Deadline, 2 A.M.

Chapter 4

Saturday — 8:00 A.M.

The men sitting around the conference room on the fifth floor of the Hall of Justice, waiting for Chief Boynton to arrive, represented the major departments of the Police Department, with both the division head and his chief assistant present. The men had been called in from many endeavors, some from time off, some from duty, some from sleep, but they were all there. Lieutenant Reardon, seated beside the head of Homicide, Captain Tower, leaned back and took advantage of the delay to relive the lovely reunion he had unfortunately been forced to leave such a brief time before.

Jan! How had he ever been lucky enough to find himself a girl like Jan? It wasn’t just that she was rapidly becoming known as one of the best of the rising crop of young architects in town; it wasn’t just that despite the considerable difference in their education she actually made him feel smart at times; it wasn’t even her wonderful looks, with the short boyish hair topping off that lovely face, and the whole kissable head topping off that incredible body; it was — well, he didn’t know exactly what it was, but he promised himself he would never again jeopardize their relationship by insisting on marriage if Jan didn’t want to marry a cop. When he was really honest about it, he didn’t blame her. Just suppose, for instance, that Kate Holland was still alive; picture her at this moment, sitting home, wondering what some nut was doing to her husband, wondering is she’d ever see him alive again...

The door opened, breaking into his reverie. Captain Clark, of Traffic, was in the doorway. Reardon put aside any further thoughts of Jan; to think of his lovely Jan while looking at Clark’s sour bulldog face, with its usual expression of belligerence, somehow didn’t seem fitting. Clark looked around the room.

“Nothing on the so-called missing car,” he announced to nobody in particular, and dragged a chair around to face Tower. He sat down and stared at the head of Homicide. “That’s if the thing is missing in the first place.”

Tower frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said,” Clark said, his chin thrust out. He was looking at Tower but his words were obviously intended for the lieutenant at Tower’s elbow. “Mike Holland went out on a toot to celebrate his retirement, forgot all about the dinner you people were throwing for him until it was too late, and then, when he finally remembered, he didn’t have the guts to call himself, so he got a pal to do it for him.” He shrugged. “And the pal thought he had a sense of humor—”

“So where’s his car?” Reardon demanded.

Clark disregarded him.

“When Mike sobers up sometime today, he’ll call up or show up all embarrassed, and in the meantime we’ll have wasted the time of dozens of men, and put God knows how many patrol cars out of service—”

“So where’s his car?” Reardon repeated.

“How the hell do I know where a drunk stashes his car?” Clark said angrily. He snorted. “This town has a million bars and nine tenths of them have parking lots!”

“No way,” Reardon said stubbornly. “The footmen have been checking parking lots. Anyway, Mike was sober on that tape. I heard it. It was no gag.” He remembered something else. “And he was in pain. I could tell by his tone of voice, even if he didn’t say anything.”

Clark looked at the ceiling in supplication. “Even if he didn’t say anything!”

Gentry cut in quickly. Roy Gentry was the head of Laboratory Services and probably knew more about drunks than any other man in the room. The result of the bag tests ended up in his lap, and any blood or urine analyses for alcohol were part of his responsibilities. Gentry was also a conciliator by nature, possibly because he was tall and thin and craggy, and in college somebody had told him he looked like the young Lincoln. If so, it was a Lincoln with spectacles that always appeared to be on the verge of falling from the large thin nose.

“Captain Clark might have a point,” he said in what he obviously hoped was a compromising manner. “I would judge it rather hard to determine if a man is drunk or sober merely by listening to a tape recording of his voice. Oh, of course,” he went on in a manner that surprised no one in the room, “if he was really drunk, where his speech was visibly — I mean, well — where it could be heard to be...” He trailed off.

“Anyway,” Clark said, as if he wanted to make clear he neither needed nor wanted Gentry’s half-hearted support, “how do we know when that tape was recorded?”

“You mean, Mike Holland might have made a recording ahead of time, saying he was kidnapped? On the offhand chance he might have a few drinks too many on the night of his retirement dinner and forget to show up?” Reardon stared at Clark. “What goddamn kind of sense is that supposed to make?”

“Now, let’s not get excited—” Captain Tower began.

“Let’s not get excited?” Reardon turned to look at his superior in astonishment. “A cop is kidnapped — kidnapped! — and everybody here talks as if the whole thing was a gag of some sort! What do you mean, let’s not get excited? I figure on getting goddamn excited!”

“Nobody is talking as if it’s a gag,” Captain Tower began, but this time it was Clark who interrupted.

“Let him get as excited as he wants,” he said in a half-amused tone. He turned to Reardon. “Just answer me one question, Lieutenant — who in God’s name would want to kidnap Mike Holland? Why? What would anyone gain? The man has no family, and if he had any money other than his paycheck, I don’t know about it, for one.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Reardon said quietly, “Damned if I know. But we’ll know when that tape comes.”

“If it comes,” Clark began, and then stopped short as the door opened again and Chief of Police Alex Boynton strode in in his usual hurried manner. Boynton had only been promoted a short time, but the change had been one that the huge majority of the men at the Hall favored. He walked to the head of the long table, looked about in the silence that had fallen, and then nodded abruptly, sitting down.

“All right, gentlemen,” he said in his deep voice. “Let’s get started. Who’s first?”

Clark spoke up. “I was saying, Chief, that this whole thing sounds to me as if it could be a gag—”

“You didn’t hear that tape and I did,” Reardon said, and then was rapped to silence by Boynton.

“Let’s take it one at a time,” Boynton said. “All right, Lieutenant. You were the one who reported it. Let’s start with you.”

“Yes, sir.” Reardon hitched his chair a bit closer to the long conference table and paused to collect his thoughts. Getting excited and talking off the top of one’s head might be all right with a man like Captain Clark, but Boynton was a different matter. “Well, sir, as you know, last night we had scheduled a retirement party for Mike Holland, and he didn’t show up. We were waiting for him at the restaurant when there was a call for me, and the caller said that Mike had been kidnapped. He played a tape with Mike’s voice on it for proof. Mike said something like — he was talking to these men — Listen, you dumb baboons, I’m a police officer. I’m a cop. Who in the name of sweet Mary and Jesus is going to give a plugged dime for an old cop? Or words to that effect—”

“A good question,” Clark said, and grinned.

Boynton took one look at Clark and the traffic officer subsided, but there was a twinkle in his eye in appreciation for his own wit. Boynton turned back to Reardon.

“Go on.”

“Yes, sir. Well, we all know that ‘sweet Mary and Jesus’ was a favorite phrase of Mike’s. And he hadn’t been drinking, not a drop, I’d swear it. Anyway, I asked this character on the phone what he wanted, and he said the demands would be on a tape sent here this morning in the first mail, addressed to me. He said—”

“Why you?” Boynton’s deep-set eyes were watching Reardon steadily.

“Sir?”

“I said, why would he address the tape to you?”

“I don’t know, sir. He knew my name and he knew I was in charge of the dinner. I’m just reporting what the man said. We tried to trace the call, but Marty’s Oyster House — the restaurant the affair was being held at, sir — only has the one phone, and the nearest outside phone was a block away and out of order. The man said he’d put it out of order, which means he knew the area pretty well—”

“It also seems to mean he was an amateur,” Boynton said.

“Sir?”

“He seemed to do a lot of talking. Unnecessary talking. However.”

“Yes, sir.” Reardon frowned, recalling something else. “There was something odd about that call, sir. If he had called from his home, or a house, he would have been taking a big chance of having the call traced. But at the same time, I have to doubt he would have made the call from a public booth.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t see a kidnapper standing in front of a window in a drugstore, or out in the open at a street booth, playing a tape recorder into a telephone receiver,” Reardon said firmly. “Too many people could see him and remember the scene.” He shrugged. “Still, we weren’t able to trace the call in any event, so I don’t expect it makes that much difference.”

“On the other hand,” Boynton said, voicing his thoughts, “anyone screwy enough to kidnap a retired cop with nothing but his pension could be screwy enough for anything.” He looked at Reardon. “Did the man sound — well — unstable?”

Reardon didn’t have to think about that one.

“No, sir. He sounded happy, but not slaphappy, if you know what I mean. Not giggly. Just pleased with himself, as if he’d pulled off a good one and was congratulating himself. He laughed a few times, but it was all plenty sane laughter. He was simply enjoying himself.”

“Could he have been on anything? High?”

“I don’t think so, sir. He sounded sharp. On the ball.”

“Any sort of accent to help identify him?”

“You mean, black or white?”

“Or Chicano. Or British. Or French or Chinese. I mean, any accent?”

“White American, I’d say. Almost certainly white American.”

“I see.” Boynton drummed his thick fingers on the table before him while he thought about it. “Well, black or white, screwy or not, it might not hurt to have the footmen check out the drugstores in their areas to see if anyone remembers someone using a tape recorder in a phone booth at that hour last night.” His eyes came up. “Incidentally, what time was it?”

“He hung up at 10:02, sir.”

“Right. The street phone booths would be harder to check, unless we give the story to the media and ask them to ask for the public’s co-operation. Maybe somebody—”

“We can’t do that, sir,” Reardon said quickly. “That was one of the things the man said. No publicity. No newspapers. He was definite on that score.”

“I see.” Boynton didn’t sound surprised. He swung around to a man sitting beside him, scribbling in a shorthand notebook. “Mark, make a note. Get it out to the stations for relay to the footmen. Have them check where possible without advertising. Man at a phone — tape recorder. You know what I want.” He swung back. “All right, Lieutenant. What else?”

“Well, sir, we — Sergeant Dondero and myself — went out to Mike’s house and I got in using a slip card. There was no sign of any disturbance. The evening paper was on the floor near a chair in the living room; Mike had read it and it comes about five-thirty, because we checked this out with the neighbors. There were signs in the bedroom that he’d changed clothes, for the dinner we can only assume, or our guess is he was snatched when he walked out of the house to get into his car. It’s a quiet neighborhood, and apparently none of the neighbors heard or saw anything, because we checked them out, both sides of the street, for a block in each direction. We—”

There was a sharp ring of the telephone, and Reardon paused. Boynton reached over and picked it up, grunting into it. A brief moment and he handed it down the table to Reardon. The lieutenant brought the receiver to his ear.

“Yes?”

It was the lobby desk. “You wanted to know when the mail got here, Lieutenant. The mailman’s here now.”

“Hang onto him!” Reardon said, and came to his feet. He looked at Tower. “Mailman’s here,” he said shortly. “Dondero’s probably still sacked in — he worked late — but Stan Lundahl ought to be in by now. Could you have him meet me in the lobby?” He glanced at Boynton. “Be right back, sir.”

Boynton grunted. The last thing Reardon heard as he left the room was Clark’s voice, a bit more respectful since he was addressing the chief, but still the same niggling whine.

“Chief, if you want my opinion, the whole thing still sounds like a tempest in a—” The closing door ended the sound.

Clark! Reardon thought and wrinkled his nose in distaste as he rang for the elevator. If they had to kidnap somebody from the Police Department, why couldn’t it have been a loud mouth like Clark? Then none of them would have to sweat getting him free; the kidnappers would undoubtedly throw the bastard out into the street just to stop hearing that voice.

Saturday — 8:50 A.M.

Alfred L. Kavulich, Postman, stood firmly beside the wide lobby counter, his expression clearly indicating righteous indignation, his one hand tightly gripping one side of his mailbag, his entire attitude demonstrating his representation of the United States Government, as well as his knowledge of the rights, prerequisites, and responsibilities of such representation. Herodotus may not have included it in his list, but as far as Alfred L. Kavulich was concerned, bag-grabbing was fully as bad as rain, sleet, or dark-of-night any day.

From the other side of the counter, Patrolman William A. Healey, one of three men assigned to day-desk duty, held the opposite side of the mailbag with equal determination, as representing both the people of the municipality of San Francisco and the explicit instructions of Lieutenant James Reardon, which instructions Healey had no intention of disobeying. To Reardon, coming across the marble-floored lobby from the elevators, the touching tableau might have been posed to demonstrate either Devotion to Duty or a test of post office equipment arranged by the Bureau of Standards at the behest of the leather lobby.

He came to the desk, tugged the postman’s hand abruptly free of the bag, motioned Patrolman Healey also to relinquish his grip, and without further ado dumped the contents upside down upon the counter. A few letters slid to the floor from the pile. There was a shocked gasp of outrage from Alfred L. Kavulich.

“Hey!” the postman said, voicing his natural resentment at this cavalier treatment of government property, quite as if the destruction of the mail was a privilege reserved for the august members of the postal branch; but Reardon paid the man no attention. He was poking lightly with a closed fountain pen among the several larger brown envelopes and smaller packages that were submerged in the heap. Under his prodding, more letters joined those on the floor, and the postman, torn between calling for the police or picking up the letters, finally realized where he was and bent down. He held the retrieved letters in his hand and glared at Reardon as he straightened up. “Just what do you think you are doing? That’s government property!”

“True,” Reardon conceded. He had shoved a majority of plain letters to one side and was concentrating on the larger material. “Ah!” He edged one small package free from the pile with the tip of his pen and bent closer to study the face of the package. Healey reached for it but Reardon pushed his hand away. “Don’t touch it.”

The postman, in the midst of further expostulations, stopped dead. He opened his eyes wider and almost closed his mouth. At last he thought he could see a possible reason for the arrogant treatment that had been accorded both his person and his mail by these madmen.

“What is it? A bomb.”

“I sincerely hope not,” Reardon said, and considered the postman carefully. Whatever else Alfred L. Kavulich looked like, he didn’t look like a kidnapper’s accomplice. He touched the package lightly with the tip of the pen. “Where did you pick this up?”

The postman stared. Any doubt he might have had that the entire San Francisco police force had taken leave of their senses, led by the stocky maniac facing him, disappeared.

“Where did I pick it up?” What a question! Where did a postman normally pick up pieces for delivery? At the A&P? “At the post office, naturally! Where else?”

“Without a postmark?” Reardon asked. “Without stamps?”

“What?” The postman looked at the face of the small package and his confusion deepened. “There must be some mistake...”

Reardon studied the stunned face a moment. No, Alfred L. Kavulich may have been many things, but a criminal he was not. “That’s right,” Reardon said quietly. “Who did you meet since you left the post office who gave you this package?”

“Nobody!” On this score Alfred L. Kavulich was ready to wager his life. “Oh, sure, people along the route give me mail to deliver, it’s out in the van, not in my bag. And it’s got stamps on it; I don’t accept mail without stamps. I’d have to—” He suddenly paused, thinking. Reardon waited. “Hey!” Alfred L. Kavulich suddenly said, convinced. “I know! Yeah! It must have been that guy who bumped into me! I thought he was just a drunk, but a nice guy, because even though he dumped my bag, he helped me pick the stuff up.” He shook his head dolefully. “And all he was trying to do was to save a couple cents stamps!”

Reardon felt the old familiar tingle of being close to something.

“What did he look like?”

“Like a wino,” the postman said, and frowned in an attempt to recall more details. “Yeah, a wino. Drunk. That’s why he bumped into me, is what I figured then. Just to save a couple stamps!”

“But what did he look like, damn it?” Reardon was beginning to lose his patience with Alfred L. Kavulich.

“I’m trying to tell you, he was a drunk, a wino,” the postman said, aggrieved. “Not staggering, but not all that steady, either. And that breath of his! Wow!” He seemed to realize this scarcely constituted a description. “Let me see — he needed a shave — or maybe he had a beard — I don’t remember which. He was a wino, see? You see dozens of them on the street all the time. That’s all I can tell you.”

Stan Lundahl had come up and was watching with a bright eye. The attitude of Detective First Grade Lundahl was that of a curious bystander; from his exaggerated height he stared down at the pile of mail on the counter with the air of a person who had stumbled on a grab bag in the middle of the street, but was polite enough to wait until asked to participate. Reardon motioned him closer.

“Stan. This package was added to the mailbag—”

“I heard.”

“Good. Then try to find out what the man looked like from this... this—” Words failed him. “From this man. Go back to where it happened. Maybe you’ll find a better witness than this... this—” He dropped it. “I want the man who put this package in the mailbag.”

“Right,” Lundahl said, perfectly agreeable. He tucked a match-stick into his mouth in lieu of the cigarettes he had abandoned in his haste to comply with Captain Tower’s order, and turned to the postman. “Let’s go. We’ll talk on the way.”

“But — my mail...!”

“So it’ll be delivered a little late today, is all,” Lundahl said in a kindly tone. “Pretend like it’s Christmas. Or any other day, as far as that goes. Nobody’s going to steal it; this place is fairly honest, as police stations go. Now, where did this all happen? This bumping and dumping and picking up, and all?”

“Just down the street, practically. I was getting out of my van—”

“And what was the wino wearing?”

“I told you. I—” Alfred L. Kavulich suddenly paused. “He was wearing a windbreaker! Yeah. It was green—”

“A nice Christmasy color,” Lundahl said approvingly, and led the way through the heavy glass doors of the Hall to the steps outside, his eyes automatically searching Bryant Street in both directions for a green windbreaker he was sure was far away from there by now.

Saturday — 9:10 A.M.

Harry handled the old car with care, his tiny eyes peering brightly from side to side, almost bird-fashion, to see if anyone might be paying undue attention to the car he was driving. The plates had been muddied over, but that still didn’t mean it was safe to be driving around with it in broad daylight, even if it was going to be abandoned in a few minutes. And to drive it practically in front of the Hall of Justice, yet! Sure, it was a ten-year-old Chevy like thousands of others, and sure, it was black, like thousands more of others, but still, it belonged to a cop, and a cop that every other cop in the state was undoubtedly searching for at the moment. Crazy! Sure, George wasn’t the guy to be afraid of taking chances, but what Harry would have liked to know was, why was it every time George took a chance, it was Harry’s neck that was out?

At Harry’s side the wino leaned back against the worn upholstery, feeling on top of the world. A grimy hand, jammed into the bottom of the windbreaker pocket, firmly clutched two wrinkled twenty-dollar bills. He could hardly believe his good fortune. Forty bucks just to bump into a postman, dump his bag accidentally-on-purpose, and then help him stuff the junk back in! Plus the little package he had added, of course. He glanced over his shoulder at the small driver with the zoot-suit hat and wondered if maybe he could do other little jobs for the tiny man sometimes. Forty bucks bought a lot of juice. As a matter of fact, with forty bucks a guy could take a step up the ladder and maybe get himself some cheap brandy. It didn’t last as long, of course, but it packed a greater wallop, a deeper euphoria. But of course it wouldn’t be smart to be sudden-rich and spend it all at once, either. He sighed. Money brought problems, there was no doubt. The thing to do, obviously, was to get a bottle of muscatel and consider the spending of the forty bucks in depth. Or should it be a bottle of cheap brandy?

He looked through the windshield, and was brought from his dreams of alcoholic grandeur by a slight braking of the car. He frowned as he noticed for the first time where they were. This was miles from where he thought he was being taken; this was a section of town he didn’t even know. In fact, from the deserted looks of the area, it appeared that very few people knew it.

“Hey,” he said, not complaining especially, since the little man seemed to be a potential source of income to be nurtured, “what are we doin’ way over here? I thought you was goin’ to drop me where you picked me up. Remember? Down at—”

“You didn’t hear good,” the little man said quietly. “They’d find you in five minutes down there, and then what? Dumping a mailman’s bag is a federal offense. You could get ten years.”

“Hey!” the wino said, startled. “You didn’t say nothin’ like that! You didn’t say nothin’ like that! You said it was a gag, a joke, is what you said. You said they wasn’t nothin’ to worry about!”

“And there isn’t,” Harry said evenly. “Not up here. Why do you think I’m dropping you off up here?”

“Yeah, but...” the wino began, doubtfully.

“I’m telling you. You drop off here, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Nobody’ll think to look for you up here.”

“Oh. Well, okay,” the wino said. Anyways, what difference did it make, down there, up here, wherever? Besides, who was going to raise a fuss about bumping into a mailman, anyways? It could have been an accident; who was going to prove it wasn’t?

Harry completed braking the car and drew it to the curb. He leaned past the wino, wincing a bit as the stale breath hit him, and pulled down on the door handle. The door swung open.

“Here you are.”

“Yeah,” the man said vaguely, and climbed out. He hesitated a moment, his hand on the open door, trying to remember what it was he had been thinking about before. Then it came to him and he bent down, peering in at Harry. “Hey, you ever get any more jobs like that, I’m your boy. On’y, how can I get in touch? I don’t usually have no fixed place I’m at...”

“I’ll find you,” Harry said confidentially, and leaned over, pulling the door shut.

The wino seemed to sense rejection.

“I can help you out in lots of things,” he said, trying to interject his words through the slight gap of the almost closed window. “I ain’t just good for bumping into people—”

“I’m sure,” Harry said, and put the car into gear.

The wino stared down vaguely a moment and then straightened up, looking around. There had to be a bar someplace in the area, even in a deserted neighborhood like this. Hell, where wasn’t there a bar in any part of any town in the country? If not this block, the next one. He raised his hand in an uncertain salute to his unknown benefactor and started to cross the street, involved once again in the problem of wine or cheap brandy.