Shamus In The Green Room (31 page)

fice. Maybe if I could restore order there, I could restore order

elsewhere. Homeostasis. The maintenance of external balances

facilitates the maintenance of internal balances.

It’s a scientific principle.

After an hour of filing, however—followed by fifteen solid

minutes of dusting, and several of sneezing, which I wouldn’t

have had to endure if I’d dusted more regularly—I’d con-

cluded that the whole thing was a crock. Still, I’d done one

thing right: I’d waited until Vincent came home, and I’d

helped him talk Annie down from the state she’d worked her-

self into. While Alexander watched cartoons, and the two of

them went out for a walk, I’d put the house back together and

started dinner (no yeast). When they came home, arms locked

tightly around each other’s waist, they announced they were

292

going to fight for joint custody. Roxana had a long way to go,

but Annie was no longer going to write her off as a lost cause.

Not for her sake, but for Alexander’s.

Two things right: I’d finally talked to Gambino, who’d re-

alized at some point during the day that he never had gotten

his eggs Benedict. There were fireworks, as I’d expected. Words

like gun had made a definite impact (Rafe’s gun, not Tina’s;

I still hadn’t broached the whole issue of Tina). Gambino didn’t

know Captain Donaldson, but he was familiar with Detective

Smarinsky. After a dinner of Indian takeout, Gambino got

him on the phone. They talked for a while. Both had meetings

all day tomorrow—Friday—but Smarinsky agreed to a sit-

down at the end of the day, with the caveat that it was shabbat,

and his wife was baking fresh challah, so the clock would be

ticking.

After they hung up, and because Gambino asked so nicely,

I swore on the latest issue of People (I was boycotting the rest

of them) that I was going to stay out of it from there on in. I had

every intention of sticking to my word. But in my defense, I’d

eaten so much garlic naan I couldn’t think straight.

That was hours ago, of course. Now I sat at my Lucite desk,

which I could actually see for the first time in years, wide awake

at two o’clock in the morning. It was too late to call anybody.

I could wake up Gambino, but he had a busy day ahead of

him. So I walked over to the bookshelf and pulled out the

Hammett biography I’d written all those years ago.

It was my second book, and the one that still meant the

most to me, probably because I admired Hammett so much,

both for his personal integrity and the beauty of his language.

I ran my fingers over the shiny white dust jacket with the stark

293

black Roman letters. I’d struggled with the title for a long time.

Nothing had seemed right. For a while, I’d wanted to call it Ink

Is a Stain, which was the first line of a poem Hammett had

written early in his career. But I’d finally decided on The Man

Who Wasn’t There, after a verse he used to recite to his younger

daughter, Jo:

Yesterday, upon the stair

I saw a man who wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there again today.

Oh, how I wish he’d go away.

The man who wasn’t there. That was how I saw Hammett—

not as the thin man, who was so insubstantial he had to stand

in the same place twice to throw a shadow, but as someone far

more elusive: drinking at the Clover Club when he should have

been in his office at MGM; with his lover when he should have

been with his wife; in the army when he should have been in

the hospital; in jail when he should have been at his typewriter.

As a close friend of his, a screenwriter named Nunnally John-

son, once said, you could only live that way if you didn’t ex-

pect to be around much past Thursday. But Hammett lived to

sixty-six. He spent his whole life dodging a bullet that was

coming at him in slow motion.

My editor, Sally, had wanted a little-known black-and-

white photo of him for the cover. It was taken in San Fran-

cisco circa 1921, up on the roof of 620 Eddy Street, where

he’d lived while working for the Pinkerton office, when he was

first married. But I’d disliked that photograph, with Hammett

looking off into the distance, a pipe in his mouth, a large,

294

black drainpipe leaning perilously close. It was so portentous,

somehow. Her second choice was a charcoal sketch of a bottle

being borne along the waves. She’d taken the idea from one of

the early biographers, who’d likened Hammett’s first stories

for Black Mask to letters in a bottle, set adrift in the hope

they’d be found by like-minded souls. I’d disliked that idea,

too, disliked the whole romantic mythology of Hammett as a

tortured hero.

Hammett could’ve kept writing, that was the thing, penned

dozens of Sam Spade rehashes, kept himself busy, out of trou-

ble. But he didn’t want to. He’d mastered the form: why repeat

himself? Over the years, pressured by his publisher, he’d an-

nounced titles of forthcoming novels, serious novels this time:

There Was a Young Man, The Hunting Boy, The Valley Sheep Are

Fatter. But none ever materialized. I flipped to the last chapter

of my book, and found a quote from the fragmentary Tulip,

which Hammett left behind at his death: “If you are tired, you

ought to rest, I think, and not try to fool yourself and your cus-

tomers with colored bubbles.”

You miss the story when you get caught up in the myth.

The myth is the story’s engine, not its conclusion. How well

Hammett knew this. Consider the legendary Maltese falcon:

when the thief, Caspar Gutman, finally gets his hands on it, he

turns the bird upside down and scrapes an edge of its base with

his knife: “Black enamel came off in tiny curls, exposing black-

ened metal beneath. Gutman’s knife-blade bit into the metal,

turning back a thin curved shaving. The inside of the shaving,

and the narrow plane its removal had left, had the soft gray

sheen of lead.”

It was a fake, a ruse—a myth.

295

A myth takes you only so far, and not always in the direc-

tion of the truth. The truth is right there in front of you.

That’s what Captain Donaldson had said. But you have to be

ready to confront it.

I was ready, I suddenly realized.

All I had to do was open one more door.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-EIGHT

It wasn’t made of glass, but when I slipped the key into the

lock, I half-expected it to shatter. Such are the perils of the

literary imagination. It was actually anticlimactic. No shattered

glass, no lightning bolt from on high, no little voice in my head

asking what the hell I was doing, which would have been a fine

thing to ask at four in the afternoon on this unusually bright

day in early fall.

I kissed the Playboy bunny for luck, slipped the key ring

back into my pocket, and opened the door to Rafe Simic’s

house.

No one was at home.

I knew that already, having called five times at five-minute

intervals, letting it ring until the machine picked up. I’d used a

prepaid, throwaway cell phone so the number couldn’t be

traced back to me, and remembered to pay in cash. Afterward,

the phone went into a Dumpster on the corner of Venice and

298

Lincoln with thirty unused minutes, but what the hell. A find

like that would make somebody’s day, and god knows I could

use the karmic payback. Yes, I’d thought of everything.

“Hey!” someone called out. “Don’t shut that door!”

Make that almost everything.

I spun around slowly, giving myself enough time to wipe

the look of terror off my face.

“You’re Rafe’s friend, right?” It was the guy in the Rolling

Stones T-shirt from the other day. He was carrying two gro-

cery bags. “Remember me? I’m Sam the neighbor.”

“Hey, Sam the neighbor,” I said, doing my best to radiate

inner peace.

“Rafe went to the desert, didn’t he?”

“That’s right! In the desert for three more days!” Which is

why it was going to be no problem whatsoever getting into his

house. I peeled off my sweater. I was starting to perspire.

“Too bad. He borrowed something I need. Well, I guess I

don’t really need it. You know how that goes.”

“Sure.”

“Man, I’d love to get out of town. Some guys have all the

luck.”

I started to play with my wooden bangles. Most people take

this sort of thing as a hint, but not Sam.

“No such luck for me,” he continued. “I’m stuck here. Edit-

ing the movie from hell.”

He waited for me to ask for details. I didn’t want to ask for

details. I rocked back and forth on my heels. I played with my

bangles some more.

“Director’s a first-timer. Doesn’t know anything. So it’s all

on me. I just spent nineteen hours straight in the editing suite.

I could sure use a beer.”

299

Go home then.

He waited expectantly.

I smiled innocuously.

He smiled back, but innocuous wasn’t his thing. Exactly

the opposite. His smile showed intent. His smile showed teeth.

His smile said wouldn’t it be great to have a beer in the movie

star’s house with the movie star’s girlfriend and then sleep with

her in the movie star’s bed while the movie star was out of

town? I really didn’t have time for this. Sam stroked his five-

o’clock shadow, which was one hour early. “Aren’t you going

to invite me in? I’m a thirsty guy.”

“It’s just that—”

“C’mon. You look like you could use one, too,” he said.

“I’m—”

“Rafe is always so hospitable.”

“Oh, fine,” I said, taking his arm.

That’s when the flashbulbs started popping.

There were three, no four, no five of them. It was like a bad

joke, these overweight guys in their safari jackets: man the

hunter stalks his prey, finds the perfect moment to strike.

I could see the headlines already: “Buxom Brunette Beauty

Cheats on Rafe!” “Rafe’s Faithless Girlfriend Caught in the

Act!” Only I wasn’t Rafe’s girlfriend, nor would I cheat on him

with Sam, of all people, if I were.

Oh, god: what was I wearing? None of the coral beads had

fallen off the bangles. The shoes were wood-grain print plat-

forms with ankle straps, from the forties and in perfect condi-

tion. But my chocolate ballet dress with the spaghetti straps?

What a pity I’d taken off my sweater. My arms were going to

look like ham hocks.

“Over here!”

300

“Look this way!”

“Smile for Daddy!”

“Give us a wave!”

Sam started to wave.

“Are you out of your mind?” I yelled, slapping his hand down.

“Sorry, reflex.”

I dragged him inside Rafe’s house and slammed the door shut.

“Should we call someone?” Sam asked, making himself

comfortable on the sofa.

Good idea. The police could just take me away now. “Who’d

you have in mind, Sam?”

“Oh, I don’t know. How about that beer?”

I went into the kitchen and opened the stainless-steel fridge.

There was extra-firm tofu, soy milk, something horrible-

looking that bore a slight resemblance to bacon, a vat of sour

cream, a six-pack of Diet Coke, and beer, two kinds: Chimay,

from Belgium, and Budweiser. A Bud for Sam.

Speak of the devil, the door to the kitchen swung open and

there he was, proffering a tub of sweating ice cream as if it

were a dozen red roses.

“I’m lactose intolerant,” I said.

“Too bad. It’s vanilla bean.” He maneuvered himself be-

hind me—which would have been desirable only if I’d been

choking and he were performing the Heimlich—then started

shimmying down to open the freezer. “Don’t want it to melt,”

he murmured, “but as for you . . .” I feinted left, then dodged

the bullet by sliding sideways out of his embrace.

“Beer in the living room!” I cried gaily.

I choked once, on onion soup gratinée. It was in the kitchen

of the faculty club at the University of Chicago, where I

worked as a hostess while my ex-husband went up for tenure.

301

But instead of Heimliching me, the chef put down the chops

he was Frenching and stuck his hand down my throat to re-

move the offending cheese. Gruyère.

Sam found his spot on the couch. “So.” He took a slug of

his beer.

“So,” I replied, perching myself on the arm of a leather

chair that looked like it could take it.

“You’re awfully far away,” he said.

“I’m comfortable, thanks.” Of course, I wasn’t, so I sort of

slid into the chair proper, landing with a thud. He didn’t care.

“How long have you known Rafe?”

“It seems like forever. Another Bud?” Maybe he’d pass out,

and I could go about my business undisturbed.

“I’m fine.” He got up to look out the window. “Looks like

the photographers are gone.”

“Oh, good,” I said.

“Rafe’s got problems I can’t even imagine.”

“So true.”

He shook his head. “Paparazzi.”

I nodded.

“They’ll eat you alive,” he said authoritatively.

“Tear your flesh off in chunks.”