He had a soft burring voice. “What’s the handle, kid?”
Dunc, drenched with sweat, realized he was terrified.
“Pierce Duncan. Everybody calls me Dunc. But you got—”
“Make it easy on yourself, Dunc. Tell us about Kiely.”
“I don’t know anybody named Kiely.”
On the corner was a dive with a red neon sign above the door. Two men came out, glanced incuriously at the Lincoln, and angled across Harrison. Yell for help? Try to shove Emmy out and dive out after him, run like hell? Emmy waggled the switchblade; light shimmered off the gleaming steel.
The dark figure came hurtling down at Dunc, led by gleaming steel. In her bedroom upstairs was Artis, dying.
“We tracked him here from L.A., so we knew he was in town,” Earl said reasonably. “Tonight we spotted him talking with you outside that slophouse on Third — but there was a prowlie behind us, so we had to go around the block. When we got back, he was gone. You weren’t. We followed you.”
“That’s the guy you’re looking for? That old wino? Hell, he was just a juicehead, bummed me for a buck.”
“Did he say where he lived?”
“No. Nothing. Not even thanks for the handout.”
Earl was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. He said abruptly, “Emmy, let him out.”
“Hey, listen, Earl, how do we know—”
“Let him out.”
Emmy clambered out and Dunc slid over. He felt he was visibly shaking, but knew it was internal. When he was standing beside the car, Emmy shoved a face wreathed with garlic fumes into his. “Go down Harrison without trying to look-see the license plates, boyfriend.”
“Can the musical comedy act and get in here,” snapped Earl.
After walking a block on Harrison without looking back, Dunc leaned against a wall and held out his hand. It was steady. He was glad. It seemed important that the hand be steady.
What did he do now? Call the cops? Forget the whole thing and start the long trudge back to Ma Booger’s?
A hot Las Vegas wind seemed to blow through him, raising sweat in the cold San Francisco night. It left him no choice.
Chapter Thirty-one
The bus dropped Dunc in front of the Third Street precinct house, and he walked two and a half blocks to the Wessler. It was a flophouse over a saloon. Apart from a car sliding into a parking place in the next block, he had the street to himself He could see his breath.
Twenty minutes before the 2:00 A.M. bar-close. The downstairs saloon was an old-fashioned place with high ceilings; plain heavy glass bowls filled with hard-boiled eggs were set out on the bar. Two Italian laborers were drinking draft beer, one shaking salt into his glass to raise the head.
A balding heavyset barkeep who probably had a blackjack on his hip and a .38 under the bar said, “What’s yours, Jack?”
“I need to talk with a guy named Ajax Kiely.” He pointed at the ceiling. “He lives upstairs. He wants to see me.”
The barkeep’s wet dirty towel moved around on the top of mahogany as if by its own volition. “Go ask at the kitchen.”
Dingy yellow light shone from the connecting doorway. Dunc could smell garlic and frying steak. The kitchen barely held a fat black iron stove and a fat red-faced Italian lady with a fine assortment of chins and her hair pulled back in a wispy bun.
“I ain’t doing anything but steak sandwiches tonight.”
“Ajax Kiely told me to meet him here.”
She flipped over the sizzling steak, cut it enough to peek in, took down a heavy platter, and reached for a loaf of French bread as she made up her mind about him. She cut the bread with a broad serrated knife, added the steak, shoved silverware and the platter with the sandwich on it into Dunc’s hands.
“He’s out back. Tell him he owes me a buck.”
Beyond a washed-out green curtain was a big barren room with long tables pushed back against the walls to open the hardwood floor for Saturday night dancing. Kiely was in the second of the dark-wood booths along the left wall, staring into a glass of dark amber liquid he held in both hands like a chalice. He looked up, startled, when Dunc slid the platter across the table and himself into the other side of the booth.
“The lady in the kitchen says you owe her a buck.”
Kiely grinned. “Hey, sport! I bet you’re here to ask me about the New Criticism.” Dunc shook his head. “Then ‘why meet we on the bridge of Time, to ’change one greeting and to part?’ ”
“Who said—” He stopped. “Yeah, I know, you said it.”
“No, Sir Richard Burton said it. Guy who translated The Arabian Nights.”
“Listen, there’s really something I have to tell you—”
But Kiely kept talking as he chewed and hot beef juice ran down over his fingers, his drink temporarily abandoned.
“It was in the service during the war that I developed my fondness for strong drink. I’d enlisted in the air force and captained a flying squad in Australia, never’ve liked a limey since. One of ’em sold me a jug of juice for ten bucks American, when I opened it, I found out it was tea.”
“Maybe he was trying to save your life,” said Dunc.
Kiely laughed, picked up his glass. “ ‘I wonder often what the Vintners buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell.’ ”
That one Dunc knew. The Rubaiyat. “Two guys,” he said. “They’re looking for you.”
The change was remarkable. Kiely’s fork hit the plate and spanged off onto the floor. In the bar the jukebox was blaring “Goodnight, Irene” as a reminder to all that it was closing time.
“Earl and Emmy, is it? ‘Machinations, treachery, and all ruinous disorders.’ How’d they slice it for you, sport?”
Dunc was on his feet. “To hell with you, Mr. Kiely.”
Kiely pointed at a scratch on Dunc’s silver belt buckle. “From Emmy’s knife, ain’t it? Oh, I know those guys! Spend three years on the lam from Philly to New York and Chicago and Kansas City and L.A., with amiable lovely death looking over your shoulder, and your nerves get galvanized like a frogs. How d’you think they knew I was here?”
“Probably an L.A. skip-tracer. Why are they after you?”
“Teaching seemed tame after the war and besides alcohol I’d become addicted to high-stakes poker. Three years ago I got in very deep to very bad people, there was a heavy-money game...”
“You knocked it over.”
“Helped to. I was inside man, Earl and Emmy pulled the actual robbery. It went swell — except Earl shot the dealer dead, tried to kill me, too. I ran — with all the money.”
He clawed open the top buttons of his shirt. A small leather pouch was slung around his neck on a leather cord. From it he took a flat metal toothed key with “181” stamped on it. He laid it reverently on the table between them.
“There it is, sport, wealth arithmetic cannot number. Eighty grand. Safe-deposit box, but only Kiely knows the bank and the city and the name it’s under. Fact is, I’d give it all to Earl, but he’d just kill me any-way.”
Dunc said, “Pickwick Stage Depot at Fifth and Mission — I’ll front you a Trailways ticket out of here, right now.”
A forefinger pushed the key across the table. “Hold this for me, will you, kid? I just got a feeling. Give it back when I get on the bus, and we’ll laugh about it. Okay?”
Dunc said, “Okay,” and stuck the key down inside one sock.
They went in the adjacent door with a single light over it and up a flight of creaky stairs. The small, stuffy office at the top was empty. A strip of faded maroon carpet led them down a narrow hall and around two right angles to Kiely’s door. It was narrow as a pauper’s grave, sour with recent cigar smoke.