Hammett (Crime Masterworks) (32 page)

But I’m a detective myself, and I went after Hammett as a detective, not as a writer. I treated him as a man I’d been hired to track down, and used the manhunter’s, not the scholar’s, techniques and sources.

Starting points were three facts from Nolan: Hammett came to San Francisco early in 1921; he worked for the local Pinkerton office; he quit after finding stolen gold cached aboard a steamer from Australia.

Results of this preliminary investigation:

Five cases upon which he worked as a local Pinkerton op have been isolated. He probably resigned from the agency on Thursday, December 1, 1921. Shortly thereafter he went to work as a publicist for Samuels’ Jewelers (on Market near Fifth at that time, not at the present location of Market near Powell). He and Josephine (
née
Dolan) were living at 620 Eddy Street until sometime in 1923, when she and their infant daughter left San Francisco for the first time.

Until their return, Hammett inhabited cheap rooming houses while trying to eke out a writer’s existence. One of these was 20 Monroe Street – directly across Bush from the mouth of Burritt Street, the dead-end alley where Sam Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, was to be gunned down a few years later.

By 1925 Hammett and the family were back together at 620 Eddy Street. He had begun selling his fiction regularly, but ad-writing for Samuels’ was still necessary. By 1927 he and Josephine and their (now) two daughters had moved to a larger apartment at 1309 Hyde; but that same year saw their final schism.

We pick Hammett up in my novel in 1928, living alone at 891 Post and writing full-time. For the purposes of my story he leaves here for 1155 Leavenworth, his ultimate San Francisco address, at the end of that summer. This dating is fictional; he was living at 891 Post as late as March 30th of the following year (1929).

The above are hard facts.

Working detectives and working novelists seldom have the luxury of a scholar’s certitude, but the following points have been established to
my
satisfaction:

Hammett was a heavy drinker and a chain smoker; he did not drive automobiles (was unlicensed in California); he felt no need of a telephone; he dressed well and at times flamboyantly, but always with the panache to carry it off; he gambled heavily, perhaps compulsively, on horses, cards, dice, prizefights, and probably women. He was a man of many acquaintances and (by choice) no friends. He was, however, witty and charming and gregarious. This pleasant surface masked the very private man.

For example: When I ran to earth (under another name and in another town) the Peggy O’Toole who served as partial inspiration for Bridget O’Shaughnessy, she did not know of her own partially masked appearance in
The Maltese Falcon
until I told her of it.

She has never read the book.

Finally, you will find in this novel a great many details about Hammett that, as a detective, I would include as raw, unverified data in an agency report. As a novelist, I leave to you the judgments as to whether any particular item is fact or fantasy. An example: A woman named Goodie had an apartment at 891 Post Street in 1928. But was this apartment next door to Hammett’s? Was she a cute little blonde? Is she
my
Goodie? Have fun.

Serious Hammett scholars, by the way, may feel that I play games with my reconstruction of how the prizefight scene in Chapter IX (‘A Black Knife’) of
Red Harvest
came to be written. My explanation is fictional, of course, but the timing fits: the four
Red Harvest
novelettes appeared in
Black Mask
from November, 1927, through February, 1928, and Hammett would have had time before the first two weeks of November, 1928 (when he got the
Red Harvest
galley proofs from his publisher) to write and insert the boxing scene.
Red Harvest
was published by Alfred A. Knopf in book form on February 1, 1929.

It is a common literary device to illuminate a character’s present by his past. Throughout, you will find Hammett recalling his youth and past life. Many of these facts appear here for the first time, so the question must inevitably arise: Are they indeed fact? Or invention?

Anything from Hammett’s early life that is presented as hard fact
is
hard fact. Thus, Hammett’s father did get sick when he was one year into high school, and so he quit Polytechnic Grammar School to work as a messenger boy for the B & O Railroad to help swell the family coffers. He did work at the Charles and Baltimore streets office. But it is invention that Hammett, cutting across the yard because he was late for work one morning (that he was often late is well established), stumbled over the body of a brakeman killed by a switching engine.

Facts: Hammett’s father took the children to the Philadelphia city dump; there was a billy goat at the dump. But though
I
once knew a billy goat who would douse live cigarette butts in the bizarre fashion mentioned in the novel, I rather doubt that Hammett did.

Facts: A girl named Lillian Sheffer lived next door to the Hammett house at 212 North Stricker in Baltimore; she had a girlfriend named Irma Collison; Irma’s little sister was about Hammett’s age and a friend of his. But Hammett’s mute childhood crush on Irma is my own invention.

Thus, the facts are indeed true; the way they are specifically related to my own story is often fictional.

Some of this material can be traced to Nolan’s study, cited above.

But the vast majority of it is the result of remarkable original scholarship by Professor William Godshalk of the University of Cincinnati. He simply handed over to me all of his original Hammett research. This novel would not have its present depth
of background without Professor Godshalk’s stunning generosity. He has in progress (to be published by Twayne Press) a critical biography of Hammett that should prove to be
the
major academic source for years to come.

How do you go about re-creating a city as it existed several years before you were born? Since I am a writer, not a scholar, my method was to set up criteria and work within their bounds. Because of the 1906 earthquake and fire that razed the city, San Francisco has a disproportionate number of her ‘old’ buildings (erected during her rebirth rather than during her original nascency) still standing and in good repair. Thus I was able to set almost all of the novel’s action in places that existed in 1928 and exist today.

I spent many hours with newspapers, magazines, and books in conventional research of the era and the city. The picture of the white slavery traffic and of whorehouse life in Capone’s Chicago, to cite two examples among many, are reflections of this sort of research. Nuances of everyday language often came from my mother’s (once my Uncle Russ’) treasured and tattered collection of
Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bangs
. Such parts of the San Francisco
mise-en-scène
as the Prescott Court speakeasy, Coffee Dan’s, Yee Chum’s (today Yee Jun’s, best greasy spoon in Chinatown), the fan-tan parlor, the nameless Italian café, the use of White Top cabs almost exclusively by those outside the law – these, as well as many other backdrops, came from written or verbal reminiscences.

In all this, my main concerns were to create a believable Hammett and a believable city.

One of the facts of San Francisco life since the pre-World War I days of Abe ‘The Boodling Boss’ Reuf has been a high degree of skillfully localized political corruption. It was true in the twenties; it is true today.
The Maltese Falcon
gives a
flawless picture of it. So I decided to build my plot around that curious child of the twenties’ weak law enforcement, the reform committee.

To this I grafted elements of that marvelous San Francisco brouhaha stirred up in the late thirties when a newspaper-pressured DA hired Los Angeles private eye Edwin Atherton to investigate graft and corruption in the police department, and
Atherton did!
Horror! Consternation!

Connoisseurs of that vintage San Francisco will doubtless identify the real-life counterparts (moved back a decade in time) of Victor Atkinson, Brass Mouth Epstein, Molly Farr, Dr Gardner Shuman, and Griffith and Boyd Mulligan.

The rest of the officials and politicos and cops and assorted good guys and bad hats who are based on real people are right out of the city’s Roaring Twenties. Lovers of
that
era might feel a twinge of nostalgia at Brendan Brian McKenna, Owen Lynch, Dan Laverty, George B. Biltmore, his wife May and Chauffeur Harry and little white dog Bingo, and many others. You will look in vain for models for Crystal Tam and Heloise Kuhn. They are only mine. Sergeant Jack Manion of the Chinatown Squad appears under his own name. And District Attorney Matthew Brady, although he never appears in person, permeates the novel just as he permeated San Francisco life of the twenties. (For a brilliant, thinly veiled portrait – as ‘District Attorney Bryan’ – see Chapter XV, ‘Every Crackpot’ of
The Maltese Falcon
.)

Finally is Jimmy Wright. Anyone who doesn’t know the person upon whom
he
is based has a lot of reading to do before he can claim familiarity with the work of the remarkable man and remarkable writer whose enigmas sparked my need to write this novel.

On a book such as this, a great many people must be conned by the writer’s enthusiasm into doing much of his work for him. If I have forgotten anyone, please –
mea culpa
.

My agent, Henry Morrison, who started the whole thing during a San Francisco visit with the innocent remark, ‘I wonder what would happen if somebody wrote a detective novel using Dashiell Hammett as the protagonist . . .’

My dear friend and peerless editor, Jeanne Bernkopf, who pointed the way when I faltered, walked beside me to the end, and taught me a great deal about the craft of the novel in the process.

Bill Godshalk, whose massive contributions are detailed elsewhere.

Clyde C. Taylor, my editor at Putnam’s, who labored far above the dictates of mere duty on behalf of the book.

Gladys Hansen, without whom the San Francisco Public Library’s Special Collections would crumble to dust, who always seemed willing to suffer this fool gladly as he stumbled through her demesne.

Dave Belch, the library’s publicist, who harried the original Atherton Report the length and breadth of the state’s library system for me.

Dori and Richard Gould, co-founders of Comstock Books, who opened their stockroom to me and whose enthusiasm, delight, and excitement with the project never failed to amaze me. Dori also gave unstintingly of her precious time to offer detailed editorial comment most valuable to me. A very special lady.

My editor at Random House, Lee Wright, who opened closed doors (and files) for me, even though her house was not doing the book. The height of professionalism in a great editor, the height of friendship in a grand lady.

My brother, Rog, who found two absolutely indispensable
source books for me: the 1927 Sears catalogue and the 1929 World Almanac.

As always, Dean and Shirley Dickensheet with their scholars’ wisdom, their friends’ enthusiasm, and their collectors’ library.

My mom and dad, who were young and in love in the twenties and who enriched my life immeasurably over the years with their memories of that era.

Herb Caen, because he understands San Francisco so well, and has written so often and so evocatively of what Hammett should mean to all of us who love this city.

Bill Targ, who furnished eleventh-hour Hammett information nowhere else available.

Finally, for their investment of time, worry, substance, and scholarship: Bill Blackbeard, founder of the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art; Bill Clark, world’s leading authority on
Black Mask
; Brooke Whiting, Curator of Rare Books for the UCLA Library; C. M. Ingham of Pacific Telephone; John H. Brooke (formerly) of Yellow Cab; Albert S. Samuels, Sr (deceased) and his son, Albert S. Samuels, Jr; and fellow writers Jack Leavitt, Art Kaye, Curt Gentry, William F. Nolan, and Bill Pronzini (who lent me his name and his bootlegging great-uncle).

And of course, Susan, who persevered through the years when my writer’s income would seldom buy the groceries, and who gave those years so much of their point and meaning.

JOE GORES

San Francisco

October 1974

AN ORION EBOOK

First published in the USA in 1975
First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Orion Books.
First published in ebook in 2011 by Orion Books.

Copyright © 1975 by Joe Gores

The right of Joe Gores to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The lines from the song ‘JaDa’ are used by permission: W/M: Bob Carlton. Revised Lyric and Arrangement:
Nan Wynn, Ken Lane. Copyright © 1918 renewed 1946 Leo Feist Inc., New York, NY.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 4091 3694 1

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