Chasing Sam Spade

by Brian Lawson

  “Doris, look, things are getting pretty bad. They’re following me, you know who I mean. It isn’t safe for me to be around for a while. I shouldn’t have come over last night. I’m going to stay away now. I’m sorry, it’s the only way. I can’t risk them following me, getting to you. It’s better this way, really it is,” he said in one quick rush of words. What more could he say. “I can’t even risk coming by the restaurant. You’ll have figured that out by the time you get home and get this. I’m okay, but I’ve got to stay out of sight for a while. I’ll call when I can. Thanks, for last night, for everything,” and he pushed the button. He was back on his own.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN:

  Tuesday Danny Goes Underground

  The instant messaging spilled across the screen:

  BEN: Where are you today?

  DANNY: Parked in a garage out in Chinatown. Don’t want to say more. I rent a car then take it back the next day, check into a hotel every other night, check out and get another car. Everything’s portable today. Nobody can trace me that way.

  BEN: Is anybody really after you? It’s been what, three days?

  DANNY: Must be. Why would they stop?

  BEN: Why would they start?

  DANNY: We’ve done that. They’re after me and this time I could get killed. First I get roughed up, then they chase me all over downtown. They’re serious. If it happened before, it’ll happen again.

  BEN: Aren’t you scared? This isn’t a virtual game, this is real.

  DANNY: I know. I’m scared all the time. I try to sleep sometimes in the car but I can’t get more than a couple of hours. Somebody walks by, a car parks next to me and I wake up. I keep waiting for that guy to come back and this time really hurt me. Christ, I’m so scared I can’t even take a dump.

  BEN: Why not come home? You can’t do anything else down there. Seems like you shot your wad.

  DANNY: Skelley doesn’t know that. I told him I had what I needed, just one or two more pieces, tie him to the murders.

  BEN: It hasn’t happened yet, he can guess.

  DANNY: But he can’t know. My bet is everything in his life is a sure thing. Money, power. He gets what he wants and he doesn’t get surprised. I’m betting not knowing, not being in charge, will drive him nuts and he’ll have to talk to me.

  BEN: And if he doesn’t?

  DANNY: I don’t know. The next step is I start posting a daily journal of life on the run, being chased by Skelley thugs. Real time. Virtually live. People will eat it up. I’ll give him 24 hours to meet my terms or I start posting daily.

  BEN: You’re making this about you. It’s about Chuck.

  DANNY: Now it’s about Skelley and me.

  BEN: That’s an unhealthy place to be. Sounds like vendetta from here.

  DANNY: Maybe, but his father screwed Chuck. And he was involved in Chuck’s death. I know it. Who knows what these people can do, or will do. It’s our turn. Chuck and me.

  BEN: You just said it was about you two now. Which is it? Finding out about Chuck, is that enough? Settling Chuck’s score? Or settling yours? How much payback do you want?

  BEN: The validation is that important?

  DANNY: It’s that important.

  Danny sat back, staring at the screen. What was enough payback? How much was enough?

  A car’s tires screeched on the slick concrete garage ramp and he swiveled to watch the car crawl slowly past, moving through the dull, surreal underground light: two women, looking for a space, a shopping trip or something. He let out a quick sigh; he was getting paranoid, jumping at every sound.

  His stomach rumbled and he took another swig of Pepto and chased it with a long gulp of 7-Up. Living out of a car and eating junk was going to ruin him even if Skelley didn’t.

  BEN: Danny, what’s wrong?

  DANNY: Nothing, just thinking. Maybe you’re right.

  BEN: About?

  DANNY: How much is enough. Chuck’s long gone. And Skelley really hasn’t done anything to me.

  BEN: Getting your ribs kicked in sounds like something.

  DANNY: Yeah, but I’ll be okay. What should I do, sue him for the cleaning bill? Maybe insist he get a rib broken by the mugger of my choice? I don’t know, maybe he’s just scared and didn’t think it through. And I did threaten to blackmail him.

  BEN: You’re taking a lot of this on yourself. Don’t forget he is the moving party. He had you attacked. You threatened, true, but he used physical violence. There’s no way around that.

  DANNY: Sure, but right now I’d settle for the truth about what they really did to Chuck?

  BEN: Nothing about the real hidden crime?

  DANNY: I don’t know. It doesn’t seem all that important now. It mattered to Chuck. All that matters to me is what they did to Chuck. Let the rest stay buried.

  BEN: It’s that or live out of your car, spend your savings, hiding. Ask him, talk to him. Get it settled and come home.

  Danny shrugged, then smiled at himself in the rear view mirror; he was interacting with a laptop computer, affective displays for plastic and silicon chips. He rubbed his face, feeling a couple days’ stubble. There were dark circles under his eyes and he could smell the stale smell of rancid sweat on him and his clothes. Time to check into a motel and get cleaned up. Get a good night’s sleep. He hadn’t slept well since that night at Doris’s.

  DANNY: Got to go. Meeting Johnny downtown.

  BEN: Lucky you have him.

  DANNY: Yeah. He got me to Dugan, he kept me going after the beating.

  BEN: How are you feeling?

  DANNY: Okay. My ribs hurt but the bruises are fading.

  BEN: What now?

  DANNY: Think I’ll sign off. Between AOL’s dime a minute 800 number and the cell charges, these real time chats are going to eat me alive. Talk to you when?

  BEN: This is Thursday. I’m giving a seminar module tonight and have some errands in the morning. How about tomorrow around 2?

  DANNY: I’ll call you.

  BEN: What about school? You’ve got to get back by the weekend for prep.

  DANNY: I know.

  BEN: They’ll bounce your fanny right out. You’ve got an obligation, you said you’d be there to teach what, four classes? It’s scheduled, right? You can’t just not show up.

  DANNY: I know. You just want to get me back to Seattle where you can harass me. Let’s see what happens. Got to go....D.

  He signed off, then stuffed the computer and components into the bag before starting the car and pulling out of the garage into the bright afternoon sunshine. He just had time to get downtown and pick up Johnny.

  It turned out he had more time than that.

  He drove south down Van Ness toward the pickup spot they’d arranged. Danny swiveled around, caught the curb lane driver’s eye and gestured that he wanted to cut across to the curb lane; the man waved him over, and when the light changed he darted to the curbside, pulling into a red zone just before the crosswalk intersection with Golden Gate and put the car in neutral. He saw Larkin huffing and puffing up the slight Van Ness grade from McAllister, arms pumping and scuttling around pedestrians; the old guy could motor when he wanted to.

  A dark blue panel van streaked with dirt and mud ducked out of the outside of the three lanes of fast-flowing northbound traffic and skidded to a stop at the curbside and somebody jumped out of the cab right in front of Johnny. The guy, tall, thin wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, grabbed Johnny and slammed him backwards against the side of panel van; the van side door slid open and the man shoved Larkin backwards and jumped in after him, sliding the door closed as the van roared away from the curb, cut off an approaching bus and slid around the corner heading east on Golden Gate.

  It had taken only a few seconds; Danny wasn’t even fully out of his car when the kidnappers sped away. The license plate was obscured by a streak of mud across the back doors and bumper. And they were gone.

  “Oh Christ, no, Johnny,” he said, quickly looking around; there was another mud s
treaked van pulling up behind him. He jumped back into the car, shoved it into gear and darted out against the red light, just missing being broadsided by a delivery truck that dry skidded to a halt behind him, blocking the intersection with its horn blaring.

  His heart was hammering in his chest and he could taste hot metallic spit in his mouth. He swung right onto McAllister, floored it, and then skidded right again on Franklin and north up the hill in the opposite direction. He looked in the rear view mirror; no van, just three dense lanes of cars heading toward the Bay. He wiped his palms on his shirtsleeves and felt a cold, deep ache moving up from his bowels into his gut.

  “Oh shit, I’m so sorry Johnny. Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, pounding on the steering wheel. He took another breath and slowed the car, matching traffic, hitting the lights now, moving away from the kidnapping area. He had no direction, no goal, he just kept driving, heading north, crossing Post, Sutter, then sliding over into the left lane to turn into the one-way traffic heading West on Pine St., riding the stream of cars, eyes blurred, air burning in his chest. He slowed down again, cresting the hill, driving into the blue sky before heading downhill now, sliding through the blasted Filmore St. black ghetto, houses dead or dying along both sides.

  He kept to the middle lane of Pine until he got to Masonic, turned left and drove past the University of San Francisco, heading toward the Height-Ashbury district, then turning right onto Fell along the block-wide strip of Panhandle Park until finally crossing Stanyan and driving into the cool oasis of Golden Gate Park, slowing, letting the car move along with the thin Wednesday afternoon traffic. Finally he pulled over, parked and turned off the motor.

  He rolled down the window. The smell of freshly mown grass drifted in, cutting the thick, acrid air inside the car. He eased his clenched hands open and slid the seat back, stretching his legs as far as he could. The sun was thin, already softening as the first tendrils of fog wormed their way through the dark cypress and pines. He pulled out the map; the park was eight blocks wide and more than fifty blocks long, a great green slab cutting halfway across the city, a green conduit for ocean fog and breezes dragged in from the West.

  He realized he hadn’t taken a deep breath since downtown; he rolled his shoulders and sucked the cool, moist air deep into his chest. And finally his racing pulse slowed down and he felt relaxed enough. He pulled out the cell phone and dialed.

  “John Skelley...tell him its Danny Boyle...thanks,” and he waited, listening to the hollow on the line. The guy was too cheap, maybe just too traditional, to put music on the line. Finally the neutral secretary’s voice came back: what did he want? What did he want, he almost screamed, but caught himself in time.

  “Tell him it’s about a mutual friend who’s had an accident, a bad accident. And more people may be hurt, tell him that,” he said, gritting his teeth, trying to keep his voice calm. Again the empty line and then Skelley.

  “Listen you son of a bitch, you hurt that old man and I’ll get you so help me God I’ll rip your fucking heart out,” he blurted out, the words like bile, spilling over him and he felt the scalding streaks move down his cheeks again. Then there was silence; Skelley came back on, cool voice like ice water in his ear. He listened to the cool voice.

  “Don’t give me that shit, you know what happened to him don’t pretend you don’t know...no, you wouldn’t say anything, never give anything away, huh...okay, okay, cut the shit, what do you want?” he snarled and listened while Skelley carefully spelled out his demands.

  “Fuck you,” he snapped, but unperturbed, the voice continued. “I don’t stop until you talk, you rat hearted little fuck...no, okay, okay I said, no more names, business, just business....”

  He held the phone away from his ear for a moment, then started talking. “Okay, that’s what you want. This is what I want. You let him go...ok, then we talk first, right now…no, where? The phone clicked off, the last words sliding through to him: my office, 8:30. And he was gone. Danny hit redial and this time Skelley answered the phone.

  “No, not your place...I don’t care, no, goddamn it no... we’re on the edge here...no, someplace neutral...no, no, listen to me, we do this my way now or I’m going to the cops...I don’t care what they do to me but I’ll make sure every tabloid sleaze bag reporter in the world is there waiting to hear my story...no, when it’s out it’s too late, you can’t stop it...harassment? fuck you, you kidnapped somebody, let’s see about that...I don’t have to prove anything,” and the line went quiet, not dead, not empty like he’d been put on hold, just empty as though Skelley had stopped being there, stopped even breathing. Then he was back.

  “Okay then, let’s pick someplace else,” and he laid the map up against the steering wheel, fingering where he was, looking for something, anything. Glancing at his watch, he said, “okay, here it is, meet me at the beach...yeah, Ocean Beach, at the foot of, hold on, Great Highway and Lincoln...at 4:30...no, I don’t give a damn about traffic or your business or anything else, you’ve got almost an hour to get there, just do it or the next thing you see is me on TV...okay, good, and come alone...okay, bring your kid then, I don’t care, why not let him see what kind of people swim around in his gene pool...don’t worry about it, okay, just park and get out and go the sea wall, I’ll find you, 4:30,” and he clicked the phone off.

  * * *

  The fog was coming in a little thicker and it looked like he was driving West into a high, gray wall. He drove slowly with the light traffic, taking streets randomly, steadily heading toward the Pacific. He was moving almost silently through the dripping cypress and pale meadows; he rolled down the window and let the wet fog and rich, heavy smell of the wet trees and grass soak into him until he came to the Great Highway that ran along the western edge of the City, the western boundary along the Pacific. He pulled into a parking space near the South Windmill with a view of both the Great Highway and the Lincoln Way intersection. Through the traffic he could see the sea wall that ran along the beach and the few hardy walkers and joggers on the ocean side already bundled up and moving like wraiths through the gray afternoon.

  3:57: he got out and starting walking slowly around the area, trying to fix the place and cars and the few people he saw moving around in the thin, fog muted sunlight. The ocean was a dark, leaden mass separated from the encroaching fog only by shades of gray where the sun still fitfully thinned the fog. There was a slight, steady breeze behind the fog; the air was thick and salty in his mouth and nose and with it all, a dampness he could feel sinking through his jacket and into his flesh.

  There were fourteen cars in the parking area, the only one that could reasonably be called close to the intersection. He walked back to the car, started the motor and moved to another spot that had a better view of the parking lot. He sat in the car, engine idling and windows cracked to keep the glass clear: four twelve.

  4:23: a dark Porsche Carrera purred into the parking lot and pulled into a space in front, the closest available spot to the intersection; exhaust clouded as the car sat and idled in the fog. Finally the motor stopped, the doors opened and Skelley got out of the passenger’s side, dressed in another pinstripe suite, gray against the gray day until he was hardly there at all, nodding, saying something through the open door before slamming it shut with a dull, heavy thud that hardly reached Danny through the fog. A short, stocky young man in a tweed topcoat and maroon scarf tight to the neck climbed out of the driver’s side and stood, door open, talking to Skelley.

  Danny got out, leaving the motor running and door open.

  “Skelley,” he yelled.

  Skelley turned and faced him, said something to the young man, and the two of them walked toward Danny’s car. He moved out to the meet them, waiting a car length in front of his bumper, standing in the gray, cold seeping in already.

  “Who’s that?” he said when they were close enough. “Your kid? It better be him and not some thug.”

  “No, don’t worry. My son, Patrick,” he said.

 
Patrick Skelley was a thick brick from the family line, the same height as his father but where the elder Skelley was lean, bird boned and skin stretched tautly like waxed parchment over the whipcord muscle and bone, the son was thicker, somehow less distinct. There were dark smudges under his family-blue eyes and he was at least a day, maybe two, away from a shave. Not much more than thirty, he had the look of someone only a handful of years away from going completely to suet and slump.

  “Where’s Johnny?” He wanted to throw every curse he could think of at Skelley, scream his name and rip his heart out. Instead he kept the fire banked and listened to the thumping measure of his heart.

  The boy stepped forward a pace, then another, sticking a gloved finger toward Danny. “Watch your tone, fella.”

  Danny looked at him, shook his head and said, “Skelley, tell your kid to stuff it or I drive straight to the police.”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to,” the younger Skelley said, raspy voice thicker, as though he was trying to talk as deep in his chest as he could.

  Danny looked past him to the father. “Whatever. Again, where’s Johnny?”

  The cold was starting to make Danny shiver, or the anger, but the other man stood there, planted, hands clasped loosely. He said, “Assuming I knew what you were talking about....”

  “...you know, you kidnapped him.”

  “Assuming I knew what you were talking about, for me to even respond to the question would strongly suggest I had something to do with the event you’ve described,” he said, voice so thin in the creeping fog Danny thought it was drifting in from several directions at once.

  “Okay, legalisms aside, let’s work with hypotheticals,” he snapped. “Assuming my friend has been kidnapped.”

  “A strong word, that.”

  “Okay, detained perhaps. That better?” but the man just shrugged. “Assuming that, and with your knowledge of the City, where do you think he could be and how long would it take him to get home from there?”