Joe Gores - Interface

“Walter Hariss speaking.”

“Get the cunt off the other line.”

After a momentary silence, Hariss’ voice, congested with rage, said, “Dawn.”

“Bi-i-ig deal,” said the teenage voice. “I’ve heard it before.” But within a few seconds, Docker and Hariss were alone on the line.

“Listen, you bastard, whoever you are, my family—”

“It’s Peeler,” whined Docker in his asthmatic voice. He became querulous. “His teeth are all over the floor. I had to wipe his blood off my shoes.”

The silence was longer this time. Hariss’ tense, almost frightened voice said, “Gus... Gus is...”

“His nose is up under his forehead.” Docker’s laughter almost got away into hysteria. “Marquez. Kolinski. Rizzato.”

There was cold terror in the importer’s voice by this time.

“Doc... Is this Docker? What do you want?” He was almost whispering. “ What is it , damn you? You’ve got the... the merchandise, the money...”

The operator said, “Your three minutes are up, sir, please signal when through.”

“Thank you, operator.” Docker laughed again. “That’s how long you’ve got, Hariss — as far as I am away from you. Then...”

“My God!” whispered Hariss’ new, terrified voice. “Lo... look, you’ve got a quarter of a million in dope, street prices. Keep it. You’ve got a hundred-seventy-five thousand cash. Keep it. All—”

“I want your life, Hariss,” said Docker in measured tones that carried conviction even through the muffling handkerchief.

“But... but why ?”

Docker laughed again. The laughter went into registers where normal laughter never went.

“Does that matter, Hariss? Your life. Tonight.”

The line was dead. Docker had hung up.

Walter Hariss hung up the phone with a shaking hand. Sweat was running down his face. He looked around the ornate study with eyes whose whites showed all the way around the pupil, giving his heavy features a slightly owl-like look. The eyes did not seem to register what they were seeing. The shaking hand found a cut-glass whisky decanter, splashed generously into imported glass. Italian glass, hand-blown, $86.76 a dozen wholesale...

The phone was ringing. Walter Hariss raised his head. He looked stupidly at the glass in his hand. It was empty. The level in the decanter on the sideboard was three inches lower.

Panic flooded across his features. His eyes sought the Seth Thomas clock, a thing of chrome and plastic and gleaming brass on the antiqued oak sideboard.

Twelve minutes since Docker’s call. Twelve precious minutes gone.

The phone was still ringing. Walter Hariss ran his hand over his eyes, across his fleshy face, as if attempting to dismiss the nightmare.

The phone had stopped ringing.

His daughter’s footsteps came to the study door. She called through the thick hardwood. “I said you were on the other line. He said he’d call back in five minutes.”

“Who...” His voice had an odd tone. He stopped, adjusted it, as if to isolate his family from a viral contagion. He’d had an argument with Dawn on the way home, their relationship was still tender. “Who was it?”

“A man named Neil Fargo. He said—”

“Good! Thank you, Dawn.” The name seemed to act as adrenalin on him. Intelligence and cunning were once more moving behind his eyes. “If I’m on the other line when he calls, tell him to hang on. I want to speak with him. Don’t let him hang up.”

“I’ll rape him,” she said through the door in her sexiest tones.

He got out “Dawn!” sharply before recognizing the mockery in her voice. He finished lamely, “Whatever you think best, Dawn.”

She went away. He dialled on the other line. After several rings, the voice of Blaney, the overweight Rock Hudson, answered, “Bush Street.”

“Where’s Daggert?”

“Out for hamburgers, Mr Hariss.”

“Want to start earning that percentage, Blaney? And there’s fifty cash each in it for you and Daggert besides.”

“You’re on, Mr Hariss.”

“Good. Call in a couple of the temporaries, and then as soon as Daggert gets back, you and he come directly to my house, understand? Four-eighty-eight Sea Cliff Avenue, in the traffic circle right beyond Phalen State Beach parking lot.”

Dimly, he heard the other phone ringing, heard his daughter’s voice in the hallway, heard her step outside his door.

“Daddy...”

He turned from the phone. He called, “Right. Thanks, Dawn. I’ll take it in a second.” Back to the phone. Speaking with the strongarm, his voice had none of the fear it had carried in speaking with Docker. “Right away, Blaney, understand?”

“Got you, Mr Hariss.”

“I want both of you armed.”

He hung up, picked up the other phone, hesitated momentarily as if he feared it might be another call from Docker; but when he spoke his voice was an executive snap. “Is that you, Fargo?”

“Me. Listen, I’m in a pay phone at the airport. All hell broke loose out here while I was sitting in the middle of a fucking traffic jam at South City. Docker’s gone again. Still by car, not by plane. One of your inside men, some hippie kid, is in custody for trying to steal an attaché case—”

“Docker’s?”

“You hired the kid, you know what you told him to do.” Neil Fargo laughed without any particular mirth. “Your other man, that fat little guy dressed up like Robin Hood, was found in the elevator over in the parking garage, out cold. People found him thought he’d had a heart attack. but I saw him and there were some mighty big red marks on his neck. And some lady lost her lunch when she found Peeler stuffed under her car down in the lower level of the garage. So Docker’s been around.”

Hariss was having trouble with his voice again. “Gus... ah, had Gus been struck in the face?”

There was surprise in Neil Fargo’s voice. “Yeah. Hit under the nose with a hard narrow object. The cops think it was the leaf out of an auto spring, but I know damned well Docker karate-chopped him — I’ve seen that fucker in action before. Peeler would have died of encephalitis from having bone driven up into his brain anyway, but he was DOA when the cops got there. Which means he didn’t make any dying statements, and you’re still in the clear.”

Hariss fought to keep the terror out of his voice. “In the clear? I’m not... not in the... Fargo, you’ve got to get up here! Docker called me. Here at home! He said—”

“I thought your lines were unlisted.”

“I...” It was Hariss’ turn for surprise. “They are! How...”

“Did Roberta Stayton know them?”

“Not from me,” said Hariss.

“Kolinski?”

“Certainly.”

“There’s your answer. If she was planning on setting up you and Kolinski for some kind of fall, she’d have asked. What did Docker say?”

“He’s... he said he was...” Hariss was striving for an offhand delivery, but his voice slid into a higher register in midsentence, like a teen-ager’s. “Said he’s coming to kill me. Do you think Roberta Stayton hired him to—”

“What difference does it make if he’s on his way?” His voice had tightened and thinned. “Stay away from windows. Keep the blinds drawn. How long ago did he call?”

“Nearly...” Hariss checked the Seth Thomas again. “Nearly half an hour ago. But he was calling long distance. The operator said his three minutes were up.”

Neil Fargo growled, “That doesn’t mean a fucking thing, long distance starts at the San Mateo County line.”

Hariss was reacting to Neil Fargo’s reaction; the sweat was standing on his face again, and his fingers were slippery around the receiver.