“I see,” Bryan said finally in a strangled voice.
Spade stubbed out his cigarette, stood without haste, pulled the points of his vest down, and pointed a finger at Bryan as Bryan had pointed a finger at him.
“You’ll be having ambitions to be district attorney — all assistant D.A.’s do. So roll your dice, Bryan. And that’s all right, I can find my own way out.”
“Something took the wind out of his sails, Sid.”
Spade was sitting across from the diminutive attorney, his hat balanced on the near corner of Wise’s desk.
“Charles Hendrickson Barber,” said Wise.
Spade got a startled look on his face. “I just got raked over the coals for refusing to divulge his name to Bryan.”
“Oh, Barber wouldn’t do anything as compromising as appear in this thing personally.” Wise began playing with the pencil on his desk. “But apart from being president of Golden Gate Trust, he’s also president of Golden Gate Saving Trust. He has a hand in the commission house of Kittle and Company. He’s a director of the Shipowners’ and Merchants’ Tugboat Company and was vice president of the nineteen fifteen Panama Pacific International Exposition. He’s a real power in this city, Sam, and—”
“And that’s why he came to you to hire someone to find his son when the kid ran off. He didn’t want his power-structure cronies to know there was trouble in the Barber family.”
“That’s also why I called him and told him Bryan was going to try and get his name out of you. I said he had nothing to worry about, you were a boulder without a fissure, but...”
Spade pulled his brows down in a black frown. “I can rake my own chestnuts out of the fire, Sid.” His face brightened, he stood, picked up his hat. “Still, it’s not so bad to declare our weight and come out punching. Because Barber made a phone call and someone dropped by the hall, I won’t have to be dodging a summons and complaint from Bryan any time soon.”
“I’m glad you’re pleased,” said Wise drily.
“When I’m not, Sid, you’ll be the first to know.”
He found Effie Perine making diagonal cuts across the long stems of a dozen red roses.
“Secret admirer?” he asked.
“Of you,” she said ruefully. “Mrs. Barber sent them.”
His eyes gleamed theatrically. “Mrs. Barber, huh? Any calls? Any clients waiting in my office?”
“Nothing. I think the whole town knows that the district attorney’s office had you on the carpet all morning.” Her face turned serious. “How do we stand, Sam?”
“On our own two feet.” He sat down across from her. “Here’s how it works, sweetheart. The cops don’t like us. The D.A. doesn’t like us. City Hall doesn’t like us. But even though they’re going to welsh on the reward money, the International Banking Corporation does like us. Because Charles Barber’s son is back in the fold unharmed, Barber likes us.”
“What good does all of that do us, Sam?”
“Just this: this city’s big-money circles will know that and take it into account when they need an investigator who isn’t with one of the big agencies and can keep his trap shut.” He took the cigarette she had rolled him, lit it, blew smoke luxuriously at the ceiling. “Which will translate into a better class of client who will pay bigger fees for our services.”
“Does it translate into a better office in a better part of town?” she asked.
“Not yet. I need a lot of people to talk to me because they feel they can trust me. Too much flash makes ’em nervous.” He ground his fag out in her ashtray, stood. “But as of now you’re on the payroll full-time at twenty-five bucks a week. Tell that to your mother.”
She was on her feet also, eyes alight. But all she said was “She likes you, you know. She trusts you won’t get her little girl into any trouble you can’t get her out of.”
“Does that mean I can use your mother as an informant in the Greek community?”
“You’re an impossible man, Samuel Spade!” she ex claimed.
He started toward his private office, then paused and turned back. “When you finish with those roses, you’d better make a file headed ‘St. Clair McPhee.’ We don’t have anything to put in it — yet. But I’m betting we will.”
He went on and shut the door. Effie Perine began arranging the roses in a vase. She began softly singing the refrain from “Ain’t We Got Fun?” to herself as she worked.
The phone rang. She stopped singing to pick up.
“Samuel Spade Investigations.”
She grabbed her steno pad and started making notes.
1925
II
Three Women
The chief business of the American people is business
14
The Eberhard Death
Apparently aimless, Samuel Spade wandered through the throng lying or sitting or picnicking on the grassy slope above the Fleishhacker Pool. Crowds of people in bathing costumes, summer frocks, and shirtsleeves were enjoying the warm, sunny day, rare out near the beach at the foot of Sloat Boulevard.
Spade was tieless, collarless, in rolled-up shirtsleeves, his suit coat slung over one shoulder with his forefinger hooked through the loop inside the back of the collar. The Chronicle for Saturday, September 12, 1925, was folded in a coat pocket.
He worked his way through the border of low pine trees and bushes to come up behind a mid-forties sandy-haired man standing at the edge of the vast outdoor plunge. The bright horizontal pattern of the man’s V-neck cricket sweater emphasized his thickening waist. A light breeze mingled the sharp salt tang of the ocean with the clean fragrance of the evergreens.
“What brings us out here on a sunny Saturday, Ray?”
Ray Kentzler turned to look at Spade. He had a square Germanic head and a pleasant broad-mouthed face with pale, smart, watchful eyes under blond brows.
“I’m working this one outside the system, Sam.”
“Fair enough. But who’s paying me, if it comes to that?”
“Oh, Bankers’ Life — if it comes to that.” He moved his head slightly. “C’mon, let’s walk; I’ve been wanting to get a gander at this place since it opened.”
“Largest outdoor pool in the country,” said Spade solemnly.
But Kentzler took his gibe at face value.
“Open maybe four months. Three city blocks long, nearly half a football field wide, six and a half million gallons of warmed circulating seawater. Twenty lifeguards on duty—”
“Who need rowboats to go out and get anyone who’s in trouble, the pool’s so big. If your wife was at one end, Ray, she wouldn’t be able to identify your kid at the other end.”
“Probably wouldn’t want to,” said Kentzler.
“They built it in the wrong place. It should be down the peninsula near Stanford, where they get hot weather.”
“I notice you have your coat off, Sam.”
“And in another hour, when that fog rolls in from the ocean, you’ll notice I have it back on again.”
They strolled through drifting adults and running kids, past tulip-shaped light fixtures on tall metal poles.
“Let me buy you a late lunch, Sam.”
At the bathhouse, 450 feet long, done in Italian Renaissance style, with a glazed tile roof and dining rooms on the second floor, they chose the room looking out toward the ocean rather than the one facing east over the pool toward Lake Merced. Their salads arrived, along with Boston clam chowder for Spade and oysters for Kentzler. The insurance man leaned across the table, his voice low and confidential.