by Gores, Joe
Blaney began, ‘I thought that was …’ Then caught himself and stopped.
‘Alex’s arrest has changed that situation,’ said Hariss smoothly. ‘Our best interests now will be served by distributing this commodity ourselves rather than selling it as a unit elsewhere as an expedient toward raising more cash.’
Blaney’s voice tightened hopefully. ‘I’ll need a percentage.’
‘Were you to get a percentage from Alex?’
After an appreciable pause, the big man shook his head. ‘Lump sum.’
‘You’ll get a percentage from me.’
‘Hey!’ he exclaimed, as if he had run a bluff and had won. ‘That’s swell, Mr Hariss.’
When Blaney had returned to the garage floor, Hariss laughed to himself. ‘A percentage – and of course standing between me and danger if anything goes wrong.’ He laughed again, softly. ‘And of course no percentage of the money in the attaché case that the money man will be taking out of Neil Fargo’s hide.’
He dialled his home number, told his daughter to come and pick him up. Then he leaned back in his chair with the contemplative face of a man with a clear conscience and good digestion who has supper on his mind. His wife had recently hired an excellent cook.
18
Some twenty minutes before Walter Hariss had telephoned his daughter, Docker had driven the yellow Montego up onto the San Francisco Skyway. Not at Tenth and Folsom as the tipster had informed Neil Fargo and Hariss, however, he had entered the concrete maze at Gough and Turk Streets. Freeway is a misnomer during rush-hour traffic; almost instantly, Docker was in the stop-and-go tie-up where the Oak Street on-ramp poured fresh commuters into the Central Freeway’s main stream.
Docker edged the powerful car into the right lane after the South Van Ness/Tenth Street influx had been assimilated, then spent five motionless minutes before he could begin edging forward again.
The delay did not seem to unduly frustrate the hulking blond man, although he did keep a nervous tattoo of muscular fingers going on the steering wheel. His inner tension displayed itself in other ways, too. His bleak eyes behind their hornrims kept searching the cars massed in the growing twilight behind him, and every minute or two he would jab the radio station-selector in search of relief from the mindless rush-hour commercials.
Finally the yellow Montego was past the tight-jammed lanes which went east toward Bay Bridge, and he was able to take the one-lane concrete loop which put him into the main traffic stream south. After he’d left the monstrous concrete spaghetti of the Southern Freeway interchange behind, he was able to touch the posted 50 mph for the first time as holes began appearing among the solid lanes of cars on the Bayshore; Interstate 280 had siphoned off the westbound traffic.
Docker reached 65 mph and began paying even more attention to the rear-view mirror after the South San Francisco off-ramp, but then abruptly abandoned the surveillance.
‘Couldn’t spot a tail in this traffic anyway,’ he muttered aloud.
He lit a cigarette, which kept his face busy and perhaps his mind as well. His harsh features were illuminated from below by the dashboard lights. His calloused, deadly hands were rock-solid on the wheel except when he moved the dwindling cigarette around in his mouth.
After the San Bruno off-ramp ten miles south of the city, he got into the right-hand lane reserved for the airport turn-off a mile-and-a-half further on. The big yellow car, slowed to a decorous thirty, went by a stalled motorist on the overpass who had his hood raised and a plastic Highway Patrol already helped pennant impaled on his radio aerial.
Ahead of Docker were the ever-changing auto traffic patterns heading toward the twin terminals, each lane now marked with its special destination. Behind, his rear-view mirror showed him, the stalled motorist was slamming down his hood, sprinting around his car for the driver’s side.
Docker smiled grimly to himself. His big hands swerved the auto into the left-hand, PARKING lanes. His foot suddenly goosed the accelerator and the car went into a three-quarters slide right under the INCOMING PLANES ramp and down a narrow blacktop lane which led to the lowest tier of the parking garage.
This won him precious seconds. No lights showed in his rear-view mirror as he collected from the automatic ticket machine, drove under the electronically-folding restraint arm, fast, then stood the car on its nose a dozen yards beyond.
Across half a lane coming in from the right were sawhorses, which bore the sign: LEVEL FULL. USE RAMP TO UPPER FLOORS.
Docker twisted the power-assisted wheel over hard, shot past the sawhorses, almost instantly made a hard left into the intersecting lane. He drove forward three car lengths, stopped, killing lights and motor in the same moment.
The Montego was now in a lane parallel to the entry lane and hidden from any car coming through the ticket machines.
Docker left the car, crept unevenly forward between parked cars, squatted down so his head would not show above them. A bare ten seconds later a car nosed down the ramp, collected a ticket. Docker grinned tightly. It was the stalled motorist’s green Plymouth.
The Plymouth hesitated at the sawhorses. Docker was tense. The Plymouth finally went on. Docker relaxed. He came partially erect so he could watch over the hood of one of the parked cars as it went up the ramp.
It didn’t. It went past, on toward the next intersecting lane down the garage which was parallel to that which was sawhorsed.
Docker ran unevenly back to the Montego, kicked it alive, squealed back to the sawhorse lane, swung quickly back into the main aisle down which the Plymouth had just gone.
Ahead, the Plymouth had already disappeared down one of the cross-lanes.
Docker followed. For the next three minutes he criss-crossed the entire floor, always a lane behind the Plymouth as it made its slow search, able to follow its progress by watching for the oblong of plastic forgotten on the aerial over the roofs of the intervening rows of parked cars.
Finally the Plymouth tired of the search and went up the ramp out of sight. Docker parked in an open space under a NO PARKING sign and directly below the immense air blower which served to ventilate the garage.
He retrieved his attaché case from behind the seat, carefully locked the car. He was at the very end of the dimly-lit garage, half a city block from the closest moving sidewalk which carried passengers to the sub-floor of the Central, older of the two terminals.
Docker limped right by this oasis of escalators, stairs and elevator to the upper garage floors, ignoring the glaring fluorescents and canned mechanical voice tolling the airlines which could be reached by this conveyor belt.
Instead, he went most of the length of the garage to the second, similar complex which carried people by escalator belt from the upper floors and by conveyor belt from this floor, under the two-tiered street outside, to the Southern Terminal.
Docker waited inconspicuously between parked cars until the down-ramps disgorged a group of five servicemen, two of them in civvies. Docker didn’t really blend in with them because of the length of his hair, but he did get protective coloration from them.
At the far end of the moving sidewalk were escalator stairs up to the luggage and transportation level, then yet another escalator to the terminal main floor.
He seemed to be with a woman and a three-year-old baby getting off the escalator in the immense expanse of waiting area, by staying a tight three paces behind them as they angled over toward the newsstand in the center of the building.
Despite this a youth with a bad complexion, and the sort of scraggly beard so often worn to mask a receding chin, glanced up sharply from his comic book when Docker passed. The youth was sitting on one of the black Naugahyde chairs that flanked the escalator.
He sighed, folded his comic book, stuck it in the back pocket of his jeans as he stood up. By chance he wandered in the direction of the newsstand.
Beyond the newsstand, and enclosed on three sides by glass walls to discourage rip-offs, were several rows of paperback book shelve
s. Docker threaded his way through browsers and time-killers to the rear of the bookracks, where he stood with his back to the glass wall and scanned the crowds for a full two minutes.
Apparently he saw nothing to disturb him. He bought a candy bar, went down to the central cluster of departure gates munching it, then entered a small dark intimate bar under the huge departure board.
Here he found a table facing the door, ordered and sipped a tall pilsener glass of draft beer while agreeing with the comments of the short-skirted waitress about the freeway accident by South San Francisco which apparently had tied up all the south-bound lanes. He left too much silver on the table, lounged under the departure sign for two more minutes, then limped down the corridor to the nearest men’s room. Another three minutes there.
After all this, Docker went back through the main terminal and outside to the ARRIVALS curb, where he stood weighing up the various uniformed porters. He finally selected one, talked with him. A twenty-dollar bill changed hands.
Docker went back inside, this time to cross directly to American Airlines and queue up at the PURCHASE TICKETS HERE window. Waiting, he set the attaché case between his feet, toed it along ahead of him as the line inched forward.
Eventually the overweight blonde in stretch pants and mink coat stepped aside with her ticket. Docker returned the smile of the well-groomed, uniformed, utterly forgettable young man behind the chest-high counter, and accepted his offer of aid.
‘I’d like,’ he said precisely as he looked down to toe his attaché case forward again, ‘a ticket to – hey!’
On the final word he turned quickly, stepping back so his heel came down firmly on the foot of the youth with the scraggly beard and comic book. Somehow the attaché case slid six feet across the floor in the process. Because Docker was whirling with such energy at the same time that the youth was anchored firmly in his path, his elbow struck the captive a numbing blow in the chest.
‘My attaché case!’ Docker was yelling and pointing. ‘He tried to steal my attaché case!’
The boy was staggering back, mouth open to yell protests. Docker stumbled as he did, apparently losing his balance because of his suddenly very noticeable bad leg. To save himself, he reached out to grab the youth’s jacket front with both hands.
Somehow, in passing, the hands clapped the boy smartly and simultaneously on each side of the head. Not hard enough to rupture the ear drums but hard enough to compress them sharply.
The boy did what any normal person would do in such a situation. He screamed.
His scream so disconcerted Docker that the big man lost his footing, sprawled full length on the floor. His outstretched hand closed firmly around the handle of the attaché case. People were exclaiming, jostling. Uniformed security guards were converging.
‘All right, what happened—’
‘What’s going …’
Docker, struggling to rise, had a grip on the boy’s belt. The boy was still yelling. Docker was shouting about his attaché case. The guard trying to help him up was pointing out that the attaché case was in Docker’s other hand. The other guard had hold of the boy by this time.
‘That kid tried to grab my case,’ Docker finally got out.
‘I didn’t!’ The boy had stopped yelling, was rubbing his ears. ‘I was just standin’ there …’
‘… knocked me down, ask these people …’
‘… pushed that man, I saw …’
‘… bad leg …’
‘Quiet!’ roared one guard. He got a semblance of it. ‘Now, who saw what happened? Really saw, not just heard the commotion?’
A bland-faced black porter pushed forward through the crowd.
‘I saw it, officer.’ He spoke almost apologetically. ‘It’s like the gen’man says. He was in line, went to move his case with his foot, an’ this here kid’s hand was jes’ pullin’ it away. He try to grab it, the kid shove ’im …’
The guard turned to the hippie youth firmly in the grasp of the other guard. The boy’s mouth was still spilling protests and his eyes had become almost frantic with the realization of what was happening.
‘That’s it, son,’ said the guard.
‘He hired that porter …’
‘Oh, Christ!’ said the guard in a disgusted voice.
Docker, meanwhile, had been tapping his watch, shaking his head, backing away. He said, ‘I’m going to miss my plane if I remain here any longer.’
The guard seemed to not realize he had bought no ticket. ‘Hey, but wait a minnit, mister. You—’
‘I’m sure this gentleman can furnish the full particulars.’
‘Mos’ surely can,’ supplied the porter.
‘But …’
‘I’ll be back from Los Angeles tomorrow, officer, then I will be fully prepared to prefer charges against this young beast.’
‘Well, but …’
‘Officer, my plane …’
The hippie youth’s eyes were murderous, but there was no way he could follow. Docker, still casting worried looks at his watch, had pulled an empty plane ticket folder from an inner pocket and was consulting it assiduously as he moved off. His gestures and movements were precisely gauged to mime harassed worry without tipping over into parody.
At the far end of the terminal from American Airlines was a long ramp which slanted down one floor to the baggage area. It was directly beside one of the corridors to the waiting planes, so Docker, now well out of sight of guards, hippie and porter, skipped down the ramp.
The only person who reacted in any way was a short, worried, pudgy man in an almost electric green suit. He chanced to unglue himself from the wall as Docker passed, entered the phone booth he had been standing beside, dropped his dime and began dialling.
Docker went through the gate and past the revolving baggage carousels, past the deplaned passengers clucking over their luggage like hens around scattered feed, and down the escalator to the moving sidewalk. Two minutes later he was back on the ground floor of the parking garage.
He did not head off toward the yellow Montego directly, however. Instead, he went around to the far side of the huge concrete shaft housing the escalators, stairway, and slow groaning elevator to the upper floors. He punched the elevator button.
As he did, the short, out-of-breath man in the electric green suit came pounding around the corner of the housing, saw him, and pulled up short.
‘Ah … going up?’ he asked Docker with a lame bright smile.
‘Level C,’ said Docker.
They got on the elevator together. The automatic doors slid shut. As they did, Docker’s big hands closed around the little man’s throat. Skillful fingers found the carotid artery, and the little man went to sleep between Level A and Level B. Docker deposited him on Level C, left him slumbering in an artfully arranged cardiac arrest position, returned to the ground floor, and limped his way down the great empty echoing garage to his Montego.
It was dark in the corner where he had parked it. He stood well clear of the car, in shadow himself, for nearly a minute, head up, eyes questing. It could almost be imagined that his nostrils quivered for the smell of danger.
Finally he shrugged, an almost sheepish expression on his face, and went over to the car. As he bent to unlock the door, shoes scraped concrete behind him. He whirled.
Walking toward him was a small, dark man who could not have been over five-two. His black hair gleamed in the dim light and was slicked straight back. He wore a suit with very wide lapels and a necktie which was even wider.
‘Is that your car, sir?’ he asked.
‘Uh … rental,’ said Docker. He had the car key in his right hand, the attaché case in his left, and no hands left over to do anything about the small, dark man who seemed to be some sort of official.
‘Didn’t you see the No Parking sign, sir?’
‘Well, uh, officer, to tell the truth …’
‘Parking Authority. Security Division,’ said the man importantly. His eyes glittered. He stepped
closer. ‘I’ll have to see your identification, sir …’
He was a yard away. He’d started to extend his hand, stopped abruptly and jerked it back, at the same time looking up at the ceiling.
‘What the devil?’ he exclaimed.
He put his hand up to the back of his neck as if to feel the water or whatever it was that apparently had dripped on him from the lower concrete above their heads. Docker’s face obediently turned upward, apparently in the almost automatic reaction the small man’s actions called for.
As it did, Rizzato’s hand darted downward in a blur of motion, gripping the commando knife he had just jerked from its neck sheath.
19
When Gus Rizzato had arrived at San Francisco International, he had first sought out a white courtesy telephone as instructed, had duly spoken to Nolan Avery – who was a short, rotund, worried-looking man in a green suit.
‘He’s here now,’ Nolan Avery had said. ‘He’s having a beer in that little bar off the South Terminal concourse.’
‘Where’s his car?’
‘Bottom level, down at the north end under the air blower in a No Parking area. Our man missed it first time around, but went back—’
‘All right, I’ll page you again in a few minutes, give you a phone number. You call me there when Docker starts back for his car. Got that?’
‘Yes, sir, Mr Rizzato.’ Avery’s voice had paused. ‘That other man, that private detective or whoever he is, hasn’t shown up yet.’
‘Probably still on the freeway. There was a hell of a pile-up at South City. I went around, but cars that had gone by that exit before they started the rerouting are stuck until they clear it. He was a few minutes ahead of me, so he’s still sitting there.’ Rizzato had chuckled, then his voice had hardened. ‘Remember, when he shows up, you tell him nothing. Docker hasn’t shown, you’ve never heard of me. Got that?’
‘Yes, Mr Rizzato.’
Now Gus Rizzato sat in the phone booth, waiting for Docker’s return to the parking garage. Nolan Avery had the number. Rizzato’s face was composed, without impatience or expectation. He found a pimple under his chin, seemed to take sensual pleasure in popping it and wiping his thumbnail on his trouser leg. Twice, after making sure no one was in sight, he stepped from the booth to draw his knife from his neck sheath with that blinding, practiced speed. When the knife was in his hand, his eyes got a moist, hot look.
