Max Collins: Kill Your Darlings

“For a Hammett fan you don’t seem too thrilled at the prospect of reading a ‘new’ Op novel.”

“I just don’t trust Gorman,” I said.

“I understand the book is authentic.”

“First-rate Hammett?”

“What I heard was ‘authentic’ Hammett. It’s actually his first novel, so it’s bound to be a lesser work.”

“Not really. He’d been writing short stories for a good many years by ’27. If it isn’t close to Red Harvest in tone and quality, I… I don’t know.”

Tom was amused. “Suspect fraud, Mal?”

“I smell Gregg Gorman, is all.”

A pretty woman in her early forties, wearing a Sam Spade trenchcoat, her hands thrust in its pockets, was in the doorway, looking anxiously around the bar room. I knew her: Mae Kane, Roscoe’s current-and in my estimation best-wife. She had wide Joan Crawford eyes. An out-of-date silver pageboy hairdo that had been Kane’s idea swung in twin arcs as she looked about the room. Irritation tugged at the red slash of her mouth.

Then she saw me, and the slash turned into a nice smile, an attractive smile, and she moved toward our table.

Tom and I stood.

Mae came over and hugged me. I hugged her back and looked at her and saw a face like that of a Hollywood beauty who was aging but doing it well. In fact, Mae had been an actress, once, a stage actress and then a radio and TV personality of some national prominence, of the Faye Emerson variety-until her first husband (a banker, now deceased) had turned her into a housewife-a housewife with a maid and furs, admittedly, but a housewife. She and Roscoe had met four years ago on a talk show she was doing for a local TV station, in Milwaukee, where they both were living; after her banker husband’s fatal coronary, Mae had gotten back into broadcasting in a small way. Meanwhile, Roscoe swept her off her feet. I’d spent a weekend with them a year ago and, after three years, they still behaved like newlyweds. She was the bright glow in the midst of Roscoe’s currently dark universe; the glow that made that universe worth existing in, despite Roscoe’s publishing “situation.”

I introduced Tom and Mae, and Tom said some gushy but sincere things about Roscoe Kane and Gat Garson.

Mae seemed to have other things on her mind.

“Something’s wrong,” she said. “I was supposed to meet Roscoe in the lobby, at eleven. It’s almost midnight.”

“Didn’t you come down together?”

“No. I had some work to do at the station, and Roscoe wanted to come here a day early, to do some sort of business or other. He took a plane down yesterday; I drove down this evening.”

I gestured for Mae to sit and she reluctantly did. “Nothing to worry about,” I said. “Roscoe just got a little wound up tonight….”

“Wound up as in ‘tight’?” she asked; her eyes looked sad.

“Yeah. He must’ve forgot he was supposed to meet you. He went up to his room half an hour ago.”

She glanced at Tom, wondering if she should get into this with a stranger present; then she said, “He’s been drinking too much, Mal.”

“He always has as long as I’ve known him.”

“Not like this. Did he tell you about the fire?”

“What fire?”

“He drank himself to sleep a few weeks ago. Nothing unusual about that. But I was at work, at the station. He was smoking… he’s supposed to have given that up, doctor’s orders, but when I’m not around to hound him, he’ll have a smoke. He fell asleep with the cigarette in his hand, it dropped to the floor and burned up half the carpet, and if the neighbor hadn’t been walking her dog and seen smoke, the house-not to mention Roscoe-would’ve been incinerated.”

I didn’t know what to say; I just tried to look sympathetic and shocked and concerned, which was no trick, because I was all of those things. But I just didn’t know what you could do to keep a sad proud chronic drinker, whose career was a shambles, from drinking. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I wasn’t sure Roscoe should have that taken away from him. What else did he have?

“I thought I was enough,” Mae said. She had a blank expression, but you could almost see her heart breaking in the watery shimmer of her eyes. “We were so in love. We still are. But we had plans to get his career going again. We had more than just plans. He was writing again. Only these past few months, he’s been drinking more than writing.”

Tom raised his eyebrows in a sideways glance that Mae wasn’t supposed to see; but she did, and picked up on how uncomfortable Tom was hearing all this, and she seemed suddenly embarrassed.

She stood. “Well. Maybe I should just take a room of my own.”

“Whatever for?” I asked.

“Roscoe said he planned to register under a phony name. He likes to mingle with people, with fans, but on his own terms; doesn’t like to have them dropping by his hotel room at all hours. But he went off and neglected to tell me what name he’d be using. The clerk is the night clerk and wasn’t on duty when my husband checked in, so describing him won’t get me a key or a room number.”

“I know his room number. It’s 714. You want me to take you up there?”

She smiled; she really looked lovely. She had the right kind of lines in her face-she was in her forties like Faye Dunaway is in her forties. I felt a little surge of sexual interest in her, which immediately made me feel guilty.

I said, “I’d love to walk you up to your room… your husband’s room.”

She picked up on my nervous slip and her one-sided, wry smile showed she liked compliments as much as her husband.

“Nice meeting you, Mr. Sardini,” she said to Tom, shaking his hand, nodding to him as he half-rose a little clumsily, surprised by the attention. “Excuse my little soap opera theatrics,” she said. “I used to be in show business, you know.” As if that explained it. Which it probably did.

Tom said something polite and I told him to order me another Pabst, I’d be back soon.

We picked up her bags from the bellman in the Congress’ fancy front lobby; I carried them. In the elevator, Mae said, “Did Roscoe tell you about his new publishing deal?”

“No,” I said, surprised he had one. And more surprised that, if so, he hadn’t mentioned it tonight, when he was filibustering on publishers.

“Well, he does. Not much of a deal. A small publishing house wants to do the five Gat Garsons that have never been published in the United States. A man named Gorman is responsible.”

Him again.

“Gorman’s done some important work,” I said, “in getting undeservedly neglected mysteries back in print.” The s.o.b.

“Roscoe was excited about it for a while,” she said, a little puzzled. “But his euphoria was short-lived. It seemed, after the first rush, to depress him even more. It was a little after that that he started really drinking heavily again.”

The elevator doors slid open on seven; the Congress was an old hotel, and, despite frequent remodelings, looked it. We wound around several halls to 714.

I knocked.

No answer.

When I got tired of knocking, and Mae was starting to get a little hysterical, I went downstairs to the desk and came back up with a bellman and a master key. He unlocked the door and left, and Mae and I walked in.

That’s how we came to find Roscoe Kane in the tub, a bottle of Scotch, empty, on the floor nearby, Roscoe himself slumped in the nearly full tub, his arms floating on the surface, his head bobbing up to the top but his nose and eyes still under water, his thin hair spreading out from his head like spider legs.

Mae didn’t scream or faint.

She just dropped to her knees and cried.

I think maybe I cried, too.

Heroes aren’t supposed to get drunk and drown in the bathtub, you know. But mine had.