‘I’ve just come back from church. Some people stop after their second drink. You’ve got a phone call.’
Hammett padded after her on bare feet to pick up the receiver from her davenport table.
‘DASH! SEEN THE NEWSPAPERS ABOUT-’
‘ Sweet Christ! ’ screamed Hammett. ‘ Whisper, man, whisper.’
‘Okay,’ said Vic Atkinson in a softer voice. ‘You seen in the newspapers about the raid on Molly Farr’s?’
‘I saw.’
‘It’s the wedge we need! This, on top of all the publicity she got out of that tax guy’s remark, makes her damned vulnerable. We lean on Molly, she tells us who pays who and why, in return for a promise of immunity. Then we-’
‘Not we, goddammit! I told you… Besides, you haven’t even been hired yet.’
‘Molly doesn’t know that. Her place. Half an hour. From the way you sound, it’ll take you that long to get there.’
Every Sunday morning Molly Farr, dressed to somber perfection, made the two-block pilgrimage to the weathered old stone building at 611 O’Farrell Street. She figured she owed it. Eleven years before, Molly — along with three hundred other ladies of the night — had descended on this same Central Methodist Church at her gaudiest, her cheap scent reeking and her ostrich plumes nodding, to protest the campaign against vice being waged by Reverend Pastor Paul Smith. She had been twenty-three at that time.
Reverend Smith had persisted in his crusade. The Barbary Coast had been shut down, the parlor houses, cribs, brothels, and bagnios had disappeared for the moment, and a thousand prostitutes had been thrown out of work. Molly had gone south still a whore; but she returned a few years later to become a madam.
Thus, every Sunday she went in somber splendor to the Central Methodist services, because here she had first been shown the true way: Become a businesswoman because there is no security in being a whore. Unfortunately, she’d never been able to thank Reverend Smith in person; during the intervening years he had renounced the cloth to become a used car salesman.
Molly, perspiring slightly from the walk, let herself into 555 Hyde Street, which had been discreetly shuttered since the Friday-night raid. She was a handsome woman, sternly beautiful rather than pretty: a face with the clarity of a cameo.
She passed under the foyer’s crystal chandelier, noted that the elevator brass needed polishing, and went upstairs to her small private landing, which overlooked the front entrance. She stopped. The door of her apartment was a foot open and two tall men were talking with her maid in the crowded sitting room.
One of them was very lean, the other built like a bull. Her maid, Crystal Tam, was a tiny Chinese girl who came barely to their chests. She had a breathtakingly lovely face framed in lustrous blue-black hair that flowed down across her shoulders to the middle of her back.
To break it up, Molly said, ‘Sorry, gents, we’re closed.’
‘Your maid was just telling us,’ said the heavyset one. ‘But we were asking her…’
Molly collapsed in the big flowered wing chair that dominated the cluttered room. She set aside her wide-bordered silk parasol and fanned herself with one hand.
‘Get me a beer, that’s a darling’
‘Of course, Miss Farr.’
Crystal wore a fancifully brocaded silk kimono; her arms were crossed on her breast so she could thrust her hands into the opposing scoop sleeves. Her steps were mincing, as if her feet had been bound in infancy. She was only fifteen, but was already much more than a maid to Molly. She was confidante, even adviser. It was Crystal who had suggested taking off the police graft as a business expense. It had been a swell idea until that stupid bastard with Internal Revenue had made the joke about it at the Rotary luncheon.
‘All right, gents, what were you asking her?’
‘How to cure a ten-year-old dog,’ said Atkinson.
‘What’d she tell you?’
‘To pee in a shallow dish and dip my thing in it before it got cold. Three times a day for a week.’
Molly threw back her head and laughed, a full-bodied laugh that engaged her whole frankly voluptuous body. ‘If you really tried to cure a dose that way, you’d be in trouble.’
Crystal returned with a big German mug with a hinged pewter lid. She set it on the red lacquer telephone stand at Molly’s elbow. Molly drank deeply.
‘ I’m not in trouble,’ the bull-like one told her. ‘ You are.’
Molly wiped away her foam mustache and waited until Crystal had departed.
‘You’d better drift, boys, before I use the telephone.’
‘That’s what we’re interested in, Molly. I’m Victor Atkinson, this is my associate Dashiell Hammett. We want to know just who you do call when you get into trouble. Also, who you pay…’
Molly laughed again. ‘You must be out of your mind.’
‘Not really.’ Hammett spoke for the first time. ‘The DA’s got you where your pants hang loose.’
Molly allowed herself a slight sneer. ‘Keeping a Disorderly House?’ She shook her head. ‘C’mon, boys, what’s that even if he could make it stick? A fine and-’
‘How about Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor?’ said Hammett. ‘Three felony counts?’
Contributing. Jesus! That carried a heavy jolt! Molly buried her nose in her tankard again, then said, ‘One of those kids, I knew his goddamn grand father, can you believe that? I was just a kid myself then, in the old Parisian Mansion on Commercial Street…’
‘Quit stalling, Molly.’ Atkinson loomed over her chair. ‘We need some names. Who do you juice in the police department? How are the payoffs made? You play ball with us, Molly, and-’
‘Sorry, boys. Like I told you, we’re closed today.’
‘We’ll be around,’ said Atkinson. Hammett followed him to the door, then paused and tipped his hat.
‘Charmed,’ said the lean writer.
The door had barely closed behind them when the phone rang. She swung open the phone stand and removed the receiver from the hooks. ‘This is Molly.’
‘This is your old sweetheart,’ said Boyd Mulligan’s nasal tones.
‘Yeah? Which one?’
‘How many sweethearts you got, for Chrissake?’
‘Oh, Boyd darling. I haven’t heard your voice in so long I didn’t recognize it.’
After she had opened the house five years before, Boyd Mulligan had been around twice a week to get a piece of Molly as well as of the action. He was a mean son of a bitch with a woman, so she’d been happy when he’d finally started just sending a messenger for the Mulligan Bros Bailbond Company share.
‘I’ve been busy, but I’ve been keeping tabs on you just the same. Tommy Dunne called to say a gumshoes out of LA named Victor Atkinson was around to your place.’
‘I was just going to call you about that.’
‘What did they want?’
‘Names. Figures…’
‘Just what I thought.’ There were vicious undertones in the nasal voice. ‘I’ve been sitting here thinking, what if Molly decides to spill her guts to these birds? What if they promise she can cop a plea or get immunity if she does? What if-’
‘Don’t lean on me, Boydie-babyl’ she snapped. ‘I’ve had Chicago amnesia in the past, and will again if it comes to that. But don’t lean on me.’
‘Aw, look, sweetheart, I didn’t mean it that way. I tell you what, tomorrow morning you go see Brass Mouth Epstein. Tell him we’re picking up his fee and that we don’t want you to be tried for Contributing. How he gets you off is his concern.’
‘What if he says disappear?’
‘Then disappear — only make sure we know where you are. And I’ll tell you what: If you have to dump that thousand bucks bail you put up Friday night, we’ll swallow it.’
She found warmth for her voice. ‘What can I say except thanks?’
‘As long as that’s all you say, sweetheart.’ He gave his nasal chuckle. ‘You let me know what Epstein says tomorrow, okay? I’ll be at the shop.’
After she’d hung up, Molly sat staring at the thick Oriental carpet. Why was Mulligan paying for Phineas Epstein as her attorney? He would cost plenty and was dead straight besides. He was at no man’s command. That meant DA Matt Brady did plan to forget his friends and go for Contributing. Fifteen goddamn years, maybe — while on the strength of it Brady leapfrogged into the mayor’s seat.