Interface (Crime Masterworks) (2 page)

BOOK: Interface (Crime Masterworks)
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The young addict was staring, wide-eyed. ‘What are you tellin’ me, man?’ he exclaimed in alarm. ‘What are you tryina do to me?’

‘Up to you,’ said Docker.

He was still laughing. He seemed to have a hard time stopping. The laughter had tones of hysteria in it. He stood with his hands in his topcoat pockets and the attaché case between his feet, watching the hype edge away around the corner of the building. When he had disappeared, Docker quit laughing. His face looked as if it had never known laughter of any kind.

He fished a dime out of his pocket. After he had used it, he caught a bus.

2

T
he phone was ringing in the empty office when Pamela Gardner unlocked the street door. On the inside of the glass in capital letters were the words
NEIL FARGO
and underneath in smaller caps,
INVESTIGATIONS
; Pamela was carrying a newspaper, her brown-bagged lunch, the current doorstop from Book of the Month, and a dress in a large cardboard box which she was returning to House of Nines after work. She was a tiny girl barely five feet tall, perhaps 95 pounds in weight.

‘Coming,’ she muttered as she fought to get her key back from the door.

The ringing phone hurried her, however, so she dropped first the Book of the Month, then, in retrieving it, the dress. She finally left them to run up the narrow straight stairs to the second-floor office. Her skirt was short enough so she would have been showing a great deal of pantyhose to anyone climbing the steps behind her. Her thighs still had a slight adolescent chunkiness which was somehow rather innocent.

The phone stopped ringing just as she picked it up.

‘Oh, damn!’

She had rescued her packages, had begun distributing items into drawers, on desk and file cabinet tops in the time-honored secretarial ritual, when the phone started ringing again.

‘Neil Fargo, Investigations.’

Still wearing her coat, she took the message, hung up. The phone immediately began ringing again.

‘Neil Fargo, Investigations.’

She took another message, got out of her coat and got the coffee started. She always cleaned the pot before leaving the office at night. She was around twenty, with a short nose and a long upper lip. Her eyes were blue, very bright, wide-set. Given five more years and five fewer pounds, the right clothes and a different hair style, she would be a beautiful woman. Right now she was a perky kid with a trim figure a little too wide in the hips for her diminutive size, her small, pointed breasts softened by a furry pale yellow sweater.

Twelve minutes later, at 8:19, the street door admitted Neil Fargo. He came up the stairs two at a time, whistling cheerily. Pamela was reading the morning
Chronicle
, since there had been no reports on the dictating machine.

‘Any calls?’

‘Maxwell Stayton’s secretary will expect you when Mr Stayton arrives at ten.’ She made a face, either for Mr Stayton or his secretary but probably the latter. ‘Two calls from that importer down on Battery Street, Walter Hariss; he’ll drop by personally. One from a man named Docker, no message, and—’

‘Docker?’ demanded Neil Fargo sharply.

His direct brown eyes had gotten surprisingly bleak. He was a big, blocky man with an angular, somewhat Indian face and nondescript brown hair cut subtly shorter than current styles. It made his face almost brutal in the way that Burt Lancaster’s once was brutal, although he looked nothing at all like Lancaster.

‘No first name or initial.’ She suddenly giggled, betraying her youth. ‘He had a mushy voice, like he had false teeth.’

‘He leave a number?’

‘Said he’d call back.’ But something in his voice had sobered her. She looked up at him with bright blue eyes alive to nuance. Her face was narrow, narrow-chinned, all the features fine and sharp as good portraiture. ‘Is something the matter, Neil? Who is Docker?’

Neil Fargo tapped lightly on the edge of her desk with his knuckles. He smiled. The smile made the hard, bony face less stark even though he did not have the sort of features that a smile particularly enhanced.

‘If Docker calls back, try to get a number.’

‘Neil …’ She paused, troubled, then said in a rush, ‘This doesn’t have anything to do with Walter Hariss, does it?’

‘Why?’

She made a small, meaningless gesture. ‘I’ve heard he … People say he imports more than cheap pottery and tourist curios. And that Docker mentioned his name. Something about getting to you before Hariss did.’

‘Docker and Hariss?’ Neil Fargo was not totally successful in making the idea sound new to him. He said, ‘You’ll be a detective yet, doll.’

He went into his small private office set off from the main room by head-high partitions. The windows looked down on the intersection of Bush and Franklin Streets. Neil Fargo took off his topcoat. He was wearing a dark blue double-knit suit and a white shirt with a wide dark tie that gave him a substantial, conservative air. He set the dusty Venetian blinds so he could look out the windows.

By the time he had drunk a cup of black coffee and smoked one cigarette, Walter Hariss had arrived. Neil Fargo smiled without mirth, watching the importer get out of the rear seat of the black Fleetwood his nasty little chauffeur had maneuvered into a slot halfway up Bush Street.

Neil Fargo went to the open door of his office, which offered privacy from his secretary only with the door shut. He leaned against the frame with his arms folded. The two men clattered up the stairs.

‘You’ve met my secretary, Pamela Gardner,’ said Neil Fargo. He made appropriate gestures. ‘Pamela, Gus Rizzato – Mr Hariss’ chauffeur.’

Hariss followed him into the inner office, then after Neil Fargo had sat down behind the desk, said, ‘This is private.’

The detective nodded amiably and went to the door again. Gus Rizzato was beside Pamela’s chair, leaning down to say something to her. He was built like a jockey and had black hair and a swarthy face with a bad complexion. His tie was six inches wide, just barely wider than the lapels on his suit. The girl was shaking her head at what he was saying, making her short brown hair dance around her temples. Her face was set and pale.

‘Will you go downstairs to Stempel’s and get us some doughnuts, doll?’ The girl nodded hurriedly and stood up. Neil Fargo added, ‘And then go over to the Seventy-Six station and tell Emil to fill up the Fairlane. Don’t hurry.’

‘Yes, Mr Fargo.’ There was relief in her voice.

She got her purse and started down the stairs. Rizzato looked appreciatively after her. He winked at Neil Fargo, made obscene gestures that crudely suggested sexual intercourse, and swaggered out after the girl.

Neil Fargo stared after him, then returned to the cubicle where Hariss waited impatiently.

‘Sometime I’m going to do something about that little son of a bitch,’ he said to the importer.

Walter Hariss made a dismissive gesture with his hand. He was a small-boned, solid man in his late forties, with a good tan and a round, slightly fleshy face and full lips, who wore very expensive clothes well. He wore his grey hair medium length, brushed back from his face in a modified pompadour. His shoes gleamed. Only the overripe diamond on his pinky finger destroyed the illusion of solid businessman.

Neil Fargo sighed and nodded. ‘All right. What went wrong?’

‘We got knocked over.’

‘Knocked over!’ The detective’s thin lips tightened into a wolfish grin, emphasizing the Indian cast of his features. He made it an exclamation, not a question.

‘At the drop point. My courier, Julio Marquez, got killed and my chemist got laid out. And then the cops showed up before he could get out.’

‘Tipped,’ muttered Neil Fargo.

He got up, paced twice back and forth beside the desk, cracking his fisted right hand into his left palm.

‘Your fucking friend Docker is missing and so is my kilo of H,’ said Hariss. ‘To say nothing of the attaché case.’

‘Docker called here before I got in. Docker. Hah!’ He struck the desk suddenly with the flat of his palm. His calender jumped an inch off the polished hardwood. His eyes got mean. ‘Well, you’re the fucker who wanted everything done through intermediaries. Didn’t want to be there yourself. Didn’t want me there. A hundred and seventy-five thousand bucks was in that attaché case and I’m responsible to the money man for it!’

‘Was there?’ asked Hariss. His pale eyes burned softly in his ruddy face. He had a well-modulated voice that suggested he had spent quite a lot of time learning to speak well.

‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You’re the one came up with Docker as the drop man. Old Army buddy from Vietnam, would lick the sweat off your balls for you.’ He leaned closer. He jabbed Neil Fargo in the stomach with the forefinger of the hand that held his dollar cigar. ‘Maybe you just kept the money, told your buddy to knock off the courier and Addison, my chemist, and—’

‘Sure,’ said Neil Fargo in a savage voice. ‘We plan murder in an apartment I rent in my own name that has my fingerprints all over it so the police will be sure to know where to look. Quit fucking around. I’m on the hook to the money man, Hariss!’

‘Who
is
the money man?’

Neil Fargo just shook his head. ‘How did you get onto this so fast? The seven o’clock news?’

‘It was a phone tip, one of the prowlies who responded called me, he owed me a favor and knew I used Addison. He said there was a pottery figure broken on the floor – you know what that means.’

‘And no attaché case,’ muttered Neil Fargo.

‘I asked my man about that, casually. That’s when he remembered he saw someone getting on a Bryant Street bus with an attaché case. Just as they were pulling up. He didn’t know it was important at the time.’

‘Observant cop,’ said Neil Fargo. ‘Any description?’

‘Big man, long blond hair, glasses – that’s your fucking Docker, right?’

Neil Fargo nodded sourly. ‘Docker.’

‘Do you know where to find him? Where he’d go? What he’d do?’

‘He’s only been in town three weeks – he was supposed to be staying in that apartment.’ He took his nervous turn around the little office again. ‘Christ, Hariss, he needed the money, he looked right for this. He was square with me in Nam, kept me from getting my ass shot off a couple of times.’

Precision lent heavy menace to the importer’s voice. His gestures wreathed his head in cigar smoke.

‘I want that fucker, Fargo. A quarter of a million in smack in that clay figure, and—’

‘Street prices,’ said Neil Fargo almost contemptuously. ‘I figure you paid maybe twelve, thirteen thou for it in Mexico.
If
it was ninety-five percent pure, as you claimed.’


Your
chemist.’

‘I had a chemist there in good faith—’

Walter Hariss suppressed whatever he had been going to say. He stood up. He was a stocky five-eight, the top of his razor-cut grey hair came to Neil Fargo’s upper lip. He put an arm around the detective’s broad shoulders. He found a smile that cost him something extra.

‘We don’t have to fight, Neil. We both want the same thing, right? The money back, the heroin back. You—’

He broke off as the street door opened, closed; Pamela’s light, nervously cheery tones came up the stairwell ahead of the sound of her heels on the stairs.

‘Find Docker, we’ll get the rest of it straightened out,’ said Neil Fargo hurriedly. ‘Have Alex Kolinski get his street people on Docker, and add to the description that he’s got a slight limp – nicked in the right knee in Nam. Partial disability. I’ll start at the other end – phone, utilities, driver’s license, the usual skiptracing routines.’

He stood aside for Hariss to leave first, trailing aromatic cigar smoke. Outside, Pamela Gardner was back behind her desk, the white paper bag of doughnuts on the blotter in front of her. She looked as if the desk were a breached redoubt. Gus Rizzato was sitting on the edge of it, one hand on her shoulder, talking earnestly. In talking, he used eyebrows and mouth and his entire mobile Latin countenance. He looked up at the detective and grinned.

‘I like this little girl, Fargo. Why don’t you tell her it wouldn’t be a bad idea for her to act a little more friendly?’

Neil Fargo said heartily to Hariss, ‘Good to have you drop by, Walt. I think we can clear up that little matter today.’

Then his long arm shot out and his big hand gathered in the front of Rizzato’s shirt, tie and jacket lapels as well. The arm twitched. It jerked Rizzato off the desk and slammed him down on his feet like snapping a towel in a locker room.

‘You put any more hands on that girl, Peeler, I’ll break them off.’ His voice and mouth were cool, contemptuous. His eyes were hot and vicious. He let go of the shirt front and stepped back.

Rizzato measured him icily, on the edge of violence, though he was at least a foot shorter than the detective. Hariss said sharply, ‘Gus.’

Rizzato’s fighting-dog stance relaxed. He straightened his jacket with a pompous shrug, strutted out of the office like a jockey who can no longer make the weight. Hariss followed.

When the street door closed behind them, the girl, who had been sitting very straight in her chair, put her hands up to her cheeks. Crimson suddenly flushed across her features.

‘He said to me … He told me he wanted to …’

‘Sorry I let him in here, doll.’

She started to say something more, stopped, then took down her hands from her face. The flush was receding. She said, ‘Why did you call him Peeler?’

‘The story goes that he was once assigned to shut up somebody who was talking to an assistant DA back East …’ He broke off. He said tonelessly, ‘You don’t really want to know.’

‘I do.’ Her eyes were bright again.

‘The story goes he took this guy down into a basement in Brooklyn and skinned him alive.’

The girl made a choked sound in her throat and her flush receded further, so her face was almost pale.

‘You asked,’ said Neil Fargo. He was bent over the desk writing rapidly on her scratch pad. As he wrote, he talked. ‘Docker. Here’s everything I have on him, which isn’t a hell of a lot. I want the full drill, doll. DMV check for license and possible auto registration, credit check, phone company, our contacts at the gas company and scavengers. I want to know if he’s bottled up here in town, or if he made it out. Airlines, train, buses. If he doesn’t have a car, start a run on the car-rental places. Private charter plane services – you know the routine. If the police call, I went out, you don’t know where.’

BOOK: Interface (Crime Masterworks)
13.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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