“Sorry, Mae,” Gorman said, the anger still pulsing in his red face. “Just lost my temper a second.”
Kathy, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet, probably because she was scared out of her skin, found the presence to say, in clipped tones, “You wanted to ask me something, Mr. Gorman. What is it?”
Gorman smiled, pretending to swallow his anger; but there was too much of it to take in in one gulp. He was wholly unconvincing when he went to her and patted her shoulder, paternally, saying, “Mr. Gorman. What nonsense is that? We’re friends, we been friends for years. I’m sorry I snapped at you, baby.”
“Don’t call me ‘baby,’ ” Kathy said. Through her teeth.
“Kathy. Look, darlin’. I just want to ask you something. You lied to me, didn’t ya? You said you and Mallory weren’t seeing each other.”
“Is that the question?”
“No, hon. It’s... something else. You, uh, didn’t... last night, when you borrowed that... you didn’t give it to...”
I smiled cheerfully and said, “I think
The Secret Emperor
is a hell of a book. Really I do. It’s just too bad Dashiell Hammett didn’t write it.”
“Shit!” Gorman said, his rage-red mask returning, frustration mixed in with the anger. “Shit.” He turned and walked away from us, pacing in the area between the bed and the wall.
Mae came up to me and said, “I don’t understand, Mal. Are you talking about the newly discovered—”
“Save it, Mae. I think I know the business you and Gregg were discussing.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“Roscoe Kane wrote the Hammett book. I read it last night. It’s wonderful. It’s perhaps Roscoe’s masterpiece—the only thing that makes me say ‘perhaps’ is that it’s not a Gat Garson
book, but a Continental Op story. A pastiche. Which makes it automatically a lesser work, but...”
Gorman turned and with two raised fists shaking in the air said, “Go to hell!” Then he lowered the fists and looked at the floor and said, “Go to hell.”
I moved away from Mae and toward Gorman; Kathy stood quietly, nervously by the door.
I said, “I meant no sarcasm by what I said, Gorman. I really do think the book is a remarkable work. Where mystery writers are concerned, Hammett was the best. And Roscoe Kane was second-best. I’ve always felt that way; I always ranked him above Chandler and the rest—though most people have told me I’m nuts for having that opinion. But you and I have something in common, Gorman. A common bond, yessir.”
He sat, on the edge of Mae’s bed; he looked up at me with empty eyes. The hate had drained out; he seemed tired, slumped there on the edge of the bed. Even his goatee looked limp.
I said, “You and I, we both knew. We both knew just how good Roscoe was. We both knew how thoroughly he admired Hammett, how much he’d studied him. And we both know he may have been the only writer alive who could convincingly, seamlessly, pick up the ball for ol’ Dash.”
And Gorman started to smile. Just a little.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, lightly.
“Oh? That’s your stand, is it? Just going to tough it out. You figure I can’t prove it; it’s an allegation I can make, but can’t prove, and since Roscoe Kane’s so underestimated a writer, even so maligned a writer, my allegation will seem foolish. ‘Roscoe Kane pass for Dashiell Hammett? Don’t be absurd!’ That what you expect?”
“You’ll look the fool you are, Mallory.” He didn’t look as tired now.
“I think you’re wrong,” I said. “I think I can prove Kane wrote
The Secret Emperor
. I can certainly raise enough doubt to cause you a lot of trouble. You see, you know Kane’s work well, but not as well as I do. He gave me something, once. An unpublished early novel of his. He said it was a darling he should’ve killed. Never mind what he meant by that. Suffice to say it was a book no publisher had wanted but that he’d always had a fondness for. And rather than throw it out, he gave it to me, his fan, his ‘protégé,’ if you will.”
Gorman, not following this, smiled uneasily and said, “So?”
“So, it isn’t a terrific book—but it’s a nice book. And four of the major characters and one subplot from that unpublished novel found their way into his Hammett pastiche, the novel you’re passing off as
The Secret Emperor
.”
Gorman’s face went white; he exchanged quick glances with an equally white Mae Kane.
“He did that on purpose,” I said. “At least that’s my instinct. He wanted to leave a clue for somebody—specifically me—so that one day his authorship would be established. You see, I think he agreed to go along with your hoax—complete the five-thousand word manuscript of Hammett’s that’s sitting down in the University of Texas collection, even as we speak—for his own purposes.”
Mae said, “Mal, if Roscoe ghosted that book, it’s news to me....”
I turned and looked at her. “That’s what you wanted me to think; that’s why you told me about Roscoe being troubled about something in recent months, something he hadn’t shared with
you. If I stumbled onto the truth, you didn’t want to seem to be a part of it. Did you, Mae?”
“Mal, you’re wrong—so wrong....”
“No, Mae, I’m right. This has you written all over it. Your greed. Your shrewdness. My guess is Gorman here approached you first. And you sold Roscoe on it. But that’s only a guess.”
She said, “It’s a bad guess, Mal. I had nothing to do with this hoax. If indeed it is a hoax....”
“It’s a hoax. I can prove it. And I’m going to prove it before your precious book comes out.”
Gorman stood; cleared his throat, smiled patronizingly. Laughed: heh-heh-heh. Said: “Look, Mallory. Let’s explore some possibilities. First, I’m protected on this thing. If you want to get my ass in a jam, you’re not gonna.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Let’s keep this hypothetical. Let’s hypothetically say I talked Roscoe Kane into hypothetically faking this Hammett book.”
“Yeah. Let’s hypothetically say that.”
“Suppose I hypothetically set things up so it looks like I’m an innocent party.”
“How could you have done that?”
He smiled and shrugged.
And then Mae came clean.
She walked up to me, looked right at me, so close I could smell her; she smelled good—jasmine, soap or perfume, I don’t know what. But jasmine.
And she said, “Mal, it’s true. Gregg’s covered himself. He planted the manuscript among legitimate materials he acquired.”
“From that rental library in California he bought out?”
“Yes. And the person who previously owned those materials was a publisher who Roscoe had done work for; and that man,
who Roscoe was linked to, died of natural causes two years ago. So if this should all... come to light, Gregg Gorman will come out unblemished.”
“But minus six figures from Random House,” I said.
“A good share of that money went to Roscoe,” Mae said, “so you’d be taking it from me, Mal. And at what expense?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’d be tarnishing Roscoe’s name; you’d brand him forever in the public consciousness as a fraud. A criminal, even. Can you do that to my husband’s memory?”
“As someone once said, Mae—you’re good. You’re very good.”
“Please, Mal.”
“Please what?”
“Please think of Roscoe. It... was weak of me, of him, to get involved in this. But you know what his situation was; you know he couldn’t publish anything in this country, hadn’t published anything in years. It was a second chance for us. And Gregg was going to publish Roscoe’s own books, and... it was a new start.”
“Only it made him depressed.”
Sadness fell across her face like a veil. “Yes. He began to drink. Heavily. You know that.”
“He lost his self-respect,” I said, “getting involved in this scam. Didn’t you know that would happen?”
She laughed. Bitter little laugh. “He didn’t have any self-respect left. Not until he finished writing Hammett’s book....”
“And reminded himself how good he was.”
She laughed again. Sardonic little laugh. “That’s right.
The Secret Emperor
gave him his self-respect back....”
“And took it away, at the same time.”
Mae sighed. “I loved him, Mal. I didn’t mean for it to go this way.”
“What way?”
“For him to... drink himself to death.”
“Oh. You mean get drunk and drown himself in the tub. Accidentally.”
“Or whatever. It was suicide, in a way.”
“You were convinced it was murder, yesterday.”
“I... I don’t think it was. I’ve been thinking. Having second thoughts. I just don’t think those wet towels mean anything. We were clutching at straws....”
“Or damp towels.”
Firmly, resolutely, she said, “I think we were wrong, Mal. I think Roscoe just... died. Hard to accept, I know. Probably hard for you to accept your hero being involved in a... scam, as you call this. But he was. He was. Life doesn’t work out like it does in books... does it, Mal?”
“Rarely,” I said.
“Do you think less of Roscoe, for what he did?”
“No.”
“Do you... think less of me?”
“Mae,” I said, “I hardly think of you at all.”
Tears ran down her cheeks. She bit her lip and turned and went into the bathroom and sat on the stool and wept.
Suddenly Gorman’s hand was on my shoulder. The last time he did that, I punched him in the stomach.
This time I just turned and looked into his grinning face; it gave me a much closer look at that food-flecked goatee and those yellow teeth than I ever hoped to have. The beady buglike eyes were moving back and forth. He was smiling. He’d had a revelation.
“How’d you like a piece of the action?” he said.
I smiled and shook my head. Unbelievable.
“How ’bout some action?” he went on. “Then you can keep your idol’s name clean and make a few bucks on the deal, to boot. Why not. Let’s say ten grand now, and another ten six months after the book’s published—assuming everything’s goin’ as planned.”
“Is this hypothetical?”
“Yeah, sure. You want ten hypothetical grand or not?”
I looked at his nervous, grinning countenance, and then at Mae, sitting on the stool in the bathroom looking up now, tear-streaked face otherwise blank, but the eyes were appraising me. Kathy was standing by the door; frozen.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Good,” Gorman said.
“Good,” Mae said, smiling bravely.
“The awards ceremony is at two,” I said to her. “Don’t forget.”
She nodded. “I won’t forget.”
I turned back to Gorman. “You going to be there?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’m a speaker.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. PWA asked me to say a few words about this important Hammett book we discovered.” And he smiled at me buddy-buddy and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Even if I take your ten grand, don’t do that.”
His smile disappeared and he backed off. “You got no soul, Mallory. No heart and soul.”
“I had ’em removed in childhood,” I said, “along with my scruples.”
From the bathroom, Mae in a monotone said, “Gat Garson. Chapter Four,
Trouble Wears a Skirt
.”
“Correct, Mae,” I nodded to her, and took Kathy by the arm and got the hell out of there.
We went to the Artistic Café for lunch, again, and Kathy questioned me about
The Secret Emperor
. I told her the novel’s plot was pretty much as indicated in the 5000-word fragment Hammett had left of it.
The action begins in San Francisco but quickly moves to Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. Hammett’s nameless detective, the Continental Op, is sent east to trace a stolen document, a seemingly nondescript assignment. In the course of the case he soon becomes involved with the exotic daughter of millionaire Sheth Gutman. Gutman, frustrated that he can never hope to run for the presidency because he’s a Jew, plans to become “secret emperor of the United States,” by getting his own man, a crooked senator, elected president. The Op is drawn into a labyrinth of corruption on high levels—in political, military and industrial circles. The finale, a paraphrase of a Hammett short story, “The Gutting of Couffignal,” and a foreshadowing of the conclusion of
The Maltese Falcon
, has the Op rejecting the advances of Gutman’s daughter, who has betrayed him, and turning her over to Secret Service agents.
“In short,” I told her over cheeseburgers, “it’s the best novel Hammett never wrote.”
“Was the Gutman name in Hammett’s fragment?” she asked. “Or was that an embellishment of Roscoe Kane’s?” Gutman, of
course, was also the name of the famous, villainous “fat man” of
The Maltese Falcon
.
“That was in Hammett’s fragment,” I said. “I’ve never read the fragment, incidentally, but it’s been summarized in articles and in various Hammett biographies—including Cynthia Crystal’s. As I recall, the detective hero of Hammett’s version
wasn’t
the Op, though. That, apparently, was a Roscoe Kane embellishment.”
“I wonder why he did that?”
I swallowed a bite of cheeseburger, sipped some Coke through a straw and answered. “Actually, it’s one of the tip-offs that the book’s a fake. Hammett had begun the book with a different protagonist, a hero who doesn’t appear in any of his other stories or novels. But since the fragment was only five thousand words, there wasn’t much for another writer to pick up on and run with, where the character was concerned. Better to treat the fragment as a false start, and rework it, substituting an established Hammett hero.”
She nodded, seeing it. “The Op’s the hero of dozens of short stories and several novels. That gave Kane a lot to draw from. Gave him a frame of reference.”
“Right. And don’t forget, Roscoe was a real Hammett fancier. He was intimate with the Op tales. Knew ’em by heart.”
“Why were you so suspicious, Mal, even before you read the manuscript?”
“Well, Gorman’s involvement, on principle. But keep in mind that Gorman’s a publisher himself—as if I had to remind you; he’ll plead that he felt Mystery House was too small to properly publish the Hammett book, hence the need to sell it off to a major publisher. Which is twaddle. A book like that would’ve
made
Mystery House a major publisher. Gorman was
after a quick financial kill. Also, the fact that the Hammett estate is getting ‘a piece of the action,’ as Gorman puts it, made me wary.”