*
The world flew out from under Butterfield’s feet. He executed an inverted U two feet into the air, lit on his tailbone, sprawled onto his back, and before he could recover from the stun of it all the man on the other end of the rope heeled Washoe Ban around and headed back toward the stable at a brisk lope, dragging the fight plumb out of the stable boy. Holy Christ, but life was a beautiful thing.
Then, as he slowed to a walk, he spotted the group of strangers standing between him and the stable, ugly bastards in dungarees, steel poking through the toes of their workboots. They were armed with scythes and sledgehammers and pitchforks. Siringo’s hat was skewered on one set of tines.
12
He took a dally around the saddle horn to free his hands and drew the Colt, cocking it and pointing it at the man in the center of the line. The man had black whiskers that appeared to grow straight up from his neck all the way to his eyes, whose whites shone through the thicket. He held a sledgehammer near the end of the handle in throwing position.
“Six rounds, seven men,” Siringo said. “Which one of you thinks it’s his lucky day?”
No one moved.
“Stand down, gentlemen. This man is my guest.”
Charmian had emerged from the stable behind the men, to stand beside Becky London; the plucky little squirt had made good on her promise to bring on the cavalry. She’d added a hat to her ensemble, with a velvet brim tilted toward one temple. Her stepmother held her late husband’s revolver against one hip with the hammer eared back.
“That how you’re fetching a man to supper now?” Black Beard pointed his hammer at the stable boy on the ground. He held the heavy tool straight out; three feet of hickory ending in four pounds of steel. Siringo would not want to take him on at wrestling.
The old detective let the others do the talking. He kept the pistol aimed at the man’s breastbone.
“He’s wanted in L.A. for horse-stealing,” said Hammett. He was inside the building, leaning on his forearms on the sill of the broken window. “You can come with us if you want, and share the charge. Me, I never made friends that fast.”
Black Beard turned his head far enough to see the .38 in the young detective’s hand. He let the hammer slide through his hand until he was holding it more casually near the head.
The tension went out of the group then. Weapons lowered. Obviously the man with the sledgehammer was the leader.
“You can step down, Mr. Siringo,” Charmian said. “Yuri, help him with the prisoner.”
One of the other men, slope-shouldered, with a fine set of imperial whiskers, leaned his scythe against the stable wall and came forward.
Siringo uncocked and holstered his Colt and dismounted. Together he and Yuri got the dazed Butterfield to his feet and free of the lasso. The bib of his overalls hung down where a strap had broken, but he appeared unharmed except for scrapes and bruises. Black Beard dropped his hammer and took Washoe Ban’s reins while the two men escorted the stable boy toward the building, a hand on each arm.
The man with Siringo’s Stetson raised his pitchfork for the detective to jerk it loose of the tines. Siringo paused, scowled at the punctures, slapped the hat against his hip to knock loose the dirt, and put it on. As he stepped past the man with the pitchfork, he curled his free hand into a fist and swung. The man’s nose collapsed and he sat on the ground.
“Respect a man’s hat.”
Hammett laughed his snarky laugh.
*
Charmian hung up the gallows telephone in the combination dining room and parlor and went back to her seat. “That was a Sergeant Conifer with the San Francisco Police, returning my call. A horse answering Spirit Dancer’s description was found half an hour ago in the livery stable of a man named Soo Lok.”
“That sounds like the place where we rented our mounts,” Hammett said. “We could’ve saved ourselves a trip.”
“I ain’t complaining.” Siringo sipped beer, spat a hop back into the glass, and sat back in his rocker, admiring Charmian London. It was dark out, and lamplight was uncommonly kind to her cheekbones. “I was pretty sure Butterfield told the truth this time. No one wants to be drug by a horse twice.”
“That was barbaric.” Becky London didn’t look up from David Copperfield open in her lap; on the other hand, she hadn’t turned the page in twenty minutes.
Her stepmother ignored the interruption. “The resemblance wasn’t so close at first, but the sergeant was thorough enough to apply a piece of wet burlap to the horse’s forehead. He found Spirit Dancer’s star-shaped blaze under the paint. Personally I doubt Abner had the intelligence to think of that; but I doubt the police will be able to prove it was Soo Lok, unless Abner implicates him. It was probably a crime of opportunity. He saw his client was nervous, guessed theft was involved, and took steps to protect himself and whatever profit he might draw from the situation. In any case, the fact someone went to all that trouble certainly redounds to the theory’s credit.”
“Who goes to jail over it don’t signify, though Earp’ll likely want somebody to pay; he’s vindictive. But he’s more interested in getting the horse back. Now all we got to figure’s who benefited from putting Butterfield in the ground before he could tell his story.”
“We know who,” Hammett said. “Why’s the question.”
Charmian looked from one to the other. “What is it you think I’m too delicate to know? If having an assassin on my property doesn’t entitle me, I don’t know what would.”
“Mr. Hammett’s just speculating. I’d like to run it past your sheriff before we go around casting stones. Can you trust your hands to make Butterfield stay put till he comes?”
“They’re used to harder work. As I said, they’re a fine bunch of pirates.” She looked at the clock on the big stone mantel. “He should have been here by now. What’s keeping him?”
“Shaking every hand on the way,” muttered Becky. “He started running for reelection the minute he was sworn in.”
“Patience, child. You’ve a lifetime to learn about the world of men.” Charmian returned her attention to Siringo. “You know, you didn’t have to break Ivan’s nose. He and his brother Yuri have been working here since Jack brought them from a Russian settlement up north. They’re sawyers by training, and between them they do the work of ten men.”
“It’s a self-defense issue. In Texas, a fellow’s hat can be the only thing between him and a set of fried brains.”
“Need I remind you this isn’t Texas?” This time Becky met his gaze. She still had her own hat on, as if she’d forgotten about it. He thought she looked comical sitting around her own house wearing a hat.
Hammett turned from a shelf of books whose titles he’d been examining and smiled over his beer.
“Don’t be too hard on him, miss. He’s got an allergy to lynch mobs. And he could’ve shot Butterfield and saved himself effort.”
“He’s a brute. This is Beauty Ranch, not some filthy mining camp.”
“All the more reason to see you came to no harm for harboring a thief without knowing it.”
Siringo could see his partner was sweet on the girl. He changed the subject before things got any more complicated.
“You pull a good brute yourself, Hammett. For a minute there in the stable I thought you was going to skin Butterfield like a jackrabbit.”
“It’s the moustache.” He touched his upper lip. “All the picture villains wear them.”
“You’re all impossible! I’m going home to Mother in the morning.” Becky snapped shut her book, got up, and left the room.
“She inherited Jack’s temper,” Charmian said. “The rows he had with her mother were known to all the neighbors, but he never laid a hand on her. He was all blow, and so is Becky.”
Hammett said, “I think she’s just about perfect.”
Pistons clattered outside. Charmian put aside her cup of tea.
“That will be the sheriff in his Dodge.”
The sheriff’s name wa
s Vernon Dillard; and five minutes’ acquaintance was sufficient to make Siringo suspect he’d changed the spelling, substituting i for u.
He wore a town suit and a homburg like the president’s, but that was as close as he got to looking like a man in a responsible job. His coat barely buttoned across his paunch and his big ham face was red and streaming by the time they got to the top of the ridge. He squatted over the tread marks the truck had left, and made as much noise getting back up as a cow giving birth to a calf with a full set of horns.
“Good luck finding the man that belongs to that rig,” he said. “Half the property owners in the county own a Ford truck.”
Hammett shook his head. “The eel doesn’t live in this county. He sleeps in the Frisco sewer and eats raw fish.”
“You big-city detectives read too many cheap magazines. If it’s this eel character you keep jawing about, he’s probably working for one of London’s creditors. He left a lot of bills unpaid when he croaked.”
The young man opened his mouth again, but Siringo stared him into silence.
“Thanks for coming out, Sheriff,” he said. “You’ll put a man or two on watch, in case he comes back?”
“Just for a day or two, and I don’t mind telling you it’s a waste of time. He was just trying to put a scare in the widow, and now he’s done that, he won’t be back. I’m short-handed enough sending men all over these hills hunting down alky cookers. I can’t spare one to wet-nurse a couple of skittish women all spring.”
“Spoken like a true servant of the people,” Hammett said. “You can’t step ten feet out your office door without stumbling into a speakeasy. What’s the going rate to eliminate the competition from the sticks?”
Dillard’s face reddened another shade. “How’s about I run you in for lugging around that flask in your pocket?”
“Go ahead, sweetheart. The law says I can drink all I want, as long as it doesn’t catch me selling any. It’s been a long time since I lost sleep worrying what a tin badge thinks of me.”
The sheriff dug a sap out of his hip pocket and slapped his other palm with it. “Maybe I offered to take you in for questioning and you put up a fight.”
“Don’t lie on my account.” Hammett reached into the pocket containing his brass knuckles. Siringo’s hand shot out and clamped down on his wrist.
A tense moment followed. Then Dillard grinned, straining the bulge of tobacco in his left cheek, and returned the sap to its pocket.
“It’s a lucky man’s got a friend he can count on in a pinch,” he said. “But the sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass all day. He might not be around next time.”
“You like to pick your teeth with dynamite, that it?” said Siringo, when the sheriff was halfway back down the slope.
Hammett had his makings out, but his hand shook so badly the paper fluttered out from between thumb and forefinger. He looked down at the hand, laughing. “Whew!”
*
When Dillard left, with Abner Butterfield manacled in the Dodge’s backseat, Charmian invited her guests to stay the night. Siringo shook his head. They were back in the parlor. Becky London had gone upstairs.
“Mr. Hammett can, if he wants. I’ll be hanging around Frisco a couple of days.”
“Yeah?” Hammett’s brows raised.
“If it’s Becky and me you’re worried about, shouldn’t you stay here?”
“Your sheriff’s dead wrong about his intentions, but I think the shooter got what he come for, even if it didn’t go the way he had figured. I doubt he had anything to do with stealing horses. He, or the man he’s working for, had something on, and a couple of private detectives sniffing around was bad for business, whatever it is. Like a lot of folks he thought if he put our only witness out of the way we’d lose interest. You got to snuff out that kind of thinking right at the source.
“Also I don’t like being trailed. I want to get to the bottom of this eel business before I head home.”
“Who—or what—is the eel?” Charmian asked. “Gentlemen, I think by now you know I’m no shrinking violet. I demand to know why my house was put under assault.”
Hammett looked at his partner. Siringo rocked back and forth, pulled on his pipe, nodded. “Local character,” Hammett told Charmian. “He’s affiliated with a man named Clanahan.”
“That scoundrel.” Her face was grim.
PART TWO
OPERATING UNDER THE INFLUENCE
In the early 1920s … Hammett was not a writer learning about private detectives, but a private detective learning about writing.
—Joe Gores
13
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was tall and gaunt, with a barbered moustache that made his expression unreadable as a cat’s. His hair was pale rather than blond, and when he took off his hat it sprang up into a tall mane as if it had never been held down. His nose was straight and his chin cleft. He looked like a fair-haired Lucifer.
When his landlady called up to say he was wanted on the telephone downstairs, he bounded down the steps and picked up the receiver she’d left dangling from the black box. “Yes, angel?”
“Sam, darling. How did you know it was me?” Jose’s mezzo tones crackled, broken up by a thousand miles of interconnecting cables.
“It’s always you. No one else knows this number—or wants it. When are you coming out?”
“Just as soon as the doctor says it’s safe for me to travel. You know, the first three months are the most crucial.”
“I thought it was the first three minutes.”
“Don’t be coarse. Do you miss me?”
“Sure, but we better not go against doctor’s orders.”
“You could try to sound disappointed.”
“You know I miss you.”
“You could come back to Montana.”
“I’m stuck here just now. Do you need money?”
“Did you sell something? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“No such luck. I took a job.”
“What sort of job? A detective job? Sam!”
“It’s almost wrapped up. I’ll wire you a couple of hundred later today.”
“You told me you were done with all that.”
“I said if I never worked another case it’d be too soon. It got to be too soon.”
“Were you going to tell me?”
“I just did.”
“After I pried it out of you. Sam, are you taking care of yourself?”
“Sure.” He tucked the earpiece under the corner of his jaw and rolled a cigarette.
“Not smoking?”
“Promise.” He held the match without striking it.
“Drinking?”
“Not a drop.” He left the flask in his pocket.
“Are you writing?”
“I was, when the phone rang.”
“Don’t be cross. How’s it going?”
“I’m having a little trouble with the plot. I can’t figure out what the villain’s got in mind.”
“Well, you will. I know something the publishers don’t.”
“What’s that, how to answer your mail?”
“No, silly. I know you never quit.”
“I quit the Agency. I quit my tomcat ways when I met you. A guy can get used to this quitting business with an angel to help him out.”
“Banana oil. Are you sure you can spare two hundred? What will you live on?”
“Love, sweetheart. Like the song says.”
“I’m serious. You’re not eating, I can tell. You even sound skinny.”
“I’m fat as a slug. The client’s loaded, don’t worry.”
“Who is it?”
“You know I never talk about that.”
“Is it a woman?”
“Sure. Swell dame. She looks like Theda Bara and dances like Nazimova.”
“I’m serious. If you won’t tell me, I’ll burn up every penny of that money on this call.”
“Okay. It’s Wyatt Earp.”
“So you really won’t
tell me.”
“Someone else wants to use the phone. I’ll call you in a couple of days.”
“Who’s waiting, Jesse James?”
“Crazy about you, Jose.”
“Promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”
He promised, and hung up the receiver just in time for a coughing jag.
He walked to the States Hof Brau and ordered pickled pig’s feet and a bottle of near beer. Charlie Siringo entered just as he dug in.
The old detective stood just inside the door, glancing around while his eyes adjusted to the dim light, then spotted Hammett and came over. He was slight, with a few black hairs in his silver moustache trimmed at right angles like a carpenter’s square. He wore parts of different suits, gray trousers with a striped vest and black coat, but they were carefully brushed and a green cravat added a touch of color. His face was dinged all over from pox and he limped slightly from some old injury.
He took off his hat when he reached Hammett’s table. His hair was thin at the temples, bald at the crown, and parted in the middle. “Eat the rest of that hog while you was waiting?”
“Take a load off. Try the Wiener schnitzel. It’s the best in town.”
“Can I get a steak?” He drew out a chair and sat down, frowned at the holes in his hat, and set it at his elbow.
“Big John!”
A great rolling zeppelin of a man came their way, draped in acres of gray worsted. A yard of gold watch-chain hammocked his belly. “Ja, Sam.” The counterweight of his muttonchop whiskers added resonance to his Prussian accent.
Hammett asked Siringo how he took his steak.
“Any way it comes, so long as it’s quick.”
“Make it bloody, John. And squeeze out two more bottles from the moose in back.” He pointed at his beer.
John squinted at Siringo. “Prohibition agent?”
“Pinkerton,” Hammett said. “Retired, like yours truly. What’s in back?”
The big man leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “I just took delivery on a case of Canadian.”
“Who’s on the seal, Pancho Villa?”
Ragtime Cowboys Page 8
