Hammett

by Joe Gores

  ‘This is your old sweetheart,’ said Boyd Mulligan’s nasal tones.

  ‘Yeah? Which one?’

  ‘How many sweethearts you got, for Chrissake?’

  ‘Oh, Boyd darling. I haven’t heard your voice in so long I didn’t recognize it.’

  After she had opened the house five years before, Boyd Mulligan had been around twice a week to get a piece of Molly as well as of the action. He was a mean son of a bitch with a woman, so she’d been happy when he’d finally started just sending a messenger for the Mulligan Bros Bailbond Company share.

  ‘I’ve been busy, but I’ve been keeping tabs on you just the same. Tommy Dunne called to say a gumshoes out of LA named Victor Atkinson was around to your place.’

  ‘I was just going to call you about that.’

  ‘What did they want?’

  ‘Names. Figures…’

  ‘Just what I thought.’ There were vicious undertones in the nasal voice. ‘I’ve been sitting here thinking, what if Molly decides to spill her guts to these birds? What if they promise she can cop a plea or get immunity if she does? What if-’

  ‘Don’t lean on me, Boydie-babyl’ she snapped. ‘I’ve had Chicago amnesia in the past, and will again if it comes to that. But don’t lean on me.’

  ‘Aw, look, sweetheart, I didn’t mean it that way. I tell you what, tomorrow morning you go see Brass Mouth Epstein. Tell him we’re picking up his fee and that we don’t want you to be tried for Contributing. How he gets you off is his concern.’

  ‘What if he says disappear?’

  ‘Then disappear — only make sure we know where you are. And I’ll tell you what: If you have to dump that thousand bucks bail you put up Friday night, we’ll swallow it.’

  She found warmth for her voice. ‘What can I say except thanks?’

  ‘As long as that’s all you say, sweetheart.’ He gave his nasal chuckle. ‘You let me know what Epstein says tomorrow, okay? I’ll be at the shop.’

  After she’d hung up, Molly sat staring at the thick Oriental carpet. Why was Mulligan paying for Phineas Epstein as her attorney? He would cost plenty and was dead straight besides. He was at no man’s command. That meant DA Matt Brady did plan to forget his friends and go for Contributing. Fifteen goddamn years, maybe — while on the strength of it Brady leapfrogged into the mayor’s seat.

  Crystal came into the room lugging her cardboard suitcase. It looked heavy. She had on street clothes and a coat.

  ‘Hey! Where the hell are you-’

  ‘I must leave now, Miss Farr.’

  ‘Those detectives? They can’t-’

  ‘Not them.’ Despair glinted in the tilted eyes. ‘Just…’

  ‘For God’s sake, kid, what is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘I have seen my death.’ She moved a hand to indicate her newspaper, crumpled open to the news page.

  ‘Is it the trouble from back east?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Molly wished she knew what the trouble back east really was. ‘Here? In San Francisco?’

  The girl did not respond.

  ‘Okay, kid,’ said Molly, ‘tomorrow you go see Brass Mouth Epstein with me. If he tells you to disappear, we’ll drop out of sight together where nobody’ll find us. Now, you go in and pack Molly’s things like a good girl, just in case.’

  Crystal hesitated, then disappeared to the rear of the apartment with her cheap cardboard suitcase and a fatalistic shrug.

  Molly paced up and down. Hell, she was in as much trouble as her goddamn maid. She knew where the goddamn bodies were buried. If some of them were dug up because of her arrest, the Mulligans would want another in their place.

  Hers.

  6

  Hammett entered his apartment carrying the Tuesday morning Chronicle, his meager mail, and a long loaf of French bread. At the far end of the hall he gave the loaf a left-handed toss around the doorframe into the tiny kitchen. He stopped dead at sight of the massive figure sprawled in the living room’s only upholstered chair.

  ‘You’ve got a lousy lock, Hammett.’ Atkinson made bluish swirls of smoke with his stogie. ‘Ought to get a rim latch with a dead bolt. I blew this one open with a breath.’

  Hammett dropped his newspaper and mail on the unmade wall bed and sat down.

  ‘It’s not your breath, it’s those goddamn cigars.’

  Atkinson lit another of the nickel monstrosities from the ruins of the old. ‘You thought over my proposition any more since we had all that good clean fun shoving Molly around the other day?’

  ‘Still not interested. How’d it go with the reform committee last night?’

  ‘I’m hired. Given the green light by His Honor personally.’

  Hammett’s voice showed surprise. ‘Brendan Brian McKenna himself? What the hell was he doing there? Slumming?’

  ‘Acting as chairman. He showed up unexpectedly, and they-’

  Hammett slapped his hands together and crowed, ‘They form a committee to clean up San Francisco, and as chairman they take the man who’s been running it as an open town for sixteen years.’ He lit a cigarette, and feathered smoke through distended nostrils. ‘He’ll hamstring you, son.’

  ‘Maybe. But I was damned careful to get that personal secretary of his, Owen Lynch, to spell out what I was being hired to do — which I’ll grant you ain’t exactly a moral crusade. Atkinson Investigations is to probe alleged graft within the police department. Period. But within that framework, no limitations. Lynch is damned enthusiastic.’

  Hammett was thoughtful. ‘Your charter makes sense.’

  ‘Yeah. And McKenna suggested my closing report go to the grand jury, not just the committee. In case there might be criminal indictments.’

  Hammett paced the narrow littered room with quick, light strides as if it were a cage. When he wasn’t drinking, like now, he found the litter distasteful.

  ‘Too damned much sense to be coming from McKenna.’

  ‘You don’t really think he’s behind the police department corruption, do you, Dash?’

  ‘“Plain Bren McKenna from the Mission,”’ mused Hammett. ‘That’s what he called himself when he ran against “Pinhead” McCarthy in 1913. He makes five hundred a month as mayor, and must spend twice that a month on hootch and harlots in that Caucasian geisha house he maintains for visiting politicos out on Sanchez and Twentieth. I guess it’s worth it to him to wear Eskimo parkas and Indian feather bonnets and motormen’s caps. Corrupt?’ He shook his head. ‘But when it comes to actually running this burg — to handling or delegating power — he can’t find his backside with both hands. If you want to know who’s behind police corruption in San Francisco, just look a block out Kearny Street from the Hall of Justice.’

  ‘Mulligan Bros Bailbonds. But how the hell do you prove it?’

  Hammett chuckled. ‘I met old Farrell Mulligan a couple of times before he died.’ His voice took on a nasal quality and a brogue. ‘“Son, when they crap in this town, they wipe with Mulligan paper.” Which isn’t much in the way of proof. When he went, his kid brother Griff took over. Now I hear that Griff just counts the take while Farrell’s pup Boyd does the heavy work.’

  ‘Well, I ain’t got a mandate to go after the Mulligans. Vice, gambling, and the rackets only as they relate to police department graft. All I gotta do is find somebody who’ll sing. Somebody like Molly who-’

  ‘Yeah, look how she cooperated.’

  Atkinson grinned sourly. ‘Preacher Laverty and Lynch believe the committee’s already put the fear of God into the mayor and the DA and the police. Molly may not be singing yet, but they sure closed her up

  …’

  ‘Vic, the only reason there was a raid at all is that three high school kids went there to celebrate somebody’s sixteenth birthday. If the ma of one of them hadn’t heard them setting it up by phone, and if her husband hadn’t happened to know the DA personally, Brady wouldn’t have pushed the cops into making a raid.’

  ‘This ain’t ever go
nna make the papers, but the mother who overheard the kids on the phone was Evelyn Brewster.’

  ‘The shipping Brewsters?’

  ‘That’s her. And she’s the prime mover on the reform committee.’

  Hammett sat down on the bed again, chuckling. ‘No wonder McKenna showed up at that meeting last night. I’ll bet old lady Brewster’s the one who pushed Brady into arraigning Molly and all her girls — even that Chinese maid — in municipal court yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah. Goddammit.’ Atkinson slammed a suddenly angry fist on the arm of his chair, hard enough so an inch of grey ash rolled down the front of his shirt. ‘They came down on Molly at just the wrong goddamn time. If I could have kept working on her-’

  ‘You mean you can’t anymore?’

  ‘Don’t you ever read them newspapers you carry around? Neither Molly nor the maid showed up for their arraignment.’ He brightened. ‘Maybe I can work a deal with Epstein, her attorney, to get at Molly. She talks to me instead of the DA-’

  ‘If Molly was your client, would you turn her up? With the Mulligans owning half the cops in town as a private police force?’

  ‘I’d furnish her protection,’ said Atkinson airily.

  ‘Sure you would.’

  The big man was on his feet. ‘Anyway, my people will be in from LA the first of the week. I ain’t much of a detective if I can’t turn up Molly before then. I told the reform committee I was going back down south today, but I think I’ll stick around for a day and try to dig her out. Maybe make a round of the speaks tonight, see what I can get on which cops are being paid off. Want a pub-crawl?’

  ‘I said to count me out, Vic.’

  Hammett brushed Vic’s cigar ash off the frayed tasseling of the venerable Coxwell he had inherited with the apartment, and sat down. He had a whole night at the typewriter ahead of him. He stood up again, went to stare out between dingy lace curtains at the stucco fascia across Post Street.

  Dammit, Vic was going at it all wrong. Advertising his presence by going around to the speaks when he should be waiting until he had taps on the Mulligan Bros phones, and on the bookie joints, speaks and taxi houses with the solidest protection. Because the better the protection, the closer to the pipeline through which money moved up and favors moved down…

  Hell with that. He hadn’t even checked the mail he’d grabbed off the hall table on the first floor. He ought to be getting the check from Cap Shaw for those two stories…

  Hammett felt the blood rush to his face. He was staring down, not at a check, but at a 9 X 12 manila envelope from Black Mask that could only contain his Continental Op stories. Rejected. He sat down on the wooden chair he used as a typing chair, and held the stories loosely in his lap.

  Rejected! The goddamn magazine hadn’t rejected anything of his in four years, not since…

  Phrases jumped out at him from the cover letter: not up to usual standard… Op says in ‘The Gutting of Couffignal’ that he’s a detective because he enjoys the work… not sure you enjoyed writing… stories… much as you looked forward to cashing check…

  He wanted to be sore. He wanted to boil with rage, tear up the letter, go off on a toot. But…

  But goddammit, Cap was right. He was on his feet again, pacing again, still holding the manuscripts in his hand. Finally he dropped them aside, unnoticed. Hell, admit it, Hammett: You wrote them only because you were worried about the landlord. You used the Op as a meal ticket, and he deserved better.

  He stopped dead in his tracks at the typing table. There was another envelope he hadn’t seen. From Alfred A. Knopf, the New York publisher who would be doing his first book in February. Just telling him when he could expect the Red Harvest galley proofs? He picked it up and gutted it with a hooked forefinger that tremored slightly.

  But it was from Harry Bloch. About The Dain Curse, which Black Mask would be running as four separate novelettes in a few months. Harry was… God, was enthusiastic!

  Biggest problem Harry and Mrs Knopf saw was Gabrielle’s slight physical deformities, which surprised Hammett. Didn’t she need them to explain her mental kinks? Also, he wanted her to be slightly… what? Distasteful at first, so the reader could be lured into sympathy with her, a step at a time, almost against his will.

  Also, Harry saw the story as overly episodic for novel form, but hell, Hammett knew that.

  He was pacing again. Felix Weber and his damned Primrose Hotel, that was the trouble. Felix had to go. But who — or what — would replace him, fill his function in the story? Hey! Translate him into someone entirely new, maybe. An ex-con like Tokzek wasn’t essential to

  …

  He stopped in the middle of the little room to burst out laughing. Not Egan Tokzek! Felix Weber. Why had the rapist shot dead by Preacher Laverty leaped to mind when he was thinking of the fictional Weber? Was Tokzek maybe an ex-con Hammett had helped send up? Why did that name have a tantalizing familiarity?

  Rumrunner, according to This Reporter on the Chronicle. Suggest that Vic find out which bootlegger he’d been running rum for, lean on the ’legger a bit? But why, exactly? Tokzek had nothing to do with..

  Hammett grimaced angrily. He didn’t want to dig out connections, form hypotheses, remember details about real felons like Egan Tokzek anymore. Only about fictional ones like Felix Weber.

  And nothing Vic Atkinson or anyone else could do was going to change that.

  7

  ‘This burg is full of rotgut whiskey,’ said Vic Atkinson.

  The cabbie pulled up in front of darkened Pier Fourteen with a shrug. ‘Nobody makes you drink it.’

  ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

  Atkinson stood on rubbery legs beside the Yellow’s open window, muttering to himself as he handed over a single and waved away the change.

  ‘There any action around here, cabbie? Girls? Booze? A little game-’

  ‘This here’s a Yellow, mister, not a White Top.’

  Atkinson peered blearily after the retreating taillight. A few feet away, below the edge of the heavy timber dock, dark water lapped around iron-bound pilings. He could smell clean salt air. Beyond the dark blot of Goat Island were the scattered pinpricks marking Point Richmond. It was well after midnight and such a still night he could hear the purl of water against the prow of a brightly lit late boat nosing into the Ferry Building slips from Oakland.

  Pronzini. That was the word he’d picked up at the Chapeau Rouge on Powell and Francisco. Somewhere here at the foot of Mission Street was supposed to be a speakie run by Dom Pronzini, who had a lock on the illicit booze making its way down from British Columbia.

  He crossed The Embarcadero to the cigar store next to the Hotel Commodore. His steps became exaggerated, his eyelids fractionally drooped, a button of his shirt had come open. His shoulder struck the door frame, so he had to grab the edge of the glass countertop to keep from falling on the floor.

  ‘Gimme some Van Camps.’

  ‘“A taste of its own,”’ quoted the clench-faced old man getting out the cigars.

  ‘Like my boots.’ He lit up, blew smoke across the counter, and leaned close. ‘’M in from Seattle, lookin’ for a little drinkie.’

  ‘’Gainst the law, mister.’

  ‘So’s spitting on the sidewalk.’

  The old man gave a long-suffering sigh.

  ‘Next block over, Steuart Street. One thirteen. Back side of the d’Audiffred Building on the corner. Only building left standing on this side of East Street during-’

  ‘Pay phone,’ said Atkinson to stem the spate of words.

  ‘Down to the Army-Navy YMCA.’

  Atkinson paused in the doorway. ‘Who sent me?’

  ‘It’s Maxie this week.’

  The Army-Navy YMCA a short block away was a square gray granite building, eight stories high. Atkinson entered the ornate high-ceilinged lobby, his heavy workman boots slapping echoes from the terrazzo floor. A pimple-faced youth behind the registration desk pointed out the pay phone.

  It ra
ng a great many times before a girl’s sleep-tousled voice answered.

  ‘I want to talk with Dashiell Hammett,’ said Atkinson.

  ‘You’ — she broke it with a huge yawn — ‘you know… what time it…’

  Atkinson put on his tough voice to growl around his cigar, ‘Hammett, sister. It’s important.’

  Hammett’s voice was short and irritated.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Dash!’ he exclaimed loudly. ‘How are you this bee-oo-tee-ful morning?’

  ‘Christ, I might have known. You bastard, I’m writing.’

  ‘And I’m walking the midnight streets, alone, drinking in cheap gin mills, alone, ogling pretty girls, alo-’

  ‘Goddammit, Vic, I’m writing!’

  ‘I’m at…’ He paused to read off the phone number in the dim light, wondering for the first time whether maybe he wasn’t a little bit drunk, after all. DAvenport seven-seven-eight-nine, and…’ He got his mouth close to the receiver. ‘I’m in danger, Dash! Strange men…’

  ‘I hope they beat your goddamn head in!’

  Atkinson rubbed his ringing ear thoughtfully, twitched his nose, wiggled his eyebrows, and checked his railroad watch. Going on one. He decided maybe it was a little thick, at that.

  One thirteen Steuart Street was a bare white wooden door without any lettering on it, not even a knob. But when Atkinson pushed, it opened inward to a flight of wide stairs going straight back. He reached the second floor winded. Too damn many cheap cigars. A hallway took him back toward The Embarcadero; he checked each door for a peep-slot.

  Two-thirds of the way along the hall he thumped a fist on a heavy hardwood panel that turned out to be sheet steel. After a moment the peep-slot slid open and an eye gleamed at him.

  ‘You’ll wake the baby.’

  ‘Maxie sent me over with the kid’s milk.’ Atkinson laid a five-dollar bill, folded longways, on the edge of the slot.

  It disappeared. The door was opened by a man in a dark suit and shirt with a wide white tie. He was a head shorter than Atkinson, but fully as wide. He had dirty fingernails. He gestured.