Joe Gores - Spade & Archer

It took Spade only twenty minutes to methodically search the entire place, inch by inch, using quick eyes that missed nothing and surprisingly delicate fingers that probed everything. In the kitchen, no icebox, no dishes in the sink. A slightly warm coffeepot on the stove. A bread box with half a loaf in it, butter and jam and three eggs on the shelf over the drainboard, a can of Lipton’s coffee. Plate, cup, saucer, one set of cutlery.

The space created by the hardwood screen was just large enough to hold a single bed, a chest of drawers, and a battered wardrobe. Between the bed and the wall was a cheap suitcase, empty. On top of the chest of drawers were a few cosmetics and a bar of bath soap wrapped in a washcloth. The chest held a meager array of neatly folded blouses and underclothes.

The wardrobe held one hat, two scarves, and three skirts on hangers, all the same size. There was only one dress, the expensive brown and tan silk frock with the Greek gold coin as a buckle ornament Penny had worn to his office on her first visit.

Spade found no papers, no checkbook, no money or jewelry, no rent or utility receipts. No phone, no books, no magazines, no radio. No crumpled letter written in Greek. No chest of Bergina. Apart from the silk frock, nothing to suggest that anyone named Chiotras lived there. Nor anyone named Drosos. But on the shelf of the magazine stand beside the easy chair were two dozen newspaper clippings about the Eberhard death.

Just as Spade slipped out of 3A the radio in 3B went silent. He palmed the knob, began knocking on the door he had just closed as a thin, slightly haggard blond woman in a cloth coat emerged from 3B. She held the hand of a girl of four or five, who was carrying a doll. The girl wore a woolen coat, a two-color hockey cap with a pom-pom and a matching scarf with a knit fringe. Blond curls peeped out from beneath the cap.

Spade had turned with an ingratiating smile. “I wonder if you might know where I could reach Mrs. Drosos.”

“Miss Drosos,” the blond woman corrected automatically. The little girl was examining Spade with gravity, clutching her doll to her chest. The woman absently patted her head. “Julia Drosos.” Her voice bore traces of erstwhile refinement.

“Yes, ma’am. We got her letter, you see.”

“About a job?” she asked quickly.

“Her professional qualifications sound fine, but we need a little more personal information.”

“I’m Beverly Donant. I — we, my husband and I — we don’t know Julia well, she’s lived here only a month. She’s all alone in this world. She was caring for her aged mother down in Santa Barbara, and after the poor woman died she found herself bursting into tears all the time. She wants work taking care of children. Some youth and gaiety in her life after all that heartbreak.”

“This would be a nanny situation for a well-to-do family down the peninsula.”

Beverly Donant’s smile illuminated her long, narrow face, made her suddenly pretty. The daughter smiled with her. She had her mother’s same radiant smile.

“I’m sure Julia would be just right for the job,” Beverly Donant said enthusiastically. “She’s stayed with my little Jenny twice when Tom and I went to the movies.”

“She sings me songs and tells me stories,” said Jenny.

“Stories about ancient Greece?” asked Spade.

“Greece!” exclaimed Beverly Donant. “I should have known! All that life and vitality, all that long black hair and those dark eyes and that lovely complexion. I thought maybe Irish, but Greek fits even better.”

“She sounds like just the person we’re looking for.”

Spade went up slanting Taylor Street to the unmarked entry-way of a red brick building half covered with ivy. At the top of eight wide marble steps was a foyer with, to the right, a four-foot cast-bronze owl standing on a bronze life-size human skull.

Charles Hendrickson Barber’s heavy but mellifluous orator’s voice said, “The owl was done in nineteen thirteen by Jo Mora.”

The difference in Barber’s attitude from the day before was marked. The banker shook Spade’s hand warmly, then led him past an unattended reception desk and down a long hall lined with framed photographs of the Bohemian Club’s earlier days.

“It started out in eighteen seventy-two with rooms on Pine Street above the old California Market. In the eighteen nineties they expanded to a better suite of rooms, at one hundred thirty Post, between Kearny and Dupont Alley. But that burned down in the fire after the nineteen oh six quake. In oh seven the club started over again, like everyone else in the San Francisco of that day. Then we moved into this building, and I believe here we’ll stay.”

They came to a bank of three elevators, whose brass doors were decorated with ornate scrollwork. A craggy-faced man, beautifully dressed, came out of one of the elevators with a marked, crabwise limp. He greeted Barber effusively, shook Spade’s hand as if truly delighted to meet him, and went his way.

“We keep rooms on the upper floors for the use of club members from out of town,” explained Barber.

He led Spade through the lounge, a sprawling room with a carpeted floor and twenty-foot-tall windows facing Taylor Street. Drawn back from them were heavy wine drapes; closed over them were gossamer white net curtains. Four men were seated in leather armchairs dotted around the room, reading newspapers with cups of coffee on round end tables beside them.

“The founding members were journalists and artists and musicians and writers who lamented the lack of culture in post — gold rush San Francisco. They wanted something like the Century Club in New York, the vie bohème. But pretty soon, for financial reasons, they had to start admitting prominent businessmen.”

“Writers and artists and musicians never make any money.”

Barber ignored Spade’s words to walk almost majestically down the room. He paused in the wide entrance to a modest dining room.

A serious-faced white-aproned man dressed otherwise in black came up to greet them. Barber addressed him as Reginald and asked for a table away from the others.

“Certainly, Mr. Barber,” said Reginald gravely.

The surprisingly plain dining room was three quarters full of San Francisco movers and shakers, a few of whom Spade knew by sight. Barber was greeted by most of them. They were seated.

“Yep,” Spade said, “no women. Effie’ll be delighted.”

“My wife isn’t. She’s never been inside the place.”

He broke and buttered a sourdough roll; Spade sipped ice water. A waiter appeared, hovered. Barber said the minute steak was edible. Spade said that was fine; Barber ordered for both.

“How’s Henny doing these days? He must be out of the university by now,” said Spade, bland faced.

Barber banged the linen tablecloth in delight.

“He graduated with honors from Berkeley in June. Between the social whirl and tennis, I’ve had him coming down to the bank and observing, part-time of course — have to avoid the nepotism issue. I’ve wanted him to start out as a teller and learn the ropes. It’s paying off. Yesterday he came to me and said he’d like to apply for a teller’s position at somebody else’s bank besides mine, so he could advance on his own merits.”

“So he’s gotten the urge for adventure out of his blood.”

“Has he? He took his degree in literature. His mother and I offered him a year in Europe to soak up some culture, but he said if he went to Europe it would be to climb the Matterhorn. He’s been trying his hand on Half Dome in Yosemite, scaring his mother half to death. I think he enjoys doing it.”

“And how is the good Mrs. Barber?”