Lillian and Dash (13 page)

“The girl. You know her?”

“Why? You think there’s something here?”

“No, no, I’m sure it’s like you said.”

“Yeah, I do know her. Pretty good kid.”

“In the old days at Pinkerton, I had dozens of these things. We used to call them ‘dicker-tickers.’ ” He let Donegan smile. “Personally, all I ever cared about was, Did the girl get her money before the geezer checked out?”

“Angel is a true pro. Does all her business right up front.”

Hammett extended his hand now. “Thanks, Lieutenant. See you in the funny papers.” They were already walking toward their respective cars. “Will there be an autopsy?”

“Doubt it. The examiner thought he saw enough back there.”

“The family might want one.”

“That’s their business, isn’t it? He’s from back East, right? New York?”

“Think so.”

L
ATER, AT A BREAKFAST SHOP
on Flower Street, Hammett asked Phil Edmunds to tell him everything he knew about Jerry Waxman. This is what struck Hammett as important about Phil’s report: Jewish guy. Brooklyn. Tough as nails. Vice-president Northeast Electrical Workers Union. Yes, mid-fifties, but in great shape, beat me two sets of tennis yesterday at my place. Single. Dynamic sort of guy. Obsessed … labor organizing was his whole life. I knew him back in New York from his organizing electricians on Broadway. He was amazing at what he did …

Phil was getting off track. Hammett brought him back: “Myra and I invited him out for a week and set up all sorts of meetings with people who are interested in maybe getting some of the writers organized out here. You remember, what
we talked about. He was going to sit down with guys from different studios …”

“Which ones?”

“M-G-M, Paramount, Warners, RKO, Universal, all of them. Myra knows the specifics, dates, places, et cetera. Anyway, we wanted him to stay with us at our place. He said he needed to be on his own, he had preparations. I found that apartment for him. I reserved last week and dropped him off last night.”

“What time?”

“Early, before eight. He said he had work to do. I believe he did. Those meetings, lots of them, lined up all week. Jerry was a pretty serious guy.”

“Did he smoke?”

“Never.”

“Would you say he was a vain man?”

“Vain? Yes. Very. Why?”

“Any idea where he might have found that woman? How she got there?”

“None whatsoever, but knowing Jerry as I do something about this is just not right. I feel it. So does Myra.”

Hammett lit another cigarette and tapped his coffee cup signaling for a refill. “I don’t know how involved you want to get, Phil, but the important thing now is to pressure the medical examiner’s office for an autopsy, and do it fast. I have a strong feeling they won’t want to do it, so you might have to bring some real pressure to bear with his family …”

“An autopsy? You suspect something?”

“I’m in no position to get involved myself but …” Even as he said this, Hammett knew he was already involved simply by letting his identity become known to police at what he now believed to be the scene of a murder. “You have to move very quickly because if you wait and the official judgment is
death by natural causes
, you may have to try to prove a negative. So get the jump on it. A reliable, independent autopsy and, almost as important, the girl’s statement. You’ll probably have to get the newspapers involved. Even if the prosecutor is reluctant, bang the drums loud enough to get a grand jury impaneled. This might get pretty messy. Not to mention costly.”

“You think someone may have killed him?”

“A distinct possibility.”

“Why would anyone …? For trying to organize? Jesus.”

Hammett now got to play the Op or Spade or even Nick Charles, explaining how a “dicker-ticker” could be a murder: “In the ashtray next to the deathbed were two cigarettes, each lying on opposite sides of the tray, whose long ash revealed they had been lighted but neither of them had been smoked, simply allowed to burn themselves away. Even though her lipstick case was prominent, there wasn’t lipstick on either cigarette. And then you tell me your man Waxman didn’t smoke, well then …

“Secondly, if the cash deal between Jerry and Angel had been completed before any sexual activity began, why would
his wallet be on the pillow of the other bed rather than on the night table, the bureau, or in his pants pocket? Possible but unlikely. And why was her lipstick case on top of the wallet? How did it get over there? He pays her, puts the wallet down on the far pillow, then she does her lips and puts her lipstick on top of his wallet? Strange.

“Third, and most important, on the bathroom sink, a set of dentures. Jerry’s. With a whore in his room, Jerry, vain Jerry, as you tell me, pulls out his teeth and puts them on the bathroom sink? That’s the sort of thing a guy like Jerry does when he’s alone and thinks he’s going to sleep. These things have to be explained because right now none of them add up.” Hammett was proud of himself.

Edmunds whistled. “My god, someone killed him. How?”

Hammett didn’t explain and pushed his coffee cup away from him. “We need a working photographer right away. Let me call a friend at Pinkerton. This might cost. Are you willing to spring?’

“Whatever it costs. It’s the least …”

On the way back to the Regency apartments, Edmunds said, “How much? Approximately?”

“Depends on what’s needed, how far we have to go with this. It’s a Sunday. The pictures should cost no more than fifty or so.”

The photographer, a scarecrow in a suit and bow tie, met them at the Regency. He had done lots of Pinkerton work and knew of Hammett through his Continental Op
stories in
Black Mask
. In fact, he’d submitted a few stories there himself. One, he told Hammett, got an encouraging, handwritten rejection letter. Hammett clapped him on the shoulder. The cameraman used a Silvestri Flexicam with a large flash, exactly the right equipment for the job at hand. Hammett appreciated a pro.

The door to 10-B was closed now but the old cop, sitting on the steps and smoking as they sauntered up, was still on guard.

Hammett flipped his wallet again: “Hammond.
Times
. Remember?”

“You’re still not getting in there.”

“There’s a news story here. You can’t keep us out.”

“Don’t like it, talk to Donegan.”

“How about we just peek in this window right here.”

“How about you just get the hell back in your car.”

Which is what they did, or appeared to do, making sure the cop saw them make their way to their car out on Figeroa.

A block away they parked, circled around the apartment complex, and made their way to the rear bathroom window of Jerry Waxman’s rooms. The bathroom window was left exactly as Hammett remembered it. Hammett peered in the window. “Son of a bitch.”

No dentures on the bathroom sink. No towels tossed carelessly on the floor near the shower. Even though the lights were turned off in 10-B now there was enough sunlight coming through the front windows to see that the room
had been cleaned up. Hammett looked at his watch; it had been barely an hour. Both beds were now made. There was no suitcase, no wallet, no lipstick. The night table had been stripped clean, only a darkened lamp, no glasses or books or papers, no hairbrush, and certainly no ashtray.

Hammett expelled breath slowly from puffed cheeks. “God damn me.”

Phil said, “Why?”

“I screwed this up royally. How did I let them …”

He explained to the photographer that just a few wide shots were now needed but be sure the time and date on them could be confirmed. “Thirty bucks for two shots and all your trouble?”

“Not necessary, Mr. H. Just meeting you was good enough for me. But maybe if you’d be kind enough to look at one of my stories …”

“We’re sorry for the inconvenience.” He put the money in the young man’s suit jacket. “Phil, give him another ten.” Hammett slowly began to walk away.

L
ATER THAT EVENING
at Phil and Myra’s, he gave his summary analysis: “The autopsy is only important now if it can get you to a formal inquest that determines the actual cause of death. I’m speaking legally here, so you’re going to need a tough, smart lawyer who knows what he’s up against and is willing to take these people on. They are very good at what
they do, a hell of a lot better than I thought. I’m not wild about our chances now, and … and I’m profoundly sorry for falling asleep at the switch.”

Phil said, “You said
our
chances. That means you’re willing to stand with us on this?”

“I’ll do what I can.”

For her part, Myra Ewbank was still frozen by the fact that somebody had murdered her friend. Just last night Jerry Waxman was sitting right there in Hammett’s chair. She looked out the window and imagined Jerry serving 30–love.

Hammett said, “If you want to proceed with this, call everyone you know in the business, newspapers, radio people. Get the word out everywhere, most especially to his union guys back East.”

Myra said, “What do you mean, ‘If we want to proceed’?”

“Phil will explain.”

“Does Lilly know about this?”

“No, not yet. Why?”

“She knew Jerry Waxman too.”

“Really?”

Sitting in his car, Hammett berated himself. In the old days he’d never have left the crime scene. He didn’t have to leave. That was a careless mistake. It was the
why
of his carelessness he searched for while smoking alone in the car.

Deep down, he knew the
why
: He had been reluctant to get completely involved as a participant. He was from the outset not, as he liked to say,
in for a penny, in for a pound.
He was only
in for a penny
. Working from a distance, he convinced himself he could have it both ways. That was a luxury he could never have had when doing good detective work was his livelihood. And maybe at the heart of
why
was his unwillingness to jeopardize the good M-G-M money he was still making writing movie scripts? The Waxman case would have found its way back to him. That
why
carried the weight of truth.

As he drove home, he was convinced that someone had gotten away with murder. The idea was abhorrent to him. Hammett suspected how it might have been done. He remembered a case up in Frisco. The feet, an injection between the toes, insulin was his best guess. Maybe it still wasn’t too late.

His sense of failure was every bit as acute as Lilly’s had been with
Days to Come
. In her, failure revealed itself as shame. In him, it came as hatred, not directed at whoever might have murdered Jerry Waxman, but solely at himself.

L
ILLIAN WAS STAYING
at the large, sun-filled corner apartment on Riverside Drive she had leased for two years. She was hoping to entice Hammett to leave California. Of course, she preferred him to leave on his own terms, not be driven out, as looked more likely since he was being squeezed out of
Thin Man
scripts.

The sun arrived in Lillian’s place in late afternoon. There was a superb view of the Hudson. A continuous line of small boats, barges, ferries, and large ships passed up, down, and across the river. They helped give her writing hours just the diversion she presently desired. She would write a sentence on a lined sheet in her tight hand, reread it, alter a word or two, perhaps move a phrase forward or back, look out the window, and tell herself she would start the next sentence when that Jersey ferry touched the pier.

It was a writing pace she’d never experienced before. Normally words poured out in such a rush she’d let them spill
across the page, at least in first draft. Afterward there was plenty of time to see what she really meant, time to rearrange and reorder. Here at her neat desk alongside the window she felt herself writer, editor, and reader at once, participant and observer simultaneously. She told herself she enjoyed the ease of composing in this fashion. It wasn’t true. She was, in fact, writing haltingly, uncertainly, because she didn’t fully know what she was talking about.

Hammett was finally coming East. Just for a visit, he made clear. Still, she was hopeful. He’d be in New York on Thursday. She needed him right now. One good evening’s talk with him would clarify her problem and give her a choice of solutions. No one knew more about what was actually happening in Spain in the first months of ’37 or of the political events of the previous year than Hammett. She had not yet told him about the commitment she’d made to write a documentary film about the Spanish Civil War. She didn’t think he would approve, especially if after coming to New York Hammett discovered it was Lillian who had opted to leave. No, surely he would not like that. But wasn’t that all the more reason for him to come with her to Spain?

Lilly didn’t fully understand why Hammett had agreed to come to New York. True, he didn’t have a lot of work in Hollywood at the moment. True, his mishandling of the Waxman murder was a blow to his ego. True, he wanted to talk Alfred Knopf into a good advance on a new novel and thought that if he was based in New York for a while,
Knopf was likely to think him serious and go for the deal. And true, he missed her company, although she certainly wished he would actually declare that to be so. Just once. But she perceived something else, something halting in his voice over the phone that suggested discomfort. She put her pen down and looked out the window for a very long while and watched an ocean liner, probably arrived from Europe, being pulled by tugs up the river and alongside the West Side piers. She missed Hammett terribly.

His plane was due to arrive in Newark at three p.m. American Airlines Flight 111. She was at the terminal building early, unwilling to repress her excitement. He ducked out of the plane, stood for a moment at the top of the ramp and looked around at the people pushing forward below. He stood thin and tall, buttoning his suit jacket on a very cold day; his pewter hair against his tanned face made him look glorious. She saw him first and touched her throat with her hand. Hammett, there. She was like a young girl again with a crush on a movie star.