Work Text
“Raymond is such a good boy, Mister Spade,” sang the old woman for the seventh time since she’d installed herself in the oaken armchair. She was of an old-fashioned bulldog breed, round and short-limbed and solid. Heavy, well-creased folds hung under eyes that were pink and fragile with too many tears. “I just know he wouldn’t…” She shook her head and swallowed the rest of the refrain.Spade noted the similarity in the lips, the ones in the photograph she’d given him were pressed in a tight smile and the ones across from him were trembling, but they were the same lips, and Spade had to admit, even accounting for the march of time, they looked better on the boy.“Everyone is saying such horrible things about poor Raymond, and I just know that something’s happened to him! A mother knows!” She brought a handkerchief, one far too delicate and diminutive to be of any real use, to her bulbous nose.“So, Mrs. Ernst, you’re saying your son, a doctor, regularly plays chess with this man, Josiah Amberley, at the latter’s home in Lewisham, and then last weekend both he, that is, your son, and Mrs. Amberley disappeared?”She nodded. “I just know something horrible has happened to him.”“Best not to count our chickens before they hatch, Mrs. Ernst.”“I can pay you, Mister Spade…”Christ. Spade could take the swells and the dames and the hustlers without batting an eye, but the mothers always got him in the pump. The mothers, like this one, who snapped opened their second-best pocketbooks and, with palsied, liver-spotted hands, passed him tired-edged bills that had been tucked in coffee cans and rolled up stockings for as long as there’d been mothers and good boys like Raymond Ernst.Spade took two of the bills and then raised a halting hand.“Just for expenses. If I need more, I’ll let you know.”“Thank you, Mister Spade.”“Don’t thank me yet, ma’am. But I’ll be in touch as soon as I know something.”“What’d you think of her, sweetheart?”Effie Perine stopped typing and looked up.“She’s all right, Sam. The mothers are always all right. The boys…” Effie shrugged.“Yeah, well, I’m going out Lewisham way and see what I can dig up on her boy and this Mrs. Amberley that he’s supposed to have scampered off with. Wish me luck, angel.”“Good luck, Sam.”“Hullo, Sam“Lieutenant MacKinnon.”“What are you doing in Lewisham?”“Looking at real estate. I’m thinking of retiring out here.”“Yeah, like dick work’s got a pension. You here about the Amberley case?”“I might be. On the other hand, I might not.”“I got my work to do, Sam. You got yours. What say we have a drink and talk shop?”“All right.”“…but why did the kid leave town without his lucky rook?” asked Spade.“His what?”“Rook, you know, the chess piece with the pointy head. His mother said it was his lucky piece and he always had it with him. Once, their place caught on fire, the kid went back inside for the damn rook. But this time, he left it behind. Why?”“Aw, Sam. You’ve seen a picture of Mrs. Amberley?”“Yeah.”“Then you know why.” MacKinnon gave a long whistle. “She’s the kind of broad you go out for cigarettes and don’t come back for, lucky pawn or no lucky pawn.”“Rook,” said Spade. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is that ol’ song-and-dance, the treacherous friend and the fickle wife, but I don’t know, something about it stinks, MacKinnon.”“I’ll say. That house stinks. Like paint.”“Paint? Huh. That’s how the old man made his money, wasn’t it? ‘Brickfall & Amberley, Manufacturers of Artistic Materials.’ What was he painting?”“The walls of the hallway. Green, if you can believe it. He’d already painted the door and woodwork of the strong-room, where the safe was that held the seven thousand dollars in securities that Doctor Traitor and Mrs. Fickle are supposed to have taken off with. Christ, you ought to see that room, Sam. Like the Bank of England.”“Well, if you got a lot of money like Amberley and you don’t want anybody to get it, you got to keep it safe but nearby. But, you know, it seems an odd thing for a man to do when he’s wife’s just left him. Paint the walls, I mean.”“Amberley’s screwy, that’s for sure. ‘One must do something to ease an aching heart.’ At least that’s what he said when I asked him about it. One can never tell with those kind of guys.”“I don’t like ‘im, MacKinnon. Not one bit.”“I don’t like ‘im, either, Sam, but since when has that got anything to do with anything? Nobody’s reported seeing Mrs. Amberley and your man Ernst since last Friday.”“You think Amberley killed ‘em?”“What I think doesn’t matter. It’s what I can prove, Sam. And right now, I can’t prove a damn thing.”“Yeah, yeah. Where was Amberley that Friday night?”“Theatre. He got tickets for himself and his wife, but she begged off with a headache at the last minute. He showed me the wife’s ticket. We’re checking it out.”“Word around the neighborhood is that Amberley’s as tight as a clam with his money.”“That ain’t a crime, Sam.”“And that he treated the missus like a dog. Would you treat a woman like that like a dog? And speaking of dogs, what happened to theirs?”“I didn’t see any dog, Sam.”“But there’s an old kennel covering an abandoned well out back.”“Is there? I’ll ask him about it.”“Why don’t you take him in for questioning, MacKinnon? Maybe keep ‘im there a couple of hours.”“Just like that, Sam? ‘Cause my ol’ pal the private dick says so?”Spade shrugged.“Just a suggestion. Think about it.”About an hour later, Spade was rolling a cigarette when he saw the curious figure of Josiah Amberley being escorted down the street by Lieutenant MacKinnon.Amberley’s back was curved, and his legs were spindly, but his arms and chest were that of a giant. Snaky locks of grizzled hair curled from under an old straw hat, and his face was deeply lined. It was no wonder that Mrs. Amberley had sought companionship elsewhere. It couldn’t have been much fun looking at that ugly mug over your coffee and toast every morning.Spade glanced at his watch and, abandoning his post and his half-rolled cigarette, crossed the street.Two hours later, it was a pale and tight-lipped Samuel Spade who showed up at the Lewisham police station asking for Lieutenant MacKinnon. He kept walking, past the clerk who said that the Lieutenant wasn’t available at moment, until he came to the right office.Then he burst in the room.“Spade!” growled MacKinnon, rising from his desk.“Sorry, Lieutenant. I just got one question for Mister Amberley here: what’d you do with the girl? ‘Cause I found my boy in the well. And I also found your little green death chamber, you murdering bastard.”Amberley’s face contorted with rage. He gave a hoarse scream and sprang to his feet, clawing at Spade with bony hands.Spade jerked backwards.MacKinnon circled his desk. He was quick, but not quick enough.Spade drove his right fist into the chin of Amberley’s demonic mask the moment before Amberley’s talons found Spade’s throat. Amberley’s head snapped back, giving time for MacKinnon to pin Amberley by the arms. Men began swarming the office, creating a swelling human buffer between Spade and Amberley.Amberley wriggled and twisted as he was dragged out of the office. He spat in Spade’s direction. Spade watched the men haul him towards the holding cells.“You shouldn’t have hit him, Sam,” said MacKinnon reproachfully.“I should have done hell of a lot worse. He’s made a good mother cry ‘til the end of her days.”A telephone-bell rang in darkness. It was an artificial darkness because of the heavy curtains, but Sam didn’t notice or care. He’d been asleep for hours.“Hello…Oh, MacKinnon…yeah, I know, it is the stuff of nightmares…the bastard piped the gas straight into that strong-room of his…he locked them in, there was nowhere for them to go, and no one to hear their screams, god awful…paint to cover up the smell of the gas, yeah…and, I don’t know, maybe they scratched on the walls, too, or something…Ernst, yeah, in the well…securities, too...oh, you’ve not found her yet…hmm…he must’ve put her someplace special…hey, maybe he ground her up and put her in the paint somehow…yeah, but he was a twisted fellow…one can never tell…yeah, all right. Good night, Mac.”The second telephone-bell rang in darkness, too, but this time interior and exterior worlds matched.“Hello…listen MacKinnon I don’t mean to be—oh, damn!” Spade sighed. “Did he say where he put her before he did it? Leave a note? Yeah, I know. Wishful thinking. Well, keep looking for her. She’s got to be somewhere.”The third time Spade woke it wasn’t so much as waking as being gently washed up on shore.He knew he was in his bedroom and in his bed.There was his tinny alarm-clock. There was his copy of Duke’s Celebrated Criminal Cases of America.And there was a girl, hovering over him.“Thank you, Mister Spade. You saved my life."“Don’t mention it, sweetheart.”The photograph didn’t flatter. She was the goods: two cascades of long dark hair and a face like a Spanish Madonna. Two full lips loomed larger, then disappeared and touched his, kissed his.Spade kissed back.Then he reached up, his hands were expecting spectral nothingness, but instead found warm, soft, pliable flesh, curves to trace, mounds to massage, skin to caress. He inhaled the rich perfume of her hair and felt her breath tickle his neck when she sighed her sweet little sighs.“Just tell me this, angel: how’d you get out of the death chamber?”“For the simple reason that I was never in it, Mister Spade.”Her tone was as dark and sweet as molasses. But her words reminded Spade of something he’d read in a book, and while he was trying to think of the book, she crawled atop him and, laying his body along the length of his, made herself at home.He held her by the hips and rolled them together and thrust and spent himself inside her. He laid his head on the slope of her breast and listening for the beating of her heart.Spade listened, but he heard nothing until his tinny alarm-clock was announcing the dawn of a new day.He opened his eyes at once, sat up, and looked about the room.There was his alarm-clock.There was his copy of Duke’s Celebrated Criminal Cases of America.His bed showed no signs of having any occupant during the night but himself.“It must’ve been a dream,” he mumbled to the empty room. “Or not. One can never tell.”It had been that kind of case.