Ragtime Cowboys (20 page)

Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., hastened through a door that opened on gleaming tile. Water ran. Siringo reached across the desk, opened the drawer, snatched the key, and stuck it in his pocket. He closed the drawer just as the boy came out of the bathroom carrying a full glass.

Siringo indicated gratitude, put a pill in his mouth, and swallowed it with water. It was one of the aspirins he took to ease the pain in his bad leg.

“I thought heart medicine went under the tongue.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, massaging his chest. At length he let out a gust of air and smiled weakly. “They're handing out medical licenses early back East,” he said.

“You're all right now?”

“Sound as a dollar.”

“I wish I knew who sent the flowers. My father doesn't like surprises.”

“Who does?”

“May I have your name, in case he asks?”

“Peter Collins.”

*   *   *

In the lobby he stepped behind a potted plant and looked at the key. It was a simple cutout with a round tab and slightly worn wards. On one side, the initials
HAC
were engraved above the number 12. The other side contained the legend
DO NOT COPY
.

A mahogany booth opposite the front desk contained a public telephone with a city directory on a shelf. He sat down on the leather-upholstered seat and thumbed through the
H
's in the business section. Harriet's Advice Counseling seemed less than promising, as did Hassim's Arabian Caterers. Between them reposed, in medium type:

HARVARD ATHLETIC CLUB

Beside it was a telephone number and an address on Sacramento Street.

Three blocks from the hotel he entered a hardware store, waited for a man to pay for his purchase at the counter, and handed the clerk the key. The clerk, a young man in a canvas apron, turned it over and frowned. “It says ‘do not copy.'”

“This says ‘in God we trust.'” Siringo poked a folded five-dollar bill across the counter.

The bill vanished. The clerk found a corresponding blank on a pegboard, inserted the original in one slot of his machine and the blank in another, and switched on the motor. It ground and threw a shower of sparks. When it finished, the clerk held both keys close to his eyes, drew a rattail file from a bouquet of them in a tin cup next to the cash register, and spent a few minutes filing the wards on the new key to conform to the worn edges of the original. He inspected them twice before he was satisfied, then blew off the shavings. “That'll be two bits.”

Siringo flipped a coin onto the counter. “Can I get an envelope to carry 'em in?”

The clerk handed him a No. 10 and Siringo left.

He returned to the Alexandria Hotel and Kennedy's floor. As he stepped off the elevator, a maid in black-and-white livery emerged from another room to pluck a feather duster from a wheeled cart parked in the hall. He gave her the original key and a silver dollar to deliver towels to Suite 32, and while she was at it to drop the key in the top drawer of the desk when no one was looking. She looked doubtful, but bit the coin, nodded, and placed it and the key in an apron pocket.

Around the corner he stepped aboard a cable car and rode it nearly to the top of Nob Hill, home of more houses with clusters of porches and gables, but all in far superior condition to the Sailors Rest, painted in rainbow colors, with carriage houses behind. One, larger than most, had the year 1851 engraved in the stone lintel above the front door, and the address he was looking for on a gatepost. It bore no other identification.

A tall, white-haired porter whose Boston drawl made Joseph Senior and Junior sound like Midwesterners asked him in the entryway if he was a member. He shook his head and took out the envelope he'd gotten from the clerk in the hardware store. “I got a message for Mr. Kennedy. To be delivered in person.”

The porter checked his registration book. “He's not in, sir.”

“Know when he'll be back?”

“I'm afraid not, but if you leave the message, I can assure you he'll get it.”

“Orders is orders. I'll check back later.”

There'd been a risk Kennedy was in; but his leaving the key behind had been a hopeful sign.

Siringo took his time crossing the tessellated floor to the exit, and when he opened the door looked back. He saw only the top of the porter's white head bent over the registration book, possibly recording the visit. He closed the door and hustled on rubber soles to the other side of the winding staircase that separated the man's station from the rest of the room, found a door at the back, entered a narrow passage whose unpainted plaster told him it was used exclusively by staff, followed his nose past an open door belonging to a humid kitchen—moving fast to avoid attracting attention to a stranger—and came upon a plain staircase leading to the upper floors.

Instinct told him the gymnasium would be on the top floor, which contained the most windows and offered the broadest view of the city. There he detected the bleachy smell of disinfectant, heard water splashing, and stepped through a door into a room that took up most of the top floor, with a naked man doing the Australian crawl in a tile-lined pool and two others in trunks and undershirts sparring in a boxing ring. In the mouth of a corridor to the right he spotted the first of a line of tin lockers with louvered doors secured with padlocks.

He drew no interest from the swimmer or the boxers—both of whom, loose-bellied and shambling, were in no condition to fight professionally. It was always a wonder to him what lengths rich men would go to in order to make up for the exercise they didn't get by avoiding honest work.

Number 12 was indistinguishable from the locker on either side of it. He inserted the key he'd had made in the lock, cursed when it didn't work right away, wiggled it. The lock sprang loose. He tugged open the door and looked at some empty clothes hangers on a rod and a black satchel on the floor of the locker.

He lifted it out and set it on the long bench that ran down the center of the hallway for the out-of-shape athletes to sit on while they put on their socks and shoes. The satchel wasn't locked. He unlatched it and pursed his lips when he saw the contents, pantomiming a whistle.

 

25

“You look like a gigolo.”

“I been called worse.”

They were sitting in Siringo's room in the Golden West, the guest smoking a pipe, Hammett a cigarette. They were drinking Siringo's moonshine from hotel glasses.

“Tastes better from the jar somehow,” Hammett said.

“Get used to it. Once you been to Nob Hill, you can't ever go back.”

Hammett added the last slug of Scotch from his new flask, both secured in Sacramento.

“I don't trust a man who smokes a pipe,” he said. “You ask a question, he fiddles with it for five minutes before he gives you an answer, and then it's usually wrong.”

“I don't trust a man who blows up orphanages.”

“I haven't blown one up all year. You think because you trimmed your moustache and put on different clothes it makes you invisible?”

“Not to a Pinkerton; but we ain't dealing with any, are we?” Siringo swallowed a slug of liquor. “You going to tell me what happened to your foot? You're too young and skinny for gout.”

Hammett looked at the bundle of bandages covered by a pillow slip. “I should change the dressing.” He told Siringo what had happened aboard the train.

“What about the toilet salesman?”

“I may have bought myself a day off Purgatory there, made an honest man out of a sow's ear.”

“I doubt it.”

“Me, too. Next time he'll just refine his methods.”

“How's your head?”

“I'm working on it.” Hammett took a long draught from his glass. “What about the other?”

“It appears we miscalculated. Lanyard didn't go for the bait.”

“‘We', nothing. It was your plan.”

“I waited for you to come up with a better one, but then the train came and we ran out of time. Not that it was a total loss. We got him off our backs for a spell.”

“He won't wander long. We need to get out of Frisco.”

“For once we see eye to eye. I been hankering for that Sonoma country. Reminds me of the desert country along
La Jornada del Muerto.
”

“And it's such a restful name. You going to tell me what you found out?”

“I hit pay dirt. There must have been right around a hundred thousand in that satchel, all tied up in neat bricks of C-notes.”

“Let's divvy it up and retire.”

“I left it there, the satchel, too. It came to me Kennedy might miss it.”

“There goes South America and all its charms. What else might he miss?”

Siringo scooped something out of his inside pocket and flipped it into Hammett's lap.

It was a small notebook bound in green leather.

Hammett put out his cigarette and opened it, flipped through several pages.

“I can't make head nor tail of it,” Siringo said. “Maybe he had a stroke.”

“It's a number-to-letter cipher. If you gave me a year I might work it out.”

“You got an hour.”

“Why so specific?”

“That's when the next train leaves for the north country. I don't see no reason to dillydally, do you?”

“Go for a walk and take that stink-pole with you. I need to concentrate.” Hammett got up from his armchair and sat down at the little writing desk.

*   *   *

When Siringo came back, the room was hazy with smoke. He opened a window. “You burn that camel shit and you beef about my pipe? What's the doc say about them coffin nails?”

“I got a second opinion in Carson City. He was against it.” Hammett found a place to grind out his butt in the pile in the ashtray and tossed the hotel pad at Siringo. He caught it against his chest, opened it, and read:

A. M. Fall: $10,000

S. P. Clanahan: $5,000

Harry F. Sinclair: $15,000

Edward F. Doheny: $50,000

There were other names Siringo didn't recognize. “Who're the rest?”

“Search me. Punk players, by the amounts. Fall's got money problems, they say, so he'll take less than the oilmen. The bigger sums to Sinclair and Doheny are likely down payments. Those birds stand to make millions out of Buena Vista and Teapot Dome. Whatever Kennedy's got planned, he's in it for the long run, straight up to the cabinet.”

Siringo lit his pipe; taking his time. He shook out the match and contemplated the charred end.

“I don't suppose it come to you we're in over our heads.”

“Why should we be any different from the enemy? What do you think'll happen when Kennedy misses his account book?”

“He'll turn Frisco inside out looking for Peter Collins.”

“Thanks for blowing my best alias. I was hoping to use it on a couple of stories I'm not too sure about.”

“I couldn't use Charlie O'Casey. That would take him straight to Ahearn and Muldoon. No sense making things too easy.”

“He'll trace it to my wire.”

“Couldn't be helped. I've found it's easier to keep your lies straight if you hold them to a minimum.”

“There's where we part company. You don't write fiction.”

“You think not? When Pinkerton came down on
A Cowboy Detective,
threatening to break me in the courts, I spent weeks changing the name of the Agency and everyone I had anything to do with in its service. I paid back most of the advance to cover the extra typesetting. Whoever said a lie can't live never had to deal with lawyers.”

“And you wonder why I'm an anarchist.”

“I thought you said you was a Marxist.”

Hammett shook his head. “I can't figure why you're not in public office.”

Siringo pointed at the notebook. “That's why. It makes a man sentimental for the days of back-shooting in broad daylight.”

“Another place where we see eye to eye.”

“If you're waiting for a hug, I wouldn't advise it.” The old detective puffed up a cloud of sour-smelling smoke. “Anyways, it's all the more reason to light a shuck north.”

Hammett grasped his bamboo cane and levered himself upright.

“Arrange the tickets. I'm going home to pack.”

“I wouldn't, unless you want to put the eel back on our trail. He'll default to your billet for want of nothing else. Pick up what you need on the way.”

“Swell. Don't forget to pack the shine.”

Siringo scratched at the stubble where he'd trimmed his moustaches. “What about that jug you was fixing to bring back from Carson City?”

“That bootlegger I told you about was Pete Durango. I blew him up at the hospital in Carson City. It was my getaway stake. I'll buy you a case of Jack London's best from Becky.”

“Interesting how you went straight to her instead of Charmian.”

“I won't seduce her till you give me the office. If you want to arrange it with her stepmother, you're a free man.”

Siringo's pipe had gone out. He knocked it into a dusty basket of fruit courtesy of the Golden West. “In the old days, I'd horsewhip you.”

“In the old days, you might try.”

The old detective's face went black. Then it lightened by degrees. “I don't feature riding on the outside of a train's any picnic.”

“If I'd seen it coming, I'd've packed a wicker basket.” Hammett smiled then. “You weren't kidding when you said you've got luck in store. I guess you spent a deal of it when Clanahan and Kennedy weren't in residence when you ran those bluffs.”

“I know it.” Siringo looked sour. “From here on in I'm running on my wits and nothing else.”

“In that case we're boned.”

“Go to hell.”

Hammett scooped up Kennedy's notebook and the notes he'd made.

“What you fixing to do with 'em?” Siringo asked.