wylie had made, but did not comment on it. Instead, he remarked, “I understood that personnel from the Coroner’s office, not from the police department, displayed bodies for identification purposes.”

Wylie was suddenly uncomfortable.

“Well, you see, sir, I... ah...”

“You wanted to see if I’m as cold a son of a bitch as I’m supposed to be. I am, Inspector. You’d do well to remember that.”

Wylie was no longer abashed. “I’m conducting an investigation into an alleged murder, Mr Stayton. You were apprised of your daughter’s demise by a civilian instead of authorized police personnel. This—”

“Neil Fargo,” agreed Stayton. “And this robbed you of a chance to study my reactions, to judge whether my surprise at news of her death was genuine or not. A daughter who was a — what is the term, a hype? — could be a great embarrassment for a man in my position, and the man who murdered her is an ex-employee. So you decided to retrieve what you could of the situation by studying my reactions to seeing her dead body. Is that so?”

“Something like that, yes, sir.”

Stayton nodded. “I’ve seen dead bodies before. What is happening with Alex Kolinski?”

Wylie moved up the hall, the industrialist falling in beside him. A greedy light had entered the cop’s eyes.

“I believe he is going through the booking process, Mr Stayton. But I can arrange for you to speak privately with him if you—”

“I don’t want to see the bastard. I just want to make sure he gets strung up by the nuts.”

Without waiting for a reply, Stayton opened the door which led into the narrow room, desk-crowded, which was behind the Coroner’s office reception counter. Wylie held back.

“I understand there was friction between you and Kolinski while he was in your employ.”

“I found him screwing my daughter while he was my chauffeur, and kicked his ass out of my house. I suppose you could call that friction.”

They went through the narrow office, past the civil service stenos typing like aged arthritics, and out to the broad concrete ramp from the Hall of Justice to the Harrison Street municipal parking lot. Beyond the lot and above it, the Skyway moaned and shook with the beginnings of the rush-hour traffic.

“One other little thing has bothered me, sir,” said Wylie.

Stayton, who had been starting down the ramp toward the lot, turned resignedly back. The air was chilly, for the sun was low above the soft, maimed breasts of Twin Peaks; but it was not nearly as chilly as the air in the room they had just quit. Stayton, in a suit but without a topcoat, seemed impervious to both sorts of cold.

“What is that?” he asked impatiently.

“This thing of Neil Fargo calling you about your daughter’s death.”

“He is in my employ. I expect loyalty of my employees.”

“If that loyalty should conflict with the police in their authorized investigations—”

“Then the police have legal remedies. Meanwhile, you’ve been a policeman long enough to know the power realities of this city. I am one of those realities, and my daughter is dead. The man who made her dead will pay the full penalty of the law.”

“And if he didn’t make her dead?” demanded Wylie stubbornly.

“If you have doubts as to Kolinski’s guilt, dismiss them. They are puerile. Get in the way of his conviction for murder in the first degree, and I will crush you, utterly.”

The planes of Wylie’s rather ugly face tightened and flattened. Unconsciously, he set his feet as if to take or deliver a blow. He said thinly, “Are you threatening a police officer, Mr Stayton?”

“It is not a threat.” He laid a finger against the middle button of Wylie’s honest, off-the-rack suit. “It is a statement of objective fact. Utterly, if you interfere.”

He turned on his heel and strode down the ramp. Below, in a red-curbed zone where no cars were allowed to park, his long black sleek Continental waited, the chauffeur stiff beside the open back door. Wylie watched the grey-haired industrialist get in. The door shut with a sound like a vault being closed. The car pulled away with the noise of autumn leaves being drifted by the wind.

Wylie looked at his outstretched right hand. The outspread fingers were tremoring. He said, “Shit,” aloud, and got out a cigarette. As he hunched over it and his match, drawing in the fragrant harsh smoke, a voice spoke lightly behind him.

“And that’s today’s word from God. Stay tuned for the Bay Area weather.”

“You heard that bastard?”

Henry Tekawa nodded. He was lounged against the pipe railing in lofty disdain of soot and dirt. He said, “You have to make allowances, Vince. The man has lost a daughter.”

“And found a son named Neil Fargo,” he sneered. He cursed several times in a tired voice, then shook his head. “You looking for me?”

“I understand you have an APB out for somebody named Docker.”

“Somebody named Docker is right. That’s all we got on him, a lot of good the APB’s going to do. Homicide this morning out on Bryant Street. Just the last name, no initials, no prints, nothing in R&I. Material witness at the moment. Why?”

“I’ve got a sort of informant named Docker. Just the last name, no initials—”

“Jesus Christ,” said Wylie. “I’m buying the coffee.”

They rode the elevator to the Hall of Justice basement and the low-roofed, pale-walled public cafeteria across from the personal property room of the city jail. They found a corner table away from the attorneys and their clients, and where they had a chance of not being spotted by any newsmen working the police beat.

“You have a package on the dead man? Marquez?” Tekawa’s flat-planed face was politely interested, nothing more.

“He’s a Mexican national. We’ve teletyped, but...”

“Could he have been a drug courier?”

“Hey.” Wylie was silent, considering. They drank coffee. “That’s cute. I’ll tell you something, Hank. Addison, the cat we found unconscious at the scene, is a chemist. We don’t have a package on him, but...”

“Marquez brings it in, Addison tests it for purity,” mused Tekawa. “When Docker told me that Kolinski was giving somebody an OD, he was very specific. It was a hotshot of pure skag hijacked at Bryant Street this morning. Said a courier got killed and that you were handling the case.”

“Any question at all that Kolinski didn’t hit her?”

“I just had the fingerprint report on that syringe. Kolinski, no question.” Tekawa’s grin was pure pleasure. He parted forefinger and index finger to hold the hypo, with his thumb depressed the imaginary plunger. “Like that. If the autopsy confirms overdose, he did it.”

“But then where does that fucking Docker fit in?”

“Where does he fit in down at Bryant Street?”

Wylie told him, all of it.

When he was finished, Henry Tekawa said, “There any suggestion of dope, besides the chemist being there?”

“Well... Rosas, the hype they collared there, picked up that speed from the medicine chest. And another ampule of speed was busted on the bathroom floor that he says he didn’t drop. So there could of been more, and Docker could have used it. That boy is cutting a wide enough swath to read like somebody on something.”

“And prints on the shards of the broken ampule?”

“No.”

“Wiped?”

“Rubber gloves. Again, in my book, Docker. I’ve reconstructed what I think are his movements after he left Bryant Street at seven-thirty this morning. He’d already killed Marquez with his bare hands, and roughed up Addison. Now he roughs up Rosas in Franklin Square, tries to set him up for the fall on the Marquez wipe. Next, two spade baggage-handlers down at Greyhound give his description as the cat who beat hell out of a little hanger-on named Rowlands — only he told the spades he was a syndicate enforcer.”

“Are you sure it’s the same man?” asked Tekawa.

“Description fits. An hour, hour-and-a-half later a guy with the same description shows up on Market and First, stomps some hippie chick’s toes, comes on heavy in a First Street bar, then buys a one-way bus ticket to LA on Trailways. Then—”

“Did he get a bus ticket at Greyhound?”

“Yeah. I forgot that. Seattle. One-way.”

The voices at the next table rose sharply enough to cut into their discussion. One of the men was hawk-nosed, heavy-jawed, with greying dark hair brushed straight back. He wore oddly-assorted clothing: a yellow knit pull-over t-shirt, black narrow shoes, one black and one brown sock, pyjama bottoms, and a yellow sport shirt that didn’t go with anything else, especially the pajamas.

“... don’t know when I can pay you back the bail money, Dave!”

“How the hell did you end up in the slam in the first place?” Dave was younger, long-haired, with a mechanic’s grease permanently imbedded beneath his fingernails.

“Had a fight with the old lady and she swung at me with a butcher knife so I called the cops. But they came and took me. And the landlord was raising hell, I don’t know what his beef is, I’ve been there six years, he gets thirty-one dollars a week from me, he’s got a good thing going...”

They became aware of the cops’ scrutiny, lowered their voices. Wylie shook his head. “There’s some fucking compensations to being plainclothes at that, Hank. We don’t have to break up domestic beefs. Anyway, a few minutes after Docker bought this bus ticket at Trailways — which he didn’t use — a black hanger-on named Browne got the shit beat out of him in the men’s can there. We can’t tie it strictly to Docker, and Browne ain’t talking, just like Rowlands, but...”

“But,” said Henry Tekawa in a disgruntled voice. “None of it makes much sense, does it? Weird mixture of irrationality and cunning. And none of it ties in with a heroin OD in a Tenderloin hotel...”

“Wait... a... minute...” exclaimed Wylie with narrowed eyes. “There was a Mexican figurine busted on the floor at Bryant Street. Would of been hollow when it was whole—”

“The lab test the pieces for H dust?” demanded Tekawa quickly.

“No, but they sure as fuck will now.”

Tekawa said excitedly, “Walter Hariss imports clay figurines from Mexico.” Wylie started to interrupt, but he went right on. “Hariss and Alex Kolinski are owners-of-record, according to information I received just this afternoon, of the FarJon Hotel where Roberta Stayton died. And Vice confirms that Kolinski probably has been running a string of junkie whores out of that hotel.”

“Roberta Stayton a junkie whore?”

“Little hard to figure, isn’t it?” agreed Tekawa. “But according to the black chick who managed the place, she was one of the string — specialized in giving head. She was down to around ninety pounds and her mouth was about the last thing she had left that anybody’d pay to use.” Somehow, Tekawa’s brutal words were delivered with such utter disinterest that they were robbed of salaciousness or even of offense. They were merely a recital of facts.

“Docker the bagman?” ventured Wylie. “Knocking over his own drop? But even if we fall on him, I doubt like hell if the DA can tag him for Murder One on Marquez. No witnesses, he could damn well cop a self-defense plea. Marquez had a gun, fired one shot from it. If Docker had a gun, he didn’t use it.”

“Apparently didn’t need it.” Tekawa drained the last of his coffee, made a face at the dissolved sugar in the bottom of the cup. “We don’t even know Docker was a bagman, except he carried an attaché case. If someone was making a dope buy at Bryant Street, we don’t know who was buying and who was selling. Christ, none of it makes sense.”

“There’s one other common denominator,” said Wylie almost slyly.

“I was wondering when you’d get around to him.”

“Yeah. Neil Fargo. He rents the Bryant Street flat a couple of weeks ago to stash a witness — he says — and shows up at the Jones Street hotel where the Stayton woman gets it.” He looked suddenly disgruntled. “Trouble is, he was screwing some Swedish chick this morning when the action was taking place at Bryant Street. And you were already there when he got to Jones Street.”

“And he had a legitimate reason to be there,” said Tekawa. “According to Stayton’s personal secretary — who doesn’t like Fargo any more than you do — he’s been hired three times in the past two-and-a-half years to find Roberta Stayton after she’s wandered off with somebody she picked up in a bar or at a ski lodge or whatever.”

“How long was he looking for her this time?”

“Three weeks, part of it in Mexico, according to what he says.”

“Kinda sloppy work for a private eye with his reputation, ain’t it? With her marching up and down Jones Street under a sandwich board labelled „Come and Get it“?”

“You said yourself you wouldn’t figure Maxwell Stayton’s daughter to be a junkie whore.”

“There’s that.” Wylie’s face was sullen. “Hell, if we could just uncover something to prove that Fargo and Docker know each other—”

“If if if!” Henry Tekawa threw up his hands in abrupt atypical frustration. “All we have is ifs. What we need is to lay our hands on Docker.”