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

by Joe Gores

  "Uh-huh, that's what I came in about." Spade frowned and cleared his throat. "I think I'm going to have to tell a coroner to go to hell, Sid. Can I hide behind the sanctity of my clients' secrets and identities and what-not, all the same priest or lawyer?"

  Sid Wise lifted his shoulders and lowered the ends of his mouth. "Why not? An inquest is not a court-trial. You can try, anyway. You've gotten away with more than that before this."

  "I know, but Dundy's getting snotty, and maybe it is a little bit thick this time. Get your hat, Sid, and we'll go see the right people. I want to be safe."

  Sid Wise looked at the papers massed on his desk and groaned, but he got up from his chair and went to the closet by the window. "You're a son of a gun, Sammy," he said as he took his hat from its hook.

  Spade returned to his office at ten minutes past five that evening. Effie Perine was sitting at his desk reading _Time_. Spade sat on the desk and asked: "Anything stirring?"

  "Not here. You look like you'd swallowed the canary."

  He grinned contentedly. "I think we've got a future. I always had an idea that if Miles would go off and die somewhere we'd stand a better chance of thriving. Will you take care of sending flowers for me?"

  "I did."

  "You're an invaluable angel. How's your woman's intuition today?"

  "Why?"

  "What do you think of Wonderly?"

  "I'm for her," the girl replied without hesitation.

  "She's got too many names," Spade mused, "Wonderly, Leblanc, and she says the right one's O'Shaughnessy."

  "I don't care if she's got all the names in the phone-book. That girl is all right, and you know it."

  "I wonder." Spade blinked sleepily at Effic Perine. He chuckled. "Anyway she's given up seven hundred smacks in two days, and that's all right."

  Effie Perine sat up straight and said: "Sam, if that girl's in trouble and you let her down, or take advantage of it to bleed her, I'll never forgive you, never have any respect for you, as long as I live."

  Spade smiled unnaturally. Then he frowned. The frown was unnatural. He opened his mouth to speak, but the sound of someone's entrance through the corridor-door stopped him. Effie Perine rose and went into the outer office. Spade took off his hat and sat in his chair. The girl returned with an engraved card--_Mr. Joel Cairo_.

  "This guy is queer," she said.

  "In with him, then, darling," said Spade. Mr. Joel Cairo was a small-boned dark man of medium height. His hair was black and smooth and very glossy. His features were Levantine. A square-cut ruby, its sides paralleled by four baguette diamonds, gleamed against the deep green of his cravat. His black coat, cut tight to narrow shoulders, flared a little over slightly plump hips. His trousers fitted his round legs more snugly than was the current fashion. The uppers of his patent-leather shoes were hidden by fawn spats. He held a black derby hat in a chamois-gloved hand and came towards Spade with short, mincing, bobbing steps. The fragrance of _chypre_ came with him.

  Spade inclined his head at his visitor and then at a chair, saying: "Sit down, Mr. Cairo."

  Cairo bowed elaborately over his hat, said, "I thank you," in a highpitched thin voice and sat down. He sat down primly, crossing his ankles, placing his hat on his knees, and began to draw off his yellow gloves.

  Spade rocked back in his chair and asked: "Now what can I do for you, Mr. Cairo?" The amiable negligence of his tone, his motion in the chair, were precisely as they had been when he had addressed the same question to Brigid O'Shaughnessy on the previous day.

  Cairo turned his hat over, dropping his gloves into it, and placed it bottom-up on the corner of the desk nearest him. Diamonds twinkled on the second and fourth fingers of his left hand, a ruby that matched the one in his tie even to the surrounding diamonds on the third finger of his right hand. His hands were soft and well cared for. Though they were not large their flaccid bluntness made them seem clumsy. He rubbed his palms together and said over the whispering sound they made: "May a stranger offer condolences for your partner's unfortunate death?"

  "Thanks."

  "May I ask, Mr. Spade, if there was, as the newspapers inferred, a certain--ah--relationship between that unfortunate happening and the death a little later of the man Thursby?"

  Spade said nothing in a blank-faced definite way.

  Cairo rose and bowed. "I beg your pardon." He sat down and placed his hands side by side, palms down, on the corner of the desk. "More than idle curiosity made me ask that, Mr. Spade. I am trying to recover an--ah--omament that has been--shall we say?--mislaid. I thought, and hoped, you could assist me."

  Spade nodded with eyebrows lifted to indicate attentiveness. "The ornament is a statuette," Cairo went on, selecting and mouthing his words carefully, "the black figure of a bird."

  Spade nodded again, with courteous interest.

  "I am prepared to pay, on behalf of the figure's rightful owner, the sun of five thousand dollars for its recovery." Cairo raised one hand from the desk-corner and touched a spot in the air with the broad-nailed tip of an ugly forefinger. "I am prepared to promise that--what is the phrase?--no questions will be asked." He put his hand on the desk again beside the other and smiled blandly over them at the private detective.

  "Five thousand is a lot of money," Spade commented, looking thoughtfully at Cairo. "It--"

  Fingers drummed lightly on the door.

  When Spade had called, "Come in," the door opened far enough to admit Effie Perine's head and shoulders. She had put on a small dark felt hat and a dark coat with a grey fur collar.

  "Is there anything else?" she asked.

  "No. Good night. Lock the door when you go, will you?"

  "Good night," she said and disappeared behind the closing door.

  Spade turned in his chair to face Cairo again, saying: "It's an interesting figure." The sound of the corridor-door's closing behind Effie Perine canie to them.

  Cairo smiled and took a short compact flat black pistol out of an inner pocket. "You will please," he said, "clasp your hands together at the back of your neck."

  V.

  The Levantine

  Spade did not look at the pistol. He raised his arms and, leaning back in his chair, intertwined the fingers of his two hands behind his head. His eyes, holding no particular expression, remained focused on Cairo's dark face.

  Cairo coughed a little apologetic cough and smiled nervously with lips that had lost some of their redness. His dark eyes were humid and bashful and very earnest. "I intend to search your offices, Mr. Spade. I warn you that if you attempt to prevent me I shall certainly shoot you."

  "Go ahead." Spade's voice was as empty of expression as his face.

  "You will please stand," the man with the pistol instructed him at whose thick chest the pistol was aimed. "I shall have to make sure that you are not armed."

  Spade stood up pushing his chair back with his calves as he straightened his legs.

  Cairo went around behind him. He transferred the pistol from his right hand to his left. He lifted Spade's coat-tail and looked under it. Holding the pistol close to Spade's back, he put his right hand around Spade's side and patted his chest. The Levantine face was then no more than six inches below and behind Spade's right elbow.

  Spade's elbow dropped as Spade spun to the right. Cairo's face jerked 'back not far enough: Spade's right heel on the patent-leathered toes anchored the smaller man in the elbow's path. The elbow struck him beneath the cheek-bone, staggering him so that he must have fallen had he not been held by Spade's foot on his foot. Spade's elbow went on past the astonished dark face and straightened when Spade's hand struck down at the pistol. Cairo let the pistol go the instant that Spade's fingers touched it. The pistol was small in Spade's hand.

  Spade took his foot off Cairo's to complete his about-face. With his left hand Spade gathered together the smaller man's coat-lapels--the rubyset green tie bunching out over his knuckles--while his right hand stowed the captured weapon away in a coat-pocket. Spade's yell
ow-grey eyes were somber. His face was wooden, with a trace of sullenness around the mouth.

  Cairo's face was twisted by pain and chagrin. There were tears in his dark eyes. His skin was the complexion of polished lead except where the elbow had reddened his cheek.

  Spade by means of his grip on the Levantine's lapels turned him slowly and pushed him back until he was standing close in front of the chair he had lately occupied. A puzzled look replaced the look of pain in the lead-colored face. Then Spade smiled. His smile was gentle, even dreamy. His right shoulder raised a few inches. His bent right arm was driven up by the shoulder's lift. Fist, wrist, forearm, crooked elbow, and upper arm seemed all one rigid piece, with only the limber shoulder giving them motion. The fist struck Cairo's face, covering for a moment one side of his chin, a corner of his mouth, and most of his cheek between cheek-bone and jaw-bone.

  Cairo shut his eyes and was unconscious.

  Spade lowered the limp body into the chair, where it lay with sprawled arms and legs, the head lolling back against the chair's back, the mouth open.

  Spade emptied the unconscious man's pockets one by one, working methodically, moving the lax body when necessary, making a pile of the pockets' contents on the desk. When the last pocket had been turned out he returned to his own chair, rolled and lighted a cigarette, and began to examine his spoils. He examined them with grave unhurried thoroughness.

  There was a large wallet of dark soft leather. The wallet contained three hundred and sixty-five dollars in United States bills of several sizes; three five-pound notes; a much-visaed Greek passport bearing Cairo's name and portrait; five folded sheets of pinkish onion-skin paper covered with what seemed to be Arabic writing; a raggedly clipped newspaper-account of the finding of Archer's and Thursby's bodies; a post-card-photograph of a dusky woman with bold cruel eyes and a tender drooping mouth; a large silk handkerchief, yellow with age and somewhat cracked along its folds; a thin sheaf of Mr. Joel Cairo's engraved cards; and a ticket for an orchestra seat at the Geary Theatre that evening.

  Besides the wallet and its contents there were three gaily colored silk handkerchiefs fragrant of chypre; a platinum Longines watch on a platinum and red gold chain, attached at the other end to a small pearshaped pendant of some white metal; a handful of United States, British, French, and Chinese coins; a ring holding half a dozen keys; a silver and onyx fountain-pen; a metal comb in a leatherette case; a nail-file in a leatherette case; a small street-guide to San Francisco; a Southern Pacific baggage-check; a half-filled package of violet pastilles; a Shanghai insurance-broker's business-card; and four sheets of Hotel Belvedere writing paper, on one of which was written in small precise letters Samuel Spade's name and the addresses of his office and his apartment.

  Having examined these articles carefully--he even opened the back of the watch-case to see that nothing was hidden inside--Spade leaned over and took the unconscious man's wrist between finger and thumb, feeling his pulse. Then he dropped the wrist, settled back in his chair, and rolled and lighted another cigarette. His face while he smoked was, except for occasional slight and aimless movements of his lower lip, so still and reflective that it seemed stupid; but when Cairo presently moaned and fluttered his eyelids Spade's face became bland, and he put the beginning of a friendly smile into his eyes and mouth.

  Joel Cairo awakened slowly. His eyes opened first, but a full minute passed before they fixed their gaze on any definite part of the ceiling. Then he shut his mouth and swallowed, exhaling heavily through hisnose afterward. He drew in one foot and turned a hand over on his thigh. Then he raised his head from the chair-back, looked around the office in confusion, saw Spade, and sat up. He opened his mouth to speak, started, clapped a hand to his face where Spade's fist had struck and where there was now a florid bruise.

  Cairo said through his teeth, painfully: "I could have shot you, Mr. Spade."

  "You could have tried," Spade conceded.

  "I did not try."

  "I know."

  "Then why did you strike me atter I was disarmed?"

  "Sorry," Spade said, and grinned wolfishly, showing his jaw-teeth, "but imagine my embarrassment when I found that five-thousand-dollar offer was just hooey."

  "You are mistaken, Mr. Spade. That was, and is, a genuine offer."

  "What the hell?" Spade's surprise was genuine.

  "I am prepared to pay five thousand dollars for the figure's return." Cairo took his hand away from his bruised face and sat up prim and business-like again. "You have it?"

  "No."

  "If it is not here"--Cairo was very politely skeptical--"why should you have risked serious injury to prevent my searching for it?"

  "I should sit around and let people come in and stick me up?" Spade flicked a finger at Cairo's possessions on the desk. "You've got my apartment-address. Been up there yet?"

  "Yes, Mr. Spade. I am ready to pay five thousand dollars for the figure's return, but surely it is natural enough that I should try first to spare the owner that expense if possible."

  "Who is he?"

  Cairo shook his head and smiled. "You will have to forgive my not answering that question."

  "Will I?" Spade leaned forward smiling with tight lips. "I've got you by the neck, Cairo. You've walked in and tied yourself up, plenty strong enough to suit the police, with last night's killings. Well, now you'll have to play with me or else."

  Cairo's smile was demure and not in any way alarmed. "I made somewhat extensive inquiries about you before taking any action," he said, "and was assured that you were far too reasonable to allow other considerations to interfere with profitable business relations."

  Spade shrugged. "Where are they?" he asked.

  "I have offered you five thousand dollars for--"

  Spade thumped Cairo's wallet with the backs of his fingers and said: "There's nothing like five thousand dollars here. You're betting your eyes. You could come in and say you'd pay me a million for a purple elephant, but what in hell would that mean?"

  "I see, I see," Cairo said thoughtfully, screwing up his eyes. "You wish some assurance of my sincerity." He brushed his red lower lip with a fingertip. "A retainer, would that serve?"

  "It might."

  Cairo put his hand out towards his wallet, hesitated, withdrew the hand, and said: "You will take, say, a hundred dollars?"

  Spade picked up the wallet and took out a hundred dollars. Then he frowned, said, "Better make it two hundred," and did.

  Cairo said nothing.

  "Your first guess was that I had the bird," Spade said in a crisp voice when he had put the two hundred dollars into his pocket and had dropped the wallet on the desk again. "There's nothing in that. What's your second?"

  "That you know where it is, or, if not exactly that, that you know it is where you can get it."

  Spade neither denied nor affirmed that: he seenied hardly to have heard it. He asked: "What sort of proof can you give me that your man is the owner?"

  "Very little, unfortunately. There is this, though: nobody else can give you any authentic evidence of ownership at all. And if you know as much about the affair as I suppose--or I should not be here--you know that the means by which it was taken from him shows that his right to it was more valid than anyone else's--certainly more valid than Thursby's."

  "What about his daughter?" Spade asked.

  Excitement opened Cairo's eyes and mouth, turned his face red, made his voice shrill. "He is not the owner!"