Joe Gores - Hammett

‘May, this is Dashiell Hammett,’ boomed Biltmore. ‘He’s an attorney works with Phineas. Mr Hammett, my wife.’

Hammett bowed over the unflawed right hand. ‘I’m charmed, Mrs Biltmore. May I present my fiancee, Miss Augusta Osborne.’ He flashed the delightful smile he reserved for special occasions. ‘Everyone calls her Goodie.’

‘Goodie it shall be!’ cried May Biltmore in sudden animation. She turned to the one-eyed chauffeur. ‘Harry! Where has Bingo gone?’

‘He was in the kitchen trying to bite the cook the last I saw, ma’am,’ said the one-eyed man gravely.

‘Oh, dear, I’d better go find…’

A tiny white fuzzy dog burst into the room, yapped once, then threw himself headlong against the leg of May Biltmore’s chair.

‘You have a wonderful home,’ said Goodie impulsively.

Biltmore stroked his vast walrus mustache. ‘We like it, m’dear. Moved over after the fire. Thought it might happen again, y’see? Seems a bit silly now, perhaps, but in those days-’

‘Let’s have tea!’ exclaimed May Biltmore.

The chairs were Chippendale walnut, or Louis Philippe rosewood with Aubusson tapestry coverings. Goodie had never seen anything so elegant. Hammett was more interested in the South Seas tapa cloths and displays of African assegais that covered the walls.

‘Loot from my sailing days. The tapas are Marquesan, with one by the western Pacific blackamoors. Made of beaten mulberry bark, dyed with crushed roots and barks and berries.’ He moved down the wall. ‘The long spears are Masai from British East; the short ones are Zulu

…’ He broke off with a chuckle. ‘Harry could probably tell you more about those than I could.’

‘I came around the Horn, you know,’ interrupted his wife with her charming, abstracted smile. She made it sound as if she were another trophy. ‘What a trip it was, with one’s furniture and china!’

An awkward, uniformed girl with close-set eyes interrupted. ‘Tea, mum.’

Tea! Goodie could never have imagined the finest supper in the finest restaurant being half so grand. It was served from a trolley, the tea and coffee poured from chased silver plate.

She had had sandwiches, of course — although not ones made of watercress, or mustard beef, or tongue paste, or roe. But who had ever seen asparagus rolls? Anchovy rolls? And potted cheese and biscuits, and home-pressed meat, and hot crumpets, and golden brown cream scones crumbly in the mouth. And fresh baked bread with sweet butter from a moisture-beaded crock. Cornish saffron bread like fruitcake, and Scotch shortbread like butter cookies in disguise.

But there were proper sweets as well: lemon curd tartlets, lemon sponge roll, seed cake, English loaf cake, and something called Lancaster treacle parkin, a ginger-flavored confection that, May Biltmore explained, had been aged for weeks in an airtight container.

‘Its all so delicious!’ Goodie exclaimed, after a pause because of her mother’s oft-repeated warnings about talking with her mouth full.

‘I don’t know where she puts it,’ said Hammett ruefully.

Biltmore hitched his chair fractionally closer to Goodie’s. ‘Well, m’dear, it certainly has made you the picture of health. Tell you what …’

‘So you’re an associate of that rascal Phineas,’ beamed May Biltmore at Hammett. ‘Perhaps you know dear unfortunate Mrs Starr.. ’

Biltmore harrumphed from across the tea cart.

‘As a matter of fact, darling, it’s to interview Mrs Starr that Mr Hammett and his charming fiancee are here this afternoon.’

‘It is tragic, isn’t it?’ she asked sorrowfully. ‘To lose one’s entire family in a ghastly train wreck! No wonder she has come west to try and forget…’

‘Tragic,’ Hammett echoed. He laid a hand on Goodie’s shoulder as she also began to rise. ‘Stay here and fill up on cakes and sandwiches, sweetheart.’ He grinned at Biltmore. ‘Maybe I won’t have to feed her tonight.’

‘How charming!’ exclaimed May Biltmore.

As Hammett went out to look for the cottage just beyond the stone bridge past the tennis courts, Biltmore’s shining dome was bent solicitously over Goodie’s gleaming ringlets, and Mrs Biltmore was cooing over Bingo, the little white dog.

The three-room cottage was peak-roofed like the main house. Smoke wisped from the stovepipe through one side of the roof. Hammett rapped sharply at the door.

‘Hawkins, Mrs Starr. From Mr Epstein’s office. He sent me out with a few things for you.’

‘Just a moment.’

Just before the door swung open, he checked in his overcoat pockets the reassuring bulges of the weapons he planned to use against her.

‘It’s about time he sent some-’ Fire blazed in the blue eyes as recognition washed across her face. ‘ You! ’

Hammett pushed by her, tensed for a knee at the groin, but all she did was fall back, yowling.

‘That kike son of a bitch sold me out!’

‘Hush. You’ll wake the neighbors.’ He kicked the door shut with a heel, leaned against it, hands in his overcoat pockets and a sardonic grin on his face.

Molly had retreated to the center of the small living room. It was furnished with main-house castoffs. On the wall, ‘The Lone Wolf’ competed with ‘The End of the Trail’ in cheap gilt frames.

‘I thought that pickle-nose Jew bastard was dead straight!’

‘Brass Mouth didn’t set you up.’

‘I’d believe you?’ she demanded scornfully.

‘You can believe this.’

His right hand came from the overcoat pocket with a gun-drawing movement. Molly cried out in alarm. Then, when she saw what he was holding, her face unclenched.

‘You’re kidding me. It’s a mirage.’

Hammett set the bottle of Old Dougherty on the glass- and cigarette-scored top of the wicker table and dropped his coat on the sofa.

‘I figure being a fugitive as dry work.’

‘Come to mama!’ She had the cork out before getting cautious again. She went into the kitchen carrying the bottle, to return with two water glasses that she splashed half-full.

‘Let’s see you put that down, mister. Then we’ll talk.’

‘Mud in your eye.’

Hammett shook his head and reached for the bottle to replenish his glass. He sat down. Molly drank, refilled, sat down across from him with a beatific look. Hammett lit a cigarette and drank rye.

‘You make a passable grieving widow.’

‘I looked in the mirror this morning, I thought I was my goddamn mother.’ She brooded in silence. ‘Damn near a week without anyone to talk to, except that dotty old woman out there. She talks to her dog. Her goddamn dog! ’

‘So talk to me.’

Her lip curled. ‘What’s a nice girl like me doing in-’

‘What do you know about Vic Atkinson’s death?’

‘Vic Atkinson? The guy you were…’ It belatedly hit her. ‘ Death? You mean he’s-’

‘Monday night. With a baseball bat.’ It could be true, she might not have heard. In her role as grief-struck widow, she wouldn’t have been able to evince much interest in local news.

‘Look, Hammett, I’m sorry about your friend, but you can’t expect me to act all broken up. I only met the gentleman the one time.’ She shrugged. ‘I heard somewhere that Scarface Al uses a baseball bat to-’

‘Now you sound like the cops,’ said Hammett. ‘Nope, this was local, something Vic was working on.’ He paused deliberately. ‘He was going to find you, and he was going to shake you until something fell out. Say you were scared enough to make a phone call after we left your cathouse’

‘Parlorhouse,’ she interrupted automatically.

‘Bullshit.’

‘All right, I was scared.’ She wore a black floor-length dress with a cameo brooch at the throat to set it off. ‘But that’s all you’re getting from me. I know what you’re doing, bringing your bottle to-’