Joe Gores - Spade & Archer

Spade’s voice betrayed urgency. “When will it sail?”

“They’ll start loading cargo tomorrow, let the passengers aboard the next day, and sail that afternoon.”

“Thanks,” said Spade and hung up abruptly.

He locked the office and left, but did not go back to his apartment in Ellis Street. He caught a down car to the Ferry Building, walked out to Pier 35. When the loading started in the morning there would be lots of activity, but at midnight the San Anselmo was deserted. As it had been the night he’d gone aboard to watch Grost and Grafton, the gangplank was unguarded.

Spade easily vaulted over the gate across the head of the gangway, landed on the deck on almost silent feet, and cat-footed it across the boat deck to the lifeboats.

In the third one he checked he obviously found what he was looking for. He left the ship wearing a satisfied expression.

“Tomorrow night,” he muttered to himself.

At 6 o’clock the next evening Sam Spade strolled through the cigar store that fronted Sly-Pork Cunningham’s pool hall across from Pier 27. He looked successful, dapper, almost dandyish in a blue woolen double-breasted suit, a hand-tailored blue patterned tie, and shiny black oxfords. He was smoking a cigar.

Able-bodied seamen Grost and Grafton were playing rotation at one of the six green felt tables. The pool hall was high ceilinged, noisy with the clack of balls and the voices of the kibitzers lining the walls in straight-backed wooden chairs. The overhead lights were filtered through cigar and cigarette smoke.

Grafton ran the three through nine before miscuing on the ten. Spade spoke in a flat, almost menacing voice.

“I play the winner. Dime a ball.”

Grost took him in, almost sneered. “Private game, Mac.”

“I play the winner, dime a ball,” said Spade in that tone.

Grost was the heavy-bodied one, thick and slow in a faded tight-fitting middy and blue jeans that bagged on heavy flanks. His body looked poised for violence, but his chin was just going south and his piglike eyes could not hold Spade’s stony stare.

“Ah, OK, sure. Ah, anything you want.”

Rattled, he shot and missed. They played out their game hurriedly. Grafton won. Spade put aside his cigar and selected one of the cues held upright in the rack midway down the room, laid it on the table, and rolled it back and forth. It was bowed, rolled unevenly. The next one he selected rolled flawlessly.

As he chalked up he said, “Lag for break.”

Grafton won the break. Spade set them up, tightly so they would break wide, hung the wooden triangle back up on the wall.

Grafton put so much force into his break that the twelve ball jumped off the table. Spade fielded it left-handed like a good shortstop, set it back on the green felt.

Grafton made the one and two balls, had to try a bank shot for the three, missed. Spade ran the rest of the table in order. He put his cue back in the rack, picked up his still-smoldering cigar. With ill grace, Grafton gave him a dollar.

“Close enough,” said Spade. “Let’s barber. Outside.”

Grafton stepped up close, almost chest to chest. In sharp contrast to his fellow seaman he was lithe and lean, his work clothes almost tailored, his face bland but his eyes dark and blade sharp. Emboldened by him, Grost stepped closer too.

“Who the hell you think you’re kidding, Mac?”

Spade touched his ear. “Too many lugs hanging out in here.” He leaned close, murmured without any apparent movement of his lips, “The sovereigns,” then walked out.

He had thrown his stogie into the gutter and had started rolling a cigarette when the two seamen came up to him.

“This had better be good,” said Grafton in an icy tone.

Spade hunched against the fog-laden evening wind to fire up his cigarette with his lighter.

“The San Anselmo boards passengers tomorrow morning and sails for Australia in the afternoon. You two only have tonight to get the rest of the gold off.”

“We don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” mumbled Grafton.

Spade dragged in smoke and looked around in exaggerated confusion. “Am I talking to the wrong people here? Kest must have told you to be on the lookout for me before he lost his guts and ran away and hid.”

They seemed to struggle for what to say. Spade shrugged as if in disgust, started up Sansome Street. The two men hesitated, then hurried to fall into step with him.

“We knew there was someone, but Kest — he didn’t say nothing,” said Grost. “We been waitin’ for him to—”

“Shut up, you damn fool!” snarled Grafton.

Spade chuckled. “What a smart pair you are! He’ll rat you out to the cops to save his own hide. I got most of the gold off the night the San Anselmo arrived, but I told Kest a couple of hiding places aboard ship just in case. I figured it was safer for all of us if you two never met me face-to-face. But with the ship leaving tomorrow I have to chance it.”

“We was promised a third of what we hid aboard, but now we want half.”

Spade looked angry, then tossed away his butt, shrugged.

“OK, half it is, seeing as how we’ll be splitting Kest’s share. I’ve got a Chink merchant lined up in Chinatown’ll give me seventy-five cents for every dollar of gold I bring him. But you boys don’t see a dime unless you recover the rest of it tonight.”

Grafton got a crafty look. “Look here, mister, how do we know you ain’t just some grifter tryna cut yourself in?”

“You birds figure you can smuggle off the gold still aboard when you get to Honolulu.” Spade shook his head. “You’ll land in the brig for sure. I’ll see to that. But if you move it here tonight you’ll get your share. Tomorrow’s too late.”

Spade started walking again. Grafton hurried to catch up. “Maybe you don’t have no idea if there’s gold hidden aboard. Maybe you’re just tryna con us into telling you things.”

“Half’s in a vent pipe from the fuel tanks, the other half’s in a scupper from the boat deck to the promenade deck.”

They stared at him in silence. Grafton got sly again. “Where are you gonna be while we’re takin’ all the risks?”

“Waiting for you on the dock with a car,” said Spade.

Grafton shook his head. “Uh-uh. You’re gonna be right there with us so you’ll be in the can with us if anything goes wrong.”

Spade sighed, shrugged. “You birds are too smart for me.”

From the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Office in Powell Street, Spade called Tom Polhaus in the Detective Squad Room at the Hall of Justice. “Dundy around, Tom?”

“Gone home.” Polhaus chuckled. “So we can talk, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

“That’s what I’m driving at.”

“I can’t be goin’ around behind my partner’s back, Sam.”

“He would behind yours. Bring him in after if that’s what you want, but if he knows about the play beforehand he’ll hex it for sure. And he’ll hog the glory and the promotions. Do you want in on the San Anselmo gold-theft collars or not?”

“Damn, I just knew you had a line to that gold,” said Tom.

Spade talked, hung up, called a Hertz Drive-Ur-Self station and said he would be by to pick up a car within the hour. At Bernstein’s in Powell Street he had a plate of steamed clams, then walked to his apartment to change clothes.

An hour after midnight a 1920 Model T Ford went out along Pier 35 to stop at the wooden fence. Its streamlined hood and big radiator with nickel trimmings gleamed under wet-haloed dock lights. Beyond the fence the black curved side of the San Anselmo stretched up into darkness. In the bay Alcatraz was baying like an old hound, Land’s End lighthouse was yapping back from beyond the Gate.