Joe Gores - Hammett

Hammett came by her bearing a steaming pot of coffee in one hand and a cheap tin tray in the other with both of his cups and saucers on it, both of his spoons, sugar and cream, and two buttered sweet rolls hot from the oven.

‘Look, ma, no hands.’

He continued into the kitchen where he deposited his treasures on the table. He was dressed in a business suit, a dress shirt, and a patterned tie with a large loose knot. He busied himself laying out his peace offering.

‘I have a vague recollection of trying to bust down your door the other night.’

Goodie blushed. ‘I… wouldn’t let you in, Sam. A little later I saw you going over to the Weller.’

He looked at her with keen dark eyes. His mouth quirked beneath the trim mustache. ‘I was hootched up like a bat, sweetheart.’

‘I’m… sorry about your friend.’ In a small voice, she added, ‘The newspapers say it was a gangland slaying, but you said…’

‘Don’t let it get cold.’ He waved at the table and sat down himself. Around bites of sweet roll, he outlined what had happened since Atkinson’s death, ending with the attack a few hours previously. ‘I really red-lighted Shuman, and this must have been his idea of a smart way to get back at me. It was actually stupid, because it’s given me a place to start.’

‘A member of the police commission ordering you beat up?’ Goodie sounded rather dazed. ‘I bet you were followed to the poker game, and-’

‘Uhuh. Spotting a tail is like riding a bicycle, darling — you never forget how.’

She turned Hammett’s wrist to check his watch, then was on her feet and flying for the bathroom. ‘It’s after seven thirty — I’ve got to comb my hair and get to work!’

‘I’ll just use your phone…’

She stuck her blond head back around the doorframe from the big wall bed closet beyond which was the minuscule bathroom. ‘Is that why you’re being so sweet this morning, Sam?’

‘What sort of bum do you take me for?’ he demanded virtuously.

He could hear her laughter as he sat on the sofa, set the telephone on his knee, and told the operator that he wanted DAvenport 20. When a voice said, ‘Police,’ Hammett said, ‘Central Station,’ waited some more, them asked for Sergeant Manion.

‘Jack, Dash Hammett here. I’m trying to get a line on a Chinese girl named Crystal Tam, who… huh? Right, that’s the one, Molly Farr’s maid… Mmm-hmm. No, I’m not even sure she’s local, but I thought… yeah. Right. That fast? Okay, many thanks, Jack.’

He broke the connection, released the hooks, gave the operator a SUtter exchange number, got no answer, and was hanging up when Goodie emerged from the bathroom fully dressed and pulling on her coat.

‘Will you shut the door when you leave, Sam?’

He blew her a kiss, returned to the phone and got DAvenport 8398 and asked for Jimmy Wright. When the fat little detective came on the line, his voice was still full of sleep.

‘What have the cops turned up on Vic?’ Hammett asked him.

‘Last solid thing is him leaving the Chapeau Rouge at the foot of Powell sometime after midnight, under his own power. They thought he was a timber beast out of Seattle. The Homicide boys are checking cabs now.’

‘All right, I want you to ask around the Army-Navy Y, the Lawrence Hotel, the Commodore — places like that near Mission and The Embarcadero.’

‘Will do,’ said the cop, without asking where the lead had come from.

Hammett tried the SUtter number again, and this time was told that Phineas Epstein would be in court until four thirty. Hammett identified himself as a reporter named Hawkins from a Los Angeles paper, and made an appointment to see Epstein at six P.M.

His last call was to the business office of the phone company.

‘My name is Harrison LeGrand, I have TUxedo eight-two-seven-three. I’d like to check my toll calls for the past week…’

He got the information, thanked the girl, and hung up. He carefully pulled Goodie’s door shut behind him, tried it to make sure it was locked, and went next door for his overcoat and his now-battered gray Wilton fedora. He went out into Post Street.

Hammett hadn’t known Chinatown before the fire, when Grant Avenue had been Dupont Gai, Street of a Thousand Lanterns, and the climb up from Bush had been lined with clattering shooting galleries. Where now were restaurants and bazaars and import shops and warehouses, then had been houses whose half-open shutters revealed scantily clad, foulmouthed Caucasian whores.

He passed Old St Mary’s Church on the corner of California. Even that had been gutted to the walls by the fire following the quake. Catty-corner across the intersection was the new, beautifully oriental Sing Fat Trading Company, with tilt-edged pagoda roofs and narrow balconies with delicate filigree railings.

Mostly gone, too, were the trousered women and silk-jacketed shopkeepers, the lily-footed wives of rich merchants, and the highbinders swarming around the gambling clubs even at noon. Some of the hatchet men were still around, but the last tong killing had been in 1922, a year after Jack Manion had taken over as sergeant of the Chinatown Squad. Manion, who had earned the fear and hatred of the Six Companies and the name of Mau Yee. The Cat. Because he seemed to have eyes that could look behind him.

Hammett stopped with one foot in the gutter to keep from running into a blue-denimed waiter hurrying someone’s hot lunch from the Shanghai Low. Half a block beyond, an aged man with the beard of a billy goat and the timeless Oriental eyes of Confucius was wielding a gleaming cleaver in a white tiled butcher shop, sectioning up a whole pig, smoking hot and roasted to a deep mahogany color. A dozen smoked ducks hung by their necks behind him.

Hammett doubted that Manion would have anything for him on Crystal Tam. It was only three hours since he had called. Still, Jack could do some incredible things in Chinatown.

The heavy warring odors of ginger, hot grease, and herbs drifted from an import shop as he stepped around a big wet wooden tub half-filled with sea snails; next to it was a wooden crate of dried South Seas beches-de-mer used in making soup.

He bought a Mandarin orange from a sidewalk stand, and pushed toward the thickset, unruly-haired Caucasian who seemed to be reading the calligraphy posted outside one of the Chinese-language newspaper offices.

Hammett dropped peels on the sidewalk. He shoved a juicy segment of orange into his mouth. To Manion’s back, he said, ‘What’s the news?’

The Irishman turned and grinned. There was a cleared space around him. In these narrow streets, The Cat bore invincibility like a physical aura.

‘The price of opium is going up.’

‘They put that in the papers?

When they were clear of the throng and crossing narrow Grant Ave to the far sidewalk, Manion said, ‘Hell, you know I can read only about six words of Cantonese. Psychology, Dash just psychology.’

‘You have anything for me, Dr Freud?’

Manion grinned again. He was craggy-browed and square-jawed, and moved with the easy grace of a man who never hesitated to drop through a skylight in pursuit of a hatchet man. ‘Have I ever failed you?’

‘How about lunch at Yee Chum’s while you tell me about it?’

‘Lead on, Oh Father of Detectives.’

Hammett stopped dead on the Washington Street sidewalk. ‘Don’t tell me you save old Black Masks. “Dead Yellow Women” appeared three years ago-’

‘ Black Mask is better than corncobs in the bathroom,’ Manion assured him seriously. ‘You can read ’em before you use ’em.’

On the corner of Waverly Place, narrow worn stairs led down to the basement, a spotty inset mirror giving them back their reflections. At the bottom were heavy wooden double doors that they shoved wide as they entered the noisy, steamy, clattering, low-roofed room. The round-topped tables were crowded with Chinese shoveling in rice with chopsticks while the singsong of high-pitched conversation went on unabated. They were the only Caucasians.