Joe Gores - Spade & Archer

Penny Chiotras sat at a window table alone. In profile her face looked tranquil, untroubled, but the tendons of the hand raising her teacup were taut with tension. She left money on the table, issued into busy Grant Avenue. Without looking around, she walked up toward Sutter two blocks above, following instructions.

“Good girl,” muttered Sam Spade approvingly.

He waited until she was lost from view in the evening press of strollers, then left his recessed entryway across from the tearoom. For the next thirty minutes she followed instructions, but then instead of going down toward Market and the Cameo Theater, she went into the front entrance of the St. Mark Hotel across Powell from Union Square.

“Not so good,” Spade muttered.

He got into the front cab in the taxi line, reached over the back of the seat to give the goateed driver a silver dollar.

“Go around the block, cap, and pull up just beyond Mason.”

The driver checked his rearview, grinned as he drifted his cab away from the curb.

“I don’t suppose you remember me, Mr. Spade, but I drove you all over hell and gone last year behind a Flip doorman who was shakin’ down guests stayin’ at the Baltimore Hotel with ladies not their wives.”

“Sure. Erle, isn’t it? I recognize the goatee.”

As they rounded the corner into Post, Penny Chiotras issued from the side entrance of the St. Mark. She checked the street, then walked to Powell and caught a down cable car to Market. But not to the Cameo Theater. Instead, she went down a block to Mission, boarded a number 11 streetcar, rode it all the way to the end of the line at Twenty-fourth and Hoffman in the Outer Mission, nestled below Diamond Heights in usually fog-free Noe Valley.

She waited outside the car until it started its return trip, jumped aboard when it was already moving, got off at Dolores and Twenty-third. Spade told the cabbie to wait, then followed her.

Penny ducked into Severn, one of three narrow halfblock alleys that run off Twenty-third between Dolores and Church. By the dim streetlight he watched her go up the stairs of a narrow wooden row house of uncertain color. He waited until a roller shade was pulled down in the third-floor front window on the left. Pale light went on behind it. When the light went out Spade returned to his waiting cab, went home and to bed and to sleep.

At 8 a.m. he was explaining to Effie Perine, “I told her I would tail her last night, see if anyone was behind her. I waited outside the Russ Building, where she says she’s a stockbroker’s secretary, picked her up, shadowed her. No one. Nothing.” Spade spread his hands wide to show how devoid of shadowers the back trail had been. “She ditched me at the St. Mark instead of going to the Cameo Theater. And what she told me doesn’t hold up. No sinister men ducking around corners.” His smile was without humor. “Except me.”

“Ditched you?” asked Effie Perine in an unbelieving voice.

She handed him the cigarette she had rolled for him; he lit it with a match from the desktop dispenser. She was frowning.

“So you don’t believe her,” she said.

“That she’s scared, yeah. That a Turk is shadowing her, no — at least not last night. She told me a wild tale about a gold-bound chest that’s supposed to be from the time of Alexander the Great, but—”

“The chest of Bergina!” exclaimed Effie Perine.

“Not you too,” Spade growled in mock disgust.

“It’s true Greek legend. Alexander was one of the greatest Greeks, a real hero to our people. Bergina was his sister. But how does that tie in with Penny’s father?”

“She showed me a letter written in Greek, said it was her father’s handwriting, said it was dated nineteen twenty. She said it was delivered to her mother last month by a man who said he had been a brigand in her father’s revolutionary band. Said he got some money from her ma and disappeared.”

Effie Perine’s mouth drew up almost primly. “Delivered? By hand? Five years late?”

“You don’t like it either, huh? The letter supposedly says her father found the chest and that it would be his legacy to his family. All I know, darling, is that her story about the Turk is hooey. I think the chest is hooey. She made me promise I wouldn’t follow her home because he only knows where she works. That’s hooey too. If he can pick her up at the one place he can follow her to the other.” An unholy glow came into his eyes. “I’d better follow her home tonight after all, see what’s so—”

“Don’t you dare!” Her eyes were flashing. “It would be a — a betrayal of trust.”

“Like all the trust she’s giving me? Nu-uh, sister.”

“So that’s it? That’s all you’re going to do for her?”

“Are all Greeks as hard to get along with as you are?” asked Spade. “I’ll follow her again tonight, just to make sure.”

The phone rang. Effie Perine reached across the desk, picked up the receiver, said, “Samuel Spade Investigations.” She listened for a moment, said, “I’ll see if he’s come in yet,” put her hand over the mouthpiece, said, “Ray Kentzler.”

Spade took the phone. “Jovanen finally figure out that I’m on the payroll?”

“He did indeed, and hit the roof. Even wanted me to pay you out of my own pocket! I talked him out of that, but you’re off the case.”

“You’re the one wanted me on it.”

“I was tilting at windmills.”

“Well, I’ve got a couple of feelers out, but since I don’t work for you anymore, Ray, I’ll just have to let ’em drop.”

He hung up. Effie Perine was wide-eyed.

“You quit?”

“Was fired.” Without a pause he said, “Those Cal-Cit bank records are the key, darling. They’d tell us what we really have to know: did Eberhard suddenly go broke, and if he did, why?”

“What difference does it make? We don’t have a client.”

“Give the merry widow a call, tell her I need her backing to get into those bank records if I’m going to find out the truth about how and why her husband died and be able to prove he didn’t commit suicide. Tell her I’ll find the mistress at the same time.”

The phone rang again. Effie Perine went through her standard formula, again covered the mouthpiece, said, “Charles Hendrickson Barber this time, sounding angry.”

He took the phone from her, said into it, “It’s Spade.”

The banker’s voice was cold and tight.

“I’m calling you on behalf of the Banking Commission, Spade. We want to know what the devil you’re playing at.”

“Yes, nice to hear from you too, Mr. Barber. I’ll be at your office in half an hour.” He hung up without waiting for a reply. “Progress,” he told Effie Perine. “I’ll get more out of Barber than he’ll get out of me.” He was on his feet. “Your Penny’s coming in this morning to find out if I saw anyone shadowing her last night. Tell her no, but that I’ll try again tonight. Tell her no more silly little tricks like ditching me. See can you get her to open up about a few things. Maybe take her to lunch for a nice girl-to-girl chat.”

Tobias Krieger led Spade through the labyrinth of bank offices to the door bearing the legend:

In four years the minor bank official’s pencil mustache had flourished and thickened over his pink upper lip. He knocked on Barber’s door. A voice rumbled from within. Krieger opened it. Barber, now sixty-four, was still walrus mustached, distinguished, tall, thick. He stood up behind his ten-foot-long teak desk and bellowed.

“Get out!”

Krieger evaporated. Spade crossed to the padded hardwood chair in front of the desk, sat down.