Hammett

by Joe Gores

  ‘You eat here a lot?’

  ‘We’re trying to fatten him up,’ shouted the fat Italian lady over the din. She laughed hugely and dug a porcine elbow into Hammett’s ribs. Somehow it was not at all like Heloise Kuhn’s elbow. ‘You’re even worse than he is, you boys must be undertakers.’ She roared with laughter and winked at Goodie. ‘You’ll eat?’

  The stockings of the girl dancing on the front table fell down and she was helped, suddenly red-faced and embarrassed, to the floor.

  As the racket momentarily ebbed, Hammett said, ‘Soup to start. Ravioli. Salad after. Then we’ll order.’

  Over huge flat bowls of rich brown steaming minestrone, thick with beans and mostaccioli, Hammett asked offhandedly, ‘Who came out big winner at the game the other night?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘The fat German.’

  ‘Right you are.’ Fingers started a toothpick toward his mouth, realized that Goodie was watching, and morosely returned the pick to his vest pocket.

  ‘I went down forty,’ admitted Hammett. ‘I guess that Irishman was big loser. Funny, I keep thinking I’ve seen him around, but…’

  ‘Joey Lonergan.’ Fingers took out a cigar instead. ‘Came out here from back east a year or so ago. Owns a repair garage in the six-hundred block of Turk Street. Takes the night calls himself, but must be coming up in the world — just bought himself a second tow truck.’

  ‘In solid with the cops, then, I guess,’ said Hammett idly.

  ‘They call him right from the scene of the accident, so he’ll beat the other towers to it. He kicks back a percentage, of course. Carries the nickname of Dead Rabbit, I don’t know why.’

  It seemed to have some meaning to Hammett. He raised questioning eyebrows. ‘Lonergan a tough boy?’

  ‘He says he is.’

  Goodie sighed and leaned back against the cracked leather seat of the Number 15 streetcar they’d caught at Kearny and Broadway. ‘You invited me along tonight only because you wanted to find that Fingers LeGrand without him knowing you were looking for him, didn’t you?’

  They rattled by the Washington Street intersection where lights burned in the windows of Mulligan Bros Bailbonds. Behind that window a pair of crude Irish power-brokers had planned to grab control of a city — and had succeeded. Where had they learned the subtlety — and gotten the original necessary cash — to play the power game?

  To hell with it. For tonight, anyway. He looked down at the golden-haired girl beside him. What he wanted to do was go home and make love to her. The trouble was that he couldn’t. It would be like breaking the wing of a songbird.

  ‘What about that man with the funny monicker?’

  ‘ Monicker? You had better quit hanging around with me. Dead Rabbit Lonergan. Way back before the Civil War there was a gang of street toughs who ran the bloody old Fifth Ward in East Lower Manhattan and called themselves the Dead Rabbit gang. Claimed to be dead game for anything. Lonergan’s the bimbo set me up last night.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ she demanded, wide-eyed.

  ‘Fingers never uses last names at his poker games — few professional gamblers do…’

  He broke off as they went out the folding doors to the deserted financial district corner. Hammett watched the double-nose car clack away, then turned back to Goodie.

  ‘During a break in the play, Fingers mentioned my last name. Immediately Lonergan made an excuse to get to the phone. To call a girlfriend in South San Francisco, he said. But the phone company records don’t show any toll calls from Fingers’ number last night.’

  ‘And on that you assume-’

  ‘Men have been hanged on less, sweetheart.’

  His eyes were caught by the Sutter Hotel, spilling bright light from its ornate lobby across the street. He’d put the hotel in the novel about Sam Spade and the blackbird, the script lying at home in a drawer in rough draft. A block away, on the corner of Montgomery, was the Hunter-Dulin Building where he had put Spade’s office.

  What the hell was he doing back in the detective business? If he couldn’t make love to Goodie, at least he could be writing. He longed for one of his all-night sessions with the typewriter. A session in the fictional San Francisco of fog-bound streets and hard-minded victorious heroes, where he could control the blood and manipulate the men. He had The Dain Curse to revise, now that he’d figured out the way to go with that book, and in The Maltese Falcon he had a chance to do something that nobody else had ever done before.

  But it wasn’t to be. Not right now. Because in the real San Francisco men were for sale and his friend had gone to his death with a pulped skull and loosened bowels. The friend whose call he hadn’t answered. So Hammett owed him.

  As Goodie’s door shut, Hammett leaned on the wall beside his own and very gently drifted it open with his fingertips. Dim light came up the interior hallway from the living room. He’d left the room in darkness.

  Dammit, he hadn’t expected things to happen this fast after the attempted jacking-out last night. He wasn’t packing anything more lethal than a penknife. Get to the kitchen for a butcher knife. Best bet.

  Hammett eased down the hall to flatten himself beside the open doorway to the living room. He edged an eye around the frame. He stiffened, then gave a snort of disgust and walked into the room.

  ‘I may as well live in the Pickwick Stage Depot,’ he said.

  Short dumpy Jimmy Wright, sprawled in Hammett’s sagging overstuffed Coxwell, slid a forefinger between the pages of one of Hammett’s Black Masks. ‘You’ve got a lousy lock.’ He raised the magazine slightly. ‘This is good stuff, Dash. I ought to sue.’

  ‘Which one is it?’

  The op leafed back to the title. ‘“Dynamite.”’

  ‘Yeah, that’ll be part of a novel titled Red Harvest in January.’

  ‘This is supposed to be Butte, Montana, ain’t it?’

  ‘That and Boulder and Anaconda.’ He sat down on the unmade bed and leaned back on his elbows. ‘You get anything on Vic?’

  ‘The cops turned up the cabby who took him from the Chapeau Rouge. Dropped him at Pier Fourteen. So I nosed around at the foot of Mission like you told me. Old gent in the Johnson and Larsen Cigar Store next to the Hotel Commodore steered a guy answering Vic’s description over to Dom Pronzini’s speak a block away on Steuart Street. Even gave Vic the password.’

  ‘The cops get any of this?’

  ‘Who the hell ever talks to cops?’

  Hammett took a turn around the room. ‘Dom Pronzini. Old Rinaldo’s pup — I sent the old man up to Q on a five-to-twenty back in twenty-one. I hear chat Dom brings in most of the real Canadian from the rum fleet these days.’

  ‘Through Bolinas and Sausalito,’ the dumpy little detective nodded sleepily. ‘He’s giving the boys down in Half Moon Bay a run for it.’

  Hammett stopped pacing. Sure! Goddammit, the connection he’d almost made in Marin County snapped together in his mind.

  ‘That rapist the Preacher shot out by Golden Gate Park — Egan Tokzek. Wasn’t he a runner for Pronzini?’

  ‘If you can believe the reporter from the Chronicle.’

  ‘How’s your stock down at Pinkerton’s these days?’

  ‘They don’t spit on the floor when my name comes up.’

  ‘All right. See can you find out if they’ve got anything in their files on Tokzek.’ He was frowning, tugging his mustache in thought. He jerked his shoulders in an odd little shrug. ‘See if he had a sister, too. We’re starting to move on this.’

  Lonergan’s Garage at 639 Turk Street was a one-story brick building with a false front. A sign hung on the post between the big double doors: ATTENDANT WILL BE BACK IN 20 MINUTES.

  Hammett nodded approvingly at the lock on the double door, and took from his pocket a flat strap of steel six inches long and slightly angled and tapered at one end. Inserting this between door and frame, he applied steady leverage. There was a muted crack.

  The dim interior was heavy with
petroleum smells. A tow truck was backed up against the wall beyond the vast well leading down to the basement parking area. Hammett leaned over the unshielded edge to stare into the gloom. A concrete ramp led down to a concrete floor a good twenty feet below. It would do.

  The littered little office had double windows painted black to well above head-level. Backed against that same wall was a man-high black safe with a big brass handle and a brass dial.

  Hammett spun the dial idly. Give him a couple of hours and he could strip the side off her, but none of her secrets would be valuable to him. Lonergan was too far down the ladder to have more than a name or two. He’d settle for that. Or even for a phone number.

  He sat down behind the desk and put his feet up and waited. The desk was butted up against the partition between the office and the garage floor, so he could see out into the main area through the waist-level window. The clock over the window said midnight had passed. Clipboards of work orders, aged by greasy fingers to a blackish brown, decorated the doorpost.

  Five minutes later, headlights arced across the ceiling. Hammett’s eyes brightened, but he did not change position. The lock on the overhead doors rattled on its chain, then the doors creaked up to shoot hot light across the grease-stained concrete. A tow truck, towing nothing, was driven past the office window and stopped with its motor thrumming and the cab out of Hammett’s sight.

  Dead Rabbit Lonergan sprang suddenly into the doorway, crouched like an ape, a tire iron swinging loosely in one hand. When Hammett made no move, Lonergan came slowly erect. A huge grin split his face when he saw who was there.

  ‘On your feet, bimbo. The boys are gonna be glad to get another crack at you. Fast, before I smash both your shoulders with this.’

  ‘I don’t carry a gun,’ said Hammett mildly as he was patted down by the big Irishman. He kept his arms wide and raised. Lonergan worked left-handed, keeping the tire iron cocked in his right fist. The tow truck grumbled acrid exhaust fumes.

  ‘I don’t know why they want you,’ said Lonergan. ‘But I think we’ll stick your head in that exhaust while I make a phone call.’

  ‘I’ll tell you why they want me,’ said Hammett. ‘They’re afraid of me. That’s why they wanted me taken out last night. I represent some of the boys back east. The BIG boys back east. We’re moving in, taking over this town. It’s just a matter of time. We figure that you’re small-fry, but you’re a place to start. So why don’t you get smart and tell me who you called to get those three gorillas who were supposed to beat me up?’

  Lonergan had been staring at him, slightly slackfaced, as he had been speaking. He hesitated for a moment, then crinkled up his rugged, handsome features and laughed out loud. He leaned against the doorpost with the clipboards on it.

  ‘What you been smoking, Hammett? Whoever’s behind you, it ain’t gonna work. We got the cops behind us in this burg. No outsiders are gonna-’

  ‘Before you left Five Points, you ever hear of a big Irishman named Babe?’

  ‘Should I have?’

  ‘Might have been after you left,’ Hammett muttered thoughtfully. ‘The Babe was an expert with a tire iron and made the mistake of trying to use one on a fat little killer out of Baltimore named Garlic.’

  Lonergan slapped the tire iron against his open left hand. ‘This ain’t Baltimore, bo.’

  ‘Garlic blew away both the Babe’s kneecaps with a matched pair of. 45’s. They had to take his legs off just below the hips because he got gangrene from the garlic on the bullets. These days he rides around on a little board with casters on it, selling pencils around Forty-second and Times Square…’

  Lonergan chuckled and tightened his grip on the tire iron. ‘I think you want to get petted with this thing, bim-’

  He shot forward across the room to crash headfirst into the far wall. He whirled off it with tire iron upraised and lips drawn back from tobacco-stained teeth.

  ‘I like to burn ’em when they’re comin’ at me,’ grated Jimmy Wright. The lumpy. 45 automatics in his fists stared at Dead Rabbit with unwinking eyes.

  The tire iron clattered to the floor. Dead Rabbit’s hands shot up, shaking. His face was pinched and tired around the eyes as if he had developed a sudden head cold.

  Hammett hadn’t moved during the flurry of action. He said: ‘Garlic, why don’t you walk this bird over to the edge of the basement well so he can tell us what he knows? If he don’t tell us in thirty seconds, he jumps off. Twenty-nine… twenty-eight…’

  ‘Jesus, man, that’s twenty feet down!’ cried Dead Rabbit. Wetness was mooning out from beneath his arms. ‘I’ll get all busted up.’

  Hammett watched the big terrified Irishman. ‘When you can’t crawl up the ramp anymore, he puts one. 45 in each of your ears and pulls the triggers at the same time.’

  Hammett and the op walked away from Lonergan’s Garage.

  ‘Once he gets his nerve back, he’s going to call ’em up and tell ’em we were here,’ said Jimmy Wright thoughtfully.

  ‘I want him to. I want them to start knowing I’m around. My God, is that crude, Jimmy! A phone call from Shuman after he left the reform committee meeting Thursday night. And that second phone number he gave us — that’s Boyd Mulligan’s home phone!’

  ‘Crude is right. A direct line to the Mulligans. But I guess they never expected anyone to be around asking questions.’ Then the operative started laughing. ‘Without anybody laying a glove on him! They should call him Scared Rabbit.’

  17

  Hammett went up the sloping walk between carefully trimmed privet to the rambling two-story pseudo-Elizabethan in the exclusive Parkside District. When he rang the bell, the inset door was opened by a young pretty colored maid much like his own Minnie Hershey in The Dain Curse.

  ‘Mr Hammett? Come right in, sir.’

  The living room was two-storied under a cathedral arch, the furniture heavy, leather, of a scale to match the room.

  ‘Right in here, sir.’

  Two of the solarium walls were floor-to-ceiling glass that framed a staggering sweep of Pacific beyond the rolling miles of dunes.

  Evelyn Brewster, seated on the cretonne cushions of the cane sofa, did not rise when Hammett entered. Her eyes were frosty.

  ‘I should have thought I’d made my feelings about you clear on Thursday night.’

  Hammett bowed wordlessly, then said, ‘But I’m sure you would wish me to carry out the committee’s objectives properly.’

  An unexpected smile touched her lips and she leaned forward with sudden animation. ‘I know I must seem inflexible to a man of your.. background, Mr Hammett. But the work of the committee is all-important to me. The punishment of the guilty must take precedence over merely personal considerations, so if you have come here to plead special circumstances for some friend whose activities-’

  ‘Quite the contrary, Mrs Brewster.’ He fell easily into her stilted cadences. ‘A prominent San Franciscan to whom I need an introduction might inadvertently have information vital to my investigation.’

  She looked intrigued. ‘The name?’

  ‘George F. Biltmore.’

  ‘My God!’ She was genuinely shocked. ‘You can’t suggest that Captain Biltmore could possibly-’

  ‘Not for a moment, ma’am. But…’ He lowered his voice confidentially. ‘A man in Captain Biltmore’s position can open doors..’

  She nodded wisely. ‘I’ll call him at his office.’

  As Evelyn Brewster picked up her phone in Parkside, Boyd Mulligan was spinning his swivel chair to answer the phone in his Kearny Street bailbond office.

  ‘Mulligan Bros,’ he snapped self-importantly as he unforked the receiver.

  It was the muffled voice that over the years he had come to recognize if not know. ‘Get him.’

  ‘Oh… uh, yeah, sure.’

  Mulligan laid the receiver on the desk and went down the narrow room to the doorway of the inner, private office. He was short and strutting, his shoulders were narrow and his posture ju
st slightly swaybacked, so he always walked as if he were about to start tap dancing.

  ‘Uncle Griff, it’s… uh… him.’

  He returned to his desk and hung up the phone noisily. All three of them knew he wasn’t bright enough to know things he wasn’t bright enough to know.

  Griff Mulligan was a white-haired banty rooster with a lilting Irish tenor as light as a Shannon mist. He wore a faded comfortable flannel shirt and old-fashioned armbands that matched his garters and galluses.

  ‘A pleasant good morning to ye.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ grated the no-longer disguised voice.

  ‘And what might the trouble be with it?’

  ‘I just heard about that stupid attempt to scare off Hammett.’

  ‘I’d not heard of it meself,’ said Mulligan with a sideways gleam of his faded blue eyes toward the doorway beyond which his nephew sat. ‘But I suppose that Boyd thought-’

  ‘That would be a first. Hammett learned it was Joey Lonergan who fingered him for the strong-arms, and last night he and his right bower, Jimmy Wright, paid a visit to Lonergan’s Garage. Lonergan opened the bag for them.’

  Mulligan’s voice remained as mild and melodious as before.

  ‘Well, now, faith, it’s not that Joey knows the devil of a lot. A couple of phone numbers without any names to-’

  ‘It’s given Hammett a connection. He’s tough and he’s smart…’

  ‘So was Atkinson.’

  ‘Whoever killed Atkinson did us no favor,’ snapped the other man quickly. ‘Remember that.’ His voice became elaborately casual. ‘I want Hammett left alone, but I don’t want him getting hold of Molly. Where do you have her stashed away?’

  ‘Faith, I don’t know meself. I’ve let Boydie handle that.’ He lowered the receiver. ‘Boyd! Where is it that you have Molly holed up then?’

  ‘Ask her little kike attorney. He wouldn’t tell me.’

  To the phone, Mulligan said in an ominously calm voice, ‘Boyd seems to have lost sight of her for the moment, but Molly won’t sing-’

  ‘TelI him to find her. Now.’

  ‘Right ye are,’ said Mulligan in his lilt.