Interface (Crime Masterworks) (13 page)

His mouth smiled around the disfiguring wad of paper as he saw the red-headed narc start very casually across O’Farrell with the green light, sauntering toward the fat man. Just as he reached the curb, the fat man hung up.

Tekawa said very quickly, as the redhead looked questioningly back at him, ‘What do you mean, murder?’

‘Quit stalling me, man,’ snapped Docker. He slid a thin blade of paranoia into his voice. ‘You tryna keep me talking, is that it? You tryna keep me on the line so you can trace the call? You tryna—’

‘From a phone I didn’t know you were going to call me on?’ Tekawa shook his head at his red-headed partner, who stood on the curb facing downhill, which put his back to Docker. His hands were in his pockets; he teetered on his toes, idly. Tekawa went on, ‘Hell, Docker, you sound like you’ve been around long enough to know it’s damned near impossible to make a trace with all the electronic equipment they use today anyway.’

‘Yeah. Sure.’ Docker’s voice was mollified. ‘I’m strung out, that’s all.’

‘Strung out?’

‘There you go, fucking leaning on me again!’ he cried. He said in more rational tones, ‘Just an expression, that’s all.’

He stopped there, waited. He watched the fat man unwedging himself from the phone booth. The fat man was fat enough so his belt must have been a sixty; his shoes, chronically asked to support a weight no shoes could long support, were run over so far that the outside edges of the uppers were worn through.

The fruiter took the fat man’s arm tenderly, as he might have taken a woman’s. Both Docker and Tekawa were silent, both watching the little domestic drama. The fat man had taken the paper-wrapped bottle from the fruiter’s other hand like an infant reaching for a breast. They moved away together.

Docker, in his window, mouthed silent syllables into his phone in case Tekawa could see him through the glass despite the reflections from the street. Tekawa finally broke the silence.

‘When you say murder, Mr Docker …’

‘Murder One.’

Kolinski, hands thrust into the pockets of his expensive coat, lean as a mortician, was turning into the street door of the FarJon Hotel across the street. His face was set and grim.

Docker said excitedly, ‘He’s giving her an overdose.’

‘Who? Where?’

From his coffee shop, Tekawa could not see the door up Jones Street that Kolinski had just entered. His partner, who was staring down Jones toward Market, had his back to the door.

‘You ever heard of a man named Kolinski?’

‘I may have.’ Tekawa’s voice had become instantly guarded. Docker was watching the second sweep of his watch now.

‘Don’t be so fucking cute, Jap. Your nuts ache you want him so bad. So he’s just given her an OD. It’s a deliberate hotshot – ninety-five percent pure shit.’

‘Nobody has pure—’

‘This came out of a hijacked shipment where a courier from Mexico got wiped this morning out on Bryant Street. Wylie’s on it from Homicide.’

In tones he attempted to make casual, Tekawa began, ‘I may have heard something—’

‘Kolinski’s going to split if you don’t get up there.’

Tekawa’s cool finally slipped. ‘Where, then, goddam you?’

‘Five-one-seven Jones. The FarJon Hotel. Get up there, Jap. You’ll hear the coon on the desk screaming when you go through the street door.’

Docker depressed the hooks but kept talking into the dead phone. He also turned slightly so his shoulder and part of his back were to the window to make him seem unaware of what was going on in the street outside. Past the black plastic edge of the phone he watched Tekawa burst from the coffee shop and cross O’Farrell against the red light. The redhead fell in beside him; they went up Jones in strides so long as to be nearly running.

They tried the narrow dirty street door of the hotel, found it locked, mashed the buzzer.

The door opened.

Something, perhaps something they heard, made them start drawing their pieces as they went in and then out of sight up the stairwell.

Docker grimaced around the wad of mushy paper, released the hooks of the phone, dropped another dime as his eyes stayed on the gaping doorway of the FarJon Hotel. He dialled. When Pamela Gardner’s voice spoke Neil Fargo’s name in his ear, followed by the formula Investigations, he said, ‘Roberta Stayton. FarJon Hotel, five-one-seven Jones.’

Docker hung up on the girl’s repeated demands to know who was calling. Something in her voice made him stand frowning for a few moments before melting away through the lobby, to a side door which let him into an alley which in mid-block intersected another alley which finally let him out into the 500 block of Geary. That was where he had left his rented canary yellow Montego. His dime’s worth of meter had not run out during the time it had taken Robin to die.

N
eil 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.’