She was in the outer office when the phone rang. She answered, after a few seconds laid down the receiver. Her heels detoured to the coffee pot before coming across the floor to his open doorway. She set down a steaming mug. Her face was tight.
“It’s that Rhoda Walström who used to—”
“Thanks, doll.” His briefing had not included Rhoda. He said into the phone, “Hello, darling, I was going to call you this morning. You at work already? Mm-hmm. Early, huh? Yeah, me too. The police been around yet?”
He winked at Pamela Gardner. She left abruptly, but he could hear her heels falter, stop within earshot. Sunshine slanting through the east windows laid her shadow on the floor near his office door.
“Wylie himself?” he said into the phone. “I’ll bet he gnashed his teeth when you said...” He listened. He laughed. “I doubt if you really mind about ruined reputations, Rhoda. Tonight? Why not? I told Wylie you were a terrific lay, I guess I’d better make sure I didn’t lie to the police...”
When he hung up thirty seconds later, Pamela’s shadow was gone from the floor. He could hear her making secretarial noises at her desk. He checked his watch like a man marking time to an important appointment; his face was cold and withdrawn and totally without the animation he had injected into his chatter with the big Scandinavian girl.
The phone rang. A few moments later, Pamela called, “Neil. It’s Inspector Wylie on line one.”
He punched the phone off the HOLD she’d put it on, said, “Fargo” into it.
“I’ve been talking with Hank Tekawa this morning, Fargo,” said the policeman’s flat, impolite tones. “That was a lovely drug bust he and Maley made last night out in Sea Cliff. Apparently developed their whole case themselves through careful investigative blah blah bullshit.”
“Give Lieutenant Tekawa my regards,” said Neil Fargo. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I’ve got an appointment in—”
“Thing is, Fargo, Hariss opened up like an oyster before his lawyer got there to shut him up. Claimed a frame engineered by you and this fellow who drove off the cliff at Baker Beach last night. Docker. Said Docker and you were in the same outfit in Vietnam, that Docker saved your life once, was a POW—”
“I doubt if Hariss’ heroin-possession jury is going to give much of a shit about my war reminiscences.”
“I do. You told me yesterday you didn’t know Docker, at a time I had out a material-witness want on him in connection with a death by violence. Obstructing justice at least, maybe accessory after—”
“Did Hariss let it drop that the Docker in my outfit in Nam was MIA — missing in action? That he never turned up on any of the repatriation lists? That he is presumed dead by the military authorities?”
There was a long silence. Finally Wylie growled, “Are you just blowing smoke, or—”
“Walt Hariss isn’t a very reliable witness, Inspector. I suggest that you check with the Army Records Center. See if you can find any of my prints out at the Hariss house. Find some witnesses that put me there last night. Then check with Maxwell Stayton on whether I had supper with him and went up to his office afterwards to talk about his daughter’s murder. If you have any questions after all that, you’ve got my office phone number.”
He hung up. His coffee was cold. He got out a cigarette, sat with it in his hands, his face almost stupid in its total lack of expression. He looked at the cigarette as if seeing it for the first time, stuck it unlighted back in his pack. He turned the page on his calendar. Then he rubbed his face with his hands, like a man who is worn out from overwork or insomnia.
He looked at his watch. Five to nine. He stood up so abruptly that he tipped over the empty wastebasket. He went out into the main office. His features were animated.
“I’ve got an appointment, doll.”
She said in a small voice, “Neil.”
He stopped and looked at her. “Well?”
“If... Docker didn’t meet her down in Mexico like you said in that report, then where did he meet her?”
“Docker was a Bay Area boy originally, doll. Went with her in college for a while — like that. So when he came back from the Vietnam prison camp, I guess he looked her up. That’s my reconstruction, anyway. And found her hooked on heroin. He must have felt something for her, because he let her drag him into her crazy scheme of revenge...”
“Oh.” She said it in that small, distant voice. After a long time she said, looking at her desk, “You turned him in, didn’t you, Neil?”
“He killed two people.”
“You... said it was self-defense both times.”
He nodded. “Let’s just say I knew he couldn’t get away with it anyway, and that he was better off dead than in prison. If you don’t like that, just say that I felt it was part of my job as a detective.”
“That makes it a... pretty rotten sort of job, doesn’t it, Neil?”
“Lots of people think so.” He suddenly grinned. “It’s the only one I’ve got.” The grin faded. “If you’re going to quit, Pam, make yourself out a check for a month’s severance pay. I’ll sign it when I get back. Now, I’ve got an appointment.”
“I didn’t say I was going...” But her voice trailed off.
“Up to you, doll. But you’re not going to change me. And you’re not going to change the job.”
He went down the stairs quickly, wooden-faced, waved through the window at the Chinese woman who ran the beauty shop. She waved back, with a reminiscent smile. The smile was brilliant and quite alluring.
At the Seventy-Six station, Emil was waiting. Down in the next block the big yellow scavenger’s truck grunted as one of the garbagemen pulled the lever which made it swallow up the trash they’d been dumping into its open maw.
“Hey, Fargo! What happen to big yellow car, huh?”
“Maybe Doc Follmer’s compact ate it.”
Emil grinned crookedly. He had very bad teeth. “Ha! Next time I charge you.” He added in his atrocious accent, “That’s nice car, you want sell to me?”
“Too late, Emil. It was stolen last night.”
The Hungarian looked at him blankly for several seconds, then convulsed with laughter. “Is stole! Is stole off big private eye? I notice about five, six o’clock is gone, I think you take it. Instead, is stole!” He slapped his knee with delight.
Neil Fargo shrugged sullenly, from his car got a brown attaché case. He turned toward the men’s room, paused, said, “It was a rental job, the insurance’ll cover the replacement. Whoever took it sent it over a cliff out in the Presidio. Wedged down the accelerator with a lug wrench, stood outside the window and flipped it into low...”
“Is bad thing to do to nice car.”
The detective went by the voluble Hungarian without answering, and went into the men’s room. The single stall was closed; the restroom was cold and smelled of disinfectant. From outside, a door or two away, came the rattle of garbage pails as the scavengers emptied them into the hulking compressor truck.
Neil Fargo hoisted the attaché case up on the square white porcelain sink, unsnapped the catches. He opened it, stared at the contents. Then, belatedly, he put his fingertips against the closed stall door and pushed it wide.
“Hello, Docker,” he said.
But the stall was quite empty.
He laughed thinly through his teeth, a sound almost totally devoid of mirth. He dropped something on the floor, trod it under his heel. It was a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with clear glass in the frames. He picked up the bent frames and dropped them into the big refuse pail the garbagemen would collect within a minute.
He lifted out the long ash-blond wig, and stuffed that down among the morning’s wet, used paper towels. He made sure it was covered, so the scavengers for whose arrival he had been waiting would destroy it without even seeing it. He closed the attaché case.