only fifteen, but was already much more than a maid to Molly. She was confidante, even adviser. It was Crystal who had suggested taking off the police graft as a business expense. It had been a swell idea until that stupid bastard with Internal Revenue had made the joke about it at the Rotary luncheon.
‘All right, gents, what were you asking her?’
‘How to cure a ten-year-old dog,’ said Atkinson.
‘What’d she tell you?’
‘To pee in a shallow dish and dip my thing in it before it got cold. Three times a day for a week.’
Molly threw back her head and laughed, a full-bodied laugh that engaged her whole frankly voluptuous body. ‘If you really tried to cure a dose that way, you’d be in trouble.’
Crystal returned with a big German mug with a hinged pewter lid. She set it on the red lacquer telephone stand at Molly’s elbow. Molly drank deeply.
‘ I’m not in trouble,’ the bull-like one told her. ‘ You are.’
Molly wiped away her foam mustache and waited until Crystal had departed.
‘You’d better drift, boys, before I use the telephone.’
‘That’s what we’re interested in, Molly. I’m Victor Atkinson, this is my associate Dashiell Hammett. We want to know just who you do call when you get into trouble. Also, who you pay…’
Molly laughed again. ‘You must be out of your mind.’
‘Not really.’ Hammett spoke for the first time. ‘The DA’s got you where your pants hang loose.’
Molly allowed herself a slight sneer. ‘Keeping a Disorderly House?’ She shook her head. ‘C’mon, boys, what’s that even if he could make it stick? A fine and-’
‘How about Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor?’ said Hammett. ‘Three felony counts?’
Contributing. Jesus! That carried a heavy jolt! Molly buried her nose in her tankard again, then said, ‘One of those kids, I knew his goddamn grand father, can you believe that? I was just a kid myself then, in the old Parisian Mansion on Commercial Street…’
‘Quit stalling, Molly.’ Atkinson loomed over her chair. ‘We need some names. Who do you juice in the police department? How are the payoffs made? You play ball with us, Molly, and-’
‘Sorry, boys. Like I told you, we’re closed today.’
‘We’ll be around,’ said Atkinson. Hammett followed him to the door, then paused and tipped his hat.
‘Charmed,’ said the lean writer.
The door had barely closed behind them when the phone rang. She swung open the phone stand and removed the receiver from the hooks. ‘This is Molly.’
‘This is your old sweetheart,’ said Boyd Mulligan’s nasal tones.
‘Yeah? Which one?’
‘How many sweethearts you got, for Chrissake?’
‘Oh, Boyd darling. I haven’t heard your voice in so long I didn’t recognize it.’
After she had opened the house five years before, Boyd Mulligan had been around twice a week to get a piece of Molly as well as of the action. He was a mean son of a bitch with a woman, so she’d been happy when he’d finally started just sending a messenger for the Mulligan Bros Bailbond Company share.
‘I’ve been busy, but I’ve been keeping tabs on you just the same. Tommy Dunne called to say a gumshoes out of LA named Victor Atkinson was around to your place.’
‘I was just going to call you about that.’
‘What did they want?’
‘Names. Figures…’
‘Just what I thought.’ There were vicious undertones in the nasal voice. ‘I’ve been sitting here thinking, what if Molly decides to spill her guts to these birds? What if they promise she can cop a plea or get immunity if she does? What if-’
‘Don’t lean on me, Boydie-babyl’ she snapped. ‘I’ve had Chicago amnesia in the past, and will again if it comes to that. But don’t lean on me.’
‘Aw, look, sweetheart, I didn’t mean it that way. I tell you what, tomorrow morning you go see Brass Mouth Epstein. Tell him we’re picking up his fee and that we don’t want you to be tried for Contributing. How he gets you off is his concern.’
‘What if he says disappear?’
‘Then disappear — only make sure we know where you are. And I’ll tell you what: If you have to dump that thousand bucks bail you put up Friday night, we’ll swallow it.’
She found warmth for her voice. ‘What can I say except thanks?’
‘As long as that’s all you say, sweetheart.’ He gave his nasal chuckle. ‘You let me know what Epstein says tomorrow, okay? I’ll be at the shop.’
After she’d hung up, Molly sat staring at the thick Oriental carpet. Why was Mulligan paying for Phineas Epstein as her attorney? He would cost plenty and was dead straight besides. He was at no man’s command. That meant DA Matt Brady did plan to forget his friends and go for Contributing. Fifteen goddamn years, maybe — while on the strength of it Brady leapfrogged into the mayor’s seat.
Crystal came into the room lugging her cardboard suitcase. It looked heavy. She had on street clothes and a coat.
‘Hey! Where the hell are you-’
‘I must leave now, Miss Farr.’
‘Those detectives? They can’t-’
‘Not them.’ Despair glinted in the tilted eyes. ‘Just…’
‘For God’s sake, kid, what is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I have seen my death.’ She moved a hand to indicate her newspaper, crumpled open to the news page.
‘Is it the trouble from back east?’
‘Yes.’
Molly wished she knew what the trouble back east really was. ‘Here? In San Francisco?’
The girl did not respond.
‘Okay, kid,’ said Molly, ‘tomorrow you go see Brass Mouth Epstein with me. If he tells you to disappear, we’ll drop out of sight together where nobody’ll find us. Now, you go in and pack Molly’s things like a good girl, just in case.’
Crystal hesitated, then disappeared to the rear of the apartment with her cheap cardboard suitcase and a fatalistic shrug.
Molly paced up and down. Hell, she was in as much trouble as her goddamn maid. She knew where the goddamn bodies were buried. If some of them were dug up because of her arrest, the Mulligans would want another in their place.
Hers.
6
Hammett entered his apartment carrying the Tuesday morning Chronicle, his meager mail, and a long loaf of French bread. At the far end of the hall he gave the loaf a left-handed toss around the doorframe into the tiny kitchen. He stopped dead at sight of the massive figure sprawled in the living room’s only upholstered chair.
‘You’ve got a lousy lock, Hammett.’ Atkinson made bluish swirls of smoke with his stogie. ‘Ought to get a rim latch with a dead bolt. I blew this one open with a breath.’
Hammett dropped his newspaper and mail on the unmade wall bed and sat down.
‘It’s not your breath, it’s those goddamn cigars.’
Atkinson lit another of the nickel monstrosities from the ruins of the old. ‘You thought over my proposition any more since we had all that good clean fun shoving Molly around the other day?’
‘Still not interested. How’d it go with the reform committee last night?’
‘I’m hired. Given the green light by His Honor personally.’
Hammett’s voice showed surprise. ‘Brendan Brian McKenna himself? What the hell was he doing there?
