Nightmare Town

by Dashiell Hammett

  Guild turned his back to her and addressed the district attorney. “There’s no sense to their story. If I were you I’d throw them in the can and charge them with the murder.”

  Boyer gaped. Hopkins’s face went yellow. His wife leaned over her sewing and began to cry. King stared at the dark man as at some curio seen for the first time.

  The district attorney was the first to speak. “But—but why?”

  “You don’t believe them, do you?” Guild asked in an amused tone.

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “If it was up to me I’d do it,” Guild said good-naturedly, “but if you want to wait till we locate Wynant, all right. I want to get some more specimens of Wynant’s and the girl’s handwriting.” He turned back to the Hopkinses and asked casually: “Who was Laura Porter?”

  The name seemed to mean nothing to them. Hopkins shook his head dumbly. His wife did not stop crying.

  “I didn’t think you knew,” Guild said. “Let’s go up and get those scratch samples, Boyer.”

  The district attorney’s face, as he went upstairs with Guild, was a theater where anxiety played. He stared at the dark man with troubled, pleading eyes. “I—I wish you’d tell me why you think Wynant didn’t do it,” he said in a wheedling voice, “and why you think Ray and the Hopkinses are mixed up in it.” He made a despairing gesture with his hands. “What do you really think, Guild? Do you really suspect these people or are you—?” His face flushed under the dark man’s steady, unreadable gaze and he lowered his eyes.

  “I suspect everybody,” Guild said in a voice that was devoid of feeling. “Where were you between two and three o’clock yesterday afternoon?”

  Boyer jumped and a look of fear came into his young face. Then he laughed sheepishly and said: “Well, I suppose you’re right. I want you to understand, Guild, that I keep asking you things not because I think you’re off on the wrong track, but because I think you know so much more about this kind of thing than I do.”

  —

  GUILD WAS in San Francisco by two o’clock in the morning. He went straight to the Manchu.

  Elsa Fremont was singing when he stepped out of the elevator. She was wearing a taffeta gown—snug of bodice, billowy of skirt—whereon great red roses were printed against a chalky blue background, with two rhinestone buckles holding a puffy sash in place. The song she sang had a recurring line, “Boom, chisel, chisel!”

  When she finished her second encore she started toward Guild’s table, but two men and a woman at an intervening table stopped her, and it was then ten minutes or more before she joined him. Her eyes were dark, her face and voice nervous. “Did you find Charley?”

  Guild, on his feet, said: “No. He didn’t go up to Hell Bend.”

  She sat down twisting her wrist-scarf, nibbling her lip, frowning.

  The dark man sat down, asking: “Did you think he’d gone there?”

  She jerked her head up indignantly. “I told you I did. Don’t you ever believe anything that anybody tells you?”

  “Sometimes I do and am wrong,” Guild said. He tapped a cigarette on the table. “Wherever he’s gone, he’s got a new car and an all-day start.”

  She put her hands on the table suddenly, palms up in a suppliant gesture. “But why should he want to go anywhere else?”

  Guild was looking at her hands. “I don’t know, but he did.” He bent his head further over her hands as if studying their lines. “Is Frank Kearny here now and can I talk to him?”

  She uttered a brief throaty laugh. “Yes.” Letting her hands lie as they were on the table, she turned her head and caught a passing waiter’s attention. “Lee, ask Frank to come here.” She looked at the dark man again, somewhat curiously. “I told him you wanted to see him. Was that all right?”

  He was still studying her palms. Oh, yes, sure,” he said good-naturedly. “That would give him time to think.”

  She laughed again and took her hands off the table.

  A man came to the table. He was a full six feet tall, but the width of his shoulders made him seem less than that. His face was broad and flat, his eyes small, his lips wide and thick, and when he smiled he displayed crooked teeth set apart. His age could have been anything between thirty-five and forty-five.

  “Frank, this is Mr. Guild,” Elsa Fremont said.

  Kearny threw his right hand out with practiced heartiness. “Glad to know you, Guild.”

  They shook hands and Kearny sat down with them. The orchestra was playing “Love Is Like That” for dancers.

  “Do you know Laura Porter?” Guild asked Kearny.

  The proprietor shook his ugly head. “Never heard of her. Elsa asked me.”

  “Did you know Columbia Forrest?”

  “No. All I know is she’s the girl that got clipped up there in Whitfield County and I only know that from the papers and from Elsa.”

  “Know Wynant?”

  “No, and if somebody saw him coming in here all I got to say is that if lots of people I don’t know didn’t come in here I couldn’t stay in business.”

  “That’s all right,” Guild said pleasantly, “but here’s the thing: when Columbia Forrest opened a bank-account seven months ago under the name of Laura Porter you were one of the references she gave the bank.”

  Kearny’s grin was undisturbed. “That might be, right enough,” he said, “but that still don’t mean I know her.” He put out a long arm and stopped a waiter. “Tell Sing to give you that bottle and bring ginger ale set-ups.” He turned his attention to Guild again. “Look it, Guild. I’m running a joint. Suppose some guy from the Hall or the Municipal Building that can do me good or bad, or some guy that spends with me, comes to me and says he’s got a friend—or a broad—that’s hunting a job or wants to open some kind of account or get a bond, and can they use my name? Well, what the hell! It happens all the time.”

  Guild nodded. “Sure. Well, who asked you to O.K. Laura Porter?”

  “Seven months ago?” Kearny scoffed. “A swell chance I got of remembering! Maybe I didn’t even hear her name then.”

  “Maybe you did. Try to remember.”

  “No good,” Kearny insisted. “I tried when Elsa first told me about you wanting to see me.”

  Guild said: “The other name she gave was Wynant’s. Does that help?”

  “No. I don’t know him, don’t know anybody that knows him.”

  “Charley Fremont knows him.”

  Kearny moved his wide shoulders carelessly. “I didn’t know that,” he said.

  The waiter came, gave the proprietor a dark quart bottle, put glasses of cracked ice on the table, and began to open bottles of ginger ale.

  Elsa Fremont said: “I told you I didn’t think Frank knew anything about any of them.”

  “You did,” the dark man said, “and now he’s told me.” He made his face solemnly thoughtful. “I’m glad he didn’t contradict you.”

  Elsa stared at him while Kearny put whisky and the waiter ginger ale into the glasses.

  The proprietor, patting the stopper into the bottle again, asked: “Is it your idea this fellow Wynant’s still hanging around San Francisco?”

  Elsa said in a low, hoarse voice: “I’m scared! He tried to shoot Charley before. Where”—she put a hand on the dark man’s wrist—“where is Charley?”

  Before Guild could reply Kearny was saying to her: “It might help if you’d do some singing now and then for all that dough you’re getting.” He watched her walk out on the dance-floor and said to Guild: “The kid’s worried. Think anything happened to Charley? Or did he have reasons to scram?”

  “You people should ask me things,” Guild said and drank.

  The proprietor picked up his glass. “People can waste a lot of time,” he said reflectively, “once they get the idea that people that don’t know anything do.” He tilted his glass abruptly, emptying most of its contents into his throat, set the glass down, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You sent a friend of mine over a coup
le of months ago—Deep Ying.”

  “I remember,” Guild said. “He was the fattest of the three boo how doy who tried to spread their tong war out to include sticking up a Japanese bank.”

  “There was likely a tong angle to it, guns stashed there or something.”

  The dark man said, “Maybe,” indifferently and drank again.

  Kearny said: “His brother’s here now.”

  Some of Guild’s indifference went away. “Was he in on the job too?”

  The proprietor laughed. “No,” he said, “but you never can tell how close brothers are and I thought you’d like to know.”

  The dark man seemed to weigh this statement carefully. Then he said: “In that case maybe you ought to point him out to me.”

  “Sure.” Kearny stood up grinning, raised a hand, and sat down.

  Elsa Fremont was singing “Kitty From Kansas City.”

  A plump Chinese with a round, smooth, merry face came between tables to their table. He was perhaps forty years old, of less than medium stature, and though his gray suit was of good quality it did not fit him. He halted beside Kearny and said: “How you do, Frank.”

  The proprietor said: “Mr. Guild, I want you to meet a friend of mine, Deep Kee.”

  “I’m your friend, you bet you.” The Chinese, smiling broadly, ducked his head vigorously at both men.

  Guild said: “Kearny tells me you’re Deep Ying’s brother.”

  “You bet you.” Deep Kee’s eyes twinkled merrily. “I hear about you, Mr. Guild. Number-one detective. You catch ’em my brother. You play trick on ’em. You bet you.”

  Guild nodded and said solemnly: “No play trick on ’em, no catch ’em. You bet you.”

  The Chinese laughed heartily.

  Kearny said: “Sit down and have a drink.”

  Deep Kee sat down beaming on Guild, who was lighting a cigarette, while the proprietor brought his bottle from beneath the table.

  A woman at the next table, behind Guild, was saying oratorically: “I can always tell when I’m getting swacked because the skin gets tight across my forehead, but it don’t ever do me any good because by that time I’m too swacked to care whether I’m getting swacked or not.”

  Elsa Fremont was finishing her song.

  Guild asked Deep Kee: “You know Wynant?”

  “Please, no.”

  “A thin man, tall, used to have whiskers before he cut them off,” Guild went on. “Killed a woman up at Hell Bend.”

  The Chinese, smiling, shook his head from side to side.

  “Ever been in Hell Bend?”

  The smiling Chinese head continued to move from side to side.

  Kearny said humorously: “He’s a high-class murderer, Guild. He wouldn’t take a job in the country.”

  Deep Kee laughed delightedly.

  Elsa Fremont came to the table and sat down. She seemed tired and drank thirstily from her glass.

  The Chinese, smiling, bowing, leaving his drink barely tasted, went away. Kearny, looking after him, told Guild: “That’s a good guy to have liking you.”

  “Tong gunman?”

  “I don’t know. I know him pretty well, but I don’t know that. You know how they are.”

  “I don’t know,” Guild said.

  A quarrel had started in the other end of the room. Two men were standing cursing each other over a table. Kearny screwed himself around in his chair to stare at them for a moment. Then, grumbling, “Where do these bums think they are?” he got up and went over to them.

  Elsa Fremont stared moodily at her glass. Guild watched Kearny go to the table where the two men were cursing, quiet them, and sit down with them.

  The woman who had talked about the skin tightening on her forehead was now saying in the same tone: “Character actress—that’s the old stall. She’s just exactly the same kind of character actress I was. She’s doing bits—when she can get them.”

  Elsa Fremont, still staring at her glass, whispered: “I’m scared.”

  “Of what?” Guild asked as if only moderately interested.

  “Of Wynant, of what he might—” She raised her eyes, dark and harried. “Has he done anything to Charley, Mr. Guild?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She put a tight fist on the table and cried angrily: “Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you find Wynant? Why don’t you find Charley? Haven’t you got any blood, any heart, any guts? Can’t you do anything but sit there like a—” She broke off with a sob. Anger went out of her face and the fingers that had been clenched opened in appeal. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—But, oh, Mr. Guild, I’m so—” She put her head down and bit her lower lip.

  Guild, impassive, said: “That’s all right.”

  A man rose drunkenly from a nearby table and came up behind Elsa’s chair. He put a fat hand on her shoulder and said: “There, there, darling.” He said to Guild: “You cannot annoy this girl in this way. You cannot. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a man of your complexion.” He leaned forward sharply, peering into Guild’s face. “By Jesus, I believe you’re a mulatto. I really do.”

  Elsa, squirming from under the fat drunken hand, flung a “Let me alone” up at the man. Guild said nothing. The fat man looked uncertainly from one to the other of them until a hardly less drunken man, mumbling unintelligible apologies, came and led him away.

  Elsa looked humbly at the dark man. “I’m going to tell Frank I’m going,” she said in a small tired voice. “Will you take me home?”

  “Sure.”

  They rose and moved toward the door. Kearny was standing by the elevator.

  “I don’t feel like working to-night, Frank,” the girl told him. “I’m going to knock off.”

  “Oke,” he said. “Give yourself a hot drink and some aspirin.” He held his hand out to Guild. “Glad I met you. Drop in any time. Anything I can ever do for you, let me know. You going to take the kid home? Swell! Be good.”

  X

  Elsa Fremont was a dusky figure beside Guild in a taxicab riding west up Nob Hill. Her eyes glittered in a splash of light from a street-lamp. She drew breath in and asked: “You think Charley’s run away, don’t you?”

  “It’s likely,” Guild said, “but maybe he’ll be home when we get there.”

  “I hope so,” she said earnestly. “I do hope so, but—I’m afraid.”

  He looked obliquely at her. “You’ve said that before. Mean you’re afraid something’s happened to him or will happen to you?”

  She shivered. “I don’t know. I’m just afraid.” She put a hand in his, asking plaintively: “Aren’t you ever going to catch Wynant?”

  “Your hand’s cold,” he said.

  She pulled her hand away. Her voice was not loud: intensity made it shrill. “Aren’t you ever human?” she demanded. “Are you always like this? Or is it a pose?” She drew herself far back in a corner of the taxicab. “Are you a damned corpse?”

  “I don’t know,” the dark man said. He seemed mildly puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  She did not speak again, but sulked in her corner until they reached her house. Guild sat at ease and smoked until the taxicab stopped. Then he got out, saying: “I’ll stop long enough to see if he’s home.”

  The girl crossed the sidewalk and unlocked the door while he was paying the chauffeur. She had gone indoors leaving the door open when he mounted the front steps. He followed her in. She had turned on ground-floor lights and was calling upstairs: “Charley!” There was no answer.

  She uttered an impatient exclamation and ran upstairs. When she came down again she moved wearily. “He’s not in,” she said. “He hasn’t come.”

  Guild nodded without apparent disappointment. “I’ll give you a ring when I wake up,” he said, stepping back toward the street door, “or if I get any news of him.”

  She said quickly: “Don’t go yet, please, unless you have to. I don’t—I wish you’d stay a little while.”

  He said, “Sure,” and they went in
to the living-room.

  When she had taken off her coat she left him for a few minutes, going into the kitchen, returning with Scotch whisky, ice, lemons, glasses, and a siphon of water. They sat on the sofa with drinks in their hands.

  Presently, looking inquisitively at him, she said: “I really meant what I said in the cab. Aren’t you actually human? Isn’t there any way anybody can get to you, get to the real inside you? I think you’re the most”—she frowned, selecting words—“most untouchable, unreal person I’ve ever known. Trying to—to really come in contact with you is just like trying to hold a handful of smoke.”

  Guild, who had listened attentively, now nodded. “I think I know what you’re trying to say. It’s an advantage when I’m working.”

  “I didn’t ask you that,” she protested, moving the glass in her hand impatiently. “I asked you if that’s the way you really are or if you just do it.”

  He smiled and shook his head noncommittally.

  “That isn’t a smile,” she said. “It’s painted on.” She leaned to him swiftly and kissed him, holding her mouth to his mouth for an appreciable time. When she took her mouth from his her narrow green eyes examined his face carefully. She made a moue. “You’re not even a corpse—you’re a ghost.”

  Guild said pleasantly, “I’m working,” and drank from his glass.

  Her face flushed. “Do you think I’m trying to make you?” she asked hotly.

  He laughed at her. “I’d like it if you were, but I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “You wouldn’t like it,” she said. “You’d be scared.”

  “Uh-uh,” he explained blandly. “I’m working. It’d make you easier for me to handle.”

  Nothing in her face responded to his bantering. She said, with patient earnestness: “If you’d only listen to me and believe me when I tell you I don’t know any more what it’s all about than you do, if that much. You’re just wasting your time when you ought to be finding Wynant. I don’t know anything. Charley doesn’t. We’d both tell you if we did. We’ve both already told you all we know. Why can’t you believe me when I tell you that?”

  “Sorry,” Guild said lightly. “It don’t make sense.” He looked at his watch. “It’s after five. I’d better run along.”