“Harry and the Chink used them for batting practice and threw their car keys and their shoes into the harbor.”
“That’s Harry’s weird sense of humor, all right.” April tapped her cocktail glass absently against her small dazzling teeth. “Ferris, I must find out what sort of game he’s playing.”
“Why not just divorce him? This is California, with your looks any judge would give you—”
“In that wall safe are the keys to three safe-deposit boxes of undeclared currency no judge would give me.”
Besner fingered his mustache. “We grab the money and—”
“— and look over our shoulders some dreamy afternoon in Rio and see Harry coming down the beach after us.”
Besner shuddered. “What do we do, April?”
She crossed the room with long, sensuous strides. Her gray eyes were level with his blue ones. “Neutralize him. Find your little April a shrewd, tough, unethical P.I. who’s a sucker for brunettes.” She took his right hand and cupped it around one of her breasts. “Meanwhile, he won’t be back for another hour...”
Charlie Parker’s alto sax was doing things to “Sweet Georgia Brown” no man had ever done before, flying her out to the edge of the solar system on a flurry of diminished fifths. Drinker Cope said, “Bird must of gotten his saxophone out of hock again.”
The placed was jammed with colored and white. As they all went wild at the end of the set, a huge craggy-faced man sat down uninvited at their table. His formidable belly was out over his belt, his suit coat was strained around a massive torso.
“This place taken?” he growled.
“Fuck off, asshole,” snapped Drinker.
The man grabbed up Drinker’s glass to sniff it. “There’s booze in this drink!” he roared, and plopped a heavy gold SFPD inspector’s shield down on the table. Bottles began disappearing as if by magic. “Show me some ID, mister, and damned quick!”
“How about I show you the back of my lap?”
Both men started to laugh, wrung one another’s hand. The bottles were reappearing at adjacent tables.
“Dunc, this is my old SFPD partner, Wee Jimmy Haggerty. Jimmy, my associate, Pierce Duncan.” It was like shaking hands with a two-by-six oak plank. Drinker was paying the waitress for more setups from a large roll of bills. He said to Wee Jimmy, “I’m surprised Colleen would let you out on this holy night.”
“Jesus Mary and Joseph, first it was midnight Mass at the cathedral, and then it was to be trimming the tree, so I told herself I had to check on a couple of suspects.” He drank spiked Coke and roared with laughter. “And be jaysus, here ye both be!”
Lee Fong stopped the Cadillac directly across from a narrow alley called Old Chinatown Lane. The few pedestrians were all Chinese, the parked cars were beaded with night mist that had settled in the last hour. Harry Wham opened his door, paused.
“You go on home, Lee,” he said.
“I park on Stockton, wait for you, boss.”
“I’ll be at least an hour, maybe two.”
“I wait for you, boss.”
Harry got out, disappeared into the shadows of Chinatown.
Five-thirty Christmas morning and Dunc had to go to the bathroom, really bad, but didn’t want to miss Bird, who had landed on “Scrapple from the Apple” and wouldn’t leave. Wee Jimmy Haggerty and Drinker Cope were reminiscing about their police department days, and Dunc didn’t want to miss that, either.
“That elevator at the Hall of Justice still get stuck between floors?” Drinker turned to Dunc in explanation. “The felony tank is down on the ground floor, but three, four cops and one felon, they take the elevator up to the court floor.”
“Only it stalls between floors,” explained Wee Jimmy.
“The felon leaves the first floor pleading innocent, by the time he gets to court, he’s beggin’ them to plead him guilty.”
“Rolled newspapers across the kidneys,” chortled Wee Jimmy.
The set was finished; Dunc got unsteadily to his feet.
“Gotta tap a kidney of my own,” he told them solemnly.
He had just unzipped in front of one of the urinals when a woman six-three in her three-inch silver heels sashayed in. Jet-black hair danced around her broad café au lait face in saucy shimmering ringlets. A skintight silver-sequined dress showed cantaloupe breasts, ripe racehorse buttocks. Her eyelashes were an inch long, her mouth, impossibly juicy, impossibly red, was half a foot wide, her fingernails three inches long and even shinier red than the outrageous mouth.
Dunc scuttled to the door, jerked it open, craned around to see what was written on the outside. MEN. He pulled back in.
“You all right, honey,” the woman exclaimed in a rumbling basso voice. “You in the right place.”
Dunc had to relieve his aching bladder; he returned to the farther of the two urinals. The Amazon hunkered up to the adjoining urinal and flipped up her skirt, pulled down the front of her white lace panties, and from a massive set of masculine equipment directed her own stallion-like stream into her urinal. As she did, she looked over at Dunc and winked.
“Jes our little secret ’twixt us girls.”
When Dunc staggered back to the table, Drinker and Wee Jimmy were laughing even harder than the transvestite. “Jesus, the look on your face when you stuck your head out of the door to check which crapper you were in...”
“I need a drink,” croaked Dunc.
Chapter Forty-one
Desk work today. Dunc was trying to track down a man who lived on a Chinese junk moored out in the middle of the Sausalito harbor and might or might not have been involved in a drunken hit-and-run accident on Christmas Eve.
Drink and the Devil had done for the rest...
Dunc was still queasy from his own Christmas Eve. Better ask Sherry how to find the guy and get him to admit liability.
As he walked up to Sherry’s desk, a woman came up the stairs. She wore a gray tailored suit to match her eyes, white gloves, high-heeled gray shoes, and a flat little ecru hat.
She told Dunc, “Surely you’re not Edward Cope.”
“Surely not,” he agreed.
She turned to Sherry. “April Wham for Mr. Cope.”
Sherry headed for Drinker’s office. No intercom for this baby, thought Dunc. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am. Drinker appeared in his doorway. April Wham drifted that way.
Drinker bowed slightly. “Mrs. Wham.”
He closed the door, April was already seated and crossing her legs. Instant lust warmed Drinker Cope’s cold heart. From her silver-clasped gray purse she took a silver cigarette case and a silver lighter, extracted a Herbert Tarryton. Drinker almost lunged across the desk to light it for her.
Back at her desk, Sherry was looking daggers at the door.
“She’s trouble,” she said. Dunc was going to make a crack about trouble being their business, but Sherry went on, “I know her type. I. Magnin originals, Joy at a hundred bucks an ounce...” She sat down, gave an angry toss of her head, and lit a cigarette. “Okay, what did you want to ask me about, kid?”
In Drinker’s office April was looking at him through her drifting cigarette smoke. Her eyes were very limpid and direct.
“Would it shock you if I said I loathe my husband?”
Drinker waved a dismissive hand. She nodded.
“I want you to find out all about Harry — Harry Wham, my husband. He had what you men call a good war — marine captain in the Pacific island-hopping campaign, a chestful of medals.”