He thumbed a nickel into the slot of the phone Epstein had used. His face felt flushed. Goddamn, to play the percentages that way and have your number come up! It had just felt right that of all the pay phones available on the block, Epstein would choose the crowded, bustling Owl as the place he’d be least conspicuous while calling.
‘This is your long-distance operator. May I help you?’
Hammett drawled, ‘Inspector O’Gar. Homicide, Central Station. Five minutes ago a long-distance call was placed from this number. SUtter eight-seven-three-seven.’
‘Homicide?’ Excitement vibrated in her voice. ‘What… how can I help you, Inspector?’
‘Number called. Name of party called. Location of that phone.’
‘Ah… the number is two-three-two Mill Valley, Inspector. That is registered to a Mr George F. Biltmore on Corte Madera Street-’
‘I’ll be dammed!’ exclaimed Hammett.
‘I beg your pardon!’
‘Oh. Yeah. Sorry.’ He got back into his imaginary O’Gar’s skin. ‘Who’d he ask for?’
‘Mrs Biltmore.’
Hammett hung up in her ear without thanking her; it was what she would expect from a real cop.
George F. Biltmore!
Who would expect madam Molly Farr to be stashed in the Marin County estate of San Francisco’s Commissioner of Shipping? Biltmore was a power on the Street, a wealthy man who had started out as a sea captain and now had one of the city’s largest ship brokerage firms. Did Biltmore know who he was hiding up there in the redwoods? Or had Epstein lied to him about a secret witness or an endangered client or
…
Tomorrow for Biltmore. He thought he had a way to get to him. But meanwhile, he had other things to find out.
He dialed Fingers LeGrand’s number, TUxedo 8273, but he got no response. From the operator he got the phone number for 22 Prescott Court, the flat directly below LeGrand’s. He was in luck. He recognized the sultry voice that responded.
‘This is the man with the blisters,’ he said.
There was silence for a moment, then a low laugh as the whore remembered their brief encounter on her back porch.
‘Hi, big boy.’
‘My weakness is still liquor, sweetheart, but maybe you can help me. I’m trying to get in touch right away with Fingers…’
16
Above the pounding shoes, strong ankles swelled into muscular calves. The girl on the table held up her skirts so her petticoats swirled about her plump dimpled knees as she danced. Work-thickened hands clapped time to the accordion, and voices shouted encouragement through the din and smoke.
Hammett and Goodie paused in the doorway, squinting. Goodie said, in an exhausted voice, ‘Oh, Sam, it smells so good! Can’t we eat now? Please? We’ve been to six places already-’
‘Now we eat,’ said Hammett. Through the smoke he had glimpsed the dolorous features of Fingers LeGrand at one of the gingham-covered tables in the rear. The whore had said Fingers always ate supper in one of a dozen little family-style Italian cafes around Broadway and upper Grant.
‘Hey!’ Hammett exclaimed in great surprise. ‘Fingers!’
‘Hello, Dash.’ The skinny gambler stood up. The table was scattered with fragments of brown Italian crust; a demolished antipasto was shoved to one side. He bowed to the golden-haired girl. ‘Good evening, ma’am. Out for a night on the town?’
‘Just trying to get fed before I collapse of hunger.’
Hammett, who had eaten only half a Chinese lunch, realized he too was ravenous. They sat down. The air was rich with the mingled fragrances of tomato and mushroom sauces, pastas, steamed clams, roasting chicken, and veal. A vast woman bustled over to their table and clopped down a bottle of illegal wine.
‘The first pint’s free,’ explained Fingers. ‘After that it’s a dime a bottle.’
‘You eat here a lot?’
‘We’re trying to fatten him up,’ shouted the fat Italian lady over the din. She laughed hugely and dug a porcine elbow into Hammett’s ribs. Somehow it was not at all like Heloise Kuhn’s elbow. ‘You’re even worse than he is, you boys must be undertakers.’ She roared with laughter and winked at Goodie. ‘You’ll eat?’
The stockings of the girl dancing on the front table fell down and she was helped, suddenly red-faced and embarrassed, to the floor.
As the racket momentarily ebbed, Hammett said, ‘Soup to start. Ravioli. Salad after. Then we’ll order.’
Over huge flat bowls of rich brown steaming minestrone, thick with beans and mostaccioli, Hammett asked offhandedly, ‘Who came out big winner at the game the other night?’
‘Who do you think?’
‘The fat German.’
‘Right you are.’ Fingers started a toothpick toward his mouth, realized that Goodie was watching, and morosely returned the pick to his vest pocket.
‘I went down forty,’ admitted Hammett. ‘I guess that Irishman was big loser. Funny, I keep thinking I’ve seen him around, but…’
‘Joey Lonergan.’ Fingers took out a cigar instead. ‘Came out here from back east a year or so ago. Owns a repair garage in the six-hundred block of Turk Street. Takes the night calls himself, but must be coming up in the world — just bought himself a second tow truck.’
‘In solid with the cops, then, I guess,’ said Hammett idly.
‘They call him right from the scene of the accident, so he’ll beat the other towers to it. He kicks back a percentage, of course. Carries the nickname of Dead Rabbit, I don’t know why.’
It seemed to have some meaning to Hammett. He raised questioning eyebrows. ‘Lonergan a tough boy?’
‘He says he is.’
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.