Hammett (Crime Masterworks)

by Gores, Joe

  Her lip curled. ‘What’s a nice girl like me doing in—’

  ‘What do you know about Vic Atkinson’s death?’

  ‘Vic Atkinson? The guy you were . . .’ It belatedly hit her. ‘Death? You mean he’s—’

  ‘Monday night. With a baseball bat.’ It could be true, she might not have heard. In her role as grief-struck widow, she wouldn’t have been able to evince much interest in local news.

  ‘Look, Hammett, I’m sorry about your friend, but you can’t expect me to act all broken up. I only met the gentleman the one time.’ She shrugged. ‘I heard somewhere that Scarface Al uses a baseball bat to—’

  ‘Now you sound like the cops,’ said Hammett. ‘Nope, this was local, something Vic was working on.’ He paused deliberately. ‘He was going to find you, and he was going to shake you until something fell out. Say you were scared enough to make a phone call after we left your cathouse’

  ‘Parlorhouse,’ she interrupted automatically.

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘All right, I was scared.’ She wore a black floor-length dress with a cameo brooch at the throat to set it off. ‘But that’s all you’re getting from me. I know what you’re doing, bringing your bottle to—’

  ‘Have a drink,’ suggested Hammett.

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘Have a drink, Hammett.’ He leaned the other way. ‘Thanks, I will.’

  Watching him pour, she said in sudden impatience, ‘Gimme that bottle. I can match a beanpole like you drink for drink any day.’

  ‘You’ve got more to lose,’ warned Hammett.

  She laughed harshly. ‘Try it, buster, you’ll be walking like a cowboy for a month.’

  ‘I meant names,’ said Hammett. ‘All those big important names you’d never dare talk to me about.’

  ‘Damn right. Hoping I’ll get drunk . . .’

  ‘I think one of us already is.’

  A surprising shudder ran through her. ‘I hadn’t ought to be talking to you like this. If certain people—’

  ‘I could always tell them you spilled your guts,’ said Hammett thoughtfully to help her along.

  ‘Jesus H. Christ, you seemed like pretty straight Ghees last week.’

  ‘Vic was, see what it got him.’

  Hammett lurched to his feet, stood waiting for the dizziness to pass. The jug was mortally damaged. Those water glasses could fool a man. He pulled aside the Nottingham lace curtain and looked out. Beyond the path, the stream purled and foamed between its banks. Dusk. And he hadn’t learned a damn thing, except that neither he nor Molly was liable to drink the other under the table. He turned back to the room.

  ‘All I’ve got is that Vic was looking for you, and that he was murdered. Is there a connection? Help me out, for Chrissake! If I was going to snitch you away to the gumshoes, you’d have the sheriff’s brogans on the back of your neck instead of me with a bottle of bad hootch. Speaking of which . . .’

  He refilled the glasses, sat down again, and cocked his feet on the edge of the table.

  ‘Okay, ask your goddamn questions. I probably won’t answer any of them, but you might get lucky.’

  ‘Who’d you call after we left last Sunday?’

  She shook her head, slowly, her brilliant blue eyes fixed on his face, then grimaced and said, ‘Oh, what me hell? You were barely out the door when Boyd Mulligan called. He knew you’d been there and he wanted to know why. I told him you were after names. That’s all.’

  Hammett put his feet back on the floor and found his crumpled pack of cigarettes in one pocket. He shook his head.

  ‘Nope. I can’t buy the Mulligans as ordering Vic killed because he’d been around asking for names. They’d know he’d do that. There had to be some desperation . . .’ He interrupted himself. ‘Who do you pay off in the cops?’

  She hesitated. ‘Hammett, you aren’t stringing me along, are you? If you rat to the DA or—’

  ‘You’re safe with me, Molly.’

  ‘Where’d I hear that before?’

  ‘The rumble seat on your first date.’

  ‘Screw you. Okay.’ She grimaced. ‘The man on the beat, the sergeant and lieutenant at Bush Street station. They might give the captain a cut, but he’s never been around with his hand out. You have to realize that the patrolman is usually more important than the brass in a payoff setup.’

  Hammett lit a cigarette, nodding, expelling smoke with the words, ‘Sure. But there’s nothing there, Molly. Nothing worth a man’s life. Now, if someone thought you’d been willing to talk to Vic about some of the things you and your girls hear from customers who are on the inside in San Francisco—’

  ‘I never would, and they know it. That would be worth my life.’ She dismissed it with a shrug. ‘Jesus, am I getting high!’

  ‘We may as well kill the bottle before it spoils.’

  They drained it equally between the two glasses, taking exaggerated care not to spill a drop. Hammett sighed.

  ‘So it doesn’t have anything to do with you, Molly. Then who? And why?’

  ‘You said the police think it was a mob killing. Are you sure they aren’t right?’

  He drained his glass. ‘You too? Why does everyone have the mob on the brain?’

  ‘It’s that damned Crystal. She told me once she was on the run from somebody in the mob in Chicago.’ Her eyes and voice brooded. ‘Never told me who or why. But that Sunday you were there, she saw something on the front page of the newspaper that made her pack up and want to leave. Good kid, ’at Crystal. Been with me a y’r.’ She had begun slurring words.

  ‘Sure,’ said Hammett blearily. ‘First Chinese saint onna Cath’lic calendar.’

  ‘Screw you! I doubt you ever spent a whole hell o’ lotta time helping out WCTUers ’cross th’ street. Tell ya, offered Crystal chance to be one of a’ girls, work th’ schoolgirl lay – you know, school uniform, she can pass for ten, twelve, drive the ’ole goats wil’. But . . .’ Her hand got up to her face just too late to intercept a ringing belch. ‘But she jus’ wanna be maid! Bright kid. Talks like college grad-you-ate.’ She added sadly, ‘Booze all gone.’

  ‘Lissen, gotta talk to ’er,’ said Hammett. ‘P’rade ’er out. Gotta ask ’er ’bout a fat, bad woman near Bolinas who—’

  ‘But Crys’al isn’t here.’ Tears came to Molly’s eyes. ‘Monday mornin’, Brass Mouth, he tol’ her not come with Molly.’

  That struck Hammett as strange, even as he realized that Molly was crying. Crying over li’l lost Crystal. Or over empty bottle. He went around the table so he could put a comforting arm around her shoulder. A nice warm shoulder.

  ‘Hammett will find ’er. Hammett, th’ eye that never closes, th’ ear without wax, th’ nose that never drips . . .’

  Molly leaned her head back against his hip. He bent and kissed her. His tongue touched a salt tear that had run down to the corner of her mouth. It was a nice mouth. He left it to get his overcoat from the sofa. He took his hand triumphantly out of the coat pocket. The hand had another bottle in it.

  After that, things got hazy. He remembered trying to get back into some items of clothing so they could troop up to the main house for some bright city lights. And he remembered them raising their voices in glorious song together.

  City girls use Kotex,

  Country girls use rags.

  But LuLu is the only girl

  Who uses burlap bags.

  Or was that after they’d trooped up to the main house?

  ‘It serves you right,’ said Goodie cruelly.

  ‘Please.’ Hammett’s voice was broken.

  ‘They’ll never invite us back again, or . . .’

  ‘Tell me about it tomorrow.’

  ‘It is tomorrow.’

  Hammett staggered across to the railing and peered wisely out over the water, crinkling his eyes in the far-seeing way of old salts. He could see seven, perhaps eight inches into the roiling fog.

  ‘How d’you know it’s tomorrow?’ he demanded triumphantly wh
en Goodie materialized beside him.

  ‘I have to go to work in just a few hours.’

  Antiphonal, he thought. Like the two sides of the church choir singing at each other during the Holy Week services at St Nicholas Church down the road from his granddaddy’s tobacco farm. How about them apples, kid? Antiphonal, and drunk besides. They’d sung ’em in Latin.

  ‘Why don’t you talk in Latin?’ he suggested. ‘Very softly.’

  ‘Who was that terrible woman? That . . . that song. And when she got up on the piano in the drawing room and started to shimmy—’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘Do you remember what went on in that cozy little cottage of hers?’

  ‘I detected.’

  ‘Mr Biltmore was very upset. He offered to take me to lunch next week to make up for—’

  ‘At Jack’s, I’m sure.’ Hammett felt a little stomach upset coming on. They never should have started that second bottle. Rather, he thought sagely, they shouldn’t have finished that second bottle.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she demanded stiffly.

  ‘Private rooms with beds upstairs above Jack’s.’

  ‘Sam, that’s a rotten thing to say!’

  ‘I feel rotten.’

  The ferry lurched, then wallowed in a trough of wave. Goodie took his arm. Hammett’s stomach lurched.

  ‘Better let go of my arm, Goodie.’

  ‘Well!’ Goodie exclaimed. ‘I never . . .’

  ‘Something my sainted mother once told me. Never stand downwind of somebody who’s . . . about to be . . . sick . . .’

  21

  Brass Mouth Epstein, ferret-face mobile with delight, reached across the desk to shake the lean detective’s hand. Bright morning sunlight streaming through the blinds danced dust motes in the air and made the Persian carpet seem alive. He said maliciously, ‘Drop around to give me a message from Molly?’

  ‘She said you were a kike son of a bitch and a pickle-nose Jew bastard.’ Hammett’s hours in a Turkish bath had pushed color into his face.

  Epstein chuckled. ‘You damn near convince me you did see her.’

  Hammett leaned forward to drop his match onto the smoking stand ashtray.

  ‘Bingo sends his regards, too.’

  The laughter faded from Epstein’s face. ‘Bingo who?’

  ‘Bingo Biltmore. Arf, arf.’ Hammett’s eyes sparkled; he was enjoying himself.

  ‘I’ll be a son of a bitch,’ said the dapper little attorney. ‘I’ll even be a kike son of a bitch.’ He got to his feet and began pacing the carpet between the desk and the window. ‘You mind telling me how you did it?’

  His horse-faced secretary stuck her head in the door. ‘You’re due in Judge Conlan’s courtroom in half an hour.’

  ‘Thanks, Jenny.’

  She withdrew. Hammett put his head back against the fine-grained Spanish leather and blew one of the few perfect smoke rings of his life. He brought his eyes down to Epstein’s.

  ‘I figured the odds for you using one of the Owl Drug phones to make the call at a probable four to seven. So I was having a cup of coffee at the counter when you came in.’

  ‘Set up!’ exclaimed Epstein to himself, sadly. He sat down and fixed his eyes on a pencil lying on the desk. ‘Molly tell you anything helpful?’

  ‘Even negatives are helpful. Who are you hiding her from? Brady? The Mulligans? Or both of them?’

  ‘The DA isn’t going to put Molly away for fifteen years,’ said Epstein obliquely.

  ‘Maybe not. But only because she’ll spill her guts once he starts squeezing her.’

  ‘Brady isn’t going to put any pressure on her.’

  ‘You don’t know Evelyn Brewster very well. Five bucks says she’ll push Brady into going all the way on Molly.’

  Epstein checked his watch. He sighed and rose. ‘Conlan is a bastard about attorneys being late. I don’t think you know Mrs Brewster very well. And I doubt if you know me at all.’

  Hammett got to his feet. ‘You figure to save Molly with your brilliant courtroom pyrotechnics?’ Epstein grunted wordlessly. ‘Or maybe Molly’s just not going to show up at all.’

  ‘In this state there’s ninety days before her bail will be declared forfeit. On the eighty-ninth day she’s going to show up in court – and I’m going to take your five dollars.’

  ‘Don’t count on the reform committee folding up or on my brilliant investigation uncovering all the corrupt policemen. Evelyn Brewster wants Molly’s hide nailed to her wall no matter what else happens.’ Hammett suddenly remembered his drunken promise to Molly. ‘By the way, Molly wants to know where you’ve hidden her maid.’

  ‘Crystal isn’t with her?’

  ‘She thinks you told Crystal to find her own hole.’

  A frown creased Epstein’s brow. ‘But I’m not even Crystal’s attorney! I was very surprised when she didn’t show up for the arraignment.’

  ‘Didn’t she talk to you about some mysterious trouble she’d had back east? In Chicago? With some mobster or other?’

  ‘No, nothing, not a word.’

  Hammett hurriedly dropped the subject before the little attorney got intrigued, and they parted with a handshake.

  Hammett headed downhill for Market and a streetcar. Crystal Tam. Strictly speaking, not part of his investigation at all. But damned interesting. Maybe even germane. Vic killed in what could conceivably have been a mob killing. Crystal on the run from some mobster after seeing something about him – presumably – in the local newspaper.

  Maybe, out of curiosity, somewhere along the line he’d drop by the Chronicle for a look at the front page for his birthday Sunday, the day before Crystal disappeared.

  Jimmy Wright’s room at the Townsend was just a buck-and-a-quarter hotel room, anonymous as rolled oats. A room for a reasonable night’s sleep, for an hour of hired sex, for a poker game, for a suicide note and a straight razor slippery with arterial blood.

  But this Monday it was a business conference. Hammett had looked over the four new men up from LA and liked what he saw. Unmemorable men, the first requisite for a good op.

  He lounged against the dresser, ashtray at his elbow.

  ‘We’ve been hired to investigate corruption in the San Francisco police department, not merely to probe vice in the city. We’re not surveying conditions, we’re seeking punitive evidence. The cops know this, so we can expect damn-all in the way of cooperation from the department.’

  ‘How much authority do we have?’ asked a pockfaced man.

  ‘We’ve got the Chief of Inspectors on our side, and the mayor’s office is supposed to be behind us. We’ve got a reform committee that might or might not have some teeth in it, and we’ve got power to go to the grand jury.’

  ‘Sounds pretty good to me.’

  ‘That’s all just on paper.’

  ‘Somebody said something about phone taps,’ cut in a cheerfully round-faced operative sitting on the foot of the bed.

  ‘McKenna’s right bower, Owen Lynch, is giving us the mayor’s written authorization today.’

  The round-faced man had a notebook open. ‘Names and numbers.’

  ‘Dr Gardner Shuman. General office number is WEst sixty-seven. Two phones at the drugstore downstairs, WEst six-four-six and six-four-seven. Home phone, WAlnut two-three-two. Two numbers at his office down on Post Street. DOuglas five-eight-eight-five . . .’

  As Hammett continued to rattle off names and numbers without using any notes, Jimmy Wright fired up a Fatima. Hammett had chosen an excellent way to announce himself as a fellow pro.

  ‘Home phones on the Mulligans?’ asked the wireman without looking up from his flying pencil.

  ‘Griffith, no. He’s too smart to transact business from the house. Boyd, yes. He’s a dummy who likes to throw his weight around. You know the drill. Anything in or out that sounds interesting or suspicious.’

  ‘My meat,’ said the rotund man.

  Hammett lit a cigarette of his own.
‘Jimmy, pick out the six top taxi-trade houses – on a par with Molly Farr’s – and tap ’em. Ditto on the six biggest speaks in town, and make sure Dom Pronzini’s is on the list.’

  ‘Got you,’ said Wright. ‘How about Brass Mouth Epstein’s office?’

  ‘I talked with Molly yesterday.’

  ‘Busy weekend,’ he said admiringly.

  ‘Yeah. Also the six top books in town. Concentrate on those who use wire services from back east.’

  ‘We’ll need a raft of stenos,’ warned Wright.

  ‘Hire ’em.’ He pointed at the swarthy pockmarked man. ‘Find an office where we can keep records, question witnesses, and record answers. Two telephones. Security. A back entrance that’d be tough for anyone else to keep tabs on.’ He swung back to Wright. ‘Jimmy. Make damn sure that nobody gets the phone company to tap our phones.’

  ‘How many men should Tommy use for interrogations?’

  ‘Two besides himself. Not you.’ He had turned to the final pair of men. One looked like a drinker, with sad bloodhound eyes, the other like a labor organizer in a loud check suit. Neither of them was either one. ‘I want you two on prowling assignments.’

  ‘Expenses?’ The labor organizer hadn’t removed his derby hat.

  ‘Within reason, they’ll be covered. Get around to the speakies and bookies. Listen. Watch for payoffs. Don’t ask questions – that might be what got Vic rubbed. Any uniform bulls on the take, get their shield numbers. Plainclothes, listen for names. If they’re driving, get the auto license numbers. If they use a cab, get his number so we can try for an ident from the driver later. Questions?’

  ‘You want us to tail anybody?’ asked the drinker.

  ‘We’re too thin in the field for that until we’ve got fingers pointing at specific people. Anything else?’

  Nobody spoke. Hammett nodded.

  ‘All reports in writing to Jimmy. I want the taps to go on today, the interrogations to start tomorrow. We begin with sergeants on up.’

  Pockmark grinned for the first time. ‘I like it already.’

  ‘You won’t get anything out of them this time around, except somebody gets stupid. I just want them to know we’re in business.’