“They see me go into the bar downstairs, one of ’em stays outside—” God, how could he have been so stupid? “and the other goes upstairs and checks the hotel register, jimmies Kiely’s lock, when we come in he takes out Kiely and saps me down and it’s all over.”
“Why d’ya think one downstairs and one upstairs? Why didn’t they make sure of the money before they killed their man?”
Dunc thought about it, finally sighed. “Because Kiely went in saying what they wanted was right there in the room. He was stabbed. Emmy likes the knife.” He caught Drinker’s glance at his gouged belt buckle. Guy didn’t miss a trick. “Earl would have made sure of the money before he killed Kiely. Emmy, no.”
“Why didn’t this Emmy character do you, too?”
“Wanted a fall guy?” He made it a question.
“He smart enough for that? If he was too dumb to—”
“The fall guy would have been Earl’s idea.”
Cope chuckled. “Maybe so, kid, but I doubt it. He’d wanta turn you upside down and shake you for what’d fall out — only now he’s gonna have to turn me upside down and shake me instead.” He opened his briefcase, tossed the morning Chronicle on the bed. “Educate yourself. You can go out to eat, they won’t be looking for you here in boogietown, but stay close.”
“Don’t you want me to go out and try to track ’em down?”
Drinker looked at him like he was nuts. “I don’t keep heroes on my payroll. I’ll put people on the street and get word to you when I want you to move.”
“What are you going to do with the key?”
“I’ll talk to the chief of detectives in the Kansas City P.D We’ve tipped a jar or two together. He’ll check for a bank box under the name of Moran. If there is one, he gets a court order, if the money’s there, we all split the reward.”
Dunc merely nodded. He doubted the box would be found.
After dark, he walked four blocks out Geary to Fillmore and ate at the counter of a rib joint, the only white face to be seen. Back at Nat’s place, a teenager was pleading outside an open hallway door with a woman in her thirties. She smelled of strange sins. They stopped talking as Dunc passed, staring at him across the racial gulf.
A little before ten, there was a light tapping on the door. Dunc crossed the room on silent stocking feet, stood by the closed door, sweat sheening his forehead. “Y-yeah?”
“Got a message fo’ you.”
It was the woman of the exotic perfume. She had clear brown eyes slightly slanted, a beautiful brown oval face, black hair lustrous and coiling. Her house robe showed enough cleavage to cause a stirring in Dunc’s groin.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“ ‘Ma’am’?” She gave a throaty chuckle. “Drinker say, jes parade round Market Street where you was last night, you be met.”
Dunc thanked her and started to shut the door, but she put out a detaining brown hand. “Scared, ain’t you, white boy?”
“No, I’m just... Yeah.”
“Don’t gotta be ‘shamed ’bout bein’ scared. You got the time, honey, I got the time, too. Don’t cost you nothin’. But you ain’t got the time, has you?” Again, the big belly-shaking laugh. “Too bad, shugah. I’s the bes’ you’ll nevah have.”
“Hey, buddy, got a light?”
Dunc stooped to light a cigarette for the legless man who peddled pencils on Market Street. The man rested on his square castored board, cataloging every person who passed without even turning his heavy handsome head. He spoke around his cigarette.
“The fat one’s been using Yellow Cab 238.”
“Thanks,” said Dunc, “can I—”
“No. The Drinker asked me to keep an eye out.”
Half an hour later Yellow 238 drove up to the cabstand by the Greyhound Depot on Seventh Street. The driver was a tall stooped number with brown hair and brown teeth.
“Fat guy I picked up? Sure, if...” He rubbed thumb and forefinger together. Dunc dealt him an ace. “He barhopped down around Third and Folsom for an hour, kept me on the meter. Then to Jones and Eddy. Cheap bastard. No tip.”
The driver buried his nose in a movie magazine as if it were a schooner of beer. Dunc started away. The fat man running the nearby newspaper stand called out to him.
“Stan, newsstand on Market and Kearny, he’s got something to tell you, said it was important.”
“Hey, thanks.”
“Thank the Drinker.”
The downtown streetcar passed Powell, Dunc remembered the young guy throwing money in the street. Just twenty-four hours ago!
Stan was huddled up in the corner of his square green booth wrapped in a bulky blue sweater against the cold. He came up to the counter when Dunc showed. “You’ll be Dunc.” His heavy bohunk accent was that of the line workers at Studebaker’s South Bend plant. He had a square, honest face. “Tall one, hard eyes, he go down Third Street maybe two hours ago. Looking.”
“For me,” said Dunc.
“Other one, fat one...” He blew out his cheeks like a squirrels and patted his belly above his gold watch chain. “Barbary Coast Hotel bar. Eddy between Leavenworth and Jones.”
“Many thanks, Stan.” Dunc offered to shake hands. Stan shook. Dunc offered him money. Stan shook his head.
“On the Drinker. Listen, they got a big Lincoln in the lot on Eddy between Larkin and Leavenworth. They the bad guys?”
“They’re the bad guys.”
“Then you and Drinker, you get ’em, hokay?”
“Hokay,” said Dunc, with a certainty he didn’t feel.
Chapter Thirty-three
Fog-shrouded midnight streets threw his footsteps back at him. The Golden Gate Bridge’s foghorn bellowed desolately about being out in the Bay on such a night, the Alcatraz foghorn agreed. He thought fleetingly of lifers tossing on iron cots, insomniac in dank cells, then of Kiely, permanently somniac.
Swirled pearl hazed the streetlights. Passing cars were muted moving shadows, were gone. Men of chilled smoke hurried by in search of warm rooms and good drinks and maybe soft women to make them human again.
And somewhere in the muck was Earl, moving as a hungry tiger moves, his fist full of bills to buy Dunc’s whereabouts. What was Dunc searching for? The answer to a question posed in Las Vegas, with only a shadow to go on?
He shivered in Nat’s army jacket and wished for a topcoat. He’d check out the Lincoln, then at least confirm that Emmy was drinking at the Barbary Coast Hotel. That would suggest they were staying there and Emmy was waiting for Earl to return.
The Lincoln was parked nose-out amid a dozen other cars in a narrow unlighted gravel lot sandwiched between two red brick office buildings put up just after the ’06 quake. No attendant, maybe he could even the odds before he called for help.
No doorman at the Barbary Coast Hotel, either. He went in — gingerly. Dim lighting, stuffed chairs with nobody in them, dusty potted palms, a desk with a half-dozing clerk. In one sidewall unlit red neon, Coffee Shop, in the other a doorway screened by a beaded curtain with Shanghai Lil’s in red neon above it.
Dunc stuck a quick head through the curtain, withdrew instantly. The beads made a muted tinking sound. It was a dim place with indirect lighting and a nautical motif, fishnets draped from the ceiling, potted palms to suggest the tropics, big glass floats a foot in diameter from the nets of the Japanese fishing fleet. Chinese fans above the bar, atmospheric oriental screens to give privacy to the couples at the tables. Half a dozen drinkers studding the stick, Emmy among them.
At a phone booth by the parking lot, Dunc used street light to look up Shanghai Lil’s in the directory, dropped his dime, gave the heavy-voiced bartender a nasal, whiny voice borrowed from a pecker-wood chain-gang guard in Georgia.