Interface (Crime Masterworks)

by Gores, Joe

  Docker stepped back, regarded the scene critically, then carefully toed the syringe a little further under the bed where it would not be instantly apparent to anyone entering the room. He was working with fine tolerances now.

  Docker opened his attaché case without lifting it from the floor, put in the hypo which had killed her, withdrew a banded sheaf of bills. They were hundreds, fifty of them. His gloved fingers laid them on the corner of the dresser.

  One last quick look around the room.

  Breeze gently stirring the dirty lace curtains, very slightly guttering the candle on the dresser top. Sunlight gone from the mellowed brick wall opposite. Spoon. Ripped baggie which had brought her the death she sought.

  He looked at his watch. He touched nothing except his attaché case and the doorknob going out. He left the room, the building, by the same route he had entered, like a cloud passing from the pale face of the moon. The goose-plump black girl using the pay phone at the far end of the hall did not see him go. No one saw him go.

  It was 2:47 P.M.

  13

  Elided syllables made the voice on the phone as rich as chicken gumbo.

  ‘Mist’ Kolinski you gotta come over here right quick—’

  ‘What? Who the hell—’

  ‘This here’s Daphne. At the hotel? It’s Miss Robin. Mist’ Kolinski, she …’ The voice paused, became suddenly intimate with puzzlement or dread. ‘He was here! Dat man. Dat man who limps. He was in her room, I seen him …’

  Kolinski’s hand mauled the receiver as if it were Docker’s neck. Kolinski’s own voice sounded strangled.

  ‘Is … he still there?’

  ‘He surely isn’t. But when I seen him go by de desk, I went down to Miss Robin’s room ’cause I was scared … I mean, Mist’ Kolinski, she was askin’ me ’bout whether I know which girl was with him las’ week, an’ …’ Her voice quavered with terror at his possible displeasure. ‘An’ Mist’ Kolinski, it was Miss Robin he was with last week!’

  ‘You fucking black bitch, what are you telling me?’ His voice snapped Hariss erect, alert.

  ‘She’s …’ The Dixie voice got even closer to the phone, so it had the intimacy of intercourse to Kolinski’s ear. ‘She’s done shot herse’f up, Mist’ Kolinski! She’s already goin’ on the nod, an’ she laughin’. She sayin’ you gonna have to wait for her to come down off her high ’fore she tell you where he’s at. An’ she say you gonna have to beg her …’

  ‘You fucking cunt!’ Kolinski screamed at her.

  He slammed down the receiver, twisted toward the door. Hariss was in his way. Hariss put a small beautifully-groomed hand on his chest. It stopped Kolinski like a log through the windshield.

  ‘Get hold of yourself.’

  ‘Docker was just up at that fucking Robin’s room! The nigger cunt spotted him sneaking out, and …’ He was fighting for control and ramming his arms into his overcoat. ‘… and after he left, that fucking bitch shot herself up.’

  ‘And?’ Hariss’ voice was ominous.

  ‘Robin told the spade she knew where he had gone but that I was going to have to crawl to get the information.’

  Hariss quoted drily, ‘“I own her.” You ignorant, strutting animal! You …’ He stopped, shook his head almost in admiration. ‘Strong genes. Her father’s daughter …’

  Kolinski was once more at the door. ‘What pisses me, Walt, I left her those two extra bindles of shit this morning myself. So she could use them to …’ Flecks of spittle had appeared at the corners of his mouth. His eyes were quite mad. His hands convulsed themselves like dogs fucking. ‘She figures because she’ll be on the nod before I get there—’

  ‘Alex.’

  ‘I’ll get her awake and I’ll—’

  ‘Alex!’ The importer’s tone slashed through his rage. Kolinski tried to meet the other’s eyes, couldn’t.

  He growled, ‘Goddammit, Walt, I—’

  ‘Crawl for her, Alex, if that is what is necessary.’

  Kolinski drew a deep breath. His rage was passing. He nodded. ‘Yeah. Okay. Whatever I have to do to find out where he is. But afterwards …’

  ‘Of course. Afterwards.’ As Kolinski started for the door, Hariss added, ‘One further point.’

  ‘Christ, Walt, I gotta—’

  ‘The point is that Docker has a car. Yet he pauses to confer with a junkie whore with whom he casually slept a few nights before.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Why hasn’t he gotten out of town?’

  The two men stared at one another with a recognition dawning between them. Mixed in with the struggling comprehension were the first hints of personal fear. It was Hariss who voiced it.

  ‘Docker?’ he whispered. ‘And Robin? And what does he want?’

  Kolinski blustered, ‘When I get through with that bitch, we’ll have a lot of answers.’

  His voice was that of a boy drawing a line in the dirt and daring a bigger boy to step over it. The lights of the small office raised a sheen of perspiration on Walter Hariss’ heavy features.

  At the same moment Kolinski stormed out, Docker lowered the wrist with the watch on it so he could look through the smeary front window of the narrow pensioners’ hotel directly across from 517 Jones. That was the address of the second-floor hotel in which Robin Stayton had just completed her dying.

  Docker dropped a dime, dialled. His eyes were intense behind their hornrims, his lips were pursed almost as if he were counting. The pay phone was isolated in the front corner of the lobby, well away from the old men watching the afternoon soaps on the lobby TV. By merely switching his gaze downhill through the smeared window, to the coffee shop on the far corner of the O’Farrell Street intersection, he could see his quarry.

  In the front booth were a red-haired man and a black-haired man, the redhead in profile and the other with his back to the window.

  The phone was ringing. Docker was chewing on a wad of toilet paper. Through the window he could see the coffee shop’s Chinese waitress reach under the counter to pick up the receiver.

  ‘There should be two men sitting in the window booth drinking coffee,’ said Docker, as if he were not where he could see them himself. His voice labored like an asthmatic’s around the wad of moist paper. ‘One of them should be a red-headed Irishman—’

  ‘Say, who is this? What do you—’

  ‘The other should be a Jap. Tell the Jap he’s got a phone call.’

  He watched the waitress pause, decide, lay the receiver against her breast so he could no longer hear her breathing or her voice as she leaned across the counter. Her mouth moved. The back of Henry Tekawa’s sleek black head jerked to her words. He stood swiftly, went to the counter and put one knee on a deserted stool so he could lean forward to take the receiver.

  ‘Tekawa,’ he said.

  ‘Docker again.’

  Tekawa had a voice as smooth as butter, totally unaccented. He was third-generation American. He said, ‘Mr Docker, my partner and I have wasted almost forty-five minutes drinking lousy coffee in a crummy cafe because—’

  ‘Shut up!’ The viciousness in Docker’s voice came through the wad of paper. Quasi-hysteria joined it there. ‘You fucking cops are always the same! Lean on everybody, always lean on people! Only now I’m doing the leaning. I hang up this fucking phone and you’re fucked, Tekawa. Got that?’

  ‘I could hardly miss it.’ Tekawa’s voice was light, almost humorous. He turned and scanned the street casually through the window, took in the enormously fat man in a light-colored sport coat who was wedged into the public phone booth on the other side of O’Farrell. ‘You called me yesterday, Docker, said—’

  ‘I’m doing the talking,’ cried Docker. Tension whined in his voice. He too could see the fat man in the phone booth. He paused, so when the fat man gestured again he could speak in rhythm with the gesture. ‘I’m offering you a big bust, Tekawa, and you come on cop-heavy with me …’

  ‘A drug bust, I believe you said yesterday?’


  ‘It’s bigger than that today.’

  Tekawa moved his eyes to his red-headed partner and back to the fat man in the phone booth. As he did, an aging queer with a slack mouth and avid eyes and dandruff on the shoulders of his black ribbed sweater came out of the liquor store a few steps from the fat man’s phone booth.

  ‘Bigger?’ prompted Tekawa.

  ‘Murder,’ said Docker.

  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.

  14

  Neil 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.