Interface (Crime Masterworks)

by Gores, Joe

  ‘I can be.’ Seeing the look in the detective’s eyes, he added, ‘I will be.’

  ‘Get braced for the bad, just in case.’

  This time Stayton offered to shake the detective’s hand.

  In the immense open-air lobby below the building’s stubby pillar legs, Neil Fargo used a pay phone. Pamela Gardner answered on the second ring with her formula, ‘Neil Fargo, Investigations.’ When she heard his voice, she exclaimed, ‘Thank God you called.’

  ‘You’ve got a line on Docker? Great work, doll. What—’

  ‘No Docker. Homicide called. They want you down at the HalI of Justice as soon as—’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘What? Oh.’ Understanding entered her voice. She had a very good phone voice, soft and extremely sensual, which did not fit either her fresh-scrubbed little-girl looks or the way her mind worked. ‘An Inspector Wylie.’

  ‘Son of a bitch. Vince Wylie hates my guts.’ He checked his watch. ‘Look, doll, call him back, tell him I’ll be there between one and one-thirty.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And no luck with Docker, huh?’

  ‘The only Docker in the book is on Beach Street, Neil – and that’s a girl. She was d.a. when I called, I’m trying to get the landlady to—’

  ‘Forget all that. Anything from the state?’

  ‘DMV says no driver’s license, no autos registered in his name. Ma Bell says no phone, even unlisted. PG&E is still checking, but he’d probably have the sort of place where the utilities are in the landlord’s name if—’

  ‘Yeah. Look, doll, don’t waste any more time on that crap. Start calling car-rental outfits. Just for the last day, two days, he’d have to show a valid driver’s license from somewhere to get a car – Nevada or Oregon, maybe. I’ve put a couple of street types on him, too. They’ll call you if they turn anything. Just hit the high spots from now on. We’re running out of time. I’ll check in after I’m through at the Hall, if I’m not in jail.’

  She took it literally. ‘Should I alert Jack Leavitt in case—’

  ‘I don’t think Wylie has enough to make us yell lawyer yet. Instead of worrying about what might happen to me, we have to find out where that goddam Docker has gotten to.’

  8

  Docker stepped off the N Judah car where Sutter Street stubbed its toe on Market. All streetcars inbound for the East Bay Terminal used Market, so the fact it was a Judah car originating out in the Sunset District offered no real clue to where he’d gotten onto it.

  The blond man paused on the sidewalk in front of the ritzy new Standard Oil Building like a man undecided, swinging his attaché case as his ever-active eyes surveyed street, crowds, passing autos from behind their heavy hornrims. The air smelled of sewage, and a PG&E crew had a manhole open to look for whatever had died down there.

  Docker did not seem to see whatever he was looking for. Beyond the beautiful little reflecting pool where ecology freaks liked to dump motor oil and expired seagulls whenever there was an oil spill in the Bay, a long-necked steel dinosaur was eating a dead building. Docker watched as it took another bite, seizing the edge of a wall in serrated steel jaws and shaking its head angrily when the ancient brick was stubborn about peeling away from the I-beam bones. Then the wall surrendered and the dinosaur disdainfully dropped a couple of yards of it into the rubble around its caterpillared feet.

  ‘Spare change, mister?’

  Docker brought his eyes down from the building to the panhandling hippie chick. She wore washed-out jeans and somebody else’s sweatshirt and no shoes, and was as anachronistic as an Edsel. Her hair was the same ash-blonde as Docker’s, just about as long and worn much the same way, parted in the center and falling to her shoulders.

  ‘Sell your watch,’ said Docker.

  She made a disgusted face. Despite his hair length, she said, ‘Fuckin’ straight.’

  Docker turned away toward First Street. As he did, the sole of his shoe came down on the girl’s bare toes, hard. She yelled. One of the yellow-hatted PG&E workmen straightened up with a shocked look on his face. It wasn’t a face that had a whole lot left to be afraid of.

  Docker kept going. Behind him, the girl hopped up and down on her undamaged foot and yelled curses. People watched. His eyes worried and angry at the same time, the PG&E workman put a detaining hand on Docker’s arm. Docker stopped. He looked at the workman as a pathologist would look at a cadaver he was about to cut up.

  The workman’s gaze faltered. The hand dropped away.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Docker said.

  Instead of continuing on down Market to First, he cut off down a narrow blacktopped alley called Ecker Street. His uneven stride was now springier, as if the Market Street confrontation was what he had been seeking. The alley took him between crowding ancient brick walls and eventually to Mission Street. Here he turned left, to First, crossed with the light and went out First.

  The half-block to Minna Street was crowded with the sort of places which are always across the street from bus terminals, and Docker seemed to be searching again. He rejected first a drugstore that tastefully displayed its condoms on the candy counter, then a short-order joint with a back room featuring a wide variety of dildoes, merkins, and battery-operated body-massagers strapped like penises. At a bar which had SALOON painted across its front in heavy ornate circus-poster letters, he turned in.

  Underneath SALOON was All Girl Bartenders!! in smaller red letters. Inside was a standard joint tricked out western, with a pair of plastic Texas longhorns over the back bar. Only one All Girl Bartender!! was behind the stick, wearing a Stetson and boots and a vest and a plastic pistol belt with a plastic Frontier Colt ball-ammo .44 in the holster, low on the hip of her dated red hotpants.

  Docker dropped a dollar in front of the rodeo-shirted nipples she pointed at him across the bar. ‘Bourbon,’ he said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Huh? Oh. Put it in a glass.’

  ‘Cute.’

  The girl had a hawklike, predatory face and long black hair and legs like a dancer’s. Docker had his shot standing at the bar, putting it down in a lump like somebody dropping a horseshoe. The girl had no time to move away before he set the empty shot-glass back on the bar. She had no other customers to move to anyway, except a pair of south of Market types taking turns trying to sell one another pieces of the Yerba Buena Center.

  ‘I just got into town,’ said Docker to the girl. ‘I’m looking for a whore.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  Docker said patiently, ‘You’ll do. How much?’

  She leaned toward him sweetly while dropping a hand on the bar so the extended forefinger pointed at the door. She said, ‘And it’s bye, bye, baby. Now. Out.’

  ‘Anything you think is reasonable. Just a cheap fuck—’

  ‘The owner is an ex-pro wrestler who loves to work out on guys who four-letter his waitresses. He’s out in back playing with the beer kegs for exercise. If I should call him—’

  ‘He gets a broken arm,’ said Docker.

  Some time went by. She sighed. She said almost regretfully, in a much softer voice, ‘Look, mister, I’m married. Honest.’

  ‘So was my mother, it never stopped her.’

  He patted the girl on the cheek and went out before she could say anything further, limping very slightly because the attaché case in his right hand put added strain on that leg. The All Girl Bartender stared after him. She wet her lips thoughtfully. Then she began assiduously wiping the plank with her bar rag, an unexpected blush mantling her cheeks.

  Six doors down, Docker turned in at an open-fronted amusement arcade called Fun Terminal. Four guys were feeding the pinball machines that lined the left wall and ran down that side of the building’s midline. Three of them were whites; the fourth, at the machine closest to the door, was a wasted-looking black with greying hair and holes cut in his shoes to let his bunions breathe.

  The right side of the Fun Terminal was filled with half-a
-hundred dime and two-bit movie peep-show machines, each showing three-minute fuck films cut into thirty-second segments. Docker bought two bucks’ worth of quarters and fed them into the machines, switching after each quarter instead of watching any of the brutally pornographic films out. The eyepieces smelled of perfumed disinfectant. Unlike some of the other patrons, he occupied his right hand with his attaché case rather than his anatomy.

  When he’d spent enough time there, Docker walked back to the change desk.

  ‘You ought to furnish handkerchiefs,’ he said to the hard-faced harpy on the stool. ‘I almost had an accident all over the front of one of your nice machines.’

  ‘So next time wear a rubber.’

  Docker crossed First Street still laughing. He ignored both the mid-block crosswalk and the angry horns and squealing brakes of the cars which the light at Mission released just in time to swerve or stop to avoid hitting him.

  ‘I declare,’ muttered the black man named Browne. ‘He’s a wild man.’

  As soon as Docker had disappeared into the Trailways Terminal, Browne went after him. He was slower than Docker in crossing the street, more careful of traffic and using the crosswalk, so Docker was already at the ticket window when Browne came through the swinging doors.

  Browne immediately slowed to an Uncle Remus shamble down the broad aisle between the orderly rows of nearly depopulated benches. He came into earshot as the ticket agent was saying, ‘One-way to Los Angeles? Yes, sir. The Silver Eagle leaves in just twenty-one minutes.’

  Docker put his money on the counter. The lean, stooped, sad-eyed black man moved up beside him to study a posted timetable. Docker said, ‘What gate?’

  ‘We … don’t have a gate,’ said the ticket agent somewhat defensively. ‘Just outside and to your left, in Natoma Street. The bus stops there. Your luggage—’

  ‘This.’ Docker lifted the attaché case, then lowered it below counter-level. ‘I’ll carry it. What time does the bus get in?’

  ‘Well, it makes several stops. San Fernando, Glendale, Burbank, North Hol—’

  ‘I’m glad Trailways is hiring the mentally handicapped.

  I bought a ticket for Los Angeles.’

  ‘Ten-forty tonight.’ The ticket agent had flushed.

  Docker pocketed his change. ‘Jesus Christ. I could walk faster.’

  He turned away from the window. The ticket agent turned angry, now florid features at the grey-haired black man reading the schedules.

  ‘Next,’ he snapped.

  ‘Just browsin’.’

  ‘Then quit blocking the ticket window.’

  Browne put his face close to the agent’s. Browne’s eyes had yellowish bloodshot whites. ‘A soft voice turneth away wrath,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘And saveth a fat lip.’

  He followed Docker back through the terminal. The travellers scattered around the echoing, low-ceilinged room were mostly older men buried in paperbacks or newspapers. Browne’s steps quickened as Docker went toward the banks of doors opening into Fremont Street, then slowed again as the quarry turned right between the rows of benches.

  This led only past a two-bit shoeshine stand and a bank of storage lockers to the men’s room. Browne hesitated, checked his watch, rubbed his hands together nervously. They were long, tapering dry-palmed hands that made a rustling sound against each other. Finally the black man went into the restroom also, entering the tiled facility crab-fashion as if to avoid the full force of any blow launched at him from behind the door.

  Docker was nowhere near the door. Indeed, he was just feeding a dime into the slot of the furthest pay stall in the line. He went in without looking around at all as Browne headed for a urinal. Four of the twenty-one minutes before the Silver Eagle’s departure had passed.

  The moment Docker’s stall door had clapped shut with its heavy click designed to make the patron feel his dime was well spent, Browne drifted down the line of stalls on silent feet. He stopped just short of Docker’s, precisely where the overhead fluorescents had no chance of casting his shadow under Docker’s door. He listened, poised.

  From inside came the rustle of clothing. A pause. Then a grunt, a splash, a relieved sigh.

  Browne was already moving, quickly and silently, trotting at little short of a run toward the First Street entrance and the pay phone outside it. He dropped his dime, dialled. Alex Kolinski’s heavy voice came on the line.

  ‘He’s here,’ exclaimed Browne, ‘In the men’s room takin’ a shit!’

  Before Browne was out the men’s room door, however, Docker’s stall had opened. The big, blond, hard-faced man had emerged fully clothed. Docker had the attaché case pinched between arm and body again to free both hands. He was drying, with a heavy wad of toilet paper, the fist he’d used to make the splash. He dropped the paper on the floor, went out of the restroom.

  In the phone booth outside the far end of the block-long terminal, Browne was saying, ‘Trailways Terminal on First Street is where. He—’

  ‘He’s getting a bus.’ Kolinski’s voice made it a statement.

  ‘Ain’t I tellin’ you? Los Angeles Silver Eagle, it leaves here at twelve-twenty. He—’

  ‘He’s got an attaché case with him?’

  ‘Uh. That like a briefcase only it square-like?’

  Docker had stayed against the wall, had gone out the Fremont Street door closest to the men’s room and thus had not been visible from the body of the waiting room, let alone from Browne’s phone booth outside in First Street. He turned right, toward Natoma Street, then right again and went along Natoma toward First Street, where the Silver Eagle would load. The bus was waiting. Docker ignored it.

  ‘Man, I tell you he try to leave I follow him. Be like pickin’ cherries off a tree—’

  ‘Listen, goddam you!’ cut in Kolinski angrily. ‘Don’t go up against him, hang back if he doesn’t get that bus. I and some men are on the way. He beat the living shit out of Rowlands over at the Greyhound station about an hour ago, acted like he might be dropping meth …’

  Browne, whistling cheerily under his breath, headed back into the terminal. Thirteen minutes to bus departure.

  Docker, who had been standing just out of sight on Natoma, went across First Street in long strides toward the open dark maw of the parking garage directly opposite. His topcoat tails flapped around his legs and the attaché case swung in asymmetrical rhythm to help with his balance.

  He pulled up just inside the door with a little skip made necessary by his limp, then twisted to scan the front of the terminal building. Browne was nowhere in sight. Satisfied, he straightened his lapels, rubbed on the back of one calf the shoe-tip of the other foot which had gotten scuffed, then went away between the rows of parked cars.

  This echoing passageway took him through the sprawling dim low-ceilinged garage to a series of open-air blacktop lots. These, leased to private operators by the state, followed the course of the Skyway which shook and rumbled with traffic above Docker’s head.

  Eventually he emerged into Howard Street between two immense concrete abutments. He was nearly two blocks from the Trailways Bus TerminaL There was no one behind him. It was 12:18, two minutes before the Silver Eagle would leave for Los Angeles without him.

  Back at the terminal, Browne was staring in disbelief as the last southbound passenger boarded the big double-decker bus. The door shut with a pneumatic sound very much like phooey. Browne sprinted back into the terminal and through it toward the men’s room. In his wake moved a very big man wearing a droopy mustache that made him look like an overweight Rock Hudson during the actor’s mustache phase.

  Browne straightened up from looking under the locked door of Docker’s empty stall with shock in his face. As he did, Kolinski came in, preceded by the overweight Rock Hudson and followed by another man equally as large. All three of them had their hands in their overcoat pockets. No one else was in the restroom. The last man stopped and leaned against the door so anyone trying to open it would find it unyielding unl
ess they got back and took a run at it.

  Browne was backing up. Unfortunately for him, he was already at the last stall, almost against the back wall. Kolinski’s deep-set eyes were dangerous.

  ‘So?’ he said.

  Browne said: ‘I swear he … I come in here after I seen he wasn’t on the bus. I swear—’

  ‘Blaney?’

  ‘He wasn’t on the bus,’ said Rock Hudson.

  ‘Any other bus out of here he could have caught?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I swear,’ said Browne. ‘I swear, Mr Kolinski …’

  ‘Daggert. Amtrack?’

  ‘The last train out was at nine o’clock,’ said the man who was making sure there would continue to be no one else in the restroom.

  ‘I swear, Mr Kolinski—’

  ‘Upstairs? An East Bay bus?’

  Blaney merely shook his head. ‘He must of smelled our friend here and just split. Unless …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kolinski. ‘Unless.’

  Browne had gone silent. Silence did not attract attention. But Kolinski’s attention was apparently already attracted. Since silence hadn’t worked, Browne began trying to make himself fit into the corner formed by the final stall and the back wall. He was too long and lean and suddenly dolorous to be successful.

  Then Kolinski smiled. A lot of Jews wearing tattooed numbers would have recognized the quality of that smile. ‘How much did he pay you to lose him?’ asked Kolinski softly.

  Browne’s face glistened. His lips were dry. He said, ‘Mr Kolinski, I swear—’

  ‘Blaney.’

  The search was swift, thorough, professional, not at all gentle. Blaney shook his head. ‘Not enough to buy a piece of ass off his mother.’

  ‘Pure stupidity, then.’

  Kolinski swung a round-house right as he spoke. It was a sucker punch, but it drove Browne’s head sideways against the wall tiles because Browne had made no attempt to block it, counter it, or move his head out of its way. Like silence, it didn’t work either to deflect Kolinski’s anger.

  ‘Make this stupid nigger hurt,’ Kolinski said.