Comprehension came to him. “What are you doing here?”
“Blackjack Jerome is looking for you. He asked me to reel you in.” One statement of fact and one lie. The shakes were starting work in The Fin’s hands. “But maybe you’re in on a better business these days. Is it good? Anything in it for me?”
The Fin didn’t know what to say, so I took his arm and led him toward the Fairmont, away from the wreckage and the attention that could not be much longer in arriving. It took him three entire blocks before he started to calm down.
“San Francisco is a city of opportunity, you know,” he blurted out.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that.”
“We’re in a new century now,” he looked searchingly into my face. “The twentieth century.”
“Fin, I know what year it is. How about we do this? Allow me to take you to your new partners in opportunity. If there’s something in it for me, swell. If not, I’ll go tell Blackjack that he’s lost a good man to a better deal.”
What few brains the kid had were shaken up enough so that he agreed to the proposition, though no doubt he had little native objection to having someone along with thick forearms. The way The Fin’s intellect worked, though, it probably had not yet occurred to him that it didn’t look likely that he’d live out this night.
We flagged a taxi and dropped off Nob Hill to the Palace Hotel. In the ornate lobby, parked at an angle good for observing the bank of elevators, I saw one of the agents I’d sent to relieve young Arney. Lagging a step behind The Fin, I gave my fellow op the sign for first up, meaning he was to take the first shadow assigned, Riordan, if this dance broke apart suddenly.
The Palace was the largest hotel in town, a city within a city. Definitely a good place to hide yourself for a time if that was what interested you. The Fin took us to a room on the seventh floor.
Riordan came to the door and let us in. Another man came out of the bath, pulling on a freshly laundered shirt. The woman sat on a couch near the windows. Our youthful operative had been correct enough — she was a tightly wrapped little package and the fuse was lit.
The man in the shirt asked, “Who’ve you got with you, Elisha?”
The kid said, “This is Mr. Hunt.”
The Fin had never known my real name, nor much else. He figured me for just another skull-breaker, because that’s the way Blackjack and I thought that card should be played.
I stepped forward with my palm out, grinning, and pretended to correct his memory, “Make that Hunter.” It or a variant thereof was a favorite alias.
“You can call me Mac,” the man said, ignoring my hand. He pointed a thumb at Riordan. “That’s Johnson.” He glanced toward the couch. “And she’s Irene.”
It was going to be a fun little party.
“So,” he said, finishing his last button and tucking the shirttails in, “what do you want?”
I decided to try fitting some pieces of the puzzle together. “Okay, it’s like this. I’m guessing you might need some local muscle for your operation. Now that Helland is out of the picture.”
“You know Helland?”
“Sure. When he used to be alive.”
Riordan froze like a statue and I didn’t hear any oxygen passing through The Fin. The man who called himself Mac gazed upon me more closely, and I saw where young Arney got the impression he wasn’t the convivial sort. But it was the woman who spoke, spitting out the words, “Just kill that fat little fuck.”
Well, change my name from Michael to Dennis! I didn’t know exactly who this dame was, but she was going to get someone else boxed up, and fast, if she had her way.
“I guess I’m not your brand of medicine,” I said, taking a quick look into those pale icy blue eyes. I glanced at her companions. “You like to keep long lean monkeys on your leash.”
Figuring he was used to it, I tugged my rod out of a pocket and stepped quickly to the left, bringing it smashing into the side of Riordan’s head and tumbling him to the carpet. Three steps back enabled me to catch The Fin around the throat with an elbow and hold him in front of me, gun arm stretched across his shoulder. Mac had a knife in his hand by this time, but I cautioned him against unnecessary movements by thumbing back the hammer on my .38 Special. I wasn’t some sitting duck in a coupé for him to practice tricks on.
Silvery eyes ablaze, the woman sat forward on the edge of the couch, breathing hard, legs parted, taking every detail in. I admit it was all very thrilling, but I’ve seen more excitement in my time.
I pulled The Fin’s head tight against my cheek, forcing a strangled gasp out of his pipes. With his ear at my lips and my face hidden by his, I whispered, “You want out?”
“Tell Blackjack,” he said hoarsely, “I’m busy,” but then I caught the ghostly words Second and Howard before he gave out with a cough. I took him rearward with me to the door, found the handle and slipped out, shoving him back inside the suite.
IV
The Fin was taking more of a risk than I’d have thought prudent, but he had his cover story about Blackjack to lurk behind. And he was just dumb enough to believe he might be able to come out of this business in sole possession of the latest cache of stolen jewels. Maybe he dreamed of taking that beautiful woman along, too, eloping from this city of plenty, wealthy at last. A hopeful sap.
The clue he’d piped out was clear enough, though. One of the places we gathered before heading to the docks was a warehouse Blackjack rented near Second and Howard, only a couple of blocks from the Palace. If the kid still had a key or knew a way in, that would be a dandy hideout for the loot. Nothing at hand to pin the crime on them if the cops got wise, and safe as safe until they chose to grab the bundle and flee the town.
I knew this turf well enough, and wanted to insure recovery on the stolen property. A fiasco like Oak Park wouldn’t do on my watch. The Fin might or might not be able to tell us where the stash was, but The Fin might be knifed already. If I got spotted following any of them on the street, the game would play out longer, perhaps a lot longer, so I bounded out of the stairwell into the lobby with a freshly baked plan.
“Come here, you,” I said to the first bellhop I saw, grabbing him by an arm and slipping a silver dollar into his mitt. “Use your key to get me over to the gin mill. And make speed.”
Clutching his prize in a tight fist, he plunged ahead of me to the basement, then through the connecting tunnel that led from the Palace to the neighborhood still. Frank Dorr’s restaurant did business upstairs in 35 New Montgomery, right across the street from the main lobby entrance, but the gin operation downstairs was the big moneymaker. They vented the fumes into the parking garage in back of the eatery, but anyone who knew anything had it marked as the place in that part of town for a thirsty man to buy a pint. Demand from the hotel denizens was met via shipping bellboys to and fro underneath the street.
The bellhop unlocked the gate that connected the walkway from the Palace and pulled to a stop before the bootleggers’ solid door. He started to make the two-three knock at the latched eyehole to attract their attention, but I nixed him. “No hooch tonight, sonny. You can scurry back to work.”
My destination lay over a block south and another east through passages that honeycombed this part of town below the sidewalks. I knew of another set of tunnels around Eighth and Folsom, and had heard that they connected to this network. I was going to have to check into that someday, because obviously the knowledge might come in handy.
The tunnels had been dug years ago as storage depots for unloading supplies into the various buildings, but now provided a greased pipeline for moving gin about in quantities large or small. For that reason, I didn’t expect any of the massive fire doors I might encounter to be locked. The keys the bellboys used were merely a formality, part of their racket.