Jon Breen: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 114, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 697 & 698, September/October 1999

She lingered over her lunch, killing time. Unless Sal Gagliardo had changed his routine, he wouldn’t open up his tattoo parlor until midafternoon. Callie had a little protect-your-ass work to do. If Sal ever suspected that she had joined the straights and was in fact spying for them, he and her other old cronies would toss her off Front Street Bridge without a second thought. Sal was a good guy only up to a point.

Daytime traffic on the waterfront was murder, so she left the car on Seneca and took a bus down to Third Street. She was early, but she had to wait only ten minutes until Sal was open for business.

Callie went charging in, breathing fire, secretly relieved that Sal’s elderly mother was nowhere in sight. “Thursday night, Sal,” she said angrily. “That’s what you told me. Your buddy Mario needed a driver Thursday night.”

“Callie?” he said, surprised. “What—”

“You know what today is, Sal?” she plowed on. “It’s Friday. The day after good old Mario needed his driver.”

“Well, hey, when you didn’t call, he got somebody—”

“When I didn’t call? Is that what you said... when I didn’t call? Sal, I punched out that damned number thirty times! Thirty times, Sal!”

“You left a message on his answering machine?”

“What answering machine? All I got was ring-ring-ring. I tell you, I was so pissed today I could barely talk to my probation officer. I know she thinks I’m on drugs.”

“But Mario does have an answering machine! I keep telling him to get a cell phone but he—”

“Sal, listen to me. At the other end of 624-5516 there is no answering machine.”

“Whoa, whoa — wait a minute!” He was patting the air with his hands. “That’s 624-5510. Zero, not six.”

She stared at him for a beat and then fished the index card out of her hip pocket. “See that little stem going up on the left? That’s a six!”

“Naw, Callie, that’s a zero. So I’m a little sloppy about the way I close up circles — it still looks a zero to me.”

She threw up her arms. “Are you telling me that all that time I was calling a wrong number? I actually missed out on a job because of your lousy handwriting? Sal, I am going to kill you.”

“Aw, c’mon, it’s not that big a deal — it was just a restaurant heist.”

“Which I did not get a piece of!”

“Hey, it’s not the end of the world — there’ll be more jobs. C’mon, Callie!”

She let him gradually jolly her into a better mood. He apologized four times. He promised her a better job soon. He wanted to know if they were still friends. Callie reluctantly allowed as how they were. Eventually they shook hands and parted on good terms.

Ass protected.

Hal Stanwyck finally scored, on Friday, spending the night in the woman’s apartment. Kevin Craig was convinced that was when the new computer chip exchanged hands. Callie sighed and pointed out that handing over a chip was not exactly an all-night job. Besides, the woman wasn’t a pickup; Stanwyck had brought her with him from work to the waterfront. He could have handed over the chip in the car during the drive in from Memotek, if she were his contact. But Kevin wouldn’t budge from his conclusion... until confronted with personnel records that showed the woman was a new employee and, in fact, hadn’t even been living in Port Wolfe at the time the earlier, flawed chip had been smuggled out.

Hal-Baby spent Saturday and Sunday doing chores and playing. Kevin had brought in additional operatives to help with the surveillance, so Callie had to work no more than one eight-hour shift each day. And Monday night she was on Riverview Parkway once again, following Stanwyck toward the waterfront.

But this time was different. For one thing, Stanwyck hadn’t left Memotek until nearly seven. For another, he was riding in the backseat of a taxi instead of driving his BMW. Could just be car trouble. Or he could be trying to avoid being followed. If the latter, the guy really was an amateur. It hadn’t occurred to him that the sudden appearance of one bright yellow taxicab where no cab had appeared before just might attract a little attention.

The taxi let him out on Front Street; Callie parked under a Deliveries Only sign and took off after him. Stanwyck bought fish and chips from a takeout place and wandered the streets, eating and checking his watch. Then he went into a fried-chicken place for a second bag of sustenance and sat on the front stoop of a featureless building while he ate. And checked his watch. At a quarter to nine, he jumped up and moved off at a fast clip.

Callie wanted to laugh. Stanwyck’s idea of how to check for a tail had to come from old Charlie Chan movies. He’d walk along briskly for a while and then whirl to face those behind him, looking for a face he’d seen before. Then he’d pretend to be absorbed in a poster advertising a boxing match that had taken place a year ago, all the while sneaking peeks over his shoulder in what he thought was a casual manner. Once he ventured a block past Third Street into no man’s land, turned around, and ventured right back out again.

All this went on for no more than twenty minutes; Stanwyck didn’t have the patience to play the game right. He led her to Chung’s Palace on Bell Flower Street, a club Callie knew well. She waited five minutes until a couple showed up at the door and fell in behind them, the three of them entering together.

The dinner crowd was thinning out and it was too early for the night revelers, so Chung’s was only sparsely occupied at the moment. Stanwyck was seated at a black enameled table in the lounge area that formed a semicircle around the bar, under a papier-mâché dragon suspended from the ceiling. Later in the evening when the place began to fill up, the dragon would belch harmless puffs of orange smoke. Meet me under Chung’s dragon. Callie had said that herself often enough in the past.

She took a seat at the bar and ordered a Tsingtao beer. The mirror behind the bar gave her an unobstructed view of Hal Stanwyck... who was clearly nervous and waiting for someone.

Finally, she arrived. The newcomer was a stunning, smallboned Chinese woman wearing a delicately embroidered turquoise dress. This was no first contact; Stanwyck knew her. He was glad to see her, but still nervous.

Callie couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was clear from watching their reflections that what started as an amicable conversation had quickly turned adversarial. Those two were not in accord at all. Finally the woman slapped her small hand on the table and said something that made Stanwyck’s face turn pink.

After a pause, he dipped his right shoulder. Opposite him, the Chinese woman dipped her left shoulder.

He’d passed her something under the table.

Callie’s instructions were clear: Follow the chip. She paid for her beer and left. Across the street from Chung’s Palace was an appliance store, locked up for the night with an iron grille over its glass front. Callie stood with her back against the grille and took her phone out of her backpack.

Kevin Craig would be gone by now, so she’d have to call the night number. Oh, what was his name? The man in charge of night security.

He told her. “Bass Agency, Gene Maxwell speaking.”

Nice voice. “This is Callie Darrow. I’m on a surveillance job for Kevin Craig and I need to get a message to him. Like right now.”

“Please spell your first name, and then tell me the message.”

She spelled Callie and said, “Tell him the transfer took place and I’m on it.”

“Got it. Where are you now, Callie?”

“Outside Chung’s Palace, on the waterfront. My subject’s going to be coming out any minute.”