Joe Gores - Spade & Archer

“Sounds like good investigative technique to me.”

“And it gets better. Lights on inside the warehouse at four in the morning. Four men came out, one of them paid Brix some money. When they were gone, Miles looked in a window. The place was loaded to the rafters with goods.”

“The stuff being stolen on the docks. Just like he said.”

Spade smiled thinly.

“The overhead loading door doesn’t have a window. The door beside it has a window, but it is covered with butcher paper on the inside. The other windows are ten feet off the ground and covered on the inside with butcher paper too. Yesterday Miles told me he saw another payoff to Brix the night before. Through one of those windows.”

“Which are all covered with butcher paper.”

“Yeah. Miles also described the man he said was paying Robbie Brix for information about the goods that later were disappearing. Harry Brisbane, right down to the Aussie accent. Except Miles couldn’t have seen him paying anybody any money on Green Street. Harry’s been laid up at home for two weeks with a broken foot, and never heard of anybody named Robbie Brix.”

“You trust Brisbane?”

“He’s a straight shooter. And the warehouse is owned by the Shipowners’ and Merchants’ Tugboat Company and they haven’t leased it out to anyone else.”

“But they’re one of your clients. It just doesn’t figure.”

“There’s a way it does. Through the Blue Book and Miles.”

Wise blew out a breath and scratched his head. Flakes of dandruff settled on his shoulders. “I told you not to take him on as a partner. Are you going to confront him with it?”

“No. I’ll just try to keep him off anything that might hurt Spade and Archer, then kick him out at the end of our year.” Spade shook his head. “In business with him for less than a week, and I find out he’s a son of a bitch.”

At the Continental office Spade asked for Mickey Linehan. The op was out in the field, but he’d left an envelope. In Bush’s Coffee Shop in the 700 block of Market, Spade got a grilled-cheese sandwich and black coffee, ate and drank while scanning the single sheet of paper with Linehan’s scrawl on it.

Effie Perine said, “Miss Choi called asking for a report.”

“Tell her to come by first thing in the morning.” He hooked a hip over the corner of Effie Perine’s desk. “How straight do you think she’s being with us?”

“She acts as if she’s telling you everything you need to know, but — but she’s—”

“—not your typical Chinese woman? Almost more like a white woman?” When she nodded, he said, “Do you know any agents out at the immigration station on Angel Island?”

“I was in grammar school with an American-born Chinese boy named Ray Chong Fat who’s a translator out there.”

“See can he find out if Mai-lin passed through the station in the last year or so, how long she was detained and questioned. She says she’s been here for maybe a month, but was that when she got to Angel Island or when she was cleared for entry into San Francisco? For the Chinese, clearance can take weeks, months.”

Effie Perine was making pothooks in her notebook. “You think she’s lying about who she is and how she got here, Sam?”

“I don’t think anything yet. I just need to know.” He stood up. “Ask Chong Fat about the Reverend Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy too. Being a clergyman, he wouldn’t have had any trouble getting in. But there’d still have to be a record of his entry.”

Spade’s suit coat was over the back of his chair. Morning sunlight laid a bar of filtered gold across the desktop. Mai-lin Choi came in, much more Chinese than on her first visit. Gone was the haughtiness of face, the sternness of eye. She gestured to emphasize her clothing.

“You like?” she asked in a singsong voice.

She wore the sort of loose-fitting washable frock that a maid could buy for sixty-nine cents. Her shapeless slippers would make plop-plop sounds as she walked. The jacket she draped over the back of the chair was dark, warm, shapeless, standard dress for cold foggy days on upper Grant Avenue.

“Soon I will be going to talk to people in Chinatown. If I am small and humble with eyes downcast, dressed cheaply, they will feel at ease and talk to me. Otherwise...”

“Otherwise,” Spade said in a passable falsetto, “no savvy.”

She seemed to suddenly tire of the game.

“What do you have to tell me?” she asked.

“Nothing on Charles Boothe yet. But Fritz Lea spent six years in Joliet prison in Illinois, nineteen fourteen through nineteen nineteen, for a phony timber-stock scam. He next surfaced working a bank fraud in New York in nineteen twenty-two. It was nol-prossed, lack of evidence. In nineteen twenty-six he was indicted in Los Angeles on a counterfeit bearer-bond scheme that was again dismissed for lack of evidence. Who are you going to be talking to in Chinatown?”

“Methodists whose parents helped my real father when he came to San Francisco the first time. They were children then, but I am hoping they will remember personal anecdotes about him.”

Spade leaned back in his swivel chair, hands interlocked behind his head. He appeared totally at ease.

“Why are you looking for Boothe and Lea eighteen years later?”

She checked the wall clock behind Miles Archer’s unoccupied desk, looked at Spade out of the corners of her slightly slanted eyes. “Look at the time! I must go.”

Spade nodded pleasantly as she started to rise.

“I’ll have Effie return your retainer on your way out.”

She settled back in her chair. “Because of the money. I shall remain until I find it, or find out there is none.”

“Ah,” said Spade, “the money,” as if they had already been discussing it. “How much money?”

“A great deal, raised for my father’s... political aims.”

“I have a banker friend who could check up on it for us.” Spade chuckled. “Give him one look at you, he’d do anything for you. He’s a romantic.”

“It will not be in a bank. It will be in cash.”

“Buried treasure?” asked Spade in a joking voice. “Perhaps even that.” Spade frowned, stubbed out a cigarette. “What do you mean by a great deal of money?”

“Perhaps as much as a quarter of a million American.”

“And your father died in Peking three years ago.”

“You are indeed clever of mind, Mr. Spade. And yes, my father was indeed the great Chinese patriot Sun Yat-sen.” Her eyes flashed. “Liang Qichao had defected to reformism, and the young radicals, who had despised my father, then made him their standard-bearer.”

“Let’s go talk with these people of yours in Chinatown.”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “I will ask Reverend Zhu, their pastor, to accompany us. He will have influence with them.” Spade bowed her out of the office, stopped beside Effie Perine’s desk. “Now she claims that her real father was Sun Yat-sen. Tomorrow I meet the famous Reverend Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy.”

“Why is he so important?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart. I have a feeling about him. Meanwhile, ring up Ralph Toomey at Matson Shipping, tell him I need an up-to-date list of the goods stolen on the docks in the past month.” As she got busy with the telephone Spade said, “Have we heard anything from Miles today?”

She held up a finger, said, “Mr. Spade would like an appointment with Mr. Toomey at his earliest convenience.” She covered the mouthpiece, to Spade said, “Nothing so far,” uncovered the mouthpiece, said, “A half hour would be perfect.”

“When Miles calls in, don’t tell him about my appointment with Toomey.”

Ralph Toomey’s ornate corner office at Matson Shipping looked kitty-corner across the 200 block of Market to the old Hansford Building. Dominating the office was a huge rolltop desk pockmarked with green-felt-lined pigeonholes. In a corner of the room was a green secrétaire with an inlaid top.