Джо Горес - Cases

“So, Dunc, how goes the great Chauncey Jones trackdown?”

It had been ten days since Drinker had handed him the file. He had been to fifty-seven addresses, had talked with 122 people. He hadn’t filed a report since the first one.

“Over the weekend I stood over his grave and told him what a rotten son of a bitch he was. The bastard’s dead — as both of you very well knew when you sent me out after him.”

Sherry sat up straight behind her desk. “You what? ”

“I crossed your tracks a dozen times, Drinker. It was a hit-and-run, but the gamblers he crossed killed him. Tell me straight — is Amanda Harris in any danger?”

Drinker Cope was still for a moment, then shook his head.

“Was there ever a wife back in Dayton?”

“No. Different client, different assignment, but it seemed a nice file to dummy up for you to cut your teeth on.”

“You know what pisses me off the most?” asked Dunc. “I never even saw the guy. It feels unfinished somehow.”

“They often do,” said Sherry.

Drinker straightened up, set down his coffee cup.

“Just ten fucking days,” he said. “Okay, three hundred a month, retroactive to the day you started. You can charge your gas and oil at Emil’s 76 station around the corner on Pine and Franklin. Keep receipts of your expenses. And kid, go out and get drunk tonight — you earned it. A hell of a job.”

He picked up his coffee, retreated to his private office.

Sherry said, “Since you don’t like coffee, Dunc, I bought a box of tea for you.”

Penny met Gerald at the student union after her Monday afternoon class. He had been calling the sorority every few days since school had opened, asking her to meet him, and she’d been putting it off. Not that she was afraid of her own feelings. She knew her own feelings. But he had dominated her life for over a year, he might assume he still could...

He sat down at her table. “Hello, Penny.”

She nodded coolly. “Gerald.”

He looked the same as ever, a lean and hungry man with pale eyes — what had she ever seen in him? “I... Look, Penny, I... owe you a great apology for the way I acted that night...”

“You apologized the next day, Gerald. There’s no need—”

“I... Nothing like that will ever happen again.” He reached for her hand, took her unresponsive fingers in his own. “I want things to be the way they used to be. I need —”

“They never will be, Gerald. You have to know that.”

“All right. Of course.” His blue eyes were very earnest. “I know that. But I can make you happy, I...”

And his other hand came out of his pocket and he tried to slide a diamond engagement ring onto her finger. Penny jerked her hand back as if the tabletop were hot. She was glad he had done this. It made her remember, really remember, who he was.

“Gerald,” she said low-voiced, intensely, “don’t call me again. Don’t write. Don’t drop around.” She was on her feet, looking down at him. “I don’t want to see you again.”

She walked away from the table. Gerald started to cry.

Dunc let the Monday night crowds carry him down Market. Instead of getting drunk, he’d gone to the movies, a triple feature, any seat in the house thirty-five cents. One of them had been The Asphalt Jungle, Marilyn Monroe baby-faced and luscious, kissing suave corrupt Louis Calhern. There had been a drawing for a set of dishes, and a washed-out blonde with big knuckles and veiny hands had almost cried when Dunc’s stub held the winning number. She did cry when he gave her the dishes.

The night was clear, without a hint of fog. This was his city. Already he loved it. On impulse he turned in at the Fog Horn, a dark narrow bar just off Seventh. It was a typical Market Street watering hole, full of sad men sucking on draft beers, their pockets full of nickels and their heads full of ghosts. The bartender swished a damp rag around in front of him.

“What’ll it be?”

“Draft.”

Behind the bar, painted on black velvet, was a huge mural of the San Francisco/Oakland car ferry passing under the silver Erector Set arch of the Bay Bridge, a bone of white water in its teeth. It made him nostalgic for this city he still barely knew. He and Grey Ghost had used that ferry during his dead-man hunt; soon it would be no more. The lower deck of the bridge would be converted from trains to autos, and the ferries would die.

He finished his beer, wandered down Market Street. There was always something astounding — and instructive — for a rookie private eye to see on the City’s midnight streets.

At the foot of Powell, a man and woman stood arguing on the cable-car turnaround. He was young, blond, well dressed, she was blond, dark-eyed, good-looking. He was crying, tearing bills from his wallet and throwing them down on the gleaming rails.

“Go ahead, take it, take the money! That’s all you’re after, isn’t it? Isn’t it? That’s all you’re after!”

The girl didn’t answer. She was on her hands and knees like a scrubwoman, scrabbling after the greenbacks.

When Dunc came out of a Third Street greasy spoon after a piece of tired cherry pie and a glass of milk, a gray-haired man wearing rumpled clothing and tired whiskey eyes was arguing with a short dapper Mexican. One of the Mexican’s hands waved a nearly empty Tokay bottle while the other tried to fit his new white Stetson on the old bird’s head. Thrust away, he spread his arms wide and ran into a parking meter. Then he grabbed the other man’s arm and tried to drag him down Third Street.

“No! You already sank me in a sea of troubles down there.”

The Mexican wandered off singing to himself. The gray-haired man said to Dunc with an almost sheepish grin, “I spent my last dollar on a good bottle of Tokay, and then I gave it to that Mexican. Then I found out he already had plenty of glue — folding glue. A fool and his money, et cetera.” His faded blue eyes stared worriedly after the Mexican. “And down there where he’s going he’ll lose it all.”

“Where’s down there?” asked Dunc.

“South of Market. Like going north of the bridge on Clark Street in Chicago, or down Washington Ave to Second in Minneapolis. I’ve seen them all. Pawnshops outnumber everything but liquor stores and at night only the bars are bright. Cops work in pairs, winos like me sleep on street corners until the wagon takes them to the drunk tank at Kearny and Washington.”

South of Market. Dunc had never heard the term before. He said to the gray-haired man, “You’re very poetic.”

“Cowper said that poetry is mere mechanic art. I used to teach it. Poetry.”

“I used to be an English major.” Dunc stuck two dollar bills in the jacket pocket. “For a new bottle of Tokay.”

“A decent man.” He chuckled. “I think I’ll fool you. I think I’ll get something to eat with this. I have a room at the Wessler Hotel, Third and Twenty-second. Ajax Kiely. If you ever find yourself way to hell out Third Street...”

Way out Sepulveda, thought Dunc. “Maybe I’ll drop by.”

He watched the old man slouch off. At first glance he had seemed just another grifter among the Third Street juiceheads and happy girls and silent drifting Negroes, but he reminded Dunc of Frank O’Malley, the fabled Notre Dame prof who was also a fabled martini drinker. Last St. Paddy’s Day, O’Malley had held his Modern Catholic Authors class in the Oliver Hotel bar.

South of Market, Kiely had told Dunc. When you’d quit shaving every day and your hand shook reaching for that first quick one in the morning, you were said to have gone south of Market. As much a state of mind as a location. Dunc liked it.