Benny put down his needle.
“The competition’s gotten so fierce that a lot of us Portagees are going back to fishing almost full-time. Don’t pay so good, but it ain’t so hard on the nerves.”
A seagull swooped down to land on the top of the cabin. Benny threw a scrap of rope at him.
“You know the waters around Red Rock Island, Benny?”
“Back of my hand. It’s only twenty minutes from here even for this old scow.” Benny laid an affectionate hand on the hatch cover. “When I was a kid we’d go out there moonlit nights, try to shoot us some rabbits. Thing we could never figure out, how did they get there in the first place? It’s really deep water out there, maybe fifty, sixty feet — I took soundings once.”
“There any rabbits left?”
“Not many.” Benny tossed aside the net. “No foxes or nothing can get at them, but there’s not much vegetation for ’em to eat, and only rainwater or fog or dew on the rocks for ’em to drink. Only other wildlife is seabirds and bats that hang around those old manganese mining tunnels.”
“I need you to take me out there tomorrow night, late. Don’t let anybody know about it, Benny. Not anybody.”
“Anybody asks, I’m going out after a load of hootch.”
It was 1 a.m. Sam Spade was merely a bulky shape in Effie Perine’s chair. The flexible arm of her adjustable desk lamp was twisted so its circle of light in the otherwise dark office illuminated a smoldering cigarette, a butt-heaped ashtray, Treasure Island, its front endpaper skillfully and carefully laid open, and Spade’s big hands holding a folded, soiled, amateurishly drawn map.
The hands laid down the map and picked up the ornate Greek dagger Effie Perine used as a letter opener. The right hand began pressing the blunted bronze point against the left palm, idly at first, then hard. The point was so rounded it did not make the slightest indentation. The right thumb tested what should have been the cutting edge of the dagger’s thick six-inch tapered almost-oval blade. It drew no blood.
Spade dumped the ashtray, folded the map, and put it into his suit-coat pocket. He slid the dagger into its symbol-laden scabbard and thrust it into the pocket with the map. His movements brought his thoughtful face into the oval of light. He picked up Treasure Island, turned out the light, and left.
43
Red Rock Island
Effie Perine closed the door and said, “Miss Choi is here. She’s not alone. Henny Barber is with her.”
“That boy is plenty smitten. Sabbath Zhu?”
“No Sabbath Zhu.”
“Then by all means have them in, sweetheart. And sit in yourself. Don’t bother with your shorthand pad.”
“So that’s the way it is.”
“That’s the way it is.”
Henny Barber said almost aggressively, “That Fairfax policeman came around asking all sorts of impertinent questions about Charles Boothe’s death. He said nothing about a message. Why haven’t we heard anything about it until now? Mai-lin has the right to know everything.”
“Henny. Please.” Her tone was of fond exasperation. She leaned forward intently. “Mr. Spade, did our going there that day have anything to with... what happened to Mr. Boothe?”
“Hard to say one way or the other. Nobody followed us there, that’s for sure.” His voice became ironic. “So, no, I’d say you can’t take the blame for that one.”
“Thank God.” She leaned back, looking suddenly exhausted.
“He knew that I didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t know where Lea had hidden the money he pulled from the bank. So I thought the books pulled out of the bookcase and scattered around on the floor were some sort of message. They weren’t. But one of them was under his body, clutched in his hand.”
“That was the message?”
“Not quite.” He looked at each of them in turn. “You know anything about Red Rock Island?”
“No,” said Mai-lin in a puzzled voice.
“Yes,” said Effie Perine. “It’s a six-acre knob of dirt and rock in the bay off the Richmond shoreline, eight miles from Fisherman’s Wharf. We had a picnic there once. My father said Russian and Aleut fur hunters after sea otter used to camp there in the early eighteen hundreds.”
“Manganese,” said Henny suddenly. “Wasn’t it found to be rich in manganese? That’s why it’s called Red Rock. And didn’t speculators dig all sorts of tunnels and mine a lot of ore?”
“Two hundred tons,” said Spade. “And Norwegian and Swedish sailors loaded their ships with it, calling it ballast. Only when they got back to Europe they sold it to paint manufacturers. Our government owned Red Rock then and put a stop to it.”
“What does this have to do with Charles Boothe?”
“Everything, Henny. The early Spanish explorers called it Moleta Island after the pigment in the rock. In eighteen twenty-seven Captain Frederick Beechey of the Royal Navy charted it as Molate Island — he got the Spaniards’ name for it wrong. Then it was called Golden Rock because of legends that pirates had buried their treasure there. Then—”
“And then later it was called Treasure Island because of those same legends!” exclaimed Effie Perine.
Spade had gotten elaborately busy constructing a cigarette.
“The book Boothe was holding on to was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. That’s the clue Boothe managed to leave for me.”
“So the money is buried on Red Rock,” said Mai-lin.
“Don’t get your hopes up. It’s a long shot at best.”
“And there have to be dozens of tunnels on that island,” said Henny in a dispirited voice.
“Except that Dundy did his usual slipshod investigation of the murder,” said Spade. “He saw it was a kid’s adventure book and dismissed it. But Boothe had hidden a map of Red Rock between the front cover and the endpaper. With a tunnel marked.”
Henny was on his feet. “Where’s the map?”
“In my safe,” said Spade. “And there it stays until tomorrow night. And then it’ll be just Mai-lin and me.” He studied the girl’s face intently. “Just us, Mai-lin. You don’t tell anyone else. Not anyone. You got that?”
After a long pause she said, “I’ve got it, Mr. Spade.”
Effie Perine returned to Spade’s office after seeing the couple out. “What do you really think of it all, Sam?”
“I think there’s nothing there to find. Boothe probably made the fake map to sell but never got any takers. Or maybe Fritz Lea lied to Boothe. Or maybe dug it up himself. Or maybe a weekend treasure hunter found it. Anyway, I don’t believe there’s any pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow.”
She stuck a cigarette between his lips, lit it with the desk lighter. “Then why did you say you’d take her out there?”
“She’s my client. This is what she wants.”
“Do you think she’ll tell Sabbath Zhu about it?”
“I hope not. Zhu came up clean in Miles’s investigation, but I still don’t trust that bird.”
“Miles or Zhu?”
“Miles I trust as an op. Zhu I don’t trust at all.”
“Be careful, Sam. I–I have a bad feeling about this, like I did when Penny...” A shiver ran through her slim body. “You aren’t planning something tricky and... dangerous, are you?”
“I’m a big boy now,” said Spade. “I know what I’m doing.”
Thick ropes of white and silent fog were rolling in from the Pacific through the Golden Gate. Alcatraz was gone, as were Sausalito and the lights marking the East Bay towns of Berkeley, Emeryville, and Oakland. The air was wet, heavy, cold.