‘Then what did Atkinson intend to do?’
Jimmy Wright had been mistaken. Get Dalton W. Brewster on your side, and you had his wife no matter how much noise she made ahead of time.
‘When you hire a detective, you hire a bloodhound. He uncovers facts and leaves evaluations to the people who hire him.’
‘I find that unacceptable.’
Dr Gardner Shuman, opening his campaign of opposition. Jimmy had warned Hammett that Shuman was the Mulligans’ man, body and soul. He was a bald, stout, middle-aged man sitting next to the mayor.
‘You aren’t hiring my views, you’re hiring my expertise.’ Hammett added, with an indifference that lent it strength, ‘You hired Vic Atkinson, and I was a better detective than Vic ever thought of being.’
‘Why aren’t you a detective now?’
‘I retired. Voluntarily.’
Shuman was hurting him; he could see it in the other faces around the table. Especially with Evelyn Brewster.
‘We were led to understand that Mr Atkinson was returning to Los Angeles to organize his staff,’ she said. ‘Now he turns up dead in San Francisco.’ She already had decided that this lean, cool-faced fellow just would not do. Not in the face of Dr Shuman’s opposition. Dr Shuman was a trustee of the San Francisco Opera Company and a Knight of Columbus. ‘So I do not feel we can even be sure that Mr Atkinson’s death had anything to do with his planned work for this committee.’
‘If you really believe that, then you’d better all fold up your tents and quietly steal away.’
‘Hmph,’ said Mayor Brendan Brian McKenna from the head of the table.
Eyes turned toward him. He was rotund and balding, with a silvery mustache that lent his face a spurious weight and purpose. A black pearl stickpin gleamed in his gray cravat. A fresh carnation, like those the City Hall wags suggested he wore in his pajama top at night, bloomed in the lapel of his dark cutaway.
‘What I mean to say, perhaps Mr Hammett has an excellent thought there.’ His own thoughts were with the cut-glass decanter behind a sliding panel in his office. ‘Perhaps we ought to disband for this evening. Mr Atkinson’s death has been a terrible shock-’
‘I want an answer tonight.’
Hammett had set his feet, as if the room had begun to rock and he was bracing against it. But he knew he could not carry the fight to Bren McKenna personally. This was the man who, after the 1906 earthquake and fire, had literally directed disaster relief from the back of a prancing white steed; the only mayor in Prohibition America who dared have as his campaign song a ditty titled ‘Smile with Brandy Bren.’
So Hammett said civilly, ‘Mr Mayor, Vic Atkinson has been dead for nearly forty-eight hours. Somebody killed him and that somebody’s out there right now’ — the rough power of his voice held them all momentarily motionless — ‘trying to make damned sure he’s going to get away with it. I want to make damned sure he doesn’t. And meanwhile this committee wants to sit around arguing whether I’ll be able to use the correct fork for the fish course at their victory dinner.’
The silence that followed was broken, not by Shuman as he had expected, but by Dalton Brewster.
‘I can understand the temptation to reduce this investigation to a personal vendetta against the men who murdered your friend. But by your own admission what is needed is dispassion, not-’
‘I hadn’t seen Vic Atkinson in over six years, hadn’t written to him or communicated with him in any way. But yes, he was my friend. He was also a husband, a father, a good detective, and an upright man. He died because he wanted to do something about a department full of cops who’d become a little too corrupt, and a Board of Supervisors a little too openly for sale, and a district attorney-’
‘As a member of the San Francisco police commission, I resent your remarks about our fine department,’ interrupted Shuman.
‘Vic believed in this investigation — and because he had this committee behind him, because he thought his banks were secure, he got careless. And he died.’
Shuman was almost sputtering. ‘You dare to suggest that Victor Atkinson was betrayed by someone in this room?’
‘That’s your suggestion, Doctor, not mine.’
‘I suggest that Victor Atkinson was struck down by someone from his own highly unsavory past. A man who drank and-’
Hammett let his voice go tight and furious, and his eyes became coals. He leaned across the polished hardwood table so he could thrust his face close to Shuman’s.
‘ You have the gall to call Vic Atkinson unsavory?’
He straightened up. He looked around at the dozen or so uncomfortable faces. McKenna, the Brewsters, Hayden from the City Planning Committee, Walcott, president of the Civil Service Commission, Superior Court Judge Fitzpatrick, Boyle of the Anglo-California Trust, DiReggio of the Bank of Italy, Fremont Older of the News-Call, a couple of others he didn’t know by sight, Shuman himself.
‘Shuman, Gardner, medical doctor.’ Hammett made it a flat recitation. ‘Degree from the University of California med school in 1899. Entered general practice, but soon…’
Shuman half-rose, face furious. ‘I’m not going to-’
‘Shut up!’ snapped Hammett.
Shuman’s face turned pale, but he sank back in his seat. McKenna’s half-raised remonstrative hand gradually lowered. Brewster sat up straighter, with a ghost of a smile on his face. Used to wielding authority himself, he could recognize it in others.
‘Member of the Police Commission since 1915, very popular with the department. Carries an Honorary Policeman’s badge. We all know that a good deal of the corrruption in this city stems from the Mulligan Bros Bailbonds Company, even if there is no courtroom proof of this fact. Correct?’
He looked from face to face, deliberately. Rapt silence. Shuman was chalk-white.
‘Right. Now, Griffith Mulligan holds — personally holds — the mortgage on Dr Shuman’s office at the foot of Post Street. He personally holds the mortgages on Dr Shuman’s house on the corner of Scott and Pine. He personally holds the mortgage on the building at Sutter and Divisadero that houses the general office of Shuman’s Prescription Pharmacies and store number one in the Shuman drugstore chain.’
Shuman seemed to have shrunk in his clothes. ‘You have no right..’
‘And Mulligan Bros Bailbonds holds the mortgages on the other twenty-five Shuman pharmacies scattered around town. What was your word, Doctor? Unsavory?’
Shuman was on his feet, face ashen. He gripped his walking stick like a club. His voice shook. ‘I do not intend to stay here and listen to any more of this. There are legal remedies…’
He collected his hat and cape. As he stalked out, Hammett was going on exactly as if he had not departed.
‘Through his position on the police commission, Dr Shuman receives all — all, every one — of the department assignments to examine arrested prostitutes for venereal diseases. He also gets as much medical business involving accident, rape, and assault victims as the police department can shove his way without the rest of the doctors squawking too loudly…’
‘Facts,’ interrupted Dalton Brewster abruptly. He seemed to have taken a sudden shine to Hammett. He raked the table with his coolly appraising look, then turned back to the lean detective. ‘But you want a friend’s murderer caught. We want a structure of corruption and vice exposed. The two things aren’t the same.’
‘You can’t accomplish one without the other, Mr Brewster. I’m not opposed to your moral crusade. I merely say that the city of San Francisco is the way it is because that’s the way its citizens want it. This system has worked so well that the eastern mobs have never been able to get a toehold here. But whoever rubbed Vic Atkinson changed the rules. I want him. I’m going to have him. In getting him, I’ll shake enough other bad apples out of the tree to satisfy you people.’
‘That’s as much of a commitment as you can give this committee?’ demanded Evelyn Brewster’s tight, quiet voice.