The Case of the Crime King

Chapter 27

We went over to Homicide with Harney to take a look at the file card. The ten-year-old address listed was a tenement house that long since had been torn down as part of the city’s slum-clearance program. The suspect’s parents were listed as Amos and Jean Saltenson.

There was no Saltenson listed in either the phone book or the city directory.

“Must of moved out of town,” Frank said.

“Uh-huh.” I turned to Harney. “The Paloma Gang still in existence?”

“Sure,” he said. “They keep pulling in young kids as new members as fast as the older ones drop out.”

“Whose district is it?”

“Central. That’s Ramirez and Emlet.”

“Could you have them do a little digging?”

“Sure. That’s their job.”

I said, “See if they can find anybody who remembers Saltenson. Try to find out where his parents moved. And if he had a girl he might have given a picture to. Even a ten-year-old picture would be some help. They might inquire about Harry Strite, too. We don’t need his picture, but just possibly some kid might come up with a lead.”

“Will do,” Harney said. “Ramirez and Emlet check in about six p.m. I’ll have them start digging tonight, and tell them to leave a note in your box before they check out.”

We went back to Robbery Division and got out an APB and local supplements reporting that the last member of the gang had now been identified as Edward Saltenson. We also teletyped C.I.I. and wired the F.B.I. in Washington for record checks.

The following morning I found a note in my box from Tony Ramirez of the Gang Squad. It said that he and Emlet had found widespread awareness among the members of the Paloma Gang that Saltenson and Strite were former members, and some pride that their former members had gained statewide publicity. But none of the present members had been able, or willing, to furnish any leads.

There was also a teletype from C.I.I. saying there was no record on Saltenson.

At noon a wire came from the F.B.I. saying there was no record on him in Washington, either.

During the following week there was no activity on the part of the robbery gang, and no new leads developed. On Monday, May 12th, Frank and I had to appear in the Superior Court for the arraignment of Maurice Wey.

The master-calendar courtroom, where the suspect was to be arraigned, is on the eighth floor of the Hall of Justice. As we rode up on the elevator, Frank said, “Funny thing, Joe.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“They all end up here, one way or another. In this building, I mean.”

“Who’s that?”

“The wrong ones,” he said. “Some of ’em make the eighth floor.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The rest make the morgue in the basement.”

The arraignment was set for 9:00 o’clock. We arrived a few minutes early and took seats in the front row. Gradually the rest of the room filled with witnesses, spectators, and lawyers until there were few vacant seats. Then a team of sheriff’s deputies brought in Maurice Wey and turned him over to a court bailiff. The suspect was dressed in neatly creased blue slacks and a light-blue sports shirt.

A plump, vaguely untidy-looking man in a wilted brown suit rose from a rear seat and approached the suspect and bailiff. He spoke briefly to the suspect, who nodded.

“Who’s that?” I asked Frank.

“Marcus Quade,” Frank said. “Could have gotten himself a better lawyer.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Been up for disbarment twice. Beat both raps, but the Bar Association is still out to get him. Gives the whole profession a bad name.”

“What’d he do?”

“Suborned a witness once. Case of mine, when I used to work Bunco-Fugitive, which is how I know about him. Then he barely skinned out of a blackmail mess.”

“Sounds like a nice fellow,” I said.

A voice from the front of the room said, “All rise, please,” and there was a general stirring as everyone in the courtroom got up for the judge’s entrance. The judge stepped up to the bench and said, “You may be seated.”

Eight cases came up before Maurice Wey’s. It was ten thirty when his name was finally called.

Marcus Quade stepped up to the bench and asked for a week’s delay to enter a plea.

“I was just engaged for the case, Your Honor,” he said. “I haven’t yet had time to study it.”

The judge’s reply made it plain that Wey’s attorney was not held in high esteem by his fellow members of the bar. The judge had just granted a similar delay to another attorney on the identical grounds.

“Three days should be enough to enter a plea,” he said testily. “You won’t be preparing a complete defense. Adjourned until May fifteenth. Next case.”

To one side of the courtroom there was a steel-grilled detention bullpen to which prisoners who were finished in court were herded to await transfer back to jail. As the bailiff led the suspect toward this, Frank looked after them ruefully.

“Means another morning shot,” he said.

The bullpen door clanged behind Maurice Wey.

The next prisoner had been called forward, and it was now too late to rise and leave until his case had been disposed of. It took only a few moments. This man, too, was granted a delay and was led toward the bullpen.

Frank and I rose and started to move toward the aisle next to the wall. Just as we reached it, a commotion on the opposite side of the room swung us around.

The bailiff who had been escorting the last prisoner to the bullpen sat on the floor. The bullpen door hung wide open, and all ten prisoners were rushing out into the courtroom. Apparently they had made a concerted rush at the door the moment the bailiff unlocked it.

Instantly the courtroom became a madhouse. Three prisoners jumped up on counsel tables and looked around wildly for the nearest exits. Bailiffs, lawyers, and spectators grabbed at them, got in each other’s way, and converted the whole front of the courtroom into a free-for-all. Other prisoners headed for side doors, found them locked, and tried to battle their way back through the crowd. Struggles simultaneously broke out all over the room.

I spotted Maury Wey coolly trotting up the center aisle toward the main door, stiff-arming people out of the way with the expertness of a broken-field runner.

Because of their proximity to prisoners, courtroom bailiffs aren’t armed. And although numerous officers besides Frank and me were armed, none dared fire into that milling crowd.

Shoving through the disorganized spectators was like running through glue. Maury Wey had disappeared through the main door before we were halfway to it. By the time we reached the hallway, we could hear his feet clattering on the stairs a full floor below us.

A glance at the elevator indicators showed no cars within three floors of the eighth floor. There was nothing to do but take the same route down that the suspect had. We plunged down the stairway, three steps at a time, just as a whole horde of other officers and bailiffs burst from the courtroom in pursuit.

At the seventh-floor landing we shot past two girls who were flattened against the wall with startled expressions on their faces. At the next landing a dazed lawyer sat spraddle-legged with an open briefcase in his lap and papers from it spilled all around him. We leaped over his legs and sped on.

We were both panting by the time we reached the fourth floor, but we didn’t let it slow us down. The rapid clatter of footsteps below us was becoming fainter by the moment. The suspect was steadily increasing his lead. He must have been an expert stair-runner, because we weren’t doing any dallying. By the time we reached the main floor, we had left the horde following us two floors above.

Both of us were winded when we burst out of the Spring Street entrance with drawn guns. We halted, gasping for breath, and looked hurriedly around in all directions.

There was no sign of the suspect.

Moments later a dozen officers and bailiffs swarmed out of the building behind us. They came to a halt in a ring around us, panting heavily and eyeing us questioningly.

I said to Frank, “Start this bunch questioning every pedestrian on the street to find out which way he ran. I’ll get it on the air.”

I went back inside to the nearest phone and called Communications.

10:49 a.m. Within minutes radio units surrounded the area. Two hundred police officers searched the Civic Center on foot, checking every building and looking behind every bush. A room-by-room search of the Hall of Justice was started, on the chance that the suspect might have doubled back.

This search was abandoned when a pedestrian declared he had seen the suspect’s getaway. The witness’s description left no doubt that it had been Wey. The suspect had come racing out of the Hall of Justice and had leaped into a black sedan parked at the curb with its motor running, and the car had immediately moved off at normal speed. The witness had not noticed the license number and wasn’t sure of the make of the car. He could describe it only as new enough to have tail fins.

He said that an unusually big man had been driving the car.

Maurice Wey was the only prisoner among the ten who made good his escape. None of the others even got as far as the courtroom’s only unlocked door. Questioning disclosed that Wey had managed to stir them up to attempt the break in only the few minutes that had elapsed between when he was ushered into the bullpen and when the bailiff unlocked the door to admit the next prisoner. They all insisted there had been no advance planning while they were in the County Jail.

Radio units throughout the city were informed of the escape and asked to be on the lookout for the black sedan and the two suspects. An APB and a local were also gotten out.

No trace of either suspect was found.

1:03 p.m. We had a conference with Captain Peters about the escape.

“If it was Big Julie driving that car, it was a planned break,” the captain said. “Julie would have had to get word to Wey in jail that the car would be there. Find out what visitors he had.”

“We already phoned the sheriff,” I said. “Nobody saw him except his lawyer.”

Captain Peters frowned. “Hardly likely an attorney would be party to a jailbreak.”

Frank said, “Marcus Quade won’t be an attorney long if the Bar Association can help it. He’s hardly representative of the profession.” He repeated to the captain what he had told me in court.

The captain was scowling when Frank finished. “If he was Wey’s only visitor, guess we have to assume he was the messenger.”

“Want us to pull him in for questioning?” I asked.

After considering this, the captain shook his head. “You’d never get him to admit it in a million years. Why waste time? We’ll just pass on our suspicion to the Bar Association so they’ll have a little more ammunition when they finally get on target.”