Counting Up, Counting Down

by Harry Turtledove

  Daisy Miller from London

  La Tórtola from Gozo

  Admiral Byng from Minorca

  Golden Wind from Bombay

  After he read the advertisements on the other side of the page that held Ships in Port, he tore out the three-inch length of agate type and stuck it in his trouser pocket. Then he worked his way through the rest of the newspaper.

  “Miles?”

  Bowman looked up. Eva stood in the doorway that led to the bedroom. She was wearing a thin, clinging silk crêpe de chine peignoir. Bowman had given it to her for their anniversary a few years before. She did not wear it very often.

  “It’s getting late,” she said. “Aren’t you coming to bed?” She had not washed off her makeup and smeared her face with cold cream, the way she usually did at bedtime.

  Bowman folded up the paper and tossed it on the floor. His fingers were stained with ink from the cheap newsprint. He rubbed them on the thighs of his pants, rose from the couch. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said.

  A hard fist pounded on the front door. Bowman sat up in bed. The pounding went on. “Who’s that?” Eva asked, her voice half drunk with sleep.

  “Damned if I know, but I’m going to find out.” Bowman groped for the switch on the lamp by the bed. He flicked it, and screwed up his eyes against the sudden flare of light. He peered at the alarm clock on the nightstand by the lamp. Midnight. Scowling, he got out of bed. He had hung his holster on a chair. He pulled out his pistol, clicked off the safety.

  “What are you going to do?” Eva asked. The cold cream made her round cheeks glisten like the rump of a greased pig.

  “See who it is,” Bowman answered reasonably. “You stay here.” He slid into his pajama bottoms and padded out toward the door. For a bulky man, he was surprisingly light on his feet. He closed the bedroom door after him.

  The pounding had slowed when the light went on. Bowman yanked the door open. He pointed the pistol at the two men on the front porch. A moment later, he lowered it. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “You boys trying to get yourselves killed? I knew cops were dumb, but this dumb?” He shook his head.

  “We’ve got to talk to you, Miles,” one of the policemen said. “Can we come in?”

  “You got a warrant, Rollie?” Bowman asked.

  “Not that kind of talk, I swear.” Detective Roland Dwyer crossed himself to show he was serious.

  Bowman considered. He nodded gruffly. “All right, come in, then,” he said, and turned on the imitation Tiffany lamp on the table by the door. “But if you and the Captain here are playing games with me—” He did not say what would happen then, but left the implication it would not be pretty.

  “Thanks, Miles,” Dwyer said with an air of sincerity. He was a tall Irishman heading toward middle age. His hair had naturally the color to which Eva’s aspired. His face was long and ruddy and triangular, with a wide forehead and a narrow chin. He wore a frayed shirt collar and pants shiny with wear at the knees: he was, on the whole, an honest cop.

  Bowman waved him toward the sofa. The Captain followed him in. Bowman quickly closed the door. The night was chilly, and had the clammy dankness of fog. Bowman sat down in the rocking chair next to the table that held the lamp with the colored glass shade. His voice turned hard: “All right, what won’t keep till morning?”

  Dwyer and the Captain looked at each other. The latter was a short, pudgy man, a few years older than Bowman. He had a fringe of silver hair futilely clinging to the slopes of his pate, skin as fine and pink as a baby’s, and innocent blue eyes. His suit was new, and tailored in the English fashion. He smelled of expensive Bay Rum aftershave lotion.

  After a brief hesitation, the Captain said: “Evan Thursday’s dead, Miles. One slug, right between the eyes.”

  “So?” Bowman said. “Good riddance to him is all I have to say, Bock.”

  Captain Henry Bock steepled his fingers. He pressed them so tight together, the blood was forced from their tips, leaving them pale as boiled veal. “Where have you been tonight, Miles?” he asked delicately.

  Bowman heaved himself out of the rocker. He took two steps toward the Captain before he checked himself. “Get out of here,” he snarled. “Rollie tells me everything’s going to be jake, and you start with that—” He expressed his opinion with vehemence, variety, and detail.

  Roland Dwyer spread his hands placatingly. “Come on, take it easy,” he said. “This guy gets iced, we have to talk with you. We think he shot Tom, after all, and Tom was your partner.”

  “Yeah? Is that what you think?” Bowman made a slashing gesture of disgust with his left hand. “Looked like you were trying to pin Tom on me. Or do you figure I took care of both of ’em now?”

  “Where have you been tonight?” Captain Bock repeated.

  “At the office and here, dammit, nowhere else but,” Bowman said. “Ask my secretary when I left, ask Eva when I got here. You want me to get her out so you can ask her?” He glanced over to the closed bedroom door. “Only take a minute.”

  “It’s all right, Miles,” Detective Dwyer said. “We believe you.” He looked over at Henry Bock again. “Don’t we, Captain?”

  Bock shrugged. “Neither of those women is likely to tell us anything different from what Bowman says, anyhow.”

  The Captain had spoken quietly. Bowman glanced at the bedroom door again. When he answered, he, too, held his voice down, but anger blazed in it: “And what the hell is that supposed to mean? You come round here with one load of rubbish, and now you start throwing around more? I ought to—”

  “Shut up, Bowman,” Captain Bock said flatly. “What the women say doesn’t matter, not this time. Thursday caught his right outside Kezar Stadium, in Golden Gate Park. If you’d arranged to meet him there, it wouldn’t have been five minutes out of your way.”

  “And if pigs had wings—” Bowman stood up, opened the front door. “Get out,” he growled. “Next time you come here, you bring a warrant, like I said. My lawyer’ll be here with me, too.”

  “I’m sorry, Miles,” Dwyer said. “We’re doing our job, too, remember. You aren’t making it any easier for us, either.”

  “Go do it somewhere else,” Bowman said.

  The two policemen got up and walked into the building fog. They got into their car, which they had parked behind Bowman’s. The heavy, wet air muffled the sound of the motor starting. In the fog, the beams the headlamps cast seemed thick and yellow as butter.

  Bowman shut the door and locked it. He went back into the bedroom, replaced the pistol in its holster. Eva was sitting up, reading the novel she’d abandoned earlier. “What—did they want?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Somebody punched that Evan Thursday’s ticket for him,” Bowman answered.

  “And they think it was you?” Eva’s eyes widened. “That’s terrible!”

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” Bowman said, shrugging. “I didn’t do it, so they can’t pin it on me, right?” He lay down beside her, clicked off the lamp on his side of the bed. He yawned. “You going to look at that thing all night?”

  “No, dear.” Eva put down the book and turned off her lamp. Although she stretched out next to Bowman, she wiggled and fidgeted the way she did when she was having trouble going to sleep. Bowman shrugged once more, breathed heavily, then soon began to snore.

  The telephone rang, loud in the night as a fire alarm. Bowman thrashed, twisted, sat up, and turned on the bedside lamp. The alarm clock said it was almost three. He shook his head. “I don’t believe this.”

  The phone kept ringing. “Answer it,” Eva told him. She pulled the pale blue wool blanket up over her head.

  Muttering, he walked into the living room. He snatched the earpiece off the hook, picked up the rest of the instrument, and barked his name into the mouthpiece: “Bowman.” The voice on the other end of the line spoke. “Now?” Bowman asked. “Are you sure? . . . Jesus Christ, it’s three in the morning. . . . All right, if that’s the way it’s got to be. . . . Room 481,
right? See you there. . . . Yeah, fifteen minutes if the fog’s not too thick.”

  He slammed the mouthpiece down on his goodbye, stalked back into the bedroom. Eva had turned off the light. He turned it on again. He unbuttoned the shirt to his pajamas and walked naked to the dresser.

  “What’s wrong?” Eva asked as he pulled a clean pair of white cotton boxer shorts out of a dresser drawer. “Why are you getting dressed?” She sounded frightened.

  “I’m going down to the station.” He got into the same trousers he had worn the day before. “Bock and Dwyer, they have some more questions for me.” He put on socks and shoes, got a fresh shirt from the closet, knotted a tie with a jungle pattern of hot blues and oranges and greens, shrugged a jacket over his wide shoulders. He ran a comb through his hair, then planted a curled-brim fedora on his head.

  “Shouldn’t you call your lawyer?” Eva said.

  “Nah, it’ll be all right.” He started out. At the bedroom door, he stopped and blew her a kiss.

  The fog was there, but not too thick. He had the roads all to himself. Once, his Chevrolet and a police car passed each other on opposite sides of the street. He waved to the men inside. One of them recognized him and waved back.

  He turned right off Market onto New Montgomery. During business hours, no one could have hoped to find a parking space there. Now the curb was his to command. He walked over to the eight-story Beaux Arts building of tan brick and terra cotta at the corner of Market and New Montgomery. A man in uniform held the door open for him. He strode across the lobby to the bank of elevators.

  “Fourth floor,” he told the operator as he got into one.

  “Fourth floor, yes, sir,” the man answered. “Welcome to the Palace Hotel.”

  Bowman stood with his feet slightly spread, as if at parade rest. He looked straight ahead. The elevator purred upward. When it got to the fourth floor, the operator opened the cage. Bowman stepped out while the fellow was telling him the floor.

  A sign on the wall opposite the elevator announced:

  401–450 451–499

  ⇐ ⇒

  Bowman went ⇒. The carpet in the hall was so thick that the pile swallowed the welt of his shoe each time his weight came down on it. He paused a moment in front of room 481, then folded his thick hand into a fist and rapped on the door just below the polished brass numbers.

  It opened. “Come in,” Gina Tellini said. She looked as fresh as she had the afternoon before, but at some time between then and now had changed into a dark green velvet lounging robe of Oriental cut. The front of a Chinese dragon, embroidered in deep golds and reds, coiled across her breasts.

  Bowman stepped into the hotel room. Gina Tellini closed the door after him. As she started back past him, he said, “Thursday’s dead.”

  She stopped in her tracks. A hand started to fly up to her mouth, but checked itself. “How do you know that?” she asked in a shaken voice.

  “Cops—how else?” He barked mirthless laughter. “They want to put that one on my bar tab, too, along with Tom.” His lips thinned, stretching his mouth into a speculative line. “You could have done it. You would have had time, after you left the office.”

  “No, not me.” She dismissed the idea in three casual words. “Here, sit down, make yourself comfortable.” She waved Bowman to a chair upholstered in velvet two shades lighter than her gown. She sat down on the edge of the bed facing him. The bed had not been slept in since the maid last prepared it.

  “All right, not you,” Bowman said agreeably, crossing his legs. “Who, then?”

  “It could have been Nicholas Alexandria,” Gina Tellini said. “He carries a gun. You saw that.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. It could have been. But a lot of people carry guns. I carry one myself. ‘Could have been’ doesn’t cut much ice.”

  “I know.” Gina Tellini nodded. The motion made the robe come open, very slightly, at the neckline. “But somebody besides Alexandria wants the Maltese Elephant.”

  “Somebody besides Alexandria and you.” Bowman’s gaze focused on the point, a few inches below her chin, where velvet had retreated. “Thursday’s dead. Who else is there?”

  “A man named Gideon Schlechtman,” she answered promptly. “Sometimes he and Alexandria work together, sometimes Alexandria is on his own, or thinks he is. But if he gets the elephant, Schlechtman will try to take it from him.”

  “I bet he will,” Bowman said. “And what about you and Alexandria and what’s-his-name, Schlechtman? I bet the three of you are one big happy family, right?”

  “It’s not funny, Miles,” Gina Tellini insisted. “Schlechtman is—dangerous. If Evan Thursday is dead, that’s all the more reason to believe he’s come to San Francisco.”

  “Is that so?” Bowman said. “All I have is your word, and your word hasn’t been any too real good, you know what I mean. And if this here Schlechtman is real and is in town, whose side are you on?”

  “That’s a terrible question to ask.” Gina Tellini’s eyes blazed for a moment. Then sudden tears put out the fire. “You don’t believe a word I’ve told you. It’s so—hard when you don’t trust me. I’m here in your city all alone and—” The rest was muffled when she buried her face in her hands.

  Bowman rose from the chair, sat down beside her on the bed. “Don’t get upset, sweetheart,” he said. “One way or another, I’ll take care of things.”

  She looked up at him. Lamplight sparkled on the tracks two tears had traced on her cheeks. “I’m so damned tired of always being alone,” she whispered.

  “You’re not alone now,” he said. She nodded, slowly, her eyes never leaving his. He slipped his left arm around her shoulder, drew her to him. Her lips parted. They kissed fiercely. When they fell back to the mattress together, his weight pinned her against its firm resilience.

  The rumble of a cable car and the clang of its bell outside the window woke Miles Bowman. The gray light of approaching dawn seeped through the thick brocaded curtains of Gina Tellini’s room.

  Moving carefully, Bowman slid out from under her arm. She stirred and murmured but did not wake. Bowman dressed with practiced haste. The door clicked when he closed it. He paused outside in the hall. No sound came from within. Satisfied, he walked back to the elevator.

  More automobiles were on the street now, but not too many to keep Bowman from making a U-turn on New Montgomery. He turned right onto Market Street and took it all the way to the Embarcadero.

  The Ferry Building was quiet. Its siren would not wail for another two hours, not until eight o’clock. Through the thinning fog, its high clock tower loomed, brooding and sinister. Man-o’-War Row and berths for passenger liners stretched south of the Ferry Building, commercial piers for foreign lines north and west around the curve of the shore. Bowman turned left, toward them, onto the Embarcadero. Between gear changes, his right hand grubbed in his trouser pocket. He pulled out the piece of newsprint he had torn from the San Francisco News.

  He parked the car and got out. His nostrils dilated. The air was thick with the smells of rotting piles and roasting coffee, mud and fish and salt water. Sea gulls mewed like flying cats. He padded along, burly as the longshoremen all around but standing out from them by virtue of jacket and collar and tie.

  The News listed ships in order of the piers at which they were docked. The Daisy Miller was tied up by Pier 7. Shouting dock workers loaded wooden crates onto her. Stenciled letters on the sides of the crates declared they held sewing machines. They were the right size for rifles. Bowman shrugged and walked on to Pier 15, where La Tórtola was berthed.

  A handful of sailors worked on deck, swabbing and painting under the watchful eye of a skinny blond man in a black-brimmed white officer’s cap and a dark blue jacket with four gold rings circling each cuff. He saw Bowman looking at him. “What do you want, you?” he called. He had a German accent, or maybe Dutch.

  Bowman put hands on hips. “Who wants to know?”

  “I am Captain Wellnhofer, and I have the ri
ght to ask these questions. But you—” The captain’s face had been pale. Now it was red and angry.

  “Keep your shirt on, buddy,” Bowman said. He looked down at the scrap of newspaper in his hand. “This here the boat that’s supposed to get another load of fodder today?”

  Captain Wellnhofer’s face got redder. “Do you not know in your own language the difference between a boat and a ship? And we have no need for fodder now. You are mistaken. Go away.”

  The Admiral Byng was docked at Pier 23. Nobody aboard her admitted any need for fodder, either. Bowman grimaced and hiked on to Pier 35, which held the Golden Wind. “Halfway to Fisherman’s damn Wharf,” he muttered. The only men visible aboard her were little brown lascars in dungarees. None of them seemed to speak any English. Bowman held a couple of silver dollars in the palm of his hand. A lascar hurried to the rail with a sudden white smile. Bowman tossed him one of the coins. He asked the same question he had before. The lascar didn’t understand fodder. “Hay, straw, grain—you know what I mean,” Bowman said.

  “You crazy?” the lascar said. “We got tea, we got cotton, we got copra. We take away steam engines, petrol engines. You think maybe we feed them this grain?” He spoke in his own singsong language. The other lascars laughed.

  “Yeah, well, just for that, funny guy—” Bowman jammed the other silver dollar back into his trouser pocket. The lascar’s Hindustani oaths followed him as he strode down the pier toward the Embarcadero. He paused at the base of the pier to scribble a note: Expenses—Information—$2. Then he walked back along the curb of the harbor to his automobile.

  He parked it in the garage across the street from his office. Lounging against the brick wall not far from the entrance was a burly middle-aged man with the cold, hard, angular features of a Roman centurion. With its wide, pointed lapels, padded shoulders, and pinstripes, his suit stood on one side or the other of the line between fashion and parody. Bowman looked him over, then started up the steps.