Lillian and Dash (16 page)

Hammett liked to type “End” when he finished a story or a chapter. It gave him the feeling that something had been done. He typed “End” and the phone rang.

“It’s me. Been trying to get through for days.”

He had no idea who
me
was, only that it wasn’t Lillian. “I’ve been busy.”

“Are you sitting down?”

“It’s three in the morning.” He’d be damned if he’d ask who
me
was.

“I can’t believe he’s done it, Dash. The scoundrel.” It took about twenty seconds more to determine
me
was Myra Ewbank and the
scoundrel
was her husband, Phil Edmunds. It took a while longer for Myra Ewbank to elaborate on what the scoundrel had done. The scoundrel list included “a rabbi—who knows what he paid the guy?—who persuaded the Waxman family to forgo the postmortem because Jewish tradition would be compromised by an autopsy. Waxman’s sister turns out to be a religious nut who bought the whole deal and convinced the rest of the family that—”

Hammett said, “Easy, Myra, there’s always exhumation.”

“Exhume what, his ashes? Phil had Jerry cremated. His old friend, Jerry. His old tennis partner. For whose murder the coroner has found, quote, no reason whatsoever to suspect foul play, unquote. So much for Jewish tradition.”

“Hmmm.”

“Hmmm, indeed.” Myra didn’t sound drugged anymore.

“When did all this happen?”

“Weeks ago. I’ve been busy as hell too. But, yes, it’s my fault. I left all the Waxman stuff to him. I just got caught up with everything else that’s happened. I should say everything just got caught up with me. I can’t believe the things he’s done. He put the money that was raised to find out what really happened to Jerry Waxman—some $17,000—into his own personal account. Stole it, Dash. Then three days ago he was named president of the Screen Writers Association, and you know what a phony front organization that is. And they’re paying him a fortune. How come you don’t know? Don’t you get
The Reporter
?”

“Myra, I’m in New York writing.”

“Still.” She sighed and brought her voice back up. “Then I check and see he’s cleaned out our joint account. We were going to do Europe next summer.” She was unsteady again. “He’s taken the sports car. When I was away on location, he packed his fucking bags and left. Leaving was the only good thing in the whole deal. He’s not going to get away with this, is he Dash?”

Sounded like he already had. “That’s complicated, Myra. I think the Waxman case is pretty well shot. But let me think about it. As for the money and your wayward husband …”

“
Ex
-husband.”

“… there are still some options. I have to think about it. But do this immediately. Call Peter Carey. He’s a lawyer and a private investigator. First-class guy. Mention my name. Give him my number. He owes me, so we should be able to work something out.”

“Dash, I’d much rather you …”

“Of course you would, dear. I simply can’t right now. I’ll be on it with Carey. Promise. He’ll do everything I would do. And I’ll do everything I can from here until Lilly gets back.”

“That’s when?”

“Your guess … Been calling and calling. Can’t get through.”

“Can he really get away with all this, Dash?”

“Maybe not all of it, Myra.”

This scoundrel turned rat was one clever son of a bitch. Phil Edmunds was the kind of guy Hammett really despised, a cunning sneak and a coward who took enormous advantage of people’s good opinions and misreadings of his character. He was the same devious prick when he was drinking to Lilly’s success and Myra’s superb Stroganoff as when he was getting Jerry Waxman cremated to set himself up.

Myra’s phone call three nights later was worse. Personally. She’d been drinking. “They canned me,” was how she began the conversation. “The best writer in the place—well, debatably anyway—and they just cut me loose. After I …”

Hammett whistled into the phone.

“You think this is his doing?”

“Probably so. He’s really got some leverage with important people. I’m curious. You’ve got a contract. How did Mayer deal with it?”

“He didn’t. Mayer wouldn’t see me. Neither would Selznick. It was Selznick’s assistant, Gelb. The little bald bastard. He sat me down like I was a naughty child and said the company couldn’t risk keeping anyone whose personal behavior was about to become grist for the gossip mills. That was his phrase, can you believe it,
grist
?” She laughed and repeated
grist
.

“So I asked what
grist
those
mills
found out about me. He said he was uncomfortable talking about specifics. I said comfort was not the point. This was my goddamned career, for God’s sake. He said did I ever read my moral turpitude clause? I said, Jesus, you wouldn’t do something like that would you? Didn’t say a word, just moved things around on his desk. Dash?”

“Ever get him to reveal specifics?”

“I asked, What morals? What turpitudes? He said it was all too tawdry for him to discuss. I said I wasn’t going to leave until he did. He says, ‘Illicit sexual behavior.’ I say,
‘Not specific enough.’ Dash, he wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Just, ‘illicit.’ Who’s the guy? I said. Not with guys. With women. Plural? He still wouldn’t look at me. He just nodded. I was steaming.
Name them, you bastard, name them!
He said
they
would if
they
had to. Publicly. So what do I do now, Dash?”

“Nothing for now. Did they offer you a settlement?”

“Nothing great. I mean, I’m not a saint, Dash, but I’m not a piece of shit either.”

“You’ve got your talent to fall back on, Myra. Lots of friends in the business …”

“I’ve already made calls, a dozen of them. No one calls me back. I don’t get it.”

Hammett got it. It wasn’t very complicated. Phil Edmunds told someone important he could make the Waxman thing go away and named his price. It was substantial—all of the above. But he couldn’t guarantee his wife wouldn’t blow the whistle; they would have to take care of that.

“All I want to do is work.”

“And you will, you will. Myra, we’ll help you through this.” He was speaking for Lillian too. “Remember, I’m three hours later here. Call earlier.”

She had already hung up.

Hammett lit a cigarette and lay back on his pillow. Already a strategy was forming, not a winning strategy but something to upset the applecart. Call it an insurgency. There was enough material—photographs of the crime
scene, affidavits, alternative theories of the crime—to keep the Waxman murder alive as scandalous gossip in the newspapers for years. The cremation still left things open to interpretation. Books could be written, films made. Hell, it never had to go away completely and eventually something would break, someone would crack. That, too, was human nature. But sometimes human nature took a vacation.

Dashiell Hammett had invented so many complicated murder plots with so many unlikely twists just for the sport of it, he had to remind himself now that normal people had no idea a murder like Waxman’s—a political assassination in a sense—often went unpunished. Perhaps
usually
was the better word. Such a crime altered the course of people’s lives a bit, but it did not tip the world out of balance and cause events to wobble out of control. In fact, such unpunished crimes changed very little. It only makes us sad when we know the truth.

H
EMINGWAY WAS NOT IN
P
ARIS
as had been arranged. Lillian took it as a sign that things would not go well for her project—there had been many such signs—and maybe even for the war. He had left a note at her hotel informing her that he was in Madrid because that’s where the front was. Martha Gellhorn and Joris Ivens were filming up in the Basque
country, where the war was especially brutal. They would all meet in Madrid in one week’s time. Filming had already begun, successfully, he claimed. His letter ended, “We need to beat the hell out of these bastards. Your good words will help us do that. Hem.”

While in Paris Lilly had written in her notebook,
How do you dress for this goddamned war?
It was not an unimportant consideration. How did you show the participants the respect they deserved? Show them you were neither a naïf nor a dilettante? How should you look so that people could trust you? Certainly a beret, because so many Republicans wore berets. A leather jacket because it indicated a certain military standing, but fleece-lined because it did get pretty cold at night. Dark slacks for mobility and dash, and to break down gender distinctions, with dark athletic shoes for the same reason. Lillian Hellman looked like an experienced war correspondent and she liked the confidence her costume instilled.

Her contact in Paris was a Spaniard named Pascal Rubio, a small dark man from the Spanish government’s Office of Diplomatic Relations, whose task it was to get this important American writer to Barcelona, and from there to the front safely and expeditiously. The first part was easy since rail lines from the French border to Barcelona had not been touched. To get her from Barcelona to Madrid alive might be more difficult. Rubio also believed Lillian Hellman to be an American diplomat without portfolio and a personal friend
of President Roosevelt. Her direct influence might move the United States to more active support for the Republican cause. Because his English was spotty, he referred to her sometimes as an “Emmissionary.”

The Nationalists—a coalition of rightist groups led by insurgent army officers and the fascist Falange party—had indeed pushed the front to the western banks of the Manzanares. Madrid was exposed to their artillery. Republicans and Nationalists were locked in a battle for the superb old city that in all likelihood would determine the outcome of the war. The Nationalists held the skies, thanks to the support of fascist German and Italian aircraft. The Republican army swelled with volunteers from all over the world. In October 1937 the outcome was still in doubt. Lillian was hopeful that there was still time for her efforts to matter as she approached Madrid in a black Ford covered with road dust.

Twice her trip from Barcelona had been canceled, the bombing along the road was so great no driver was willing to attempt it. The Republican army press office, which wanted its story told by Señorita Hellman, could find no one to take so dangerous a trip. Enter Julio Gómez. Gómez agreed to drive the Mees Hellman to Madrid for four thousand pesetas. Lillian reached for Hammett’s cash and agreed.

Lillian immediately liked his looks—dark wavy hair, tall for a Spaniard, ever-eager smile—and liked how smartly he’d put all her things in the trunk of his black Ford. The car was
polished and spotlessly clean inside. Gómez declared in excellent English that it was “My car, my own, my contribution to the cause, Señora Hellman.”

“Señorita Hellman.” And off they went on a clear morning at a fairly brisk pace.

Although the road from Barcelona was straight as a string on the map Hammett had given her, it had been bombed so severely that you’d have to drive double the 350-kilometer distance. It was now a trip of six or seven hours at best under terrible conditions. They’d gotten off to a good enough start, but it soon became clear that Julio Gómez was not Lillian’s kind of guy. Not only did he never stop talking, everything he said about the world and the war was dead wrong, and everything else was about Julio Gómez and unlikely to be true. The second category dominated the first. It would have been amusing if there wasn’t so damned much of it. But he was beautiful to look at, which gave him another hours’ grace.

An hour into their trip, Lillian touched his hand on the wheel and said, “Shush.”

He scowled and said, “That is no word,
shush
.”

“How about ‘Shut the fuck up’ then?”

Planes flew over the nearby main road from time to time; the shelling of Valencia from offshore could still be heard. Gómez told of having been a fighter pilot shot down in the Pyrenees. A bald-faced liar in addition to everything else. Hours passed slowly in the misery of his company.

Just beyond Valverde, Gómez drove off the road about half a kilometer and into a small plaza in front of the village church. Lillian got out and sipped from the fountain and splashed tepid water on her face, the back of her neck. Gómez climbed atop his Ford and sang some lines from “La Paloma.” Women gathered in a few doorways. Were there no men left in this village? Gómez engaged some of them in conversation and eventually he ushered Lillian through a door and down a long blue hallway to a large kitchen.

A straight-backed old woman stood at the head of the table and indicated a place for Lillian to sit on a bench. Against the wall was a middle-aged woman who appeared to be the old woman’s daughter. Seated at the table were the daughter’s daughters, girls in their twenties, one with two babies. All the faces indicated that they had never seen anyone like Lillian in their lives.

There was cool water and red wine and bread and cheese and beans and, of course, sardines. She tried to eat as little as possible but she was very hungry. Gómez quickly asked for seconds.

Back in the car afterward, Lilly spoke of the marvelous generosity of the Spanish people, the women at least.