Hammett

19

On Christmas Eve, 1910, a quarter of a million people — the greatest crowd in San Francisco’s history — had gathered around Lotta’s Fountain to hear an impromptu concert by famed opera soprano Luisa Tetrazzini. Today, as the streetcar went rattling by the ugly, ornate, cast-iron monument at Kearny, Geary, and Market, the intersection was Sunday-deserted.

Goodie did not notice the lack of people. She was too elated to notice much of anything.

‘Oh, Sam, I’m so excited!’

‘Maybe they’ll meet us at the door with a shotgun.’

She mocked a pout. ‘You mean I’m just window dressing again?’

‘You’ve got a devious mind, girl.’

Goodie leaned back against the shiny leather and looked out at the cable car making the turn up Sacramento. Beside the wedge-shaped corner building were steep steel stairs leading up to the pedestrian crosswalk that bridged The Embarcadero to the Ferry Building

‘I don’t care,’ she said, ‘George P. Biltmore!’

The afternoon before, Goodie had spent a dollar and her lunch hour at Le Maximilian Coiffeurs to have her blond ringlets water-waved by Georgia. After work, another five dollars and ninety-eight cents had gone on the stylish ‘tomboy’ dress she now wore: a light-green velour blouse with dark-green silk kerchief and swagger tie, and a plaid cashmere skirt and waistband.

Two weeks’ lunch money, and then some, but she was going over to Mill Valley for tea with the George F. Biltmores! Wait until she wrote her mother about that!

The car made the loop around the fenced grass oblong directly in front of the grand arched central entrance of the Ferry Building. A couple of bums dozed in the noontime sun.

Hammett bought two round-trip tickets to Mill Valley, and they joined the waiting-room throng beyond the gleaming gilt metal grillwork.

Going up the creaking wooden gangway to the sidewheeler Eureka, with the salt air keen in their nostrils, Goodie clung to Hammett’s arm.

‘I’ve never ridden this before.’

‘It must have been a long swim from Crockett.’

‘You know what I mean. This ferry. To Sausalito.’

The mooring lines clumped solidly on deck as they were heaved clear of their bollards; the boxy white boat shuddered as its enclosed paddle wheels began churning. White water foamed as it slid from its high-sided timber slip and made its way past Goat Island and Alcatraz for the thirty-two-minute trip to Marin County.

‘I know,’ said Hammett in a sympathetic voice.

‘You know what?’

‘You’re hungry.’

From the restaurant in the upper deck’s enclosed cabin, Goodie got a bowl of Exposition clam chowder and a roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. Hammett had coffee and pungled up the required fifty cents.

‘It’s an expensive wench,’ he said sadly.

They chose places on one of the curved wooden benches; life jackets were stacked under them in case of disaster. Through salt-rimed windows they could hear the sea gulls demanding scraps from the passengers on the open cabin deck below.

‘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 fiancee, 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 fiancee 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.