Joe Gores - Interface

Neil Fargo paid, tipped enough but not so much he’d be remembered. He was three blocks from his office. He said, “I think you’ve got something too. About milk.”

The cabbie’s face seamed in a grin. “Me an’ Mark Spitz.”

Neil Fargo walked down to the closed Seventy-Six station, got his Fairlane started so the defroster would clear the windows, left it running while he used the pay phone.

“I’m on my way up,” he said. “Ten minutes.”

California Street in-town was mostly clear of traffic apart from clots at the red lights and pedestrian cross-traffic where Grant Avenue dragged Chinatown athwart his bow. The fog had dissipated enough to show him the flat glitter of Treasure Island as he went down Nob Hill past a rattling, nearly-empty cable car. There was an empty slot across from darkened Tadich’s Grill.

He walked back to Montgomery Street, and the two short blocks out to Clay where the immense leg-like white pillars slanted up to support the massive pyramid shape. He signed in with a fictitious name, for the second time that day was whisked up to Stayton Enterprises. The outer door past Miss Laurence’s deserted desk was open, and Maxwell Stayton’s blocky silhouette filled his private doorway.

Only when he turned to accompany Neil Fargo into his office did the lights slant across his features, showing how the day had ravaged them. But he said, “More like eighteen minutes.”

“And time is money. How’s Dorothy taking it?”

“Another fucking stupid question. Cognac?”

“No, thanks. I’ve already had one. Which reminds me.”

He took the brandy snifter from his pocket which he had carried away from Hariss’ house. Stayton frowned uncomprehendingly at it.

“Evidence?” he asked.

Neil Fargo nodded. He went around behind the desk.

“Fingerprints?”

He nodded again, rapped the glass sharply on the rim of the wastebasket to break it, dropped the shards into the basket. “My own. I didn’t want to leave any hard evidence I’d been out at Walter Hariss’ house tonight, so I carried it away with me. If he can’t prove I was there, he takes a long fall.”

Maxwell Stayton began, “If you think I’m going to—”

“I came in with you, Max, remember? After we’d had supper together to discuss your daughter’s murder. You pick the restaurant — somewhere they won’t contradict anything you say. And have a word or two with the security guard here in case he’s ever questioned—”

“Why should I?”

Neil Fargo sat down in the same chair as that morning. Also like the morning, Stayton sat down behind the desk. The detective put his head back against the curved leather back, stared at the ceiling. His legs were thrust out ahead of him in utter relaxation, his hands hung loosely on either side of the chair arms. He was so motionless he might have been asleep.

To the ceiling, he said, “Because if you don’t, the frame against Harris won’t stick. Or might not stick. Of course you can tell me to go to hell. What the fuck, nobody pushes old Maxy Stayton around.”

Stayton reached for a cigar. His hands shook, very slightly; it had been a long day. He said icily, “You’d do well to remember that, Fargo. With my daughter dead, your claim to my consideration...”

Neil Fargo met his eyes steadily.

“Uh-uh. I’ll get by. You said this morning that you wanted the men responsible for Robin destroyed. And like magic, by tonight they’re destroyed. I hope you like it.”

“Kolinski destroyed himself by murdering Robin. As for Hariss—”

“Bullshit. Robin suicided. With ninety-five percent pure heroin that I used your hundred-seventy-five grand as bait to bring up across the border from Mexico.”

Maxwell Stayton got almost clumsily to his feet and came around the end of the desk. His cigar was in his left hand. He slowly hooked a hip over the edge of his desk and leaned forward so he loomed over the younger man. Neil Fargo made no move at all.

“Say that again.”

“Not that I knew Robin was going to get her hands on any of it,” continued Neil Fargo as if the older man had not moved or spoken. “That was something she and Docker cooked up between them.”

“Docker’s the man you said this morning you trusted and shouldn’t have? The same Docker who the eleven o’clock news said went off a cliff in the Presidio in a stolen car?”

“The same Docker.”

Stayton said in a terrible, soft voice, “How did Docker and my daughter come to meet?”

“It’s a long story. But he was in my employ, and—”

Stayton’s heavy features convulsed. Without the rest of his body moving, his right arm swept in a tight vicious arc so his massive right fist smashed against Neil Fargo’s cheekbone, driving his head sideways with such power that it upset him, chair and all. He hit the floor on one shoulder, came up with fists like rocks hanging at his sides, very much like a downed fighter will bounce up before the mandatory eight count to show he hasn’t been hurt by the blow which floored him.

For quite thirty seconds, Neil Fargo stood in the middle of the room breathing deeply, staring at his employer with eyes like hot coals. Then the tension went out of his pose.

“Feel better?” he asked.

Stayton made a vague gesture. He went back around his desk, sat down slowly in the massive executive chair, slowly put his head between his hands. His cigar jutted out from between his palms like the barrel of a gun.

“When I said this morning I wanted them destroyed...”

“Roberta did it for you. At least Kolinski. She bought his destruction with her own death and with five thousand dollars for the testimony of the black girl on the desk.”

Stayton’s voice said brokenly from between his hands, “The five thousand for the black girl. That came from my hundred-seventy-five—”

“Yeah. Docker took it out at Robin’s suggestion. I didn’t even know it was missing until too late.”

“It’s... gotten away from me, hasn’t it?” asked Stayton almost querulously.

“Yeah.” Neil Fargo rubbed a palm across his bruised face. “You’re past it, daddy. But you still pack a hell of a wallop.” He suddenly shrugged wryly. “Shit, it got away from both of us.”

A gleam appeared in Stayton’s eyes. “Meaning Docker?”

“Docker and Robin. I should have been able to foresee that if she’d gotten sick of life she’d do something about it. And find somebody like Docker to help her do it.”

He righted the chair he had been sitting in, slumped back against it once more. He tilted his head back, began talking in a soft voice.

“Let me tell you about Docker. Captain in my outfit in Nam, a tough cookie, the hardest man I’ve ever known. Then he was MIA, presumed dead until the big POW release, when he turned up on one of the lists. He looked me up when he came through Travis Air Force Base. Still just as tough, but the Cong had put him in a cage for a number of months. It turned the hard into nasty...”

He stopped talking. Stayton said, “Did Robin buy his cooperation, too?”

“They met in Mexico City,” said Neil Fargo. He sighed and lowered his head to look at the industrialist. “That’s where it got away from me. When you hired me to find Roberta this last time, and I found out here and in Mexico what I was up against — her addiction — and who I was up against — Kolinski and Hariss — I needed a wrecker. The Cong had made a wrecker out of Docker, so I contacted him in Vegas, where he’d gone to work as security in one of the big hotels, and hired him. Without knowing he and Robin had met in Mexico when she was down there trying to kick her habit, and had... I guess, had fallen for each other for a while.”