Joe Gores - Hammett

‘Bren is backing you all the way in there with the committee.’

Hammett slid down on his spine in a big leather armchair, and said nothing.

After a moment, Lynch chuckled. ‘You think he’ll try to hamstring the investigation?’

‘It’s his town.’

‘Which he’ll be leaving in two years for the statehouse in Sacramento.’ He gestured with his empty brandy glass. ‘ Unless there’s a scandal in his administration that he does nothing about.’

‘Molly Farr,’ said Hammett. There was a thoughtful, vaguely approving look in his eyes.

‘Molly Farr or some other. Oh, I know he has been elected three times because the citizens want a wide-open town. But his popularity extends beyond that. He’s America’s first lord mayor in the British sense.’ His eyes were alight with enthusiasm. ‘When he took office, San Francisco was still a nineteenth-century provincial town; Bren turned it into a twentieth-century metropolis. It was a community with a tradition of political corruption under Abe Reuf, and with a history of mob violence and vigilante violence and labor violence. Bren has brought together employer, employed, and unemployed, and gotten them to-’

‘The only thing that won’t go away is that political corruption,’ cut in Hammett in an almost lazy voice.

‘And that’s exactly why I arranged for Bren to chair this reform committee as soon as I heard about it. That’s why I talked Dan Laverty into advising the committee — so they’d get an incorruptible investigator. And when that investigator was killed, I had Dan get us another one equally trustworthy.’

‘You trust the Preacher’s judgment that much?’

‘He and Bren and I went through grammar and high school together out in the Mission. We’ve known each other for better than forty years.’ He shook his head. ‘The directions people go! Griff Mulligan was another one in the class…’

McKenna bustled in. One pearl-gray trouser cuff was artfully draped into the top of an oak-tanned cowboy boot. Despite his high heels, he was half a head shorter than the other two men. Through the briefly opened door, Hammett could see the committee members still standing in odd groups around the table.

McKenna beamed, pumping Hammett’s hand up and down in both of his. ‘Congratulations! The reform committee has hired you to investigate graft in the San Francisco police department, and to report to the grand jury all material for criminal indictments against policemen guilty of taking bribes.’ He crossed to the sliding panel in the Gillow sideboard, which was supported by two magnificently carved wooden eagles. ‘Brandy?’

‘I’m on the wagon.’ Still wary, Hammett added, ‘I’ll need strong backing in certain areas, Mr Mayor…’

‘Just name them.’

‘I’ll be questioning policemen, everyone from sergeant up, to start — and a lot of them aren’t going to want to talk to me.’

Lynch said, ‘Dan Laverty will see that anyone your people want, your people get.’

‘They’ll be Vic’s people, actually, headed by another ex-Pinkerton named Jimmy Wright. Jimmy’s in town now, the rest are due up from Los Angeles next week. They’ll start interrogations on Monday, in an office we select ourselves so informants can come and go unobserved for their own protection.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Lynch.

‘I’ll need some sort of authorization to talk to the phone company to monitor certain lines, with stenographers taking down all incoming and outgoing calls.’

‘Fair enough.’ Lynch extended his hand to Hammett; the mayor was working on his second brandy. ‘I’ll get written authorization for you before your men arrive. You’ll see that I meant what I said about the total backing of this office.’ He chuckled. ‘And you can be as secretive as you wish about your methods and findings, even with us.’

‘That’s right,’ said Hammett pleasantly.

When the lean detective had departed, McKenna lowered his snifter almost sadly. ‘That’s a man with a grievance, Owen, and you’ve turned him loose in my city with a meat ax.’

Surprising anger suffused the secretary’s heavy features. ‘Goddammit, man, this is your only chance to get out of the mess you’ve gotten yourself into!’

‘Mess?’

Lynch sighed. He plopped his briefcase on a walnut and gilt console table and fished in his watch pocket for the key.

‘I didn’t plan to spring this on you until tomorrow morning on the Sacramento train, Bren, but…’ He delved for papers. ‘You know they’ve taken to calling you Randy Bren around City Hall these days?’

‘Haw! That’s good, that!’ McKenna tossed off half his third brandy with a practiced flip of the wrist. ‘Randy Bren. I like that.’

‘I doubt that Colleen would find it very amusing.’

‘She ain’t likely to hear it.’

Lynch said nothing. McKenna turned a hard questioning stare on him. Mention of his wife seemed to have troubled him.

‘Well, is she?’

Lynch had removed a thin file folder from the briefcase. ‘Report from a private detective dated Monday, May 21, 1928. Subject of Investigation: BRENDAN BRIAN MCKENNA. Client: COLLEEN DOROTHEA MCKENNA. Quote: “Subject was observed leaving-”’

‘Col… you mean that Colly put a private snoop on me?’

‘What did you expect, Bren? She’s no fool and you’ve been getting more flagrant with it. Quote: “Nine thirty A.M., subject was called for at City Hall by a blonde…” Hmm… ah, yes. “Left Whitcomb Hotel, Market Street, at eleven o’clock A.M…’ Ah! Here: “Twelve ten P.M. ascended to upstairs room above Jack’s Restaurant with a brunette”… There’s a good word, Bren, “ascended”; it gives a scriptural flavor that I’m sure Colly would find comforting. The investigator points out that there are beds in those upstairs rooms, and…’

‘You’ve made your point,’ said McKenna weakly.

Lynch put the folder back in the briefcase. ‘And you can ask what mess you’ve gotten yourself into?’

McKenna said wearily, ‘Thank God Colly didn’t see-’

‘Who the devil do you think gave it to me?’

‘You… can’t be serious, Owen!’

‘With a note that if this didn’t stop, you’d be running for governor as a divorced man.’

McKenna went to the ornate rocaille pier glass to nervously center his cravat. The light slanted down cruelly across the puffiness of indulgence around his jowls, the fine veining in his eyes, the first tiny hints of burst capillaries in his nose.

He mumbled, ‘Colly would go through with it? The divorce?’

‘If you force her hand. If you don’t, she’ll keep it in the family once again. But something that isn’t going to disappear is that Judah Street rezoning stink. It’s all over the papers and liable to-’

‘I vetoed the damned thing Friday.’

‘Two weeks too late. It’s an open secret that your three handpicked boys on the Board of Supervisors took a thousand apiece to vote for the change from Second residential to commercial.’

‘I’ll have their candy asses if they did,’ said McKenna with as much anger as he could muster.

‘Then there’s the rape-murder of that little Chinese girl…’

‘Dan Laverty shot the murdering bastard dead; the blue-noses ought to be cheering.’

‘Would they cheer to know that Dan kicked the man’s balls up into his belly first?’

‘Yes,’ said McKenna defiantly, ‘after what he used ’em for.’

‘Maybe so. But the dead man was a rumrunner for a local ’legger. The teetotals are already saying it wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t allow the speaks to flourish in San Francisco. And finally is this thing of the Brewster pup and his cronies going off to Molly Farr’s place.’