The Case of the Crime King

Chapter 14

We continued to talk to the victim. His descriptions of the suspects conformed pretty well to the estimates of height and weight Frank and I had made from our brief glimpses of the two men. Grammon judged the larger man to be about five feet eleven and a hundred eighty pounds, the smaller one to be about five-six and a hundred thirty.

He said he was unable to describe their faces.

“Why not?” I asked. “They weren’t masked, were they?”

“Not exactly. But you know those false noses attached to glasses frames that you can buy in dime stores?”

“Yeah,” I said, beginning to understand something that had been puzzling me ever since I had seen the smaller suspect astride the fence. I had wondered why a heist artist with such a prominent and easily identifiable nose hadn’t bothered to cover it with a mask.

“They were wearing those. Pretty smart disguise, too.”

Frank said, “How’s that?”

“Well, they change a man’s whole appearance.”

“So does a handkerchief mask,” Frank said.

“Yeah, but you could spot a masked man a block away. With these things, even a passerby might not notice you unless he happened to look right in your face.”

9:52 a.m. We returned to the office. By then D.M.V. had identified the Mercury as one that had been reported stolen the previous evening. Its owner was a prominent Jewish rabbi, who obviously could have had no connection with the robbery.

The suspects had not yet been apprehended, and there was as yet no report from Latent Prints on the Mercury.

A half hour later a motorist reported in by phone that two men answering the descriptions of the suspects had commandeered his car at gunpoint only a block from Decameron Lane. They had forced him to drive them to Hollywood, and had pushed him from the car near Hollywood and Vine.

Both men had been wearing dime-store false noses attached to glasses frames.

A want on the commandeered car was put on the air to all units. Within fifteen minutes it was found abandoned at Hollywood and Sunset.

And there the trail ended.

11:03 a.m. Sergeant McLaughlin of Latent Prints phoned that all but one of the fingerprints lifted from the wrecked Mercury had checked out as belonging to the rabbi owner. A single unidentified print had been lifted from the briefcase handle. The briefcase, incidentally, had still contained the robbery loot.

A single print is good enough for identification purposes if you have a definite print to compare it with. But it is useless for running a check against the complete fingerprint files. It takes at least three prints to make a search of the files feasible.

I asked McLaughlin if he had yet been informed of the car abandoned at Hollywood and Sunset. He said Bill Tucker of Latent Prints was already on his way there, and he’d phone me as soon as he had a kickback from Tucker.

When I hung up, Frank said, “I’ve been thinking about that adhesive tape, Joe.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So have I.”

“It ring the same bell with you?”

“Loud and clear,” I said. “So does one of the descriptions.”

“Uh-huh. The little guy. But the other one sure wasn’t Big Julie.”

“No,” I agreed.

“Think maybe Operation Statewide has finally started?”

“I know one way to check it out.”

“How’s that?”

“Let’s make a visit to Latent Prints.”

We found Sergeant McLaughlin alone in 208. McLaughlin is a dark, lean, good-looking man with a thin black mustache. He resembles a juvenile-lead actor more than a policeman.

I handed him the list of all the suspects we had considered as possible members of the robbery gang. There were twenty-four names on the list.

“Be much trouble to check these against that briefcase print?” I asked.

McLaughlin was in the process of making a run on some other case. “In a hurry?” he inquired.

“Well, yes.”

“Give me an hour,” he said. “I’ll phone you at Robbery.”

11:17 a.m. We had barely gotten back to Robbery Division when Sergeant McLaughlin phoned.

“That was easy, Joe,” he said. “Wish they were all that simple.”

“Get a make?” I asked.

“First name on the list. Guy named Maurice Wey.”

11:28 a.m. We got out a local and an APB on Maurice Wey. We also sent an Operation Statewide teletype to the Criminal Investigation Section of the Attorney General’s office.

When these routine matters were taken care of, I said to Frank, “Let’s roll.”

He didn’t have to ask where. He knew I meant the apartment of Big Julie Martin and Harry Strite.

Martin and Strite had a small furnished apartment on Seventh Street. It was on the second floor of a three-story building that had no elevator. It wasn’t exactly a slum tenement house, but it wasn’t the Beverly Carlton, either. It was a plain brick building with bare but reasonably clean halls. It housed about twenty units of three or four rooms.

We could hear a typewriter going when we stopped in front of the apartment door. The sound ceased the moment I knocked. Frank stood to one side of the door with his hand on his gun as footsteps approached from inside.

The precaution proved unnecessary. When the door opened, Big Julie Martin stood there in shirt sleeves, his sleeves rolled to expose hairy forearms and his hands empty.

“Well, well,” he said with a friendly grin containing no element of surprise. “The lieutenant and his perennial satellite. I’m honored.”

I pushed past him into the living room and gave a quick glance around. No one but Martin was in it. Near the window was a card table with a portable typewriter and a pile of manuscript on it.

Frank followed in behind me, and gave Big Julie a quick shakedown.

“He’s clean,” Frank said.

I jerked my head toward the kitchenette, and Frank went to check it. I checked the bedroom and bath. The bedroom was furnished with twin beds, both neatly made. The bath was old-fashioned, but clean. No one was in either.

Back in the living room I glanced at Frank and he said, “Nothing.”

“Where’s your partner?” I asked Big Julie.

He raised his eyebrows. “At work, I presume. He left for there at seven a.m.”

Frank said, “What’s the name of that place he works again?”

“Wilshire Coal and Wood Yard.”

Frank said, “Don’t mind if I use your phone, do you?”

Big Julie grinned at him. “As a parolee, do I have any choice?”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s your castle.”

“Be my guest,” the big man said graciously, gesturing toward the phone on a corner end table.

Frank went over to the table and began thumbing through the book. I walked over to the typewriter and glanced at the sheet of paper in it. It was numbered page fifteen. The top line was the continuation of a sentence from the previous page, and read: “screeched to a halt fifty yards from the roadblock, spun wheels in reverse, slewed the car around and roared back in the opposite direction.”

“Still grinding it out, huh?” I said.

“Six days a week. I can hardly keep up with my commitments.”

Across the room Frank said into the phone, “Like to speak to Harry Strife.”

There was a pause, then he said, “What time’d he go out?” He listened, then grunted thanks and hung up.

“Out in his truck,” Frank said to me.

I moved toward the door, and Frank followed. I opened it and stood aside for Frank to go out first. I paused to look back at Big Julie.

“Thanks for the use of your phone,” I said.

“Any time at all, Lieutenant.”

I said, “You’re not very curious.”

“No,” he agreed.

“Couple of police officers came looking for my partner, I’d wonder why.”

“I do wonder.”

“Yeah?”

“Naturally, Lieutenant. But you know something?”

“What?”

“I never ask questions of a cop.”

I looked him up and down. Then I said, “I’ve got a different theory.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“You know why we’re looking for him.”

We walked downstairs and outside before Frank said anything. Then he said, “Strite’s boss says he took out his first delivery at seven thirty. Checked in empty at ten, went out again with another load and is still out.”

I grunted.

“Seems to clear him, doesn’t it?”

“Not yet.”

“Hardly seems a reputable businessman like his boss would lie for him.”

“Not likely,” I said. “But there’s one thing about a job like Strite’s that’s perfect for setting up alibis.”

“Yeah?” Frank said. “What?”

“You can park a truck, knock off a job, and get back to the truck again. Who’s to say you haven’t been working all the time?”

“Uh-huh,” Frank said thoughtfully. “Guess we better check it out all the way.”