Joe Gores - Spade & Archer

His eyes gleamed theatrically. “Mrs. Barber, huh? Any calls? Any clients waiting in my office?”

“Nothing. I think the whole town knows that the district attorney’s office had you on the carpet all morning.” Her face turned serious. “How do we stand, Sam?”

“On our own two feet.” He sat down across from her. “Here’s how it works, sweetheart. The cops don’t like us. The D.A. doesn’t like us. City Hall doesn’t like us. But even though they’re going to welsh on the reward money, the International Banking Corporation does like us. Because Charles Barber’s son is back in the fold unharmed, Barber likes us.”

“What good does all of that do us, Sam?”

“Just this: this city’s big-money circles will know that and take it into account when they need an investigator who isn’t with one of the big agencies and can keep his trap shut.” He took the cigarette she had rolled him, lit it, blew smoke luxuriously at the ceiling. “Which will translate into a better class of client who will pay bigger fees for our services.”

“Does it translate into a better office in a better part of town?” she asked.

“Not yet. I need a lot of people to talk to me because they feel they can trust me. Too much flash makes ’em nervous.” He ground his fag out in her ashtray, stood. “But as of now you’re on the payroll full-time at twenty-five bucks a week. Tell that to your mother.”

She was on her feet also, eyes alight. But all she said was “She likes you, you know. She trusts you won’t get her little girl into any trouble you can’t get her out of.”

“Does that mean I can use your mother as an informant in the Greek community?”

“You’re an impossible man, Samuel Spade!” she ex claimed.

He started toward his private office, then paused and turned back. “When you finish with those roses, you’d better make a file headed ‘St. Clair McPhee.’ We don’t have anything to put in it — yet. But I’m betting we will.”

He went on and shut the door. Effie Perine began arranging the roses in a vase. She began softly singing the refrain from “Ain’t We Got Fun?” to herself as she worked.

The phone rang. She stopped singing to pick up.

“Samuel Spade Investigations.”

She grabbed her steno pad and started making notes.

Apparently aimless, Samuel Spade wandered through the throng lying or sitting or picnicking on the grassy slope above the Fleishhacker Pool. Crowds of people in bathing costumes, summer frocks, and shirtsleeves were enjoying the warm, sunny day, rare out near the beach at the foot of Sloat Boulevard.

Spade was tieless, collarless, in rolled-up shirtsleeves, his suit coat slung over one shoulder with his forefinger hooked through the loop inside the back of the collar. The Chronicle for Saturday, September 12, 1925, was folded in a coat pocket.

He worked his way through the border of low pine trees and bushes to come up behind a mid-forties sandy-haired man standing at the edge of the vast outdoor plunge. The bright horizontal pattern of the man’s V-neck cricket sweater emphasized his thickening waist. A light breeze mingled the sharp salt tang of the ocean with the clean fragrance of the evergreens.

“What brings us out here on a sunny Saturday, Ray?”

Ray Kentzler turned to look at Spade. He had a square Germanic head and a pleasant broad-mouthed face with pale, smart, watchful eyes under blond brows.

“I’m working this one outside the system, Sam.”

“Fair enough. But who’s paying me, if it comes to that?”

“Oh, Bankers’ Life — if it comes to that.” He moved his head slightly. “C’mon, let’s walk; I’ve been wanting to get a gander at this place since it opened.”

“Largest outdoor pool in the country,” said Spade solemnly.

But Kentzler took his gibe at face value.

“Open maybe four months. Three city blocks long, nearly half a football field wide, six and a half million gallons of warmed circulating seawater. Twenty lifeguards on duty—”

“Who need rowboats to go out and get anyone who’s in trouble, the pool’s so big. If your wife was at one end, Ray, she wouldn’t be able to identify your kid at the other end.”

“Probably wouldn’t want to,” said Kentzler.

“They built it in the wrong place. It should be down the peninsula near Stanford, where they get hot weather.”

“I notice you have your coat off, Sam.”

“And in another hour, when that fog rolls in from the ocean, you’ll notice I have it back on again.”

They strolled through drifting adults and running kids, past tulip-shaped light fixtures on tall metal poles.

“Let me buy you a late lunch, Sam.”

At the bathhouse, 450 feet long, done in Italian Renaissance style, with a glazed tile roof and dining rooms on the second floor, they chose the room looking out toward the ocean rather than the one facing east over the pool toward Lake Merced. Their salads arrived, along with Boston clam chowder for Spade and oysters for Kentzler. The insurance man leaned across the table, his voice low and confidential.

“There’s a big life insurance policy at Bankers’ Life I can’t talk to anyone at the office about because we’ve privately agreed to settle even though we aren’t admitting it yet. But... I’m bothered. What do you know about the Collin Eberhard death?”

“What’s been in the papers. He was swimming in the bay out in front of the Neptune Bath House when he got into difficulty. Some witnesses say he was struggling against the current, others say he was just floating facedown. They rowed out in a small boat to rescue him, but he was already dead. The tabloids started hinting that there were rumors of irregularities at California-Citizens Bank, where he was founder and president.”

“Are you sure you didn’t memorize the papers?”

“Then they decided that he was financially ruined and because of that had taken out a very large life insurance policy in favor of his wife and then ingested a vial of poison. I don’t know what made them come up with that, but it sold a lot of newspapers.” Spade pulled the folded Chronicle from his suit coat pocket and slapped it on the table. “It still does. Today’s big question seems to be whether he died of suicide, accident, or natural causes.”

“Yeah. The autopsy was held seventeen hours after his death and the coroner held the inquest two weeks ago—”

“With you guys pushing for suicide. Because the policy hadn’t been in effect long enough for you to have to pay off if he killed himself, suicide would let you off the hook.”

“Can you blame us? This is a lot of money that would go to the widow, Sam — I mean a lot of money. Bankers’ Life’s money.”

Spade stopped spooning soup with an abrupt growl.

“I don’t blame anybody for anything. But I don’t work domestic cases, I don’t take pennies off dead men’s eyes, and I don’t pick the pockets of new widows.”

“What do you know about this one?”

“Nothing, Ray. Not a thing.”

“She’s nine years younger than Eberhard was. Married him seven — no, eight years ago, just about when he founded his little private bank. They were struggling. Just scraping by. Then four years ago the bank started growing, getting prosperous. He started getting rich. She was suddenly sitting pretty. A lot of money and no children. She didn’t want any.”