the shank of the evening, the place was still over three-quarters full, and both barkeeps were sweating as they shoved it out over the stick. The thousand-faceted mirror globe was solemnly revolving, the tinted spotlights sending flecks and dots and streamers of color across the faces of the dancers. Up on the dais, a colored band Imported Direct From Connie’s In Harlem At Great Expense was backing a torcher using body English on ‘Runnin’ Wild.’
The sweating Negro leader tried one of the soaring cornet solos with which Father Dip was challenging King Oliver in the Windy City, and blew nothing but air. Who cared? There was plenty of booze, plenty of money, and the girls had parked their girdles in the ladies’ room so they could do the shimmy and the black bottom and the Charleston with proper abandon.
At just seventeen minutes before two o’clock in the morning, the front door was buzzed open to admit Dashiell Hammett. His gray houndstooth jacket had three buttons and his charcoal slacks had a knife-edge crease. His black wing tips were freshly polished. He leaned slightly on the polished ebony cane in his right hand while telling the blue-chinned bouncer his pleasure.
‘That way for the bar, sir.’
‘Thank you, my good man.’
Hammett spoke with the considered enunciation of one whose condition makes of the term ‘drunkenness’ a non sequitur. His eyes had a slightly glassy, slightly hooded look, like the eyes of a resting hawk. He laid his stick on the bar and placed his freshly blocked and newly banded Wilton beside it.
The bartender wiped his hands on his apron. ‘Yessir, what can I..’
He broke off as a watchful Dom Pronzini, on the customer’s side of the stick, exclaimed, ‘Bless my soul! Mr Hammett! Say, this is swell!’
Hammett nodded to him with careful courtliness.
‘Dom.’ His words were barely slurred at all. ‘I believe I will have a Dunbar’s on the-’
‘For you, it’s on the house, Mr Hammett!’ He gestured up the bartender. ‘Tony. Dunbar’s. Bring the bottle.’
The torcher started ‘Oh Daddy,’ which Ethel Waters had made so famous. She didn’t have the Waters voice or the Waters style, but the half of her that was out of her red-sequined dress apparently made up for it.
Tony brought the drinks. Hammett kept his back to the room.
Pronzini’s heavy face was alight with a grin showing big stained teeth. ‘So, Mr Hammett, you’re back in the sleuthing game. Papa still says you’re the best in the business. He got out two years ago, and he’s… ah… looking forward to running into you again.’
‘Just working for wages in those days, Dom.’ He toasted silently with his glass, then tossed it off. ‘It’s a little different now.’
Pronzini nodded. He leaned closer, so their shoulders touched. ‘You mean that friend of yours. That Atkinson guy. A tough break.’
Without looking at the big Italian, Hammett said in his soft drink-slurred voice, ‘What time was he in that night, Dom?’
‘In here? Here? That night?’ Pronzini reared back as if dismayed. He said humbly, ‘Well, gee, Mr Hammett, I guess he could have been. But you see how busy-’
‘Like the morgue that night, Dom.’
Still hunched over the bar, Hammett poured. It was excellent whiskey.
‘Well, Mr Hammett, even so! I didn’t know the man…’
‘Had a couple of drinks with him, Dom.’ He held up his shot glass as if displaying it. ‘Like us, tonight.’
The jovial Italian’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘I’m not sure I like that, Mr Hammett.’
Hammett looked directly at him for the first time. It was four minutes before two o’clock. His voice was softly suggestive.
‘Who killed him, Dom?’
‘Whew!’ Pronzini shook his head in a dazed way, at the same time raising a hand at the bartender. ‘It ain’t right, Mr Hammett, you coming around trying to jack me off that way. We have one more drink; you’d better leave.’
The bartender stood across the stick from them, his hands on the varnished wood. ‘Yessir, Mr Pronzini?’
‘Mr Hammett wants one for the road, Tony. Take this piss away and bring us a bottle of the real stuff. The real stuff. Okay?’
‘Yessir, Mr Pron-’
‘No thanks, Dom.’ Hammett had stepped back a pace from the bar. His pose matched that of the bartender’s, with his right hand a bare inch from the heavy ebony walking stick.
‘Tony,’ said Pronzini in a flat voice.
Tony’s hand was six inches away from the bottle of Dunbar’s when Hammett moved. No drunk ever moved that fast. His stick smashed down on Tony’s hand. Tony screamed and tried to jerk the shattered hand away. Hammett put his weight on the stick, grinding it down against the trapped hand.
‘No Mickeys, Dom. No back room. Not me.’ He lifted the stick and pointed it toward the blue-chinned bouncer, who was reaching under his left arm. ‘No guns, Dom. Or I smash your skull while he’s getting it out.’
Pronzini waved off the bouncer. The bartender had crashed backwards against the bottles, clutching his pulped hand. Pronzini swiveled his heavy head past the suddenly silent, staring patrons toward the equally silent band.
‘Play, you goddamn boogies!’ he yelled.
The piano player started a fast riff of ‘Cemetery Blues.’ The drummer and brass caught in raggedly. They settled in behind the vocalist’s body English.
‘Enjoy yourself, folks!’ Pronzini boomed. ‘Just a little joke.’
Faces turned, dulling as curiosity left them. Bodies began swaying to the beat. Somebody laughed. Somebody dropped a glass. On the floor, somebody started dancing. Pronzini turned back to Hammett, his face dangerously suffused with blood.
‘How do you think you’re getting out of here, wise guy?’
‘Not feet-first like Vic, that’s a pipe.’ His smile touched only the muscles around his mouth. ‘I was outside, in the alley, when they carried him out, Dom. His head looked like a pumpkin.’
‘Yeah,’ said Pronzini softly but explosively.
A second bouncer had come from the rear door behind the partition in the drapes. Pronzini looked at Hammett from eyes ugly with triumph. It was a dozen seconds before two o’clock.
‘You’re going out the back way with me, Hammett, and then-’
The front door came off its hinges with a tearing sound to smash into kindling against the blue-chinned bouncer’s back. He hit the floor nose-first, his scalp spraying blood. A woman screamed like a broken calliope pipe.
A massive baldheaded Chinese ran lightly over the fallen gorilla. He wore soft slippers and gray canvas trousers and no shirt. His immense naked torso was splattered with the downed bouncer’s blood. In his right hand waved and glittered a lather’s hatchet sharpened to a razor’s edge. His eyes were wild; a high keening noise came from between his foam-flecked lips.
He skittered to a stop in the center of the dance floor, as the people jostled back with terror-filled faces. Hammett thought he was doing a beautiful job. His hatchet arced deadly patterns in the air.
But with a muttered curse, the remaining bouncer woke up. His hands darted for his gun. As it did, two more massive highbinders appeared on silent slippered feet from the split in the drapery through which he had come himself. They wore loose cotton shirts sashed at the waist over canvas trousers.
As his gun cleared its holster, they engulfed him from behind. The bouncer hit the floor like a dropped sack of grain, bleeding but alive. The front door belched four more binders. Two cradled tommy guns.
Pandemonium greeted the choppers. Pronzini’s hand was frozen halfway under his jacket. The Chinese took positions against the walls. The band was playing ‘Alabamy Bound’ as if there were no tomorrow. The uncrippled bartender kept his hands spread wide on the bar in an attempt to deny ownership of them. The man Hammett had maimed was out cold.
Only Hammett had not turned as the Orientals burst in. He poured a fresh drink from the bottle he hadn’t let Tony take away. He spoke to Pronzini without looking at him.
