Hammett (Crime Masterworks) Read Online Free PDF Page A

away from that crazy little kid. Life got complicated: Somehow the easy time to tell her about Josie and the girls had passed.
    At the short-order grill just inside the front window of the Fern Café, a bulky woman with white hair and several chins wasfrying eggs hard enough to bend the fork. The metal hood over the grill was brown with the grease of dead breakfasts.
    Hammett shot a casually searching look around as he slid onto a wooden-backed swivel stool halfway down the counter. A couple of other solitary regulars, nobody at the three tables in the rear, although a half-smoked stogie smoldered in the ashtray on one of them.
    ‘The usual, Moms.’
    Vile black cigar . . .
    Hell with it. But he realized, with a little shock of recognition, that his wariness about the big man in the plaid wool lumberjack and too-new work shoes was mildly pleasurable.
    Moms slammed down the morning’s newspaper on the linoleum countertop by Hammett’s elbow, slid a cup of coffee at him, and snagged an ashtray for his chain-smoked butts.
    ‘Why are you too damned cheap to buy a newspaper, Hammett?’
    ‘That would deprive me of your warmth, your cheery smile . . .’
    She cursed him while waddling back to the grill. He checked the Friday morning city news. A Broadway Street tunnel under Russian Hill had been proposed at a million-and-a-half price tag. The Millionaire Kid, with whom he’d played lowball in North Beach a few times, had been indicted as a fence by the grand jury. Parnassus Heights’ residents were charging bribery in the attempt to rezone part of Judah Street commercial. An unidentified man in a stolen car had been killed by Chief of Inspectors Daniel J. Laverty in a running gun battle south of Golden Gate Park . . .
    Plaid movement danced in the polished metal front of the pie case beyond the counter. Something hard and blunt was rammed into the small of Hammett’s back. The cigar! The goddamned cigar!
    ‘Hands on the table, bo!’ barked the heavy remembered voice. ‘Or this thing goes off.’

    ‘Oh.’ Hammett turned casually. ‘Hi, Vic.’
    Victor Atkinson took his forefinger out of the writer’s back.
    ‘Hell. I knew that damned cigar would tip you.’
    Atkinson had come directly to the Fern Café from Dorris’ garage because he’d wanted to catch Hammett unaware, look him over. But he’d left his cigar smoldering in the ashtray while he’d hidden himself in the restroom.
    ‘Not soon enough,’ said Hammett.
    ‘Well, it’s been close to seven years, Dash.’ He led the way back to his table. The two men measured each other as they sat down. ‘I quit the Pinks just before the Arbuckle investigation.’
    Hammett made a face. ‘What the newspapers did to that poor bastard.’
    They’d had some times together, Hammett thought. At Pinkerton’s, Vic had always led the bust-in parties on the theory that anything thrown at that jaw of his would just bounce off.
    ‘I heard you got into the writing game after you quit sleuthing.’
    ‘Doing ad copy for old man Samuels,’ Hammett admitted.
    ‘Yeah. Jeweler on Market down near Fifth.’
    ‘How about you, Vic?’ He asked it casually, pretty sure it was a cop asking him questions. Atkinson confirmed it.
    ‘I bounced around a little, ended up starting my own agency in Los Angeles. The movie studios generate plenty of our kind of business—’
    ‘
Your
kind. I’m out of the game.’
    ‘Maybe a good thing, the way I walked up behind you—’
    ‘On your brand-new shoes.’
    When the implications sank in, Atkinson’s laughter cannon-balled cigar ash halfway across the table. ‘If you had a goddamn phone, I wouldn’t have to gumshoe around.’
    ‘You’ve got knuckles.’
    ‘And a propostion for you.’
    ‘Sleuthing?’ Hammett extracted his last cigarette and crumpled the empty pack. ‘Not interested, Vic.’
    ‘Sure not.’ Atkinson hitched his chair closer. ‘You remembera month, six weeks ago, the Bay Area collector of Internal Revenue made a