by Brian Lawson
The man waved at him, shooing him away, sending him along; the moments of clarity gone, he seemed diffuse now, stuck in some older, distant place half way between the now and a dream of Sam Spade.
CHAPTER FOUR:
Danny’s Burritt Alley Blues
After leaving the old man, Danny walked east on Post with the light Sunday traffic rumbling downtown with him. Walking on the shadow side it had been cool enough for his jacket; now the slanting sun warmed him enough to take it off and drape it over one arm while he shuffled along.
He looked north up the staggeringly steep slope of Jones street, so steep it seemed to be a flat wall rising to a blind summit; he felt winded just looking at the steep grade and the occasional car grinding up to the intersection with California street. He moved on downtown on Post, then turned north on then east again a block north on Bush; he was heading for perhaps the most famous historical marker in San Francisco and that for an event that happened only in the mind of Dashiell Hammett; cast in bronze, set high on the West wall, out of reach of casual vandals, the marker was set against gray painted concrete of a building wall that helped hem Burritt into a small, blind cul de sac alley less than half a block long. The memorial was simple: “On approximately this spot Miles Archer, partner of Sam Spade, was done in by Brigid O’Shaughnessy.”
The city street sign wasn’t so lucky and Burritt was half obliterated by what looked like a bumper sticker that had been glued to the steel surface and pulled off, leaving a shredded residue. But it didn’t matter; he pulled Chuck’s copy of the book out of the fanny pack and scanned quickly through a couple of pages, before tucking it away and starting to record again:
“the City’s everything to Hammett, another unconsidered character... and its weather, that ‘night fog, thin, clammy and penetrant’ ...but today there’s a blue hole of sunshine right above but still in two or three hours its going to be cold, windy and the fog will come in with a pervasive damp ache...
“everything else’s different though, buildings where there weren’t any both east and west...the hillside Archer rolled down is gone, just building to building hard up against each other like everything else in this place... no room for vacant lots and a dirty hillside in downtown San Francisco...there’s no room for room I guess...
“so what’s it look like...the west side building is blank, gray up past the plaque then a dirty tan wall, the east side is gray wall cut with a grim smeared side window of the grocery store, then the five story backside of apartments that must front below on Stockton, women’s underwear hung out to dry on 4th floor, bright patches of color against the gray and behind it, at the bottom of the alley the far south end a gloomy five stories again with fire escape dwarfing these buildings a wall of apartments or condos or something, buff cliff of a building towering over it all....”
He turned and walked the few paces to Hammett’s “bare ugly stairs” dropping down from Bush to Stockton and leaned on the concrete parapet that ledged over the entrance to the tunnel. The roar of cars shooting out of the tunnel was like the steady rumble of the seacoast and every car pushed a small quick puff of urine reek up into the Bush Street air. He took the stairs down through a pest hole of graffiti smeared white tile and the rough dust and glass gravel of what seemed like a million broken bottles and plastic fragments; he came out on Stockton, stunned by the close roar of traffic pouring downhill from the bright light bisected circle at the other end into Chinatown. He yelled over the roar into the small recorder:
“Hammett said something like ‘an automobile popped out of the tunnel beneath him and with a roaring whish, as if it had been blown out, and ran away’ but that was then, the time of Model A Fords and stake bed trucks...it’s smothered now in a great rumbling roar, a megaphone for North Beach carrying the sound into downtown, rolling like a constant surf down Stockton...
“...and the muddy hill and the billboard and all of it...gone now, nothing but business and buildings like the Green Door Touch of Ecstasy Message, In and Out Call that may be just about where Miles Archer came to his final rest and Detective Polhouse squatted on the sidewalk looking under the billboard at the body. It’s all gone, everything....”
But not everything. In the Sunday afternoon calm he could walk easily and slowly across Sutter Street, turning his shadow to face the downhill Sutter traffic and the short view to Market and shorter to the anachronism of the Hunter-Dulin Building three blocks downhill at Montgomery. 111 Sutter, the offices of Spade & Archer before Miles dissolved the partnership by his famous one-way roll down to Stockton:
“it’s painted in distant Hopper light, slanting cool fog filtered but clear... buff colored, red-roofed with elegant stepped back art deco roof line crowned with odd verdigris ironwork and flagpole...must have been something, a skyline building Hammett could probably use like a signpost for all of downtown with its distinctive roof.
“If he were standing here now in the middle of Sutter and Stockton with some hick tourist he could say, son, you can always find your way home by looking for Hunter-Dulin...now a parody of Hammett’s time pasted against the vertical aluminum and glass monolithic boredom of the building towering behind it to the east...virtually every building built in last 30 years looms over it; where have you gone Joe DiMaggio...but there it is, ready or not here goes....”
He only glanced briefly north while crossing Grant to see the famous Chinatown gate with its most unliterary lions. There was a cool breeze coming down Sutter now; suddenly he darted into traffic and sprinted to the sun side of Sutter, stopped and craned his neck to take in the whole facade of Sam Spade’s office building, continuing to record:
“from over here it’s more impressive with some perspective...each floor decorated with wrought iron bas relief griffins, mermaids, nymphs, who knows what... what were they thinking off, maybe the architects, maybe Hunter or Dulin or whatever...arched stone entry dark and cool looking with dim chandeliers glowing like small banked fires and it’s all resting on the mezzanine floor of delicate looking stone pillars...why this building, just because Hammett knew it...this is like a time warp...this must be so close to the way it was when Hammett wrote about it but with that harsh aluminum and dark glass 44 Montgomery building right cross the street it’s the most extraordinary sensation, the yin and yang of the thing, it’s overwhelming... what the hell, let’s see what’s inside...
the lobby’s all beautifully painted ceiling with flowers and Ibis and stuff...green marble facing on columns and six satin brass door elevators...ornate beyond all description and the light fixtures are probably older than I am... I could be standing literally where Hammett stood...there’s a security guard, a thin dapper black guy seated at the podium....”
The security guard’s voice was thin and echoed quickly off the stone and brass. “Can I help you?”
“Just looking,” he said. “You know this building’s famous. It’s in a book.”
The guard nodded but it was too much to expect a smile for another crazy tourist, come to look at the building and walk the halls with the ghost of Sam Spade. “Yes sir, I heard it’s in an architect book or something.”
He nodded, sure, maybe that too. It deserved to be. Hunter-Dulin was probably a wonderful example of something or other, this Art Deco period or that Streamline or something.
“You got business here?” His tone was friendly enough, but there was no give in it. It was the perfect Sunday security voice for a stone lobby.
“No, thanks, just looking,” he said and turned and pushed the surprisingly heavy brass and glass revolving door.
* * *
He leaned back against the stack of thin pillows and stretched his arms over his head, fighting to snap out of the lethargy. He’d fallen asleep around nine or so surrounded on the rumpled bed by the annotated City map, the copy of the book and his laptop. The room smelled like pizza from the greasy Domino’s pizza box and the two congealed combo slices over on the table. He’d made a meal of the pizza and three beers; the rem
aining three beers sat half submerged in tepid water in the ice bucket beside the pizza box.
He picked up the recorder and punched rewind, taking it back to the 000 setting he’d used to start his comments on the day’s activities and conclusions. He must have fallen asleep after recording and thinking about how he was going to solve his laptop problem: the hotel’s phones were hard wired and he had no way of tapping into the line for Internet access.
“Should have thought of that,” he said, voice empty in the room even with the buzz of the TV. His watch showed it was nearly eleven.
But he needed the laptop; if he couldn’t send, maybe he’d just call. He picked up the phone and punched in Ben’s number in Seattle.
Ben’s voice sounded grizzled; he must have woken him up.
“Sorry to call so late.”
“Danny? Great to hear from you. How’s it going.”
“So far, not so good.”
“You see your mom?”
“Yeah, but not much there, really. Same with the cops.”
“Can I assume they were no help?”
“Just what you guessed would happen. Only it wasn’t by mail. I got to be pimped by some asshole cop in person. Two days, $600 bucks in expenses, just to told what you said I’d be told.”
“So you rush to find meaning in the world of noire whodunits could be going better? The cops don’t buy Chuck’s theory of wholesale geezer murders?”
“Buy it? They think I’m an idiot. Maybe a criminally incompetent idiot. Or at best, simple beyond all belief.”
He waited for a response, then added, “Basically he told me to go home and not waste the adults’ time. It was brutal, Ben, just brutal.”
“And what did you do?”
“What could I do. I left. Well, by the time I got in there, then got out of there, I spent most of the morning. Spent the afternoon wandering around, just trying to figure out what the hell it all means.”
“And did you?”
“Yes. And no. I finally realized the cop was right, in one sense.”
“Okay, so tell me what they said.”
“He.”
“What?”
“What he said. One guy, Lt. Guthrie. He gave me a fast five minutes of his precious time. I showed him the letter. He read it the first page and that was about it.”
“No comment at all?”
“Basically, no. I wonder if he’s been talking to Mom?” he said and felt a sudden hot rush heading up his neck thinking about the tough few minutes with the detective.
“What did he say, exactly?”
“In summary, that they get more ‘unexplained’ deaths in a routine week than he can handle or even care about. That he didn’t see any correlation with four deaths and the fact they worked together.”
“He said correlation?”
“I think he said, and I quote, ‘it don’t figure,’ or something like that,” Danny said. “It seems they have enough drug shootings, wife stabbings, gang mutilations, vagrant muggings and assorted other madness to keep them busy. Too busy to spend a lot of time thinking about a dead man’s improbable theory.”
“A lot of time?”
“No time. He gave me his card and showed me the door. Five minutes, the police version of a quickie. Granted, the couple of detectives unlucky enough to be on duty on a Sunday probably had their hands full with normal beatings, stabbing and whatnot, and didn’t have time or inclination to listen to a crazy tourist. But still they could have at least pretended to listen.”
“Alright then, two days down there and you still don’t have a solution. And you can’t expect any help from the cops. Are you going to press on?”
“I suppose, but I’m not sure how. But as I said, I think Guthrie’s right. There’s no way the recent stuff, the killings, correlate. It lacks a motive, I suppose. At least it does without the first crime tying it all together.”
“So, you’re back to digging out facts on a crime that probably didn’t happen, that only your father thought was coded into a book that was published almost seventy years ago. Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know. I never really thought what it would be like. I hoped Chuck was making it up. That mom would show me the lie in it, but that didn’t happen. So now I’m back where I started.”
“Can’t find out about the murders without finding out about Hammett’s mysterious crime.”
“Right.”
“Well, did you get that stuff from your mom? Will it help?”
“Not really. She had a shoebox full of old letters from Chuck, but he was on his best behavior. I haven’t even read them all but I can’t see that there’s anything in there that’s going to fit into all this.”
“Well, at least you should read them all. You never know, right? And walking around San Francisco?”
“Nothing, or at least not yet. His ledger and the map documents what he did back in ’59. But all I’m doing is taking the world’s longest, most complex walking tour. He climbed all over the City, visited every scene in the book, but it’s all Greek to me and duplicating his physical search doesn’t seem to do much.”
“Was it in some kind of code or something?”
“No, not a code as much as context. It only makes sense if you know what he knew, looking for what he was looking for. Otherwise, it’s just a travelogue. I’m still trying to piece it together,” he said, sitting heavily at the table. The piles of papers, maps and various scribbled notes looked more like some freshman term paper nightmare than the curious pursuit of a middle-aged professor. “Chuck was convinced there was some secret crime coded into the book, but damned if I can figure out what made him think so other than a couple of scrawled sentences that may, or may not, have been written by Hammett. It doesn’t make sense and it sure as hell doesn’t mean he was murdered.”
He paused, then went on. “You know, I’d be in good company if I gave up on this whole idea. Mom doesn’t think he was murdered. The cops don’t think so. But even if I assume Chuck was delusional and nobody was after him and the other old Pinkerton’s men, that still leaves the obsession to deal with, the mysterious hidden crime in the novel. I think maybe I could let go of the murder idea if I could shake the feeling that there’s something in the book that explains it all.”
“Why? Just assume there’s something there. Leave yesterday’s crime alone and put your dad’s murder to rest.”
“Without the original crime, there’s no logic at all to the current murder. Or murders. I have to assume Hammett’s hidden crime was real or nothing follows and I’ll never get the truth of it,” he said, pausing to take a deep breath and pushing on but hearing the tone in his own voice, the doubt creeping in. “Chuck thought something in the book was based on a real event, that there were real people committing real crimes disguised in there. That was what he thought he was looking for. Clues to that crime, those criminals. And he thought somebody was killing people because of those clues he found. Forty years ago. So I have to find those clues.”
“That’s one way to go, I guess. So then, you assume there’s some hidden crime in The Maltese Falcon but ask yourself this, how come only your father figured this out?”
“What?”
“I said, I can’t imagine nobody ever thought of this before, looking for hidden clues for a real crime in a detective novel. For God’s sake, it must be a cliché by now.”
“I don’t know. Intuition?”
“I’d prefer some facts. Does he offer any? Hammett must have used his experiences at Pinkerton’s in San Francisco as part of his oeuvre for the novel. But other people must have read the novel and worked at Pinkerton’s. Other people must have had access to the same files. Why did only one man suspect a hidden crime in the novel? What made him think to start looking for clues in what would have been a minor, albeit entertaining, novel?”
“I don’t have a clue. No pun intended. There’s nothing in the letters like I’d hoped and the ledger doesn’t really make sense out of context of w
hat he was searching for. Other than that fragment with Hammett’s notes for the book on it that he claims the cops took away from him, I really don’t have anything.”
They chatted on, briefly, making an end to the conversation then Danny clicked off and dropped the phone on the bed beside him. He lay quietly for a moment, then got up, walked to the table, picked up a slice of cold pizza and popped open a lukewarm beer.
Something was nagging at him, just beyond the edge of thought but close enough to annoyance to keep scratching at his memory. He punched “play” on the recorder and the irritating nasal buzzing of this micro speaker filled the room like angry flies throwing themselves against the echoing lampshades, “Okay, what do I know now I didn’t know before...nothing... I’ve come, seen but not conquered.”
He turned off the recorder and leaned back against the pillows. Tomorrow he’d hit some of the other spots: John’s Grill, the Marquand restaurant and Joel Cairo’s hotel if he could find it, and back to Hunter-Dulin. And he’d call Ben and see what he thought of all of it. There had to be something.
He reached for the TV remote, picked it up then dropped it back on the bed and reached for the book.
He had decided The Maltese Falcon was an entertaining novel; he hadn’t read it in years but the pleasant teenage memory of it’s fog-sotted cityscape and hard-boiled Sam Spade hadn’t worn quite as well through an adult’s rereading. He now preferred the flawless 1941 movie as seen darkly through John Huston’s lens. The disparate images of Hammett’s “blond Satan” Sam Spade and the cool dark everyman Bogart were jarring, with Bogie carrying the day through controlled menace that leaked a subtle humor at odd moments; and too, nobody would ever be Caspar Guttman other than Sidney Greenstreet, while only Peter Lore could capture the oily duplicity of Joel Cairo. The only movie character that didn’t ring true was the forever ill-fated Wilmer, with Elisha Cook doing his best but failing to nail the barely submerged menace under the surface of the perverse youth. He had rented the movie and watched it critically again, willing himself to ignore the occasionally labored language imposed on the actors by the literal use of the novel’s dialogue; the attempt to capture the book’s 1920s ethos by slavishly translating the dialogue and filtering it through 1940s somber film noire sensibility seemed a flaw but was probably part of it’s charm to many fans.
