‘Sam, shouldn’t you get some sleep?’
‘Shleep. Remember, dead Chinese girl in car is key. Key to whole thing. Raped. Get it?’
He started to snore again.
Voices beside the bed were talking around him as if he didn’t exist. Around him and over him and through him, as parents did when you were little. As if you couldn’t hear or understand or reason because you were little.
Or drunk.
Or sick.
Starchy white uniforms. Smell of ether and disinfectant, this won’t hurt much, just an ouch Jesus Christ what’re you doing, good-looking redhead from Butte, Montana, marry that girl sometime. Josie. Ah, shit. Josie. Screwed it up, all up.
Talking around him and over him and through him with the doctor.
Next day, doctor’s office. Desert heat shimmering through the open window, baking out the impurities.
— I got only one year to live, Doc?
— ahem. Never sure with consumption, Sergeant Hammett, but the indications — then I’m leaving the hospital.
— but without proper care… as the disease advances through the lungs…
— I don’t mind dying, Doc. I just mind dying here.
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling above the bed. The streetlight outside the window cast curtain-patterns across the plaster. The Chinese girl was dead. Vic Atkinson was dead. Unspeakable evil?
‘Where’s that bottle?’
‘Sam, please…’
‘Gimme the bottle, goddammit, I know what I’m doing.’
Jimmy Wright’s voice sneered, ‘Give him his goddamn bottle. Sucking on it is what he’s good for.’
Hammett struggled to a sitting position. He looked at the square-bodied little detective. The op looked back. Goodie shoved the bottle into Hammett’s hand.
The op said, ‘How long’s he been like this?’
‘Since this afternoon. He was the same way after Vic Atkinson was killed.’
Beat the drum slowly and play the pipes lowly. Play the dead march as they carry him along. He set the bottle to his lips.
‘Yeah, he’s a sweetheart,’ said the op.
Hammett removed the bottle. ‘Fuck you, Jimmy Wright,’ he said distinctly.
‘That solves something?’
He’d show them. Both of them. As he used to show Josie when she was always at him. He drank in long swallows.
His belly tried to reject it, vomit it back up, but he stopped only when he started to strangle, even as the girl cried out in anguish, ‘Oh my God, Sam, you’ll kill yourself!’
‘Don’t worry ’bout me, sister.’ He giggled. ‘You got old goat with lotsa money, I got wife an’ two kids to worry ’bout me. Josie. Josie’s a woman…’
He stopped because Goodie was staring at him with wide terrified eyes. She turned to Jimmy Wright.
‘Is… is that true? A wife? A… a wife and children?’
Wright was silent.
Her face turned white. ‘But… Sam. Last night I… didn’t. Because I… you… I thought…’
She ran blindly from the room, hitting the doorway instead of the wall only by instinct; her eyes were squeezed tight shut.
The fat little detective shook his head. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Dash.’
‘Gotta do it sometime.’
‘Your timing’s shitty. And your manners. What’s this about the dead Chinese girl in Tokzek’s car being the key to all this?’
‘Beaten an ’ raped.’ Hammett felt deliciously sleepy. Good night’s sleep would fix him up.
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘Try ’is one, then. Crys’al never worked in North State Street roomin’ house. English too good. Kep’ couple years. Bright. Listened an’ learned. Chicago, maybe, sure. But…’
He fell straight backward from his sitting position on the edge of the bed. His head hit the wall a resounding thump. The bottle hit the floor with a like thump as his hand let it go. Bottle empty. He lay still, eyes shut, as if he’d passed out again.
Drunk on the outside. Outside only. Wish my head was empty, like the bottle. Hope you know what you’re doing, Dash.
He knew. Dying. Dying of rotgut and a head that wasn’t empty and a gone marriage and a lot of fictions he’d never write.
Head full of jumbled ideas, thoughts, intuitions, fears.
Full of facts, too. Facts about the ambush of Hymie Weiss in 1926, for instance. Capone had been seen countless places during the two days Crystal had him holed up in that rooming house. So… her story had been a lie. Why? What had she been covering?
No way to find out now.
Crystal. Thought you could handle him. Thought he…
He. Didn’t know who he was. Not for sure. Few clues. Silk scarf instead of wool. Dan Laverty doing what Dan Laverty probably had done, pushed on by… God, the man’s control!
Tomorrow. Soon enough, tomorrow, to decide whether he believed that the evil which was unthinkable was, did exist.
Tomorrow. Nobody left to die tonight anyway. Was there?
When he woke again, it was icy and black; one of those predawn hours when sick people die in their beds. Dark. Cold. God the cold! But some guardian angel was working the cool delightful neck of a bottle between his teeth.
He sucked thirstily at it. No whiskey came out. His furry tongue tasted metal.
Someone had shoved the muzzle of a revolver so far into his mouth that it touched the back of his throat, making him want to retch.
Then the voice came from the darkness above him. It was not unexpected. And somehow, though it had nothing to do with the owner of the voice, he knew — knew — that he was right and that all the whiskey in the world couldn’t drown that knowledge.
Then the voice grated, ‘Okay, wise guy, let’s move. You’re all out of time.’
31
Goodie paused to look around her suddenly bare little apartment. She was dog-tired. But she was packed. Finally, at three in the morning.
Without warning, she burst into tears. She put her face in her hands. So bleak, so depressing, stripped of everything that had made the apartment uniquely her own. She wiped away the tears with the heel of her hand, like a little girl, smearing the dust on her nose. She’d made the call to Biltmore hours ago, when she’d fled Sam’s apartment. Her mind was made up. If only he’d told her! A wife and children. Now, one more phone call…
Oh, damn anyway!
She went through to the tiny cramped bathroom.
By the medicine-chest mirror she fitted on her close-bobbed golden head the Copenhagen blue sport tam she’d bought that day. The girl at H. Liebes had said that Clara Bow wore just such a ribbed velveteen cap in her latest Paramount picture.
She could afford to buy things like that now. With the new job as Mr Biltmore’s secretary starting on Monday. And the watch he’d given her, the new negligee and the dresses and the fancy dinners and…
She turned quickly away from the mirror. She tore the tam from her head and went back to the kitchen. She sat down and finished her coffee and lit a cigarette. Her hands were shaking and her feet were cold.
The clothes and the job and the dinners meant the same thing as the phone call she was about to make. Harry the chauffeur was waiting for it. He would come and pick her up. Biltmore had promised to stay at the Bohemian Club for a few days, until she was used to his town apartment, until she was ready to… ready to be…
If only Sam had… no! Josie is a woman… She hated the very name Josie, she…
She looked around the stripped apartment again. The carefully packed bag held everything she owned. Well, next week she could throw out all those awful cheap working-girl frocks. She’d have what every small-town girl who came to the big city dreamed of! A lovely apartment, and servants, and… and…
She started to cry again. As she did, there was an echoing thump as something heavy fell against the outside of her apartment door. She stifled a scream, stood wet-faced and stiff-legged in the center of the little apartment, heart pounding wildly. Who was it? Some drunk, trying to…