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 and raised. Lonergan worked left-handed, keeping the tire iron cocked in his right fist. The tow truck grumbled acrid exhaust fumes.
‘I don’t know why they want you,’ said Lonergan. ‘But I think we’ll stick your head in that exhaust while I make a phone call.’
‘I’ll tell you why they want me,’ said Hammett. ‘They’re afraid of me. That’s why they wanted me taken out last night. I represent some of the boys back east. The BIG boys back east. We’re moving in, taking over this town. It’s just a matter of time. We figure that you’re small-fry, but you’re a place to start. So why don’t you get smart and tell me who you called to get those three gorillas who were supposed to beat me up?’
Lonergan had been staring at him, slightly slackfaced, as he had been speaking. He hesitated for a moment, then crinkled up his rugged, handsome features and laughed out loud. He leaned against the doorpost with the clipboards on it.
‘What you been smoking, Hammett? Whoever’s behind you, it ain’t gonna work. We got the cops behind us in this burg. No outsiders are gonna-’
‘Before you left Five Points, you ever hear of a big Irishman named Babe?’
‘Should I have?’
‘Might have been after you left,’ Hammett muttered thoughtfully. ‘The Babe was an expert with a tire iron and made the mistake of trying to use one on a fat little killer out of Baltimore named Garlic.’
Lonergan slapped the tire iron against his open left hand. ‘This ain’t Baltimore, bo.’
‘Garlic blew away both the Babe’s kneecaps with a matched pair of. 45’s. They had to take his legs off just below the hips because he got gangrene from the garlic on the bullets. These days he rides around on a little board with casters on it, selling pencils around Forty-second and Times Square…’
Lonergan chuckled and tightened his grip on the tire iron. ‘I think you want to get petted with this thing, bim-’
He shot forward across the room to crash headfirst into the far wall. He whirled off it with tire iron upraised and lips drawn back from tobacco-stained teeth.
‘I like to burn ’em when they’re comin’ at me,’ grated Jimmy Wright. The lumpy. 45 automatics in his fists stared at Dead Rabbit with unwinking eyes.