Hammett (Crime Masterworks) (17 page)

‘What’s he like?’ demanded Goodie, licking a dollop of mustard from the corner of her mouth.

‘Who?’

‘Biltmore. All that money, all that power . . .’

In perfect imitation of her tone, Hammett went on, ‘That frail wife, that healthy mistress—’

‘Oh, Sam, does he?’ Her eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘A
mistress
?’

‘Named Gerty. She won’t be there today, although they say he takes her up to their summer place in Napa even when his wife is there.’

‘I bet Gerty has fun,’ said Goodie enviously.

Sausalito was a small fishing village nestled along the narrow neck of Richardson Bay across from the rich sparkling villas of Belvedere Island. It was also the railroad terminus for anyone traveling north into Marin or Sonoma or Mendocino. The ferries moored right in the center of town, in three slips formed of massive wooden pilings. A hundred yards away was a pseudo-mission travelers’ hotel.

‘Northwestern Pacific runs a spur line up to Mill Valley from Almonte,’ Hammett said. ‘The whole trip takes only ten minutes.’

The olive-green wooden car, crowded with Sunday excursioners, clacked north along the Sausalito waterfront. To their left, white frame houses dotted the steep wooded hills behind the town, buried in foliage. Flowering shrubs and bushes crowded and climbed and burst in their demand for attention – rhododendrons and azaleas and delicate dangling fuchsias in the shady areas, bristling red bottle brush and gold-clustered Scotch broom in the sun.

To their right, sharp-prowed racing sloops and thick-waisted weekenders flashed dripping flanks at them, mostly from moorings at the San Francisco Yacht Club, which had moved to Sausalito half a century before.

Sausalito was more than a Bohemian fishing village and railhead; it was also a zany blend of seaport, yachting center, tourist attraction, and artist colony – and focal point for rum-runners.

‘A lot of the old waterfront warehouses on the south side of town are stacked to the rafters with bootleg booze,’ Hammett
said, and thought, courtesy of Dom Pronzini. ‘At high tide you can bring a whaleboat of rum right in under the pilings and unload it up through the trapdoors in the floor without any danger of being spotted from the street.’

Through the train’s open windows came the dense dark odor of drying mud flats. Puddle ducks, darting grebe, and mud hens with red beady eyes skittered away over the draining tidal flat at the train’s approach. At Almonte’s tile-roofed little station they transferred to the waiting one-car spur train.

‘Next stop, Mill Valley,’ said Hammett.

It was a rustic village buried in the redwoods. Far behind the town, Mount Tamalpais, where legend said the Indian maid Tamelpa had died, laid its softly contoured edges up against the summer sky. The train was jammed with travelers who intended to ride the Crookedest Railroad in the World from the top of Mount Tam down to the center of town.

A freckle-faced kid wearing knickers and a cloth cap and leading a three-legged mongrel directed them to the road that ran along Corte Madera Creek. In a bare twenty yards it had lost itself among the giant redwoods.

It was a russet earth track and even now, two months after the rains had stopped, damp underfoot. The arched vault of foliage overhead kept it cool and moist. The hill to their left was so heavily forested that there was little undergrowth.

‘Look!’ breathed Goodie.

It was a coast mule deer, its liquid eyes staring at them, its jackass ears twitching, its russet flanks heaving. Then a smaller version of itself appeared from behind the massive dim trunk of a fallen tree. Finally a tiny spotted fawn appeared, delicate as Dresden.

‘Not too usual for a yearling to be hanging around with mama after this year’s baby is born.’

Three pairs of ears twitched to Hammett’s low voice, as if to a signal. Suddenly they all were gone, with only the thump of hooves on the damp carpet of needles under the trees to show they had been there at all.

They came to a rough rock gateway, unmortared but beautifully fitted, which supported double redwood gates with hand-beaten iron hinges and massive iron rings to serve as handles.

‘We’re here,’ said Hammett.

The meandering packed-earth path, edged with decorative granite chips partially sunk in the ground, made a circle in front of the house. A circle crowded with breathtaking purple-blossomed rhododendrons and clumps of waxy-leaved pyracantha. The house itself was rambling, with red-shingled roofs and redwood shake siding. The broad shallow verandah was partially obscured by straight-bunked young redwoods.

‘It’s
beautiful
,’ breathed Goodie.

Hammett grinned and jerked the bellpull. The windows were flanked with redwood shutters that could be fastened shut during the heavy storms of winter.

The door was opened by a stocky, well-built man with only one eye who wore a chauffeur’s uniform. His accent was Australian or South African.

‘Dashiell Hammett to see Mr Bilt—’

‘Hammett? Come in, boy, come in,’ boomed Biltmore’s jovial voice from the background.

Goodie, captivated, stared about the living room. Square-cut, rough-hewn redwood supported the ceiling and paneled the walls. The fireplace had a Belgian marble mantel. The furniture was old-fashioned and unabashedly Victorian.

So also was the frail, china doll woman who rose when they entered. She was delicate and exquisitely boned, dressed in the floor-length elegance of a forgotten decade, her skin translucent as alabaster. She was gray-haired and remote, with a badly crippled left hand that she made no attempt to disguise.

‘May, this is Dashiell Hammett,’ boomed Biltmore. ‘He’s an attorney works with Phineas. Mr Hammett, my wife.’

Hammett bowed over the unflawed right hand. ‘I’m charmed, Mrs Biltmore. May I present my
fiancée
, Miss Augusta Osborne.’ He flashed the delightful smile he reserved for special occasions. ‘Everyone calls her Goodie.’

‘Goodie it shall be!’ cried May Biltmore in sudden animation. She turned to the one-eyed chauffeur. ‘Harry! Where has Bingo gone?’

‘He was in the kitchen trying to bite the cook the last I saw, ma’am,’ said the one-eyed man gravely.

‘Oh, dear, I’d better go find . . .’

A tiny white fuzzy dog burst into the room, yapped once, then threw himself headlong against the leg of May Biltmore’s chair.

‘You have a wonderful home,’ said Goodie impulsively.

Biltmore stroked his vast walrus mustache. ‘We like it, m’dear. Moved over after the fire. Thought it might happen again, y’see? Seems a bit silly now, perhaps, but in those days—’

‘Let’s have tea!’ exclaimed May Biltmore.

The chairs were Chippendale walnut, or Louis Philippe rosewood with Aubusson tapestry coverings. Goodie had never seen anything so elegant. Hammett was more interested in the South Seas tapa cloths and displays of African assegais that covered the walls.

‘Loot from my sailing days. The tapas are Marquesan, with one by the western Pacific blackamoors. Made of beaten mulberry bark, dyed with crushed roots and barks and berries.’ He moved down the wall. ‘The long spears are Masai from British East; the short ones are Zulu . . .’ He broke off with a chuckle. ‘Harry could probably tell you more about those than I could.’

‘I came around the Horn, you know,’ interrupted his wife with her charming, abstracted smile. She made it sound as if she were another trophy. ‘What a trip it was, with one’s furniture and china!’

An awkward, uniformed girl with close-set eyes interrupted. ‘Tea, mum.’

Tea! Goodie could never have imagined the finest supper in the finest restaurant being half so grand. It was served from a trolley, the tea and coffee poured from chased silver plate.

She had had sandwiches, of course – although not ones made of watercress, or mustard beef, or tongue paste, or roe. But who had ever seen asparagus rolls? Anchovy rolls? And potted cheese and biscuits, and home-pressed meat, and hot crumpets, and golden brown cream scones crumbly in the mouth. And fresh baked bread with sweet butter from a moisture-beaded crock. Cornish saffron bread like fruitcake, and Scotch shortbread like butter cookies in disguise.

But there were proper sweets as well: lemon curd tartlets, lemon sponge roll, seed cake, English loaf cake, and something called Lancaster treacle parkin, a ginger-flavored confection that, May Biltmore explained, had been aged for weeks in an airtight container.

‘Its all so delicious!’ Goodie exclaimed, after a pause because of her mother’s oft-repeated warnings about talking with her mouth full.

‘I don’t know where she puts it,’ said Hammett ruefully.

Biltmore hitched his chair fractionally closer to Goodie’s. ‘Well, m’dear, it certainly has made you the picture of health. Tell you what . . .’

‘So you’re an associate of that rascal Phineas,’ beamed May Biltmore at Hammett. ‘Perhaps you know dear unfortunate Mrs Starr . . .’

Biltmore harrumphed from across the tea cart.

‘As a matter of fact, darling, it’s to interview Mrs Starr that Mr Hammett and his charming
fiancée
are here this afternoon.’

‘It is tragic, isn’t it?’ she asked sorrowfully. ‘To lose one’s entire family in a ghastly train wreck! No wonder she has come west to try and forget . . .’

‘Tragic,’ Hammett echoed. He laid a hand on Goodie’s shoulder as she also began to rise. ‘Stay here and fill up on cakes and sandwiches, sweetheart.’ He grinned at Biltmore. ‘Maybe I won’t have to feed her tonight.’

‘How charming!’ exclaimed May Biltmore.

As Hammett went out to look for the cottage just beyond the
stone bridge past the tennis courts, Biltmore’s shining dome was bent solicitously over Goodie’s gleaming ringlets, and Mrs Biltmore was cooing over Bingo, the little white dog.

T
he three-room cottage was peak-roofed like the main house. Smoke wisped from the stovepipe through one side of the roof. Hammett rapped sharply at the door.

‘Hawkins, Mrs Starr. From Mr Epstein’s office. He sent me out with a few things for you.’

‘Just a moment.’

Just before the door swung open, he checked in his overcoat pockets the reassuring bulges of the weapons he planned to use against her.

‘It’s about time he sent some—’ Fire blazed in the blue eyes as recognition washed across her face. ‘
You!
’

Hammett pushed by her, tensed for a knee at the groin, but all she did was fall back, yowling.

‘That kike son of a bitch sold me out!’

‘Hush. You’ll wake the neighbors.’ He kicked the door shut with a heel, leaned against it, hands in his overcoat pockets and a sardonic grin on his face.

Molly had retreated to the center of the small living room. It was furnished with main-house castoffs. On the wall, ‘The Lone Wolf’ competed with ‘The End of the Trail’ in cheap gilt frames.

‘I thought that pickle-nose Jew bastard was dead straight!’

‘Brass Mouth didn’t set you up.’

‘I’d believe you?’ she demanded scornfully.

‘You can believe this.’

His right hand came from the overcoat pocket with a gun-drawing movement. Molly cried out in alarm. Then, when she saw what he was holding, her face unclenched.

‘You’re kidding me. It’s a mirage.’

Hammett set the bottle of Old Dougherty on the glass- and cigarette-scored top of the wicker table and dropped his coat on the sofa.

‘I figure being a fugitive as dry work.’

‘Come to mama!’ She had the cork out before getting cautious again. She went into the kitchen carrying the bottle, to return with two water glasses that she splashed half-full.

‘Let’s see you put that down, mister. Then we’ll talk.’

‘Mud in your eye.’

Hammett shook his head and reached for the bottle to replenish his glass. He sat down. Molly drank, refilled, sat down across from him with a beatific look. Hammett lit a cigarette and drank rye.

‘You make a passable grieving widow.’

‘I looked in the mirror this morning, I thought I was my goddamn mother.’ She brooded in silence. ‘Damn near a week without anyone to talk to, except that dotty old woman out there. She talks to her dog. Her goddamn
dog!
’

‘So talk to me.’

Her lip curled. ‘What’s a nice girl like me doing in—’

‘What do you know about Vic Atkinson’s death?’

‘Vic Atkinson? The guy you were . . .’ It belatedly hit her. ‘
Death?
You mean he’s—’

‘Monday night. With a baseball bat.’ It could be true, she might not have heard. In her role as grief-struck widow, she wouldn’t have been able to evince much interest in local news.

‘Look, Hammett, I’m sorry about your friend, but you can’t expect me to act all broken up. I only met the gentleman the one time.’ She shrugged. ‘I heard somewhere that Scarface Al uses a baseball bat to—’

‘Now you sound like the cops,’ said Hammett. ‘Nope, this was local, something Vic was working on.’ He paused deliberately. ‘He was going to find you, and he was going to shake you until something fell out. Say you were scared enough to make a phone call after we left your cathouse’

‘Parlorhouse,’ she interrupted automatically.

‘Bullshit.’

‘All right, I was scared.’ She wore a black floor-length dress with a cameo brooch at the throat to set it off. ‘But that’s all you’re getting from me. I know what you’re doing, bringing your bottle to—’

‘Have a drink,’ suggested Hammett.

‘Go to hell.’

‘Have a drink, Hammett.’ He leaned the other way. ‘Thanks, I will.’

Watching him pour, she said in sudden impatience, ‘Gimme that bottle. I can match a beanpole like you drink for drink any day.’

‘You’ve got more to lose,’ warned Hammett.

She laughed harshly. ‘Try it, buster, you’ll be walking like a cowboy for a month.’

‘I meant names,’ said Hammett. ‘All those big important names you’d never
dare
talk to me about.’

‘Damn right. Hoping I’ll get drunk . . .’

‘I think one of us already is.’

A surprising shudder ran through her. ‘I hadn’t ought to be talking to you like this. If certain people—’

‘I could always
tell
them you spilled your guts,’ said Hammett thoughtfully to help her along.