Joe Gores - Hammett

Hammett took a turn around the room. ‘Dom Pronzini. Old Rinaldo’s pup — I sent the old man up to Q on a five-to-twenty back in twenty-one. I hear chat Dom brings in most of the real Canadian from the rum fleet these days.’

‘Through Bolinas and Sausalito,’ the dumpy little detective nodded sleepily. ‘He’s giving the boys down in Half Moon Bay a run for it.’

Hammett stopped pacing. Sure! Goddammit, the connection he’d almost made in Marin County snapped together in his mind.

‘That rapist the Preacher shot out by Golden Gate Park — Egan Tokzek. Wasn’t he a runner for Pronzini?’

‘If you can believe the reporter from the Chronicle.’

‘How’s your stock down at Pinkerton’s these days?’

‘They don’t spit on the floor when my name comes up.’

‘All right. See can you find out if they’ve got anything in their files on Tokzek.’ He was frowning, tugging his mustache in thought. He jerked his shoulders in an odd little shrug. ‘See if he had a sister, too. We’re starting to move on this.’

Lonergan’s Garage at 639 Turk Street was a one-story brick building with a false front. A sign hung on the post between the big double doors: ATTENDANT WILL BE BACK IN 20 MINUTES.

Hammett nodded approvingly at the lock on the double door, and took from his pocket a flat strap of steel six inches long and slightly angled and tapered at one end. Inserting this between door and frame, he applied steady leverage. There was a muted crack.

The dim interior was heavy with petroleum smells. A tow truck was backed up against the wall beyond the vast well leading down to the basement parking area. Hammett leaned over the unshielded edge to stare into the gloom. A concrete ramp led down to a concrete floor a good twenty feet below. It would do.

The littered little office had double windows painted black to well above head-level. Backed against that same wall was a man-high black safe with a big brass handle and a brass dial.

Hammett spun the dial idly. Give him a couple of hours and he could strip the side off her, but none of her secrets would be valuable to him. Lonergan was too far down the ladder to have more than a name or two. He’d settle for that. Or even for a phone number.

He sat down behind the desk and put his feet up and waited. The desk was butted up against the partition between the office and the garage floor, so he could see out into the main area through the waist-level window. The clock over the window said midnight had passed. Clipboards of work orders, aged by greasy fingers to a blackish brown, decorated the doorpost.

Five minutes later, headlights arced across the ceiling. Hammett’s eyes brightened, but he did not change position. The lock on the overhead doors rattled on its chain, then the doors creaked up to shoot hot light across the grease-stained concrete. A tow truck, towing nothing, was driven past the office window and stopped with its motor thrumming and the cab out of Hammett’s sight.

Dead Rabbit Lonergan sprang suddenly into the doorway, crouched like an ape, a tire iron swinging loosely in one hand. When Hammett made no move, Lonergan came slowly erect. A huge grin split his face when he saw who was there.

‘On your feet, bimbo. The boys are gonna be glad to get another crack at you. Fast, before I smash both your shoulders with this.’

‘I don’t carry a gun,’ said Hammett mildly as he was patted down by the big Irishman. He kept his arms wide and raised. Lonergan worked left-handed, keeping the tire iron cocked in his right fist. The tow truck grumbled acrid exhaust fumes.

‘I don’t know why they want you,’ said Lonergan. ‘But I think we’ll stick your head in that exhaust while I make a phone call.’

‘I’ll tell you why they want me,’ said Hammett. ‘They’re afraid of me. That’s why they wanted me taken out last night. I represent some of the boys back east. The BIG boys back east. We’re moving in, taking over this town. It’s just a matter of time. We figure that you’re small-fry, but you’re a place to start. So why don’t you get smart and tell me who you called to get those three gorillas who were supposed to beat me up?’

Lonergan had been staring at him, slightly slackfaced, as he had been speaking. He hesitated for a moment, then crinkled up his rugged, handsome features and laughed out loud. He leaned against the doorpost with the clipboards on it.

‘What you been smoking, Hammett? Whoever’s behind you, it ain’t gonna work. We got the cops behind us in this burg. No outsiders are gonna-’

‘Before you left Five Points, you ever hear of a big Irishman named Babe?’

‘Should I have?’

‘Might have been after you left,’ Hammett muttered thoughtfully. ‘The Babe was an expert with a tire iron and made the mistake of trying to use one on a fat little killer out of Baltimore named Garlic.’

Lonergan slapped the tire iron against his open left hand. ‘This ain’t Baltimore, bo.’

‘Garlic blew away both the Babe’s kneecaps with a matched pair of. 45’s. They had to take his legs off just below the hips because he got gangrene from the garlic on the bullets. These days he rides around on a little board with casters on it, selling pencils around Forty-second and Times Square…’

Lonergan chuckled and tightened his grip on the tire iron. ‘I think you want to get petted with this thing, bim-’

He shot forward across the room to crash headfirst into the far wall. He whirled off it with tire iron upraised and lips drawn back from tobacco-stained teeth.

‘I like to burn ’em when they’re comin’ at me,’ grated Jimmy Wright. The lumpy. 45 automatics in his fists stared at Dead Rabbit with unwinking eyes.

The tire iron clattered to the floor. Dead Rabbit’s hands shot up, shaking. His face was pinched and tired around the eyes as if he had developed a sudden head cold.

Hammett hadn’t moved during the flurry of action. He said: ‘Garlic, why don’t you walk this bird over to the edge of the basement well so he can tell us what he knows? If he don’t tell us in thirty seconds, he jumps off. Twenty-nine… twenty-eight…’

‘Jesus, man, that’s twenty feet down!’ cried Dead Rabbit. Wetness was mooning out from beneath his arms. ‘I’ll get all busted up.’

Hammett watched the big terrified Irishman. ‘When you can’t crawl up the ramp anymore, he puts one. 45 in each of your ears and pulls the triggers at the same time.’

Hammett and the op walked away from Lonergan’s Garage.

‘Once he gets his nerve back, he’s going to call ’em up and tell ’em we were here,’ said Jimmy Wright thoughtfully.

‘I want him to. I want them to start knowing I’m around. My God, is that crude, Jimmy! A phone call from Shuman after he left the reform committee meeting Thursday night. And that second phone number he gave us — that’s Boyd Mulligan’s home phone!’

‘Crude is right. A direct line to the Mulligans. But I guess they never expected anyone to be around asking questions.’ Then the operative started laughing. ‘Without anybody laying a glove on him! They should call him Scared Rabbit.’

Hammett went up the sloping walk between carefully trimmed privet to the rambling two-story pseudo-Elizabethan in the exclusive Parkside District. When he rang the bell, the inset door was opened by a young pretty colored maid much like his own Minnie Hershey in The Dain Curse.

‘Mr Hammett? Come right in, sir.’

The living room was two-storied under a cathedral arch, the furniture heavy, leather, of a scale to match the room.

‘Right in here, sir.’

Two of the solarium walls were floor-to-ceiling glass that framed a staggering sweep of Pacific beyond the rolling miles of dunes.