Joe Gores - Interface

“Why did you need a wrecker?” asked Stayton. “I gave you all the money you asked for...”

“Money wouldn’t buy them off. Hariss wanted power — the sort of power you have — and Kolinski wanted Robin’s degradation. And a drug distribution setup. They were bringing in a kilo of pure heroin; I made them think I had a cash buyer. Your cash, of course. Since I knew Hariss had an almost pathological fear of being himself involved in anything shady, I suggested Docker as bagman. That way, I said, none of the rest of us would have to show in it at all. Mexican courier, bagman, chemist, nobody else. Hariss loved it. Kolinski was touchy but he went along.”

“So what went wrong?”

“ Docker went wrong — the one element in the situation I thought was stable. He was supposed to lay out the courier and grab the heroin before the chemist showed up. Instead, he killed the fucking courier, hung around to beat up the chemist, then went on the run from me as well as from Kolinski’s people. I thought he’d gone berserk. Now I know he was working to a pre-existent scheme he and Robin had worked out to destroy Kolinski.”

“From the way he died, I’d say he intended to keep both the heroin and the money, and—”

“Not the money. I had never given him that, although he’d handled it, of course. Then this afternoon—”

The phone shrilled, cutting him off.

“That’ll be for me,” he said.

Neil Fargo crossed to the instrument, picked it up, said, “Yeah,” and started listening. He listened for a full three minutes, interjecting only occasional monosyllables. He hung up. He seemed suddenly to dominate the room with ill-concealed excitement.

“They nailed that fucker,” he said.

“Which fucker?”

“Walter Hariss. The narcs, on a tip and with a valid search warrant, just raided his place out in Sea Cliff. Taped to the inside of a toilet lid — the oldest gag in the book — they found a key of pure heroin wrapped in waterproof plastic. Stupid of Hariss, huh? But then the most careful guy around can be made to look stupid if he’s worried about dying.”

Understanding had dawned in Stayton’s eyes. “You mean that you—”

“I mean that when the police technicians get busy inside those layers of plastic, they’re going to find a lot of fingerprints from Julio Marquez, the courier who Docker killed this morning.”

“And on the outside?”

“Smudges only, made by someone careful not to leave fingerprints.”

“But careless enough to hide it inside the toilet tank?” Stayton was on his feet, prowling the office. The fog was gone, black night sky now cloudless, the twinkling insignificant carpet of San Francisco lights spread below his eerie. Facing the window, he said, “Are you really naive enough to believe they’ll make it stick? With the sort of lawyers he’ll be able to afford?”

“Hank Tekawa, the lieutenant in charge of the raid, is a hell of a bright cop,” said Neil Fargo. “Besides, even if he beats this rap, Hariss won’t be out of the woods.”

Stayton whirled suddenly, pointed a blunt finger at him.

“I thought Docker was on the run with that heroin. How did you get it?”

“At one point he ran to the airport. I found him there, as did Kolinski’s people. They didn’t make it stick. Docker told me he was going to make a run for it, by car, to Marin County. I told him we had a chance to knock off Hariss, too, if he’d stop at a phone booth to call Hariss and threaten his life. Then Hariss would ask me to come to his house — to protect him.”

“And Docker did it for you? And gave you the heroin? Just like that?”

“He and I went through a lot together in Vietnam. And he really didn’t much give a shit any more whether he lived or died. Not once Roberta was gone. He left the heroin where he knew I’d find it once he saw he wasn’t going to make it out of San Francisco.”

Stayton sighed. “I’m not saying I believe you. But even if I did, your reconstruction leaves out one important item: my hundred-seventy-five thousand dollars. If Docker never did have it—”

“Hundred-seventy. Five thousand went to the black girl.”

“All right. Hundred-seventy thousand.”

“It’s in a safe deposit box.”

“In your name, I suppose?” There was a sneer in his voice.

“In Walter Hariss’.”

There was a moment of frozen silence. Stayton exploded, “Are you mad? Putting that kind of money in—”

“Internal Revenue will receive the tip in the morning. One of the safe deposit keys will be found in Hariss’ office desk. I put it there myself earlier this week. I dropped the other down a manhole this morning after putting the money in the box.”

“But the signature won’t be Hariss’—”

“He’s going to convince Internal Revenue of that? A hundred-seventy-thousand in cash, old bills, not sequential, not traceable, not reported on his income tax returns? They’ll pick him clean and jug him for tax fraud, then audit him for the rest of his life — even if he would beat the narcotics rap, which I don’t believe for a second. The beauty of it is, however loud he screams, nobody’ll believe it’s a frame. The amount is just too goddam big. Nobody would put out that kind of money to do somebody down. That’s why it’ll work.”

Stayton was silent for a time, mouth set in an angry slash. Finally he said, “And his family? His wife and daughter?”

“He should have thought of them before he started fucking around with Kolinski. You should have thought of them before you hired me.”

Stayton had an expression in his eyes which could have been respect not unmingled with fear. “You’re a cold-blooded bastard, aren’t you, Fargo?”

“I’m a manhunter. I work at it.”

“And you say that your friend Docker was a hard man?”

“Not hard enough,” said Neil Fargo. “He’s dead.”

“So is my daughter.”

“By her own hand, Stayton. Remember that. She wanted to die. She was a syphed-up junkie whore, she’d have died before she was forty of malnutrition or an accidental OD or one of the diseases hypes don’t have enough resistance to avoid getting. Serum hepatitis, spinal meningitis — shit, you know the litany. This way she went out clean, took Kolinski with her — the man who’d made her what she’d become. Or at least had given her the opportunity.”

Stayton looked old, crumpled, scarcely strong enough to have made the already discoloring bruise on Neil Fargo’s face. “I’d better get home. The boy doesn’t know about his mother’s death yet, I haven’t...” He stopped speaking. A frown creased his tired features. “You said your friend Docker was going to try to bust out — north, into Marin County. Why did he have to bust out? The police didn’t know where he was or what he was driving. Only one man knew...”

Neil Fargo was silent for long moments. Then he nodded.

“Yeah. Sure. He could have pointed the finger at us all. At you. At me. He could have cleared Kolinski, could have cleared Hariss. And he had become an unstable man.”

“But... he was supposed to be your friend! You... he’d saved your life in Vietnam.”

Neil Fargo shrugged. “So I’m a son of a bitch. But I’m still alive. And Docker isn’t.”

“You won’t ever work for me again, Fargo,” the industrialist choked out. His voice shook. “You know that I value personal loyalty above any... Not now, not ever again.”

Neil Fargo shrugged. From the doorway, he said, “You never gave a shit about what happened to Robin, Stayton. Only about the fact that she was carrying your name. You think you care she’s dead, but you don’t. Not really. Now you’ve got her son all to yourself. You failed with her, you think you won’t fuck it up this time with the kid. The only one who cared about Robin — really cared about Robin — was Docker. He loved her enough to help her go out with dignity.”