Interface (Crime Masterworks)

by Gores, Joe

  For the moment. But the city through which Docker now moved had thousands of watching eyes and outstretched hands. This was the muggers’ and pushers’ and prosties’ and hypes’ San Francisco. The city of cab drivers so stoned on grass that the shadow line between reality and dream became a little tenuous even on shift. The city of black kids who shot out the windows of Hunters Point buses for fun, of militants who raided precinct police stations with automatic weapons for real, and of Chinatown juvies from the Chung Ching Yee, Hwa Ching, and Suey Sing gangs who emptied .22s into one another for an illusory concept of territory.

  It was the city of cheap hustlers like Rowlands, one of many street types alerted by Kolinski’s lieutenant to watch for a big mean cat with long blond hair and a limp and some sort of briefcase. Rowlands was a round little man who made a vague living off information picked up here and there concerning this and that.

  He had taken up his post inside the front doors of the Greyhound Terminal on Seventh Street just south of Market. His hands were in his pockets and he was staring blankly out at the taxi rank like a man waiting for his wife, teetering from one foot to the other, checking his Timex. But his deceptively sleepy eyes missed nothing that might translate into money.

  At about the same time Rowlands yawned and watched the backside of a girl wobbling down Seventh in a tight skirt, a thin black man named Browne was arriving at the Trailways Bus depot. This was located in the echoing lower level of the East Bay Terminal on First Street, six long blocks away from the Greyhound depot and also just south of Market. Browne wore, among other items of dress, old oxblood dress shoes with a neat hole cut through each upper to ease the corns on his little toes.

  Browne looked up First Street and he looked down First Street. His sad brown eyes finally lingered on the phone booth a dozen steps away. His lips moved in silent self-communion. But even though it was a day of bright sunshine, with only a few clouds, it was also October. The phone booth was in shadow. First Street was windy. The wind was cold.

  Browne used the crosswalk to get to the Fun Terminal, so placed across from the bus terminal as to catch the eye of servicemen arriving from Treasure Island or the Oakland Army Terminal. Browne bought a fin’s worth of dimes from the rock-faced woman in the Fun Terminal’s change booth, and chose a pinball machine which happened to give its player a good view of First Street. This included a good view of the Trailways entrance across from the arcade’s open portals.

  Browne began playing his pinball machine, very slowly, very methodically, making each dime last. Hustlers do not have expense accounts.

  Nor are hustlers, of course, the only ones who ignore the litter baskets and cross on WAIT. Even Honest John tourists and straight-arrow, tax-paying San Franciscans like to say fuck it once in a while. Poor old straights sometimes like to spend a little money on non-Establishment fun, and hang around topless bars, and porno flicks, and neighborhood bookies. They get sadly mixed-up with cruising rough trade or backseat whores. In this underbelly San Francisco they get rolled, or get ripped off, or get a dose, or maybe even get unlucky and so get dead.

  Therefore, this alternate San Francisco to the city where the little cable cars reach halfway to the stars is also the cops’ San Francisco. Maybe especially the cops’ San Francisco.

  Because cops spend quite a lot of their time with people who get rolled or ripped off or dead. Particularly dead.

  Out on Bryant Street a hard-nosed Homicide inspector named Vincent Wylie had finished his part of the proceedings at 1748, where, less than three hours before, a dead Mexican had turned up. Because Wylie was a good cop, he hadn’t returned immediately to the Hall when he had finished in the flat where Marquez had died.

  Instead he had leisurely snooped over those nine incongruous dwellings dropped there in the middle of the industrial district. And he had noted with interest that one of them had a real-estate office on the ground floor. What more natural place for local landlords to go with their rentals than a local realtor?

  Of course there were things against it in this case. It was an extremely unkempt real-estate office, despite innumerable faded signs advertising everything but the Second Coming. There was an announcement that this office PREPARED HERE ONE’S STATE AND FEDERAL INCOME TAX RETURNS. Another boasted of CHOICE RENTALS which were AVAILABLE NOW. This office was willing to sell HOME OWNERS INSURANCE. There was SPANISH SPOKEN HERE.

  Since this sign, like the others, was in English, Wylie was not unduly impressed as he entered the realty office from Bryant Street. The shaky-handed early morning drinker behind the desk, the only one present to perform the advertised miracles, almost caught his fingers in his haste to slam shut his bottle drawer.

  ‘Look here,’ invited Inspector Vincent Wylie.

  The ruddy-faced dipso stared at Wylie’s shield. He ran the back of an unsteady hand across his mouth, where the razor had missed a triangle of upper lip. His fingernails were dirty. His nose resembled a russet potato. He might have been able to sell a house to a blind man if the blind man couldn’t smell booze.

  ‘Ah, lots of excitement up the street, officer.’

  Wylie said nothing.

  ‘I … see that Mex kid they was taking away hanging around here a lot. I useta think he might be, ah, casing me …’

  Wylie had a Doberman’s eyes in a basset’s face. He said nothing.

  ‘Ah … what’s he done, officer?’

  ‘Inspector,’ said Wylie’s mouth. Wylie’s pale, pale-lashed eyes said accusingly, boozer. Said, walk soft, boozer. Said, your broker’s license won’t last long you fuck around with me, boozer. ‘You handle that property? Seventeen-forty-eight?’

  ‘I’d … have to check my files—’

  ‘Three doors away you have to check?’

  The eyes peering past the Idaho russet had begun to water. The realtor was sweating. ‘I …’

  ‘You need a drink, go ahead. I’m not the ABC.’

  The realtor found that very funny; certainly much funnier than Wylie found it. The realtor laughed alone, had his drink alone while subsiding into chuckles. He didn’t bother with a glass. The booze was going to get his realtor’s ticket much quicker than Wylie would.

  Wylie drummed his fingers on the desk top. The laughter stopped abruptly.

  ‘Rented it two weeks ago,’ said the realtor. Neither his voice nor his hands shook any more. ‘Big guy, he was, said—’

  ‘Two-ten, two-twenty, blond hair and glasses, a limp?’

  ‘Big guy,’ repeated the realtor. ‘But …’ He was shaking his head, finally going through the thin sheaf of current rentals which slumbered in his cardbox. ‘No limp that I remember, glasses … naw.’

  ‘The hair is long. Down to here, maybe.’

  ‘That I’d remember. No.’

  ‘Rented in the name of Docker?’ Nothing in Wylie’s persistent voice indicated that the realtor’s equally persistent denials had been anything but immensely gratifying. The realtor had found the card. He shook his head.

  ‘No Docker. Different fellow, name of Fargo. One month—’

  ‘Neil Fargo?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Well well well.’ Wylie’s voice was plump with delight. ‘Now isn’t that handsome? Docker mixed up in a possible murder, and Neil Fargo rents the apartment where it happened. And uses his own name, too.’

  The realtor was grinning at him like a dog who’s brought back a stick – delighted without knowing why. The cop went out into the chilly sunshine without appearing to hear the bottle drawer creak open behind him. Wylie was smiling like a man recalling the tagline of a good dirty joke; even straight cops can be prejudiced, and not all prejudices involve minorities. Unless individuals can be considered as the ultimate in minorities.

  6

  Docker, object of all this activity, shifted the attaché case to his left hand and pushed open the heavy door of the Greyhound depot. He stopped in the over-explicit heat of the high-ceilinged room, his eyes behind their hornrims sweeping it as
if they had not seen it before. Greyhound travel advisory, ranks of waiting room chairs, straight ahead to the buses, ticket windows to the right.

  Docker went right. Brushing past a rotund little man who seemed to be waiting for his wife, passing beneath the destination-jammed schedule board to queue up at one of the windows in the old-fashioned hardwood ticket seller’s partition.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Seattle.’

  ‘One-way or round-trip?’

  ‘Single.’

  ‘That’ll be thirty-two dollars, sir.’

  Docker broke a hundred. It raised no comment. He stuffed the change into a pocket, carelessly, as if it were cracked corn, and went to the gift shop for a candy bar. To get there, he had to pass the little man who seemed to be waiting for his wife while staring moodily up at the schedule board. His head was tipped back so a roll of fat creased the back of his neck. The collar of his tan sport shirt was dirty, as was what could be seen of his eyes between his sleepy lids.

  The next Seattle bus was at 12:30, nearly two hours away. But Docker went up the gentle ramp, which emphasized his limp, to the loading area. It was a long shed-like building with bare yellow wood beams criss-crossed under an arched ceiling. The sides were open for bus-loading, so it was colder than the terminal building.

  Despite the chilliness, there was a great coming and going of people in cheap clothes, women in wrinkled print dresses and cloth coats, men in slacks and windbreakers or suits five years out of date. Behind the pastel-painted snackbar was a double row of black plastic lounge chairs with a miniature TV set affixed to one arm of each. Docker chose one, sat down with the attaché case carefully in his lap, fed in coins. The set came on, but Docker’s eyes kept busy around the echoing building.

  If they saw anything alarming, they did not reflect it. After five minutes, his muscular body had slumped against the plastic.

  Dumpy little Rowlands, still wifeless, was standing against the wall near one of the candy machines by this time. He seemed impatient now, a horseplayer waiting for his bookie, perhaps. Twice he looked toward the back of Docker’s head, then cast a measuring glance at the bank of pay phones.

  With sudden decision – have to place the bet by phone, damn near post time back East – he came off the wall, turned left and went out between the eight-by-eight posts which divided two of the long-haul gates. His face looked irritable, as if he had a rip in the seat of his pants and wasn’t sure whether it showed or not.

  This route took him between two beat-up doubledecker yellow baggage carts and across the diagonal yellow lines marking the bus lanes. It also took him out of Docker’s sight. The broad blacktopped area where the buses pulled up was open to Jessie Street, a narrow alley running down the length of the bus terminal from Seventh Street.

  Across Jessie, between the end of the broadshouldered squatty Greyhound Express building and its chain-linked parking lot, was a phone booth. Like Rowlands’ route, it was out of sight of the double bank of TV lounge chairs where Docker sat.

  As soon as the little tubby man had moved from his wall, Docker’s heavy pale head had come up. He had brushed the blond hair back from his face, had watched Rowlands out the boarding gate and across the blacktop and out of sight.

  Docker stood up, stretched, sauntered away. But not away from the loading area, not down the ramp to the terminal from which he could have reached Seventh Street unobserved. Instead, he went through the loading gate himself, and across the blacktop toward Jessie Street in Rowlands’ wake.

  Here was the rattle of baggage carts, the roar of motors and throat-clearing of gears and fart of diesels as the buses jockied for their gates. Behind Docker a metallic female voice announced a departure full of drawnout vowels which made it as incomprehensible as Swahili. A dozen buses were angled nose-first toward the gates to gorge themselves on travellers. A man in grey work clothes squealed open the baggage compartment in the side of one of them and said he would be a son of a bitch, as if he had found sacred mushrooms growing there.

  Docker angled across Jessie to the big open sliding metal doors of the Greyhound Express building. Several baggage-handlers were having a smoke. Docker made no attempt to enter the doors, but stopped beside them. One of them was saying, ‘… ol’ boy caught me with a pool cue right on the nose and I hit the door like that, man …’

  ‘Pardon me,’ said Docker, ‘could you—’

  ‘An’ then this boy starts puttin’ his number nines on me, I mean, man—’

  ‘Could you tell me—’

  ‘Man, he was layin’ nothin’ but Neolite all over me. He was walkin’ up an’ down my spine—’

  ‘I’d like to know,’ said Docker, ‘if I can get to Mission—’

  ‘I said to him, “You dam’ fool, let me up an’ I’ll run!”’

  Docker laughed with the others, finally getting their attention. He said, ‘I’d like to get to Mission Street without going out to Seventh. Is there any way to do that?’

  There was. Go the length of these fences that back the parking lots facing on Mission, and he would come to a wide blacktop area between the end of the fences and the bus drive-through. See it? Well, where all them not-in-service buses are stored, just take a left down there between them buses. Take you right out to Mission.

  As they talked, Rowlands also talked, almost desperately, into his phone a dozen yards away at the end of the building, as if terrified by the fact they seemed to be pointing in his direction as they spoke with Docker.

  ‘I tell ya it’s the fucker you want! Limp an’ everything … Fuck no, he’s a big mean-looking bastard, I ain’t gonna …’

  Docker was coming his way, his uneven stride lengthening as he approached. Rowlands’ head ducked, so he was looking at the filth and trod-out butts on the floor of the booth. A used rubber testified to the ingenuity of the sexual urge.

  ‘Fucker’s comin’ right at me, I tell you, he … Oh!’

  Docker had gone past, throwing a quick look over his shoulder at the waiting room, not even noticing the small pudgy man talking with almost desperate haste into the phone. Docker had begun nearly trotting. Rowlands let out a long breath. A drop of sweat fell from his chin.

  ‘Yeah, okay, I’ll stay with him, but I ain’t going up against him, fucker looks mean as sour owl shit.’

  After going the length of the chest-high hurricane fence interwoven with thin redwood slatting, Docker turned abruptly down between the rows of buses toward Mission. There was a three-foot aisle between them. In the center of the rows a bus was missing, making a large opening. Docker, out of sight of Rowlands, turned briskly into this.

  Rowlands was moving at a quick nervous walk himself by this time, hands thrust in pockets, shoulders hunched against the bite still in the air despite the late-morning sunshine, an unlit cigarette stuck behind one ear. He too turned down between the parked buses.

  When Rowlands reached the end of the narrow passage, where it opened out but while he was still in the aisle, Docker was on top of him. He had nowhere to go except back, and there wasn’t time for that.

  The hulking blond man came around the back of the bus with the attaché case at full swing, yelling. There was nothing of science in the attack, only an apparent blind fury. The hardened plastic edge of the case caught the fat little man in the upper chest. His collarbone broke with a snapping sound like a .22 cartridge.

  Docker, like a man possessed and foaming obscenities, dropped the case to thud his fists into Rowlands’ lower belly. Rowlands had screamed once when his collarbone had snapped. He flew back against the side of a bus under the frightful power of Docker’s blows, lit on his ass and puked in his lap. Docker set his feet to kick the fallen man in the head.

  ‘Hey!’

  He was already whirling as a second voice exclaimed, ‘What the fuck, man!’

  Still straddle-legged and with startling agility, Docker had sprung in a complete 180-degree turn so he was facing the two black baggage-handlers who had burst out of the empty bus wh
ere they had been eating sandwiches.

  One of them was a big man, big as Docker, with a scar across his forehead that said he’d mixed it in the past. Docker, in a slight crouch now, pointed a thick accusing finger at him like a ref calling a foul on Nate Thurmond.

  ‘Freeze!’ he shouted.

  All fury had gone from his voice and face, so the words carried a momentary authority. Behind the hornrims his eyes were level and observant and not at all worried. The black man froze, startled.

  ‘You kickin’ the livin’ shit outta this dude,’ objected the second weakly. He was a smaller man, not in condition for fighting. Grey touched both his voice and his tight-kinked hair.

  ‘He welched.’

  That stopped them totally. The big one rubbed his jaw with one ham-hand. The fight had gone out of his stance. ‘You mean you’re—’

  ‘I mean you don’t want my kind of trouble.’

  He made a perplexed gesture. ‘But, man …’

  Docker shot a quick glance at the fallen Rowlands without giving them a chance to come at him. The little rotund grifter lay sideways in his own mess, making agonized noises as he tried to get his breath back. Docker nodded to the blacks. He chuckled.

  ‘I guess I made my point, at that. But just in case …’

  Before either of them could move, he drove the toe of his right shoe against the side of the fallen man’s face. Rowlands cried out softly, like a bird caught by a tomcat.

  Docker picked up his attaché case, nodded pleasantly to the two outraged and confused Samaritans, and limped calmly between them and down the passageway toward Mission Street. Unmoving, they watched him go, the smaller one with a half-eaten sandwich still in one hand and his mouth hanging open as if for the next bite.