Джо Горес - Cases

“Erg,” said Dunc, and made a face, and they both laughed.

They hove-to in the lee of the Farallones, stark black shapes alive with restless squawking seabirds rising like ghostly frigates from the frothing water. In the cramped, tidy cabin Mac poured two thick white mugs full of tea as black as sin.

“The Marie is named after my wife. She’s dead now, God love her, but we sailed the seven seas, we two together, in this old boat...”

An hour before sunset the Doubloon met with an innocuous-seeming fishing boat. They watched with the glasses from the shelter of the Farallones half a mile away as Wham handed over two heavy boxes. Mac passed the glasses to Dunc. “ Flying Fish, ties up at Pier 45 near Fisherman’s Wharf. They’ll move them boxes late tonight after all the tourists have gone home, probably in fish crates.”

“How do you know so much about smuggling, Mac?”

His only response was a wink. It was after dark when he maneuvered battered old Marie back into her berth at Gas House Cove. Dunc paid him in cash, dashed to a pay phone to call Drinker Cope and tell him, two boxes, Flying Fish, Pier 45.

“I’ll cover the boxes, you catch up with Wham and see where he goes. Stick close to him after you make contact.”

Dunc left Grey Ghost Two near Portsmouth Square to follow the tall Caucasian by foot through teeming Chinatown streets. Wham ducked into one-block Waverly Place, a narrow alley full of dark shadows. Dunc went down five steps to knock on a door with a faint penumbra of light showing under it. When a short dumpy middle-aged Chinese man in a dark suit and ornate vest answered, the light sent their shadows jumping crookedly up the stairs.

“Sorry” he said. His eyes were almost lost in his moon face. “Is Chinese American Club, is members only permitted.”

“Harry Wham. He just came in here.”

“Sorry. No Wham here.” He started to close the door.

Dunc’s foot was in it. “Big blond white guy. Wham.”

He suddenly kicked Dunc’s foot away, exclaimed “Wham!” in gold-toothed merriment, and slammed the door.

Disgruntled, Dunc went up the steps. He caught movement and got his guard up in time to block a slashing knife hand that numbed his forearm. He blindly fired a left jab where the attacker’s jaw ought to be, hit only air.

They shuffled cautiously, able to see only shadows. A foot came flying sideways toward his gut. He turned to take it on the hip, spun back with a good right cross to send Lee Fong crashing into the garbage pails with a clatter and surprised grunt.

Bearlike arms encircled Dunc from behind, pinning his arms to his sides and driving his breath out in one massive whoosh! He whimpered, thrashed erratically, let himself go dead-weight. The arms loosened, he tore free, but a fist like a foot knocked him sprawling against the rough brick wall. He ran.

At Grant and California he bent over the mist-wet black iron railing at Old St. Mary’s Church, panting, trying to get his breath back. His coat was ripped and his hands skinned; grease blotched one trouser leg. A cable car disgorged a brace of Chinese girls wearing tight skirts slit halfway up their thighs. They passed Dunc giggling to turn in at the Pink Pagoda.

He followed unsteadily, seeking a pay phone. Drinker picked up on the first ring, heard him out. “I didn’t tell you to climb in the guy’s hip pocket, for Chrissake. Anything broken?”

“Only my spirit.”

“Okay, go stake out the alley.”

Drinker hung up and the phone rang. It was April Wham.

“Harry just called from Half Moon Bay, he said he’d had trouble with the Doubloon and wouldn’t be home tonight. He—”

“Harry’s here in the City, not down the coast. I was out by the Farallones today to watch him come back from Mexico and tailed him to an alley in Chinatown. Waverly Place, something calls itself the Chinese American Club. Do you know it?”

“No, of course not. What—”

“We can’t talk over the phone. I’ll come up there—”

“No!” Very emphatic. “We’ll have to meet somewhere else.”

So she had someone there with her. Probably Ferris Besner.

“The Bocce Ball Cafe,” he told her. “Twenty minutes.”

Operatic arias sung full-voice by some of the City’s best professionals pulled people into the Bocce Ball off upper Broadway. Bartenders, waitresses, waiters, busboys — all had been hired because they had operatic aspirations; many of them sang in the chorus of the San Francisco Opera. Several times a night they would serenade the customers with arias, duets, trios.

April came through the door in a slinky skintight green silk sheath, just as, outside, a halted diesel Grey Lines Nightlife Tour bus had its doors levered open fore and aft. She slid onto a stool next to Drinker’s.

In a low voice, she said, “Tell me, quickly, what’s he up to?”

Half a hundred giggling tourists rushed toward the little round tables to fulfill their one-drink minimums. Few would ever see fifty again. The din was atrocious. The waiters began sobbing out “O Sole Mio” to accompanying accordions.

Drinker grunted as if he had been kicked in the stomach, grabbed his beer bottle with one hand, April’s arm with the other, and headed for a heavy hardwood door in the back wall.

Beyond it and down two steps was a long dim quiet room housing two bocce ball courts of hard-packed clay. During the day, North Beach’s old Italian men sat on the benches lining the walls to gossip and evaluate, with great solemnity, the quality of the play. Now, at one in the morning, the courts were deserted, the benches bare. Only the slightest shadows of song and clatter made it through the heavy oak door.

April sat down on one of the benches. “Why were you out by the Farallones?” she demanded with an impatience meant to dominate the situation. “What was Harry doing in Mexico?”

“Your hubby makes regular six-day trips to Baja.” Drinker stood over her with one foot cocked on the worn oak beside her thigh in symbolic imprisonment. “His Spanish-gold routine struck me as a perfect smuggling cover. After a while the Coast Guard chalks him up as a harmless nut and quits checking him out.”

“Harry’s too smart to get involved in anything like that.”

He gave her his big insincere grin. “Wetbacks or drugs, sure. But why is his cruiser outfitted for trouble and fast enough to outrun anything around, even cutters?”

“He likes expensive toys, he always wants the best.”

“Maybe so, but this afternoon he transferred two heavy cartons to a fishing boat outside the three-mile limit so the Doubloon could come in clean.”

“What was in those boxes, Drinker? Where are they now?”

He looked at his watch. “I might have more for you in a couple of hours, April.” He detached a key from his ring. “This is for my flat. Go there and wait for me.”

“Why your flat? Tell me what you know right now, and confirm it later.” Drinker just shook his head. Her lip curled cynically. “You want it all, don’t you, darling?”

He remained silent, a monolith towering above her. She stood. Smiled. Drew a fingernail along the line of his jaw. It burned like dry ice against his skin.

“I have to go home and get my overnight case first.”

“Just so you’re there when I get there.”

A battle-scarred tomcat groomed itself on the lid of one of the garbage pails behind which Dunc had stashed himself to watch the Waverly Place doorway. Half an hour after bar-close, headlights swung across the rough brick wall opposite him. A panel truck stopped with its motor running. Two Chinese males started pulling an obviously heavy FRESH FISH crate out of the back. One lost his grip; the crate landed corner-first to spill out one of the boxes Dunc had seen transferred from the Doubloon .