Lillian and Dash (14 page)

He carried a leather valise, which he put on the ground when she appeared before him. Seen up close he looked weary, his eyes fatigued, his face lined. It had been a hard trip; he looked very like what he was, a used forty-four-year-old. Hammett embraced her tightly with both arms, raised her off the ground, and rocked her gently back and forth. Neither spoke. Why had there been so few moments like this one between them? They loved one another strongly in each
other’s presence, especially when they came together after a long absence. It was Hammett who did not want to end the embrace.

Then, abruptly, as though a director had called Cut, Lillian pushed away, took up his valise, and, trying to be funny, ushered him through the crowd. “Coming through, folks. Coming through.” And when she had sufficient attention: “That’s right, God has arrived. We’re all saved.” Until a great many years later when she became an icon and an old lady, there was always something playful, devilish about Lillian.

In the car she chattered as she drove, throwing around names and places, friends’ successes and failures, mostly failures, marital problems and scandals. Hammett did not know all the people involved and did not want to. He was more concerned with how erratically she was driving. Lillian did not stop talking. Just before she entered the tunnel, he touched her arm and said her name in a way that made her understand they were fine. She looked over at him and smiled. He was smiling back in the same way.

Lillian didn’t speak again until they were in midtown traffic. “Tough flight?”

He reduced a paragraph to two words. “Very. Always.”

“At least now it’s legal to get high while you’re high.”

“Haven’t had a drink in about three weeks.” About the time Waxman was killed.

“Why didn’t you tell me, for Christ’s sake?”

“I think I just did.”

“Dash. My god, that’s—”

“Don’t say
wonderful
or I’ll puke.”

“Open the window quick … 
wonderful
.”

“I’ve got to be careful. I don’t want any of my temperance to rub off on you.”

“I do.”

Later, in the apartment together, they watched in silence as the winter sun set over Jersey, sending diagonal light into the darkening room. Lights came on along the riverfront on both shores; the gliding boat traffic on the water was illuminated faintly. The two were at ease. He was tired. She was tamed. They drank tea out of beautiful cups. Neither wanted to break the silence until Lilly said softly, “How come?”

He understood. “The Waxman thing. What else?” He had never told her of his carelessness in leaving the crime scene and chose not to tell her now. “Had to get away.”

“I sent Phil five hundred. He says the thing is costing a fortune. Where’s that all going?”

“The money?”

“No. The case.”

“It’s not too promising. The bad guys have a lot of clout, financial, political. Until I can be sure, we have to assume he was killed because he was going to try to make Hollywood a union town.”

“They would do that?”

Hammett opened his eyes wide: “They wouldn’t? I’ll get a better handle on things when I go back.”

When I go back
came as an affront. He just got here. How to keep him here was Lilly’s new concern. “I know you are far too manly to admit it, but if these guys are killers and they know you’re onto them, isn’t there a chance, the slightest little chance, you’re in danger?”

“Actually a pretty good chance. But of course they can tail me here too. Probably will.”

Lillian said in a voice close to Nora Charles’s, “So Nickie, you came back to me because you needed a hideout.”

“Some hideout. Who couldn’t find me here? No, mostly I came because I needed you, and only you, to tell me that I wasn’t a piece of garbage.” Dashiell Hammett expelled a breath. He had never made such an admission to her. Another woman, he knew, would want to know why he considered himself garbage. Never Lillian. It was simply out of the question.

A long silence was broken by the sustained wail of a nearby tugboat’s horn. When the silence returned, it and the darkness had deepened.

Lillian had been moved by this hard man’s defenselessness more than at any time she could remember. She heard herself say the word.
Garbage
, not as a question, just as a word, the sound of it. She reached for his hand. “You? Hammett? Garbage? My god.”

It was exceptionally dark outside now, the moon had disappeared into the wintry night, which made the lights of Manhattan and towns across the river seem braver. There was a faint red glow in the far western sky. Snow.

Lilly sat silently pressed against his side. His arm hung loosely about her. After a while Lilly said, “Hungry?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Want to go out?”

“Don’t feel like other people just yet.”

“Eggs okay?”

“Eggs are magnificent.”

Lillian made scrambled eggs with buttered muffins and then more eggs and more muffins, which they devoured, stopping from time to time to toast themselves with champagne, which is what they decided to call their ginger ale. After the last toast—a mock pledge of eternal loyalty to one another—they left the dishes in the sink and went to bed arm in arm. They did not make love because it seemed so unnecessary.

Hammett was up before the sun rose. This was his favorite time of day, at least when he was sober. He cleaned the dishes, the cups, the frying pan, so quietly he didn’t have to close her door. Then he found his jacket and walked out through the lobby and down the front steps without encountering a soul. There was a bracing chill in the morning air. It hadn’t snowed but certainly would.

He had almost forgotten how alive the seasons made a person feel, as did a true neighborhood setting. Hollywood was unreal in almost every respect but its essential artificiality lay in its invariable sunlight. Seasons and their unpredictable weather would, of course, have made location shooting
too uncertain and therefore too expensive, so even the sun ended up in the movie business.

Broadway was awake, at least its commerce was. Stores, some pushcarts, newsstands were open, and people of all shapes, sizes, types, and backgrounds were all about and mingling. Hammett bought a
Times
and asked for a pack of Fatimas, which he pronounced “Fat-i-mas.”

“Here’s your ‘Fa-tee-mas.’ ”

“Duly noted. And could you direct me to a good Jewish deli?”

“There ain’t none. But on the corner is the best of the worst.”

Dashiell Hammett turned away smiling. How long had it been since he’d smiled this way, appreciatively, pleasurably, and without wearing the mask of satire. This smile made his face feel good. He was the only one smiling in the deli, where numbers were handed out even though no number was required.

When he returned to the apartment, Lilly was awake and in a short kimono. He whistled at her very good legs.

He sliced her bagel, smoothed on the cream cheese and lox and onions. She made the coffee. Lilly waited for what she thought was an appropriate amount of time over breakfast before she touched his
Times
and said, “I have a far better hideout than this place.”

He put the paper aside and did a Tallulah: “Who doesn’t, dahling.”

She had not told him of the meeting she attended a few weeks earlier at Shumlin’s office in midtown. “Want me to drop names? Of course you do. Dos Passos, MacLeish, Blitzstein, Shumlin of course …”

“I knew you were seeing someone behind my back, but the Dalton gang, come on, Lilly …”

“Martha Gellhorn. She was there too. Hemingway’s already gone over to Spain. They want me there. I want you there with me.” Hammett said nothing.

The project was Shumlin’s brainchild, a film on the war in Spain. Americans knew almost nothing about it. None of the studios, of course, was interested, but Shumlin had raised some of the money already, and the rest was promised. He said the White House supported the project but was, until the film was made, unwilling to let that support become public.

“No surprise,” Hammett said, “since they’re bending over backward at the moment not to offend our fascist friends anywhere. What’s Hemingway in for?”

“Herman said he put up a ton of his own money and raised even more. He wants to narrate it.”

“Hemingway will read your words as written? And you believe that?”

“I talked seriously with Martha afterward. I believe they’re both sincere. Hemingway is on the right side on this one, Dash.”

“And you?”

“I want to write it. I want to make it mean something. But the whole thing is so confusing, I’m in over my head already. I need advice.”

Yesterday’s Hammett, the Hammett who didn’t know how to smile properly, would have said, “What’s it pay?” The Hammett in front of her now said, “Lilly. You are a shining piece of work in a tarnished world. Fire away. I’ll give you the best advice I’ve got.”

She handed him about twenty handwritten pages, as she had so often done before. She did not have to say,
Tell me what’s wrong
, but she did.

Hammett said, “How firm is all this?”

“Firm. I’m going. Interested in cowriting? There’s money for us both to go over.”

“I’ll be the guy in the shadows on this one, if it’s all right with you.”

“It could be important in our lives. For
us
. We could make a great film together.”

Hammett did not say,
Impossible
. He thought,
Wasn’t that just the way of the world? Just when you decide to come together, the damn thing flies apart
.

“I’m sailing in two weeks. Come with me, Dash.”

“Let me read the pages. We’ll talk. Where’s a good place?” Lilly had the impression that his feelings had been hurt but didn’t know precisely how or why. It was better to address that problem later. Or never.

“There’s a desk in the bedroom. Remember, it’s just a first pass. I’m concerned about the approach.”

He looked heavenward: “Writers. Lord, spare me.”

Hammett emerged more than three hours later, which meant he’d read the draft many times. She peered into his face for a sign. She detected puzzlement. As he handed her the pages, she noticed only a line through her title,
Spain Is Waiting
, and in a smaller, cleaner hand,
The Spanish Earth
. She flipped through the pages; it was the only change. A bad sign.

It was wrong conceptually, he told her. Much too much history, much too much politics, too much documentary for a documentary, all in all too puffed up. You’re not going to change people’s attitudes, he said, unless you first touch their hearts. In a documentary everything starts with the heart. This version didn’t even come close, didn’t even try to. This is polemics. Be a playwright. It’s the human drama that matters, that always matters, that only matters. Capture the drama of people, innocent victims, caught in a world where suddenly bombs are falling out of the sky on them and on their children. How would you folks like that in Pittsburgh or Poughkeepsie? Then maybe a line—but no more than that—about those bombs and the planes dropping them being German and Italian. Nazi and Fascist. This killing is the true face of fascism, this is what totalitarians do to decent people. And we’ve got to stop them now or there may be an even harsher lesson for us further down the line.

Make your case humanly and a correct understanding of the politics will follow. This draft has the process backward—politics first and not really enough room for the human tragedy, or even worse, the human tragedy is made to seem secondary.

She knew he had it exactly right.

How many times had this happened before? Hammett tells Hellman what is wrong and it is something she sensed already that would not let itself be known to her. “Oh Jesus. Of course.”

“About the title. The Spanish soul rises from the land. Their land is who they are. Tell the story of how they will fight for their land, for their very souls, and you will have told your story well.”

Hammett wasn’t quite done. “Who’s directing?”

“Joris Ivens. He’s a Dutchman is all I know.”

“I know his work. He makes beautiful films.” The word was intended pejoratively. “Seems to me you’ve got too many geniuses involved in this project. Good luck.”

“You’re the only genius I want involved.”

“I’ve got another
Thin Man
deadline,” he lied. Mayer had cut his work to the absolute minimum. “But just be careful that there are no insurmountable problems going into the project. Whatever comes along later, you’re equipped to handle.”

“What do you mean,
going into the project
?”

“I mean, who’ll be driving the bus?”

“Which means?”

“Will Ivens shoot what
your
story demands, or will you have to follow
his camera
? With documentary work in the field, the camera usually calls the tune. Just remember, you’re the better storyteller.

Lilly stood up beside him and smoothed his hair until he looked up. She said, “Don’t you dare touch me.”

“I wouldn’t think of it. But I would love a strong glass of cranberry juice.”

“Ah, the cranberry juice. I think I left it in the bedroom.”

H
ELLMAN HAD KNOWN
from the outset that Hammett was a Marxist—it was part of his attraction—which meant mostly that he understood much personal and political behavior as economically motivated. It probably should have but did not occur to her that he might actually have been a member of the American Communist Party. He was already, but chose never to tell her. She did not know that six months earlier he had volunteered to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, composed of Americans who supported the Spanish Republicans. He was advised through Party channels—“ordered” would not be too strong a word—that he was considered far more useful to the cause in Hollywood.

Lillian knew none of this partly because he did not want any of it to hurt her. As she had not told him of her commitment to this documentary project and her impending trip to Spain. Ironically, although most of her political
enemies assumed she had been a member of the Party, she never was.

Lillian and Dash watched the sun go down yet again. It revealed its splendor only briefly before falling away. The music in the room was Scarlatti. The champagne was still Canada Dry.