It was warm for March in San Francisco they told me, and Dan Swan was sweating like a fat man on a bicycle, except he was a thin man, standing still. It wasn’t surprising though; the group of twenty or so people clustered around him had on T-shirts and jeans, shorts or light slacks. Swan was wearing a shirt and tie, trench coat and heavy rubber-soled shoes. He had to dress like that. He had to wear the fedora too, he was taking us on his famous ‘Sam Spade walking tour’ through the Tenderloin and adjacent parts of San Francisco.
‘We don’t know much about Spade,’ Swan said. ‘My guess is he was born in Oregon or Washington State. He served in the infantry in World War One and was an NCO. Not high-ranked, a corporal, maybe.’ He took off his hat and wiped his high brow which was getting higher as the widow’s peak was accentuated by retreating hair on both sides. Dark hair and dark eyes, a long face and body. He moved his shoulders uncomfortably in the coat and I wanted to tell him to take it off.
‘Where’s the dingus?’ A heavy guy in a floral shirt and floppy shorts spoke up at the front of the group. He held some money in his hand and he thrust it back into a pocket.
‘I wanna see the bird,’ he said.
Swan looked embarrassed. He wiped his face which was flushed now and not just from the heat.’ I haven’t got it today,’ he said. ‘Too hot.’
That seemed fair enough to me. I was carrying a tourist guide too thick to go in my jeans pocket, and it felt too hot to carry that. Still, the promotion photo for the tour showed Swan sneaking down a street with a bundle wrapped in frayed newspaper under his arm, and if that was one of the things you wanted…
‘This is a gyp,’ the fat man grumbled. He took the steps back down to Larkin Street two at a time, and a fat woman, also in Bermuda shorts, followed him. After a pause, a thin, nervous looking woman in a print frock went down the steps and moved off in the other direction from the fat pair.
‘Anyone else?’ Swan was aggressive now, not bothering to exert charm. ‘All right. I’ll take the money-four dollars a head, two fifty for senior citizens.’
We all pressed forward with our money, serious takers. Swan collected his hundred dollars or so and told us a little more about Hammett and Spade.
‘… the same skyline, post-earthquake, Spade would have seen. Let’s take a look.’ He almost sprinted down the steps from the Public Library and across the street, timing the lights just exactly right.
We skipped and lumbered and strode after him and got Dan’s spiel about Spade defying the DA and then we headed off along the streets the Continental Op and the Whoosis Kid and Spade had haunted. The sun was high and Swan’s fedora must have been welcome. He got more cheerful and answered some of the ignorant questions amiably as we went along. I caught him up at the corner of Geary and Leavenworth.
‘What’s the bird weigh?’ I said innocently.
He gave me a sharp look. ‘Where you from?’
‘Australia, you know, where Hammett nearly went.’
‘Yeah,’ He grinned. ‘It was a tough break.’
I stuck out my hand. ‘Cliff Hardy. I’m in this line of work at home.’
We shook. ‘Tours?’ he said.
‘No, detective work.’
He seemed a bit pre-occupied for the next hour while we traced Spade and Cairo and the others through the streets. He took us to a lane where you could see the faded name of a restaurant where Spade had eaten a steak. The building now housed a computer games outfit. Swan drew me aside.
‘Bird weighs next to nothing,’ he said. ‘Couple of pounds.’
‘Pretty light.’
‘Yeah, aluminum. I haven’t got it because it was stolen.’
Before I could say anything, a plastic bag filled with water came sailing down and burst on the sidewalk in the middle of the group. The water sprayed, picked up dust, and dirtied the clothes of a couple of women. Strong men swore. Then some garbage came down plus a couple of cans and those with combat experience ducked for cover. I saw a flash of face and the arc of an arm on top of the computer games building. I pointed up there to Swan.
He nodded tiredly. ‘Not the first time.’
A couple of people started to walk away.
‘You can have your money back!’ Swan yelled.
One of the men bent, picked up a can and threw it at Swan. It was a light toss, but Swan wasn’t prepared. I was, I stepped forward and caught the can. I thought of throwing it back but remembered that I was a stranger in a strange land. I threw the can into a trash bin.
‘Thanks,’ Swan said. ‘This goes on, and I’m out of business.’
He rushed through the rest of the tour and wasn’t helped by the inattention of the clients who looked up every time we stopped. He signed off on Market Street, and signalled me to wait while he autographed a few copies of his tour booklet for the faithful.
‘Drink?’ he said when he was through.
We had been out on the hot streets for almost four hours, a drink didn’t seem like too much of an indulgence. Swan led the way to a quiet bar and ordered two beers without consulting me.
‘All Aussies drink beer,’ he said when the waiter arrived with two big bottles of Budweiser, glasses and peanuts.
‘Some drink absinthe,’ I said.
‘No kidding?’
Budweiser is good beer and so is Coors and Schlitz and every other one I’d tasted in California. We drank some of it and I waited for him to say whatever it was the beer had been bought for.
‘Ah… this is kinda embarrassing. You know, I’m supposed to be well up on all this detective stuff.’
‘But you’re not. And somebody stole your bird?’
‘Right. And there’s more. The shop’s in trouble- that’s the Bay Mystery Bookstore on O’Farrell Street, you know it?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, I run it and it’s done okay until lately. Then the bird goes missing, plus we get that crap from the roof. I feel like a target. I feel like somebody’s out to get me.’
‘Who would be?’
He scratched his heavily stubbled chin and pulled out a packet of cigarillos. ‘You smoke, Hardy?’
‘I quit’
‘Stay with it.’ He lit up and took a pull of beer. ‘I suppose there could be someone wanting to muscle in on this tour racket. I was the first to do it, but anyone could who had the knowledge and that’s in the books.’
‘How much d’you make at it?’
‘In a big week, three or four tours, I might make four hundred bucks. Wouldn’t average nearly that, though.’
I considered it. ‘It’s not a lot to break the law for. Besides, you’ve got the book published, it’s your baby. What else-the shop, women, drugs?’
He shook his head. ‘Store does okay like I said, nothing spectacular. I’m between women just now, leastways I hope I am. Nothing there.’ He swished beer in his glass and puffed smoke. ‘These are the only drugs I use.’
‘Why did you say you were embarrassed?’
‘I need help. I’d get laughed away if I went to any of the investigators in this city. Straight to the press. Somebody stole my Maltese Falcon-shit!’
‘The police?’
‘What crime? Fuckin’ bird’s worth maybe fifty dollars. Harassment? I’m not sure there is such a crime. Cops’ve got work to do, rackets to run, you know.’
‘Yeah. Politics?’
He fiddled with the fedora on the table; the band had a tiny feather in it and I was reminded of the hat my father always wore out of doors, hail, rain or shine. ‘I used to think Tom Hayden was a good guy,’ Swan said, ‘now I hear he’s spending a million bucks to prove he’s not a radical. That’s politics.’
I nodded. ‘I was going home but I guess I can stay awhile. You’re hiring me are you?’
He pulled his tour money out of the trench coat. What’re your rates?’
‘I get one hundred and twenty-five a day and expenses back home.’
He put the crumpled notes down in front of me. ‘Be more than that here. Let’s make it that per die m.’
I took the money. ‘I’ll look into it, give it a day or two. It’s not my territory, I don’t want to rip you off.’
He imitated my accent. ‘Fair enough.’
‘At least you didn’t call me digger.’ I forked out a ten. ‘Let’s do some more drinking.’
Swan had told me that he had two people working in his bookstore: a young woman named Maggie Bolton who worked part-time, and one Roger Milton-Smith who acted as manager when Swan was doing other things. I’m a nasty, suspicious character, if someone in trouble tells me his only associate is his mother I’ll take a look at Mom.
According to Swan, Bolton would be in the shop that afternoon, Sunday being quiet, and she would knock off at 8 p.m. It was after six when we finished drinking and I told him I’d go back to my hotel for a shower and start work at eight.
‘Doing what?’ He drained his glass and the waiter came to take away his fourth bottle of Bud.
‘Following Bolton,’ I said.
I was staying in a cheap hotel on Sutter Street because I figured that all I needed was the room. I had a small transistor radio, I could watch the fights on the TV in the lounge and I’ve never minded walking a few metres to the bathroom. I had a big jug of Taylor’s burgundy for companionship and I felt I was nicely set up for the few days I intended to spend in San Francisco seeing the sights.
It was a comfortable bed too, and I spent longer on it than I intended, so I was late getting to O’Farrell Street. I located the bookstore. Almost immediately its lights went off and a slim, redheaded woman stepped out. She gave the door a slam and a shake and set off down the street.
I followed her down Stockton and Fourth to the SPT Company depot. She was young and fit and she walked fast, passing a big bargain basement bookstore without a glance. Her mind wasn’t on books. Innocently, I stood behind her while she bought a ticket to Burlingame and I did the same.
The train ride was all right, as train rides go in the dark. I wished I’d brought The Hotel New Hampshire with me from my room. Maggie Bolton read, or looked at, a fashion magazine with pictures of hollow-cheeked models on the back and front covers. She was pretty hollow-cheeked herself come to think of it, with a long, lean shape. She looked at the magazine as if she was making comparisons between the models and herself. Fair enough. I wondered why she hadn’t taken a bus, which would have given me more to look at, and I found out why in Burlingame.
We got off the train, went through the gate and Bolton waited while a north-bound train pulled in. A tall blonde woman in a stylish pants suit got down and trotted forward on high heels. She and Bolton embraced on the sidewalk. They kissed and hung on for a bit and then started to walk arm in arm north along Rawlins road, talking animatedly. They stopped at a corner market and bought a jug of red wine and some french bread. I bought some bread too and some bananas and Sports Illustrated. Just short of the San Francisco city limits, the two women went into a modern apartment block. I looked up and saw a light go on three floors up that was probably theirs.
There was a pocket handkerchief sized park across from the apartments and I sat on a bench and ate half of the loaf and two bananas and read about John Elway of Stanford’s tough decision whether to play pro football or baseball. I had to squint to read, but I could see the lights in the apartment go out in one room, go on in another, dim there for a while and then go on as before.
The first visitor arrived a little after ten in a taxi. A small Latin went into the building and there was a little action with the lights up on the third. He came out about twenty minutes later. Then a Ford Bronco with all the trimmings parked just around the corner and two bulky middle-aged men went in. Two dim lights for almost an hour. I read a piece about Jim Thorpe. Traffic was light on the street, but when I saw a police car cruising up I sauntered over to a bin to drop the magazine. The cops went past and when I got back to my bench a black man in a white suit was sitting on it. The jacket of the suit was double-breasted and so was the vest. He had a pencil line moustache and very neat, short hair.
‘Nice night,’ he said. He pushed my paper bag so that half a loaf of french bread and two bananas fell on the ground.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It sure is.’
He grinned and made an ear trumpet with one hand. ‘What do I hear? This the kinda food you eat over in England?’
‘Yes. It sure is.’
‘My. And I thought it was fish an’ chee-ips.’
‘That’s the south.’
‘Why’re you watchin’ number twelve, man?’
I sketched something Beardsleyesque in the air. ‘Well, you know. Just trying to decide.’
He stood up. It struck me that he looked very like Sugar Ray Robinson in his prime. ‘Fish or cut bait.’ he said.
I cut bait, but I picked up my bread and bananas first.
Back at the hotel I finished the bread and the Irving book and had some burgundy to wash them down. Maggie Bolton was in love, gainfully employed and her Pimp’s suit cost ten times the value of the Maltese Falcon. It was hard to see either of them bothering.
In the morning I called Swan and gave him the news.
‘A whore?’, he said, ‘Maggie?’
‘If she’s a tall red head with legs.’
‘She is. I don’t know what to say.’
‘Can I come over and look around-where you kept the bird and all?’
‘Sure. Store’s not open till twelve.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Market research. People don’t buy mysteries in the morning. You can come up to my place, though. I live here. There’s a door in the alley.’
‘Milton-Smith around yet?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
The bookshop went in for Bogartiana, Christieana, Stoutiana and all the rest of it. The front window had a first edition of The Maltese Falcon in a glass case, surrounded by Hammett, Chandler and Mac-Donald paperbacks. Maybe 20 per cent of the window display was given over to science fiction books. I averted my eyes from them and went down the alley.
I knocked on a faded wooden door and heard fast steps clattering on wood inside. Swan opened the door with a beer can in his hand.
‘Ascend,’ he said.
The door led into a sort of storeroom at the back of the shop; it was full of cartons and discarded wrapping and packing paper lay around knee deep. Steep steps not much wider than a ladder led up to a loft above the shop. The one room contained a double mattress, table, sink, TV set, some cupboards and a refrigerator, but was basically given over to books. They covered most of the available wall space and lay in piles on the floor.
‘Stock or personal?’ I said.
He shrugged and made a half-and-half gesture. He tilted his can. ‘Beer?’
‘No thanks. Where’d you keep it?’
A heap of books had collapsed just near the top of the steps. He nudged them with his foot.
‘Right here.’
I went down the steps and came up. I could reach the spot by leaning forward, not getting closer than a body length to the room. I jigged-no creaking.
‘I thought at least it’d have to be lassoed through a window.’
He grinned. ‘Shit, it’s insured. It’s the aggravation I’m worried about. You don’t figure Maggie huh?’
I shook my head and prowled around the loft. The bed was neatly made, a few dishes were stacked by the sink. The windows were clean and overlooked O’Farrell Street. The sky was blue but there was some grey cloud out over the Bay. Swan pointed at it.
‘Rain. And I’ve got a tour today. All I need is rain.’
I went over everything I could think of with him-the lease on the building, competitors in the Hammett and book business, friends with senses of humour-nothing. Just before noon I had a beer, and as some noises began to drift up from below, a ray of sunshine cut through the window.
‘Maybe it won’t rain,’ Swan said shrugging into his trench coat. ‘Store’s open, want me to introduce you to Milt?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll just drift in like a customer.’
‘Okay. Jesus, I feel naked without the bird.’
We went out to the alley and he headed off to the Town Hall to pick up his tourists. I walked around to the front of the shop and pushed open the door which had the famous thin man photograph of Hammett, blown up to poster size, stuck to the inside.
The bookstore was like a cross between a junkyard and a library. The walls had books floor to ceiling with sliding ladders attached to the shelves. There were books on tables and in free-standing bookshelves. There were books and comics and magazines in bins and boxes. It was disorderly, paperbacks mixed with hardcovers and leaves were as likely to be facing outwards as spines.
But one corner of the big room was tidy. It had the best light through a high window and was handy to the clerk’s desk and the cash register. It had a big, neatly
printed sign hanging over a geometrically arranged table of glossy hardcovers- SCIENCE FICTION amp; FANTASY.
I drifted around checking this and that and resisting the impulse to straighten things up a little. In the Sci-Fi section a man was doing just that. He was small and pot-bellied with thin, sandy hair brushed across a pink, mottled skull. He moved books from a table to the floor, expanding the section. He dealt enthusiastically with customers for the fantasy corner, less so with others.
Maybe it was just that he was busy with the little green men, maybe he wasn’t really there at all, but he didn’t seem to notice the shoplifter who carried out an armful of books with a technique that could only be called brazen.
I selected a Robert B. Parker paperback and went up to the register.
‘I’ll take this, please.’
He grunted.
‘He’s good isn’t he, Parker?’
Another grunt. He rang it up and gave me change out of five.
‘Have you got A Canticle for Leibowitz?’
He brightened visibly. His pudgy hands clasped in a fleeting attitude of reverence. ‘No, we’re out of it right now, but I could get it in for you. If you’d like to leave your name and number?’ He pounced on a scribbling pad and pen, whipped them down in front of me. I wrote John Watson and my Sydney telephone number and left after thanking him.
It didn’t rain. I hung around looking in windows and watching the store. I bought a take-out coffee and drank it sitting on the bus stop seat opposite the store. When I dropped the container into a rubbish bin I looked inside for no good reason. I don’t think much of John D. MacDonald but I didn’t see why a brand new copy of his latest book should be sitting in the bottom of a rubbish bin. Along with it was a book about Agatha Christie by Robert Barnard, a Lew Archer omnibus and a fat biography of James M. Cain. I retrieved the books and went off to catch up with Swan on Market Street.
‘Any garbage today?’ I asked him.
‘Sure, same place. Came pelting down.’
I showed him the books and told him about how his 2IC ran the depot.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘Milt’s hot for all that shit. He persuaded me to include a section and it’s done okay.’
‘I’m not surprised, he runs it like Tiffany’s.’
Swan hefted the books in his hands. ‘This is bad, maybe Milt’s eyesight is shot.’
‘He doesn’t wear glasses. He could tell an Asimov from a Zelazney at a hundred metres. Could he be trying to take you over and open the Six Rings of Uranus bookstore and brainwash?’
He laughed. ‘Milt? Come on?’
‘I’ll look into him just the same. When’s the next tour?’
‘Tomorrow. Why?’
‘I fancy a rooftop view. When you’re back at the shop act normal. Don’t shoot the shoplifters.’
He said okay and gave me his day’s takings again. I felt guilty grabbing the money he’d pounded the pavement and his tonsils for, but business is business. I went back to my hotel and read Early Autumn, in which Parker’s PI, Spenser, taught a kid how to run, pump iron, build a house and drink beer, all of which would be useful to him in later life.
That night I followed Milton-Smith to a place on Washington Street in Chinatown which you got into by giving twenty dollars to an old woman who wove cane baskets on the doorstep. I played blackjack and lost ten or twelve dollars. Milt played poker and lost a lot more. He signed things and had a serious talk with a Chinese gentleman in an English suit.
Two o’clock the next afternoon saw me on top of the computer games building. I looked down into the lane where Swan was due in about twenty minutes. The rooftop was flat with a rail around it; getting up to the fire escape was child’s play for a man who didn’t smoke and had once cleared five foot eight in the high jump. I hid behind a big box housing the building’s electrical system and waited.
He came ten minutes later: sneakers, jeans and jacket, knitted wool cap. At the roof edge he laid out the goodies from a supermarket sack-water-bag, tomatoes, a soggy-looking parcel wrapped in newspaper.
I stepped out and cleared my throat. ‘Conspiracy to litter,’ I said. ‘Ninety days.’
He spun around and I recognised him as the shoplifter. I took a couple of steps and he backed to the rail.
‘Shoplifting, too.’
He threw a slow right when I was out of range, and I stepped inside it and clipped him with my left. A fighter he wasn’t, he tripped on his own feet and flipped back over the rail. I jumped and grabbed his arm while his feet clawed at the sheer brick wall.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ he sobbed. ‘Oh, Jesus.’
His jacket had a slick surface and I could feel my grip slipping.
‘Swing your arm up and grab the edge.’
He said something about Jesus again but he got three fingers over the edge. I reached down, grabbed his jacket and belt and hauled him back up under the rail like a net full of fish. The jacket tore and slipped up his back and off as he scraped skin from his fingers getting a hold.
I was lying prone on the roof and gasping when I saw Swan come into the lane with his group. There was heavy breathing behind me, a sound like a knuckle cracking and something slammed into the side of my head. I looked down and thought I was falling, but it was only oblivion reaching up for me.
A lucky kick, sneaky. I wasn’t out for long and when I saw my attacker’s bloody fingerprints on the roof I felt almost better. I was in better shape than him. Better dressed too; his torn jacket lay on the roof beside me. I laughed and sat up and then I didn’t feel good at all. I grabbed the jacket and lay down again.
A little later I looked down into the lane which was empty. I congratulated myself on protecting Swan from the garbage. That was why I was up on the roof wasn’t it? Good job, Cliff, I thought. Let’s have a drink. Then I looked at the jacket clutched in my hand and remembered that there was a little more to it than that.
It was a cheap jacket, and it had nearly caused its shoplifting, garbage-throwing owner to fall six storeys. Worse, it had a piece of paper in a pocket with his name and address on it. George Pagemill of 537 22nd Street had had the brakes checked and the tyres rotated on his 1969 Plymouth at a local service station.
I went by my hotel, picked up my. 38 and took a taxi to 22nd Street east of the railway. A rusty blue Plymouth was in the street outside 537, which was an old house divided into apartments and rooms. George was in room eight at the top of a dark set of stairs and opposite a gurgling toilet. The toilet was empty and the doorlock was the same as George’s, a cheap job that wouldn’t have deterred a determined Girl Guide. I listened and heard muttering inside. I held the gun in my left hand, crouched a bit and drove my right shoulder up and into the door opposite the lock. The lock broke, the door flew open and I spun into the room, changing hands on the gun as I came.
George was sitting on the bed with a beer can held gingerly in his taped-up hands. It seemed to be taking all his strength to lift it. I pushed the door shut with my foot. The heavy stuff so soon after the fun and games on the roof had made my head throb. I felt mean.
‘Hi, George.’
He gaped at the gun. ‘Hey,’ he said weakly.
‘Aren’t you going to talk to Jesus?’
I chopped the can out of his hands with the muzzle of the gun; beer sprayed over his pants and the bed. I put the gun away and swept a quick look around the room-walnut veneer furniture, a stained hand basin under a dusty window, linoleum on the floor. George was no Mr Big. He was as seedy as the room, with a thin, defeated face that was just waiting to get old.
‘Get outta here.’ His voice was flat and dull; his heart wasn’t in it.
‘Whose idea was it to throw the garbage?’
He shook his head and put his bandaged fingers together. He rubbed them tenderly like a man who doesn’t expect to be hurt.
‘I could put you in for assault,’ I said.
‘Bullshit.’
‘I’ve got an armload of books with your prints all over them. Shoplifting.’
‘Crap. Anyone can look at books, open them and everything.’
I stepped close enough to smell him, reached across and opened and closed a drawer on the chest experimentally. A smell of dirty shirt came up.
‘I could break your fingers.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why would you break my fingers?’
‘Because you’re being strong and silent about who got you to throw the garbage. You’ve got a choice, George; are you more afraid of him or me?’
He glanced up and I gave him my hard look.
‘You,’ he said.
‘All right.’
‘Bookstore guy. I met him in a bar. He offered me a hundred bucks to do it for a month.’
‘Shoplift and throw garbage?’
‘Yeah. He didn’t say why.’
‘Why’d you dump the books?’
He looked at me as if I’d asked him to state the theory of relativity as an equation. ‘What else would I do with them?’
I took the gun out and looked at it. ‘Your contract is cancelled as of now, got it?’
He nodded.
‘I suggest you stay here for awhile. An hour say. I might be on the street I might not. You better play it safe.’
He nodded again and I opened the door.
‘Hey,’ he whined, ‘where’s my jacket?’
‘On the roof with the other garbage.’
The first thing I did was call Swan.
‘Where’s Milt?’ I said.
‘Here.’
‘If he gets a phone call, stall him, I’m on my way.’
I called a cab, telling the operator it was urgent. The taxi came quickly and moved fast through the thin mid-afternoon traffic. I sprinted down the alley to Swan’s door. He opened it and put a finger to his lips.
‘He says he’s sick. He got a call. Wants to go home.’
‘Let him. Has he got a car here?’
‘I suppose. Why?’
‘Have you got one?’
‘I can borrow something.’
‘Something?’
‘A motor cycle.’
‘Shit.’
‘With a sidecar.’
‘Oh, Jesus. All right. Can you leave now?’
‘Sure, Maggie’s here.’ He ducked back through the door, shouted ‘Okay, Milt!’ down the steps and came back.
‘Out here.’ He led me down towards a dumpster in the alley. Beside it was his motor cycle, an old Harley Davidson. The sidecar was a World War Two relic with patches on the fabric and dents like bullet holes in the body.
‘Has Milton-Smith ever seen you on this?’
He pulled out heavy goggles and a helmet like Lindbergh’s. ‘No. Friend in the next building lets me use it, but I don’t need it much.’
I levered myself into the sidecar which was as comfortable as a coffin. The motor caught at Swan’s first kick and we puttered down the alley. Up the street Milton-Smith was trotting along on his short legs towards a garage. We stopped with a clear view of the exit and waited. After ten minutes, a green Dodge Dart rolled out.
‘That’s him,’ Swan said.
‘Follow that car.’
The Dart crossed Market Street and began the manoeuvres designed to put it on a high road leading north-east. The wind was roaring and cold, and I only had a T-shirt and a light velour sweater between me and it.
‘Where’s he going?’ I shouted.
‘Oakland, Berkeley…’ The wind whipped the words away.
I was disappointed, not the Golden Gate. The traffic moved fast but Swan was a good rider and he kept the bike steady and my sidecar out of harm’s way. I was starting to enjoy the ride when he waved and shouted at me.
‘What?’
‘Toll.’
I fished out coins and scattered them into the machine like birdseed. The Dart had got a smoother passage through and Swan had to change lanes and pick up speed to stay in touch. The sidecar swayed and I felt like a flightless fledgling teetering on a branch.
Milt took a north-going turn off the bridge and Swan mouthed Berkeley at me. I thought about communes, marches, protests, but the streets were quiet and there wasn’t an untrimmed beard in sight. The Dart made a few turns and slid into a parking lot attached to a building with tinted glass, white pebbles and potted palms. Swan slammed on the brakes and the edge of the sidecar took me hard and low on the rib cage. I climbed out swearing, said ‘Wait’ ill-naturedly and hobbled off to where the sliding doors were closing behind Milton-Smith’s narrow shoulders and sticking-out bum.
Inside it was dark enough to screen Casablanca. When my eyes got used to the gloom I saw Milt waiting by the elevators with a flock of secretaries carrying files and folders. He was impatient, shifting from foot to foot, and nervous, scratching at his thinly covered skull. We all piled into the elevator and I lined up behind Milt as he touched button six.
At six he got out, turned left and walked down a short corridor. I hung back and watched him go into an office marked Palmer F. Wong-Realty amp; Investments. I hung around for fifteen minutes and no one went in or out of the office. Milt was in conference.
Back on the street, I filled Swan in.
‘What does it mean?’ he said.
‘Don’t know. He loses money to Chinese gambling, and here he is ensconced with a Chinese money man after getting a phone call from a guy he hired to harass you. It has to hang together somehow.’
‘We could shake it out of him,’ Swan said.
Just then Milton-Smith came out of the building. Swan ducked his head and fiddled with his goggles but I took a good long look. The man with Milt was about six foot four and couldn’t have weighed less than two hundred pounds. He had a shaven skull and only one ear; the other side of his head was just smooth, waxed, yellow skin. He took long bouncy strides as if he liked to feel the sidewalk under his feet. I wondered what else he could do with his feet.
Swan had shot them a quick look. ‘Guess not,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Well, the answer’s there, in that building.’
I sighed. ‘Yeah, I know. You better go home. I’ll call you in the morning.’
I was cold and tired by the time I had a fix on the security arrangements for what I was privately calling the Wong building. The place basically emptied at 5 o’clock with a few over-achievers hanging around till six or a little past. A security patrol van came by at seven; an armed man looked for lights, used a telephone in the lobby and then locked up. The van came back at nine; a guard checked the front door, a side service door and the small underground parking lot.
I walked a couple of blocks to get warm, called a cab and went back to the city. I had a late dinner near the hotel and crawled into bed not looking forward to the next day, and wondering why I didn’t just chuck it and fly back to Sydney. I knew why-I liked Swan, I’d taken his money and I wanted to know what was going on.
‘I thought you were going to do it last night,’ Swan said when I called him.
‘That shows how much you know about the detective business. It’s tonight. Milt in today?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How’s he looking?’
‘Nervous.’
‘You see that big Chinese with the one ear?’
‘No.’
‘That’s right, you wouldn’t. I’ll call you again tonight.’
I spent the early afternoon buying a few things. At 4 o’clock I was back at the Wong building in Berkeley. By 4.40 I was lying across the beams inside the acoustic tiles, maybe two metres above the toilets, in the men’s room on the sixth floor. I’d used the toilet before I’d climbed up into the space which was about half the size of a telephone booth. Among my effects I had a flask of whisky and a strong flashlight. I’d wound my watch.
The time passed slowly and it was hard not to sneeze. I climbed down at 6.45 and snuck a look down the corridors. There was a light near the elevator, otherwise the whole floor was dark. At 7 o’clock, phones started ringing; one rang on every floor and then there was silence. Working by the flashlight, it took me ten minutes to get in Mr Wong’s secretary’s room and another five to get into the inner sanctum. In the strong beam I picked out individual objects-a big, tidy desk, a wet bar, chairs, two filing cabinets.
Filing cabinets are a pushover and some systematiser had made it easy for me. The first cabinet contained a folder labelled SWAN. I took it over to the desk, sat down and went through it. The song it sang was clear if not sweet. Daniel Swan had filed a number of preservation requests on San Francisco buildings with the Heritage Committee and the City Hall when he began working as a tour guide. From his hastily written letter to the City, with the building designations filled in by hand, it seemed that this was a routine procedure. The applications had been put on open review by the City, which effectively blocked applications to demolish or substantially alter the said buildings. A proposal by Fenner A. Wong for a re-development of the Baltimore Building site had been refused, with Swan’s preservation request cited as the grounds.
I looked in vain for Milt under ‘M’ but I found him under ‘S’. He owed Kwong-Ping Wong of Washington Street slightly more than fifteen thousand dollars, and had taken out an unsecured loan with Palmer F. Wong for just that amount.
I used the Nashua copier in the outer office to make several copies of all documents, put the files back and locked up after me. At the bottom of the fire stairs was a door with a padlock on it which led out to the car park. I was ready for padlocks and this one didn’t give me any trouble.
A light showed into O’Farrell Street from the shop. I rattled the door and Swan opened it with the hand that wasn’t holding money.
‘How’s the take?’
‘Lousy.’
We went back to the register, stepping over the boxes and weaving between the untidy tables.
‘Your troubles are over,’ I said. ‘Or maybe they’re just starting.’ I laid out the documents on the counter. Swan got two beers from his loft and took a long swig before reading. I remembered my flask and had a shot and a chaser. He started to smile on the third page and it had spread, broad and winning across his narrow, dark features by the time he’d finished.
‘Shit,’ he said and drained his can, ‘I’d forgotten those preservation requests.’
‘Very enlightening. Why the grin?’
He picked up one of the photocopy sheets and rustled it. ‘It’s the wrong building.’
‘What is?’
‘This one, the Baltimore. A magazine writer nominated it as the Fat Man’s hotel and I went along with him when I was just starting out. I put in a request on it, but I know better now. It doesn’t fit. I haven’t taken the tour past there in a year. Didn’t you notice, Hardy? Couldn’t have been paying attention. I can lift that request tomorrow.’
‘What about the building?’
‘An eyesore. Wong can call Milt off. Say, he must be the one stole my bird. Hardy… can you…?’
I had another shot and put the whisky away. ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘might as well. Where’s the phone book? Here’s what we do.’
Milt lived in South San Francisco and my third cab of the day made a sizable hole in Swan’s tour money. If everything worked out, I planned to hit him for the expenses. I could give him the burglar’s tools for a keepsake. It was a bland, anonymous street and a bland anonymous apartment block, the kind of place you go to once and forget forever. I unshipped the. 38 and stuck it up the Chinese’s wide, flaring nose when he opened the door.
‘Back up,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to where the phone is. It’s going to ring soon.’
He looked at me carefully and seemed to decide it would be worthwhile letting me live a few minutes longer. I followed him down a hallway to a small living room where Milt was sitting at a table with a pack of tarot cards laid out in front of him. He looked up at me with his struggling thought processes showing on his gnomish face.
‘In the shop,’ I said. ‘ Canticle for Leibowitz, and in Kwong-Ping’s on Washington, and in the elevator to Mr Wong’s office.’
Bewilderment followed puzzlement and I felt sorry for him. The Chinese loomed against a book-shelf filled with Sci-Fi paperbacks and if I hadn’t known he was inscrutable I’d have thought he was impatient. The phone rang.
‘Answer it,’ I said to the Chinese. ‘It’s for you.’
He picked up the receiver and listened to the fast, sing-song words. He spoke once, put the phone down, picked up a coat and hat from a chair and walked out.
Milton-Smith looked down at the tarot cards, then turned his watery pale-blue eyes on me.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
I put the gun away and turned over one of the cards. ‘It’s pretty simple, Milt. Dan Swan talked to Mr Wong tonight and they’ve settled their differences. That means I’m not interested in George Pagemill anymore, or in you. That means Mr Wong calls off Odd Job there. You’ve still got your gambling debts and your loan and I’d think you were out a job. But that’s your problem.’
He sighed and moved a card with a bitten-to-the-quick fingernail.
‘Where’s the bird?’ I said.
He pointed down to a cupboard under a bookcase. I reached down and opened it. The figure was wrapped in a grey rag that had once been an undervest. It was about a foot high, shiny black, and weighed about the same as a full bottle of beer.
‘Why’d you keep it?’
He shrugged, then something like hope flickered across his face. ‘Dan’ll be glad to get it back, won’t he? You think he might let me keep my job?’
‘He just might,’ I said. ‘He seems like a pretty nice guy.’