Hammett (Crime Masterworks) (19 page)

‘How many men should Tommy use for interrogations?’

‘Two besides himself. Not you.’ He had turned to the final pair of men. One looked like a drinker, with sad bloodhound eyes, the other like a labor organizer in a loud check suit. Neither of them was either one. ‘I want you two on prowling assignments.’

‘Expenses?’ The labor organizer hadn’t removed his derby hat.

‘Within reason, they’ll be covered. Get around to the speakies and bookies. Listen. Watch for payoffs. Don’t ask questions – that might be what got Vic rubbed. Any uniform bulls on the take, get their shield numbers. Plainclothes, listen for names. If they’re driving, get the auto license numbers. If they use a cab, get
his
number so we can try for an ident from the driver later. Questions?’

‘You want us to tail anybody?’ asked the drinker.

‘We’re too thin in the field for that until we’ve got fingers pointing at specific people. Anything else?’

Nobody spoke. Hammett nodded.

‘All reports in writing to Jimmy. I want the taps to go on today, the interrogations to start tomorrow. We begin with sergeants on up.’

Pockmark grinned for the first time. ‘I like it already.’

‘You won’t get anything out of them this time around, except somebody gets stupid. I just want them to know we’re in business.’

V
ic Atkinson had been right, had he but known it: Mondays were busy nights at Dom’s Dump. Though it was the shank of the evening, the place was still over three-quarters full, and both barkeeps were sweating as they shoved it out over the stick. The thousand-faceted mirror globe was solemnly revolving, the tinted spotlights sending flecks and dots and streamers of color across the faces of the dancers. Up on the dais, a colored band Imported Direct From Connie’s In Harlem At Great Expense was backing a torcher using body English on ‘Runnin’ Wild.’

The sweating Negro leader tried one of the soaring cornet solos with which Father Dip was challenging King Oliver in the Windy City, and blew nothing but air. Who cared? There was plenty of booze, plenty of money, and the girls had parked their girdles in the ladies’ room so they could do the shimmy and the black bottom and the Charleston with proper abandon.

At just seventeen minutes before two o’clock in the morning, the front door was buzzed open to admit Dashiell Hammett. His gray houndstooth jacket had three buttons and his charcoal slacks had a knife-edge crease. His black wing tips were freshly
polished. He leaned slightly on the polished ebony cane in his right hand while telling the blue-chinned bouncer his pleasure.

‘That way for the bar, sir.’

‘Thank you, my good man.’

Hammett spoke with the considered enunciation of one whose condition makes of the term ‘drunkenness’ a
non sequitur
. His eyes had a slightly glassy, slightly hooded look, like the eyes of a resting hawk. He laid his stick on the bar and placed his freshly blocked and newly banded Wilton beside it.

The bartender wiped his hands on his apron. ‘Yessir, what can I . . .’

He broke off as a watchful Dom Pronzini, on the customer’s side of the stick, exclaimed, ‘Bless my soul! Mr Hammett! Say, this is swell!’

Hammett nodded to him with careful courtliness.

‘Dom.’ His words were barely slurred at all. ‘I believe I will have a Dunbar’s on the—’

‘For you, it’s on the house, Mr Hammett!’ He gestured up the bartender. ‘Tony. Dunbar’s. Bring the bottle.’

The torcher started ‘Oh Daddy,’ which Ethel Waters had made so famous. She didn’t have the Waters voice or the Waters style, but the half of her that was out of her red-sequined dress apparently made up for it.

Tony brought the drinks. Hammett kept his back to the room.

Pronzini’s heavy face was alight with a grin showing big stained teeth. ‘So, Mr Hammett, you’re back in the sleuthing game. Papa still says you’re the best in the business. He got out two years ago, and he’s . . . ah . . . looking forward to running into you again.’

‘Just working for wages in those days, Dom.’ He toasted silently with his glass, then tossed it off. ‘It’s a little different now.’

Pronzini nodded. He leaned closer, so their shoulders touched. ‘You mean that friend of yours. That Atkinson guy. A tough break.’

Without looking at the big Italian, Hammett said in his soft drink-slurred voice, ‘What time was he in that night, Dom?’

‘In here?
Here?
That night?’ Pronzini reared back as if dismayed. He said humbly, ‘Well, gee, Mr Hammett, I guess he could have been. But you see how busy—’

‘Like the morgue that night, Dom.’

Still hunched over the bar, Hammett poured. It was excellent whiskey.

‘Well, Mr Hammett, even so! I didn’t know the man . . .’

‘Had a couple of drinks with him, Dom.’ He held up his shot glass as if displaying it. ‘Like us, tonight.’

The jovial Italian’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘I’m not sure I like that, Mr Hammett.’

Hammett looked directly at him for the first time. It was four minutes before two o’clock. His voice was softly suggestive.

‘Who killed him, Dom?’

‘Whew!’ Pronzini shook his head in a dazed way, at the same time raising a hand at the bartender. ‘It ain’t right, Mr Hammett, you coming around trying to jack me off that way. We have one more drink; you’d better leave.’

The bartender stood across the stick from them, his hands on the varnished wood. ‘Yessir, Mr Pronzini?’

‘Mr Hammett wants one for the road, Tony. Take this piss away and bring us a bottle of the real stuff. The real stuff. Okay?’

‘Yessir, Mr Pron—’

‘No thanks, Dom.’ Hammett had stepped back a pace from the bar. His pose matched that of the bartender’s, with his right hand a bare inch from the heavy ebony walking stick.

‘Tony,’ said Pronzini in a flat voice.

Tony’s hand was six inches away from the bottle of Dunbar’s when Hammett moved. No drunk ever moved that fast. His stick smashed down on Tony’s hand. Tony screamed and tried to jerk the shattered hand away. Hammett put his weight on the stick, grinding it down against the trapped hand.

‘No Mickeys, Dom. No back room. Not me.’ He lifted the
stick and pointed it toward the blue-chinned bouncer, who was reaching under his left arm. ‘No guns, Dom. Or I smash your skull while he’s getting it out.’

Pronzini waved off the bouncer. The bartender had crashed backwards against the bottles, clutching his pulped hand. Pronzini swiveled his heavy head past the suddenly silent, staring patrons toward the equally silent band.

‘Play, you goddamn boogies!’ he yelled.

The piano player started a fast riff of ‘Cemetery Blues.’ The drummer and brass caught in raggedly. They settled in behind the vocalist’s body English.

‘Enjoy yourself, folks!’ Pronzini boomed. ‘Just a little joke.’

Faces turned, dulling as curiosity left them. Bodies began swaying to the beat. Somebody laughed. Somebody dropped a glass. On the floor, somebody started dancing. Pronzini turned back to Hammett, his face dangerously suffused with blood.

‘How do you think you’re getting out of here, wise guy?’

‘Not feet-first like Vic, that’s a pipe.’ His smile touched only the muscles around his mouth. ‘I was outside, in the alley, when they carried him out, Dom. His head looked like a pumpkin.’

‘Yeah,’ said Pronzini softly but explosively.

A second bouncer had come from the rear door behind the partition in the drapes. Pronzini looked at Hammett from eyes ugly with triumph. It was a dozen seconds before two o’clock.

‘You’re going out the back way with me, Hammett, and then—’

The front door came off its hinges with a tearing sound to smash into kindling against the blue-chinned bouncer’s back. He hit the floor nose-first, his scalp spraying blood. A woman screamed like a broken calliope pipe.

A massive baldheaded Chinese ran lightly over the fallen gorilla. He wore soft slippers and gray canvas trousers and no shirt. His immense naked torso was splattered with the downed bouncer’s blood. In his right hand waved and glittered a lather’s hatchet sharpened to a razor’s edge. His eyes were
wild; a high keening noise came from between his foam-flecked lips.

He skittered to a stop in the center of the dance floor, as the people jostled back with terror-filled faces. Hammett thought he was doing a beautiful job. His hatchet arced deadly patterns in the air.

But with a muttered curse, the remaining bouncer woke up. His hands darted for his gun. As it did, two more massive highbinders appeared on silent slippered feet from the split in the drapery through which he had come himself. They wore loose cotton shirts sashed at the waist over canvas trousers.

As his gun cleared its holster, they engulfed him from behind. The bouncer hit the floor like a dropped sack of grain, bleeding but alive. The front door belched four more binders. Two cradled tommy guns.

Pandemonium greeted the choppers. Pronzini’s hand was frozen halfway under his jacket. The Chinese took positions against the walls. The band was playing ‘Alabamy Bound’ as if there were no tomorrow. The uncrippled bartender kept his hands spread wide on the bar in an attempt to deny ownership of them. The man Hammett had maimed was out cold.

Only Hammett had not turned as the Orientals burst in. He poured a fresh drink from the bottle he hadn’t let Tony take away. He spoke to Pronzini without looking at him.

‘They’re from the Bo Sin Sere tong. They like their killing.’ He finally looked over. ‘Who killed Vic?’

‘
You
brought these chinks—’

‘Who killed Vic?’ said Hammett.

From the back room came the sound of breaking wood. Pronzini went white-faced. There was a crash from back there, a loud crash followed by the reek of raw whiskey.

Hammett felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he looked up into the expressionless face of Qwong Lin Get.

‘Give out a couple of cases to the customers, compliments of
Dom,’ said Hammett. ‘Smash the rest of it.’ He turned to Pronzini. ‘I figured you’d have most of the Canadian stuff cached here.’

He had to raise his voice over the wailing of the band, the shouts of the customers. One woman had begun smashing a chair on a table, laughing hysterically. The Chinese lined the walls like statues.

‘You can’t get away with this,’ said Pronzini hoarsely.

‘Who killed Vic?’

A shout of joy went up from the trapped customers as the free booze began circulating. The good prewar stuff, down from Canada. Another chair was kindled, and another. A table was upended and its legs torn off.

‘You . . . you’re ruining me!’ cried Pronzini.

Hammett sipped his drink. A hurled bottle shattered against the revolving mirrored ball. Pieces of glass and bits of dislodged mirror rained down on the dancers, who ignored them.

‘Who killed Vic?’

Pronzini’s eyes were getting desperate. ‘You’ll make me a dead man.’

‘So Vic
did
get it here.’

‘But you said—’

Over the din of the disintegrating speakeasy, Hammett said, ‘Don’t you know a con when you hear one, Dom? Home in my bed.’

Pronzini hurled his glass to the floor in anger. ‘Goddammit!’ he yelped, ‘you son of—’

A sweeping paw smashed him half over the bar. He twisted off it, ashen-faced with rage, but a glittering hatchet slammed into the wood so close to his head that a lock of severed black hair fell to the floor. Pronzini froze; he didn’t even try to jerk his head away. He stared up at the seminude Oriental giant with stark terror.

‘Shouldn’t make threatening moves, Dom.’

The dais on which the band played was being rocked. Hammett was pouring himself another shot. He was getting
mellow. They wouldn’t have much more time. The din would be reaching the street by now.

‘Who’d you call when you recognized him, Dom? Griff or Boyd?’

‘Boyd runs errands,’ Pronzini said with a sigh.

‘Who’d Griff call?’ Hammett sipped, a tall, lean, erect, very correct figure amid the wild party evolving from the destruction of Pronzini’s speakeasy.

‘I don’t know, that’s God’s truth. Only Griff knows. All right, I slipped Atkinson a Mickey. And I left the alley door open for the guy to come in. But Atkinson was alive when I seen him last.’

Some draperies were afire on the far side of the dance floor. Pronzini looked that way, agonized, just as the dais slowly collapsed. But he shook his head.

‘I ain’t got nothing else to say to you, Hammett, not even if your boys wreck the place.’

‘They already have.’

The band went off the edge of the dais in a crash of instruments. The upended torcher wore no step-ins under her tight red sequins. Four men were fighting drunkenly in the middle of the floor. Nine more, and as many women, arms linked, were swaying back and forth and chanting: ‘Where-was-Moses-when-the-lights-went-out?’

‘Down in the cellar eating sauerkraut,’ said Hammett. He picked up his hat and stick. He said, ‘I talked with that reporter who did the series on bootlegging last year. He told me Egan Tokzek was a runner for you.’

‘Tokzek?’ said Pronzini in a dazed voice.

‘What did he do for you besides run rum?’

‘What the hell else was he good for?’ he burst out in remembered grievance. ‘You can’t trust them snow-noses for nothing but donkey-work.’

‘Right you are,’ said Hammett. He set the Wilton on his silvery hair at a properly rakish angle, then tipped it to the speechless bootlegger. ‘Thanks for the drink, Dom.’

He walked through the wreckage toward the gaping front door, very erect, very proper, no hint of drunkenness in his movements. Behind him the binders funneled down to go through the door like bats leaving a cave. From far off came the clanging of a fire truck.

B
oyd Mulligan was doing the
Examiner
crossword and waiting for the secretary to get back from lunch when the lean stranger’s shadow fell across his newspaper.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Is Mr Mulligan about?’ The stranger’s snap-brim gray Wilton was pulled down to shadow his face.

‘I’m Boyd Mulligan.’

‘It’s your uncle I want.’

‘He won’t be in until three o’clock. Give me the message.’