fence, a uniform bull was holding back the crowd. He let Hammett through.
Jimmy Wright, five feet eight and overweight, was at the foot of the wooden ramp leading up into the shedlike baggage building. They shook hands.
‘Who found it?’ asked Hammett.
‘Switchman.’
The meat wagon hadn’t arrived yet. Another knot of men, all official and dominated by O’Gar’s bullet head, was clustered in the five-foot-wide area between the side of the baggage shed and the closest of the tracks. The space was for brakemen servicing the rolling stock. Four of the men staggered toward the timbered loading dock at the foot of the ramp with a sagging army blanket. When they dropped it near Hammett’s feet, one corner flopped back. He had such an acute moment of
déjà vu
that he felt dizzy. Words washed over him.
‘. . . stink?’
‘Shit his pants when he died . . .’
Baltimore. His first job, at thirteen, right out of Polytechnic Grammar School. The old man had gotten sick and Hammett had tried to pick up the pieces as messenger boy for the B&O line in their Charles and Baltimore Street office. He was late for work as usual, cutting across the tracks, when he’d stumbled on a brakeman who’d been killed by a switching engine.
A head just like Vic’s: still whole but oddly misshapen, almost soggy, no more interior structure than a beanbag. Same stink of excrement. A shabby way to die. He flipped the coarse brown wool back up with an apparently casual toe.
‘His money was on his hip,’ said Jimmy Wright. ‘No wallet.’ Working undercover, Hammett thought, there wouldn’t be. ‘Clerk from the hotel saw the excitement, came over, and recognized the clothes.’
‘Sure it wasn’t a switching engine?’
‘Brakeman was through twenty minutes before. No body. No trains moving on this track last night anyway. You see everything you want here?’
Hammett nodded. They went up Townsend to the side entrance of the depot arcade and walked under arched ceilings past the train gates. In the Depot Café at the far end of the station, they found a table and ordered coffee. Jimmy Wright also ordered ham and eggs. Watching the stocky two-hundred-pound op shovel in hashbrowns, Hammett felt a little ill. He drank scalding black coffee. He fumbled out a cigarette.
‘You going to take over the investigation of the police department now that Vic is gone?’
The op’s sleepy brown eyes gleamed, then were sleepy again. He was dressed in a brown suit; his collar was soiled and rumpled from an all-night train ride from LA. ‘I was hoping you would.’
‘Me? I haven’t been a sleuth for over six years.’
‘And I’m a hired hand.’ He sopped up the last of the egg yolk with his final bite of toast. ‘I’m lousy behind a desk, whereas
you
—’
‘A writing desk, not a detective’s rolltop.’
‘Mebbe.’ The op lit a Fatima and feathered smoke at the ceiling. He chuckled. ‘Remember that check-raising gang you and Vic and I ran down in the old Blackstone Hotel on O’Farrell Street?’
Hammett remembered. Big blond guy with a broken nose that Vic had hung out of a third-story window by an ankle tocool down. He said, ‘Remember when I got drunk at that hotel on Taylor? The one where all the ex-cons went on Saturday night because they could get together at the weekly dance and plan jobs without being arrested as parole violators? Vic was . . .’ He broke off abruptly. ‘Jimmy, he called me last night. He was on a round of the speaks, wanted me to meet him. If I had . . .’
‘Right you are,’ said the thickset operative meaninglessly.
Hammett leaned forward, elbows on the table.
‘Any blood where they found him?’
‘No blood. He was dumped.’
‘Coroner’s man make a guess on the time yet?’
‘You know them.’
‘Then here’s something you can give O’Gar when you talk to him. Vic was alive just before one o’clock. If he wants to know what Vic was working on, refer him to Preacher Laverty. I’d
Jimmy Wright, five feet eight and overweight, was at the foot of the wooden ramp leading up into the shedlike baggage building. They shook hands.
‘Who found it?’ asked Hammett.
‘Switchman.’
The meat wagon hadn’t arrived yet. Another knot of men, all official and dominated by O’Gar’s bullet head, was clustered in the five-foot-wide area between the side of the baggage shed and the closest of the tracks. The space was for brakemen servicing the rolling stock. Four of the men staggered toward the timbered loading dock at the foot of the ramp with a sagging army blanket. When they dropped it near Hammett’s feet, one corner flopped back. He had such an acute moment of
déjà vu
that he felt dizzy. Words washed over him.
‘. . . stink?’
‘Shit his pants when he died . . .’
Baltimore. His first job, at thirteen, right out of Polytechnic Grammar School. The old man had gotten sick and Hammett had tried to pick up the pieces as messenger boy for the B&O line in their Charles and Baltimore Street office. He was late for work as usual, cutting across the tracks, when he’d stumbled on a brakeman who’d been killed by a switching engine.
A head just like Vic’s: still whole but oddly misshapen, almost soggy, no more interior structure than a beanbag. Same stink of excrement. A shabby way to die. He flipped the coarse brown wool back up with an apparently casual toe.
‘His money was on his hip,’ said Jimmy Wright. ‘No wallet.’ Working undercover, Hammett thought, there wouldn’t be. ‘Clerk from the hotel saw the excitement, came over, and recognized the clothes.’
‘Sure it wasn’t a switching engine?’
‘Brakeman was through twenty minutes before. No body. No trains moving on this track last night anyway. You see everything you want here?’
Hammett nodded. They went up Townsend to the side entrance of the depot arcade and walked under arched ceilings past the train gates. In the Depot Café at the far end of the station, they found a table and ordered coffee. Jimmy Wright also ordered ham and eggs. Watching the stocky two-hundred-pound op shovel in hashbrowns, Hammett felt a little ill. He drank scalding black coffee. He fumbled out a cigarette.
‘You going to take over the investigation of the police department now that Vic is gone?’
The op’s sleepy brown eyes gleamed, then were sleepy again. He was dressed in a brown suit; his collar was soiled and rumpled from an all-night train ride from LA. ‘I was hoping you would.’
‘Me? I haven’t been a sleuth for over six years.’
‘And I’m a hired hand.’ He sopped up the last of the egg yolk with his final bite of toast. ‘I’m lousy behind a desk, whereas
you
—’
‘A writing desk, not a detective’s rolltop.’
‘Mebbe.’ The op lit a Fatima and feathered smoke at the ceiling. He chuckled. ‘Remember that check-raising gang you and Vic and I ran down in the old Blackstone Hotel on O’Farrell Street?’
Hammett remembered. Big blond guy with a broken nose that Vic had hung out of a third-story window by an ankle tocool down. He said, ‘Remember when I got drunk at that hotel on Taylor? The one where all the ex-cons went on Saturday night because they could get together at the weekly dance and plan jobs without being arrested as parole violators? Vic was . . .’ He broke off abruptly. ‘Jimmy, he called me last night. He was on a round of the speaks, wanted me to meet him. If I had . . .’
‘Right you are,’ said the thickset operative meaninglessly.
Hammett leaned forward, elbows on the table.
‘Any blood where they found him?’
‘No blood. He was dumped.’
‘Coroner’s man make a guess on the time yet?’
‘You know them.’
‘Then here’s something you can give O’Gar when you talk to him. Vic was alive just before one o’clock. If he wants to know what Vic was working on, refer him to Preacher Laverty. I’d
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