Joe Gores - Interface

“Well well well,” said Tekawa softly. “Didn’t know you were interested in real estate.”

Neil Fargo jerked a thumb at the bed. “In her.”

“Did you notice the syringe rolled under the edge of the bed? Beautiful set of latents on it. If they should be Kolinski’s...”

“It’d break your heart.” Neil Fargo added in an amused voice, “I saw you had him resisting arrest a little bit.”

Maley turned from the window, where he’d been staring down the airshaft as if carefully disassociating himself from the conversation. He had pleasantly blunt Irish features, wavy red hair just being touched around the edges with grey.

“Kolinski panicked when he saw us in the doorway behind him, tried to bust out. Past Hank.”

“ Hai! ” yipped Neil Fargo softly. He went suddenly into the karate front stance, threw in rapid succession an upward knife hand and a fisthammer, stepped away into a back stance, straightened, relaxed, laughed, and said, “Bullshit.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” said Tekawa to his partner. “He could put a bottom fist through this wall without bruising anything but the plaster.”

“I’d rather stand six feet back and throw an ash tray at ’em,” grinned Maley. His voice hardened. “You said you were interested in the deceased, Fargo. Exactly what did you mean by that?”

“Whoa, hoss,” said the detective softly. He looked at Tekawa. “You figure out yet why Alex Kolinski might want to OD a two-bit junkie whore?”

“That’s what worries me,” admitted Tekawa. He looked as worried as a slab of bacon. “She was going to turn him as a pusher?”

“Hank, we both know the connection isn’t a son of a bitch to the hype. He’s Mr Nice with the big cotton candy.”

“Accidental?”

“I don’t see Alex Kolinski making in front of a couple of narcs the kind of mistake Alex Kolinski wouldn’t make in the first place. If he was OD’ing her, it was a deliberate hotshot.”

Maley had been frowning from one to the other. He stepped suddenly in front of Neil Fargo, put a hand on his chest and shoved, not hard but not gently. Neil Fargo gave back a pace. Maley repeated the action. This time Neil Fargo didn’t move. Maley was nearly as tall as the private detective, but without the tremendous overlay of muscle the ex-pro footballer carried.

“You didn’t answer my question, Fargo. And we don’t feel like answering yours.”

“Sweet and sour, Hank? Honey and vinegar? Even to people who just see it on TV, that’s a wheeze. If you want me to get into trouble just have him put his hands on me again.”

“Jerry. It’s okay.” Henry Tekawa’s soft, unaccented voice had a hidden whiplash in it.

Maley stepped back looking confused, as if he wasn’t used to being denied his partner’s backing, especially in the time-honored police whipsaw of one cop being nasty, the other friendly.

“Which leaves you being tipped,” said Neil Fargo.

“Right,” said Tekawa. “That he was not only overdosing her, but with a hotshot of ninety-five percent pure shit. Somebody named Docker—”

“An anonymous tipster who gives you his name?” Neil Fargo started to laugh sardonically.

“He called me yesterday at the Hall, asked for me personally. Voice like he was eating mush. Very aggressive, very nervous, quick — hyper, you understand?”

“Dropping amphetamines?”

“Could be. Said yesterday he would give me a big drug bust, said he’d call again this morning. He did.”

“Hank, are you sure—” Maley began.

“It’s okay, Jerry,” said the Japanese again. “He told us to be at the greasy spoon down on the corner at two-fifteen. We waited until two-fifty for his call. He stalled around, suddenly said Kolinski was up here killing somebody with an overdose.”

“Knew ahead Kolinski was going to do it, waiting for him to show up.” Neil Fargo’s eyes gleamed. “Or was Kolinski maybe framed for it?”

“Not if it’s his fingerprints on that syringe. And not unless somebody bought the black chick on the desk to screw down the lid on him. Christ, Neil, I’m not sure the girl was even quite dead when we came in.” He paused. “Okay. Your turn.”

“Buttering up your partner?” grinned Neil Fargo.

Maley’s face darkened and his fists clenched at his sides, but he said nothing. His eyes were on Henry Tekawa, filled with a veiled anger and contempt.

“ You weren’t after Kolinski, were you, Neil?” asked Tekawa softly.

“No. A girl.”

“ This girl?”

“You have to ask?” His face was suddenly tired. “Voice like he was eating mush, you said. Same kind of voice called my secretary just before three o’clock, said I’d find my subject at this hotel. Didn’t identify himself as anyone named Docker, but it was probably the same guy.”

“And who is the subject?” Tekawa’s voice was still soft.

“Her name was Roberta Stayton.”

Jerry Maley, who had been silently prowling the tiny area of free floor space between the bed and the window, stopped abruptly. He let his breath hiss out between his teeth.

“As in Maxwell Stayton?”

“His daughter. Spoiled rich kid, the old story — debutante coming out ten or twelve years ago, when debs still came out, Stanford, then a quick marriage that cost the old man fifty thou to cut loose, a son from it. After that, pretty wild.”

“You went to Stanford yourself, didn’t you, Fargo?” asked Maley. There was frank insinuation in his voice.

“Yeah. And I knew Roberta Stayton there, yeah. She was a couple of years behind me. I also played football there, which was how her old man knew me. And why he started hiring me to find her when she started disappearing.”

“You did a good job this time,” snickered Maley.

“She was a girl who liked to kick off her shoes in a hotel room and settle down with a bottle.” He shrugged. “ Anybody’s hotel room. I doubt if she even would have drawn a line at an Irishman.”

Henry Tekawa cut in quickly, “You’re saying she was a lush, not a junkie, Neil? If you’d seen the tracks inside her elbows and on the backs of her knees—”

“No, I’m not saying that. She was a hype, all right. That’s the word I picked up down in Mexico City a couple of weeks ago when I followed her trail down there. But it’s a recent development — within the past year.” He paused, very deliberately. “The word around is that Kolinski’s the one who introduced her to the needle. He used to be her old man’s chauffeur three, four years ago.”

“Convenient,” muttered Maley.

“Are you offering this as a possible motive?”

“I’m not offering anything as anything, Hank. I’m giving you what I know. But here’s something else I know: Roberta Stayton was a very hard-nosed girl. If she decided to take a cure, and if Kolinski hooked her originally, she could very well have decided to blow the whistle on him. And he could have decided to... Christ, Hank, face it: if you hadn’t walked in on him, it’d have gone down in the books as an accidental, self-administered OD. Right?”

“Right. And now all we have to do is figure out who the hell Docker is and where the hell he fits into all this.”

“ You do,” corrected Neil Fargo. “Docker’s your problem, not mine. Mine is telling old man Stayton he just lost an heir.”

“You sound all broken up for him,” said Tekawa precisely, like a sparrow eating sunflower seeds.

“He’s a tough old bastard, played for the Bears in the thirties. He’ll stand up to it. See you at the gym tonight, Hank?”

“Sure.” Tekawa went into a karate stance of his own. “I’ll set you on your ass.”

“Ten bucks says you don’t.” He paused deliberately. “On that other thing I talked to you about...”