Spade put his arm across the back of the sofa behind her, squeezed her far shoulder. She leaned her head against him.
“We’ve got a big new client. Miles is working undercover, nights, trying to get a line on things.”
She laughed and made a dismissive gesture. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
She slid out from under his arm, stood, put her drink on the arm of the sofa. Spade stood also.
“Leaving so soon, Iva?” he asked politely.
Instead of answering, she crossed the room, opened the closet door, and swung the wall bed out and down. She let herself fall back on it, chuckled deep in her strong, rounded throat.
“I just wanted to be sure Miles wouldn’t be home tonight.” She sat up. “Come and undress me, lover. I can’t wait.”
Spade moved toward her, turning off the white overhead bowl light as he did.
34
Just a Son of a Bitch
Henny Barber was out of the swivel chair in his modest office on the ground floor of California-Citizens Bank. He wrung Spade’s hand with enthusiasm, hiked himself up to sit on the edge of his desk, careless of the crease in his conservative banker’s dark blue woolen worsted suit.
“Your father tells me you’re running the place these days.”
“Don’t you believe it, Mr. Spade! Pater likes to brag about me, but it’s Aunt Ev’s show. She’s grabbed Uncle Collin’s office and comes in once or twice a week for a couple of hours. I keep things going day to day, but she’s in control.”
“She always struck me as a woman who likes to make sure she knows what’s going on with her money,” said Spade.
“Is she!” exclaimed Henny. “Want a cigar?”
Spade shook his head, getting out tobacco and papers while Henny clipped and lit his cigar.
“Can you get me into the Bohemian Club library?” Spade asked. “I want to do a little reading up on Chinese history.”
“Pater can.”
“OK, set it up.” Spade lit up. “The bank making money?”
“Tons of it. If you have the routine down and don’t make any crazy investments or shaky loans, it’s all so darned easy.”
“Ever dream of the exotic South Seas anymore?”
“The South Seas!” Henny threw his arms wide. “All the time. Maybe I could open a Cal-Cit Bank branch in Tahiti!”
“Bored, huh?” Spade blew smoke toward the ceiling. “I’m going to change all that. I want you to find a retired New York banker named Charles Boothe, last seen in San Francisco in nineteen ten.”
Henny’s face fell. “A retired banker? That’s no challenge. A couple of phone calls and—”
“Your old man couldn’t find him.”
Interest came back to Henny’s face.
“Boothe was last seen in the company of a Fritz Lea and an unnamed Chinese gentleman. My client is named Mai-lin Choi, a couple of years younger than you are. She’s the Chinese gent’s beautiful, mysterious, unacknowledged illegitimate daughter. She’s counting on me to find Boothe and Lea for her. I’m counting on you to find Boothe for me.”
Henny was off the desk and on his feet, eyes alight.
“I’m your man, Mr. Spade!” Then he added craftily, “But only if I get an introduction to the mysterious Mai-lin Choi.”
Spade leaned over the plump redheaded girl at the switchboard while he put his hand on her shoulder.
“Think you can get my office on that dingus, Mabel?”
“For you, anything, Mr. Spade.”
“Better not let Sid hear you talking that way.”
She giggled and flicked a toggle on the switchboard, got central. She pointed at one of the phones on her desk, said, “It’s ringing, Mr. Spade.”
Spade picked up the phone with his right hand, put the receiver to his ear with his left hand in time to hear Effie Perine’s invariable “Spade and Archer Investigations.”
“It’s me, sweetheart,” he told the mouthpiece. “I’m at Sid Wise’s office now. Before I go in, have we heard anything more from Charles Barber on that warehouse?”
“Nobody is leasing it from the Tugboat Company. They’ve had it standing empty for months.”
Spade nodded, hung up the receiver, and left Mabel giggling again as he went down the inner corridor to the frosted-glass door at the far end. Sid Wise was behind his immense paper-and-file covered desk, moodily smoking a cigar. He was in shirt and vest, his suit coat draped over the back of his swivel chair. He waved a hand at the files.
“I hope you won’t be long, Sam,” he said rudely. “I’m up to my ears in work.”
Spade sat down. “I’ve got things to tell you.”
Sid Wise groaned audibly, then tented his fingers in front of his chin. Spade outlined Miles Archer’s reported work on their case for the Industrial Association, ending with the lunch at Marquand’s. Wise looked puzzled.
“Where’s the problem? I think we’ve misjudged our man.”
“Except that most of it is a passel of lies,” said Spade.
A sudden, attentive frown appeared on Wise’s tired olive-hued face. He hitched his chair around to better face Spade. His high, sometimes almost shrill voice had dropped almost an octave.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Like I told you, Miles said he spotted a Commie from Seattle named Robbie Brix getting hired at a Blue Book shape-up. Night work under the lights. When his shift ended, Miles followed him for two blocks, dropped him so he wouldn’t get wise. Two more blocks the second night. Third night he tracked Brix all the way to the warehouse at the foot of Green Street.”
“Sounds like good investigative technique to me.”
“And it gets better. Lights on inside the warehouse at four in the morning. Four men came out, one of them paid Brix some money. When they were gone, Miles looked in a window. The place was loaded to the rafters with goods.”
“The stuff being stolen on the docks. Just like he said.”
Spade smiled thinly.
“The overhead loading door doesn’t have a window. The door beside it has a window, but it is covered with butcher paper on the inside. The other windows are ten feet off the ground and covered on the inside with butcher paper too. Yesterday Miles told me he saw another payoff to Brix the night before. Through one of those windows.”
“Which are all covered with butcher paper.”
“Yeah. Miles also described the man he said was paying Robbie Brix for information about the goods that later were disappearing. Harry Brisbane, right down to the Aussie accent. Except Miles couldn’t have seen him paying anybody any money on Green Street. Harry’s been laid up at home for two weeks with a broken foot, and never heard of anybody named Robbie Brix.”
“You trust Brisbane?”
“He’s a straight shooter. And the warehouse is owned by the Shipowners’ and Merchants’ Tugboat Company and they haven’t leased it out to anyone else.”
“But they’re one of your clients. It just doesn’t figure.”
“There’s a way it does. Through the Blue Book and Miles.”
Wise blew out a breath and scratched his head. Flakes of dandruff settled on his shoulders. “I told you not to take him on as a partner. Are you going to confront him with it?”
“No. I’ll just try to keep him off anything that might hurt Spade and Archer, then kick him out at the end of our year.” Spade shook his head. “In business with him for less than a week, and I find out he’s a son of a bitch.”