Bennie was quiet for a while, until we cut off Highway One just south of Bodega Bay. It was getting close to dawn by then. Dark night, no moon, sky full of running clouds, fogbank out on the horizon — a good night for Cap Doolin’s speedboat to leave Bodega Bay and slip into Bringle’s Cove without being spotted.
“Say, Joey,” the kid said then, “you ever read Little Caesar?” Out of the blue, just like that.
“Little what?”
“Little Caesar. You know, the book by W.R. Burnett.”
“No. Never heard of it.”
“It’s the real goods, all about this Chicago gang-boss named Rico Bandello. Only problem with it is, he gets bumped off in the end.”
“Then why the hell bother to read it?”
“Because it’s the real goods, like I said. The Maltese Falcon, that’s another one with the real goods. You ever read that one?”
“No.”
“But you heard of the guy wrote it, Dashiell Hammett?”
“No.”
“Never heard of Hammett? Ah, come on.”
“You calling me a liar?”
“No, no. I’m just surprised, that’s all. He’s a local bird. Lives in San Francisco, hangs out at John’s Grill on Ellis Street. I almost met him there once about a year ago, right after The Maltese Falcon got published as a book. It was a serial in Black Mask before that.”
“So what?”
“He wrote some other books, too,” the kid said. “Red Harvest. The Dain Curse. Short stories, too. I read ’em all. He’s some writer, that Hammett. Even better than Burnett.”
“Yeah?” Angelo said. “What’s he write about?”
“Knockovers, mob wars, cheating dames, you name it. And private dicks — Sam Spade, the Continental Op. Real tough gees. He used to be a private dick himself, so he knows all about how they operate.”
“Sure he does,” I said. “Then how come he quit being one?”
“So he could write. That’s what he always wanted to do. You really ought to read one of his books, Joey.”
“I got no time to read books.”
“His stories in Black Mask, then. You know Black Mask, right?”
“No.”
“What’s Black Mask?” Angelo said.
“It’s a pulp magazine. You never heard of it?”
“No.”
“You guys ought to read it,” the kid said. “Hammett’s stories ain’t the only swell ones. Raoul Whitfield, Frederick Nebel, Carroll John Daly — they deliver the goods too.”
“Yeah? What do those birds write about?”
“Same like Hammett.”
“You do a lot of reading, huh, Bennie?” Angelo said.
“Oh, sure. A lot.”
“Bad for your eyes.”
“Hah. You sound like my old lady.”
We were less than a mile now from the side road that led to Bringle’s Cove. There was still no traffic. Bringle’s was the best delivery spot along this section of the coast. Off the beaten track, natural jetty, no hidden offshore rocks or kelp beds to foul up a boat’s engine, no place for Feds or hijackers to set up in ambush. We’d been using the cove off and on since ’27 and never had any trouble.
“I do a lot of writing, too,” the kid said. “One of these days I’m gonna write some stories for Black Mask. Right now I’m writing a book.”
“A book, huh?” Angelo said.
“Yeah. I been working on it ever since I come up permanent from the valley.”
“What kind of book?”
“A fiction book, a novel like Little Caesar and The Maltese Falcon, only better. Real tough, tougher than Burnett and Hammett.”
“What’s it about, this book of yours?”
“The liquor business. Write what you know, that’s what they tell you.”
Angelo didn’t say anything. I said, “That mean you’re writing about us, the operation?”
“Well, yeah, sort of.”
“Renzo, me, Angelo, you?”
“We’re all in it, sure, but not under our real names, not so’s we’d be recognized. I mean, I’m giving the real inside dope on how the racket works out here, but it’s all disguised, fictionalized. Nothing the cops or Feds could use, you don’t have to worry none about that.”
“What happens to us in this book of yours?”
“Nothing. That’s the beauty of it, see? None of us gets caught or shot up like Rico Bandello.” The kid squirmed some more and then laughed. “We outfox the cops and the Feds, same as we’re doing in real life, and get away clean in the end. Pretty nifty, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Nifty.”
“I call it Hooch. Couldn’t ask for a better title. Hooch.”
We jounced over the side road into Bringle’s Cove. It was a few minutes before dawn, still mostly dark, just enough daylight so you could tell the beach, the cliffside caves, the jetty were all empty except for squawking seagulls. Angelo drove into the biggest of the caves where we always left the trucks. The three of us got out with the choppers and me with the money sack and stood around waiting. The kid was still antsy. Once he said, “Man, I can’t wait to get out there and make the pickup. Action or no action.” I told him to shut his mouth and for once he shut it.
The big Graham, its canvas sides rolled halfway up so you could see the produce boxes stacked inside, rattled in about five minutes later. Three-man crew on it too. Six soldiers and six machine guns were all we’d need even if we ran into hijackers. That had only happened once on any of my runs, and what that bunch got out of it was two dead and a shot-up boat. It wasn’t anything to sweat about.
Cap Doolin showed up right on time, with just enough dawn in the sky so he could drift in without running lights. His boat was a forty-foot cruiser with twin diesels, squat-hulled and clean-decked, flush from stem to stern except for a small glassed-in pilot’s hood. She could outrun any Coast Guard cutter and had proved it more than once. Doolin eased her in close to the end of the jetty, just long enough for the six of us to climb on board. Then we headed out, running wide open once we got far enough offshore.
There was a wind and the water was choppy. Spray rattled like birdshot against the pilot house windows. Nobody said anything, not even the kid. He had his sea legs and he seemed to be handling himself all right, with his lip still buttoned.
It was full light when we neared the big Canadian rumrunner, anchored in the fogbank outside the twelve-mile limit. You couldn’t see her clear until we got close, and even then she looked like a ghost ship in the fog. The kid stood gawking at her through the windscreen. “Hey,” he said then, “hey, she’s one big mother, ain’t she.”
She was that. Hundred and ten feet, narrow-gutted, low-hulled, painted battleship gray from her waterline to the trucks of her stubby masts. Like a long, lean whale.
“How much liquor can she carry?”
“Sixty tons loaded full,” Doolin said.
“Sixty! Man!”
Doolin slid us alongside, up against the heavy rope fenders hanging from the ship’s bulwark. The six of us were all on deck by then, spreading out to watch and wait. Crewmen with machine guns were stationed on the rumrunner’s deck too. But it was all just everybody being careful. We’d done plenty of business with this bunch before.
I went over to the rail and tossed the money sack up to the Canadian captain. He knew all the cash would be there so he never bothered to count it anymore, just went ahead and ordered his crew to strip the hatch covers off the cargo hold. Doolin and his men did the same on the speedboat. I kept one eye on the kid while this was going on. Still up to snuff, but still keyed up too, his eyes jumping this way and that. The way he held his chopper, his finger skipping back and forth across the trigger, you could tell he was hoping somebody would start something.