“Your daughter isn’t chipping, for God’s sake! She’s hooked. You know what that means? Five cc’s a pop, three times a day. If you could get her to quit, what you got back wouldn’t be... Besides, why do you think Kolinski cut her supply in the first place? To get her out of your house, out in the open where she could be controlled, eventually manipulated. He didn’t dream all that up by himself.”
Stayton’s voice tightened further. “There’s someone else?”
“A Battery Street importer named Walter Hariss,” said Neil Fargo. “He and Kolinski have a number of investments together. A garage in Bush Street, maybe a couple of cheap hotels in the Tenderloin.”
“I never even heard of Walter Hariss. What—”
“It isn’t personal with him. He’s got a wife, teen-age daughter — good family man. He wants to be big. He saw potential when he learned Kolinski was still in touch with your daughter. I think he’s the one suggested hooking her. He makes fifty, seventy-five gee a year, thinks he can get his hooks into the Stayton empire through Roberta to make that half a mil a year.”
“I want him destroyed.”
“Legitimately?” Neil Fargo shook his head. “He’s a master at never doing anything that would incriminate himself personally.”
“I’ve paid you a lot of money to get my daughter back, Fargo,” said the industrialist icily. “I want her saved. I want those men destroyed.”
Neil Fargo said nothing. His face was set, stubborn. He laid his file folder on the corner of the immense hardwood desk.
Stayton said, like a bidder at an art auction, “Once Roberta is back, I will need a right-hand man. He will name his own salary...”
He stopped because Neil Fargo had laughed out loud.
“I wouldn’t fit into your operation, Max. I’ve got nostalgie de la boue.”
“A craving for the gutter? Perhaps. You’re at home in it.”
Neil Fargo sneered, “So’s your daughter.” His eyes were furious. “It took God six fucking days to create the universe, you want two men destroyed—” he snapped his fingers “—like that. Do I get Sunday off?”
Stayton swallowed whatever reply he had been going to make. He shook his head.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere, Neil. Where is Roberta?”
“Some Tenderloin hotel. There’s a hell of a lot of them, and she won’t be under her own name. From here I’m going down to the tax assessor’s office to see if Kolinski and Hariss do own any hotels down there, or pay the taxes on them if they aren’t owners of record. If they do, that’s where Roberta will be.”
He pointed at the folder.
“Quite a lot of this is in there, sanitized for that repressed sexual hysteric in the outer office when she snoops your files.”
Stayton didn’t bother to deny it. He pushed the folder around with the tip of the opal desk-set pen. “I want those men destroyed. If they aren’t... well, you have a great deal of my money.”
Neil Fargo was on his feet, zipping his briefcase.
He said scornfully, “Destroyed! What the fuck does that mean? Ruined? Jailed? Murdered? I don’t think you’ve got what it would take to buy me for any of those. As for threats about money—?”
“I don’t threaten idly, Fargo.”
But the detective met, held his eyes; and it was Stayton who looked away first. They were both big men, hard men. Neil Fargo nodded.
“I should have news about Roberta, good or bad, by tonight. Will you be available if I do?”
“I can be.” Seeing the look in the detective’s eyes, he added, “I will be.”
“Get braced for the bad, just in case.”
This time Stayton offered to shake the detective’s hand.
In the immense open-air lobby below the building’s stubby pillar legs, Neil Fargo used a pay phone. Pamela Gardner answered on the second ring with her formula, “Neil Fargo, Investigations.” When she heard his voice, she exclaimed, “Thank God you called.”
“You’ve got a line on Docker? Great work, doll. What—”
“No Docker. Homicide called. They want you down at the Hall of Justice as soon as—”
“Who’s they?”
“What? Oh.” Understanding entered her voice. She had a very good phone voice, soft and extremely sensual, which did not fit either her fresh-scrubbed little-girl looks or the way her mind worked. “An Inspector Wylie.”
“Son of a bitch. Vince Wylie hates my guts.” He checked his watch. “Look, doll, call him back, tell him I’ll be there between one and one-thirty.”
“Will do.”
“And no luck with Docker, huh?”
“The only Docker in the book is on Beach Street, Neil — and that’s a girl. She was d.a. when I called, I’m trying to get the landlady to—”
“Forget all that. Anything from the state?”
“DMV says no driver’s license, no autos registered in his name. Ma Bell says no phone, even unlisted. PG&E is still checking, but he’d probably have the sort of place where the utilities are in the landlord’s name if—”
“Yeah. Look, doll, don’t waste any more time on that crap. Start calling car-rental outfits. Just for the last day, two days, he’d have to show a valid driver’s license from somewhere to get a car — Nevada or Oregon, maybe. I’ve put a couple of street types on him, too. They’ll call you if they turn anything. Just hit the high spots from now on. We’re running out of time. I’ll check in after I’m through at the Hall, if I’m not in jail.”
She took it literally. “Should I alert Jack Leavitt in case—”
“I don’t think Wylie has enough to make us yell lawyer yet. Instead of worrying about what might happen to me, we have to find out where that goddam Docker has gotten to.”
Eight
Docker stepped off the N Judah car where Sutter Street stubbed its toe on Market. All streetcars inbound for the East Bay Terminal used Market, so the fact it was a Judah car originating out in the Sunset District offered no real clue to where he’d gotten onto it.
The blond man paused on the sidewalk in front of the ritzy new Standard Oil Building like a man undecided, swinging his attaché case as his ever-active eyes surveyed street, crowds, passing autos from behind their heavy hornrims. The air smelled of sewage, and a PG&E crew had a manhole open to look for whatever had died down there.
Docker did not seem to see whatever he was looking for. Beyond the beautiful little reflecting pool where ecology freaks liked to dump motor oil and expired seagulls whenever there was an oil spill in the Bay, a long-necked steel dinosaur was eating a dead building. Docker watched as it took another bite, seizing the edge of a wall in serrated steel jaws and shaking its head angrily when the ancient brick was stubborn about peeling away from the I-beam bones. Then the wall surrendered and the dinosaur disdainfully dropped a couple of yards of it into the rubble around its caterpillared feet.
“Spare change, mister?”
Docker brought his eyes down from the building to the panhandling hippie chick. She wore washed-out jeans and somebody else’s sweatshirt and no shoes, and was as anachronistic as an Edsel. Her hair was the same ash-blonde as Docker’s, just about as long and worn much the same way, parted in the center and falling to her shoulders.
“Sell your watch,” said Docker.
She made a disgusted face. Despite his hair length, she said, “Fuckin’ straight.”
Docker turned away toward First Street. As he did, the sole of his shoe came down on the girl’s bare toes, hard. She yelled. One of the yellow-hatted PG&E workmen straightened up with a shocked look on his face. It wasn’t a face that had a whole lot left to be afraid of.