know he’d do that. There had to be some desperation…’ He interrupted himself. ‘Who do you pay off in the cops?’
She hesitated. ‘Hammett, you aren’t stringing me along, are you? If you rat to the DA or-’
‘You’re safe with me, Molly.’
‘Where’d I hear that before?’
‘The rumble seat on your first date.’
‘Screw you. Okay.’ She grimaced. ‘The man on the beat, the sergeant and lieutenant at Bush Street station. They might give the captain a cut, but he’s never been around with his hand out. You have to realize that the patrolman is usually more important than the brass in a payoff setup.’
Hammett lit a cigarette, nodding, expelling smoke with the words, ‘Sure. But there’s nothing there, Molly. Nothing worth a man’s life. Now, if someone thought you’d been willing to talk to Vic about some of the things you and your girls hear from customers who are on the inside in San Francisco-’
‘I never would, and they know it. That would be worth my life.’ She dismissed it with a shrug. ‘Jesus, am I getting high!’
‘We may as well kill the bottle before it spoils.’
They drained it equally between the two glasses, taking exaggerated care not to spill a drop. Hammett sighed.
‘So it doesn’t have anything to do with you, Molly. Then who? And why?’
‘You said the police think it was a mob killing. Are you sure they aren’t right?’
He drained his glass. ‘You too? Why does everyone have the mob on the brain?’
‘It’s that damned Crystal. She told me once she was on the run from somebody in the mob in Chicago.’ Her eyes and voice brooded. ‘Never told me who or why. But that Sunday you were there, she saw something on the front page of the newspaper that made her pack up and want to leave. Good kid, ’at Crystal. Been with me a y’r.’ She had begun slurring words.
‘Sure,’ said Hammett blearily. ‘First Chinese saint onna Cath’lic calendar.’
‘Screw you! I doubt you ever spent a whole hell o’ lotta time helping out WCTUers ’cross th’ street. Tell ya, offered Crystal chance to be one of a’ girls, work th’ schoolgirl lay — you know, school uniform, she can pass for ten, twelve, drive the ’ole goats wil’. But
…’ Her hand got up to her face just too late to intercept a ringing belch. ‘But she jus’ wanna be maid! Bright kid. Talks like college grad-you-ate.’ She added sadly, ‘Booze all gone.’
‘Lissen, gotta talk to ’er,’ said Hammett. ‘P’rade ’er out. Gotta ask ’er ’bout a fat, bad woman near Bolinas who-’
‘But Crys’al isn’t here.’ Tears came to Molly’s eyes. ‘Monday mornin’, Brass Mouth, he tol’ her not come with Molly.’
That struck Hammett as strange, even as he realized that Molly was crying. Crying over li’l lost Crystal. Or over empty bottle. He went around the table so he could put a comforting arm around her shoulder. A nice warm shoulder.
‘Hammett will find ’er. Hammett, th’ eye that never closes, th’ ear without wax, th’ nose that never drips…’
Molly leaned her head back against his hip. He bent and kissed her. His tongue touched a salt tear that had run down to the corner of her mouth. It was a nice mouth. He left it to get his overcoat from the sofa. He took his hand triumphantly out of the coat pocket. The hand had another bottle in it.
After that, things got hazy. He remembered trying to get back into some items of clothing so they could troop up to the main house for some bright city lights. And he remembered them raising their voices in glorious song together.
City girls use Kotex,
Country girls use rags.
But LuLu is the only girl
Who uses burlap bags.
Or was that after they’d trooped up to the main house?
‘It serves you right,’ said Goodie cruelly.
‘Please.’ Hammett’s voice was broken.
‘They’ll never invite us back again, or…’
‘Tell me about it tomorrow.’
‘It is tomorrow.’
Hammett staggered across to the railing and peered wisely out over the water, crinkling his eyes in the far- seeing way of old salts. He could see seven, perhaps eight inches into the roiling fog.
‘How d’you know it’s tomorrow?’ he demanded triumphantly when Goodie materialized beside him.
‘I have to go to work in just a few hours.’
Antiphonal, he thought. Like the two sides of the church choir singing at each other during the Holy Week services at St Nicholas Church down the road from his granddaddy’s tobacco farm. How about them apples, kid? Antiphonal, and drunk besides. They’d sung ’em in Latin.
‘Why don’t you talk in Latin?’ he suggested. ‘Very softly.’
‘Who was that terrible woman? That… that song. And when she got up on the piano in the drawing room and started to shimmy-’
‘I don’t remember that.’
‘Do you remember what went on in that cozy little cottage of hers?’
‘I detected.’
‘Mr Biltmore was very upset. He offered to take me to lunch next week to make up for-’
‘At Jack’s, I’m sure.’ Hammett felt a little stomach upset coming on. They never should have started that second bottle. Rather, he thought sagely, they shouldn’t have finished that second bottle.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she demanded stiffly.
‘Private rooms with beds upstairs above Jack’s.’
‘Sam, that’s a rotten thing to say!’
‘I feel rotten.’
The ferry lurched, then wallowed in a trough of wave. Goodie took his arm. Hammett’s stomach lurched.
‘Better let go of my arm, Goodie.’
‘Well!’ Goodie exclaimed. ‘I never…’
‘Something my sainted mother once told me. Never stand downwind of somebody who’s… about to be… sick…’
21
Brass Mouth Epstein, ferret-face mobile with delight, reached across the desk to shake the lean detective’s hand. Bright morning sunlight streaming through the blinds danced dust motes in the air and made the Persian carpet seem alive. He said maliciously, ‘Drop around to give me a message from Molly?’
‘She said you were a kike son of a bitch and a pickle-nose Jew bastard.’ Hammett’s hours in a Turkish bath had pushed color into his face.
Epstein chuckled. ‘You damn near convince me you did see her.’
Hammett leaned forward to drop his match onto the smoking stand ashtray.
‘Bingo sends his regards, too.’
The laughter faded from Epstein’s face. ‘Bingo who?’
‘Bingo Biltmore. Arf, arf.’ Hammett’s eyes sparkled; he was enjoying himself.
‘I’ll be a son of a bitch,’ said the dapper little attorney. ‘I’ll even be a kike son of a bitch.’ He got to his feet and began pacing the carpet between the desk and the window. ‘You mind telling me how you did it?’
His horse-faced secretary stuck her head in the door. ‘You’re due in Judge Conlan’s courtroom in half an hour.’
