Joe Gores - Spade & Archer

“Did you find Henny? Is he all right?”

“Yeah,” said Spade.

Effie Perine said, perhaps snidely, “You could at least have rubbed the lipstick off your cheek.”

“The boy’s mother was grateful to get her son back all in one piece, that’s all. C’mon — you’ll hear all about it.”

An hour later they were eating ham, eggs, toast, and marmalade and drinking coffee with Sid Wise in the Palace Hotel on New Montgomery just south of Market. Where horse-drawn carriages had once stopped to drop off wealthy top-hatted and bejeweled patrons there was now an ornate roofed lobby with a fancy dining room.

Sid Wise had one of the morning papers braced against the silver coffeepot, folded open to the story of the midnight gold recovery aboard the San Anselmo.

“According to the newshawks, Sergeant Dundy has had his eyes on Grost and Grafton since the day the theft was discovered. Of course he figured they’d have to make their move on the night before the ship sailed, so he directed patrolman Tom Polhaus to have men concealed on the dock and aboard the ship. The thieves appeared with the gold in an iron-bound chest—”

“Sam isn’t even mentioned?” demanded Effie Perine.

“I’m surprised Tom got mentioned,” said Spade. “As for me, it isn’t just Henny’s ma who’s grateful. His old man is happy his kid’s escapade won’t be making the newspapers, so he’ll pay without a squawk. And plenty, too.” Spade grinned. “The kid’s taking no harm. Just getting caught was an adventure.”

“How did you know where to look?” asked Effie Perine.

“One of the lifeboats had food and clothing and novels about the South Seas in it.”

“But how’d you know last night?”

“The ship is sailing this afternoon.”

“Then there’s the reward money,” said Effie Perine.

“The International Banking Corporation will make the point that total recovery wasn’t made — seventy-five thousand worth of stolen gold is still missing,” said Wise. “They’ll say their policy is that the reward gets paid only on full recovery.”

“It isn’t fair!” exclaimed Effie Perine.

Wise popped the last piece of toast into his mouth, chewed, nodded. “But that’s the way they’ll play it.”

“But all along Sam’s been focused on the reward money!”

“So everybody else would focus on it, Effie. The two real questions have always been, who is St. Clair McPhee really, and how did he get the rest of the loot off the San Anselmo?”

“Is that why you went to Sausalito?”

Spade turned to Wise, who had tented his hands under his chin and was staring judiciously at the ornate chandelier overhead.

“Hear that, Sid? I told you she was a smart Greek.”

“Never knew one who wasn’t. And that’s a Jew who says it.”

Spade said to Effie Perine, “Now the point is to find McPhee, and pronto. He has his gold, but he isn’t through yet.”

Effie Perine asked, “Is he the one who hired those men?”

“Yeah.” Spade’s face darkened. “He won’t want anyone around who can identify him.”

“You mean he might—”

“Kill people? Sure. Anyone who helped get him the seventy-five thousand dollars that he got away with, and me, who kept him from getting the other fifty thousand dollars. I have to take him down, and quick.”

“But the papers are saying it was Dundy who found it.”

“McPhee, whoever he is, will know better than that.”

When they walked into Spade’s office, leaving Wise behind, the phone was ringing. Spade hung his hat on the rack by the door; Effie Perine picked up. “Samuel Spade Investigations.”

As he was crossing toward his private office she waved him to wait with the hand not over the receiver.

“A man calling himself the Portagee wants you to meet him at the Blue Rock Inn in Larkspur,” she said. “He sounds tough.”

“He is tough. Tell him I’m on my way.” There was satisfaction in Spade’s voice. “I’ve been waiting for his call.”

Though it was noon there was no sun in Sausalito. The train to San Rafael would go through Larkspur, but not soon enough. After leaving the ferry, Spade hunted up the “Hamburger Line” taxi — “two Greeks and six cabs” — that had recently expanded from San Francisco into Marin, and climbed into the front seat beside the cabdriver of the line’s lone Studebaker sedan. He pulled his topcoat tighter around him.

“Larkspur. The Blue Rock Inn.”

The gap-toothed skinny driver had rheumy eyes and a tweed cap pulled down over his ears and fur-lined gloves on his hands. He looked over at Spade disconsolately.

“Cold old ride up over the mountain. Train’ll be going in an hour,” he said, as if reluctant to venture out of the relative shelter of town into the windswept lower reaches of Tamalpais.

“I don’t have an hour,” said Spade.

The driver nodded sadly and slammed the car into gear, and they took off with a jerk. The two-lane road ran from Richardson Bay to Larkspur, first out across the lowland tidal flats, then up and over the hill beyond Mill Valley. It was a corkscrewing, up-and-down nine-mile ride on gravel.

Air rushing around the edges of the windscreen made talk impossible, so Spade rolled and smoked cigarettes and stared out at the pines and redwoods and, on the steeper slopes, manzanita and Scotch broom. Black-crested Steller’s jays flitted through the foliage. Once Spade looked back and could see the city gleaming white across the bay.

The taxi went down a winding decline through a final set of racetrack curves, past a farmhouse and a red barn with horses in the hillside pasture. Then they were back on level ground and chugging along Magnolia Avenue. Beyond more groves of towering redwoods the tiny town of Larkspur appeared. The driver pulled off the road opposite the newly refurbished Blue Rock Inn.

“Guess I better wait for you?” he asked in glum hope. A return fare other than Spade would be rare indeed.

“Yeah. And get yourself a drink. On me.”

“Hey, you’re all right, cap.”

They crossed the street together and went into the restaurant. There was no traffic, few pedestrians. The bar, against the right-hand wall, made no pretense of abiding by the strictures of Prohibition. A sign in the dining room read:

Under it was another notice, for the hotel on the top floors:

The cabbie took a stool while Spade walked back through the empty dining room looking for Benny Ruiz. He found the Portagee at the farthest table in the rear, under a window looking out onto unpaved Ward Street. There was a bottle of cheap red wine and two filled glasses in front of him. He was sucking on a Fatima. He raised his glass in greeting. There was a dirty bandage around his left forearm.

“You made quick time, Sam.”

“Hired a cab.” Spade sat, picked up the second glass, drank. He didn’t seem to see the bandage. “What are you doing out here in Larkspur?”

Ruiz shrugged heavy shoulders. “I asked around like you said, about someone going out the night before the San Anselmo gold heist was discovered.”

“And?”

“Legger name of Fundão ‘Fingers’ Lisboa spread it around he had a load of hooch coming in that night. But when he went out at one a.m. it was in his dinghy. His motor launch is the fastest on the bay, even carrying thirty cases of Canadian, and he leaves it behind. Foggy night, nobody seen where he went.”

“What time’d he come back?”

“Three thirty, four.”