“I don’t carry it around with me, for Chrissake.”
Wylie’s face lit up; he opened his mouth.
Neil Fargo said, “Call my secretary, tell her to drop it in the mail, you want it so fucking bad.”
He stopped there, laughed again when he saw how sullen Wylie’s face had gotten.
“The key in the mailbox. You hoped I’d given it to Docker.” He stared at Wylie, then shook his head in apparent disbelief. He said, “Cops. Jesus Christ.”
Wylie stared after the tall, lithe figure until Neil Fargo had passed out of the squad room. Then he sighed and shook his own head, and fished a cigarette out of the pack he had put in the desk drawer.
“Shit,” he said aloud to no one in particular.
Down in the lobby, Neil Fargo stopped at the cigarette counter for another pack of Pall Malls, even though he had opened the one in his pocket just before entering the Hall of Justice. As the blind man behind the counter waited on other customers, Neil Fargo chatted with him. Then, when they were momentarily alone, Fargo leaned closer and talked earnestly in a low voice. He seemed to be explaining something and the blind man seemed to be memorizing several things.
“I won’t let you down, Mr Fargo.”
“That’s the boy, Jimmy.”
Before leaving the Hall, he used a phone booth to get Pamela Gardner. She said she was eating a sandwich at her desk. She said she was working through the car-rental outfits but she’d had no luck so far. None of Neil Fargo’s informants on the search for Docker had called in. Docker himself had not called in. Then she had a practical question of her own.
“Did you talk with Maxwell Stayton?”
“Yes, doll. No fires burning there. I’m on my way to the assessor’s office now to keep you from jumping down my throat tonight.”
Her relief showed in her voice. “So we won’t need Jack Leavitt after all.”
“Nope. Still out of the slammer. But that reminds me. You’ll find an apartment key in the left corner of my middle desk drawer. Mail it off to Vince Wylie at Homicide, will you? I want to piss him off. And I want you to dummy up the Dahlberg file so it looks as if we’re expecting Eric LaValley up from LA next weekend as a possible surprise witness. Can do?”
“Sure. But Neil...”
His chuckle was soothing, as if to allay the anxiety which had reappeared in her voice. “Just getting at Wylie, doll. Really.”
Ten
The office at 858 Bush Street was just large enough for a steel safe as squat as a hydrant, a table, a desk, three straight-backed chairs splattered with the paint of ancient refurbishments, and a bottled water dispenser. The single door opened on the garage floor. Beside it was a tall square inset table with a stool in front of it. The table was just large enough for a time-punch machine and a cumbersome antique cash register loaded with silvery curliques.
The office itself smelled of oil and gasoline and dampness and old socks. Walter Hariss was behind the desk; with his pearl-grey hand-stitched suit and two-dollar cigars he was as incongruous as Spode in Woolworth’s.
“Missed him?” he demanded. Anger reddened his firm round face.
“We kept the fucker in the city,” grunted Kolinski.
“All he has to do is rent a car—”
“No driver’s license, according to Fargo.”
Hariss shrugged meaty shoulders under expensive tailoring. Restless, he stood, went to the door, peered out into the garage. He could see the dark polished length of his Cadillac, with the top of Gus Rizzato’s head showing behind the steering wheel.
“Steal a car, then?” he suggested.
“And drive it where?”
Hariss turned back. His expensive arm waved to indicate the wide world. Kolinski shook his head emphatically.
“Can you think of anywhere more vulnerable, once somebody’s got a make on you, than behind the wheel of an automobile on a freeway?” A rare sunny smile twitched his lips. His arms came up holding an imaginary machinegun. He sprayed the room with it as his mouth said, “Phtoo-phtoo-phtoo-phtoo-phtoo-phtoophtoo,” then added “Fwoom!” His eyes watched the car rolling and burning.
“We don’t have the manpower to cover all four freeways out of this city,” objected Hariss.
“Docker doesn’t know that.”
“And if we did spot him — what about our dope? What about the hundred-seventy-five gee?”
“Docker can’t take the chance that we won’t cut him down.”
“Then what will he do? You know a fugitive’s psychology better than I do, this is a new—”
“You’re a fucking delicate flower, I know. He’ll hole up. Head for an airport. Rent a private plane...”
“Fargo said he’s got all the small airfields in the bay area covered.”
“You trust that fucker.” It was said in a tone of amazed disbelief.
“Did I say I trusted him?”
Hariss might have elaborated on his methods of safeguard against Neil Fargo’s possible perfidy, but a woman had come to the door with a ticket in her hand. Kolinski looked past her, saw the door of the restroom shut and the light on, so took her ticket himself and ran it through the time-punch. His deceptively Neanderthal features were pleasant.
“Ninety-five cents, ma’am,” he beamed.
He gave her back her nickel and handed the ticket to the only car-park attendant who was on the floor during the slack midday hours, and who had just emerged from the john. He was a black-haired kid with a wiseass face, wearing a white jacket grimy around the cuffs and creased across the seat from sliding in and out of cars. He went off to the vertical manlift to the upper floor where her car was stashed.
The woman wandered vaguely toward the cigarette machine. After staring thoughtfully at her back for a moment, Kolinski went back into the office.
“Nice ass on that broad.”
“We’re out a quarter of a mil in heroin, and you’re staring at women’s backsides.” Hariss’ voice was filled with distaste at the wanton vulgarity.
“A woman’s ass might find us Docker if he’s holed up in town.”
Hariss listened intently as the angular bony man told him what Robin had come up with concerning Docker and his sexual habits. Listening, Hariss could not stay stilclass="underline" he perched on the corner of the desk, sat behind it, stood, fidgeted, cracked his knuckles all together with a swift palms-out shoving motion of both interlaced hands.
“How sure are you of Robin?” he asked finally.
“She didn’t make it up, if that’s what you mean. She supplied details about Docker himself.”
The woman with the nice ass got into her Saab and left. The dark-haired boy headed for the candy machine beside the office door.
“I meant, how sure are you that she won’t get the information and then hold out on you?”
Kolinski’s eyes gleamed as if with remembered lust. “No way. I own that bitch.”
“I hope so,” said Hariss equably. “Remember, I am playing for much higher stakes in this than a kilo of heroin. Roberta Stayton is my entrée to her father’s commercial empire.”
“I’ve told you before and I say it again, Walt, that old bastard is nobody to mess with. I worked for him—”
“I didn’t,” said Hariss drily. “Through your persistence and vindictive nature, we... possess Stayton’s daughter. He does not yet know this. Once he does, he will not know who I am until I have been legally granted... certain rights in Stayton Industries.”
“He knows who I am.” Kolinski’s voice was glum. “All he has to do is see me.” He suddenly slammed a frustrated fist into his open palm, and his voice became a rant. “Goddam that fucking Docker! It was all so easy, right now we should be counting hundred-dollar bills...”