Tour: By the Book

Got a note from Joe Salerno, checking to make sure I’m not actually leading the Dashiell Hammett Tour any more. Sorry, no. My big excuse — and it’s the truth — I aged out. I realized at any point something could derail it all. A knee might go out for no apparent reason. The spine might come ripping out of my back. Jeez, I could fall apart right there on the mean streets. . . . The day Joe inquired I did have pneumonia. Not the worst case of pneumonia I’ve ever had (that was last year), but irritating enough to back up my call on not scheduling any walks. Joe rolled with the punches on told me that on June 6: “I used your book and did it myself today.” He sent in the shot above of 1201 California — in real life the Cathedral Apartments, thought to serve as the model for The Coronet, where Brigid O’Shaughnessy stays, in The Maltese Falcon. More recently 1201 California was used for the exterior shots of the “retirement home” where Ted Danson goes undercover in A Man on the Inside,…