Soaked, we peeled off Herron's tour here and grabbed a cab to our hotel, the Holiday Inn Golden Gateway, at the end of the cable-car line.
We ditched our bags and hopped on the cable car, jumping off at Stockton for the key "Maltese Falcon" setting: Burritt Street, actually a dead-end alley where Archer was killed, his body tumbling downhill to the Stockton tunnel. A plaque marks the spot, but the slope where Archer died has been built over. There's a massage parlor there now.
By now it was pouring and we had no umbrellas. A detour into Chinatown solved that problem -- two for $5 -- and we headed to the Pied Piper Bar in the Palace Hotel, the only other extant building in which Spade ate. It was after 5 p.m. and we were meeting relatives for dinner later so I had a couple of beers and Michael a hot chocolate while we dried off and warmed up.
The walls are dark wood, and the high ceiling helped imbue the room with a feel of restrained opulence. All it needed to be a complete '20s throwback was the addition of some cigars and the deletion of the TVs. You could almost see Spade, whose V-shaped face made him look "rather pleasantly like a blond satan," lunching alone before going to meet his lawyer.
Saturday, after doing more traditional tourist things -- Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf -- we were back in the heart of Hammett's San Francisco, at John's Grill for our 6:30 reservation.
We were sent up a back staircase to the Maltese Falcon Room, where movie stills and other Falconalia line the walls. Our corner table at the window overlooking Ellis Street was in turn watched over by Archer himself -- a black-and-white of actor Jerome Cowan.
The restaurant nudges up to the line of overdoing the "Falcon" connection. The menu includes a "Bloody Brigid" vodka drink and, of course, the "Sam Spade lamb chops" with a baked potato and sliced tomato, though Hammett never specified whether Spade ate lamb or pork. Enjoying the meal, like enjoying the fiction, required a certain suspension of skepticism.
As we ate, a guitarist played light jazz. Two couples sat at the table next to us, and one in their party ordered Spade's chops too, proving the meal's appeal beyond "Falcon" fans.
So there we were, father and son, hoping for a man in a plaid flannel cap to show, a bit like Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot.
"You know," Michael said, breaking a satisfied silence, "it's a good thing Spade ordered chops. This is good. Imagine if he had ordered Brussels sprouts."
