Sam!
She crossed quickly to the door and without hesitation twisted the knob and pulled it open. Sam awaking, coming out of his apartment still drunk and shambling, falling…
His door was open, but he was not lying unconscious in the hall. Should she go in, see if…
She whirled when the elevator rattled behind her down the long hall. Two men were just entering the cage. One was heavyset, his hat jammed down on his head to hide his features. The other was Hammett. Hatless, coatless, wearing the same white collarless shirt he’d been wearing when he’d passed out. His face was haggard, and he almost fell as the other man shoved him into the elevator.
‘Sam!’ she cried.
But the door was already closed. Neither man had heard her.
Hammett’s arms had been pulled back and his wrists handcuffed behind his back. Was the other man a policeman? Only policemen used handcuffs, didn’t they? But then she remembered Sam saying that it might have been a policeman who killed Atkinson and that man who ran the speakeasy and kidnapped…
She ran back through her apartment to the kitchen window overlooking Post Street. Hammett and his captor were just crossing to a black Reo.
The fat little sleepy-faced man! He would know what to do. But.. his name? She rummaged desperately through her mind. No name surfaced. She’d taken a phone call for him, had gone into Hammett’s apartment, had said…
Wright! Jimmy Wright!
The sound of the Reo’s starter jerked her eyes back to the window. The engine caught, popped, smoothed as the man behind the wheel adjusted the mixture. The car pulled away, out Post Street. No way to see the license plate.
Jimmy Wright. But how to reach him? He was in a hotel somewhere, that she knew, but she’d never heard the name of it, or the phone number, or… Think, girl, think. Like Sam and the dead Atkinson he’d been a Pinkerton operative before…
She was sobbing again before the idea hit her. She ran to the phone, sniffling, to leaf through the gray-covered directory while waiting for the operator. ‘Give me FRanklin three-four-one-oh, the Weller Hotel,’ she said in a breathless voice. ‘And for God’s sake, hurry!’
Hammett’s teeth were chattering so hard that he put his chin on his chest in a vain attempt to stop them. Cold air whistled through the gaps in the canvas top. The Reo panted up the rise beyond Van Ness Avenue, going very fast through the silent deserted midnight streets.
Preacher Laverty turned craggy features toward him.
‘Cold?’
‘Ye-ye-yeah.’
‘I hope you freeze to death, you bastard.’
He returned to his driving. Hammett wasn’t sure where they were going. Then he thought bitterly, to hell. That’s where. He shot a quick glance over at the big cop.
‘Going to kick my balls off, too, Preacher?’
He looked over at Hammett. His big hands convulsed around the steering wheel. ‘I’d like to.’
They entered the rich broad streets of Pacific Heights: thirty-room stone mansions and rich green yards trimmed with exotic plantings nurtured and pampered by Japanese gardeners.
‘Poor old Dan Laverty, fall guy to the end.’
‘You would see it that way.’ Laverty’s eyes were wolfish. ‘To you, anyone who doesn’t help spread the corruption…’
‘So that’s how he did it,’ muttered Hammett.
He was sure now. He’d caught up with the subtle mind it had bothered him that the Mulligans didn’t possess. He felt a momentary sense of peace, even knowing that in minutes or hours he would be dead. It was possible that Laverty didn’t realize he was driving Hammett to his death.
Could he make Laverty see what was being done? Doubtful. He’d be battling a lifetime of friendship. A true long shot. Like his stumbling against Goodie’s door. Even if she’d heard it, why should she know what it meant?
He found a grin. ‘How did he get you to do his killing for him, Preacher?’
No answer.
He probed again. ‘Let me guess what he told you. Pronzini killed Atkinson and was going to kill again if he wasn’t stopped. So it was really just an execution. Okay. But what about the woman? And a seventeen-year-old kid? Retarded, at that?’
‘What are you talking about?’
The shock in the voice, the pale cop’s eyes, was unmistakable. But then how… Sure. He said: ‘I bet he called you up, asked to use your car yesterday morning, didn’t he? His was broken down. Right?’
He saw the confirmation in Laverty’s ill-concealed reaction. So simple! So direct! The man was a genius! And so foolproof. It explained everything, justified everything. And if things went wrong, there was Laverty to take the rap.
The big detective parked at the corner of Pacific and Presidio.
Hammett was numb and beyond feeling in his arms and legs. Wouldn’t be able to run even if he got the chance. But at least the icy air had cleared most of the liquor fumes from his mind. He was glad of that. He wanted to see it coming.
‘Must be right about here that Tokzek stole that Morris-Cowley.’
The corner of his eye caught Laverty’s momentary hesitation. He tried to widen the breach in the big cop’s defenses.
‘Odd that he’d need to steal a car right here.’ He jerked his head at the fine old brown shingle houses that had survived the quake and fire so well. ‘Didn’t you ever wonder whether the tipster who called knew you, and knew how you’d react to seeing that dead little girl in the car? And knew Tokzek, knew he’d be sniffing dope and so paranoid it would be impossible to take him alive?’
‘Just… shut the hell up.’
Hammett slid out of the car awkwardly; and almost fell when his legs took his weight. He stopped on tingling feet in the middle of the deserted street. On the north side of the block were five brown-wood shingle houses, simple of design and timelessly elegant in that simplicity, backed up on the low stone wall that bounded the southern rim of the Presidio.
In one of those houses he would die.
He looked straight up. There was no fog, so he could see a few stars. The last stars he’d ever see. Dead at thirty-four. Well, what the hell? At least he’d beat Christ.
‘Come on. Let’s go.’
Laverty shoved him roughly ahead, up a narrow walk between two of the houses to a plain narrow door.
‘Didn’t it bother you that Tokzek was hooked on the nose candy?’
Laverty didn’t answer. Inside the doorway was a landing, with steps leading both up and down. They went down. At the foot of the stairs was an open area of concrete floor. They stopped in front of one of the doors opening off it. Good. Every second alone with Laverty, to work on him…
‘We wait here.’
‘Sure. But tell me, Preacher, have you ever known a snow nose who was interested in even normal sex with anyone? Let along being so sex-crazed he’d beat and rape a little girl to death?’
For a moment, he thought he’d done it. Laverty wavered as the question sank in. Because every cop knew the answer to that one. They saw it so often. Habitual use of most drugs depressed the sex drive to, often, impotence. If…
But then Laverty shook his head.
‘That’s… got nothing to do with this, anyway.’
Hammett took his final despairing shot. ‘How did he convince you that I’d sold out, Preacher? You’ve been a cop all your life, cops want evidence…’
‘I’ve got evidence. I’ve questioned Joey Lonergan.’
Joey Lonergan! Vividly into his mind shot the scene at Lonergan’s Garage, Jimmy Wright posing as the little eastern killer, Garlic, and Hammett telling Lonergan they were the spearhead of the mob back east, moving in…
‘He told me all about it,’ said Laverty. ‘You and your torpedo friend from back east knocking him around and telling him you were taking over the town.’
‘It was a con, Preacher,’ said Hammett wearily. ‘To get information.’
‘How about Boyd Mulligan pressuring me to get information about you, find out what you were up to and what you knew? Was that a con, too? He knew you were trying to move in on his operation…’