Джо Горес - Cases

Dunc said belatedly, still dazed, “You saved my life.”

Drinker straightened from leaning over the corpse. He gave an ironic snort.

“The safety was on. He wouldn’t have shot you before he got that safe-deposit key. He wanted that fucking eighty grand just too much. I got your marker on this one, kid- Now get to hell outta here before the cops arrive.”

Dunc was going down the fire stairs as the police were going up in the elevator. He sloshed water on his face in the men’s room off the lobby, asked the deskman what had happened upstairs, got a noncommittal grunt, and walked free and clear out into the San Francisco fog.

Pinned to the large woman’s robe was a carnation set in a spray of greenery. She beamed with warm crinkly eyes but a rather dreadful smile on the two people standing in front of her.

“By the authority vested in me by the State of California, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

The groom did, voraciously, as if devouring raw oysters.

Standing back against the rear wall of the San Mateo County office used for civil ceremonies, Dunc thought he wouldn’t mind kissing the bride himself. She was a pretty woman in her mid-twenties with brown hair and a cute little rabbit nose. He hated to do it to her new husband at their wedding, but Sherry had said this was the first time the guy had surfaced in six months.

He plucked a single yellow rose from one of the vases of flowers banking the corner of the room behind the justice of the peace, bowed slightly, and handed it to the new Mrs. McGowan.

“For the happy bride.” She beamed. To her husband, he handed a three-folded Summons and Complaint backed with heavy blue paper. “For the happy groom. Alex McGowan, you have now been legally served in the matter of Rossiter versus McGowan. Congratulations on your marriage.”

“You son of a bitch!” the groom yelled at him.

His beloved spat in Dunc’s face and screamed, “I hope your wife dies of syphilis.”

As Dunc walked out wiping the spittle from his nose with one of the spare handkerchiefs he had learned to carry for such occasions, he decided the new bride wasn’t so pretty after all.

He couldn’t see Penny until February, but the Kiely case had disappeared just as Drinker had predicted, and he was learning the detective trade. Even process-serving had its funny moments. At a birthday party for the live-in girlfriend of a San Francisco shipping tycoon, Dunc had shown up in a clown suit. Instead of a singing telegram, the girlfriend had gotten alienation of affection papers from the tycoon’s estranged wife.

They worked any kind of case for any kind of client. Dunc quickly learned to have no emotional investment in these cases, but to act as though he did. One week might be background checks on an insurance company’s clients; the next, collecting facts for someone suing that same insurance company.

Sherry was teaching him how to skip-trace as Drinker gradually introduced him to a vast army of informants: waiters, bartenders, newsies, hotel clerks, bike messengers, car parkers, even cops picking up a few off-duty bucks. He was learning fast, loving the City at night.

It was a week before Christmas, and Dunc had just come in off a two-night stakeout in the Sunset District. An address on a postcard to her sister had convinced a Dallas, Texas, husband his missing wife was shacking up with a lover in San Francisco.

Sherry asked, “So, is the wandering wife there?”

“Not unless she’s got a goatee and is going bald.”

“Give me the report when you finish. Meanwhile...” She tossed a case file on his desk, stood up to brush invisible lint from her skirt. “Wellman Industrial Design in Burlingame. See Drinker. The client wants action on it.”

Drinker was tipped back in his swivel chair with his feet crossed on the corner of his desk. An empty glass and a half-empty bottle of bourbon were resting on his desk blotter. Dunc sat in the client chair across the desk from him.

“What kind of a camera is worth ten thousand bucks?”

“An industrial layout design camera.” Drinker poured himself another modest shot. “A father-in-law slash son-in-law beef. The old man sets the kid up in some kind of design business that depends on this camera, the marriage goes sour, now the daughter wants hubby’s nuts in a paper bag.”

“Short of that, what do we do?”

“Without the camera the kid’s out of business. Daddy’s got the sales slip on it, Daddy wants us to steal it.”

“We’re working for the wrong guy,” said Dunc.

“What else is new? A technical expert from the camera’s manufacturing company is coming in on the one A.M. flight from Chicago. You and Nat pick him up at the airport — it’s such a delicate piece of equipment it’s gotta get dismantled just so.”

“We’ll need a truck,” said Dunc.

“Nat’s getting one. Haul it up to the client’s warehouse here in the City.” He slid an envelope across his desk. “Two keys. Alarm system, warehouse.”

“Where’s the Wellman Industrial Design key?”

“That’s why Nat’s the one I called to go with you. He’s handy with a set of lockpicks.”

Nat’s chocolate face wore a wide grin as Dunc climbed into the truck. “Hey, Dunc, remember Delia, working girl in my rooming house, wears perfume’d make a monk hike up his habit? Well, she’s been asking after you, lady thinks you’re cute.”

“Lady has impeccable taste.”

Gregory Stout didn’t live up to his name. He was a Jack Sprat kind of guy with horn-rims and quick, nervous movements and a mop of gleaming black hair he had to continually brush back. As they walked three abreast through SFO’s echoing, almost empty terminal, Dunc asked, “You need tools or anything like that?”

Stout patted his carryall with a sort of prim precision. “All I need is a screwdriver. I’ll fly straight back after I’ve dismantled the camera. I’ll sleep on the plane.”

The enclosed back of the three-year-old Dodge moving van was stacked with ropes and padded furniture blankets. Nat had slipped an airport cop a buck to leave it at the curb in front of the baggage area with the blinkers flashing. They left the Bayshore at the Broadway-Burlingame light. Dunc eyed his watch.

“We’ve got time, let’s check it out.”

Wellman Design was in a light industrial area between the Southern Pacific tracks and El Camino Real. Big shutters were down over the glass storefront windows.

“Looks like there’s a loading area in back that can’t be seen from the street,” said Nat, turning his head as they passed.

Gregory Stout said nervously, “Ah... what time will the person were meeting be here to let us in?”

“After the bars close,” lied Dunc.

Nat drove back to Broadway and a bright splash of bar light. They killed time until last call playing shuffleboard and eating pretzels and sipping draft beer. Outside, it was a cold, clear night; Dunc could see his breath. They got into the truck, Nat started the engine so the heater could cut the chill.

“We’d better keep moving around,” said Dunc. “Cops see three guys in a panel truck parked with the motor running...”

After half a block a cruising police car passed them going the other way on Broadway. Dunc kept his eye on the rearview.

“They’re turning into El Camino.”

“How long d’you figure their loop takes?”

“At least an hour.”

Stout said, “Why are you men so jumpy about the police?”

Nobody answered. Nat stopped in front of Wellman Design with his turn blinkers on. Dunc got out. He could feel his adrenaline kick in. Stout was looking around nervously. Nat was backing the truck into the narrow alley between the building and a chain-link fence with ivy on it.