Spade & Archer: the prequel to Dashiell Hammett's The maltese falcon

by Joe Gores

  Spade crossed the sidewalk between iron-railed hatchways that opened above bare ugly stairs, went to the parapet, and, resting his hands on the damp coping, looked down into Stockton Street. An automobile popped out of the tunnel beneath him with a roaring swish, as if it had been blown out, and ran away. Not far from the tunnel's mouth a man was hunkered on his heels before a billboard that held advertisements of a moving picture and a gasoline across the front of a gap between two store-buildings. The hunkered man's head was bent almost to the sidewalk so he could look under the billboard. A hand flat on the paving, a hand clenched on the billboard's green frame, held him in this grotesque position. Two other men stood awkwardly together at one end of the billboard, peeping through the few inches of space between it and the building at that end. The building at the other end had a blank grey sidewall that looked down on the lot behind the billboard. Lights flickered on the sidewall, and the shadows of men moving among lights.

  Spade turned from the parapet and walked up Bush Street to the alley where men were grouped. A uniformed policeman chewing gum under an enameled sign that said _Burritt St_. in white against dark blue put out an arm and asked: "What do you want here?"

  "I'm Sam Spade. Tom Polhaus phoned me."

  "Sure you are." The policeman's arm went down. "I didn't know you at first. Well, they're back there." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Bad business."

  "Bad enough," Spade agreed, and went up the alley. Half-way up it, not far from the entrance, a dark ambulance stood. Behind the ambulance, to the left, the alley was bounded by a waist-high fence, horizontal strips of rough boarding. From the fence dark ground fell away steeply to the billboard on Stockton Street below. A ten-foot length of the fence's top rail had been torn from a post at one end and hung dangling from the other. Fifteen feet down the slope a flat boulder stuck out. In the notch between boulder and slope Miles Archer lay on his back. Two men stood over him. One of them held the beam of an electric torch on the dead man. Other men with lights moved up and down the slope.

  One of them hailed Spade, "Hello, Sam," and clambered up to the alley, his shadow running up the slope before him. He was a barrel-bellied tall man with shrewd small eyes, a thick mouth and carelessly shaven dark jowls. His shoes, knees, hands, and chin were daubed with brown loam. "I figured you'd want to see it before we took him away," he said as he stepped over the broken fence.

  "Thanks, Tom," Spade said. "What happened?" He put an elbow on a fence-post and looked down at the men below, nodding to those who nodded to him.

  Tom Polhaus poked his own left breast with a dirty finger. "Got him right through the pump--with this." He took a fat revolver from his coat-pocket and held it out to Spade. Mud inlaid the depressions in the revolver's surface. "A Webley. English, ain't it?"

  Spade took his elbow from the fence-post and leaned down to look at the weapon, but he did not touch it. "Yes," he said, "Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver. That's it. Thirty-eight, eight shot. They don't make them any more. How many gone out of it?"

  "One pill." Tom poked his breast again. "He must've been dead when he cracked the fence." He raised the muddy revolver. "Ever seen this before?"

  Spade nodded. "I've seen Webley-Fosberys," he said without interest, and then spoke rapidly: "He was shot up here, huh? Standing where you are, with his back to the fence. The man that shot him stands here." He went around in front of Torn and raised a hand breast-high with leveled forefinger. "Lets him have it and Miles goes back, taking the top off the fence and going on through and down till the rock catches him. That it?"

  "That's it," Tom replied slowly, working his brows together. "The blast burnt his coat."

  "Who found him?"

  "The man on the beat, Shilling. He was coming down Bush, and just as he got here a machine turning threw headlights up here, and he saw the top off the fence. So he came up to look at it, and found him."

  "What about the machine that was turning around?"

  "Not a damned thing about it, Sam. Shilling didn't pay any attention to it, not knowing anything was wrong then. He says nobody didn't come out of here while he was coming down from Powell or he'd've seen them. The only other way out would be under the billboard on Stockton. Nobody went that way. The fog's got the ground soggy, and the only marks are where Miles slid down and where this here gun rolled."

  "Didn't anybody hear the shot?"

  "For the love of God, Sam, we only just got here. Somebody must've heard it, when we find them." He turned and put a leg over the fence. "Coming down for a look at him before he's moved?"

  Spade said: "No."

  Tom halted astride the fence and looked back at Spade with surprised small eyes.

  Spade said: "You've seen him. You'd see everything I could."

  Tom, still looking at Spade, nodded doubtfully and withdrew his leg over the fence. "His gun was tucked away on his hip," he said. "It hadn't been fired. His overcoat was buttoned. There's a hundred and sixty-some bucks in his clothes. Was he working, Sam?"

  Spade, after a moment's hesitation, nodded.

  Tom asked: "Well?"

  "He was supposed to be tailing a fellow named Floyd Thursby," Spade said, and described Thursby as Miss Wonderly had described him.

  "What for?"

  Spade put his hands into his overcoat-pockets and blinked sleepy eyes at Tom. Tom repeated impatiently: "What for?"

  "He was an Englishman, maybe. I don't know what his game was, exactly. We were trying to find out where he lived." Spade grinned faintly and took a hand from his pocket to pat Tom's shoulder. "Don't crowd me" He put the hand in his pocket again. "I'm going out to break the news to Miles's wife." He turned away.

  Tom, scowling, opened his mouth, closed it without having said anything, cleared his throat, put the scowl off his face, and spoke with a husky sort of gentleness: "It's tough, him getting it like that. Miles had his faults same as the rest of us, but I guess he must've had some good points too."

  "I guess so," Spade agreed in a tone that was utterly meaningless, and went out of the alley.

  In an all-night drug-store on the corner of Bush and Taylor Streets, Spade used a telephone.

  "Precious," he said into it a little while after he had given a number, "Miles has been shot Yes, he's dead. . . . Now don't get excited. . . . Yes. . . . You'll have to break it to Iva. . . . No, I'm damned if I will. You've got to do it. . . . That's a good girl. . . . And keep her away from the office. . . . Tell her I'll see her--uh--some time. . . . Yes, but don't tie me up to anything. . . . That's the stuff. You're an angel. 'Bye."

  Spade's tinny alarm-clock said three-forty when he turned on the light in the suspended bowl again. He dropped his hat and overcoat on the bed and went into his kitchen, returning to the bedroom with a wineglass and a tall bottle of Bacardi. He poured a drink and drank it standing. He put bottle and glass on the table, sat on the side of the bed facing them, and rolled a cigarette. He had drunk his third glass of Bacardi and was lighting his fifth cigarette when the street-door-bell rang. The hands of the alarm-clock registered four-thirty. Spade sighed, rose from the bed, and went to the telephone-box beside his bathroom door. He pressed the button that released the streetdoor-lock. He muttered, "Damn her," and stood scowling at the black telephone-box, breathing irregularly while a dull flush grew in his cheeks.

  The grating and rattling of the elevator-door opening and closing came from the corridor. Spade sighed again and moved towards the corridor-door. Soft heavy footsteps sounded on the carpeted floor outside, the footsteps of two men. Spade's face brightened. His eyes were no longer harassed. He opened the door quickly. "Hello, Tom," he said to the barrel-bellied tall detective with whom he had talked in Burritt Street, and, "Hello, Lieutenant," to the man beside Tom. "Come in."

  They nodded together, neither saying anything, and came in. Spade shut the door and ushered them into his bedroom. Toni sat on an end of the sofa by the windows. The Lieutenant sat on a chair beside the table. The Lieutenant was a compactly built man
with a round head under short-cut grizzled hair and a square face behind a short-cut grizzled mustache. A five-dollar gold-piece was pinned to his necktie and there was a small elaborate diamond-set secret-society-emblem on his lapel.

  Spade brought two wine-glasses in from the kitchen, filled them and his own with Bacardi, gave one to each of his visitors, and sat down with his on the side of the bed. His face was placid and uncurious. He raised his glass, and said, "Success to crime," and drank it down.

  Tom emptied his glass, set it on the floor beside his feet, and wiped his mouth with a muddy forefinger. He stared at the foot of the bed as if trying to remember something of which it vaguely reminded him. The Lieutenant looked at his glass for a dozen seconds, took a very small sip of its contents, and put the glass on the table at his elbow. He examined the room with hard deliberate eyes, and then looked at Tom. Tom moved uncomfortably on the sofa and, not looking up, asked: "Did you break the news to Miles's wife, Sam?"

  Spade said: "Uh-huh."

  "How'd she take it?"

  Spade shook his head. "I don't know anything about women."

  Tom said softly: "The hell you don't."

  The Lieutenant put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. His greenish eyes were fixed on Spade in a peculiarly rigid stare, as if their focus were a matter of mechanics, to be changed only by pulling a lever or pressing a button. "What kind of gun do you carry?" he asked.

  "None. I don't like them much. Of course there are some in the office."

  "I'd like to see one of them," the Lieutenant said. "You don't happen to have one here?"

  "No."

  "You sure of that?"

  "Look around." Spade smiled and waved his empty glass a little. "Turn the dump upside-down if you want. I won't squawk--if you've got a search-warrant."

  Tom protested: "Oh, hell, Sam!"

  Spade set his glass on the table and stood up facing the Lieutenant. "What do you want, Dundy?" he asked in a voice hard and cold as his eyes.

  Lieutenant Dundy's eyes had moved to maintain their focus on Spade's. Only his eyes had moved. Tom shifted his weight on the sofa again, blew a deep breath out through his nose, and growled plaintively: "We're not wanting to make army trouble, Sam."

  Spade, ignoring Tom, said to Dundy: "Well, what do you want? Talk turkey. Who in hell do you think you are, coming in here trying to rope me?"

  "All right," Dundy said in his chest, "sit down and listen."

  "I'll sit or stand as I damned please," said Spade, not moving.

  "For Christ's sake be reasonable," Toni begged. "What's the use of us having a row? If you want to know why we didn't talk turkey it's because when I asked you who this Thursby was you as good as told me it was none of my business. You can't treat us that way, Sam. It ain't right and it won't get you anywheres. We got our work to do."

  Lieutenant Dundy jumped up, stood close to Spade, and thrust his square face up at the taller man's. "I've warned you your foot was going to slip one of these days," he said.

  Spade made a depreciative mouth, raising his eyebrows. "Everybody's foot slips sometime," he replied with derisive mildness.

  "And this is yours."

  Spade smiled and shook his head. "No, I'll do nicely, thank you." He stopped smiling. His upper lip, on the left side, twitched over his eyetooth. His eyes became narrow and sultry. His voice came out deep as the Lieutenant's. "I don't like this. What are you sucking around for? Tell me, or get out and let me go to bed."

  "Who's Thursby?" Dundy demanded.

  "I told Tom what I knew about him."

  "You told Tom damned little."

  "I knew damned little."

  "Why were you tailing him?"

  "I wasn't. Miles was--for the swell reason that we had a client who was paying good United States money to have him tailed."

  "Who's the client?"

  Placidity came back to Spade's face and voice. He said reprovingly: "You know I can't tell you that until I've talked it over with the client."

  "You'll tell it to me or you'll tell it in court," Dundy said hotly. "This is murder and don't you forget it."

  "Maybe. And here's something for you to not forget, sweetheart. I'll tell it or not as I damned please. It's a long while since I burst out crying because policemen didn't like me."

  Tom left the sofa and sat on the foot of the bed. His carelessly shaven mud-smeared face was tired and lined. "Be reasonable, Sam," he pleaded. "Give us a chance. How can we turn up anything on Miles's killing if you won't give us what you've got?"

  "You needn't get a headache over that," Spade told him. "I'll bury my dead."

  Lieutenant Dundy sat down and put his hands on his knees again. His eyes were warm green discs. "I thought you would," he said. He smiled with grim content. "That's just exactly why we came to see you. Isn't it, Tom?"

  Tom groaned, but said nothing articulate. Spade watched Dundy warily.

  "That's just exactly what I said to Tom," the Lieutenant went on. "I said: 'Tom, I've got a hunch that Sam Spade's a man to keep the familytroubles in the family.' That's just what I said to him."

  The wariness went out of Spade's eyes. He made his eyes dull with boredom. He turned his face around to Tom and asked with great carelessness: "What's itching your boy-friend now?"

  Dundy jumped up and tapped Spade's chest with the ends of two bent fingers. "Just this," he said, taking pains to make each word distinct, emphasizing them with his tapping finger-ends: "Thursby was shot down in front of his hotel just thirty-five minutes after you left Burritt Street."

  Spade spoke, taking equal pains with his words: "Keep your Goddamned paws off me."

  Dundy withdrew the tapping fingers, but there was no change in his voice: "Tom says you were in too much of a hurry to even stop for a look at your partner."

  Tom growled apologetically: "Well, damn it, Sam, you did run off like that."

  "And you didn't go to Archer's house to tell his wife," the Lieutenant said. "We called up and that girl in your office was there, and she said you sent her."

  Spade nodded. His face was stupid in its calmness.

  Lieutenant Dundy raised his two bent fingers towards Spade's chest, quickly lowered them, and said: "I give you ten minutes to get to a phone and do your talking to the girl. I give you ten minutes to get to Thursby's joint--Geary near Leavenworth--you could do it easy in that time, or fifteen at the most. And that gives you ten or fifteen minutes of waiting before he showed up."

  "I knew where he lived?" Spade asked. "And I knew he hadn't gone straight home from killing Miles?"

  "You knew what you knew," Dundy replied stubbornly. "What time did you get home?"

  "Twenty minutes to four. I walked around thinking things over."

  The Lieutenant wagged his round head up and down. "We knew you weren't home at three-thirty. We tried to get you on the phone. Where'd you do your walkin*?"

  "Out Bush Street a way and back."

  "Did you see anybody that--?"

  "No, no witnesses," Spade said and laughed pleasantly. "Sit down, Dundy. You haven't finished your drink. Get your glass, Tom."

  Tom said: "No, thanks, Sam." Dundy sat down, but paid no attention to his glass of rum.

  Spade filled his own glass, drank, set the empty glass on the table, and returned to his bedside-seat. "I know where I stand now," he said, looking with friendly eyes from one of the police-detectives to the other. "I'm sorry I got up on my hind legs, but you birds coming in and trying to put the work on me made me nervous. Having Miles knocked off bothered me, and then you birds cracking foxy. That's all right now, though, now that I know what you're up to."