Interface

Twenty Four

It was a mild morning. Pamela Gardner had her cloth coat over her arm when she paused in the vestibule of the street level door bearing the inscription NEIL FARGO — INVESTIGATIONS. She was humming a tune to herself with youthful resiliency, as if yesterday had not happened, or had happened to one of the characters in the weighty best-seller she again bore under her arm.

The office smelled of stale cigarette smoke. On the top step she stopped so abruptly that she dropped the book again, as she had done the morning before.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Oh! I...”

Neil Fargo turned from the electric coffee maker. He was scowling. “How the hell do you make this bastard thing work?”

“Oh.” She was blushing, as if meeting him here before office hours made it an assignation rather than a work day. “You... have to jiggle the cord in the socket a certain way to—”

“Jiggle it,” commanded Neil Fargo.

Pamela eyed the pot critically, did things with the cord no manufacturer’s instructions ever included. The pot began to perk, hesitantly, like a two-cycle engine with only one cylinder working.

“You look hung over,” she said snidely to the detective.

“I am. There’s a report on the tape.”

His hands had tremored ever so slightly while fooling with the coffee pot. His eyes were bloodshot. He had shaved with the office razor, but carelessly. He turned toward his inner sanctum.

“At least the janitor got the mess cleaned up last night. A cup of that when it’s ready will save my life, doll.”

But Pamela had followed him into his office. She laid the newspaper, folded open to the story, on the desk under his eyes. “Is that the same Docker?”

“The very same.” His voice was mocking, but his eyes were somber.

“It says they haven’t found the body yet, but that—”

“Yeah. He’s dead.”

The words were blunt. The girl’s very small, very soft capable hands that smelled of Jergen’s Lotion found another news story. “It says that terrible man, that one you called Peeler—”

“Yeah, he’s dead, too.” He added cruelly, “Virgins will now sleep soundly in their beds.” She began to color. He said, “Roberta Stayton is dead. Julio Marquez is dead. They’re all dead.”

“Roberta Stayton made the front page.” There was no sorrow in the small girl’s voice. Her nose twitched, somewhat like a rabbit’s. Her voice had been just short of snide.

“Her old man has the money, what do you expect? Which reminds me. Once that report is typed up, send him the original and our closing bill. Jack the price up — way up. We won’t be shaking that particular money tree any more.”

Her face was shocked. “Oh, Neil! He’s our... he...”

“We’ll just have to go back to doing legal investigations, doll.” He laughed shortly, with little real pleasure. “Maybe we ought to offer our services to Walter Hariss. He’s going to be needing a lot of help.”

“Do you think they’ll really make it stick?”

“It’ll stick,” he said solemnly. “But let’s help it along. Give Internal Revenue a call, you’re a secretary used to work for Hariss Ltd down on Battery Street. You know for a fact he has a safe deposit box stuffed with undeclared cash. They’ll take it from there.”

Her eyes shone. “Oh, Neil, does he?”

“He does. I found it out just yesterday. I wasn’t spinning my wheels all day.”

“Why don’t we claim the informant’s percentage?”

“This one’s for sweet charity, doll. Isn’t that damned coffee ready yet?”

She disappeared, but no coffee appeared. Instead, he could hear the rattle of her electric typewriter. He seemed to forget about the coffee, merely sat behind the desk staring almost vacantly out the window. Pamela came back in, sat down on the edge of his desk closest to him. In that position she showed a dangerous amount of slightly chubby thigh; but there was a dangerous look in her eyes to match the display. Neil Fargo regarded the exposed flesh.

“What would your mother say?”

She started to blush, but she made no move to cover her legs and refused to lower her eyes from his. “I’d get an apartment of my own if I thought it would do me any good.”

“It wouldn’t.”

“I know that, too. Neil, this report to Stayton — it’s full of a lot of... of things that didn’t happen.”

“Such as?”

“Going down to Mexico to look for Roberta. You never went to Mexico. You told me three weeks ago, the day after Stayton hired us, that you thought she was right here in the city in a Tenderloin—”

“Jacks the expenses up,” he said lightly.

“Can you tell me what really happened yesterday, Neil?”

“Part of it, doll.”

He told her part of it, picking and choosing through what had actually transpired. When he finished, her eyes were round.

“You took the heroin into Hariss’ house stuffed down the front of your shirt? That man searched you...”

“Just a standard frisk for a gun — there wasn’t much chance he’d find it.”

“And... and Docker killed them both with his bare hands?”

“Self-defense, both times, but nobody would have believed it. Not the cops or the DA anyway — the ones who’d matter if it came down to arrest and trial.”

“A jury would have believed him.”

Neil Fargo shook his head slowly. “Remember, the Viet Cong had him for over a year before the North Vietnamese got him. He told me nobody’d ever put him in a cage again — not for one day, not for one hour. He said he’d kill his ass first.”

Her eyes were shining again. They were very blue, very clear. “He must have been a very brave man.”

“Some Frenchman in the underground in World War Two said that only an optimist kills himself. How about that coffee now?”

She slid off the desktop reluctantly, started out with the back of her short blue skirt deeply creased from the hard surface. Then she turned back and stood in the doorway, with her crossed arms pushing her swelling youthful breasts together as if offering them for his approval.

“He loved her very deeply, didn’t he? Docker?”

“I didn’t get a chance to ask him, doll. Coffee.”

She was in the outer office when the phone rang. She answered, after a few seconds laid down the receiver. Her heels detoured to the coffee pot before coming across the floor to his open doorway. She set down a steaming mug. Her face was tight.

“It’s that Rhoda Walström who used to—”

“Thanks, doll.” His briefing had not included Rhoda. He said into the phone, “Hello, darling, I was going to call you this morning. You at work already? Mm-hmm. Early, huh? Yeah, me too. The police been around yet?”

He winked at Pamela Gardner. She left abruptly, but he could hear her heels falter, stop within earshot. Sunshine slanting through the east windows laid her shadow on the floor near his office door.

“Wylie himself?” he said into the phone. “I’ll bet he gnashed his teeth when you said...” He listened. He laughed. “I doubt if you really mind about ruined reputations, Rhoda. Tonight? Why not? I told Wylie you were a terrific lay, I guess I’d better make sure I didn’t lie to the police...”

When he hung up thirty seconds later, Pamela’s shadow was gone from the floor. He could hear her making secretarial noises at her desk. He checked his watch like a man marking time to an important appointment; his face was cold and withdrawn and totally without the animation he had injected into his chatter with the big Scandinavian girl.

The phone rang. A few moments later, Pamela called, “Neil. It’s Inspector Wylie on line one.”

He punched the phone off the HOLD she’d put it on, said, “Fargo” into it.

“I’ve been talking with Hank Tekawa this morning, Fargo,” said the policeman’s flat, impolite tones. “That was a lovely drug bust he and Maley made last night out in Sea Cliff. Apparently developed their whole case themselves through careful investigative blah blah bullshit.”

“Give Lieutenant Tekawa my regards,” said Neil Fargo. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I’ve got an appointment in—”

“Thing is, Fargo, Hariss opened up like an oyster before his lawyer got there to shut him up. Claimed a frame engineered by you and this fellow who drove off the cliff at Baker Beach last night. Docker. Said Docker and you were in the same outfit in Vietnam, that Docker saved your life once, was a POW—”

“I doubt if Hariss’ heroin-possession jury is going to give much of a shit about my war reminiscences.”

“I do. You told me yesterday you didn’t know Docker, at a time I had out a material-witness want on him in connection with a death by violence. Obstructing justice at least, maybe accessory after—”

“Did Hariss let it drop that the Docker in my outfit in Nam was MIA — missing in action? That he never turned up on any of the repatriation lists? That he is presumed dead by the military authorities?”

There was a long silence. Finally Wylie growled, “Are you just blowing smoke, or—”

“Walt Hariss isn’t a very reliable witness, Inspector. I suggest that you check with the Army Records Center. See if you can find any of my prints out at the Hariss house. Find some witnesses that put me there last night. Then check with Maxwell Stayton on whether I had supper with him and went up to his office afterwards to talk about his daughter’s murder. If you have any questions after all that, you’ve got my office phone number.”

He hung up. His coffee was cold. He got out a cigarette, sat with it in his hands, his face almost stupid in its total lack of expression. He looked at the cigarette as if seeing it for the first time, stuck it unlighted back in his pack. He turned the page on his calendar. Then he rubbed his face with his hands, like a man who is worn out from overwork or insomnia.

He looked at his watch. Five to nine. He stood up so abruptly that he tipped over the empty wastebasket. He went out into the main office. His features were animated.

“I’ve got an appointment, doll.”

She said in a small voice, “Neil.”

He stopped and looked at her. “Well?”

“If... Docker didn’t meet her down in Mexico like you said in that report, then where did he meet her?”

“Docker was a Bay Area boy originally, doll. Went with her in college for a while — like that. So when he came back from the Vietnam prison camp, I guess he looked her up. That’s my reconstruction, anyway. And found her hooked on heroin. He must have felt something for her, because he let her drag him into her crazy scheme of revenge...”

“Oh.” She said it in that small, distant voice. After a long time she said, looking at her desk, “You turned him in, didn’t you, Neil?”

“He killed two people.”

“You... said it was self-defense both times.”

He nodded. “Let’s just say I knew he couldn’t get away with it anyway, and that he was better off dead than in prison. If you don’t like that, just say that I felt it was part of my job as a detective.”

“That makes it a... pretty rotten sort of job, doesn’t it, Neil?”

“Lots of people think so.” He suddenly grinned. “It’s the only one I’ve got.” The grin faded. “If you’re going to quit, Pam, make yourself out a check for a month’s severance pay. I’ll sign it when I get back. Now, I’ve got an appointment.”

“I didn’t say I was going...” But her voice trailed off.

“Up to you, doll. But you’re not going to change me. And you’re not going to change the job.”

He went down the stairs quickly, wooden-faced, waved through the window at the Chinese woman who ran the beauty shop. She waved back, with a reminiscent smile. The smile was brilliant and quite alluring.

At the Seventy-Six station, Emil was waiting. Down in the next block the big yellow scavenger’s truck grunted as one of the garbagemen pulled the lever which made it swallow up the trash they’d been dumping into its open maw.

“Hey, Fargo! What happen to big yellow car, huh?”

“Maybe Doc Follmer’s compact ate it.”

Emil grinned crookedly. He had very bad teeth. “Ha! Next time I charge you.” He added in his atrocious accent, “That’s nice car, you want sell to me?”

“Too late, Emil. It was stolen last night.”

The Hungarian looked at him blankly for several seconds, then convulsed with laughter. “Is stole! Is stole off big private eye? I notice about five, six o’clock is gone, I think you take it. Instead, is stole!” He slapped his knee with delight.

Neil Fargo shrugged sullenly, from his car got a brown attaché case. He turned toward the men’s room, paused, said, “It was a rental job, the insurance’ll cover the replacement. Whoever took it sent it over a cliff out in the Presidio. Wedged down the accelerator with a lug wrench, stood outside the window and flipped it into low...”

“Is bad thing to do to nice car.”

The detective went by the voluble Hungarian without answering, and went into the men’s room. The single stall was closed; the restroom was cold and smelled of disinfectant. From outside, a door or two away, came the rattle of garbage pails as the scavengers emptied them into the hulking compressor truck.

Neil Fargo hoisted the attaché case up on the square white porcelain sink, unsnapped the catches. He opened it, stared at the contents. Then, belatedly, he put his fingertips against the closed stall door and pushed it wide.

“Hello, Docker,” he said.

But the stall was quite empty.

He laughed thinly through his teeth, a sound almost totally devoid of mirth. He dropped something on the floor, trod it under his heel. It was a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with clear glass in the frames. He picked up the bent frames and dropped them into the big refuse pail the garbagemen would collect within a minute.

He lifted out the long ash-blond wig, and stuffed that down among the morning’s wet, used paper towels. He made sure it was covered, so the scavengers for whose arrival he had been waiting would destroy it without even seeing it. He closed the attaché case.

“Goodbye, Docker,” he said aloud.

His tone was somewhat like the tone he had used the previous day, in bidding goodbye to a junkie whore named Robin whom he had once loved very deeply. Deeply enough to give her those few moments of regained humanity before she slipped through the wall.

Neil Fargo heard the voices of the garbagemen, exchanging cheery profanities with Emil. He walked out of the cold little cubicle into the empty California sunshine, moving like a professional athlete the day after his team has lost the playoff game. The purple bruise Maxwell Stayton’s fist had left on his cheekbone only heightened the illusion.

Then he straightened slightly, as if about to pass a reviewing stand, pointed a forefinger at Emil as if it were a gun, moved his thumb twice to make the gun go bang bang, and got into his Fairlane.

Externally, at least, he was merely a hard-nosed private detective who’d lost his leading client so he had to get out to hustle up some new business. Manhunting was what he did, and he was good at it.