Hammett (Crime Masterworks) Read Online Free PDF

couple of wisecracks at the Rotary Club about a local madam deducting her protection payoffs as a legitimate business expense?’
    ‘Sure. And the papers made it an open secret that the madam was Molly Farr, just down the street from my apartment. The guy also said that quite a few of San Francisco’s finest were going to start paying income tax as a result.’ Hammett lifted a lip in a faint sneer. ‘It sold a lot of newspapers but I didn’t see any mass resignations down at City Hall as a result of it. I imagine . . .’ He snapped his fingers and pointed at Atkinson across the table. ‘Don’t tell me. A reform committee.’
    ‘That’s it. A citizens’ group was formed to get financial pledges lined up so an outside investigator could be hired.’
    Hammett looked up sharply. ‘Meaning you?’
    ‘Maybe. The committee meets Monday night to hear my proposals. If they like them . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Dan Laverty put my name in, we worked together a couple of times when I was a Pink and he was a detective-sergeant. He wants the department cleaned up—’
    ‘Throw out the chief with the dirty bathwater and take over his job?’
    ‘Something like that. But the Preacher’s as straight as they come.’
    ‘Good luck with it, Vic.’ Hammett tore cellophane from a new pack of Camels. ‘But I don’t see you getting anywhere no matter who recommends you.’
    ‘That’s why I want you in this with me, Dash. I’ll have damned good people coming up from LA, but only one of them knows the city. And none of them can analyze a situation the way you can.’
    Hammett shook his head with genuine regret. ‘It would be like old times, but it’s no dice. Even if I was interested, your reform committee’s going to need the mayor and the DA and the chief of police behind them, and where’s their leverage? McKenna knows damned well the people of this burg electedhim mayor so they’d have it wide open, and wide open is what he gives ’em. You’d better just hope that something happens before Monday night to give the reform committee more ammunition than they have right now.’
    ‘Something might,’ said Atkinson with stubborn optimism.

5
THREE BOYS FOUND
IN VICE RESORT;
MOLLY FARR JAILED
Police Trail Scions of S.F. Families
to Hyde Street House After
Mothers Request Action
    In a vice raid conducted at the request of mothers who suspected all was not right with their sons, police early yesterday struck to protect the morals of boys of high school age.
    They trailed a group of three boys – members of well-known families – to the house of prostitution operated by the notorious Molly Farr at 555 Hyde Street. There, while scantily attired men and girls scurried in confusion, the raiders confronted the white-faced youngsters – they ranged in age from 15 to 17 – and rounded up and jailed the inmates of the lavishly furnished two-story vice-den.
    Their parents, Captain of Inspectors Daniel J. Laverty said, requested that their names not be released to
Continued on Page 5, Col. 3
    H ammett threw aside the bloated Sunday paper to sit up. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and got his head into his hands in one practiced motion. Ohh-h-h. He explored the inside of his mouth with the dead mouse someone had given him in place of a tongue.
    Goddamn all birthdays.
    He tottered, bare-footed and bare-butted, into the bathroom. At least, this morning, he was thirty-four. He’d beat Christ.
    Just after he’d tottered back into the living room, a terrible agony shot through his head.
    The doorbell.
    He found his bathrobe wadded under the bed and went down the hall putting it on. He opened the front door with his head militarily erect so he wouldn’t upchuck.
    ‘Wipe off that silly smile,’ he said. ‘Good men are dying all around you.’
    Goodie looked radiant and fresh in street clothes, a hat shading her dancing golden ringlets.
    ‘I’ve just come back from church.
Some
people stop after their second drink. You’ve