Chasing Sam Spade

by Brian Lawson

Skelley nodded, a faint smile on his face. “Nicely put, nicely put indeed. Well, here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding he said,” chuckling, a dry, rustling sound. “You see, I too read the book.”

  “You’re no Kaspar Guttman.”

  “Nor meant to be,” he said, smile gone now and the cool, lawyerly tone Danny remembered from their first meeting was back. “So, I understand that your friend is gone.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said, turning to glance quickly at the son who was staring off into the gray distance, slowly shuffling his feet and rubbing his gloved hands together. “Nervous, sonny?”

  “None of your business,” he growled.

  “Patrick, please,” Skelley said.

  “I’m going to wait in the car,” he said sullenly, turned and stomped off through the fog.

  “Impatient.”

  “High spirited.”

  High, all right, probably going to toot off the dashboard. He had taken an instant dislike to young Skelley. Maybe it was the dull gleam of the $80,000 car, the obvious expensive cut of what looked liked like a cashmere topcoat; maybe it was just the look of soft, wet indolence in the eyes.

  “I indulge him, but he is my only son,” Skelley said. “But then, you know most of that, having done your homework.”

  Danny nodded at him, watching the round shouldered shadow moving toward the car. He caught a quick tone in the man’s voice, something like regret perhaps. Or maybe he was just finding reason for the unreasonable aversion he felt toward the son; an old refrain ran through his mind: I do not like thee, Doctor Fell, what that is I can’t tell, but I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.

  “Okay, let’s cut the bullshit. What do your want for Johnny?”

  Skelley shook his head, a long sad look around the mouth. “Mister Boyle, you are smarter than that, I am sure. I will not say anything that allows inference that I have any knowledge of the event to which you are referring. I do not. So I must assume you are simply asking for advice based on this hypothetical case you mentioned, this alleged abduction of your friend?”

  “Goddamn it, what’re you here for?”

  “Counsel, Mister Boyle, counsel,” he said, stepping another foot closer. “You asked me to meet you here, I assume in my capacity as an attorney. Do you want my counsel? In an advocacy relationship? No contracts, just between men of good will? Pro bono, or course, no charge.”

  “I know what it means,” he snapped. “Is that the only way you’re going to talk?”

  Skelley gave an uncharacteristic shrug, thin shoulders hardly disturbing the line of his topcoat. “I’m afraid so. You tell me your friend has been kidnapped. That may be so. I would never dispute your facts, not in this arena at least. But I have no knowledge of the crime you allege. All I could do would be offer a theory, a working hypothesis of one of many equally accurate, or inaccurate, fact bases that might help explain this hypothetical event. Other than that, we have nothing further to discuss.”

  “It’s real enough to John Larkin.”

  “So you say, so you say, Mr. Boyle,” he said. They walked in silence for a moment, than another. It was obviously going to be Skelley’s way, or no way, and Danny knew he couldn’t bluff the man.

  “Okay, whatever you want.”

  “Good, very good. Now, since you stated what I must assume is a hypothetical involving your friend, my best legal counsel at this point would be to help you fill in some background.”

  Very shrewd and Danny felt the cold cut even deeper. Anything he’d say from here on out would all be hypothetical and covered by attorney-client privilege. He might even be taping the conversation.

  “You taping this?”

  “No, should I be?” Skelley said. “Are you?”

  “No,” Danny said, shaking his head. “My tape recorder got broken. Street crime.”

  “A shame. Things are not as they used to be,” he said, and there seemed no irony or mocking in the man. Everything was straight ahead, precise. Perhaps he had no passion for anything except self-protection. “I notice the tape on your eyebrow. A shame, a shame. Let’s talk.”

  Skelley began walking, hands clasped behind his back, Danny tagging along beside him. “You said your friend has been abducted. And that abduction involved other activities, possibly criminal, dating back to the late 1920s, correct?”

  “Yeah,” he said, playing along. In the game they were playing, Danny had given him the opening, but the real information still lay with Skelley; he wondered how the man would make the segue from what Danny might have said to the story he would have to tell.

  “Following your facts, then, combined with my knowledge of this wonderful City and its denizens, allow me to construct a hypothetical. A series of events involving an imaginary man who let an obsession ruin his life. Facts that could explain this alleged crime,” he said, smiling a smile that made the fog even colder.

  * * *

  The story unfolded in a terse, concise way Danny imagined Skelley using for trial court summation; assuming the small, thin man ever found himself facing litigation. More likely, he settled, worked the deal, brought interested people together; clean skirts, clean hands but Danny suspected a very cluttered mind.

  “This isn’t going to be particularly pleasant, but you wanted the truth,” he said.

  “Assuming you can tell it.”

  “Oh, I can tell it, even when it does no great credit to the people involved,” he said, stopping and looking up at Danny. He could almost feel the heat coming off the little man now, like a quick jet of oxygen hitting some long banked fire. “Are you prepared for this level of truth? Are you prepared to find your father a madman and a drunk, a captive of his own obsessions?

  “Keep talking.”

  He nodded, yes, yes indeed. “Perhaps you are not. Perhaps we have no more to say.”

  “And perhaps you forget you aren’t in charge here, counselor,” he said, forgetting for a moment himself. “You talk or I do. No in between.”

  “So be it,” he said and turned away from Danny and began walking again, his voice steady as a metronome, as pervasive as the fog that chilled Danny to the bone.

  “Where to start? I suppose at the beginning. As you know, my father was Assistant District Attorney. He left the office in 1928 for private practice. We will use him for one of the hypothetical characters. Let’s assume this attorney used the connections he had made to secure clients. He would have been a shrewd man and probably channeled all his earnings into real estate. He did well, very well.”

  “Why did he leave the DA’s office? Was it the sex slave case?”

  “I don’t think so. At least not that I ever knew. He seldom spoke of those days and I was given to understand that he saw the main chance in private practice. He used all the charm and guile he could muster, and that was not inconsiderable I assure you, to get ahead,” he said, turning from profile and glancing at Danny, then turning back again. “I can see you don’t believe me. A bit of cognitive dissonance?”

  “What? New information’s rejected if it doesn’t support belief? Come on, that’s older than I am. Nobody buys that any more.”

  “So be it, but none the less, you do not believe me. You want to believe my father was involved in covering up that dirty, correct? You want to believe he did something underhanded that earned him money, or favors from influential men, or both. Correct? You want to believe that is your ‘hidden crime’ in The Maltese Falcon. I am sorry to disabuse you, but that simply isn’t the case.”

  “It fits. I know it sounds crazy, but it fits and it was good enough to get me to you.”

  Skelley shook his head. “The fit is only in your mind, I fear. This is all news to me. It seems we are both a victim of a bit of malicious coincidence. So it goes. There is no connection, none. In one sense I wish there were.”

  “Why?”

  “It would at least make your pursuit of me and my family reasonable. It’s syllogistic but at least makes an internal sense. No, coincidence only, nothing more, a
nd on such petards are we all hoisted.”

  Danny stopped, forcing the man to stop and turn to face him. They had already forgotten the dance of the hypothetical: Skelley was talking facts, or the facts as he wanted them told. The change from abstract to concrete suited him fine; but it also brought it closer to home and he felt his heart hammering in his chest and the fog air so cold it burned his nostrils as he sucked it in. This was it.

  “That means you’re saying nothing happened, that Chuck got it all wrong? That I’ve got it all wrong?”

  “Precisely. To be blunt, your logic is logical only to you.”

  “Than what happened to him, and don’t tell me it was all in his head,” he said, his throat so tight his voice came out came out a rasp.

  “Oh no, that he made enemies wasn’t in his head,” he said, smiling quickly, then turning to walk. It was becoming a game, each of them controlling the flow of the conversation by stopping and forcing the other to wait, face him, talk. “The crime was in his head, as it is in yours, but the consequences were very real for him. He simply got in the way at the wrong time. And he simply did what you’re doing, asking too many questions. It was, how should I put it, an irritant. Hypothetically, of course.”

  “Can it, Skelley. I’ve already agreed with you, okay? Sure you’re making it up, sure it’s hypothetical. Talk straight, for God’s sake. You’re trying to tell me you people ruined a man’s life because he was annoying you?”

  “Not me, my father. I was away at school at the time,” he said, looking at him sharply. For a moment Danny thought there was a flash of irritation in those cool blue eyes, then it passed. “No, what I say to you now was told to me by my father. But I have every reason to believe it to be true. You have to consider the context.

  “My father had just left the District Attorney’s office when Hammett’s book came out in 1929. Fortunately, it was just serialized in something called Black Mask and nobody took it seriously. Then the book came out in 1930 and some people mentioned that the book’s District Attorney Bryant gave the entire department a bad name. I remember my father saying he was annoyed with Hammett and for the way he portrayed the city, the District Attorney, the Coroner, most of the police. He said the book made everybody look bad and that sullied his reputation,” he said. “And my father, as do I, set a great deal of store in the family name.

  “Hammett left town soon after, the whole thing died down and my father went back to his affairs Then they made that movie in 1941 and stirred things up again. But, as my father pointed out, a movie is just a movie, and the war came along and everybody forgot. In fact, most people my father was representing in the 1940s didn’t even associate him with the book. Why would they. He obviously wasn’t Bryant and no hint of scandal had every attached to him.”

  “But then Chuck showed up.”

  “Yes, then your father showed up. Things after the Korean conflict were slow, in fact there were some who thought we might even end up reverting to the Depression conditions. Remember that San Francisco was a major staging area for the Pacific campaign. There was concern what would happen to the shipping industry, what all the laborers would do who had come out to work at Mare Island, Hunter’s Point and the rest. Nothing new in all that, typical post-war doldrums, but thoughtful men had to pay close attention to their affairs.

  “My father saw the future in an odd place. Everything in San Francisco had happened downtown, North Beach, east of Twin Peaks. My father paid attention to what visionary men were saying, that there was a boom coming in affordable housing here on the West side where the land was cheap and plentiful and down toward Daly City on the south. He assessed the trends, made some judicious investments, brought old San Francisco money into the investment picture, and used his well-established political connections to advance some developers and inhibit others. And he profited, handsomely.”

  “He was a speculator. Fast and loose with zoning and permits, right? Just another hustler with a briefcase.”

  “No. He was the man behind the hand who was hustling, as you put it. But his involvement was complex. Financial. Legal. Political and it called for, above all else, discretion and what we would now call a very low profile.”

  “What’s this got to do with Chuck? Hypothetically, of course,” he said. He could feel the cold like small twitches in his legs and arms and he wasn’t far from his teeth chattering. “Cut to the chase.”

  Again, that flash of irritation; perhaps if he could push the man far enough, hard enough, the thin, cool crust would shatter. Skelley continued, “Of course. Well, into that matrix came your father. My father’s business affairs were nicely balanced. He was the linchpin holding many arrangements together, linking the established San Francisco interests with the new, entrepreneurial investors and developers. Your father started asking silly questions that could have been very troublesome to some very important people.”

  “Like your old man.”

  “I doubt it. Frankly, I think your father lacked your intelligence and he certainly lacked your access to virtual information. He might have been tenacious but not as you are. For example, he never stumbled across the 1927 newspaper story. Not that the story is relevant, but he didn’t even get that far. No, your father had a theory but I doubt he was close to involving my father in it.”

  “But your old man didn’t want to take any chances, right?”

  Skelley shrugged and turned and looked at Danny, slowing down then stopping. The stood an arm’s reach apart, the fog shutting out even the cars around them. They were as alone as they would ever get.

  “That is one way to put it. It simply wasn’t prudent to let your father run around talking about hidden crimes and dredging up old scandals. Plus, he carried that cachet of being an employee of Pinkerton’s and that lent him a certain level of veracity in some persons’ minds.”

  “Like your old man’s cronies. The good old boys.”

  “His associates, yes. It was just a theory, but it was offbeat enough, improbable but interesting enough, that it could have engendered further examination. Eventually, others might have done what you did and come up with the connection with the 1927 sex crimes. Then it would become yellow journalism. Imagine the headlines. Something needed to be done to distract him. So, a word went into somebody’s ear, who talked to somebody else....”

  “...and my dad ended up out of work.”

  “Yes. Unpleasant, but hardly criminal.”

  “Then why arrest him?”

  “Ah, well, the Boyles seem to be a stubborn lot,” he said. “It was thought losing his job and being reprimanded would be enough to send him on his way. It wasn’t. He continued to poke around, and began to intimate a link with the city officials concerning this supposed hidden crime.”

  “But you said nobody believed it. Who would have cared?”

  “That’s the irony. Probably very few then and certainly in today’s permissive world, nobody. But my father was a man who had made his way by being very careful and attending to every facet of his affairs.”

  “For what?”

  “You mean what charge? I suppose pilfering materials from Pinkerton’s. It didn’t really matter as long as the seriousness was impressed on him. A few days in jail, a stern talking to. It is unfortunate that it had such dire ramifications for you and your mother.”

  “Well, she’s from the old school. Didn’t much take to her husband being a criminal.”

  “He certainly wasn’t that.”

  “Yeah, well she has a different slant on things,” he said through clenched teeth. “Do you know what this did to him?”

  “Yes, yes I do. Now. But as unpleasant as this may be, we certainly can’t be held accountable for your father’s drinking problem and all that flowed from that. It is the curse of our people, Mister Boyle, unfortunately,” he said.

  “So, it’s all just for that?”

  “That is all it was. Protecting the family name, keeping the lid on things. Making sure the bodies, no not that kind, th
e metaphorical bodies, stayed buried. And when my father died and I left the Legislature to take over the practice, I can honestly say I never thought of the whole thing again. Until you showed up.”

  “More sand in the Vaseline, huh?”

  “An irritant, to be sure. In fact, you Boyles are like some kind of boil that erupts at the wrong times, pardon the pun. First your father with his cachet of Pinkerton’s about him stirring things up. Now you. A writer of stories on the Internet, no less. It’s a small thing, but none the less, the same kind of simple-minded people would give attention where none is due. I can’t have you mucking about with ancient history and making even the most tenuous connection to the Skelley name.

  “This is an inopportune time. My son is going to run for the Assembly and he will be elected. He is a weak man, given to weak vices but he’s the last of the line and he will be successful in spite of himself. I will see to it. Before the recent unpleasantness with the President it might not have mattered. San Francisco likes it’s elected officials with a bit of hair on their chests, so to speak,” he paused, seemingly staring into a future that even his son probably didn’t have access to. Danny felt a sudden wash of pity for the kid caught up in a level of ambition he probably didn’t even understand. “And I will see to it that you do nothing to trouble the normal unfolding of that plan,”

  Skelley took a quick breath as though he only allowed himself a minimal amount of air at any given time, suddenly rubbing his hands together. His voice changed then, from a softness that Danny was almost ready to believe came from a genuine regret; now the litigator was back, seeking closure, seeking to nail the defense. “Now, it grows cold and I am not comfortable in the damp air. That is the story, as truthfully told as I am able. Now I would ask you to refrain from pursing your campaign to unjustly malign my father and my family name.”

  “You mean you want me to believe you did all this just to protect your family name? Having me beaten up, kidnapping Johnny?”

  “I know nothing about those incidents, if in fact they occurred,” he snapped. “And yes, it is just about my family name. My son will carry it forward. There is nothing more important. No silly crime you imagine is buried in that book could do as much damage as low gossip and innuendo slandering that name. I will not have it.”