Hammett (Crime Masterworks) (31 page)

‘I do, Your Honor. I am going abroad as paid companion to a wealthy heiress.’

‘Counselor?’

‘That is correct, Your Honor,’ said Epstein. ‘I have just finished representing the heiress in the matter of her estate, and she has expressed her eagerness to have Miss Farr accompany her in this capacity.’

Judge Kelly slapped his gavel down. ‘Court is adjourned.’

‘All rise.’

Hammett pushed past the spectator barrier as Kelly retired to his chambers.

‘Congratulations, Molly.’

‘Hammett!’

Epstein watched sourly as the tall blonde, now freed of her triple veil, threw her arms around the lean detective and kissed him passionately on the mouth.

‘I get her off, he gets kissed!’

‘We were in love with each other one afternoon,’ said Molly.

Hammett handed the attorney a five-dollar bill. ‘Brass Mouth, you made the DA crumble up and blow away, just like you said you would. But I’m damned if I know how you did it.’

‘Because I understand Evelyn Brewster – also like I told you.’ He rammed a repeated forefinger into Hammett’s spare gut for emphasis. ‘This morning at seven
A.M
., a crew of my process servers simultaneously delivered subpoenas to Mr and Mrs Dalton W. Brewster, Mr and Mrs Edmund N. Calloway, and Mr and Mrs C. Gerald Gordon, informing them that they, as well as their teenage sons, were to appear for the defense in the case of The People v. Molly Farr.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ breathed Hammett as the beautiful implications sank in. ‘Everyone in town would know their kids had been the ones caught in Molly’s cathouse—’

‘Parlor house,’ said the ex-madam.

‘No wonder Brady didn’t show up in person. I’ll bet he had a hell of a morning assuring all the ladies he’d let the whole case die this afternoon.’ His laughter was bitter. He could hear Evelyn Brewster’s words again.
We are here from a moral commitment . . . no matter who is hurt or what hardships fall upon their families
. . .

‘So much for civic duty.’ Hammett chuckled.

Hammett stepped off the Sacramento cable and crossed the intersection to the three-story brownstone corner apartment house, 1155 Leavenworth. In his mailbox was a single envelope.

He trudged up to the third floor with deliberate slowness, slipping a forefinger under the flap of Goodie’s letter. It bore a Crockett postmark and her parents’ return address.

Goodie. He missed her. Missed her so much that he’d finally moved out of 891 Post Street, trying to convince himself that he was doing it because too many policemen knew where he lived and might try to take him out of the investigation.

He’d meant to get up to Crockett to see her, but he’d been so damned busy. As for writing to her . . . well . . .

He stopped, key hand outthrust in front of his door, as he finished reading.

She was getting married in two months. Son of the foreman at the sugar refinery. She hoped that Hammett would always
feel she was his friend and she hoped that when she and Fairfax were married, Hammett would come to visit with them and . . .

He opened the door with a flat brass key, went through the foyer and into the living room.

A petite impeccably groomed woman rose from the chair she had turned to the front window. She was superbly clad in a City of Paris frock of beige satin with rich brown trim at the hips, throat, and pockets; brown leather pumps with gun-metal silk ornamentation; and in her left hand soft brown leather gloves. On her breast glowed a deep-blue sapphire brooch. Her hat was a Dobbs cloche of Army blue felt.

‘Hello, Hammett,’ she said in a demure voice.

Only then, impaled by the huge dark eyes that dominated the face, did he realize he was looking at Crystal Tam. The transformation had been complete, from the inside out. She was into another role. Superbly, of course. Probably because for her there were only roles.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘for a moment I thought the manager had let a lady into the apartment.’

Crystal laughed her tinkling laugh and sat down on the front edge of the chair, alert and erect as befit a smart young society matron.

‘Do you really hate me so much? After all, I let you live, did I not? With nothing more than a small scare?’ She giggled. ‘I realized it was important that you be alive to testify, if it ever became necessary, that little Crystal killed no one, no one at all.’

‘I could lie about what happened.’

‘But you would not.’ Her clear laughter rippled again. She stood up. ‘That is why I am invulnerable. You are the only man of absolute integrity I have ever met.’

‘Then we’re even. You’re the only woman of absolute evil I’ve ever—’

‘We are back to that? Evil?’ She shrugged. ‘Of course. Only the man to whom evil is a concern would see me in that way. Any other man . . .’

She completed her sentence by arching the beautifully shaped
body in its exquisite frock into a blatantly sexual pose. Hammett found himself physically stirred, as always, by her. Her knowing laughter taunted him.

‘Poor Hammett! The frustrated manhunter . . .’

He sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned back against the wall with his hands locked behind his head.

‘Just about finished with the manhunting, Crystal.’

‘You will always be a manhunter.’

‘Nope.’

She walked over to stand in front of him, legs slightly apart, hips thrust slightly forward, her hands on them. She put her head to one side while looking down at him solemnly. The eyes were huge in the delicately boned face.

‘Then your integrity can sleep,’ she said softly.

‘It doesn’t work that way, sweetheart.’

She spun away with a burst of her innocent, joyous laughter. She leaned back against the edge of the table, and her body arched again in its explicit sexual offering as if she were an exotic tropical bird creating a complicated mating ritual. ‘I can offer you sensual experiences, physical sensations, that you do not know exist. Possess me to know total fulfillment—’

‘Like Daddy Lynch?’

‘Daddy Lynch was pathetic.’

‘Most men are, with their pants down.’

Her pose shifted and she was once more the young matron, matter-of-factly drawing on her gloves. Her eyes were flat and unreadable as they watched her busy fingers. ‘Did you really believe I was making a genuine offer?’

‘I believe you were getting a hell of a kick out of whatever you were doing.’

‘I came to tell you about the final condition I imposed on Daddy Lynch.’

And Hammett knew what it was, could hear again the scene in Judge Kelly’s courtroom that afternoon.

‘I’ll be damned.
You’re
the heiress. Lynch made you his legal heir!’

She was above time, beyond morality. Neither he nor anyone else would ever touch her, arouse in her normal human feeling. Nothing but death would reach her.

‘The estate was just settled,’ he went on. ‘Rushed through by your attorney, Phineas Epstein, I’ll bet.’

‘Molly told me he was the best,’ she said demurely.

‘And now you’re a wealthy young heiress, ready to travel. With a paid companion, of course, as is proper for young ladies traveling alone.’

‘Don’t you find me irresistible?’ she asked in a bubbly voice.

Hammett didn’t say. ‘Does poor old Molly Farr know what she’s letting herself in for?’

‘I will tell her a story.’ She shrugged. ‘Molly is sentimental.’

‘Yeah. The whore with the heart of gold.’

‘Perhaps I will make her my lover,’ Crystal said thoughtfully. A cold finger touched Hammett’s spine. ‘We will go to the East. The exotic East with its exotic perversions. You know what my wealth will buy me, Hammett? The knowledge that no one will ever again touch my body unless I want him to.’

‘Not until the embalmer gets you, anyway,’ he agreed. He glanced down to hook a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. ‘If they use embalmers in the exotic East . . .’

He looked up. She was gone. He lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke. The door stood open.

‘Don’t ever get her mad at you, Molly me darling,’ he muttered. To the empty room, he added, aloud, ‘I wonder what in Christ’s name she’s going to be like by the time she turns sixteen?’

Hammett realized he had never shut the door. As he did, someone knocked on it. He found a boy Crystal’s age who hadn’t yet outgrown his pimples and would never outgrow his freckles.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m from the Crocker-Langley San Francisco Directory, sir. We’re gathering statistics for the 1929 directory. Your landlady said you had recently moved in . . .’

‘Hammett. First name, Dashiell.’

‘How do you spell those, sir?’

‘
H-A-M-M-E-T-T. D-A-S-H-I-E-L-L
.’

The young census-taker, writing laboriously, left the second
l
off Dashiell, but Hammett didn’t bother to correct him. He wouldn’t be around San Francisco much longer. Write to his sister, Reba, suggest that they share an apartment in New York for a while. The ideas of somewhere else, and of family, seemed to appeal at the moment.

‘And could I have your occupation, sir?’

‘Writer.’ Then he added, ‘
W-R-I-T-E-R
.’

He shut the door. He leaned against it for a moment, then burst out laughing and went back into the living room.

Writer. He’d snatched enough hours to finish the revision of
The Dain Curse
in the past couple of months, but
The Maltese Falcon
would have to wait for final revision until after the investigation was completed. Maybe even until after he’d left San Francisco.

But meanwhile he thought he had an idea for a new book. A corrupt city, unnamed – hell, not San Francisco, he’d had a bellyful of this burg for a while, but – why not Baltimore? The Baltimore of his childhood? Corruption and politics and murder and friendship and love. Not a detective novel. Hell no. He’d had a bellyful of that, too.

A political hanger-on. There’d be a girl, of course. Not a Crystal, not an Oriental – he’d never be able to write Crystal. But still, a woman who would use other people just as she pleased. Bent on vengeance, for some reason he could work out . . .

And in extracting her vengeance, use everybody. Except the hero. Nobody would be able to use . . . Ned? Sure. Ned. Base him physically on Fingers LeGrand. Maybe even his character a little bit, too.

But nobody could use him unless he wanted them to. Cynical, hard-drinking, always loyal, and never corruptible . . .

Sure, he thought, beginning to pace the length of the living room from window to door and back again, sure. That was going to work. That was going to work just swell.

In such novels as
The Maltese Falcon
and
The Glass Key
, Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) elevated the hard-boiled detective story he found in the pulps from a minor form of popular entertainment into literature. How he did this puzzled as knowledgeable a critic as Howard Haycraft, and still seems to puzzle students of the detective novel today.

Which in turn puzzles me.

Because Hammett did not start out, like the other
Black Mask
contributors, as a writer learning about private detection. He was a private detective learning about writing. He had spent eight years as a field operative with the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Thus, as a writer, he retained his manhunter’s subconscious attitudes.

I wanted to write a novel about Hammett the detective because this experience
was
so seminal to his art. But it is not Hammett the detective who fascinates readers; it is Hammett the detective-turned-writer. My novel, therefore, had to probe the central tension existing between his two worlds.

Writing – even writing hard-boiled stories of mayhem and murder – demands insights and compassions (and allowed self-delusions) that are destructive to the manhunter. Begin seeing your antagonist as a fellow human sufferer, rather than the enemy, and you lose that hard edge that lets you survive emotionally – and in rare instances, physically – as an investigator.

Because 1928 seemed to offer excellent possibilities to probe
this essential tension fictionally, I chose it as the year in which to set my novel.

A good year for Hammett, 1928. He was living in San Francisco; his personal life was stabilized; his health was relatively good; he was in essential control of his drinking; and for my purposes, his detective days were not impossibly far behind.

And an exciting year for Hammett the writer.
Red Harvest
, appearing in serial form in
Black Mask
, was due as an Alfred A. Knopf novel the following February.
The Dain Curse
was scheduled for
Black Mask
serialization, and was the subject of editorial discussion with Knopf concerning revision for book publication.
The Maltese Falcon
was already finished in rough (as forthcoming Hammett studies will confirm).

A secondary reason for choosing 1928 was sentimental. Hammett lived that year at 891 Post Street; and it is in this apartment house that he places Samuel Spade’s apartment in
The Maltese Falcon
. Many addresses have been advanced as the one where Spade dwelled. But if one keeps in mind the fact that Hammett
did
live on Post at the corner of Hyde, and then approaches the novel’s references to the apartment with a San Francisco map in hand, he will be driven to accept this location as the correct one.

I began work on the novel with the usual belief that little more will ever be known of Hammett’s San Francisco years than is summarized in William F. Nolan’s indispensable study,
Dashiell Hammett: A Casebook
(McNally & Loftin, 1969). Pinkerton’s employment records of the era no longer exist; he seldom spoke of these years, not even to friends; the wife who shared some of them is dead, the daughters fathered during them were infants when the family disintegrated. The solitary San Francisco years were spent in drinking too much and writing all night, those with whom he worked at Samuels’ Jewelers have been scattered
by time. Albert S. Samuels himself, to whom
The Dain Curse
was dedicated, is dead.