Slumming?’
‘Acting as chairman. He showed up unexpectedly, and they-’
Hammett slapped his hands together and crowed, ‘They form a committee to clean up San Francisco, and as chairman they take the man who’s been running it as an open town for sixteen years.’ He lit a cigarette, and feathered smoke through distended nostrils. ‘He’ll hamstring you, son.’
‘Maybe. But I was damned careful to get that personal secretary of his, Owen Lynch, to spell out what I was being hired to do — which I’ll grant you ain’t exactly a moral crusade. Atkinson Investigations is to probe alleged graft within the police department. Period. But within that framework, no limitations. Lynch is damned enthusiastic.’
Hammett was thoughtful. ‘Your charter makes sense.’
‘Yeah. And McKenna suggested my closing report go to the grand jury, not just the committee. In case there might be criminal indictments.’
Hammett paced the narrow littered room with quick, light strides as if it were a cage. When he wasn’t drinking, like now, he found the litter distasteful.
‘Too damned much sense to be coming from McKenna.’
‘You don’t really think he’s behind the police department corruption, do you, Dash?’
‘“Plain Bren McKenna from the Mission,”’ mused Hammett. ‘That’s what he called himself when he ran against “Pinhead” McCarthy in 1913. He makes five hundred a month as mayor, and must spend twice that a month on hootch and harlots in that Caucasian geisha house he maintains for visiting politicos out on Sanchez and Twentieth. I guess it’s worth it to him to wear Eskimo parkas and Indian feather bonnets and motormen’s caps. Corrupt?’ He shook his head. ‘But when it comes to actually running this burg — to handling or delegating power — he can’t find his backside with both hands. If you want to know who’s behind police corruption in San Francisco, just look a block out Kearny Street from the Hall of Justice.’
‘Mulligan Bros Bailbonds. But how the hell do you prove it?’
Hammett chuckled. ‘I met old Farrell Mulligan a couple of times before he died.’ His voice took on a nasal quality and a brogue. ‘“Son, when they crap in this town, they wipe with Mulligan paper.” Which isn’t much in the way of proof. When he went, his kid brother Griff took over. Now I hear that Griff just counts the take while Farrell’s pup Boyd does the heavy work.’
‘Well, I ain’t got a mandate to go after the Mulligans. Vice, gambling, and the rackets only as they relate to police department graft. All I gotta do is find somebody who’ll sing. Somebody like Molly who-’
‘Yeah, look how she cooperated.’
Atkinson grinned sourly. ‘Preacher Laverty and Lynch believe the committee’s already put the fear of God into the mayor and the DA and the police. Molly may not be singing yet, but they sure closed her up
…’
‘Vic, the only reason there was a raid at all is that three high school kids went there to celebrate somebody’s sixteenth birthday. If the ma of one of them hadn’t heard them setting it up by phone, and if her husband hadn’t happened to know the DA personally, Brady wouldn’t have pushed the cops into making a raid.’
‘This ain’t ever gonna make the papers, but the mother who overheard the kids on the phone was Evelyn Brewster.’
‘The shipping Brewsters?’
‘That’s her. And she’s the prime mover on the reform committee.’
Hammett sat down on the bed again, chuckling. ‘No wonder McKenna showed up at that meeting last night. I’ll bet old lady Brewster’s the one who pushed Brady into arraigning Molly and all her girls — even that Chinese maid — in municipal court yesterday.’
‘Yeah. Goddammit.’ Atkinson slammed a suddenly angry fist on the arm of his chair, hard enough so an inch of grey ash rolled down the front of his shirt. ‘They came down on Molly at just the wrong goddamn time. If I could have kept working on her-’
‘You mean you can’t anymore?’
‘Don’t you ever read them newspapers you carry around? Neither Molly nor the maid showed up for their arraignment.’ He brightened. ‘Maybe I can work a deal with Epstein, her attorney, to get at Molly. She talks to me instead of the DA-’
‘If Molly was your client, would you turn her up? With the Mulligans owning half the cops in town as a private police force?’
‘I’d furnish her protection,’ said Atkinson airily.
‘Sure you would.’
The big man was on his feet. ‘Anyway, my people will be in from LA the first of the week. I ain’t much of a detective if I can’t turn up Molly before then. I told the reform committee I was going back down south today, but I think I’ll stick around for a day and try to dig her out. Maybe make a round of the speaks tonight, see what I can get on which cops are being paid off. Want a pub-crawl?’
‘I said to count me out, Vic.’
Hammett brushed Vic’s cigar ash off the frayed tasseling of the venerable Coxwell he had inherited with the apartment, and sat down. He had a whole night at the typewriter ahead of him. He stood up again, went to stare out between dingy lace curtains at the stucco fascia across Post Street.
Dammit, Vic was going at it all wrong. Advertising his presence by going around to the speaks when he should be waiting until he had taps on the Mulligan Bros phones, and on the bookie joints, speaks and taxi houses with the solidest protection. Because the better the protection, the closer to the pipeline through which money moved up and favors moved down…
Hell with that. He hadn’t even checked the mail he’d grabbed off the hall table on the first floor. He ought to be getting the check from Cap Shaw for those two stories…
Hammett felt the blood rush to his face. He was staring down, not at a check, but at a 9 X 12 manila envelope from Black Mask that could only contain his Continental Op stories. Rejected. He sat down on the wooden chair he used as a typing chair, and held the stories loosely in his lap.
Rejected! The goddamn magazine hadn’t rejected anything of his in four years, not since…
Phrases jumped out at him from the cover letter: not up to usual standard… Op says in ‘The Gutting of Couffignal’ that he’s a detective because he enjoys the work… not sure you enjoyed writing… stories… much as you looked forward to cashing check…
He wanted to be sore. He wanted to boil with rage, tear up the letter, go off on a toot. But…
But goddammit, Cap was right. He was on his feet again, pacing again, still holding the manuscripts in his hand. Finally he dropped them aside, unnoticed. Hell, admit it, Hammett: You wrote them only because you were worried about the landlord. You used the Op as a meal ticket, and he deserved better.
He stopped dead in his tracks at the typing table. There was another envelope he hadn’t seen. From Alfred A. Knopf, the New York publisher who would be doing his first book in February. Just telling him when he could expect the Red Harvest galley proofs? He picked it up and gutted it with a hooked forefinger that tremored slightly.
But it was from Harry Bloch. About The Dain Curse, which Black Mask would be running as four separate novelettes in a few months. Harry was… God, was enthusiastic!
Biggest problem Harry and Mrs Knopf saw was Gabrielle’s slight physical deformities, which surprised Hammett. Didn’t she need them to explain her mental kinks? Also, he wanted her to be slightly… what? Distasteful at first, so the reader could be lured into sympathy with her, a step at a time, almost against his will.
Also, Harry saw the story as overly episodic for novel form, but hell, Hammett knew that.
He was pacing again. Felix Weber and his damned Primrose Hotel, that was the trouble. Felix had to go. But who — or what — would replace him, fill his function in the story? Hey! Translate him into someone entirely new, maybe. An ex-con like Tokzek wasn’t essential to
…
He stopped in the middle of the little room to burst out laughing. Not Egan Tokzek! Felix Weber. Why had the rapist shot dead by Preacher Laverty leaped to mind when he was thinking of the fictional Weber? Was Tokzek maybe an ex-con Hammett had helped send up? Why did that name have a tantalizing familiarity?
Rumrunner, according to This Reporter on the Chronicle. Suggest that Vic find out which bootlegger he’d been running rum for, lean on the ’legger a bit? But why, exactly? Tokzek had nothing to do with..
Hammett grimaced angrily. He didn’t want to dig out connections, form hypotheses, remember details about
