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.
‘They’re from the Bo Sin Sere tong. They like their killing.’ He finally looked over. ‘Who killed Vic?’
‘ You brought these chinks-’
‘Who killed Vic?’ said Hammett.
From the back room came the sound of breaking wood. Pronzini went white-faced. There was a crash from back there, a loud crash followed by the reek of raw whiskey.
Hammett felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he looked up into the expressionless face of Qwong Lin Get.
‘Give out a couple of cases to the customers, compliments of Dom,’ said Hammett. ‘Smash the rest of it.’ He turned to Pronzini. ‘I figured you’d have most of the Canadian stuff cached here.’
He had to raise his voice over the wailing of the band, the shouts of the customers. One woman had begun smashing a chair on a table, laughing hysterically. The Chinese lined the walls like statues.
‘You can’t get away with this,’ said Pronzini hoarsely.
‘Who killed Vic?’
A shout of joy went up from the trapped customers as the free booze began circulating. The good prewar stuff, down from Canada. Another chair was kindled, and another. A table was upended and its legs torn off.
‘You… you’re ruining me!’ cried Pronzini.
Hammett sipped his drink. A hurled bottle shattered against the revolving mirrored ball. Pieces of glass and bits of dislodged mirror rained down on the dancers, who ignored them.
‘Who killed Vic?’
Pronzini’s eyes were getting desperate. ‘You’ll make me a dead man.’
‘So Vic did get it here.’
‘But you said-’
Over the din of the disintegrating speakeasy, Hammett said, ‘Don’t you know a con when you hear one, Dom? Home in my bed.’
Pronzini hurled his glass to the floor in anger. ‘Goddammit!’ he yelped, ‘you son of-’
A sweeping paw smashed him half over the bar. He twisted off it, ashen-faced with rage, but a glittering hatchet slammed into the wood so close to his head that a lock of severed black hair fell to the floor. Pronzini froze; he didn’t even try to jerk his head away. He stared up at the seminude Oriental giant with stark terror.
‘Shouldn’t make threatening moves, Dom.’
The dais on which the band played was being rocked. Hammett was pouring himself another shot. He was getting mellow. They wouldn’t have much more time. The din would be reaching the street by now.
‘Who’d you call when you recognized him, Dom? Griff or Boyd?’
‘Boyd runs errands,’ Pronzini said with a sigh.
‘Who’d Griff call?’ Hammett sipped, a tall, lean, erect, very correct figure amid the wild party evolving from the destruction of Pronzini’s speakeasy.
‘I don’t know, that’s God’s truth. Only Griff knows. All right, I slipped Atkinson a Mickey. And I left the alley door open for the guy to come in. But Atkinson was alive when I seen him last.’
Some draperies were afire on the far side of the dance floor. Pronzini looked that way, agonized, just as the dais slowly collapsed. But he shook his head.
‘I ain’t got nothing else to say to you, Hammett, not even if your boys wreck the place.’
‘They already have.’
The band went off the edge of the dais in a crash of instruments. The upended torcher wore no step-ins under her tight red sequins. Four men were fighting drunkenly in the middle of the floor. Nine more, and as many women, arms linked, were swaying back and forth and chanting: ‘Where-was-Moses-when-the-lights-went-out?’
‘Down in the cellar eating sauerkraut,’ said Hammett. He picked up his hat and stick. He said, ‘I talked with that reporter who did the series on bootlegging last year. He told me Egan Tokzek was a runner for you.’
‘Tokzek?’ said Pronzini in a dazed voice.
‘What did he do for you besides run rum?’
‘What the hell else was he good for?’ he burst out in remembered grievance. ‘You can’t trust them snow-noses for nothing but donkey-work.’
‘Right you are,’ said Hammett. He set the Wilton on his silvery hair at a properly rakish angle, then tipped it to the speechless bootlegger. ‘Thanks for the drink, Dom.’
He walked through the wreckage toward the gaping front door, very erect, very proper, no hint of drunkenness in his movements. Behind him the binders funneled down to go through the door like bats leaving a cave. From far off came the clanging of a fire truck.
23
Boyd Mulligan was doing the Examiner crossword and waiting for the secretary to get back from lunch when the lean stranger’s shadow fell across his newspaper.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Is Mr Mulligan about?’ The stranger’s snap-brim gray Wilton was pulled down to shadow his face.
‘I’m Boyd Mulligan.’
‘It’s your uncle I want.’
‘He won’t be in until three o’clock. Give me the message.’
The stranger hesitated. He squared broad lean shoulders under his overcoat and leaned closer. ‘It’s from…’ He leaned closer yet. ‘ Him.’
‘Him?’ Mulligan said stupidly, trying to appear wise.
‘ You know.’ The eyes darted to the door at the far end of the room. ‘Is there a private office? Anyone coming by in the street can see me in here, and if they do…’
Boyd, thoroughly confused, left his blond-wood swivel and led the way.
Griffith Mulligan had shared the private office with no one since his brother’s death a few years before. There were filing cabinets along the left wall, with layers of thick asbestos sandwiched between their sheet steel sides. They were always locked, and Griff Mulligan carried the only key. The secret lives of half the powerful in San Francisco were locked away in these drawers; the secrets of the other half were locked away in Griff Mulligan’s shrewd Irish skull.
Boyd turned to face the stranger in the middle of the room. ‘Is this private enough for you?’ he demanded, without bothering to conceal the sneer in his voice. He wished the damned girl would get back; he was starving to death.
The stranger slid his eyes down the blank right-hand wall where the room’s only window had been bricked in and plastered over years before.
‘This’ll do,’ he said.
He put a sinewy open hand against Boyd’s face and shoved. Hard.
Boyd windmilled into Griff’s chair. The chair tipped over backward. He slammed knees-first into the wall and yowled. He struggled to his feet still too shocked for either fear or anger.
‘Are you crazy? I’m Boyd Mulligan.’
The stranger stood in the center of the room with his legs set wide, leaning toward Boyd as if against a strong wind.
‘And I’m Dashiell Hammett,’ he said.
‘Ham… Hammett?’
He felt his lower lip tremble. He pushed the lank black hair from his eyes. He wasn’t ready for this. He, well hell, he just…