Chasing Sam Spade

by Brian Lawson

  Something was fishy. Two guys help me out in ’59 on the ‘Sam Spade Case’ and they both die the same way within weeks. So I started nosing around and then I hear on the TV news one night about three weeks later when the third old Pinkerton guy got killed. But Dan Sanders had been shot dead the TV said in a grocery store robbery and the killer got away. They said he was heading up to the counter when this guy came in to stick up the place. Some robber, nothing taken, said nothing to the clerk, just walks in a shoots and runs out. The news said the guy must have been surprised to see Dan walk up, panicked and ran after shooting. Panic my Irish ass! Three guys in four weeks, I knew them all, dead just like that. If I am right then somebody is killing these old guys who were around in ’59 and I’m the only one left so I have got to think that I am next.... He threw the letter back on the table; it fell next to the old man’s “ops diary” penned carefully into the thin ledger book and a yellowed brittle-fold San Francisco city map lying in angular disarray on the piles of letters like some desperately thin blanket protecting the hand written memories. The map was doctored with penciled circles and nearly microscopic faded notation in Chuck’s meticulous hand.“Problem is I don’t know what the hell I’m looking for,” and the sound echoed around the already cluttered motel room. “Shit, now you’re talking to yourself again.”

  Like many men, never married but several times in the typical shared space of long term relationships, Danny had gone well past the point where he enjoyed absolute silence and even further on the other side of considering whether carrying on conversation with himself was aberrant. It was a way of bringing his thoughts out, letting them float in the undisturbed air like small dust motes, drifting, slowly sinking or rising depending on their weight. It was an exercise of lonely men everywhere and a child of late hours and empty apartments even more so; it also suggested what he’d come to think of as the Spade problem was settling in as a long, difficult slog before resolution.

  He keyed up a word processing file he had created before leaving Seattle that correlated information from an Internet download, his rereading of the novel and watching the classic 1941 movie version of the novel; the file traced the chronology of the novel, the fateful five days in December, 1928, when Miles Archer died, Brigid O’Shaughnessy lied, Joel and Caspar and the rest connived, all in pursuit of what Spade would come to call the “black dingus.” Hammett had invested an almost overwhelming time sense in the book, setting the city and the people in motion at particular times. There were gaps, but few, and it was possible to build an almost hour-by-hour log by following Spade through the city meetings with characters great and small.

  He sat in the half dark afternoon peering at Chuck’s city map; already thin at the creases, the map was dotted with Chuck’s precise cryptic notations and small circled references to the operations diary, it also traced out Danny’s planned route in pink Hi-Liter, a route Sam Spade took in search of the Maltese Falcon.

  The tension to get going was like an itch; his hands were shaking as he stuffed the map, Chuck’s ledger and the cassette recorder in to his fanny pack along with extra cassette tapes, a small notebook and a couple of pencils. Together it was an annoying lump resting against the top of his ass and it would brand him a tourist from two blocks away; still, it was the best way to keep all the materials together in one place and easily at hand. He shoved his wallet into the front pocket of his jeans for safety and headed out.

  The City was quiet, with little traffic and few people on the sidewalks; somehow he had expected a constant sense of bustle, a current flowing through the City even on Sunday. As he left the hotel the lobby television was talking about temperatures in the low 70s with close to 90 percent humidity; unusually humid the sincere weatherman was repeating as the door swung closed behind Danny.

  A few steps from the doorway in the pale Sunday afternoon sun and he shucked his sport coat and slung it over his shoulder. It seemed the damnedest place, with a cool wind from the west dragging in tatters of high fog over the chipped rooflines while the sun was shining and the air sticky from humidity: cool in the shadows, too warm in the sun. And it seemed to matter which side of the street you were on: twilight came early in the shallow canyons of streets that ran north-south like Larkin, the shadows damp and cool, the sun side sticky warm. He walked up a block and turned onto Post, a three lane one-way gouge through bars and run down hotels with heavily barred windows heading east into the heart of Spade country.

  At the corner of Hyde and Post he pulled the map and Chuck’s ledger out of the pack; the map was coded with the circled number “14” that corresponded to a ledger entry and read Chuck’s small, precise writing under the heading: “#14, 891 Post” 12/16/50, some rain, went to look at 891...on third floor but not sure which one was SS’s place... nobody home at any of them, left my card under the two likely doors...check back, need quick look around.”

  Cast in shades of sandstone brown and pink by the slanting sun, each brick on the street level facade edged in grime, the 891 Post Street doorway was flanked by Patty’s Dress shop and Harvey’s Dry Cleaning Finished Laundry; the Hyde Street side with Ling’s $6 Salon and Ling Trading International. This was where Sam got the two a.m. phone call about partner Miles Archer’s shooting; where Sam and Brigid and Joel Cairo danced around the cops with a story of Joel falling over the carpet and cutting his head only moments before being braced by the cops; where finally the stuff dreams are made of turned out to be leaden and Caspar Guttman and Joel Cairo walked out on the conflicted Sam who was about to send Brigid over for killing his partner. If there were a place in the heart of Sam Spade country that he had hoped to make some connection to the book and Chuck’s motivation, this would have been it. Where he stood might be the exact spot where boy gunsel Wilmer stood and watched Sam’s third-floor apartment window and front door, waiting, watching for Brigid, or Sam. Maybe 891 Post didn’t look that much different than it had in Hammett’s day when Chuck stood in the same spot and dreamed his dreams of hidden crimes before heading inside; now it was a blasted wreck of a dream and he felt the leaden disappointment of actually seeing the storied place.

  He crossed Post, dodging between cars. The front of the building, hidden from the slanting sun working its way West toward the Pacific, was in shadow; the apartment foyer that led a dozen feet or so to the original apartment front door was barred and linked to a Centex Telephone Entry System. He had to tunnel his hands to see in through the heavy iron grill; looking at the shape of the neighborhood he could already guess the grating had been installed at the sidewalk to keep bums out of the lobby and offer some safe place for residents to view conditions on the street before venturing out. At one time the entry might have been a haven for anyone waiting to be let up to the apartments; marble steps, sturdy hand set one inch white tiles with black edging suggesting a men’s room floor; unguarded now it would be a trap for vagrants and a risk for residents. He fumbled around in the fanny pack until he found the recorder, cool and surprisingly heavy in the hand, and began recording:

  “Sunday afternoon...so what did you expect... wrack and ruin maybe, or renovation possibly, but not three stories of fatigue and disinterest... all this way and this is it... Hammett lived here on the third floor overlooking Post...he dreamt of Sam Spade there... and according to his notes Chuck was here.”

  He crossed back into the sun side of Post, walking and talking with one eye out for traffic, looking for some perspective, hoping to see something out to the dream, and he stopped and looked back across the traffic to the shadowed building:

  “...all this way and there’s nothing but an old building... careful what you wish for you might get it...I don’t know what I thought I was going to find but this sure as hell isn’t it...things change but this, everything looking so tired and worn out...what would Chuck say, what did he see....”

  Standing under the cracked garish yellow and red dancing stallion Ferrari logo at Monza Motors he tried to imagine where Wilmer would have stood; tried to i
mage the thin, defuse memory of Chuck standing here too.

  “What you looking for?” and he turned to look at the old man who was looking at him quizzically.

  “Nothing, just looking.”

  “Looks like something,” the man added, nodding at him. He was thick shouldered and stooped. Yellowed tangled hair, a thick soggy cigar splitting a gray stubbled face. Beefy mottled hands hung out of the sleeves of a brown windbreaker. His white open collar shirt was heavily starched but looked frayed at the edges; he wore incongruous black dress slacks and shined black tassel loafers. He looked like a man who had grabbed what was handy, a pair of suit pants, a dress shirt and jacket. “I been here all day. Nothing’s going on. You looking for something?”

  His voice was deep in his throat, phlegmy and wet around the smoldering cigar.

  “You live around here?”

  “Up Larkin. Came here just so’s I could get me a place on Larkin because that’s my name. John Larkin,” he said, pulling the tattered cigar out of his mouth and jabbing over his shoulder. “Just like the street. That’s the reason I came here. Told my sainted mother, may she rest in peace, we never had nothing but hard work but we have our own street in the best city in the world. I want to live on my own street, I said to her and I just up and moved here.”

  He smiled at the old man. John Larkin smiled back, a brown slash of a smile the face of age. “Sixty seven last February 14,” he said, stuffing the cigar back in his mouth.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You were thinking, how old’s this stick. Right?”

  He nodded and smiled. “I was just wondering how long....”

  “Came here to work in the shipyards near the end of the Korean dust up. Twenty years old and full of piss and vinegar. Loved working on them ships. But I got too old and they put me in dry-dock,” he said, laughing a wet throaty laugh. He turned suddenly and headed into the shadow of the garage door. Danny was caught by the economical quickness of the movement and that he didn’t shamble away in that curious stooped, splay footed walk of old men everywhere; John Larkin was no spring chicken but he was a long way from being as old as his battered exterior might suggest. Danny could hear echoing voices from inside the garage, then the old man came back carrying a battered chrome dinette chair in one thick muscled hand. He pushed it up against the sun-warmed wall of the garage and sat down with a heavy sigh.

  “Feels good to rest the dogs. I’ve been around so long, longer than this garage even. Knew everybody around here. They let me use the chair when I get tired. Never used to get tired but what the hell, guy’s got a right,” he said, stretching out his legs and slumping back against the chair. “You looking for something in particular?

  “Well, no. My dad lived in the City back in the 40s and 50s and I just wanted to check out some things. You know, see what was left from his day. Things must have changed a lot.”

  “Used to be different, certainly that. Different. I knew the old man owned the store over there, back in, what, maybe it was 1952 or 53? And the Chinaman used to have that laundry over there. He kept it nice and tidy, now everything’s gone to hell. Used to tease him something awful but that was okay, people didn’t mind that stuff back then,” he said, pausing, watching Danny’s face, a huge grin spreading around his cigar. “So you wanted to see where old Sam Spade lived, right?”

  “How did you know?” he said, turning to face the old man with the question.

  “Surprised, huh? Some detective, you’re thinking?” he said, waving a thick hand at him. “ I ain’t no detective. You’re just not the first. Since I been retired and just hang around here I seen quite a few come by. Some ask questions, some just stand and look and walk away like it ain’t what they expected.”

  He shrugged, “It’s not really.”

  The old man coughed a thick smokers cough and hawked something out onto the sidewalk. “It’s what it is. Just a place. Some better around, some worse.”

  “Did you read the book?”

  Larkin shook his head. “Naw, never did read much but I saw the movies, both that early one back in the 30s and the Bogart one. Liked the Bogie movie. I can tell you everybody’s in that movie, who played what and their names. I was a real movie buff back then. Liked to take the girls up to the Fox on Market, up in the second balcony and show them a good time. Yes sir, I remember that movie real good. Didn’t show enough of the city. Just inside of places like Spade’s apartment over there and I can tell you that it don’t look like anything in that building. No rooms that big over there, that’s for sure. I been in there and it sure doesn’t look like no fancy apartment. And now’s probably even worse.”

  Danny nodded, agreeing, staring at the old building. Everybody had been up there: Hammett, Spade, Chuck even John Larkin. Everyone except Danny. He shrugged and turned back as the old man continued talking. “That was a good movie, all right. Bogie, and Sidney Greenstreet and Barton McClain and Ward Bond and Peter Lorre. Know them all. And the ladies, I remember the ladies that’s for sure. That Mary Astor playing Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Oh, she was something, real classy.”

  Danny nodded, of course, why not and the old man stared across Post now, looking at the movie that must have been playing somewhere just for him.

  “Yeah. Mary Astor played her. Good looking woman. Remember every woman in that thing, they’re all good looking. Gladys George, she plays the widow Mrs. Archer, hot number, yes sir. And that secretary, what was her name?”

  “Effie Perine,” Danny said over his shoulder.

  “That’s it, that’s it. And you know who played her, do you?”

  Danny turned and looked down at the old man who was staring up at him, stubby cigar like a pointer aimed at Danny’s chest. “Well, do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Know who played Effie Perine? Well, it was Lee Patrick. Don’t forget any of those women, not from that movie. Every woman in there was something. They knew how to dress and look good, if you know what I mean. Ladies got dolled up for a night out back then.”

  He nodded, sure, and turned back to look at the sad building and the traffic moving fitfully by, heading downtown.

  “Your dad lived around here?” But the credits for the long-gone movie must have finished running and his voice was calm again.

  Danny shook his head, no, not around here. “He just liked the book and wrote me about it and places he’d seen so I thought I’d come back and see some of the places.”

  “Back when?”

  “Early 50s I think. I know he came here because he wrote about it. He even went upstairs there,” he said, nodding at 891 Post. “Guess he was looking for Spade’s apartment or something. Wanted to see it for himself, I guess.”

  “That’s the only way to do it, got to see it yourself. I don’t hold much with this computer stuff you hear about, games and such. Walk in your daddy’s footsteps, huh? That’s nice,” old Larkin said, nodding in the sun. “Too many today don’t care where they came from. Can’t get somewhere if you don’t know where you come from.”

  He nodded, then said, “So it’s pretty much the same around here? Maybe a little run down, but everything the way it was back in the 1950s?”

  “Yeah, but dirty, all right, and going to hell fast. Everybody’s gone now from back then. Except me. What was your daddy’s name? Maybe I knew him if he hung around here much.”

  “Chuck Boyle,” he said. “No, he lived in the Mission I think. He just liked the book, that’s why he came around here.”

  “Funny about things. Maybe I was right here and your Pop was right where you are back then. Coulda happened, you know? He was here, I was here. The buildings were all here. Coulda happened,” he said, shrugging. “Never know about things.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and waited for the Muni bus to move past in clouds of smoke and noise. “What was the City like back then?”

  Old Larkin reached up and took the cigar out of his mouth. He leaned forward, forearms on his knees, head nodding and began talking, not
looking at Danny, eyes focused on the curb.

  “Oh, it was different. Your Pop musta told you that. Real different,” he said, nodding at the street. “See over there, on Hyde, right there? A hole in the ground now, tore down that old store right there and left the damned hole. Those people they lived down there for a time, in their own crap. You seen it, huh? Go over there and take a look. Full of garbage, stuff so bad even they don’t want it. Even a bottle says ‘Medical Waste’ and God almighty himself doesn’t know what’s in there.”

  “How long’s it been like that?” he said, looking at the battered chain link fence locking in a small corner section across Hyde from 891. “You remember?”

  The old man looked up quickly, nodded, then his eyes seemed to go out of focus. “I used to. It’s gone now, can’t get it now. When I get tired I lose things. You’ll see, just wait, you’ll see.”

  He smiled at the old man but he was back staring at the sidewalk, shaking his head, mumbling something Danny couldn’t catch. He said, “Nice talking to you. Got to go.”