Devil’s garden

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Background information provided by: The Day the Laughter Stopped, David Yallop; The Forgotten Films of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Mackinac Media; Frame-Up!, Andy Edmonds; Hammett: A Life at the Edge, William F. Nolan; Dashiell Hammett: A Life, Diane Johnson; Shadow Man and Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade, Richard Layman; Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett, edited by Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett; The Dashiell Hammett Tour, Don Herron; the complete works of Dashiell Hammett; American Masters, “Dashiell Hammett: Detective, Writer”; Citizen Hearst, W. A. Swanberg; and The Chief, David Nasaw. My thanks to librarians at the University of Mississippi and the great reporters of ’21 for their coverage of the Arbuckle case in the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner.

To David Fechheimer for sharing his personal stories of meeting Jose Hammett and Phil Haultain and shadowing Hammett while working as a private detective in San Francisco. Another Southerner made good in Frisco.

And to Don Herron, my guide to Hammett’s San Francisco, who provided the color and soul to this book. Anyone with any interest in Hammett’s life should make the pilgrimage and take his tour, which has been going strong for more than thirty years.

As always, this book wouldn’t exist without the guidance of my friends Neil and Esther. My great thanks to both of you for everything. And to Doris and Charlie, Tim Green, and my entire family for their unshakable support.

Also to Art Copeland for his endless trips up and down the Frisco hills with me to find some dive bar or back alley and countless journeys to Chinatown. You’re a great egg. See you on the next adventure.

And to Andrea Grimes and Tom Carey at the San Francisco Public Library for digging up forgotten files on the Rappe case, Ed Komara and the folks at the Louisiana Music Factory for helping me with the soundtrack, Joe Atkins for keeping me plied with bourbon and great noir, Rick Layman for patient answers to my nagging Hammett questions, Marc Harrold for being paid in cigars for legal questions, Bill Arney for his personal tour of the Hammett apartment, and Carl Kickery for serving us up a free round at the Ha-Ra.

The big thanks go to my wife, Angela-tough-as-nails former crime reporter and hard-boiled sister to Daisy Simpkins. You produced your best work yet this year with Billy. I can’t wait to introduce him to The City, the way my father did for me years ago.