Chasing Sam Spade

by Brian Lawson

  * * *

  When he finally got back to the hotel, hooked up and logged in and there was a message from Ben. It was brief and to the point: go online at 2 p.m. for a real-time chat.

  He logged on at exactly 2 p.m. Protocol demanded that Danny wait until Ben’s message formed before typing a response or they’d be crossing each other’s comments and the dialogue would end up being two abutting monologues. It reminded Danny of transmissions from Apollo astronauts to Houston where the time delay forced a strange, choppy cadence into the conversation full of drawn out pauses. The delay plus the six-line limited room in the onscreen chat window slowed the process to a crawl that almost broke Danny’s heart to type and read. They’d already covered Ben’s questions about Danny’s search and now he waited for Ben’s next response:

  BEN: that story looks good. Teen sex slave sounds like something out of the tabloids, fresh as tomorrow’s news

  DANNY: scanning the last three months on one 1927 reel took 2 hours, and another hour to go back looking for Skelley. I was lucky to find the second story on Skelley buried on the business page, otherwise it would have been liked he dropped off the earth and the third popped up in Society.

  BEN: Let’s see if I follow. Crime is committed in ’27, David Skelley is the DA. Nothing happens despite how sensational the crime. Three months later he quits, goes into private practice and ends up working for the SF version of Tammany Hall. Right?

  DANNY: Right, so far.

  BEN: And you adduce this is Hammett’s crime, can’t do anything with so puts it in The Maltese Falcon? Because he’s afraid of this Skelley?

  DANNY: More likely Skelley’s friends.

  BEN: A cover up and political payoff?

  DANNY: Nobody saw it, but hat’s how it figures, as Sgt. Polhaus would say.

  BEN: I don’t know, Danny, a quantum leap. Proof?

  DANNY: Not yet. But if I tie David Skelley to the crime he’s the ‘S’ Chuck wrote about. And if this guy was after him in ’59, maybe he killed him in ’99.

  BEN: I don’t know about that. For one thing, this guy David Skelley must be ninety?

  DANNY: That’s a problem, the old being killed by the older doesn’t make sense.

  BEN: Then you’re back where you started. You need something to validate your base assumption that the Skelley of ’27 is the ‘S’ Hammett wrote about and Chuck ran afoul of in ’59.

  DANNY: But that doesn’t solve Chuck’s murder.

  BEN: Death, it’s not a murder yet. Keep that in mind. Don’t let crime #2 get in the way of solving crime #1.

  DANNY: And how do I do that?

  BEN: Don’t know. If you don’t have hard data, go for soft data. Go back to the original database, human memory, people who remember people.

  DANNY: Que?

  BEN: Become an anthropologist. What about this John Larkin? Old enough to have been there with Chuck?

  DANNY: Chuck was in the Mission, Larkin in another part of town. This is a big town with isolated neighborhoods. People didn’t get around the way they do now.

  BEN: Maybe that’s a starting point. Maybe he remembers something or better, somebody who was there and can talk. Maybe knows somebody who knows somebody?

  DANNY: Can’t imagine anyone would be still alive but you never know.

  BEN: Time to give up the analytical and follow the intuitive.

  DANNY: Crap.

  BEN: Not so. Look for the people not the facts. Listen, don’t read. The truth is out there but only if you can see it.

  DANNY: We agree there.

  BEN: Ok but don’t give up. Finding out a little about yourself?

  DANNY: Don’t need self-actualization, need information. Convinced Chuck was right but how to prove it?

  BEN: Agree, but don’t give up. Gotta go, class in five minutes. Talk to me....B.

  Maybe Ben was right. Maybe it the better way would be talking to people who knew the people; and it was more reasonable in this post-modern world to trust gossip and second and third hand hearsay rather than slog through the semi-solid world of journalistic fact.

  * * *

  Rush hour traffic was piling up, even heading into town but the westbound streets were the worst. Danny stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets and wished he had worn a sweater under the sport coat. The morning blue sky had given way to late afternoon fog dragged in from the Pacific by the warm day.

  John Larkin must have been driven indoors by the late afternoon fog; his station in front of Monza Motors was empty. After looking around for him and waiting a few minutes, Danny walked up Post a few doors to where a short, sad eyed woman with grossly swollen ankles was sweeping at the windblown refuse piled up around the front stoop.

  “Have you seen the old guy today?”

  She pulled her heavy sweater closely over her chest with one hand, clutching it as though Danny were ready to steal something of great value, the lumpy red knuckled hand wrapped tightly around the broom handle. “What’d you say?”

  “The old guy, hangs around in front of Monza Motors down the street. John Larkin? I was wondering if you saw him, today?”

  “Old John? Sure, every day, same thing,” she said, giving him a quick, hard appraisal then turning back to her sweeping. “What you want with him?”

  “We were talking yesterday about the neighborhood and I wanted to ask him a question,” he said. She was old enough to have been around as long as John but she didn’t offer any observations. “You know where he lives?”

  She shook her head, no, and kept her face down, concentrating on her chore.

  “Does he hang out in any of the bars, restaurants around here?”

  This time she shrugged and turned away to start climbing the stairs, slowly, one at a time, flat feet solid on each step before she moved up to the next, dragging the broom behind her.

  “I really need to get in touch with him. I need his help.”

  She turned when she reached the stoop and looked down at him. “Try up St. Francis, up on Bush and Hyde.”

  “A hotel?”

  She shook her head and smiled; he could see the great gap in the middle of her smile. He nodded when she said, “You from out of town? Sure you are. St. Francis. The hospital.”

  “Is he sick?”

  She shook her head. “Naw. He goes up there, helps out some. Runs errands for the old sick ones. Gets in the way mostly I’d guess. Just ask for old John, they know him for sure. Three blocks up, between Bush and Pine. Can’t miss it.”

  She continued to stare at him until Danny turned and walked away. He could almost feel her eyes on his back, watching, waiting for him to do some strange tourist thing.

  The wind had come in with the fog and a sudden swirling eddy whirled new trash around his ankles. The wind died a little when he turned and headed north up the hill toward the faded tan hospital block.

  The orderly by the front desk was a small, tightly wrapped man, perhaps Filipino, with the thinnest mustache Danny had ever seen, hardly more than two or three whiskers thick and stretched with cunning proportion to the exact corners of his upper lip. Danny watched the small snake of hair dance around as the man labored through a heavily accented explanation that, yes, he knew old man Larkin and directed Danny to the small cafeteria.

  The antiseptic hollow hallway to the cafeteria was full of bright, sharp echoes and the squeaking of nuns and nurses’ rubber soled shoes and gurney wheels on the dully-polished vinyl flooring. And it carried the subtle hospital stench that he always assumed was one part disinfectant, one part stale filtered air and one part tangy congealed aroma of human pain.

  There were a dozen or so people in the cafeteria, mostly in hospital whites, orderlies or nurses on breaks; Larkin was alone at a small four chair table in the middle of the room. He was dressed the same as he had been for the last two days: a brown wind breaker, white open collar shirt was heavily starched, black dress slacks and shined black tassel loafers, but under the flat fluorescent lighting he looked somehow older, clothes
shabbier. He seemed to be nursing a cup of coffee, nodding and trying to catch the eye of anyone whom passed by, smiling slightly off center without the balancing cigar. Danny paid for a cup of coffee, walked over and pulled out a chair at John’s table.

  “Mind if I sit?”

  “Well, if it isn’t mister Maltese Falcon,” John said, smile broadening. “Sit down, sure. Say, you get around. What you doing here?”

  “Some old lady down on Post, up the street from Monza? She said you might be here.”

  John laughed, a dark, thick chuckle somewhere in the chest. Danny could almost hear the heavy wet sound of age and cigar tars bubbling in the dark low places in his chest. “Yes sir, that’s got to be Mrs. Atabisi. Woman sees all, knows all and goddman if she don’t tell all.”

  “She was very helpful.”

  “Yes sir, I bet she was,” John said. He leaned back and Danny could see that the fresh starched shirt was frayed at the cuffs and collar, the wind breaker shiny at the elbows and where small thready spots had been worn into the turned back the cuffs. “Well, you found me. Can’t be here for the coffee or the relaxing atmosphere, so it must be the company. More questions?”

  Danny smiled and sipped the tepid, bitter coffee; he must have made a face because John chuckled. “Nobody drinks it much. Just a reason to sit around.”

  “I can see why,” he said, putting the cup down and pushing it a few inches away from him. “I was wondering if you could help me out.”

  “With what?”

  Danny had wondered himself how he would broach the subject with the old man. Hell, why not tell him the truth and hope for the best. After all, what did it matter?

  “Must be some great question, you working so hard at getting it out,” he said, but there was a focused, attentive look in his rheumy blue eyes.

  “Well, the best place to start is at the beginning,” he said, suddenly feeling as though he could take a good, deep breath for the first time in days. And he began at the beginning, at the letter from Chuck. He shoved the letter across the table, along with the 1927 newspaper clipping, and talked through it while Larkin read.

  Two more cups of bad coffee for John, and a cup of hot chocolate for Danny, and he’d brought the story up to date. He’d done all the talking; John had sat and sipped at his coffee after he finished reading, nodding occasionally but listening in silence.

  “And now I’ve reached a dead end. I was hoping somebody might remember something, anything,” he said. He finished talking, took a sip of chocolate, and watched the old man over the rim of the cup.

  Most of the time the old man had been leaning forward, forearms crossed on the table, occasionally tilting his head to one side as though the story made more sense in one ear than the other. Now he sat back and let out a big sigh and ran his heavy, thick fingers through his tangled gray hair, over the back of his neck then back down to the table top.

  “Well, son, that’s some helluva story you got there,” he said. “I just knew there was more going on, the way you were looking at that old hotel and when I saw you sneak in like that yesterday morning.”

  “You saw that? Where were you?”

  “Over sitting on Mrs. Atabisi’s stoop, resting a little, but I could see you,” he said, nodding. “Yes sir, you snuck right in there when that dyke peddled her fat butt out. Slick as snot, whoosh, right in. I thought, there’s a guy looking for more than just memories of his dad. He’s got something on his mind.”

  He nodded and smiled, waiting. He wasn’t sure what he expected from John, but he could feel the tightness in his chest and across his shoulders. Something, anything was going to happen here. He felt like he had taken some small high step off the curb and onto an unknown street.

  “Well, this old stick might just be some help. In one of those great mysteries of life, I might just have what you’re looking for.”

  There was a shrewd, appraising look on his face. Here it comes, sure as hell, he wants money. Danny nodded, hoping his face was blank, neutral. He almost jumped out of his skin as John slapped one of his thick hands down on the tabletop hard enough to make the cups jump.

  “Naw, don’t worry, I’m not going to hit you up for money,” he said, dismissing the idea with a wave. “But I do want something.”

  “What?”

  “I want to be part of it, all the way. All the way to the end,” he said. “You say yes to that, and we got us a deal.”

  “I don’t know what the end is,” he said, shrugging. “This is more just, I don’t know, playing around for me. This isn’t a real mystery or anything. There’s nothing to really be part of.”

  “Not the way I see it. It sounds like the goddamndest thing I’ve heard of in years. A real, sure enough adventure and I want to be part of that,” he said, nodding seriously. “I really do. I gotta do something to keep going, you see what I mean?”

  He looked into the old man’s eyes and saw the ravages of time, the loneliness of the end game, the need to be working at something, anything, to keep the beast at bay. He smiled and nodded, “Sure, of course. We’re going to do some investigating, Mr. Larkin. We’ll call ourselves Boyle and Larkin, private investigators.”

  The old man smiled and reached out a hand; Danny shook it, feeling a deep, hard heat somewhere inside the man that came through his skin.

  “Son of a bitch, if this isn’t the damndest thing, yes sir. Sure I’ll help. Let’s get right on her. For old Chuck,” he said, pulling his hand away and lifting his Styrofoam cup. Danny smiled and raised his cup and they tapped the cups together in a toast to Chuck.

  * * *

  Danny walked back to the hotel after buying John a sandwich and slogging his way through a bowl of soup and glass of milk. The soup was thin, watery, with a few tired looking vegetables slowly dissolving into indifference as he stirred the mess. Larkin seemed to enjoy his sandwich, talking around mouthfuls and swigging the awful coffee in great gulps. At least he was talking and that let Danny get a sense of the old man and the San Francisco that was still alive in his memory. Finally he gave John his room number, arranged to meet him for breakfast at a place on Sutter John described as good and cheap, then headed out into the numbing night air.

  The fog had softened the streetlights into small fuzzy spheres, muting the traffic noise and giving the City a cool dampness on his face. Walking hunched into the cold, hands stuffed into his jeans pockets, he finally understood why somebody once said the coldest winter he’d ever spent was summer in San Francisco.

  He ducked into the liquor store across Hyde from the motel, bought a fifth of Wolfschmidt vodka and a quart of orange juice; he tucked the brown bag under his arm, jogged back across Hyde and into the overheated motel lobby.

  There was a red light strobing slowly in the dark room when he opened the door. After discarding the useless paper lid on the bathroom glass and rinsing out the glass, he poured a stiff shot of vodka, topped it with the icy orange juice and left it sit on the counter while he rinsed out the ice bucket and then walked down the hallway to the ice machine.

  He dumped some ice into the drink glass and sat down on the corner of the bed. The first sip of the drink was good, cool and bracing even with the harsh medicinal edge to the cheap vodka peeking through the juice. He picked up the phone and asked for his message; it was from John Larkin. He hung up on the desk operator and dialed the number. John answered on the first ring; Danny could tell from the hollow sound of muffled noises in the background the old man was calling from a pay phone.

  “What’s up John?” He listened while the old man rambled through his message.

  “Are you sure about this?...I mean, it’s kind of a coincidence,” he said, pausing while the old man protested that things happened that way all the time, that’s why there was a word for it, he said, because things happened. “Now that’s okay, John, I mean it’s great and everything. But I’ve been working at this weeks and I’ve spent the last three days beating the bushes and you stumble on this guy in fifteen minutes?”<
br />
  He waited for John to take a breath. “Sure, I know, beating the bushes got us together...ah huh, that’s true, sure...okay, I’ll take your word for it, it’s just, I don’t know, kind of weird we just finish talking and you come up with somebody like that.”

  He nodded once, twice and said sure, John the luck of the Irish, why not? “What did you say his name was, Ed Dugan?”

  He paused again and took another drink; it tasted bitter in his mouth now and he set it down, nodding in agreement with the unseen John who was explaining that Ed Dugan was an ex cop, a good mick who’d been around forever, knew where all the bodies were buried, a real stand up guy.

  “And you know him, right?” And he listened to John wend his way through a tangled history of volunteer work at the hospital, a couple of earlier meetings and finally it had come back to him in a flash after Danny had left the hospital: Ed Dugan, back in for maybe his final stay, here and now, get him while he could still talk about the old days.

  Finally Danny said, “Okay, if you think you can get me in to see him. He’s not dying or anything, right? Having a couple of visitors isn’t gong to push him over or anything, right?”

  He nodded, listening to the old man spell out a horror story so common it wasn’t even interesting any longer: old man, no relatives, wasting away from neglect as much as illness, dying from terminal indifference.

  “Okay, good then, I’ll meet you there...right, front desk elevators...tomorrow at 8 a.m. Sharp, right. Eight a.m. sharp,” he said, grinning at the old man’s earnestness. “Get a good night’s sleep, partner. And John? Good work, my man, good work.”

  He hung up and sat smiling at the phone for another moment or two, then picked up the drink and went into the bathroom to add some now chilled vodka and more juice to the glass. He looked at himself in the mirror, saw the dark circles around his eyes and the sag in his cheeks.