“Do you really think Docker planned this alone?”
“There isn’t anybody else.”
“There’s Neil Fargo.” His heavy features were judicial; he looked like a man who would make laws rather than break them. His eyes became suddenly murderous without a muscle changing in his face. “If Fargo is mixed up in this hijack...”
“He ain’t been breaking his ass to shower us with information, has he?” Kolinski checked his watch. “One phone call, to say Docker doesn’t have a car or driver’s license — and it’s goddam near two o’clock...”
Hariss nodded, a somewhat worried look on his face. He drummed thoughtful fingers on the desktop. The dark-haired youth started into the office, munching his candy bar, checked at whatever he saw in their faces or sensed in the room’s atmosphere, and went away hurriedly.
A look that could almost have been fear flitted across the grey-haired importer’s heavy features.
“There’s something else, Alex.”
“About Fargo?”
“About Docker. A... pattern of erratic behavior that... that’s worrisome. We have assumed that Docker, realizing the exchange point between the money and the heroin was our weakest spot because we worked through agents rather than being there ourselves, decided to take both the money and the heroin. Correct?”
“Correct,” said Kolinski.
“Then let us follow his actions for the last six hours. Before Addison arrives, he attacks and kills Marquez. He now has what he supposedly wants. Does he leave? No. He waits for Addison, knocks him cold — but does not kill him also. Why?”
“Leaving him for a fall guy for the Marquez murder,” said Kolinski promptly.
“He needed no fall guy until he was seen. Nobody except Neil Fargo, up to that point, knew what he looked like. Now Addison does. Then he goes into Franklin Square, talks with a junkie there, and sends him up to the flat also. Then, almost assuredly, he phones a tip to the police about the dead body in the flat.”
“Setting up another possible fall guy.”
“Except Addison is still alive to testify the junkie isn’t the killer.”
He paused to light a cigar, turning it evenly in the flame of his lighter. He talked around the rolled, saliva-wet leaf, then used it as a pointer to jab home his points.
“See what I mean by worrisome? It makes no rational sense. He acts as if he is high on something himself. Supporting this theory, my police informant has told me that there was a broken ampule of speed on the bathroom floor.”
“Did you ask Fargo if Docker is hooked on anything?”
“When he first mentioned Docker, he said he’d been a North Vietnamese POW for a couple of years. He might have gotten habituated to painkillers subsequently in a military hospital. But that’s academic; this isn’t: does Docker attempt to leave San Francisco?”
“He does,” said Kolinski. “First at Greyhound—”
“Does he? At Greyhound he acts like a man out of control, attacking Rowlands with the utmost ferocity. Then he coolly convinces two witnesses he is a Mafia enforcer. Later, he shows up on Market Street and makes himself very conspicuous in an encounter with a hippie panhandler. He makes himself obnoxious in a First Street bar. He makes flip remarks in a peep-show emporium—”
“As if he wants to be spotted,” muttered Kolinski. For the first time, his face reflected some of the concern apparent in Hariss’ voice.
“Exactly. Incredible stupidity, one would say at first glance. After all, he has what he wanted: the heroin and the money which was to be used to buy it. Why attract attention?”
Kolinski said haltingly, thinking it through, “But then when he is spotted, he pulls some sort of very cool switch to disappear completely and leave us running around in circles...”
“As if he’s laughing at us,” said Hariss. “Why? Is he indeed erratic, or is he playing some sort of game? And where is he? And why hasn’t Neil Fargo come up with anything further—”
The phone rang.
Kolinski picked it up, spoke his name into it, listened. He cupped the receiver with his hand and turned to Hariss. “Neil Fargo. He’s got news about Docker.”
Eleven
Walter Hariss moved with a fluid grace surprising in a man of his obviously self-indulgent habits, plucked the receiver off the wall phone over the squatty safe in time to hear Neil Fargo’s voice demand sharply, “Who else just came on besides you, Kolinski?”
“Hariss,” said the fleshy importer.
“Good. Half an hour ago Docker rented a car at a joint down the other side of Market. It’s a canary yellow Montego, this year’s or maybe last year’s model, two-door sedan—”
“License?” Kolinski’s pen was poised.
“No got. My man spotted him walking out on Howard, lost him when he ducked into a second-hand office furniture supply warehouse in the eight-hundred block. Twenty minutes later, my man made him again, just driving the Montego out of the car-rental outfit. He wasn’t in close enough to get the license—”
“Why in fuck didn’t you tell him to go in and get it from the girl behind the desk?” snarled Kolinski.
Neil Fargo’s voice instantly hardened. “Listen, asshole, I’m getting this all relayed through my secretary. I wasn’t in touch with this guy direct. I’m not sitting around my fucking office waiting for Docker to come in and sit in my lap.”
“What’s the name of the rental outfit?” asked Hariss soothingly.
“Never mind that, I’m on my way down there now. I’ll let you know when I pick anything up.”
Kolinski began, “Listen, goddammit—”
He stopped. He and Hariss were listening to the empty buzz of a dial tone. Hariss slammed a hand in frustration against the dirty plaster wall of the office. His face was very pale.
“Who does he think he is?” he panted. “Get Gus.”
Kolinski leaned out the door to bawl across the garage at the diminutive chauffeur. “Gus! Get your ass in here.”
Rizzato immediately popped out of the Cadillac, trotted up to the office. He should have been comic in the long dark blue coat and peaked cap he affected while behind the wheel of the limousine, but no figure of fun ever wore eyes like Rizzato’s.
“Yessir, Mr Hariss?” He stood in the office door like a dog waiting to be told which way to point. Hariss laid the hand which bore the cigar on his narrow muscular shoulder.
“Gus, I want you to go over to Neil Fargo’s office. There are some things I want you to find out.”
Obscure excitement sparked the little man’s eyes. “I’ll ask that secretary of his.”
“With restraint, Gus. With restraint. For now.”
“Yessir, Mr Hariss.”
“All right, three things. When Neil Fargo came into his office this morning was he carrying a package? A newspaper-wrapped package, perhaps? Two, is there such a package at his office now? Three, did a call actually relay information about Docker renting a car, and was a license number mentioned which the secretary passed on to Fargo? Now, on your way.” He let the diminutive chauffeur get to the door before calling after him, “Restraint, Gus. For the moment.”
Hariss sat down again half-smiling; his good humor was quite restored. He drew on the cigar, put his head back to drift the rich smoke at the ceiling.
“I don’t get it,” said Kolinski. “What’s with this package? And what’s with Gus and Fargo’s secretary? Shit, she’s a fucking kid, nineteen, twenty years old.”
Hariss said in a measured, distasteful voice, “She excites him.”
“Yeah, well, she’s small enough for him at that. Probably the only broad in town he could let get on top without—”