“That was quick.” She sounded slightly disbelieving.
“Yeah, too quick. Too easy.” He took his hat and topcoat off the rack. “I’m going to go snoop around, see if what he told me makes sense. Oh, and call Ray Kentzler at Bankers’ Life, ask can he get a line on who owns a two-story red brick warehouse on the Green Street stub between Sansome and Telegraph Hill.”
The morning fog was still seething over the bay, kept in motion by a biting wind through the Gate. The warehouse, built against the vertical slate face of Telegraph Hill, was locked up tight. The side windows were ten feet off the ground and covered with butcher paper on the inside. The double overhead door on the concrete loading dock had a huge new padlock that nothing short of a hardened-steel long-handled chain cutter could touch. It had no window. The access door beside it had an inset Yale lock and its window was reinforced with crisscrossed wires.
Spade found multiple fresh truck-tire tracks in the dust-covered street in front of the building. He clambered up on the dock, cupped his hands on the window of the access door, but its glass also was covered with butcher paper on the inside.
“Hey, what d’ya think you’re doing? Get away from there.”
A beefy red-faced Irish cop was puffing up Green Street toward him, nightstick in hand. Spade waved his clipboard, dropped nimbly down off the chest-high loading dock. He put the clipboard under one arm to dust off his hands, offered one of them to the cop.
“Ray Kentzler, Bankers’ Life. We carry the fire insurance on this building.”
“Fire insurance? The place’s been empty for months.”
“Still an asset.” Spade said nothing of the recent tire tracks in the dust. “We got a report of some kids trying to get inside. I had to make sure the building was secure.”
The cop shook his head. “Kids,” he said.
They walked side by side back toward the Embarcadero. Spade turned north, walking, pausing thoughtfully. He walked. Stopped, frowning. Caught a bus down the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building, where he had lunch, then went to his office. Effie Perine was out for her own lunch; as usual, she had left half a dozen message slips on his desk.
Three caught Spade’s eye: Ray Kentzler had called back to say that tracking the warehouse owner would take a day or two. Richardson said to suspend the investigation into the activities of his stepson. And the Chinese-sounding woman maybe named Mai-lin Choi had called back for an appointment with Spade at 9 the next morning.
32
Mai-lin Choi
Effie Perine came in and shut the door, leaned back against it. Spade looked up from the papers on his desk.
“Any word from Ray Kentzler on that warehouse ownership?”
“Nothing. But your nine o’clock appointment is here.”
Interest sparked Spade’s eyes. He stubbed out his latest cigarette. “By all means, sweetheart, send her in.”
She went back out, there was a murmur of voices, then she opened the door again and stepped aside.
“Miss Mai-lin Choi.”
She was perhaps twenty-two, tall and full-bosomed for a Chinese woman, Western in bearing. Her hair, of indeterminate length, was jet-black, worked into a large bun at the back of her head. She wore an untrimmed felt hat, a tan tailored frock with a contrasting pongee collar and a matching silk ribbon tie. Her shoes were the latest flat-heeled style.
Spade stood, gestured at the client chair.
“Please, Miss Choi, sit down.”
Instead, she remained standing for several moments, frankly judging him with black barely slanted eyes. Only then did she sit, turning her legs to one side so her feet were not flat on the floor. It was a graceful pose.
“You were recommended to me three years ago,” she said. Her voice was strong but smooth, her English impeccable, with only the slightest singsong rhythm to suggest her heritage. Her nose was quite aquiline, her cheekbones exquisite, her skin a pale gold. “Now you have been recommended again.”
Spade moved his head in a small bow, smiling slightly.
“Three years ago it was my pastor in Hawaii. Here, now, it is the Reverend Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy of St. John’s Methodist Church in Chinatown. He has become my spiritual adviser.”
“I will look forward to meeting him. Now, my secretary said you have a problem I might be able to help you with.”
“You are a strong man? A steadfast man?”
Spade came forward in his chair, put his elbows on the desk with his hard, bony chin between his fists. He looked at her keenly, appraising her as she had him moments previously.
“You mean as a detective?”
“And as a man. Reverend Zhu states that you have the reputation of being devious and often untruthful, but that you protect your clients’ interests at all costs. He said he could not be sure if you are also honorable.”
“Honorable. Not a word gets used very often in my profession.” He sobered abruptly. “OK, I know what Reverend Zhu has to say. What do you have to say?”
“I was a student three years ago, now I am not. Because the Chinese Exclusion Act some forty-odd years ago barred all Chinese except teachers and students and diplomats and the clergy, this time I am in this country illegally. You have heard the term paper daughter?”
“Sure. If I got it right, a Chinese American citizen can visit a wife back in China for long periods, when he comes back declare the number and gender of the kids born to him in China. All would be eligible for American citizenship if they came to this country. But if he says he’s got more than he does—”
“—then there are slots, which often are illegally sold later to young Chinese trying to get into this country. I have bought such an identity to seek two men. I cannot know how long it will take to find them, or what dangers might be involved.”
“So you feel someone might try to stop you?” Her black eyes bored into his. “One cannot be sure.”
“Fair enough.” Spade drew a pad and pencil toward himself. “Who are these men and what do they do? Last seen where and when? Do you have photographs of them?”
“Charles Boothe and Fritz Lea. I was four years old in nineteen ten, living in poverty in Japan. When I came here three years ago, before I had to leave I could only learn that Charles Boothe was a retired banker with strong ties to military circles in New York. In nineteen ten he was living here in California. I could learn very little more about him. I do not have his photograph.”
Spade poised his pencil. “What about Fritz Lea?”
“I know even less about him, but I do have a photograph.” She took an envelope from her Spanish-leather pouch bag and handed it to Spade. “This is how he looked in nineteen ten.”
It was a faded posed head-and-torso photograph of a young-looking man with soft blond hair parted in the middle, clean features, a short nose, direct eyes with a hint of dreaminess in them, a wide, well-shaped but determined mouth. He looked cool and collected and barely into his thirties. Lea wore some sort of military uniform with gold leaf around the collar. An eight-pointed gold star depended from a gold chain around his throat.
Spade studied the photograph, chuckled. “Your Fritz Lea looks like quite a lad.”
“He was an amateur strategist who dreamed of changing the world map by making China a land of economic expansion.”
“In whose army was he commissioned?”
“I have no idea. Perhaps my father’s. My real father, of whom I am the unacknowledged, illegitimate daughter.” She gave a small fatalistic shrug. “In traditional China marriage is a social contract. My father’s first wife was a peasant woman from his village. An arranged marriage. She gave him three children, one a son to carry on the line, as was her duty, then moved to Hawaii. He ensured her subsistence, as was his duty, while he traveled. I was born in Japan to a servant. Of course my father could not acknowledge me.”