Goodie sighed and leaned back against the cracked leather seat of the Number 15 streetcar they’d caught at Kearny and Broadway. ‘You invited me along tonight only because you wanted to find that Fingers LeGrand without him knowing you were looking for him, didn’t you?’
They rattled by the Washington Street intersection where lights burned in the windows of Mulligan Bros Bailbonds. Behind that window a pair of crude Irish power-brokers had planned to grab control of a city — and had succeeded. Where had they learned the subtlety — and gotten the original necessary cash — to play the power game?
To hell with it. For tonight, anyway. He looked down at the golden-haired girl beside him. What he wanted to do was go home and make love to her. The trouble was that he couldn’t. It would be like breaking the wing of a songbird.
‘What about that man with the funny monicker?’
‘ Monicker? You had better quit hanging around with me. Dead Rabbit Lonergan. Way back before the Civil War there was a gang of street toughs who ran the bloody old Fifth Ward in East Lower Manhattan and called themselves the Dead Rabbit gang. Claimed to be dead game for anything. Lonergan’s the bimbo set me up last night.’
‘How can you be sure?’ she demanded, wide-eyed.
‘Fingers never uses last names at his poker games — few professional gamblers do…’
He broke off as they went out the folding doors to the deserted financial district corner. Hammett watched the double-nose car clack away, then turned back to Goodie.
‘During a break in the play, Fingers mentioned my last name. Immediately Lonergan made an excuse to get to the phone. To call a girlfriend in South San Francisco, he said. But the phone company records don’t show any toll calls from Fingers’ number last night.’
‘And on that you assume-’
‘Men have been hanged on less, sweetheart.’
His eyes were caught by the Sutter Hotel, spilling bright light from its ornate lobby across the street. He’d put the hotel in the novel about Sam Spade and the blackbird, the script lying at home in a drawer in rough draft. A block away, on the corner of Montgomery, was the Hunter-Dulin Building where he had put Spade’s office.
What the hell was he doing back in the detective business? If he couldn’t make love to Goodie, at least he could be writing. He longed for one of his all-night sessions with the typewriter. A session in the fictional San Francisco of fog-bound streets and hard-minded victorious heroes, where he could control the blood and manipulate the men. He had The Dain Curse to revise, now that he’d figured out the way to go with that book, and in The Maltese Falcon he had a chance to do something that nobody else had ever done before.
But it wasn’t to be. Not right now. Because in the real San Francisco men were for sale and his friend had gone to his death with a pulped skull and loosened bowels. The friend whose call he hadn’t answered. So Hammett owed him.
As Goodie’s door shut, Hammett leaned on the wall beside his own and very gently drifted it open with his fingertips. Dim light came up the interior hallway from the living room. He’d left the room in darkness.
Dammit, he hadn’t expected things to happen this fast after the attempted jacking-out last night. He wasn’t packing anything more lethal than a penknife. Get to the kitchen for a butcher knife. Best bet.
Hammett eased down the hall to flatten himself beside the open doorway to the living room. He edged an eye around the frame. He stiffened, then gave a snort of disgust and walked into the room.
‘I may as well live in the Pickwick Stage Depot,’ he said.
Short dumpy Jimmy Wright, sprawled in Hammett’s sagging overstuffed Coxwell, slid a forefinger between the pages of one of Hammett’s Black Masks. ‘You’ve got a lousy lock.’ He raised the magazine slightly. ‘This is good stuff, Dash. I ought to sue.’
‘Which one is it?’
The op leafed back to the title. ‘“Dynamite.”’
‘Yeah, that’ll be part of a novel titled Red Harvest in January.’
‘This is supposed to be Butte, Montana, ain’t it?’
‘That and Boulder and Anaconda.’ He sat down on the unmade bed and leaned back on his elbows. ‘You get anything on Vic?’
‘The cops turned up the cabby who took him from the Chapeau Rouge. Dropped him at Pier Fourteen. So I nosed around at the foot of Mission like you told me. Old gent in the Johnson and Larsen Cigar Store next to the Hotel Commodore steered a guy answering Vic’s description over to Dom Pronzini’s speak a block away on Steuart Street. Even gave Vic the password.’
‘The cops get any of this?’
‘Who the hell ever talks to cops?’
Hammett took a turn around the room. ‘Dom Pronzini. Old Rinaldo’s pup — I sent the old man up to Q on a five-to-twenty back in twenty-one. I hear chat Dom brings in most of the real Canadian from the rum fleet these days.’
‘Through Bolinas and Sausalito,’ the dumpy little detective nodded sleepily. ‘He’s giving the boys down in Half Moon Bay a run for it.’
Hammett stopped pacing. Sure! Goddammit, the connection he’d almost made in Marin County snapped together in his mind.
‘That rapist the Preacher shot out by Golden Gate Park — Egan Tokzek. Wasn’t he a runner for Pronzini?’
‘If you can believe the reporter from the Chronicle.’
‘How’s your stock down at Pinkerton’s these days?’
‘They don’t spit on the floor when my name comes up.’
‘All right. See can you find out if they’ve got anything in their files on Tokzek.’ He was frowning, tugging his mustache in thought. He jerked his shoulders in an odd little shrug. ‘See if he had a sister, too. We’re starting to move on this.’
Lonergan’s Garage at 639 Turk Street was a one-story brick building with a false front. A sign hung on the post between the big double doors: ATTENDANT WILL BE BACK IN 20 MINUTES.
Hammett nodded approvingly at the lock on the double door, and took from his pocket a flat strap of steel six inches long and slightly angled and tapered at one end. Inserting this between door and frame, he applied steady leverage. There was a muted crack.
The dim interior was heavy with petroleum smells. A tow truck was backed up against the wall beyond the vast well leading down to the basement parking area. Hammett leaned over the unshielded edge to stare into the gloom. A concrete ramp led down to a concrete floor a good twenty feet below. It would do.
The littered little office had double windows painted black to well above head-level. Backed against that same wall was a man-high black safe with a big brass handle and a brass dial.
Hammett spun the dial idly. Give him a couple of hours and he could strip the side off her, but none of her secrets would be valuable to him. Lonergan was too far down the ladder to have more than a name or two. He’d settle for that. Or even for a phone number.
He sat down behind the desk and put his feet up and waited. The desk was butted up against the partition between the office and the garage floor, so he could see out into the main area through the waist-level window. The clock over the window said midnight had passed. Clipboards of work orders, aged by greasy fingers to a blackish brown, decorated the doorpost.
Five minutes later, headlights arced across the ceiling. Hammett’s eyes brightened, but he did not change position. The lock on the overhead doors rattled on its chain, then the doors creaked up to shoot hot light across the grease-stained concrete. A tow truck, towing nothing, was driven past the office window and stopped with its motor thrumming and the cab out of Hammett’s sight.
Dead Rabbit Lonergan sprang suddenly into the doorway, crouched like an ape, a tire iron swinging loosely in one hand. When Hammett made no move, Lonergan came slowly erect. A huge grin split his face when he saw who was there.
‘On your feet, bimbo. The boys are gonna be glad to get another crack at you. Fast, before I smash both your shoulders with this.’
‘I don’t carry a gun,’ said Hammett mildly as he was patted down by the big Irishman. He kept his arms wide
