Joe Gores - Spade & Archer

“We know who they are,” barked Dundy. “How come you do?”

Spade looked across the bodies to address Tom Polhaus. “Lisboa, Mondego, and Berlingas are the three thugs I asked you about, Tom, the ones who tried to mug me on the Embarcadero.”

Dundy had been standing stiffly, bent at the waist, tensely expectant. Now he almost sprang forward, exclaiming, “Samuel Spade, I arrest you for the murders of—”

“Better ask the sheriff about that,” said Spade, stepping neatly out of his grasp. “On this side of the bay you don’t have the authority to arrest a dog for lifting its leg.”

“That’s right, Sergeant,” said the sheriff quickly. “In fifteen, when Sam was with Continental, he done a couple of nifty jobs he wouldn’t take no credit for. Didn’t hurt me none with the voters come election time. So we’re gonna let the coroner get at these bodies an’ all of us is gonna go up to my office at the San Rafael Courthouse an’ we’re gonna put our bottoms on our chairs and put our heads together and figger out where we stand ‘fore anybody starts arrestin’ anybody.”

“And that was that,” said Sam Spade. “I told them what had happened the night the gold was stolen, and who killed those four men, and why, so now Benny Ruiz is out of jail and Dundy’ll have to wait for another day to put the cuffs on me.”

“That’s an explanation that doesn’t explain anything.”

“Explanations usually don’t, Sid.”

They were eating lamb chops and roasted potatoes and lettuce and tomatoes in one of the dark-wood back booths at John’s Grill on Ellis Street, just a block from Spade’s room.

“Who did kill them?” asked Effie Perine.

Spade pointed a carrot stick at her. “I told you all along that your missing passenger who didn’t have any luggage — St. Clair McPhee — was the mastermind behind all this.”

“Will they get him?”

“He’s too slick. But I’m not going to forget him, and someday...” He began counting off on his fingers. “Fingers Lisboa dead with the back of his head stove in with a shovel. Kest dead with his throat—”

Wise said in a warning tone, “Sam.”

Effie Perine’s hand had gone to her throat and her face had turned pale at his offhand descriptions.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” said Spade.

“That — that’s all right. I need to hear it.”

Spade returned to his count. “Kest with his throat cut from ear to ear. The coroner couldn’t find a mark on either of the other two thuggers, Mondego and Berlingas, but I’m betting on poison in their whiskey. They knew his face and hadn’t enough brains to stay out of trouble. That’d be enough for McPhee.”

“How do you connect all four dead men to him?” asked Wise.

Spade leaned back to roll a cigarette, wincing slightly.

“Start at Sydney. That’s where the heist was put into play. Previously McPhee had told Kest to switch the strong room locks. McPhee would come aboard at Honolulu. Geaque found that the record shows he’d made that round-trip twice before and could have known that fresh green bananas were stowed on wooden latticework racks on the poop deck with enough room left to work the mooring lines. Until the ship docked at San Francisco, a perfect place for Kest and the two graveyard-watch hands, Grost and Grafton, to hide the five chests of gold they’d stolen.”

Wise put a forkful of pink lamb in his mouth and chewed. “Where was McPhee while they looted the strong room?”

“In his stateroom. He didn’t want anyone except Kest to know who he was. I think even then he planned to kill Kest.”

Effie Perine said, “I can’t believe that none of the pursers or cabin boys or crewmen could describe him.”

Spade shook his head in disgust. “Oh, they described him. Late twenties, heavy beard, dark-haired, sort of a dandy. But when he boarded at Honolulu he was bundled up despite the climate. Looked frail, claimed to be recuperating from a long illness, so he took his meals in his cabin and never ventured out on deck. Not when anyone could get a look at him, anyway.”

“So the chests were hidden on deck under the bananas.”

“Sure. McPhee was counting on the ship to arrive here too late for quarantine. It almost always did.”

The waiter brought coffee and honey-soaked Greek baklava. Spade ground out his cigarette and was silent until after Effie Perine had poured coffee and passed the sweets.

“That meant the San Anselmo would have had to anchor off until dawn. By ten thirty the ship was a seagoing morgue. At, say, one a.m. McPhee got busy. A one-man job aboard, another man with a small boat waiting in under the stern of the ship.”

“Fingers Lisboa from Sausalito?” asked Effie Perine.

Spade nodded appreciatively. “You’ve got it, Effie. McPhee started lowering the chests down to him, one at a time. But the tug showed up early. He only got three chests off-loaded before Lisboa had to leave so he wouldn’t get spotted. Predawn, McPhee told Kest to have Grost and Grafton hustle around hiding the rest of the gold aboard ship and dumping the empty chests off the stern, open, so they would sink.”

“Tom Polhaus sent divers down to find them like you told him, and found them,” said Effie Perine. “It was in the papers.”

Sid Wise said, “How do you know all this, Sam?”

“Because it’s the only way the facts we have can be fit together to make sense.”

“Dundy would think prior knowledge.”

“Dundy never thinks. Anyway, our boy disembarked with the rest of the passengers, that night caught the car ferry at the Hyde Street pier to pick up Lisboa in Sausalito. Together they buried the gold under the house in Sausalito.” He shook his head. “It’s ironic in a way.”

“What is, Sam?”

“That’s the house where Robert Louis Stevenson lived before he sailed for the South Seas. One of the main reasons Henny Barber wanted to stow away was to see Stevenson’s grave up on Mount Vaea in Western Samoa. His romantic dream brought us into the case to mess up McPhee’s plans. Once I was in, I wanted to break the robbery and get the guy behind it. From the start something about him—”

“How about Kest?” asked Effie Perine.

“He was always a dead man, he just didn’t know it. Getting in a panic and demanding his cut right away got his throat cut sooner. They found his motorcycle below Yellow Bluff.”

Wise finished his baklava. “And the three Portagees?”

“I’m just guessing here, but I think that on the day I went to see Benny Ruiz in Larkspur, McPhee was a busy little man. He separated Lisboa from the other two, took him to the Stevenson house. Lisboa would be thinking they were going to dig up the gold where they had buried it. Instead, they dug up the gold and he got his head bashed in. McPhee then lured Mondego and Berlingas to the Stevenson house, fed them whiskey with poison in it to celebrate their success. He was always too smart for the cops.” Anger darkened Spade’s eyes. “Too smart for me, too. He almost got me on the ferry back from Marin. And still nobody living knows what he really looks like.”

“Why exactly did McPhee set those men on you and then try to kill you?” asked Effie Perine.

“At first he was worried I might grab Kest, who’d dealt with him face-to-face and could finger him. Then I recovered fifty thousand dollars in specie before he could get it. That frustrated him and he doesn’t take frustration easily. And, he likes to kill.”

“You’re drawing quite a profile of a man you’ve never met.”

The muscles bulged along Spade’s jaws. “But I know him just the same, Sid. And one of these days I’ll find him.”