The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

“About what time?”

“Somewhere between eleven-thirty and midnight, I guess.”

“He see you?”

“No. I was already in our car when he drove up.”

“What did the woman look like?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see her face, and I can’t remember how she was dressed or even if she was short or tall.”

That was all Fall could tell me. We shooed him out of the office, and I used Axford’s telephone to call up “Wop” Healey’s dive in North Beach and leave word that when “Porky” Grout came in he was to call up “Jack.” That was a standing arrangement by which I got word to Porky whenever I wanted to see him, without giving anybody a chance to tumble to the connection between us.

“Know the White Shack?” I asked Axford, when I was through.

“I know where it is, but I don’t know anything about it.”

“Well, it’s a tough hole. Run by ‘Tin-Star’ Joplin, an ex-yegg who invested his winnings in the place when Prohibition made the roadhouse game good. He makes more money now than he ever heard of in his piking safe-ripping days. Retailing liquor is a sideline with him; his real profit comes from acting as a relay station for the booze that comes through Halfmoon Bay for points beyond; and the dope is that half the booze put ashore by the Pacific rum fleet is put ashore in Halfmoon Bay.

“The White Shack is a tough hole, and it’s no place for your brother-in-law to be hanging around. I can’t go down there myself without stirring things up; Joplin and I are old friends. But I’ve got a man I can put in there for a few nights. Pangburn may be a regular visitor, or he may even be staying there. He wouldn’t be the first one Joplin had ever let hide out there. I’ll put this man of mine in the place for a week, anyway, and see what he can find.”

“It’s all in your hands,” Axford said.

From Axford’s office I went straight to my rooms, left the outer door unlocked, and sat down to wait for Porky Grout. I had waited an hour and a half when he pushed the door open and came in. “ ’Lo! How’s tricks?” He swaggered to a chair, leaned back in it, put his feet on the table and reached for a pack of cigarettes that lay there.

That was Porky Grout. A pasty-faced man in his thirties, neither large nor small, always dressed flashily — even if sometimes dirtily — and trying to hide an enormous cowardice behind a swaggering carriage, a blustering habit of speech, and an exaggerated pretense of self-assurance.

But I had known him for three years; so now I crossed the room and pushed his feet roughly off the table, almost sending him over backward.

“What’s the idea?” He came to his feet, crouching and snarling. “Where do you get that stuff? Do you want a smack in the—”

I took a step toward him. He sprang away, across the room.

“Aw, I didn’t mean nothin’. I was only kid-din’!”

“Shut up and sit down,” I advised him.

I had known this Porky Grout for three years, and had been using him for nearly that long, and I didn’t know a single thing that could be said in his favor. He was a coward. He was a liar. He was a thief, and a hop-head. He was a traitor to his kind and, if not watched, to his employers. A nice bird to deal with! But detecting is a hard business, and you use whatever tools come to hand. This Porky was an effective tool if handled right, which meant keeping your hand on his throat all the time and checking up every piece of information he brought in.

His cowardice was — for my purpose — his greatest asset. It was notorious throughout the criminal Coast; and though nobody — crook or not — could possibly think him a man to be trusted, nevertheless he was not actually distrusted. Most of his fellows thought him too much the coward to be dangerous; they thought he would be afraid to betray them; afraid of the summary vengeance that crookdom visits upon the squealer. But they didn’t take into account Porky’s gift for convincing himself that he was a lion-hearted fellow, when no danger was near. So he went freely where he desired and where I sent him, and brought me otherwise unobtainable bits of information.

For nearly three years I had used him with considerable success, paying him well, and keeping him under my heel. Informant was the polite word that designated him in my reports; the underworld has even less lovely names than the common stool-pigeon to denote his kind.

“I have a job for you,” I told him, now that he was seated again, with his feet on the floor. His loose mouth twitched up at the left corner, pushing that eye into a knowing squint. “I thought so.” He always says something like that.

“I want you to go down to Halfmoon Bay and stick around Tin-Star Joplin’s joint for a few nights. Here are two photos” — sliding one of Pangburn and one of the girl across the table. “Their names and descriptions are written on the backs. I want to know if either of them shows up down there, what they’re doing, and where they’re hanging out. It may be that Tin-Star is covering them up.”

Porky was looking knowingly from one picture to the other. “I think I know this guy,” he said out of the corner of his mouth that twitches. That’s another thing about Porky. You can’t mention a name or give a description that won’t bring that same remark, even though you make them up.