by Joe Gores
The very big man wearing the checked lumberjack was bent over to smear out his cigar butt against the sole of one new elk-hide workshoe as they passed him. He came erect against the frame of a deep-set double door to Post Street through which the last of the fight fans were exiting. The bare low-wattage bulb caged in the archway over his head cast harsh shadows down across his features.
Atkinson unwrapped a fresh cigar, spat the end in the gutter, and lit up. He seemed to be watching for someone. Overhead, the wet-laden ocean wind creaked the ornamental iron fire escape held in place by pulley and counterweight.
His eyes gleamed. The boy who had sold Hammett the Knockout had emerged from the entrance. Atkinson caught his arm in an ungentle grip. The boy’s face contorted. The big man asked questions. At the end of them, the boy palmed half a dollar and went his way, whistling.
Atkinson grinned as he departed himself, in the direction of the all-night lunchroom on Fillmore Street where he’d be able to pick up his surveillance again.
4
It was Saturday morning. Hammett faked a leap of terror when the grinning youth behind the wheel of the Fialer Limo hire-car goosed him with the electric horn. Still chuckling, Hammett entered the long narrow red brick building at 880 Post that housed Dorris Auto Repair. He unhooked the receiver of the block’s only public pay phone, dropped his nickel, gave the operator a TUxedo exchange number.
An accented voice said, ‘Verain’s Smoke Shop. Make me blink.’
‘Henri? Dash.’
‘But of course it is. Who do you like today?’
‘Louisville Lou in the second; Easter Stockings in the fifth; Khublai Khan in the seventh.’
‘All on the nose?’
‘Where else? And don’t tell me.’
One of them had better come home, Hammett thought as he hung up, or he wouldn’t be paying the rent on the first. No word from Cap Shaw at Black Mask about the two Op stories he had sandwiched between segments of The Dain Curse for eating money. Unless he could rustle up a few bucks to sit in on one of Fingers’ games, he’d have to depend on the monthly disability check from the government, which was about enough to keep him in cigarettes…
‘Hey, Hammett.’
‘How’s it going, Lou?’
Lou Dorris fluttered a grease-blackened hand, palm down.
‘The kid’s got a fever driving my wife nuts, at least it keeps her from driving me nuts, listen, you oughtta know. Big bird was around early this morning asking what time you’re usually in to place your bet, where you go to breakfast, like that.’
‘What else you have on him?’ Sounded like a cop, but Hammett couldn’t think why either public or private tin would be stepping on his shadow.
‘Big as a moose and dressed in work clothes, a wool lumberjack, heavy work shoes-’
‘The shoes new?’
Dorris momentarily checked his spate of words for thought. ‘As a matter of fact, yeah.’ Behind him, a wrench clattered on the grease-stained concrete under the Minerva Landaulet up on blocks at the rear of the garage. ‘Anyway, thought I’d better tell you, an’ lissen, who d’ya like in the fourth at Aurora?’
‘Thrace, but not well enough to put any money down.’
‘I figgered having that wop kid up might make the difference-’
‘Not at Aurora on a muddy track.’
‘Yeah, sure not.’
Hammett walked rapidly in-town on Post, hands thrust into the pockets of his mackinaw; the temperature was still below sixty, and the wind nipped here in the open street. It would be another three hours before the high fog burned away. His eyes were unconsciously busy on pedestrians and autos, a habit ingrained from the Pinkerton years. Textures. Details. Knuckles and ears and the napes of necks.
Who? And why? Tricky enough to buy shoes for the role, but not tricky enough to remember that new shoes gave him away. Hammett’s detective years were far behind, his gambling debts were fairly current, and he wasn’t playing around with anybody’s wife, so why..
Maybe Goodie had a secret husband stashed away up in Crockett. A smile flickered across his lean features as he waved to the counter girl at Russell’s Cake and Pie Shop. Goodie. Last night he’d come damned close to not walking away from that crazy little kid. Life got complicated: Somehow the easy time to tell her about Josie and the girls had passed.
At the short-order grill just inside the front window of the Fern Cafe, a bulky woman with white hair and several chins was frying eggs hard enough to bend the fork. The metal hood over the grill was brown with the grease of dead breakfasts.
Hammett shot a casually searching look around as he slid onto a wooden-backed swivel stool halfway down the counter. A couple of other solitary regulars, nobody at the three tables in the rear, although a half-smoked stogie smoldered in the ashtray on one of them.
‘The usual, Moms.’
Vile black cigar…
Hell with it. But he realized, with a little shock of recognition, that his wariness about the big man in the plaid wool lumberjack and too-new work shoes was mildly pleasurable.
Moms slammed down the morning’s newspaper on the linoleum countertop by Hammett’s elbow, slid a cup of coffee at him, and snagged an ashtray for his chain-smoked butts.
‘Why are you too damned cheap to buy a newspaper, Hammett?’
‘That would deprive me of your warmth, your cheery smile…’
She cursed him while waddling back to the grill. He checked the Friday morning city news. A Broadway Street tunnel under Russian Hill had been proposed at a million-and-a-half price tag. The Millionaire Kid, with whom he’d played lowball in North Beach a few times, had been indicted as a fence by the grand jury. Parnassus Heights’ residents were charging bribery in the attempt to rezone part of Judah Street commercial. An unidentified man in a stolen car had been killed by Chief of Inspectors Daniel J. Laverty in a running gun battle south of Golden Gate Park…
Plaid movement danced in the polished metal front of the pie case beyond the counter. Something hard and blunt was rammed into the small of Hammett’s back. The cigar! The goddamned cigar!
‘Hands on the table, bo!’ barked the heavy remembered voice. ‘Or this thing goes off.’
‘Oh.’ Hammett turned casually. ‘Hi, Vic.’
Victor Atkinson took his forefinger out of the writer’s back.
‘Hell. I knew that damned cigar would tip you.’
Atkinson had come directly to the Fern Cafe from Dorris’ garage because he’d wanted to catch Hammett unaware, look him over. But he’d left his cigar smoldering in the ashtray while he’d hidden himself in the restroom.
‘Not soon enough,’ said Hammett.
‘Well, it’s been close to seven years, Dash.’ He led the way back to his table. The two men measured each other as they sat down. ‘I quit the Pinks just before the Arbuckle investigation.’
Hammett made a face. ‘What the newspapers did to that poor bastard.’
They’d had some times together, Hammett thought. At Pinkerton’s, Vic had always led the bust-in parties on the theory that anything thrown at that jaw of his would just bounce off.
‘I heard you got into the writing game after you quit sleuthing.’
‘Doing ad copy for old man Samuels,’ Hammett admitted.
‘Yeah. Jeweler on Market down near Fifth.’
‘How about you, Vic?’ He asked it casually, pretty sure it was a cop asking him questions. Atkinson confirmed it.
‘I bounced around a little, ended up starting my own agency in Los Angeles. The movie studios generate plenty of our kind of business-’
‘ Your kind. I’m out of the game.’
‘Maybe a good thing, the way I walked up behind you-’
‘On your brand-new shoes.’
When the implications sank in, Atkinson’s laughter cannon-balled cigar ash halfway across the table. ‘If you had a goddamn phone, I wouldn’t have to gumshoe around.’
‘You’ve got knuckles.’
‘And a
propostion for you.’
‘Sleuthing?’ Hammett extracted his last cigarette and crumpled the empty pack. ‘Not interested, Vic.’
‘Sure not.’ Atkinson hitched his chair closer. ‘You remember a month, six weeks ago, the Bay Area collector of Internal Revenue made a couple of wisecracks at the Rotary Club about a local madam deducting her protection payoffs as a legitimate business expense?’
‘Sure. And the papers made it an open secret that the madam was Molly Farr, just down the street from my apartment. The guy also said that quite a few of San Francisco’s finest were going to start paying income tax as a result.’ Hammett lifted a lip in a faint sneer. ‘It sold a lot of newspapers but I didn’t see any mass resignations down at City Hall as a result of it. I imagine…’ He snapped his fingers and pointed at Atkinson across the table. ‘Don’t tell me. A reform committee.’
‘That’s it. A citizens’ group was formed to get financial pledges lined up so an outside investigator could be hired.’
Hammett looked up sharply. ‘Meaning you?’
‘Maybe. The committee meets Monday night to hear my proposals. If they like them…’ He shrugged. ‘Dan Laverty put my name in, we worked together a couple of times when I was a Pink and he was a detective-sergeant. He wants the department cleaned up-’
‘Throw out the chief with the dirty bathwater and take over his job?’
‘Something like that. But the Preacher’s as straight as they come.’
‘Good luck with it, Vic.’ Hammett tore cellophane from a new pack of Camels. ‘But I don’t see you getting anywhere no matter who recommends you.’
‘That’s why I want you in this with me, Dash. I’ll have damned good people coming up from LA, but only one of them knows the city. And none of them can analyze a situation the way you can.’
Hammett shook his head with genuine regret. ‘It would be like old times, but it’s no dice. Even if I was interested, your reform committee’s going to need the mayor and the DA and the chief of police behind them, and where’s their leverage? McKenna knows damned well the people of this burg elected him mayor so they’d have it wide open, and wide open is what he gives ’em. You’d better just hope that something happens before Monday night to give the reform committee more ammunition than they have right now.’
‘Something might,’ said Atkinson with stubborn optimism.
5
THREE BOYS FOUND IN VICE RESORT; MOLLY FARR JAILED
Police Trail Scions of S.F. Families to Hyde Street House After
Mothers Request Action
In a vice raid conducted at the request of mothers who suspected all was not right with their sons, police early yesterday struck to protect the morals of boys of high school age.
They trailed a group of three boys — members of well-known families — to the house of prostitution operated by the notorious Molly Farr at 555 Hyde Street. There, while scantily attired men and girls scurried in confusion, the raiders confronted the white-faced youngsters — they ranged in age from 15 to 17 — and rounded up and jailed the inmates of the lavishly furnished two-story vice-den.
Their parents, Captain of Inspectors Daniel J. Laverty said, requested that their names not be released to
Continued on Page 5, Col. 3
H ammett threw aside the bloated Sunday paper to sit up. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and got his head into his hands in one practiced motion. Ohh-h-h. He explored the inside of his mouth with the dead mouse someone had given him in place of a tongue.
Goddamn all birthdays.
He tottered, bare-footed and bare-butted, into the bathroom. At least, this morning, he was thirty-four. He’d beat Christ.
Just after he’d tottered back into the living room, a terrible agony shot through his head.
The doorbell.
He found his bathrobe wadded under the bed and went down the hall putting it on. He opened the front door with his head militarily erect so he wouldn’t upchuck.
‘Wipe off that silly smile,’ he said. ‘Good men are dying all around you.’
Goodie looked radiant and fresh in street clothes, a hat shading her dancing golden ringlets.
‘I’ve just come back from church. Some people stop after their second drink. You’ve got a phone call.’
Hammett padded after her on bare feet to pick up the receiver from her davenport table.
‘DASH! SEEN THE NEWSPAPERS ABOUT-’
‘ Sweet Christ! ’ screamed Hammett. ‘ Whisper, man, whisper.’
‘Okay,’ said Vic Atkinson in a softer voice. ‘You seen in the newspapers about the raid on Molly Farr’s?’
‘I saw.’
‘It’s the wedge we need! This, on top of all the publicity she got out of that tax guy’s remark, makes her damned vulnerable. We lean on Molly, she tells us who pays who and why, in return for a promise of immunity. Then we-’
‘Not we, goddammit! I told you… Besides, you haven’t even been hired yet.’
‘Molly doesn’t know that. Her place. Half an hour. From the way you sound, it’ll take you that long to get there.’
Every Sunday morning Molly Farr, dressed to somber perfection, made the two-block pilgrimage to the weathered old stone building at 611 O’Farrell Street. She figured she owed it. Eleven years before, Molly — along with three hundred other ladies of the night — had descended on this same Central Methodist Church at her gaudiest, her cheap scent reeking and her ostrich plumes nodding, to protest the campaign against vice being waged by Reverend Pastor Paul Smith. She had been twenty-three at that time.
Reverend Smith had persisted in his crusade. The Barbary Coast had been shut down, the parlor houses, cribs, brothels, and bagnios had disappeared for the moment, and a thousand prostitutes had been thrown out of work. Molly had gone south still a whore; but she returned a few years later to become a madam.
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-o
ld 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.’