Joe Gores - Interface

“Gus can take care of himself.”

“Against Fargo? I watched him play with the Forty-Niners.” His voice was suddenly worried. “I hope that bastard never finds out that we’ve got Roberta Stayton stashed in the Tenderloin while he’s running all over hell looking for her.”

“I would say we have much more proximate concerns that Neil Fargo,” said Hariss stiffly.

As if to punctuate his remark, the telephone rang. It was 2:47 P.M.

At 2:24 P.M., Docker had gone up the stairs of a faded residence hotel midway along the 600 block of Geary Street. It was a neighborhood of cheap bars, buildings torn down to make way for parking lots, and beyond mid-block, post-quake construction totally without charm.

The heavy varnished front door, its glass protected by twisted wrought iron rods, was open. The way Docker entered made it apparent that he had known the door was unlocked. He limped down the hall on a cheap carpet given spurious depth by the foam rubber pad beneath it, went through another door at the far end of what once had been a quite ornate lobby. A mirror gave him back his own bulky image fragmented by the silver peeling from the back of the mirror.

Rough concrete steps led down a half-flight to another door. This was old, weathered even on the inside, painted a faded yellow which looked almost brown in the dim light. The light over the door didn’t work. Docker let himself out.

This put him in a low-roofed, concrete passageway. At the far end was scraggly foliage, ground-hugging juniper and a wildly out-of-place Fatsia japonica, whose deeply indented spatulate leaves were turning brown from lack of chemicals in the soil. Down a dozen groaning wooden stairs was a narrow alley.

Docker turned left, went along the littered blacktop to pause in a doorway on the right-hand side with his back against the door. The building was of faded red brick. The doorway had a red EXIT light above it in a metal cage. Docker drew on his cigarette, let his eyes roam behind their hornrims. No one was in sight.

Docker ground out the cigarette against the wall, pocketed the stub, pushed backwards against the door. It opened with his weight, he slid through. He was at the foot of dark narrow stairs. He went up them through the gloom, laboring a little with his right leg yet sure-footed, his fingers in their surgical rubber serving as delicate antennae to aid his orientation as do a cat’s whiskers.

At the top of the stairs was a firedoor. The hand that did not hold the attaché case turned the knob. This door was also unlocked. Docker opened it a scant inch, laid an eye to the strip, saw only empty hallway with peeling grey walls and a grey threadbare rug with a pink flower design like spilled animal guts.

He let the firedoor click shut behind him, crossed the hall in two quick strides, twisted the closest knob, went through the door and shut it behind him.

The junkie whore called Robin had turned around the chair over which Kolinski’s coat had earlier been thrown to face the room’s lone window. This stared out at a red brick airshaft through greyed nylon curtains. The open window let air stir her lank hair and the greyed curtains. At this hour oblique sunlight touched only the upper third of the age-softened brick wall opposite.

Robin smiled at Docker over her shoulder, thus throwing her head back and tightening the muscles in her neck to give her throat a smooth deceptive grace. Her face was pinched; normally, she already would have used the second of the glassine bags of heroin Kolinski had left with her.

She laughed softly at the expression on Docker’s face. There might have been the faintest note of hysteria in her merriment. If Docker noticed, he let nothing show in the smile he found to put on.

“He brought your name up himself this morning,” she said. “I didn’t have to maneuver him at all.” Docker said nothing. She said, “I can’t ever get used to...” She stopped, shook her head. She said, “Have you got it?”

Docker opened the attaché case on the bed. “I’ve got it.” He held up one of the baggies of pure heroin for her to see, tossed it on the rumpled covers. He delved again, and dropped on the blanket beside the heroin a ten-cc syringe that looked the twin of the one which Kolinski had used on Robin that morning. “You?”

“In the top drawer of the dresser.”

Docker sighed. He sat down on the edge of the bed, legs thrust wide in front of him. He stared glumly at the cracked dirty linoleum. His position was so unconsciously reminiscent of Kolinski’s that morning and all the other mornings that the girl shuddered.

“Is this the way the world ends?” she asked softly.

Docker raised his head very quickly to surprise the momentary horror on her face. She was still sitting in her chair, knees drawn up to her chest, arms locked around her folded legs. Only her bare feet showed beneath the frayed hem of the nightgown.

“We don’t have to go through with it, Robin.”

“Daphne’s going to call at two-forty-five. You saved out the five thousand?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes were suddenly feverish with rage. “He hurt her this morning. He loves to hurt people. He calls her Aunt Jemima.”

Docker sighed again. “Robin, I still think...”

She ran a hand through her hair. There was some of that morning’s urgency back in her movements, but it was under control. The dregs of the dose Kolinski had administered still remained in her body. The sweats and sniffles were still some way off.

“I thought about getting my hair done,” she said. “Putting on makeup, buying a robe. Then I realized that would ruin it.”

Docker took a turn around the room. His face was icy behind the glasses; a faint sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead. He didn’t meet her eyes. He looked at his inexorable watch as at a bomb. He stopped by the sink, leaned over it as if he wanted to vomit into it. He straightened, turned, leaned back against the wall. He seemed disinclined or unable to stand up straight; being on his feet seemed to tire him.

“Yes,” he said harshly. “Business as usual for it to go down. But...”

“The time for „buts“ is gone.” She paused, added his name deliberately, almost mockingly, as if tasting the shape of it with her mouth. “Docker. The time for anything is gone. Time is gone.”

“It doesn’t have to be—”

“For me it does.”

She stood up, crossed the linoleum on bare narrow feet. Her skin was luminously pale. Although she was a tall woman, her head fit under Docker’s stubborn chin. The chin was already lightly stubbled since his morning shave. She reached up, removed his glasses, folded them, stuck them end-down in the outer breast pocket of his jacket.

She said against his chest, “Jesus, I’ll be glad.” She leaned back to look up into his face, then pressed hers against his chest again. “You understand that, don’t you? I’m tired, tired in my soul.”

Docker put a hand wedge-shaped with muscle under her chin, tipped her head back, bent and with a ritual tenderness pressed his open mouth against hers. It was a long, sexually alive kiss, though the lips of both man and woman were dry and feverish. Her arms went around him, clung fiercely.

She broke the kiss so she could whisper into his mouth. “I wondered whether I would wish we’d saved time for it. Now I’m glad we didn’t.” She suddenly giggled. “I’m probably syphed up again.”

“Robin, there’s still time to call it off...”

She didn’t bother to reject his plea. She began softly humming a dance tune. To a few bars of it they actually danced, a dream-like waltz step from a long time before. Docker’s limp was not apparent in their slow matched movements. They were graceful together.