“You make him sound more mysterious than Mai-lin herself.”
“Maybe he is. Manion’s squad knows most things going on in Chinatown.” He gestured with the lighter. “Anything else?”
“Ray Kentzler called to say that you owe him a lunch. The warehouse at the foot of Green Street is owned by the Shipowners’ and Merchants’ Tugboat Company.”
Spade stopped, lighter halfway to his cigarette.
“Hmph. Charles Barber’s on the board of directors at the Tugboat Company. Be an angel, call him back and ask him if they’re leasing the warehouse out to anyone.”
She wrote in her notebook. “Is something the matter, Sam?”
“Yeah, I think maybe there is, but let’s find out for sure about that warehouse first.” He stood, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray before realizing he hadn’t lit it yet. “If I’m not back by closing time leave any messages on my desk.”
He paused in the hallway outside the office for a moment, staring at the new gold leaf lettering that had just replaced Samuel Spade on the glass panel of the door:
Spade stood at his ease, watching and smoking a cigarette while a crane lifted a load of netted cargo from one of the holds of the Admiral Line’s steamship Admiral Peoples. Stevedores were on the dock to transfer the goods to an airless-tire Kleiber truck, built locally in San Francisco.
The craggy-faced foreman, named Stan Delaney, came limping over. Sharp wind off the bay stirred Delaney’s thick white hair. They shook hands.
Spade said, “I’m looking for Harry Brisbane. I owe him some money from a poker game, and I thought he said he was working here.”
“Yeah, for California Stevedore and Ballast, but he hasn’t been to work for a week, ten days.” He yelled at a longshoreman steering a platform truck with a pallet of wooden crates to the waiting Kleiber. “Johnny! Where’s Harry living these days?”
It was a narrow two-story building in the 500 block of Harrison. Apartment 1B had a penciled BRISBANE stuck in the name slot on a torn piece of paper. Spade’s knuckles tattooed the door.
“Yeah, yeah, for Chrissake, gimme a chance, will ya?”
After a few moments the door was opened and Harry Brisbane peered out. He was standing on one foot. The other foot had a cast on it. His eyes lit up.
“Hey, Sam! C’mon in.”
He backed awkwardly away so Spade could go in past him. Harry hopped around him one-footed to flop back into a broken-down easy chair in one corner of the living room. The flat smelled of cooked food and enforced confinement.
“I heard you were home, but I didn’t know you were laid up.” Spade brought a hand holding a pint of liquor out of his topcoat pocket. “But I came prepared, just in case.”
“Bless you, mate.” Harry jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “There’s ice and glasses, water in the tap, and ginger ale in the icebox if you’re a sissy about your drinks.”
Ten minutes later they were tinking glasses and tossing off bootleg whiskey.
“I haven’t seen you since you were lookin’ for that rich guy’s kid. What’s that been? Six years?”
“Seven,” said Spade. “I’m working for the Industrial Association, and some thin, wiry guy named Harry with an Aussie accent came up during the investigation.”
The pleasure went out of Harry’s bloodhound eyes, replaced by something like disappointment. “You gunning for me, Sam?”
“If I was, I wouldn’t have told you my client’s name.” He gestured at the cast. “What happened?”
“Broke my foot two weeks ago. I was working in the hold of an Admiral freighter, standing on a pile of cases while we sent a load out. Two cases slid, my foot got jammed between ’em. I couldn’t afford to lay off so I stuck it out for two days, but I couldn’t work in the hold no more. Stan Delaney put me up on deck, but I couldn’t even stand that. So I finally went to the sawbones and filed a claim.”
“I hear the company union doesn’t like injury claims.”
“Yeah, but my foot had gotten swollen up so bad I just couldn’t limp around anymore.” Harry spread his arms wide. “So now I’m getting twenty-five bucks a week under workmen’s compensation. That’s more than I can make most weeks working on the docks.”
“What happens when the compensation runs out?”
“I’ll probably go on the Blue Book’s blacklist again.”
Spade went out to the kitchen for ice. He made new drinks, said, “I thought you were already blacklisted.”
“Not blacklisted. Just not ever able to get work. Closed shop, they called it. Couple a months after you was lookin’ for that rich guy’s kid they got bighearted and let me back in. But in nineteen twenty-four we tried to set up the I.L.A. union again. We had maybe four hundred members but no contracts.”
Spade lit a cigarette. “Why did they care? Without contracts you weren’t going to take any business away from them.”
“ ‘Cause we marched in the Labor Day parade that year, I guess. The company and union officials was standing along the parade route on Market between the Ferry Building and City Hall writing down names. Anyway, they got mine. But the union reps was so busy playing cards and chasing women and making money they couldn’t bother with small fry like me. So I finally got back in, started getting regular work with California Stevedore and Ballast.” He gestured at the cast. “Then this.” He brightened. “At least my rent here is only fifteen bucks a month.”
Spade finished his drink, checked his watch.
“You know a Wobblie from Seattle named Robbie Brix?”
Harry shook his head. “And if he was down here on the docks, I’d know about him, Sam.”
“What I thought. I’ve been investigating the dock pilfering, and that’s where your description came up.” He grinned crookedly. “I can believe a lot of things about you, Harry, but being a thief isn’t one of them.” He finally stood up. “But you can see why I had to talk to you.”
“Wouldn’t be doin’ your job if you didn’t. But I haven’t been out and around for ten days, not with this cast.”
It was after dark when Spade trudged up Hyde Street from a westbound Geary streetcar. Miles Archer’s dark sedan was parked squarely in front of 891 Post. Iva Archer’s head was silhouetted behind the wheel by the midblock streetlight. By the time he got to the auto and had opened her door, his lips had turned up into a smile.
“Hello, precious,” he said.
“I’ve been waiting for over an hour for you to get home.”
“I thought you’d be resting up.” Spade smiled again, insincerely. “Miles always seems in a hurry to get home.”
She swung her legs out and put both feet on the pavement. This maneuver rode her skirt up well above her silk-clad knees.
“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. Since Miles became your partner, I haven’t seen much of you.”
“Because he’s my partner.”
“Men!” she snorted. “They have such silly ideas.” There was lingering asperity in her voice, but her blue eyes had softened. “Can I come up?”
“Sure,” he said, “you look like you could use a drink.”
He escorted her across the sidewalk to the street door, keys in hand. They rode the elevator in silence, went down the hall to his apartment without touching.
But inside the apartment, with the door closed, Iva was suddenly in his arms, pressed against him, mouth open and hungry for his. When they finally parted, Spade turned on the lights.
“Now I think we both need that drink.”
When they were seated on the sofa, drinks in hand, she complained, “Sam, he’s doing just what he used to do to me up in Spokane. He’s been out four nights in a row, this is the fifth. He doesn’t come home until dawn, and he won’t tell me what he’s doing or where he is. When I ask he just laughs and says maybe he’s partying with some new girlfriend. I know that isn’t true, at least I think it isn’t, but it just drives me crazy.”