Hammett (Crime Masterworks) (14 page)

‘Homicide?’ Excitement vibrated in her voice. ‘What . . . how can I help you, Inspector?’

‘Number called. Name of party called. Location of that phone.’

‘Ah . . . the number is two-three-two Mill Valley, Inspector. That is registered to a Mr George F. Biltmore on Corte Madera Street—’

‘I’ll be dammed!’ exclaimed Hammett.

‘I
beg
your pardon!’

‘Oh. Yeah. Sorry.’ He got back into his imaginary O’Gar’s skin. ‘Who’d he ask for?’

‘Mrs Biltmore.’

Hammett hung up in her ear without thanking her; it was what she would expect from a real cop.

George F. Biltmore!

Who would expect madam Molly Farr to be stashed in the Marin County estate of San Francisco’s Commissioner of Shipping? Biltmore was a power on the Street, a wealthy man who had started out as a sea captain and now had one of the city’s largest ship brokerage firms. Did Biltmore know
who
he was hiding up there in the redwoods? Or had Epstein lied to him about a secret witness or an endangered client or . . .

Tomorrow for Biltmore. He thought he had a way to get to him. But meanwhile, he had other things to find out.

He dialed Fingers LeGrand’s number, TUxedo 8273, but he got no response. From the operator he got the phone number for 22 Prescott Court, the flat directly below LeGrand’s. He was in luck. He recognized the sultry voice that responded.

‘This is the man with the blisters,’ he said.

There was silence for a moment, then a low laugh as the whore remembered their brief encounter on her back porch.

‘Hi, big boy.’

‘My weakness is still liquor, sweetheart, but maybe you can help me. I’m trying to get in touch right away with Fingers . . .’

A
bove the pounding shoes, strong ankles swelled into muscular calves. The girl on the table held up her skirts so her petticoats swirled about her plump dimpled knees as she danced. Work-thickened hands clapped time to the accordion, and voices shouted encouragement through the din and smoke.

Hammett and Goodie paused in the doorway, squinting. Goodie said, in an exhausted voice, ‘Oh, Sam, it smells so good! Can’t we eat now? Please? We’ve been to six places already—’

‘Now we eat,’ said Hammett. Through the smoke he had glimpsed the dolorous features of Fingers LeGrand at one of the gingham-covered tables in the rear. The whore had said Fingers always ate supper in one of a dozen little family-style Italian cafés around Broadway and upper Grant.

‘Hey!’ Hammett exclaimed in great surprise. ‘Fingers!’

‘Hello, Dash.’ The skinny gambler stood up. The table was scattered with fragments of brown Italian crust; a demolished antipasto was shoved to one side. He bowed to the golden-haired girl. ‘Good evening, ma’am. Out for a night on the town?’

‘Just trying to get fed before I collapse of hunger.’

Hammett, who had eaten only half a Chinese lunch, realized he too was ravenous. They sat down. The air was rich with the mingled fragrances of tomato and mushroom sauces, pastas, steamed clams, roasting chicken, and veal. A vast woman bustled over to their table and clopped down a bottle of illegal wine.

‘The first pint’s free,’ explained Fingers. ‘After that it’s a dime a bottle.’

‘You eat here a lot?’

‘We’re trying to fatten him up,’ shouted the fat Italian lady over the din. She laughed hugely and dug a porcine elbow into Hammett’s ribs. Somehow it was not at all like Heloise Kuhn’s elbow. ‘You’re even worse than he is, you boys must be undertakers.’ She roared with laughter and winked at Goodie. ‘You’ll eat?’

The stockings of the girl dancing on the front table fell down and she was helped, suddenly red-faced and embarrassed, to the floor.

As the racket momentarily ebbed, Hammett said, ‘Soup to start. Ravioli. Salad after. Then we’ll order.’

Over huge flat bowls of rich brown steaming minestrone, thick with beans and mostaccioli, Hammett asked offhandedly, ‘Who came out big winner at the game the other night?’

‘Who do you think?’

‘The fat German.’

‘Right you are.’ Fingers started a toothpick toward his mouth, realized that Goodie was watching, and morosely returned the pick to his vest pocket.

‘I went down forty,’ admitted Hammett. ‘I guess that Irishman was big loser. Funny, I keep thinking I’ve seen him around, but . . .’

‘Joey Lonergan.’ Fingers took out a cigar instead. ‘Came out here from back east a year or so ago. Owns a repair garage in the six-hundred block of Turk Street. Takes the night calls himself, but must be coming up in the world – just bought himself a second tow truck.’

‘In solid with the cops, then, I guess,’ said Hammett idly.

‘They call him right from the scene of the accident, so he’ll beat the other towers to it. He kicks back a percentage, of course. Carries the nickname of Dead Rabbit, I don’t know why.’

It seemed to have some meaning to Hammett. He raised questioning eyebrows. ‘Lonergan a tough boy?’

‘He says he is.’

Goodie sighed and leaned back against the cracked leather seat of the Number 15 streetcar they’d caught at Kearny and Broadway. ‘You invited me along tonight only because you wanted to find that Fingers LeGrand without him knowing you were looking for him, didn’t you?’

They rattled by the Washington Street intersection where lights burned in the windows of Mulligan Bros Bailbonds. Behind that window a pair of crude Irish power-brokers had planned to grab control of a city – and had succeeded. Where had they learned the subtlety – and gotten the original necessary cash – to play the power game?

To hell with it. For tonight, anyway. He looked down at the golden-haired girl beside him. What he wanted to do was go home and make love to her. The trouble was that he couldn’t. It would be like breaking the wing of a songbird.

‘What about that man with the funny monicker?’

‘
Monicker?
You
had
better quit hanging around with me. Dead Rabbit Lonergan. Way back before the Civil War there was a gang of street toughs who ran the bloody old Fifth Ward in East Lower Manhattan and called themselves the Dead Rabbit gang. Claimed to be dead game for anything. Lonergan’s the bimbo set me up last night.’

‘How can you be sure?’ she demanded, wide-eyed.

‘Fingers never uses last names at his poker games – few professional gamblers do . . .’

He broke off as they went out the folding doors to the deserted financial district corner. Hammett watched the double-nose car clack away, then turned back to Goodie.

‘During a break in the play, Fingers mentioned my last name. Immediately Lonergan made an excuse to get to the phone. To call a girlfriend in South San Francisco, he said. But the phone company records don’t show any toll calls from Fingers’ number last night.’

‘And on that you assume—’

‘Men have been hanged on less, sweetheart.’

His eyes were caught by the Sutter Hotel, spilling bright light from its ornate lobby across the street. He’d put the hotel in the novel about Sam Spade and the blackbird, the script lying at home in a drawer in rough draft. A block away, on the corner of Montgomery, was the Hunter-Dulin Building where he had put Spade’s office.

What the hell was he doing back in the detective business? If he couldn’t make love to Goodie, at least he could be writing. He longed for one of his all-night sessions with the typewriter. A session in the fictional San Francisco of fog-bound streets and hard-minded victorious heroes, where he could control the blood and manipulate the men. He had
The Dain Curse
to revise, now that he’d figured out the way to go with that book, and in
The Maltese Falcon
he had a chance to do something that nobody else had ever done before.

But it wasn’t to be. Not right now. Because in the real San Francisco men were for sale and his friend had gone to his death with a pulped skull and loosened bowels. The friend whose call he hadn’t answered. So Hammett owed him.

As Goodie’s door shut, Hammett leaned on the wall beside his own and very gently drifted it open with his fingertips. Dim light came up the interior hallway from the living room. He’d left the room in darkness.

Dammit, he hadn’t expected things to happen this fast after the attempted jacking-out last night. He wasn’t packing anything more lethal than a penknife. Get to the kitchen for a butcher knife. Best bet.

Hammett eased down the hall to flatten himself beside the
open doorway to the living room. He edged an eye around the frame. He stiffened, then gave a snort of disgust and walked into the room.

‘I may as well live in the Pickwick Stage Depot,’ he said.

Short dumpy Jimmy Wright, sprawled in Hammett’s sagging overstuffed Coxwell, slid a forefinger between the pages of one of Hammett’s
Black Masks
. ‘You’ve got a lousy lock.’ He raised the magazine slightly. ‘This is good stuff, Dash. I ought to sue.’

‘Which one is it?’

The op leafed back to the title. ‘“Dynamite.”’

‘Yeah, that’ll be part of a novel titled
Red Harvest
in January.’

‘This is supposed to be Butte, Montana, ain’t it?’

‘That and Boulder and Anaconda.’ He sat down on the unmade bed and leaned back on his elbows. ‘You get anything on Vic?’

‘The cops turned up the cabby who took him from the Chapeau Rouge. Dropped him at Pier Fourteen. So I nosed around at the foot of Mission like you told me. Old gent in the Johnson and Larsen Cigar Store next to the Hotel Commodore steered a guy answering Vic’s description over to Dom Pronzini’s speak a block away on Steuart Street. Even gave Vic the password.’

‘The cops get any of this?’

‘Who the hell ever talks to cops?’

Hammett took a turn around the room. ‘Dom Pronzini. Old Rinaldo’s pup – I sent the old man up to Q on a five-to-twenty back in twenty-one. I hear chat Dom brings in most of the real Canadian from the rum fleet these days.’

‘Through Bolinas and Sausalito,’ the dumpy little detective nodded sleepily. ‘He’s giving the boys down in Half Moon Bay a run for it.’

Hammett stopped pacing. Sure! Goddammit, the connection he’d almost made in Marin County snapped together in his mind.

‘That rapist the Preacher shot out by Golden Gate Park – Egan Tokzek. Wasn’t he a runner for Pronzini?’

‘If you can believe the reporter from the
Chronicle
.’

‘How’s your stock down at Pinkerton’s these days?’

‘They don’t spit on the floor when my name comes up.’

‘All right. See can you find out if they’ve got anything in their files on Tokzek.’ He was frowning, tugging his mustache in thought. He jerked his shoulders in an odd little shrug. ‘See if he had a sister, too. We’re starting to move on this.’

Lonergan’s Garage at 639 Turk Street was a one-story brick building with a false front. A sign hung on the post between the big double doors:
ATTENDANT WILL BE BACK IN 20 MINUTES
.

Hammett nodded approvingly at the lock on the double door, and took from his pocket a flat strap of steel six inches long and slightly angled and tapered at one end. Inserting this between door and frame, he applied steady leverage. There was a muted crack.

The dim interior was heavy with petroleum smells. A tow truck was backed up against the wall beyond the vast well leading down to the basement parking area. Hammett leaned over the unshielded edge to stare into the gloom. A concrete ramp led down to a concrete floor a good twenty feet below. It would do.

The littered little office had double windows painted black to well above head-level. Backed against that same wall was a man-high black safe with a big brass handle and a brass dial.

Hammett spun the dial idly. Give him a couple of hours and he could strip the side off her, but none of her secrets would be valuable to him. Lonergan was too far down the ladder to have more than a name or two. He’d settle for that. Or even for a phone number.

He sat down behind the desk and put his feet up and waited. The desk was butted up against the partition between the office and the garage floor, so he could see out into the main area through the waist-level window. The clock over the window said midnight had passed. Clipboards of work orders, aged by greasy fingers to a blackish brown, decorated the doorpost.

Five minutes later, headlights arced across the ceiling. Hammett’s eyes brightened, but he did not change position. The lock on the overhead doors rattled on its chain, then the doors creaked up to shoot hot light across the grease-stained concrete. A tow truck, towing nothing, was driven past the office window and stopped with its motor thrumming and the cab out of Hammett’s sight.

Dead Rabbit Lonergan sprang suddenly into the doorway, crouched like an ape, a tire iron swinging loosely in one hand. When Hammett made no move, Lonergan came slowly erect. A huge grin split his face when he saw who was there.

‘On your feet, bimbo. The boys are gonna be glad to get another crack at you.
Fast
, before I smash both your shoulders with this.’

‘I don’t carry a gun,’ said Hammett mildly as he was patted down by the big Irishman. He kept his arms wide and raised. Lonergan worked left-handed, keeping the tire iron cocked in his right fist. The tow truck grumbled acrid exhaust fumes.

‘I don’t know why they want you,’ said Lonergan. ‘But I think we’ll stick your head in that exhaust while I make a phone call.’

‘I’ll tell you why they want me,’ said Hammett. ‘They’re afraid of me. That’s why they wanted me taken out last night. I represent some of the boys back east. The BIG boys back east. We’re moving in, taking over this town. It’s just a matter of time. We figure that you’re small-fry, but you’re a place to start. So why don’t you get smart and tell me who you called to get those three gorillas who were supposed to beat me up?’

Lonergan had been staring at him, slightly slackfaced, as he had been speaking. He hesitated for a moment, then crinkled up his rugged, handsome features and laughed out loud. He leaned against the doorpost with the clipboards on it.

‘What you been smoking, Hammett? Whoever’s behind you, it ain’t gonna work. We got the cops behind us in this burg. No outsiders are gonna—’