Chasing Sam Spade

by Brian Lawson

  Chuck talked about Powell in the letters, of what he called the wonderful north-south arterial, tying Market Street to North Beach and he talked about standing on the roundabout at Market where the Powell St. cable car was turned by hand, passengers helping the conductor and brakeman pushing the great steel and brick wheel around, flipping the car back up Powell for another strain at the hills.

  Most of the Powell street that Hammett had written about, of Herbert’s Bachelor Hotel and the Grill, was gone now, replaced by Loris 50’s Diner and quick buck tee shirt shops and junk jewelry and camera shops. But at O’Farrell and Powell, Marquard’s was still there, an old fashioned cigar store looking its been there for years, with racing forms racked up out front for sharpies and would be rail birds on their way to Bay Meadows in the East Bay, the last track on the west side down the Peninsula at Tanforan long gone. Danny turned east on Ellis, dodging pools of sunlight, waiting for something, walking and waiting. There was a wonderful blue-sky canopy over this part of the Tenderloin, a place that seemed morning bright but didn’t seem yet warm; maybe the sun shines on the Tenderloin only if you don’t have to live on the street. Dazzled by the sudden sunshine he hardly noticed John’s Grill in the shadow side of the street, wedged between two taller buildings, only three stories wedged against the art deco splendor of the Flood Building on one side and the blank side of another building.

  Chuck was even more obscure than most other ledger entries when it came to John’s Grill. The thin morning sun broke through for good and the small yellowed page flared with brightness: “#6 John’s Grill 63 Ellis. 12/8/59...looks good, still the same, one thing hasn’t changed since ‘28... met RT for drink 6p, no luck and getting the file back, he’s an okay guy but can’t help without going into dutch on it...good drinking bar... check out and see if it fits with others...

  It was the only item in the ledger that let a bit of Chuck’s personality through, the only one where he hinted that a place was more than just another stop, another blind alley; the only place where he suggested it might have some virtue beyond feeding his obsession. It seemed to be one of the few places were he knew both Hammett and Chuck had been that was unchanged; Danny was anxious to sit at the same bar. But he was still frustrated that the abbreviations, terse notation and use of initials to identify people and places obscured the heart of Chuck’s search. “God damn you Chuck, why couldn’t you just spell it out for once, ” he muttered, stuffing the small book back in the fanny pack and cutting across the street.

  It was still early and the sidewalk on the shadowed south side of Ellis was damp with morning fog and the small John’s entryway smelled like old newspapers and oil and something he couldn’t identify. He couldn’t resist gawking, tunneling the light away and peering in through the glass panels in the door, a tourist at a shrine.

  “Got to come back for lunch,” he muttered, then turned when it sounded like somebody was answering him; behind him, standing on the curb a guy with cellular phone was carrying on an animated conversation, waving his free hand, gestures for the unseeing other at the end of the virtual phone line. He watched the man gesturing, voice raising, a heated conversation about delivery dates for this or that. He turned and walked toward Market Street and the Palace Hotel. There was time to fill before John’s opened for lunch.

  * * *

  Luis the bartender was at the far end of the bar talking to a middle aged couple he seemed to know; seventeen years behind the bar had taught him when to talk, when to listen and when to simply leave patrons alone at the bar.

  The bar in John’s Grill stretched down the left-hand side of the low ceilinged room, hard up against the small, white clothed dining tables. There was a small semi-private nook at the head of the bar near the front door where an early lunch couple had their heads together talking softly over already sticky glasses.

  Danny grabbed a seat a the far end of the bar, ordered a drink then asked for the restroom, walked the creaking stairs and took the opportunity for a leisurely tour of the second and third floors and their tributes to Hammett and the book; when he came back down the couple was still at it but the rest of the room was filling with early lunch arrivals.

  Danny took another sip from the excellent Cosmopolitan and waited for his food. He fished out Chuck’s ledger, laying it open on the scarred bar top, tilting it now to get enough light to read the small, precise notation. He reread the #6 entry and wondered again who “RT” was. He leafed through the small book, wondering again why most of the entries were during a two-week period in late 1958, followed by another shorter block of entries almost a year later but without map notations. The second block didn’t have any place reference and only annotated conversations; the references were brief, harsher and Danny felt a sense of frustration and anger behind the words, with only initials as referents, sometimes only a single letter; two early ones were about the elusive RT:

  9/14/59...talked to RT again but nothing more...says he can’t help, J is back in charge at the place and nothing goes in or out without his say so...should have grabbed what I could now it’s too late...the hell with him if he won’t help, he knows what it means.

  10/4/59...paper says L at the SFPD is dead...in his sleep...good riddance to bad rubbish... he could put me in the know if he wanted but that mick bastard stays the course all right.... couldn’t get RT on the phone to talk about it...L was the last one who could know anything, it’s all by guess and by golly from now on...the files would help but they don’t know me now...if they throw me out again somebody’s going to get a what for out of it, teach them something about the price of corn....

  Danny pulled out a pen and turned to the empty back third of the ledger; he could make do without the tape recorder, and began penciling in quick, fast notes onto the empty pages:

  what a place...even the john has character...the main downstairs dining room is really dark and low ceilinged, photos of SF dignitaries, bar is flattened S shape, bar stools high backed bentwood without padding ...a serious bar, you want to sit and have a drink here...

  feels good to be sitting here at the wonderful tired old bar, the afternoon light fading on Ellis and soft through the windows, dark crudely carved beam running length of room, Victorian brass and glass chandeliers, dark red swags hanging down to cut the view and the bottom frosted glass... bartender Luis who has been there for years, thick set, dark mustache, beak of a nose, black server jacket white shirt and black bow tie, an incongruous wagon wheel chandelier over the bar and rows of presentation decanters on a shelf of famous Americans...why that kitsch was there he didn’t know, it’s like that everywhere in town, the grace notes are wonderful but the jarring dissonance his at you all the time, you get used it to it like tiny little punches and you start rolling with them and they don’t bother you...so sit and drink and think noire thoughts...

  “Who the hell is RT? And who is “L” and why couldn’t you use names, for Christ sake,” he said, drawing a heavy line under the notation.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  Luis was standing in front of him, palms down on the bar, practiced concern on the dark Latino face. “You need something?”

  “Sorry, just talking out loud,” he said, picking up the ledger and putting it in his sport coat pocket. “Just jotting down some notes.”

  “For what, if you don’t mind me asking,” Luis said, but there was a slight smile around the eyes. “Another book on The Maltese Falcon?”

  He nodded, sure, convenient enough and obviously what Luis expected. Luis smiled and nodded, took his empty glass and began rinsing it under the bar.

  “Get it all the time, all the time,” he said.

  “People writing books about the book?”

  “Crazy huh? But it’s good for business. And they’re always polite, asking some questions but mostly just sitting and looking,” he said. “Just like you.”

  It was good for business and John’s obviously made the most of it. Even the phone number was 986-DASH. In for a penny, in for a
pound and he ordered a “Bloody Brigid”, the house Bloody Mary cursed with sweet & sour, soda and Grenadine and named after the duplicitous Ms. O’Shaughnessy.

  “You got any questions I can answer about the place or anything?” Luis said, busying himself with the drink.

  “No, pretty much have everything I need right here,” he said. “Just going to have lunch and relax.”

  Luis nodded and slid the drink across the bar, then walked back down to attend to preparing a large glass of lemon twists for the coming crowd and watch a televised soccer match without sound while carving the lemons. It was a compromise; every bar, even the good ones, had TVs in today’s world but the good one’s turned the sound off so they could be ignored. The sharp tang of lemon drifted up to Danny, mixing with the constant counterpoint of bar smoke and spilled booze and bleach.

  A gaunt waiter in black and white hove into view carrying his lunch; he slid a setup in front of Danny, then plopped down the salad and a small basket of sourdough and skittered away. He considered ordering “Sam Spade’s Chops” after reading the menu citation, “Spade went to John’s Grill, asked the waiter to hurry his order of chops, baked potato, sliced tomatoes...and was smoking a cigarette with his coffee when...” But passed on the chops in favor of the salad. Broiled rack of lamb was too much on top of a couple of drinks for a mid-day meal, even in San Francisco.

  After lunch he walked slowly around downtown, eventually ending up walking into his own shadow down Post toward Stockton, when he felt somebody close to his shoulder.

  “Mister S. would like to talk to you.”

  The voice was so soft he almost didn’t get the words. He turned, expecting the nightmare from the storefront; instead it was a tall, gaunt man, somewhere over forty with thin, close-cropped hair and the palest washed denim eyes Danny had ever seen. He was smiling a thin, slash of a smile without any teeth.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He was standing at the mouth of an alley that butted directly into Post, a thin defile of an abandoned driveway that dead-ended in a concrete wall hedged with dozen story buildings. He was also looking at the short end of a bad downhill walk.

  “I said…”

  “I heard what you said.” The tall man’s eyes went quickly out of focus, then back. The slit of a smile was gone.

  “You have no choice.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “We picked you up heading out of John’s. Lucky for us, not you.”

  “Yeah,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant. What were the chances on one early afternoon with a million people around, they’d see him. “A real lucky break.”

  “Not so much. Mister S. gave us a list of places, said just go by the book. He got a laugh out of that. Mean anything to you?”

  Danny nodded, yeah, it meant something. The man continued in the soft, almost hissing tone, “So we been covering the bases, then we spotted you.”

  He could feel the cold sweat gathering on his neck and under his arms. The tape around his ribs suddenly began itching. He said, “I can run.”

  “Where? You remember the dude from yesterday? He’s up at the corner in the car. My other friend is across the street in front of Gumps, the man in the blue jacket? Then there’s me.”

  “And what are you, the lookout at a gang bang?”

  The thin man looked at him, nodding very seriously “My friend was right, you have an attitude. You’re going to need it,” and he raised his hand, waving, and looked quickly up Post.

  Danny kicked out, feeling the jarring impact as his foot slammed into the man’s shin and the short, quick scream as the man hopped over on one leg, grabbing for his shin, then crumpled, surprise on his face, but already reaching into his jacket as he fell. Danny kicked out again catching him somewhere in the side or stomach, and heard the grunt as the man rolled away then went face down on the sidewalk, gasping. He caught the flash of blue jacket as the other man darted into traffic heading up the block toward him; he swiveled and saw the car, moving slowly in traffic next to the curb, working its way down.

  He ran down the slope of the alley, moving into the darkness, into the cut between the buildings. Chest pounding, he skidded to a stop. Nothing, the alley dead ending in a cement wall, blocked by the looming building stories above him, the dirty gray concrete, and the weathered fire escape.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” and his words were swallowed by the darkness and garbage and urine stink of the alley. Nothing, nothing there except a dumpster and the walled in doorway.

  He heard a shout and turned to look into the mouth of the alley. A car in silhouette screeched to a stop, a thick sketch of a man piled out and dragged the thin man to his feet. They stood there, backlit. They moved slowly toward, him, down the slope, one man limping but the other moving easy, rolling down the slope in thick, heavy shouldered strides, their clear black shadows disappearing from the lighter framed street opening like they were walking into water.

  “Don’t make it harder on yourself, asshole,” he heard the voice out of his nightmare, the voice from yesterday.

  He pulled himself up on top of the dumpster, the echo of the heavy metal bouncing around the alley. The lower rung of the fire escape was still out of reach. He jumped, fingers sliding off the cold, damp metal.

  “You son of a bitch, I’ll fucking kill you,” the thin man screamed, and he hobbled down the alley, trailing the thick man who was moving downhill like a bowling ball from hell.

  Danny jumped again, caught and screamed as the weight pulled the rib apart, the pain pounding in through him, hang on hang on hang on. And he did, pulling himself up through the swimming pain in his side, one rung, then another, scrambling, feeling the cold metal slam into his shins, then one foot, then another, and he locked his elbows over the rung, hanging until the nausea passed. He gasped, sucking air deep into his lungs, waiting for his heart to stop pounding, the nausea to pass. He heard one of them scrambling up onto the dumpster. He moved up another two rungs, grunting as he took the sharp stab in his side. It was easier now, feet supporting him, taking the weight off his arms, away from his rib.

  He looked down. The thin man was doubled over, hands on his knees, sagging against one wall, gasping for air. The thick man was on top of the dumpster, standing at the foot of the ladder, looking at up at him, judging the leap onto the bottom rung. He jumped and missed, landing with a heavy clang on the dumpster lid. He jumped again.

  “You fuck, you fuck,” and reached into his jacket and pulled out a heavy, black automatic, a cannon mouth of a gun, a tunnel aimed up between Danny’s legs, up right through him. “Get the fuck down.”

  “Shoot him, now,” the thin man gasped.

  Taking a two handed grip he snarled, “Come down you fuck or I’ll bust a cap up your ass.”

  “Shoot the mother fucker,” the thin man grunted, louder this time. “Shoot him.”

  “Get the fuck down, now,” the dumpster man screamed at him.

  “No.”

  The man stopped, looking at him up the barrel of the gun. “What did you say?”

  “No. I said no. Shoot, don’t shoot, I don’t care,” he grunted. It suddenly didn’t matter, and he turned and faced the ladder again. Then he began to climb.

  “Get the fuck down here. Man, I swear to God, I’ll blow your fucking ass away,” and he heard the slide on the automatic as the man jacked a round into the chamber.

  “Don’t shoot,” and the voice was new, a quiet, even tone. The third man, the man in the blue jacket. “Put the gun away. Do it. Now.”

  “Fuck you,” the man with the gun snarled. “Who says?”

  “I says. Get the car and head around the block. He’s heading into the garage. We’ll go around and head him off,” the voice commanded. “Now.”

  He kept climbing until he was on the first landing. He grabbed the door. It was locked. He looked over the railing. The dumpster man was lumbering up the slope, heading back to the car on Post. The man in the blue jacket was saying something
to the thin man who had finally unbent and was staring up at Danny; the blue jacket man turned and sprinted up the alley to the waiting car and the dumpster man who was already in the driver’s seat. Thin man cupped his hands and yelled up at Danny.

  “Run you little fuck. I’m waiting, right here, waiting,” he yelled.

  Danny scrambled up the next flight, at last they were stairs now instead of the first level ladder, his steps clanking on the metal grated stairs; the door was locked. And the next. On the fifth landing the door was propped open with a brick and he ducked through into a landing next to the ramp. He stood there in the sickly pale orange light, gasping. The air seemed thin, stale, with the stink of car exhaust. The easiest thing would be to head across the garage for the elevators or the adjacent stairs; they’d think of that and be waiting at the bottom. Maybe leave one guy there and, what, prowl slowly, up one floor at a time, up each ramp. How many floors, ten stories up, staggered floors? If he walked down the ramp their car would still be on the move up and leave only one guy to avoid on the ground floor. He headed down into the gloom, listening for the squeal of tires on the slick concrete.

  * * *

  He wheeled the car out of the Stockton St. Garage, heading out onto Stockton and through the tunnel toward Chinatown, then straight north, still on Stockton, caught in the traffic that merged from Chinatown and North Beach, turning randomly right, then left, again left. Heading up through the narrow blocks of apartments, each with scant bay windows thrusting out into the street for long lost views of the something, anything, and brief moments of direct sunlight. He was moving slowly through neighborhoods on the flanks of Nob Hill, driving just to stay away, turning quickly without signaling, sliding through stop signs, and watching in the rearview for any following car. Nothing, he’d lost them.

  He fumbled around on the passenger’s seat and found the cellular and dialed Doris’s number. She wasn’t there, he hadn’t expected she would be; she was still on shift at the restaurant. He waited for the answering machine to beep.