Джо Горес - Cases

Drinker felt stirrings of something other than lust.

“I think he takes a woman with him. I’ll pay you five thousand to find out who she is, what he does, where he goes.”

Drinker said, “Five hundred, not five thousand, would do it. I think you’re more intelligent than that, Mrs. Wham.”

She said without hesitation, “There isn’t any other woman. Harry’s past is completely hidden except for his war stories, and I can’t even find out if they’re true or not.”

“I did a little island-hopping myself with the Marines,” Drinker said in an almost dreamy voice. “Demolitions man, I blew a lot of Japs to hell and gone out of their little caves. I even knew a few captains with their chests full of medals. One of them saved my life once.”

“If you’re saying you don’t want to—”

“I’m saying I’ll know where to look for his war record.”

“Harry Wham!” she exclaimed. “Where did he get that — Marvel Comics? The gold hunting must be a front for something illegal. I want to know what it is!”

“Not the whole story but better,” said Drinker. “I’ll need a thousand now and a picture of Harry. In this town the Chinese complicate everything.”

“I don’t have a picture.” She was counting out hundreds. “But you won’t need one. He’s an enormous man with shaggy blond hair. The Chinese boy looks like any other Chinese boy. Harry berths his cruiser at the St. Francis Yacht Club. The Doubloon. ” Her clear gray eyes met his. He felt their impact in his groin. “I want you to work this personally, full-time, you alone.”

“Me alone,” he lied.

He walked her to the door. Her perfume still lingered. Someone had told her he would do most things for a quick buck, and that he had a weakness for smart sultry brunettes with the kind of legs that would turn him stupid at just the right time.

Unless April Wham had figured that one out for herself.

He shook his head and said “Whew!” under his breath.

Lying in the sunshine along the dock in Gas House Cove at the blunt end of the Marina Green, the broad-beamed ketch Marie reminded Dunc of a battered club fighter who still had a good right hook. The old salt filling the kitchen chair by the wheel had his feet on the after-gunnel and a can of beer in one hand.

So far, seven interviews, seven big fat zeros. Overhead a brown and white gull dipped and cried raucously. The slatted quay sank under Dunc’s weight, sloshing water up between the boards. It was warm for San Francisco in December.

The old salt had gray-shot whiskers and the far-sighed blue eyes of a deep-water sailor. The black briar pipe clenched between his strong yellow teeth was upside down.

Dunc squatted on the dock. “Why upside down?” he asked.

“Won’t get put out in a squall. Shove that dottle down in there with your thumb real good afore you light her, she’ll do.”

“Nice boat.”

“Hell she is. Wouldn’t make it from here to the breakwater with a following wind. I’m MacDougal. Mac’ll do.”

“Dunc. Do you live aboard?”

The old man guzzled beer. “You from a quiz show?”

“ Call-Bulletin, working on a story. I thought you’d probably know all the interesting yachtsmen around here.”

“Interesting yachtsmen like who?”

“I heard a guy at the St. Francis hunts for Spanish gold with his motor launch. Harry Wham, his boat’s the Doubloon. ”

Mac gave a single burst of laughter like the bark of a seal. “What’d an old man like me know about them rich folks?”

“Everything,” said Dunc.

He rolled a ten-dollar bill into a cylinder, leaned forward to poke it halfway down a punch hole in the top of the beer can.

“Y’re a cutie. What d’ya want, son?”

“Whatever you’ve got worth ten bucks.”

Mac drank beer out of the punch hole without a greenback in it. “He goes out with the Chink six days exactly. Maybe three times every two months. The Doubloon’s forty-two foot, draws four and a half, looks slow but ain’t. Shortwave radio, ship-to-shore phone, even a phonograph, f’God’s sake! Has two British Spitfire engines in her. She’ll take anything on this coast.”

Dunc asked, “That include cutters?”

“Includes anything, gov’ment or otherwise. Also he’s got a Chicago typewriter and grenades behind a false bulkhead for’ard.” He shut one eye and tipped his head back as if commenting on the weather. “She could make Mexico and back in six days, easy.”

“Did you say Mexico?”

“Come around when you ain’t working, son, I’ll tell you some lies you don’t have to pay for.”

Dunc had just finished the day’s report when the phone rang. He picked up, answered, “Edward Cope Investigations.”

Penny’s voice, full of laughter and delight, said, “Your Christmas present arrives tomorrow afternoon on the two-thirty plane from Chicago. I told Mom I had to go back to school early, aren’t I an awful person?”

“A wonderful person. I’ll pick you up at the airport.”

“I’ll have to fly back to school on Sunday, but we get New Year’s Eve together. What should I bring to wear?”

“Anything — sexy underwear. Nothing.” He laughed into the phone in sheer delight. “Yeah, that’s it — nothing!”

He sat with the phone in his hand and a goofy grin on his face. Tomorrow he would hold her in his arms. Tomorrow...

Finished report in hand, he resolutely strode to Drinker’s private office. Couldn’t be helped. He knocked, went in.

Drinker shut his file folder and glared up at him. “Yeah?”

“The yacht is designed to outrun anything on the West Coast, including the Coast Guard, and Harry Wham and Lee Fong go to Mexico once a month, six days round trip...” He paused; Drinker had almost leaped to his feet to jerk the completed report from Dunc’s hand. “And I need five days off.”

Drinker looked up from his reading. “Five... No fucking way! You’ve worked here maybe three months. If you think—”

“My girl’s flying in tomorrow from back east.”

Subtly Drinker’s expression lightened. “The girl at the picnic, what was her name, Peggy?”

“Penny. Penny Linden.”

“Nice-looking kid. You stuck on her?”

Dunc felt himself coloring up. “Well, you know—”

“You’re stuck on her. Back in here Monday morning, early. And call in, tell Sherry where we can reach you in an emergency.”

The Richelieu Hotel was on the corner of Geary across Van Ness from Tommy’s Joynt. Just the sound of Penny’s voice on the phone, the knowledge that she would be in his arms tomorrow — tomorrow! — giving him twinges of excitement as he asked at the registration desk for a double for five days.

“Make it something... nice,” he said. “Something special.”

The room at the Richelieu really wasn’t anything special, but, bathed in the warm diffuse late afternoon light, it was made to seem so by the dozen red roses on the round writing table under the window. Their fragrance filled the room.

“Oh, Dunc! They’re so beautiful and they smell wonderful!”

She threw herself into his arms there in the middle of the room beside her suitcase and cosmetic case. The embrace warmed to kisses then leaped to fire. Beneath her skirt she wore a black lace garter belt to hold up her stockings, nothing else.

He picked her up and carried her over to the bed with her legs locked around his hips. He didn’t put her down that first time, neither of them even undressed.

It was nearly midnight when Dunc went over to Tommy’s Joynt to bring back buffalo stew. When he returned he thought the small snuggled shape had fallen asleep. He undressed by the bathroom’s dim golden light, and lifted the covers to slide his naked body in beside hers. She gave her marvelous laugh and rolled to meet him, fully awake, her eyes great joyous wells in the semidarkness, her legs opening to receive him.