Joe Gores: Hammett

Hammett cursed aloud. He’d treated Crystal as a literary creation rather than as a real person. He had pretended to be the Op, or Sam Spade, instead of being them. He’d become a writer playing at being a manhunter. A typing desk was safer than a street corner. The tiger in his mind had sheathed its claws. He’d become able to risk less. Death had stopped looking over his shoulder.

And so he had died.

The door across the room opened. Jimmy Wright strolled in, a Fatima in his mouth and a fedora on his head. For a terrible moment, Hammett thought he had died. Jimmy Wright had his hands in his overcoat pockets because each pocket contained a naked. 45 with the safety off. So he could fire through the pocket without having to draw.

Because Jimmy Wright was a manhunter. The fat little op would never be anything else. Drunk or sober, nobody would ever get the drop on him the way that they’d gotten the drop on Hammett. The way the girl…

The girl! Crystal!

‘Jimmy, get to hell out of here! The house might go up any second-’

‘Been through the house, Dash.’ He stepped across Laverty’s body with the same casual disregard Crystal had shown. He crouched beside Hammett to unlock the cuffs. ‘Quite a dump. Fancy. Big for a guy living alone. Give you fantasies after a bit. This room’d give you nightmares. Somebody’s been busy down here.’

‘Laverty,’ said Hammett. He leaned weakly against the wall, waiting for the agony as the blood started getting back into his white, pudgy, useless hands. ‘He killed Lynch with his bare hands, and then shot himself.’

Wright grunted, standing in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips, staring up at the mess drying on the ceiling.

‘Why?’

‘End of a dream. Christ that hurts!’ He had begun gingerly shaking his hands. But he loved the pain because it told him he really was alive, that Jimmy Wright was real, that Crystal… He said delicately, ‘Anyone else in the house?’

The op shook his head. ‘Cook’s day off, maybe. I’d better call O’Gar. We’ll need the meatwagon here.’

‘Sure. Listen, Jimmy, how did you…’ He waved an arm weakly.

‘Goodie was up packi… was still up, when you managed to thump her door as Laverty took you out. Figured out that Pop Daneri would know where to reach me. I went over to her apartment and sat around twiddling my thumbs until the call came.’

The call. A horrible suspicion dawned in Hammett’s mind. He sat down on the edge of the bed and began flopping his aching hands against his thighs to hurry the wake-up process.

‘Call?’

‘A woman. Called Goodie’s, asked for me, said you were shackled in the basement here with a couple of stiffs. Said the front door would be open and the keys to your handcuffs would be on the telephone stand in the front hall. What’s so funny?’

Because Hammett had begun to rock with helpless laughter. Tears streamed down his face.

… you’ll enjoy yourself so much more, wondering… just how evil little Crystal can be…

‘She sounded Oriental, must have been the maid or something.’

Or something. In this single contemptuous gesture she had shown Hammett just how thoroughly he’d been beaten. Sam Spade? Even Sam couldn’t have done much with her. No manhunter, real or fictional, could.

Because Hammett couldn’t touch her. He knew all, could prove nothing. She was above it, beyond it, she’d won. She’d had them all killed, methodically and maliciously, but had killed none of them herself.

Anyone — anyone — who could prove anything against her was dead.

Hammett could tell his story until he was a little old man with a bent back and a long beard, and no DA in the land would take him seriously. A fifteen-year-old whorehouse maid did what?

He stood up.

‘I’d better call Goodie. She’ll be worried.’

‘She’s gone,’ said the op. He didn’t try to soften it. ‘As soon as the call came that you were here safe…’ He shrugged. ‘She was already packed.’

Hammett rested his forearm against one of the bedposts and pressed his forehead against it. So. He’d driven her to it. Stupid drunken bastard. Once Biltmore possessed her, there’d be no turning back for her. No more small town and houseful of well-loved kids and…

‘Said to tell you she’d gone back to the porch-swing cowboys. Said you’d know what she meant.’

He felt a soaring of spirit. For every evil, a good. For every Crystal, a Goodie. He found he was grinning broadly.

Sure, goddammit, who ever said you were going to get it all? A piece of it was the best any self-respecting manhunter ever expected, anyway. And in the meantime…

Hell, in the meantime he was on salary.

He jabbed a finger into the op’s hard, ample gut.

‘Okay, Jimmy, use the phone upstairs to call the rest of the boys. Lynch was behind the Mulligans. It won’t get made public, but it’s going to come out where it counts, so I want a raid on the bailbond office right now. Legal. Court order. Before Mulligan finds out his boss is dead and sends his tame cops in after the stuff. There’s enough dynamite in those files to blow up this goddamn town, and we’re going to light the fuse!’

It was Wednesday, August 29. Eighty-nine days since Molly Farr had jumped bail to start it all.

Hammett had spent the morning, as usual, passing details of the investigation to the grand jury in closed session. It wasn’t over yet, but it was drawing to a close.

The Mulligans already were under indictment on multiple felony counts of bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery, and conspiracy to commit extortion.

Gardner Shuman had resigned as police commissioner, and one of the city supervisors had committed suicide.

Fifty-seven policemen ranking from patrolman to captain had resigned quietly; fifteen more had been removed by dismissal and five had been indicted for perjury and extortion.

According to the tabloids, Laverty had killed himself while depressed over ill health, and Lynch had been murdered by an unknown assailant he had surprised rifling his home.

The probable hobo who had rolled and accidentally killed Victor Atkinson was still at large.

Famed ex-Pinkerton detective Jimmy Wright had been conducting a sweeping investigation of graft and corruption in San Francisco under the personal direction of Mayor Brendan Brian McKenna. The name of Dashiell Hammett had not appeared in the newspapers at all.

The bookies were still thriving. And the taxi houses. And the speakies. Rinaldo Pronzini had taken over his son’s club, which, thanks to its notoriety, was flourishing.

Hammett paused outside the hearing room to check his watch. Jimmy Wright, on his way in, stopped beside him. ‘Just had another photo-session with His Honor, Dash. Without his wife to point him in the right direction and tell him to smile…’

‘Yeah, but nobody’s going to stop him. He’s cleaning up San Francisco, he’s Irish, he’s handsome, he’s a hell of an orator, his wife has aged beautifully, and his best friend died defending the sanctity of the American home. Given all that, they’d make him governor if he was a hydrocephalic.’

‘Listen, Dash, I’ve closed the deal with Vic’s widow for the agency. That partnership offer is still…’

‘We can kick it around next week, Jimmy, okay?’

Ever since Jimmy Wright had walked into that basement charnel house to free him, Hammett had been immersed in the corruption that had spewed from the asbestos-lined filing cabinets hauled from Mulligan Bros Bailbonds. He was tired, worn out, sick of it. He was barely aware, as he went down the echoing marble-floored corridor, of the rushing attorneys, the nervous accused, the testifying cops and witnesses, the spectators and hangers-on congregated around the doorways of courts just convening for the afternoon sessions.