“Dundy would think prior knowledge.”
“Dundy never thinks. Anyway, our boy disembarked with the rest of the passengers, that night caught the car ferry at the Hyde Street pier to pick up Lisboa in Sausalito. Together they buried the gold under the house in Sausalito.” He shook his head. “It’s ironic in a way.”
“What is, Sam?”
“That’s the house where Robert Louis Stevenson lived before he sailed for the South Seas. One of the main reasons Henny Barber wanted to stow away was to see Stevenson’s grave up on Mount Vaea in Western Samoa. His romantic dream brought us into the case to mess up McPhee’s plans. Once I was in, I wanted to break the robbery and get the guy behind it. From the start something about him—”
“How about Kest?” asked Effie Perine.
“He was always a dead man, he just didn’t know it. Getting in a panic and demanding his cut right away got his throat cut sooner. They found his motorcycle below Yellow Bluff.”
Wise finished his baklava. “And the three Portagees?”
“I’m just guessing here, but I think that on the day I went to see Benny Ruiz in Larkspur, McPhee was a busy little man. He separated Lisboa from the other two, took him to the Stevenson house. Lisboa would be thinking they were going to dig up the gold where they had buried it. Instead, they dug up the gold and he got his head bashed in. McPhee then lured Mondego and Berlingas to the Stevenson house, fed them whiskey with poison in it to celebrate their success. He was always too smart for the cops.” Anger darkened Spade’s eyes. “Too smart for me, too. He almost got me on the ferry back from Marin. And still nobody living knows what he really looks like.”
“Why exactly did McPhee set those men on you and then try to kill you?” asked Effie Perine.
“At first he was worried I might grab Kest, who’d dealt with him face-to-face and could finger him. Then I recovered fifty thousand dollars in specie before he could get it. That frustrated him and he doesn’t take frustration easily. And, he likes to kill.”
“You’re drawing quite a profile of a man you’ve never met.”
The muscles bulged along Spade’s jaws. “But I know him just the same, Sid. And one of these days I’ll find him.”
“Meanwhile, you’re looking at trouble from the authorities. Dundy wants the D.A.’s office to go after your license.”
“Yeah. I’ve been summoned to appear in” — Spade checked his watch — “thirty-five minutes.”
The interrogation room in the Hall of Justice had a single window so dirty the sunshine-flooded rise of Washington Square below Chinatown was just discernible through it.
Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bryan stood when Sam Spade entered. With Bryan were two men. One had a jovial red Irish drinker’s face and red hair. His pulled-down tie had cigarette ash on it. The other man was thin, colorless, with round eyeglasses and a bland face and a mole on his upper lip. He remained seated with a steno pad resting on one knee.
“Samuel Spade?” asked Bryan in a formal, resonant voice.
“Guilty,” admitted Spade.
“No attorney with you?”
“I won’t need one.”
Only then did Bryan, with a gleam of satisfaction in his eye, shake Spade’s hand and sit down again. He was just past forty, of medium stature, with a tennis player’s fitness. His eyes were blue and aggressive; his black-ribboned nose glasses were for the moment hanging below a wide determined cleft chin. His almost-patrician face had a too-mobile orator’s mouth.
“We are here today for a formal exploration of certain charges that have been leveled against you by the San Francisco Police Department, Mr. Spade. Mr. Riley will observe, Mr. Levinger will take shorthand notes. I was not with the district attorney’s office when you were a Continental agent in this city, but I have heard that you often acted with little regard for the dignity and solemnity of the law.”
“You shouldn’t listen to Dundy,” said Spade.
“This is not an adversarial procedure, Mr. Spade. We are only interested in the truth here today.”
Spade dug in his vest pocket for papers and tobacco. “My truth or your truth?”
“There is only one truth.” Bryan raised his glasses and hooked them over his nose, tried to drill Spade with aggressive eyes. “The truth is that you have been operating in a very high-handed manner for the past week.”
“And have recovered fifty thousand bucks worth of stolen gold for the International Banking Corporation.”
“And let seventy-five thousand slip through your fingers.”
“Without me there would have been no recovery at all. I was working a case and ran across the theft by accident.”
“Aha! What case? For whom?”
Spade shook his head almost sorrowfully as he rolled and licked his cigarette, lit it. “Sorry, I can’t tell you that. A grand jury can maybe make me cough up his name or spend some time in the can, but you—”
The phone on the table rang. The redheaded assistant D.A. stubbed out his own cigarette and picked it up. He listened, hung up, walked quickly out, leaving behind only the whisper of the stenographer’s pencil recording his departure. Bryan frowned. The pencil stopped moving. Bryan cleared his throat.
“According to our information, Spade, you knew a great deal about those dead men over in Sausalito.”
“One slipped through the cops’ fingers after I told them repeatedly to grab him. The other three attacked me a few nights ago on the Embarcadero at midnight.”
“You do not strike me as the sort of man to take such assault without seeking redress.”
“Maybe I am and maybe I’m not, but I would have to know where they were before I could act, right? I didn’t see them again until I was shown their bodies over in Sausalito. And how did they die? One had his throat slit. According to the Marin County coroner, the other two were poisoned. A knife? Poison? Me?” Spade smiled sardonically. “Your truth or mine, Bryan?”
Bryan cleared his throat, perhaps angrily. “Then there’s the matter of your impersonating an officer.”
“If I did, a minor port official.” Spade blew smoke from one corner of his mouth. “Nobody who was there has pointed a finger at me.”
Bryan began slapping the back of one hand into the palm of the other in time with his words.
“You do not have the power of the Continental Detective Agency behind you now, Spade. You are a lone-wolf operator on the fringes of the law. Your answers to my next two questions will determine whether you retain your license or not.”
“Fire away.”
“Who was the client you were working for when you ran across the gold theft? And what did your investigation entail?”
“It was a domestic inquiry for a private individual.”
“I demand to know his name and the nature of the case!”
“I’ve said it before, you birds on the city payroll all think the law ought to be what you say it is.”
The blood rushed to Bryan’s face. “The law is the same for every man or woman, rich or poor, educated or—”
“The law is what I can get away with and stay out of jail.”
Bryan pointed an accusing finger across the table. His voice filled the room.
“You’ve had your chance, Spade! I will move against you with the full power and majesty of this office. You will receive your summons to appear before the grand jury tomorrow.” His blue eyes gleamed triumphantly. “I will have your license in my hand by the end of the week.”
The door opened and the redheaded Irishman hurried in. He stopped close to Bryan and talked urgently, glancing obliquely at Spade, gesturing with a raised shoulder and movements of his hands and head to indicate something or someone outside the room.