the garbage. That was why I was up on the roof wasn’t it? Good job, Cliff, I thought. Let’s have a drink. Then I looked at the jacket clutched in my hand and remembered that there was a little more to it than that.
It was a cheap jacket, and it had nearly caused its shoplifting, garbage-throwing owner to fall six storeys. Worse, it had a piece of paper in a pocket with his name and address on it. George Pagemill of 537 22nd Street had had the brakes checked and the tyres rotated on his 1969 Plymouth at a local service station.
I went by my hotel, picked up my. 38 and took a taxi to 22nd Street east of the railway. A rusty blue Plymouth was in the street outside 537, which was an old house divided into apartments and rooms. George was in room eight at the top of a dark set of stairs and opposite a gurgling toilet. The toilet was empty and the doorlock was the same as George’s, a cheap job that wouldn’t have deterred a determined Girl Guide. I listened and heard muttering inside. I held the gun in my left hand, crouched a bit and drove my right shoulder up and into the door opposite the lock. The lock broke, the door flew open and I spun into the room, changing hands on the gun as I came.
George was sitting on the bed with a beer can held gingerly in his taped-up hands. It seemed to be taking all his strength to lift it. I pushed the door shut with my foot. The heavy stuff so soon after the fun and games on the roof had made my head throb. I felt mean.
‘Hi, George.’
He gaped at the gun. ‘Hey,’ he said weakly.
‘Aren’t you going to talk to Jesus?’
I chopped the can out of his hands with the muzzle of the gun; beer sprayed over his pants and the bed. I put the gun away and swept a quick look around the room-walnut veneer furniture, a stained hand basin under a dusty window, linoleum on the floor. George was no Mr Big. He was as seedy as the room, with a thin, defeated face that was just waiting to get old.
‘Get outta here.’ His voice was flat and dull; his heart wasn’t in it.
‘Whose idea was it to throw the garbage?’
He shook his head and put his bandaged fingers together. He rubbed them tenderly like a man who doesn’t expect to be hurt.
‘I could put you in for assault,’ I said.
‘Bullshit.’
‘I’ve got an armload of books with your prints all over them. Shoplifting.’
‘Crap. Anyone can look at books, open them and everything.’
I stepped close enough to smell him, reached across and opened and closed a drawer on the chest experimentally. A smell of dirty shirt came up.
‘I could break your fingers.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why would you break my fingers?’
‘Because you’re being strong and silent about who got you to throw the garbage. You’ve got a choice, George; are you more afraid of him or me?’
He glanced up and I gave him my hard look.
‘You,’ he said.
‘All right.’
‘Bookstore guy. I met him in a bar. He offered me a hundred bucks to do it for a month.’
‘Shoplift and throw garbage?’
‘Yeah. He didn’t say why.’
‘Why’d you dump the books?’
He looked at me as if I’d asked him to state the theory of relativity as an equation. ‘What else would I do with them?’
I took the gun out and looked at it. ‘Your contract is cancelled as of now, got it?’
He nodded.
‘I suggest you stay here for awhile. An hour say. I might be on the street I might not. You better play it safe.’
He nodded again and I opened the door.
‘Hey,’ he whined, ‘where’s my jacket?’
‘On the roof with the other garbage.’
The first thing I did was call Swan.
‘Where’s Milt?’ I said.
‘Here.’
‘If he gets a phone call, stall him, I’m on my way.’
I called a cab, telling the operator it was urgent. The taxi came quickly and moved fast through the thin mid-afternoon traffic. I sprinted down the alley to Swan’s door. He opened it and put a finger to his lips.
‘He says he’s sick. He got a call. Wants to go home.’
‘Let him. Has he got a car here?’
‘I suppose. Why?’
‘Have you got one?’
‘I can borrow something.’
‘Something?’
‘A motor cycle.’
‘Shit.’
‘With a sidecar.’
‘Oh, Jesus. All right. Can you leave now?’
‘Sure, Maggie’s here.’ He ducked back through the door, shouted ‘Okay, Milt!’ down the steps and came back.
‘Out here.’ He led me down towards a dumpster in the alley. Beside it was his motor cycle, an old Harley Davidson. The sidecar was a World War Two relic with patches on the fabric and dents like bullet holes in the body.
‘Has Milton-Smith ever seen you on this?’
He pulled out heavy goggles and a helmet like Lindbergh’s. ‘No. Friend in the next building lets me use it, but I don’t need it much.’
I levered myself into the sidecar which was as comfortable as a coffin. The motor caught at Swan’s first kick and we puttered down the alley. Up the street Milton-Smith was trotting along on his short legs towards a garage. We stopped with a clear view of the exit and waited. After ten minutes, a green Dodge Dart rolled out.
‘That’s him,’ Swan said.
‘Follow that car.’
The Dart crossed Market Street and began the manoeuvres designed to put it on a high road leading north- east. The wind was roaring and cold, and I only had a T-shirt and a light velour sweater between me and it.
‘Where’s he going?’ I shouted.
‘Oakland, Berkeley…’ The wind whipped the words away.
I was disappointed, not the Golden Gate. The traffic moved fast but Swan was a good rider and he kept the bike steady and my sidecar out of harm’s way. I was starting to enjoy the ride when he waved and shouted at me.
‘What?’
‘Toll.’
I fished out coins and scattered them into the machine like birdseed. The Dart had got a smoother passage through and Swan had to change lanes and pick up speed to stay in touch. The sidecar swayed and I felt like a flightless fledgling teetering on a branch.
Milt took a north-going turn off the bridge and Swan mouthed Berkeley at me. I thought about communes, marches, protests, but the streets were quiet and there wasn’t an untrimmed beard in sight. The Dart made a few turns and slid into a parking lot attached to a building with tinted glass, white pebbles and potted palms. Swan
