Joe Gores - Spade & Archer

For now the hotel lobby was deserted. Dust motes danced in the air. The check-in counter was unmanned. From the room behind it came muted voices and the clink of chips.

Spade slapped the round metal bell on the counter several impatient times. A stooped man wearing a green eye-shade stuck his head through the doorway with a surprised look on his face.

“Yes, sir,” he piped. “Can I help you?”

“Benny Ruiz back there?”

“Benny.” He trailed off as if unsure of the name.

“Ruiz. Quit the clown act. Is the Portagee in the game?”

The face disappeared. Another took its place, square and meaty, wearing whiskers and a cigar. “Who’s askin’?”

“Spade.”

“Course it is. Long time no. Try the Lighthouse.”

Spade nodded. “You up or down, Duke?”

“Down twenty berries.”

“When you gonna learn not to draw to an inside straight?”

The head made a rude noise and disappeared. Spade went out into the street to walk north along the waterfront.

The Lighthouse looked like its name, a small white café with a fake octagonal wooden lighthouse on top. The windows were steamy. The clatter of cutlery, the jumble of voices, the smell of frying peppers and spicy Portuguese chorizo came out when Spade pulled the door open. A counter ran down the center of the room with stools in front and the grill behind. There were booths along the front and side walls. In four of them were lean, narrow men in rain slickers, some with missing fingers.

Three of the seven stools along the counter were taken, one by the Lighthouse’s lone woman. When Spade entered all conversation in American ceased. The sweating cook abandoned the hash browns and sausage and eggs he had sizzling on the flat steel grease-stained grill to look at Spade. His shirt was open to show the top of a red union suit.

“Yeah?”

Spade walked through the silence toward the only man at the counter who had not turned to look at him, a wide and thick man with meaty arms and shoulders under a black sweater. His round face was slightly concave, with receding black hair and round brown eyes under thick brows. His nose was broad, open pored, his lips thick. A black peacoat draped the stool beyond him.

Spade took the nearer red vinyl stool. The man turned to look at him. “Hell’s sake, Sam. What’s it been?”

“All of five years,” said Spade.

Conversation resumed. The cook slopped a mug of steaming coffee down in front of Spade. The Portagee had his elbows on the counter, was sucking heavily on a Fatima cigarette.

“New cook, new clientele. Place has changed, Benny.”

Benny Ruiz nodded. “Lots of us Portagees is leggers these days. We get nervous-like when strangers show up.”

“How about you, Benny? Dealing crab or liquor?”

“Both since Prohibition. Hell, Sam, bringing in booze beats working.”

Spade blew on his coffee, sipped it, made a face.

“Dregs of the pot,” said the cook without turning around.

Ruiz stubbed his cigarette out in the remains of his meal, picked up his peacoat, and dropped a quarter beside his plate.

“See you around,” he said.

Spade made and smoked a cigarette, sipped at the vile coffee. After all of ten minutes he tossed a dime on the counter and went outside. Ruiz fell into step beside him.

“Didn’t want to blow the gaff on you, Sam, if you was working a game on somebody for Continental.”

“I’m out on my own now, Benny. Three leggers, Portagees, jumped me in the city last night. They work out of Sausalito. I don’t have names. Maybe you could ask around, find out who’s carrying scars. Find out if one of them took a boat out — his own or somebody else’s — after midnight three nights ago and came back before first light with a load that wasn’t hooch.”

“I’ll be damned. The San Anselmo gold heist?”

“Maybe, maybe not. But there’s reward money out. Find out if he maybe met up with a man named St. Clair McPhee.”

Effie Perine was on her way down the stairs when Spade came in the street door. She stopped, said eagerly, “I can come back up if you need me.”

“Go on home, angel. I’ve been over in Sausalito.”

“Why Sausalito?” She sounded surprised.

“Because that’s where our three mug artists are from. And that’s where the bootleggers keep their boats.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Neither do I, sweetheart. See you tomorrow.”

“Sam, wait! A Phil Geaque — I think that’s how you pronounced it — called. I left his message on your desk.”

“You got it right. Gee-ack.”

“And Sid says his client is getting up on his hind legs. Three ships are slated to sail for Australia with ports of call in the South Seas during the next week and Henny could try to stow away on any of them. Does that still hold what you told me this morning, Sam? That you have Henny nailed down?”

“I’ll know where to find him when the time comes, if that’s what you mean.”

Effie Perine went down and out. Spade went up and in. By the illumination coming through the thin net window curtains he rolled a cigarette, picked up the phone, gave central Kearny 5330-1. He heard Geaque’s voice in his ear.

“Still there, Phil? Scraping the bottom of the barrel?”

“You know us, Sam. We never sleep. Bottom of the barrel is right. The police had to let those four seamen go.”

“There was never anything in that anyway.”

“We wired our Honolulu office to check whether the replacement lock and hasp for Captain Ogilvie were obtained there by the thieves. We haven’t gotten any word yet.”

“And won’t. The locks were changed in Sydney.”

“Locks? Only the captain’s was changed.”

Spade shook his head impatiently even though Geaque could not see him. “All of the locks. The San Anselmo was there eight days with the strong room open and empty and the locks hanging on their chains and their keys hanging on hooks in the ship’s officers’ quarters. Everybody ashore except a seaman or two on watch? Go on with you. New locks, new keys, to replace the old.”

After a long silence Geaque said slowly, “But then the captain replaced his lock with another one of his own, so they had to put on another lock that they’d have a key for.”

“The quartermaster, Kest, is the bird who switched ’em.”

Geaque’s sigh came over the wire. “Kest failed to report for last night’s midnight watch, and today the police found two gold sovereigns in a pawn shop. The man who ex changed them for American money fit Kest’s description. But I find it hard to believe he had the brains to set this whole thing up.”

“Nor did he. It was a passenger got on at Honolulu.”

Geaque’s voice was sharp. “Who is he? What’s his name? Where is he right now?”

“Don’t know, don’t know, and don’t know. He gave the name of St. Clair McPhee — surely false — to the shipping line, paid cash, was first off the boat, and disappeared.”

“That’s him for sure?”

“Sure as death and taxes.”

“The authorities now hold the theory, and I concur, that the gold was stolen before the ship ever arrived in Honolulu, and was off-loaded and hidden there. The thieves’ll be planning to pick it up when the San Anselmo passes through on its way back to Australia. I’ll plant an undercover man aboard in hopes that he can identify them before Honolulu.”

“Waste of time, Phil. The gold was stolen here.”

“You’re wrong, Sam. We’ve confirmed it’s not hidden aboard and there’s been no opportunity to smuggle it off the ship since it docked. It has to be in Honolulu.” Another sigh. “Anyway, the point is moot. We’re out of time here. The authorities can’t hold the San Anselmo much longer.”