Interface

Five

As Robin waited, the search for Docker was spreading across San Francisco. Not the San Francisco famous to tourists for the 49-Mile Drive, the bright flower stall on the Bank of America’s sprawling dark plaza, the St Francis Hotel’s dizzying exterior elevators to the tower. Not even the San Francisco of the rich condominiums of Russian and Nob Hills, or of the rows of boxy tracts which had stilled the once-restless sands of the Sunset District.

But San Francisco all the same, a real city as valid as the one they shoot movies in, and give awards to the restaurants of, and write books about.

An underbelly San Francisco, in which Alex Kolinski was on his way to the Bush Street parking garage where Walter Hariss waited, smoking an impatient cigar. In which Pamela Gardner was on the phone, skiptracing the big blond man named Docker. Neil Fargo was just parking his Fairlane in the Fifth and Mission garage. And a uniformed prowlie named Edmunds had feigned sudden illness and had, on behalf of his monthly pay-off from Walter Hariss, tracked down the driver of the 25 Bryant bus which had carried Docker to Army Street. There the big blond-haired, limping man with the attaché case had debussed, and there the trail had ended.

For the moment. But the city through which Docker now moved had thousands of watching eyes and outstretched hands. This was the muggers’ and pushers’ and prosties’ and hypes’ San Francisco. The city of cab drivers so stoned on grass that the shadow line between reality and dream became a little tenuous even on shift. The city of black kids who shot out the windows of Hunters Point buses for fun, of militants who raided precinct police stations with automatic weapons for real, and of Chinatown juvies from the Chung Ching Yee, Hwa Ching, and Suey Sing gangs who emptied .22s into one another for an illusory concept of territory.

It was the city of cheap hustlers like Rowlands, one of many street types alerted by Kolinski’s lieutenant to watch for a big mean cat with long blond hair and a limp and some sort of briefcase. Rowlands was a round little man who made a vague living off information picked up here and there concerning this and that.

He had taken up his post inside the front doors of the Greyhound Terminal on Seventh Street just south of Market. His hands were in his pockets and he was staring blankly out at the taxi rank like a man waiting for his wife, teetering from one foot to the other, checking his Timex. But his deceptively sleepy eyes missed nothing that might translate into money.

At about the same time Rowlands yawned and watched the backside of a girl wobbling down Seventh in a tight skirt, a thin black man named Browne was arriving at the Trailways Bus depot. This was located in the echoing lower level of the East Bay Terminal on First Street, six long blocks away from the Greyhound depot and also just south of Market. Browne wore, among other items of dress, old oxblood dress shoes with a neat hole cut through each upper to ease the corns on his little toes.

Browne looked up First Street and he looked down First Street. His sad brown eyes finally lingered on the phone booth a dozen steps away. His lips moved in silent self-communion. But even though it was a day of bright sunshine, with only a few clouds, it was also October. The phone booth was in shadow. First Street was windy. The wind was cold.

Browne used the crosswalk to get to the Fun Terminal, so placed across from the bus terminal as to catch the eye of servicemen arriving from Treasure Island or the Oakland Army Terminal. Browne bought a fin’s worth of dimes from the rock-faced woman in the Fun Terminal’s change booth, and chose a pinball machine which happened to give its player a good view of First Street. This included a good view of the Trailways entrance across from the arcade’s open portals.

Browne began playing his pinball machine, very slowly, very methodically, making each dime last. Hustlers do not have expense accounts.

Nor are hustlers, of course, the only ones who ignore the litter baskets and cross on WAIT. Even Honest John tourists and straight-arrow, tax-paying San Franciscans like to say fuck it once in a while. Poor old straights sometimes like to spend a little money on non-Establishment fun, and hang around topless bars, and porno flicks, and neighborhood bookies. They get sadly mixed-up with cruising rough trade or backseat whores. In this underbelly San Francisco they get rolled, or get ripped off, or get a dose, or maybe even get unlucky and so get dead.

Therefore, this alternate San Francisco to the city where the little cable cars reach halfway to the stars is also the cops’ San Francisco. Maybe especially the cops’ San Francisco.

Because cops spend quite a lot of their time with people who get rolled or ripped off or dead. Particularly dead.

Out on Bryant Street a hard-nosed Homicide inspector named Vincent Wylie had finished his part of the proceedings at 1748, where, less than three hours before, a dead Mexican had turned up. Because Wylie was a good cop, he hadn’t returned immediately to the Hall when he had finished in the flat where Marquez had died.

Instead he had leisurely snooped over those nine incongruous dwellings dropped there in the middle of the industrial district. And he had noted with interest that one of them had a real-estate office on the ground floor. What more natural place for local landlords to go with their rentals than a local realtor?

Of course there were things against it in this case. It was an extremely unkempt real-estate office, despite innumerable faded signs advertising everything but the Second Coming. There was an announcement that this office PREPARED HERE ONE’S STATE AND FEDERAL INCOME TAX RETURNS. Another boasted of CHOICE RENTALS which were AVAILABLE NOW. This office was willing to sell HOME OWNERS INSURANCE. There was SPANISH SPOKEN HERE.

Since this sign, like the others, was in English, Wylie was not unduly impressed as he entered the realty office from Bryant Street. The shaky-handed early morning drinker behind the desk, the only one present to perform the advertised miracles, almost caught his fingers in his haste to slam shut his bottle drawer.

“Look here,” invited Inspector Vincent Wylie.

The ruddy-faced dipso stared at Wylie’s shield. He ran the back of an unsteady hand across his mouth, where the razor had missed a triangle of upper lip. His fingernails were dirty. His nose resembled a russet potato. He might have been able to sell a house to a blind man if the blind man couldn’t smell booze.

“Ah, lots of excitement up the street, officer.”

Wylie said nothing.

“I... see that Mex kid they was taking away hanging around here a lot. I useta think he might be, ah, casing me...”

Wylie had a Doberman’s eyes in a basset’s face. He said nothing.

“Ah... what’s he done, officer?”

“Inspector,” said Wylie’s mouth. Wylie’s pale, pale-lashed eyes said accusingly, boozer. Said, walk soft, boozer. Said, your broker’s license won’t last long you fuck around with me, boozer. “You handle that property? Seventeen-forty-eight?”

“I’d... have to check my files—”

“Three doors away you have to check?”

The eyes peering past the Idaho russet had begun to water. The realtor was sweating. “I...”

“You need a drink, go ahead. I’m not the ABC.”

The realtor found that very funny; certainly much funnier than Wylie found it. The realtor laughed alone, had his drink alone while subsiding into chuckles. He didn’t bother with a glass. The booze was going to get his realtor’s ticket much quicker than Wylie would.

Wylie drummed his fingers on the desk top. The laughter stopped abruptly.

“Rented it two weeks ago,” said the realtor. Neither his voice nor his hands shook any more. “Big guy, he was, said—”

“Two-ten, two-twenty, blond hair and glasses, a limp?”

“Big guy,” repeated the realtor. “But...” He was shaking his head, finally going through the thin sheaf of current rentals which slumbered in his cardbox. “No limp that I remember, glasses... naw.”

“The hair is long. Down to here, maybe.”

“That I’d remember. No.”

“Rented in the name of Docker?” Nothing in Wylie’s persistent voice indicated that the realtor’s equally persistent denials had been anything but immensely gratifying. The realtor had found the card. He shook his head.

“No Docker. Different fellow, name of Fargo. One month—”

“Neil Fargo?”

“That’s him.”

“Well well well.” Wylie’s voice was plump with delight. “Now isn’t that handsome? Docker mixed up in a possible murder, and Neil Fargo rents the apartment where it happened. And uses his own name, too.”

The realtor was grinning at him like a dog who’s brought back a stick — delighted without knowing why. The cop went out into the chilly sunshine without appearing to hear the bottle drawer creak open behind him. Wylie was smiling like a man recalling the tagline of a good dirty joke; even straight cops can be prejudiced, and not all prejudices involve minorities. Unless individuals can be considered as the ultimate in minorities.