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

by Joe Gores

  Dundy blew breath through his nose in a puff that was not quite a snort and said: "Get your hats."

  Cairo's eyes, holding worry and a question, met Spade's mocking gaze. Spade winked at him and sat on the arni of the padded rocker. "Well, boys amid girls," he said, grinning at the Levantine and at time girl with nothing but delight in his voice and grin, "we put it over nicely."

  Dundy's hard square face darkened the least of shades. He repeated peremptorily: "Get your hats."

  Spade turned his grin on the Lieutenant, squirmed into a more comfortable position on the chair-arm and asked lazily: "Don't you know when you're lacing kidded?"

  Tom Polhaus's face became red and shiny.

  Dundy's face, still darkening, was immobile except for hips moving stiffly to say: "No, but we'll let that wait till we get down to the Hall."

  Spade rose and put his hands in his trousers-pockets. He stood erect so he might hook that much farther down at the Lieutenant. His grin was a taunt and self-certainty spoke in every line of his posture.

  "I dare you to take us in, Dundy," he said. "We'll laugh at you in every newspaper in San Francisco. You don't think any of us is going to swear to any complaints against tIme others, do you? Wake up. You've been kidded. When the bell rang I said to Miss O'Shaughnessy and Cairo: 'It's those damned bulls again. They're getting to be nuisances. Let's play a joke on them. When you hear them going one of you scream, and then we'll see how far we can string them along before they tumble.' And--"

  Brigid O'Shaughnessy bent forward in her chair and began to laugh hysterically.

  Cairo started and smiled. There was no vitality in his smile, but he held it fixed on his face.

  Tom, glowering, grumbled: "Cut it out, Sam."

  Spade chuckled and said: "But that's the way it was. 'We--"

  "And the cut on his head and mouth?" Dundy asked scornfully. "Where'd they come from?"

  "Ask him," Spade suggested. "Maybe he cut himself shaving."

  Cairo spoke quickly, before he could be questioned, and the muscles of his face quivered under the strain of holding his smile in place while he spoke. "I fell. We intended to be struggling for the pistol when you came in, but I fell. I tripped on the end of the rug and fell while we were pretending to struggle."

  Dundy said: "Horse feathers."

  Spade said: "That's all right, Dundy, believe it or not. The point is that that's our story and we'll stick to it. The newspapers will print it whether they believe it or not, and it'll be just as funny one way as the other, or more so. What are you going to do about it? It's no crime to kid a copper, is it? You haven't got anything on anybody here. Everything we told you was part of the joke. What are you going to do about it?"

  Dundy put his back to Spade and gripped Cairo by the shoulders. "You can't get away with that," he snarled, shaking the Levantine. "You belched for help and you've got to take it."

  "No, sir," Cairo sputtered. "It was a joke. He said you were friends of his and w'ould understand."

  Spade laughed.

  Dundy pulled Cairo roughly around, holding him now by one wrist and the nape of his neck. "I'll take you along for packing the gun, anyway," he said. "And I'll take the rest of you along to see who laughs at the joke."

  Cairo's alarmed eyes jerked sidewise to focus on Spade's face.

  Spade said: "Don't be a sap, Dundy. The gun was part of the plant. It's one of mine." He laughed. "Too bad it's only a thirty-two, or maybe you could find it was the one Thursby and Miles were shot with."

  Dundy released Cairo, spun on his heel, and his right fist clicked on Spade's chin.

  Brigid O'Shaughnessy uttered a short cry.

  Spade's smile flickered out at the instant of the impact, but returned immediately with a dreamy quality added. He steadied himself with a short backward step and his thick sloping shoulders writhed under his coat. Before his fist could come up Tom Polhaus had pushed himself between the two men, facing Spade, encumbering Spade's arms with the closeness of his barrel-like belly and his own arms.

  "No, no, for Christ's sake!" Tom begged.

  After a long moment of motionlessness Spade's muscles relaxed. "Then get him out of here quick," he said. His smile had gone away again, leaving his face sullen and somewhat pale.

  Tom, staying close to Spade, keeping his arms on Spade's arms, turned his head to hook over his shoulder at Lieutenant Dundy. Tom's small eyes were reproachful.

  Dundy's fists w'ere clenched in front of his body and his feet were planted firm and a little apart on the floor, but the truculence in his face was modified by thin rims of white showing between green irises and upper eyelids.

  "Get their names and addresses," he ordered.

  Tom looked at Cairo, who said quickly: "Joel Cairo, Hotel Belvedere."

  Spade spoke before Tom could question the girl. "You can always get in touch with Miss O'Shaughnessy through me."

  Tom looked at Dundy. Dundy growled: "Get her address."

  Spade said: "Her address is in care of my office."

  Dundy took a step forward, halting in front of the girl. "Where do you hive?" he asked.

  Spade addressed Tom: "Get him out of here. I've had enough of this."

  Tom hooked at Spade's eyes--hard and glittering--and mumbled: "Take it easy, Sam." He buttoned his coat and turned to Dundy, asking, in a voice that aped casualness, "Well, is that all?" and taking a step towards the door.

  Dundy's scowl failed to conceal indecision.

  Cairo moved suddenly towards the door, saying: "I'm going too, if Mr. Spade will be kind enough to give me my hat and coat."

  Spade asked: "What's the hurry?"

  Dundy said angrily: "It was all in fun, but just the same you're afraid to be left here with them."

  "Not at all," the Levantine replied, fidgeting, hooking at neither of them, "but it's quite hate and--and I'm going. I'll go out with you if you don't mind."

  Dundy put his lips together firmly and said nothing. A light was glinting in his green eyes.

  Spade went to the closet in the passageway and fetched Cairo's hat and coat. Spade's face was blank. His voice held the same blankness when he stepped back from helping the Levantine into his coat and said to Tom: "Tell him to leave the gun."

  Dundy took Cairo's pistol from his overcoat-pocket and put it on the table. He went out first, with Cairo at his heels. Tom halted in front of Spade, muttering, "I hope to God you know what you're doing," got no response, sighed, and followed the others out. Spade went after them as far as the bend in the passageway, where he stood until Tom had closed the corridor-door.

  IX.

  Brigid

  Spade returned to the living-room and sat on an end of the sofa, ehbows on knees, cheeks in hands, hooking at the floor and not at Brigid O'Shaughnessy smiling weakly at him from the arnichair. His eyes were sultry. The creases between brows over his nose were deep. His nostrils moved in and out with his breathing.

  Brigid O'Shaughnessv, when it became apparent that he was not going to look up at her, stopped smiling and regarded him with growing nneasiness.

  Red rage came suddenly into his face and he began to talk in a harsh guttural voice. Holding his maddened face in his hands, glaring at the floor, he cursed Dundy for five minutes without break, cursed him obscenehv, blasphemously, repetitiously, in a harsh guttural voice.

  Then he took his face out of his hands, looked at the girl, grinned sheepishly, amid said: "Childish, huh? I know, but, by God, I do hate being hit without hitting back." He touched his chin with careful fingers. "Not that it was so much of a sock at that." He laughed and lounged back on the sofa, crossing his legs. "A cheap enough price to pay for winning." His brows came together in a fleeting scowl. "Though I'll remember it."

  The girl, smiling again, heft her chair amid sat on the sofa beside him. "You're absolutely the wildest person I've ever knowmm," she said. "Do you always carry omi so high-handed?"

  "I let him hit me, didn't I?"

  "Oh, yes, but a police offici
al."

  "It wasn't that," Spade explained. "It was that in hosing his head and slugging me he overplayed his hand. If I'd mixed it with him then he couldn't'ye backed down. He'd've had to go through with it, and we'd've had to tell that goofy story at headquarters." He stared thoughtfully at the girl, and asked: "What did you do to Cairo?"

  "Nothing." Her face became flushed. "I tried to frighten him into keeping still until they had gone and he either got too frightened or stubborn and yelled."

  "And then you smacked him with the gun?"

  "I had to. He attacked me."

  "You don't know what you're doing." Spade's smile did not hide his annoyance. "It's just what I told you: you're fumbling along by guess and by God."

  "I'm sorry," she said, face and voice soft with contrition, "Sam."

  "Sure you are." He took tobacco and papers from his pockets and began to make a cigarette. "Now you've had your talk with Cairo. Now you can talk to me."

  She put a fingertip to her mouth, staring across the room at nothing with widened eyes, and then, with narrower eyes, glanced quickly at Spade. He was engrossed in the making of his cigarette. "Oh, yes," she began, "of course--" She took the finger away from her mouth and smoothed her blue dress over her knees. She frowned at her knees.

  Spade licked his cigarette, sealed it, and asked, "Well?" while he felt for his lighter.

  "But I didn't," she said, pausing between words as if she were selecting them with great care, "have time to finish talking to him." She stopped frowning at her knees and looked at Spade with clear candid eyes. "We were interrupted almost before we had begun."

  Spade lighted his cigarette and laughed his mouth empty of smoke. "Want me to phone him and ask him to come back?"

  She shook her head, not smiling. Her eyes moved back and forth between her lids as she shook her head, maintaining their focus on Spade's eyes. Her eyes were inquisitive.

  Spade put an arm across her back, cupping his hand over the smooth bare white shoulder farthest from him. She leaned back into the bend of his arm. He said: "Well, I'm listening."

  She twisted her head around to smile up at him with playful insolence, asking: "Do you need your arm there for that?"

  "No." He removed his hand from her shoulder and let his arm drop down behind her.

  "You're altogether unpredictable," she murmured.

  He nodded and said annably: "I'm still listening."

  "Look at the time!" she exclaimed, wriggling a finger at the alarm-clock perched atop the book saying two-fifty with its clumsily shaped hands.

  "Uh-huh, it's been a busy evening."

  "I must go." She rose from the sofa. "This is terrible."

  Spade did not rise. He shook his head and said: "Not until you've told me about it."

  "But look at the time," she protested, "and it would take hours to tell you."

  "It'll have to take them then."

  "Am I a prisoner?" she asked gaily.

  "Besides, there's the kid outside. Maybe he hasn't gone home to sleep yet."

  Her gaiety vanished. "Do you think he's still there?"

  "It's likely."

  She shivered. "Could you find out?"

  "I could go down and see."

  "Oh, that's--will you?"

  Spade studied her anxious face for a moment and then got up from the sofa saying: "Sure." He got a hat and overcoat from the closet. "I'll be gone about ten minutes."

  "Do be careful," she begged as she followed him to the corridor-door.

  He said, "I will," and went out.

  Post Street was empty when Spade issued into it. He walked east a block, crossed the street, walked west two blocks on the other side, recrossed it, and returned to his building without having seen anyone except two mechanics working on a car in a garage.

  When he opened his apartment-door Brigid O'Shaughriessy was standing at the bend in the passageway, holding Cairo's pistol straight down at her side.

  "He's still there," Spade said.

  She bit the inside of her lip and turned slowly, going back into the living-room. Spade followed her in, put his hat and overcoat on a chair, said, "So we'll have time to talk," and went into the kitchen.

  He had put the coffee-pot on the stove when she came to the door, and was slicing a slender loaf of French bread. She stood in the doorway and watched him with preoccupied ees. The fingers of her left hand idly caressed the body and barrel of the pistol her right hand still held.

  "The table-cloth's in there," he said, pointing the bread-knife at a cupboard that was one breakfast-nook partition.

  She set the table while he spread liverwurst on, or put cold corned beef between, the small ovals of bread he had sliced. Then he poured the coffee, added brandy to it from a squat bottle, and they sat at the table. They sat side by side on one of the benches. She put the pistol down on the end of the bench nearer her.

  "You can start now, between bites," he said.

  She made a face at him, complained, "You're the most insistent person," and bit a sandwich.

  "Yes, and wild and unpredictable. What's this bird, this falcon, that everybody's all steamed up about?"

  She chewed the beef and bread in her mouth, swallowed it, looked attentively at the small crescent its removal had made in the sandwich's rim, and asked: "Suppose I wouhdn't tell you? Suppose I wouldn't tell you anything at all about it? What would you do?"

  "You mean about the bird?"

  "I mean about the whole thing."

  "I wouldn't be too surprised," he told her, grinning so that the edges of his jaw-teeth were visible, "to know what to do next."

  "And that would be?" She transferred her attention from the sandwich to his face. "That's what I wanted to know: what would you do next?"

  He shook his head.

  Mockery rippled in a smile on her face. "Something wild and unpredictable?"

  "Maybe. But I don't see what you've got to gain by covering up now. It's coining out bit by bit anyhow. There's a lot of it I don't know, but there's some of it I do, and some more that I can guess at, and, give me another day like this, I'll soon be knowing things about it that you don't know."

  "I suppose you do now," she said, hooking at her sandwich again, her face serious. "But--oh!--I'm so tired of it, and I do so hate having to talk about it. Wouldn't it--wouldn't it be just as well to wait and let you learn about it as you say you will?"

  Spade laughed. "I don't know. You'll have to figure that out for yourself. My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkeywrench into the machinery. It's all right with me, if you're sure none of the flying pieces will hurt you."

  She moved her bare shoulders uneasily, but said nothing. For several minutes they ate in silence, he phlegmatically, she thoughtfully. Then she said in a hushed voice: "I'm afraid of you, and that's the truth."

  He said: "That's not the truth."

  "It is," she insisted in the same low voice. "I know two men I'm afraid of and I've seen both of them tonight."