Free Interface (Crime Masterworks) by Joe Gores Page A

Thirteen minutes to bus departure.
    Docker, who had been standing just out of sight on Natoma, went across First Street in long strides toward the open dark maw of the parking garage directly opposite. His topcoat tails flapped around his legs and the attaché case swung in asymmetrical rhythm to help with his balance.
    He pulled up just inside the door with a little skip made necessary by his limp, then twisted to scan the front of the terminal building. Browne was nowhere in sight. Satisfied, he straightened his lapels, rubbed on the back of one calf the shoe-tip of the other foot which had gotten scuffed, then went away between the rows of parked cars.
    This echoing passageway took him through the sprawling dim low-ceilinged garage to a series of open-air blacktop lots. These, leased to private operators by the state, followed the course of the Skyway which shook and rumbled with traffic above Docker’s head.
    Eventually he emerged into Howard Street between two immense concrete abutments. He was nearly two blocks from the Trailways Bus TerminaL There was no one behind him. It was 12:18, two minutes before the Silver Eagle would leave for Los Angeles without him.
    Back at the terminal, Browne was staring in disbelief as the last southbound passenger boarded the big double-decker bus. The door shut with a pneumatic sound very much like phooey. Browne sprinted back into the terminal and through it toward the men’s room. In his wake moved a very big man wearing a droopy mustache that made him look like an overweight Rock Hudson during the actor’s mustache phase.
    Browne straightened up from looking under the locked door of Docker’s empty stall with shock in his face. As he did, Kolinski came in, preceded by the overweight Rock Hudson and followed by another man equally as large. All three of them had their hands in their overcoat pockets. No one else was in the restroom. The last man stopped and leaned against the door so anyone trying to open it would find it unyielding unless they got back and took a run at it.
    Browne was backing up. Unfortunately for him, he was already at the last stall, almost against the back wall. Kolinski’s deep-set eyes were dangerous.
    ‘So?’ he said.
    Browne said: ‘I swear he … I come in here after I seen he wasn’t on the bus. I swear—’
    ‘Blaney?’
    ‘He wasn’t on the bus,’ said Rock Hudson.
    ‘Any other bus out of here he could have caught?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I swear,’ said Browne. ‘I swear, Mr Kolinski …’
    ‘Daggert. Amtrack?’
    ‘The last train out was at nine o’clock,’ said the man who was making sure there would continue to be no one else in the restroom.
    ‘I swear, Mr Kolinski—’
    ‘Upstairs? An East Bay bus?’
    Blaney merely shook his head. ‘He must of smelled our friend here and just split. Unless …’
    ‘Yes,’ said Kolinski. ‘Unless.’
    Browne had gone silent. Silence did not attract attention. But Kolinski’s attention was apparently already attracted. Since silence hadn’t worked, Browne began trying to make himself fit into the corner formed by the final stall and the back wall. He was too long and lean and suddenly dolorous to be successful.
    Then Kolinski smiled. A lot of Jews wearing tattooed numbers would have recognized the quality of that smile. ‘How much did he pay you to lose him?’ asked Kolinski softly.
    Browne’s face glistened. His lips were dry. He said, ‘Mr Kolinski, I swear—’
    ‘Blaney.’
    The search was swift, thorough, professional, not at all gentle. Blaney shook his head. ‘Not enough to buy a piece of ass off his mother.’
    ‘Pure stupidity, then.’
    Kolinski swung a round-house right as he spoke. It was a sucker punch, but it drove Browne’s head sideways against the wall tiles because Browne had made no attempt to block it, counter it, or move his head out of its way. Like silence, it didn’t work either to deflect Kolinski’s anger.
    ‘Make this stupid nigger hurt,’ Kolinski