“Were they great friends, Bern?”

“They only met once,” I said. “In 1936, if I remember it correctly. Ten Black Mask regulars got together for dinner in L.A. Chandler lived out there, and Hammett was working in Hollywood at the time. Norbert Davis and Horace McCoy were there, too, and Todhunter Ballard, and five other writers I don’t know much about.”

“I don’t know anything about the ones you just mentioned.”

“Well, Ballard wrote a lot of westerns, and I think he was distantly related to Rex Stout. Horace McCoy wrote They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? I forget what Norbert Davis wrote. Stories for Black Mask, I guess.”

“And that’s the only time they met?”

“That’s what everybody says.”

“Oh?”

“Every biography of either of the two of them mentions that meeting. They had a photo taken of the group, to send to the editor of Black Mask back in New York.” I went over to the Biography section and came back with Shadow Man, Richard Layman’s life of Hammett, and flipped through it to the photos. “Here we go. That’s Chandler with the pipe. And that’s Hammett.”

“It looks as though they’re staring at each other.”

“Maybe. It’s hard to tell.”

“Did they like each other, Bern?”

“That’s also hard to tell. Years later Chandler wrote a letter in which he recalled the meeting. He remembered Hammett as nice-looking, tall, quiet, gray-haired, and with a fearful capacity for Scotch.”

“Just like me.”

“Well, you’re nice-looking,” I agreed. “I don’t know about tall.”

She glowered at me. Carolyn can stand six feet tall, but only if she happens to be wearing twelve-inch heels. “I’m not quiet or gray-haired, either,” she said. “I was referring to the fearful capacity for Scotch.”

“Oh.”

“Is that all Chandler had to say about him?”

“He thought a lot of him as a writer.” I flipped pages, found the part I was looking for.