real felons like Egan Tokzek anymore. Only about fictional ones like Felix Weber.
And nothing Vic Atkinson or anyone else could do was going to change that.
7
‘This burg is full of rotgut whiskey,’ said Vic Atkinson.
The cabbie pulled up in front of darkened Pier Fourteen with a shrug. ‘Nobody makes you drink it.’
‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
Atkinson stood on rubbery legs beside the Yellow’s open window, muttering to himself as he handed over a single and waved away the change.
‘There any action around here, cabbie? Girls? Booze? A little game-’
‘This here’s a Yellow, mister, not a White Top.’
Atkinson peered blearily after the retreating taillight. A few feet away, below the edge of the heavy timber dock, dark water lapped around iron-bound pilings. He could smell clean salt air. Beyond the dark blot of Goat Island were the scattered pinpricks marking Point Richmond. It was well after midnight and such a still night he could hear the purl of water against the prow of a brightly lit late boat nosing into the Ferry Building slips from Oakland.
Pronzini. That was the word he’d picked up at the Chapeau Rouge on Powell and Francisco. Somewhere here at the foot of Mission Street was supposed to be a speakie run by Dom Pronzini, who had a lock on the illicit booze making its way down from British Columbia.
He crossed The Embarcadero to the cigar store next to the Hotel Commodore. His steps became exaggerated, his eyelids fractionally drooped, a button of his shirt had come open. His shoulder struck the door frame, so he had to grab the edge of the glass countertop to keep from falling on the floor.
‘Gimme some Van Camps.’
‘“A taste of its own,”’ quoted the clench-faced old man getting out the cigars.
‘Like my boots.’ He lit up, blew smoke across the counter, and leaned close. ‘’M in from Seattle, lookin’ for a little drinkie.’
‘’Gainst the law, mister.’
‘So’s spitting on the sidewalk.’
The old man gave a long-suffering sigh.
‘Next block over, Steuart Street. One thirteen. Back side of the d’Audiffred Building on the corner. Only building left standing on this side of East Street during-’
‘Pay phone,’ said Atkinson to stem the spate of words.
‘Down to the Army-Navy YMCA.’
Atkinson paused in the doorway. ‘Who sent me?’
‘It’s Maxie this week.’
The Army-Navy YMCA a short block away was a square gray granite building, eight stories high. Atkinson entered the ornate high-ceilinged lobby, his heavy workman boots slapping echoes from the terrazzo floor. A pimple-faced youth behind the registration desk pointed out the pay phone.
It rang a great many times before a girl’s sleep-tousled voice answered.
‘I want to talk with Dashiell Hammett,’ said Atkinson.
‘You’ — she broke it with a huge yawn — ‘you know… what time it…’
Atkinson put on his tough voice to growl around his cigar, ‘Hammett, sister. It’s important.’
Hammett’s voice was short and irritated.
‘Yeah?’
‘Dash!’ he exclaimed loudly. ‘How are you this bee-oo-tee-ful morning?’
‘Christ, I might have known. You bastard, I’m writing.’
‘And I’m walking the midnight streets, alone, drinking in cheap gin mills, alone, ogling pretty girls, alo-’
‘Goddammit, Vic, I’m writing!’
‘I’m at…’ He paused to read off the phone number in the dim light, wondering for the first time whether maybe he wasn’t a little bit drunk, after all. DAvenport seven-seven-eight-nine, and…’ He got his mouth close to the receiver. ‘I’m in danger, Dash! Strange men…’
‘I hope they beat your goddamn head in!’
Atkinson rubbed his ringing ear thoughtfully, twitched his nose, wiggled his eyebrows, and checked his railroad watch. Going on one. He decided maybe it was a little thick, at that.
One thirteen Steuart Street was a bare white wooden door without any lettering on it, not even a knob. But when Atkinson pushed, it opened inward to a flight of wide stairs going straight back. He reached the second floor winded. Too damn many cheap cigars. A hallway took him back toward The Embarcadero; he checked each door for a peep-slot.
Two-thirds of the way along the hall he thumped a fist on a heavy hardwood panel that turned out to be sheet steel. After a moment the peep-slot slid open and an eye gleamed at him.
‘You’ll wake the baby.’
‘Maxie sent me over with the kid’s milk.’ Atkinson laid a five-dollar bill, folded longways, on the edge of the slot.
It disappeared. The door was opened by a man in a dark suit and shirt with a wide white tie. He was a head shorter than Atkinson, but fully as wide. He had dirty fingernails. He gestured.
‘Sorry, bo. House rules.’
‘You got a chill off?’ sneered Atkinson.
But he stood patiently for the frisk. It was for show, to impress high-rollers from uptown out for a night of slumming; it wouldn’t have turned up anything smaller than a cannon.
‘Through the door, bo,’ said the bouncer.
Atkinson stuffed the cigar back into his face and sauntered away. As his fingers touched the knob, the door opened with a short angry buzz. Interesting. If… Yeah. Three feet beyond it, a second door. Yep, hinges on the opposite side. Buzzed through. And beyond that the third, hinges again reversed.
No scrubbed-out stains, no scars in the wood. Again, just for show.
The third door admitted him to a blast of light and noise, and to a carbon copy of the man on the outside, except his chin was a little bluer and his fingernails a little cleaner. Or maybe it was just that the light was better.
‘Welcome to Dom’s Dump.’ His grin was as manufactured as his Brooklyn accent.
Atkinson jerked his thumb at the three-door arrangement. ‘I thought Big Al had a lock on those.’
‘Where’d you say you was from?’
‘I didn’t.’
Atkinson sauntered on. Dom’s Dump was a huge echoing high-ceilinged place with heavy plum curtains around all the walls to mask the windows and sop up the noise. The ornate hardwood bar ran the length of the right-hand wall; it had retained its old-fashioned brass rail, but the spittoons were gone. Too many ladies came to the speakies these days. The center of the room was open, the hardwood floor waxed but well-scuffed, ready for dancers. Tables were crowded around the dance floor, and the long wall across from the bar was lined with dark- varnished wooden booths with high backs.
Atkinson put his back to the bar. He hooked his elbows over it, and one heel over the brass rail. He puffed blue smoke. Few people here this time of night on a Tuesday. Thursday through Monday would be their big play. Suspended over the dance floor was a giant ball covered with hundreds of bits of mirror. It was motionless, but on busy nights it would revolve and the colored spots trained on it from the corners of the high ceiling would cast shifting patterns of light and color across the dancers.
‘What’ll it be, sir?’ Atkinson looked back over his shoulder at the barkeep.
‘Antiquary, if it wasn’t cooked up this morning.’
Midforties. Black curly hair shot with gray, a pasta figure under his white apron. Too old by fifteen years for Pronzini, and he didn’t have the Capone air they all cultivated these days. The eternal hired hand.
‘Here you are, sir.’
