‘I’ve… got a date…’
The fat little op bustled back into the room. He did not sit down, nor did he take any notice of the coffee.
‘And there’s something else that don’t make sense. Our people finally got hold of the police report on the Pronzini kill. He was gunned down at three A.M.’
‘That’s solid?’ demanded Hammett in a surprised voice.
‘Eyewitnesses, three of them. They didn’t get a description of the killer or a license number on the car, they were too busy trying to fit into the same six feet of gutter. But they’re sure of the time. Three A.M.’
Hammett tugged at his mustache, then caught the look on Goodie’s face and shrugged slightly. She had been turning from one to the other, frowning, not understanding.
‘At three A.M.,’ said Hammett, ‘Crystal was snatched from the Weller Hotel.’
‘Oh, Sam, no! How terrible for her.’
‘If we count out the eastern mobsters, the only suspect we’ve got for the snatch and the Pronzini kill is Dan Laverty, the Chief of Detectives. Since the simplest way is usually the easiest way, we’ve been trying to fit him for both the killing and the kidnapping. But if they happened at exactly the same time…’
Goodie was still quite a way behind him. Her voice was shocked. ‘Sam, a policeman? ’
‘I told you a long time ago that everybody’s for sale in this burg.’ He turned to Jimmy Wright. ‘What’s Laverty been doing since we put the tail on him?’
‘Down at the Hall, doing his job. Hasn’t seen anybody he shouldn’t have. No phone calls when he’s been out and around. Which ain’t saying much, since we can’t tap into his phone at the Hall.’
‘Tell the boys to stick tight.’
‘Will do. If anything develops, you’ll be where?’
‘Here. I’m waiting for a phone call from Lynch. He’s supposed to be working on it from the other end.’
The op nodded and put on his hat and left.
‘You don’t seem terribly worried about that girl, Sam,’ said Goodie.
‘I think she called whoever came and got her. I think she arranged for him to spring her out of the hotel with that phony badge. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
‘Then she’s not really in danger at all?’
‘Oh, she’s in danger, right enough. She just doesn’t realize how much. She’s playing some sort of game, and she thinks she can handle whoever it is.’
‘I don’t see how you can believe that, Sam!’ she exclaimed. ‘You say you count out the eastern mobsters, but if Al Capone himself is after her for-’
‘Sometime when I’ve got a week, I’ll tell you all the holes in that story.’
Goodie’s eyes softened. She put a hand on his arm.
‘Sam, if you have to stay here for a phone call, I’ll stay and make us something to eat and…’
‘What about your date?’
‘I could break it.’
He almost said yes. But he still hadn’t told her about Josie and the two girls. Tell her now. Let her know how futile it is. Hurt her now so you hurt her less later. Can’t. He said, ‘I wouldn’t want you to do that, kid.’
As if to punctuate the sentence, an auto horn sounded twice in the street below. Color rushed into Goodie’s face. She checked her wristwatch. Hammett hadn’t seen it before. He knew jewelry from his years at Al Samuels’ store: This looked like the Elgin eighteen-karat white-gold bracelet watch that retailed for seventy dollars.
‘Yes!’ exclaimed Goodie. ‘I…’ She flew to the window. She looked out. ‘Yes,’ she said again. She turned to Hammett. ‘Are you sure…’ She stopped, said, ‘That poor girl,’ and put her hands on Hammett’s forearms and went up on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth. There was yearning and desperation and passion in the kiss. He put his arms around her. He responded. Goodie tore free and ran to the hall doorway and out.
He stood in the middle of the floor for nearly a minute, face set, then moved to the window to stand looking down into the street.
Goodie went across Post to the massive Hispano-Suiza Cabriolet gleaming on the far side. A uniformed chauffeur, very correct in visored cap and gleaming boots and the beige uniform with flared breeches, got out to hold the door of the enclosed rear compartment for her. Hammett had last spoken with the chauffeur about jabbing a knife into the backside of a fat woman in Bolinas.
The electric lamps came on along Post Street. Hammett paced his apartment. At some point he heated a can of Campbell’s tomato soup and turned out a tin of Booth’s Crescent sardines. As he ate, he glanced through his partially revised manuscript of ‘Black Lives.’ Goodie’s phone didn’t ring. He got interested in the manuscript.
He piled his dishes on the drainboard and moved over to the Coxwell with the manuscript. Soon he was frowning in concentration. He had written Harry Bloch at Knopf that some revision was wanted but that he wasn’t sure he could, or would, do it. Now he was sure.
Of course. Now some of the changes jumped right out at him. Get specific. Make a question about an address into a specific reference to Golden Gate Avenue. And forget that line about Homicide men messing around in the Op’s job. Wordy. Just wonder who’d been killed. Good. Clean and crisp.
An hour later Goodie’s phone rang, unheard and unheeded.
It was that damned ending. The ending of Part I of the novel had to be strong. Words again. Too damn many of them. Hey! Just end it where he said of his work that it got done. The last three paragraphs could go. He lined them out. Good. End it with the simple declarative. That livened the dull spot at the end of the first quarter.
That still left problems of course: too many murders, too much of a gap between the first two quarters of the story and the rest of it — but at least he’d made a start at revisions along the right lines..
He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. Goodie’s phone was ringing. He went to answer it.
‘I tried to get you earlier, but there was no answer.’ Owen Lynch’s heavy, considered tones. ‘I spoke at length with Dan about-’
‘Where was he the night Vic got chilled?’
‘Home in bed. Asleep.’
‘Sure. With his wife beside him. Double bed?’
Lynch said in a rather stiff voice, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Jesus!’ Hammett exclaimed. ‘Sensibilities! Okay. No way to prove he wasn’t. I don’t really think he did it. I think it happened with Tokzek about the way he told it, too. Which means that somebody set Tokzek up for a fall. Somebody who knew that Laverty, when he saw the Chinese girl, would go berserk. Knew, because he did it once before with a cheap hood named Parelli.’
‘If you’re right, it could only be the Mulligans,’ said Lynch. ‘He swears he was home in bed when Pronzini died, too.’ His voice was exhausted. ‘I asked him for his badge just until all this is cleared up. He cried when he laid it on my desk. If you’re wrong, Hammett, and it turns out to be the eastern mobs moving in…’
‘Yeah.’
Lynch shook the lethargy from his voice. ‘Any news on the Chinese girl?’
‘Lots of negatives. Not anybody from the Treasury Department. No known hoods in by train from back east, nobody out with a Chinese girl under one arm. Our eyewitness on the snatch can’t identify the guy.’
Hammett went back to his own apartment, leaving both doors open in case Jimmy Wright called with news about Crystal.
The ringing of Goodie’s phone woke him a final time at four fifteen in the mowing. He was sprawled in the Coxwell chair, icy cold from the mist blowing in through the open windows. His neck was stiff as hell and his shoulder was sore. He groped around in the half-light for his shoes, the wisps of his dream still fogging his mind.
Ten years old, living on North Stricker opposite the orphan asylum the old man always threatened him with when he was bad. But he’s been good, and he and his dad are duck hunting in the salt marshes along Chesapeake Bay, he with a four-ten single-shot too big for him.
‘Coming, goddamn you,’ he muttered at the phone. Four fifteen. Why in hell didn’t Goodie answer it? Oh.
Waking up cold and stiff. Swing your legs over the edge of the bed in the hunting shack, stretch and yawn and scratch your backside through the trap in the union suit. Plank floor numbing cold-blue feet as you grope for your socks with a cautious toe. Out in the living room, pull on stiff canvas pants by the intense white light of the hissing kerosene lamp. The big potbelly iron stove starting to glow red.