Free Interface (Crime Masterworks) by Joe Gores

Los Angeles.’
    ‘Ten-forty tonight.’ The ticket agent had flushed.
    Docker pocketed his change. ‘Jesus Christ. I could walk faster.’
    He turned away from the window. The ticket agent turned angry, now florid features at the grey-haired black man reading the schedules.
    ‘Next,’ he snapped.
    ‘Just browsin’.’
    ‘Then quit blocking the ticket window.’
    Browne put his face close to the agent’s. Browne’s eyes had yellowish bloodshot whites. ‘A soft voice turneth away wrath,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘And saveth a fat lip.’
    He followed Docker back through the terminal. The travellers scattered around the echoing, low-ceilinged room were mostly older men buried in paperbacks or newspapers. Browne’s steps quickened as Docker went toward the banks of doors opening into Fremont Street, then slowed again as the quarry turned right between the rows of benches.
    This led only past a two-bit shoeshine stand and a bank of storage lockers to the men’s room. Browne hesitated, checked his watch, rubbed his hands together nervously. They were long, tapering dry-palmed hands that made a rustling sound against each other. Finally the black man went into the restroom also, entering the tiled facility crab-fashion as if to avoid the full force of any blow launched at him from behind the door.
    Docker was nowhere near the door. Indeed, he was just feeding a dime into the slot of the furthest pay stall in the line. He went in without looking around at all as Browne headed for a urinal. Four of the twenty-one minutes before the Silver Eagle’s departure had passed.
    The moment Docker’s stall door had clapped shut with its heavy click designed to make the patron feel his dime was well spent, Browne drifted down the line of stalls on silent feet. He stopped just short of Docker’s, precisely where the overhead fluorescents had no chance of casting his shadow under Docker’s door. He listened, poised.
    From inside came the rustle of clothing. A pause. Then a grunt, a splash, a relieved sigh.
    Browne was already moving, quickly and silently, trotting at little short of a run toward the First Street entrance and the pay phone outside it. He dropped his dime, dialled. Alex Kolinski’s heavy voice came on the line.
    ‘He’s here,’ exclaimed Browne, ‘In the men’s room takin’ a shit!’
    Before Browne was out the men’s room door, however, Docker’s stall had opened. The big, blond, hard-faced man had emerged fully clothed. Docker had the attaché case pinched between arm and body again to free both hands. He was drying, with a heavy wad of toilet paper, the fist he’d used to make the splash. He dropped the paper on the floor, went out of the restroom.
    In the phone booth outside the far end of the block-long terminal, Browne was saying, ‘Trailways Terminal on First Street is where. He—’
    ‘He’s getting a bus.’ Kolinski’s voice made it a statement.
    ‘Ain’t I tellin’ you? Los Angeles Silver Eagle, it leaves here at twelve-twenty. He—’
    ‘He’s got an attaché case with him?’
    ‘Uh. That like a briefcase only it square-like?’
    Docker had stayed against the wall, had gone out the Fremont Street door closest to the men’s room and thus had not been visible from the body of the waiting room, let alone from Browne’s phone booth outside in First Street. He turned right, toward Natoma Street, then right again and went along Natoma toward First Street, where the Silver Eagle would load. The bus was waiting. Docker ignored it.
    ‘Man, I tell you he try to leave I follow him. Be like pickin’ cherries off a tree—’
    ‘ Listen , goddam you!’ cut in Kolinski angrily. ‘ Don’t go up against him, hang back if he doesn’t get that bus. I and some men are on the way. He beat the living shit out of Rowlands over at the Greyhound station about an hour ago, acted like he might be dropping meth …’
    Browne, whistling cheerily under his breath, headed back into the terminal.