“Just a code,” Reardon said, coming back to life from his nap. “It was my broker telling me that Mohouses are going up on the first.” He glanced over his shoulder and dropped his voice. “Don’t blab it all over the place. We don’t want it to get around.”
Lundahl looked hurt. “You mean, if you wanted me to know what it was all about, you’d tell me, right?”
“Right,” Reardon said, pleased with Lundahl’s ready intelligence, and led the way from the gymnasium, not unhappy to leave his dream behind in the large vaulted room, keeping company with the dust and the odor of stale socks.
Sunday — 1:05 P.M.
Marty’s Oyster House, in common with most bars and restaurants in that section of San Francisco, was far from being overly busy on an early Sunday afternoon, but that in no way tended to improve its notoriously terrible service. Porky Frank, sitting in a booth to the rear, saw Reardon begin to push through the etched-glass doors and put out a hand, catching a waiter on the wing. Porky’s surprise was even greater than that of his bagged quarry; the waiters at Marty’s were usually more elusive. Still, Porky had one and he did not intend to free him until he had put him to good use.
“An extra dry martini, up, and a large beer,” he said, disregarding the hurt look on the face of the waiter. “The martini with a olive.”
The waiter nodded, unsurprised at the order. Anyone impolite enough to snatch at waiters instead of letting them come to you at their own pace was quite apt to be the type to use a beer chaser for a martini. Still, one of the rules of the house was that once you were pressed into service whether against your will or not, you actually had to serve the customer. It was a rule the waiters at Marty’s intended to fight bitterly at their next contract negotiations, but for the moment it was in effect.
“Dry olive and beer,” he said into his drooping mustache, and headed for the bar.
Reardon dropped into the booth across from Porky and nodded. Porky returned the greeting and considered the lieutenant gravely for a moment before coming to the conclusion that enough preliminaries had been observed and that it was time to move on.
“You look rested, Mr. R,” he said equably. “Tell me, what’s new on the case?”
Reardon looked around for a waiter and saw with astonishment that one was approaching their table laden with martini and beer, and seemed intent upon serving them. He turned back to Porky with a frown of curiosity.
“It was nothing,” Porky said modestly. “I caught him when he wasn’t looking.”
“But you caught him, which is what counts.” Reardon’s tone was properly congratulatory. He looked around and realized he was hungry. He accepted his beer, held the waiter by the arm while he ordered a hot roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes. The waiter shrugged philosophically, and wrote it on his pad. What people did with their stomachs was no concern of his. Reardon released the waiter and turned to Porky. “Well?”
“I asked you first,” Porky said a bit reprovingly. He saw the look that crossed Reardon’s face but was not intimidated. “I repeat, I asked you first. Mainly because there is nothing new from my end. I wanted to meet with you to see if you had anything. Maybe it would tie in with the nothing I’ve got. You understand?”
“Roughly.” Reardon took a large draught of his beer and set the glass down. He wiped his lips and considered Porky. “We received the tape, the way the man said on the telephone. Somebody had bumped into a mailman and slipped the package into the mailbag while he was helping the mailman pick up the junk. You were right on that...”
Porky looked modest.
“We even found the wino who’d put the package in the mail-bag,” Reardon added. “Only he was dead...”
Porky’s look of modesty disappeared. Reardon related the events of the past few days while Porky listened closely, taking a sip every now and then of his martini. The waiter brought the food, placed it on the table with an air of refusing any responsibility for it, and escaped before these exigent customers could demand anything else, like water, or toothpicks, or even dessert. Reardon took a mouthful, found it delicious, and spoke around it.
“And that’s where we are,” he said. “Nowhere. This bastard is cutting Pop into little squares and the brains are trying to make up their minds whether to trade this Lazaretti for him or not.” He dug another large forkful of food from his plate and sighed. “Not that I’m so damned sure the brains are wrong. It’s just that it makes it a little rough on Pop.” He put the food in his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and looked at Porky somberly. “And you say there’s nothing from your end? Does anything I just told you tie into anything you’ve heard? In any way?”
Porky shook his head. “Not that I can see.”
“Anything about any Italian connection?”
Porky’s eyebrows rose. “Italian?”
Reardon finished the last bit, looked at the plate as if he might well have liked to lick it, and put down his fork regretfully. He picked up his beer.
“That’s right. Italian. Lazaretti is from Italy, and Lazaretti is the guy this maniac wants to trade for Pop. And we can’t figure out why.”
“Nor can I.”
“Great,” Reardon said with irritation. “You must have done some great listening!”
“Oh, I listened very well, and I heard quite a lot,” Porky said easily. “It’s just that I fail to see any connection with what I heard and what you would like to hear. For example, I hear there’s apt to be a change in gambling bosses in town — not that the Organization exists, you understand, or if it exists it certainly has no tentacles planted in our fair city, and even if by some odd coincidence it did have a tentacle or two around, certainly nothing to do with gambling. Still, the rumor persists.”
Reardon was listening. Porky went on.
“Then, too, I hear that the price of Turkish horse is on the rise, due to a temporary shortage, such as occurs from time to time. I also hear there’s a lot of heat on a few parties because it seems a three-hundred-grand shipment of grass from Mexico turned out to be just that. Grass. Like on your front lawn. Although, from my experience, real grass in Mexico is rarer than Mary Jane. Theoretically, that should make it more valuable, shouldn’t it?”
“Depends on the going market for Mexican lawns,” Reardon suggested.
“Probably. Let’s see — what else did I hear? Oh, yes! Speaking of Mary Jane, the real big talk around is that there’s a chemist in Monterey who has been working on the development of an essence that smells just like grade-A pot. Now that I think about it,” Porky said, “I wonder why nobody ever did that before?”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?” Reardon asked, astonished.
“Come, come, Mr. R!” Porky said reprovingly. “You can’t be as obtuse as all that! Can you imagine the frustration of all the dogs the Federal Bureau of Narcotics has trained to sniff out marijuana, when just about everything that comes through customs has the same smell?” He laughed. “Can you picture the scene at customs, say when four or five planes come in at the same time from our sister republic to the south, and those poor mutts start going absolutely berserk over everyone’s luggage? It’ll look like a dog-food ad.”
“Very comical, I’m sure,” Reardon said dryly. “But it doesn’t get us anywhere.”
“No,” Porky admitted, and sobered up. “Still, it’s all I can offer at the moment. You’re sure that this Lazaretti, or Sergeant Holland, never raised dogs for the Narcotics Bureau? It would give us a tie-in.” He seemed to accept Reardon’s silence as denial. “Too bad. Well, I shall return to keeping my ear to the ground. Pray it doesn’t rain. The one thing I hate is moldy ear, as we call it. Incidentally,” he added curiously, “what did you ever do about that newspaperman?”