Hammett (Crime Masterworks) (5 page)

Thus, every Sunday she went in somber splendor to the Central Methodist services, because here she had first been shown the true way: Become a businesswoman because there is no security in being a whore. Unfortunately, she’d never been able to thank Reverend Smith in person; during the intervening years he had renounced the cloth to become a used car salesman.

Molly, perspiring slightly from the walk, let herself into 555 Hyde Street, which had been discreetly shuttered since the Friday-night raid. She was a handsome woman, sternly beautiful rather than pretty: a face with the clarity of a cameo.

She passed under the foyer’s crystal chandelier, noted that the elevator brass needed polishing, and went upstairs to her small private landing, which overlooked the front entrance. She stopped. The door of her apartment was a foot open and two tall men were talking with her maid in the crowded sitting room.

One of them was very lean, the other built like a bull. Her maid, Crystal Tam, was a tiny Chinese girl who came barely to their chests. She had a breathtakingly lovely face framed in lustrous blue-black hair that flowed down across her shoulders to the middle of her back.

To break it up, Molly said, ‘Sorry, gents, we’re closed.’

‘Your maid was just telling us,’ said the heavyset one. ‘But we were asking her . . .’

Molly collapsed in the big flowered wing chair that dominated the cluttered room. She set aside her wide-bordered silk parasol and fanned herself with one hand.

‘Get me a beer, that’s a darling’

‘Of course, Miss Farr.’

Crystal wore a fancifully brocaded silk kimono; her arms were crossed on her breast so she could thrust her hands into the opposing scoop sleeves. Her steps were mincing, as if her feet had been bound in infancy. She was only fifteen, but was already much more than a maid to Molly. She was
confidante
, even adviser. It was Crystal who had suggested taking off the police graft as a business expense. It had been a swell idea until that stupid bastard with Internal Revenue had made the joke about it at the Rotary luncheon.

‘All right, gents, what were you asking her?’

‘How to cure a ten-year-old dog,’ said Atkinson.

‘What’d she tell you?’

‘To pee in a shallow dish and dip my thing in it before it got cold. Three times a day for a week.’

Molly threw back her head and laughed, a full-bodied laugh that engaged her whole frankly voluptuous body. ‘If you really tried to cure a dose that way, you’d be in trouble.’

Crystal returned with a big German mug with a hinged pewter lid. She set it on the red lacquer telephone stand at Molly’s elbow. Molly drank deeply.

‘
I’m
not in trouble,’ the bull-like one told her. ‘
You
are.’

Molly wiped away her foam mustache and waited until Crystal had departed.

‘You’d better drift, boys, before I use the telephone.’

‘That’s what we’re interested in, Molly. I’m Victor Atkinson, this is my associate Dashiell Hammett. We want to know just who you
do
call when you get into trouble. Also, who you pay . . .’

Molly laughed again. ‘You must be out of your mind.’

‘Not really.’ Hammett spoke for the first time. ‘The DA’s got you where your pants hang loose.’

Molly allowed herself a slight sneer. ‘Keeping a Disorderly House?’ She shook her head. ‘C’mon, boys, what’s that even if he could make it stick? A fine and—’

‘How about Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor?’ said Hammett. ‘Three felony counts?’

Contributing. Jesus! That carried a heavy jolt! Molly buried her nose in her tankard again, then said, ‘One of those kids, I knew his goddamn
grand
father, can you believe that? I was just a kid myself then, in the old Parisian Mansion on Commercial Street . . .’

‘Quit stalling, Molly.’ Atkinson loomed over her chair. ‘We need some names. Who do you juice in the police department? How are the payoffs made? You play ball with us, Molly, and—’

‘Sorry, boys. Like I told you, we’re closed today.’

‘We’ll be around,’ said Atkinson. Hammett followed him to the door, then paused and tipped his hat.

‘Charmed,’ said the lean writer.

The door had barely closed behind them when the phone rang. She swung open the phone stand and removed the receiver from the hooks. ‘This is Molly.’

‘This is your old sweetheart,’ said Boyd Mulligan’s nasal tones.

‘Yeah? Which one?’

‘How many sweethearts you got, for Chrissake?’

‘Oh,
Boyd
darling. I haven’t heard your voice in so long I didn’t recognize it.’

After she had opened the house five years before, Boyd Mulligan had been around twice a week to get a piece of Molly as well as of the action. He was a mean son of a bitch with a woman, so she’d been happy when he’d finally started just sending a messenger for the Mulligan Bros Bailbond Company share.

‘I’ve been busy, but I’ve been keeping tabs on you just the same. Tommy Dunne called to say a gumshoes out of LA named Victor Atkinson was around to your place.’

‘I was just going to call you about that.’

‘What did they want?’

‘Names. Figures . . .’

‘Just what I thought.’ There were vicious undertones in the nasal voice. ‘I’ve been sitting here thinking, what if Molly decides to spill her guts to these birds? What if they promise she can cop a plea or get immunity if she does? What if—’

‘Don’t lean on me, Boydie-babyl’ she snapped. ‘I’ve had Chicago amnesia in the past, and will again if it comes to that. But
don’t lean on me
.’

‘Aw, look, sweetheart, I didn’t mean it that way. I tell you what, tomorrow morning you go see Brass Mouth Epstein. Tell him we’re picking up his fee and that we don’t want you to be tried for Contributing. How he gets you off is his concern.’

‘What if he says disappear?’

‘Then disappear – only make sure we know where you are. And I’ll tell you what: If you have to dump that thousand bucks bail you put up Friday night, we’ll swallow it.’

She found warmth for her voice. ‘What can I say except thanks?’

‘As long as that’s
all
you say, sweetheart.’ He gave his nasal chuckle. ‘You let me know what Epstein says tomorrow, okay? I’ll be at the shop.’

After she’d hung up, Molly sat staring at the thick Oriental carpet. Why was Mulligan paying for Phineas Epstein as her attorney? He would cost plenty and was dead straight besides. He was at no man’s command. That meant DA Matt Brady
did
plan to forget his friends and go for Contributing. Fifteen goddamn years, maybe – while on the strength of it Brady leapfrogged into the mayor’s seat.

Crystal came into the room lugging her cardboard suitcase. It looked heavy. She had on street clothes and a coat.

‘Hey! Where the hell are you—’

‘I must leave now, Miss Farr.’

‘Those detectives? They can’t—’

‘Not them.’ Despair glinted in the tilted eyes. ‘Just . . .’

‘For God’s sake, kid, what is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I have seen my death.’ She moved a hand to indicate her newspaper, crumpled open to the news page.

‘Is it the trouble from back east?’

‘Yes.’

Molly wished she knew what the trouble back east really was. ‘Here? In San Francisco?’

The girl did not respond.

‘Okay, kid,’ said Molly, ‘tomorrow you go see Brass Mouth Epstein with me. If he tells you to disappear, we’ll drop out of sight together where nobody’ll find us. Now, you go in and pack Molly’s things like a good girl, just in case.’

Crystal hesitated, then disappeared to the rear of the apartment with her cheap cardboard suitcase and a fatalistic shrug.

Molly paced up and down. Hell, she was in as much trouble as her goddamn maid. She knew where the goddamn bodies were buried. If some of them were dug up because of her arrest, the Mulligans would want another in their place.

Hers.

H
ammett entered his apartment carrying the Tuesday morning
Chronicle
, his meager mail, and a long loaf of French bread. At the far end of the hall he gave the loaf a left-handed toss around the doorframe into the tiny kitchen. He stopped dead at sight of the massive figure sprawled in the living room’s only upholstered chair.

‘You’ve got a lousy lock, Hammett.’ Atkinson made bluish swirls of smoke with his stogie. ‘Ought to get a rim latch with a dead bolt. I blew this one open with a breath.’

Hammett dropped his newspaper and mail on the unmade wall bed and sat down.

‘It’s not your breath, it’s those goddamn cigars.’

Atkinson lit another of the nickel monstrosities from the ruins of the old. ‘You thought over my proposition any more since we had all that good clean fun shoving Molly around the other day?’

‘Still not interested. How’d it go with the reform committee last night?’

‘I’m hired. Given the green light by His Honor personally.’

Hammett’s voice showed surprise. ‘Brendan Brian McKenna himself? What the hell was he doing there? Slumming?’

‘Acting as chairman. He showed up unexpectedly, and they—’

Hammett slapped his hands together and crowed, ‘They form a committee to clean up San Francisco, and as chairman they take the man who’s been running it as an open town for sixteen years.’ He lit a cigarette, and feathered smoke through distended nostrils. ‘He’ll hamstring you, son.’

‘Maybe. But I was damned careful to get that personal secretary of his, Owen Lynch, to spell out what I was being hired to do – which I’ll grant you ain’t exactly a moral crusade.
Atkinson Investigations
is to probe alleged graft within the police department. Period. But within that framework, no limitations. Lynch is damned enthusiastic.’

Hammett was thoughtful. ‘Your charter makes sense.’

‘Yeah. And McKenna suggested my closing report go to the grand jury, not just the committee. In case there might be criminal indictments.’

Hammett paced the narrow littered room with quick, light strides as if it were a cage. When he wasn’t drinking, like now, he found the litter distasteful.

‘Too damned much sense to be coming from McKenna.’

‘You don’t really think he’s behind the police department corruption, do you, Dash?’

‘“Plain Bren McKenna from the Mission,”’ mused Hammett. ‘That’s what he called himself when he ran against “Pinhead”
McCarthy in 1913. He makes five hundred a month as mayor, and must spend twice that a month on hootch and harlots in that Caucasian geisha house he maintains for visiting politicos out on Sanchez and Twentieth. I guess it’s worth it to him to wear Eskimo parkas and Indian feather bonnets and motormen’s caps. Corrupt?’ He shook his head. ‘But when it comes to actually running this burg – to handling or delegating power – he can’t find his backside with both hands. If you want to know who’s behind police corruption in San Francisco, just look a block out Kearny Street from the Hall of Justice.’

‘Mulligan Bros Bailbonds. But how the hell do you prove it?’

Hammett chuckled. ‘I met old Farrell Mulligan a couple of times before he died.’ His voice took on a nasal quality and a brogue. ‘“Son, when they crap in this town, they wipe with Mulligan paper.” Which isn’t much in the way of proof. When he went, his kid brother Griff took over. Now I hear that Griff just counts the take while Farrell’s pup Boyd does the heavy work.’

‘Well, I ain’t got a mandate to go after the Mulligans. Vice, gambling, and the rackets
only
as they relate to police department graft. All I gotta do is find somebody who’ll sing. Somebody like Molly who—’

‘Yeah, look how
she
cooperated.’

Atkinson grinned sourly. ‘Preacher Laverty and Lynch believe the committee’s already put the fear of God into the mayor and the DA and the police. Molly may not be singing yet, but they sure closed her up . . .’

‘Vic, the only reason there was a raid at all is that three high school kids went there to celebrate somebody’s sixteenth birthday. If the ma of one of them hadn’t heard them setting it up by phone, and if her husband hadn’t happened to know the DA personally, Brady wouldn’t have pushed the cops into making a raid.’

‘This ain’t ever gonna make the papers, but the mother who overheard the kids on the phone was Evelyn Brewster.’

‘The shipping Brewsters?’

‘That’s her.
And
she’s the prime mover on the reform committee.’

Hammett sat down on the bed again, chuckling. ‘No wonder McKenna showed up at that meeting last night. I’ll bet old lady Brewster’s the one who pushed Brady into arraigning Molly and all her girls – even that Chinese maid – in municipal court yesterday.’

‘Yeah. Goddammit.’ Atkinson slammed a suddenly angry fist on the arm of his chair, hard enough so an inch of grey ash rolled down the front of his shirt. ‘They came down on Molly at just the wrong goddamn time. If I could have kept working on her—’

‘You mean you can’t anymore?’

‘Don’t you ever read them newspapers you carry around? Neither Molly nor the maid showed up for their arraignment.’ He brightened. ‘Maybe I can work a deal with Epstein, her attorney, to get at Molly. She talks to me instead of the DA—’

‘If Molly was your client, would
you
turn her up? With the Mulligans owning half the cops in town as a private police force?’

‘I’d furnish her protection,’ said Atkinson airily.

‘Sure you would.’

The big man was on his feet. ‘Anyway, my people will be in from LA the first of the week. I ain’t much of a detective if I can’t turn up Molly before then. I told the reform committee I was going back down south today, but I think I’ll stick around for a day and try to dig her out. Maybe make a round of the speaks tonight, see what I can get on which cops are being paid off. Want a pub-crawl?’

‘I said to count me out, Vic.’

Hammett brushed Vic’s cigar ash off the frayed tasseling of the venerable Coxwell he had inherited with the apartment, and sat down. He had a whole night at the typewriter ahead of him. He
stood up again, went to stare out between dingy lace curtains at the stucco fascia across Post Street.

Dammit, Vic was going at it all wrong. Advertising his presence by going around to the speaks when he should be waiting until he had taps on the Mulligan Bros phones, and on the bookie joints, speaks and taxi houses with the solidest protection. Because the better the protection, the closer to the pipeline through which money moved up and favors moved down . . .