The Case of the Crime King

Chapter 30

The men crouched by the bushes on either side of the porch were in uniform. They both turned to look at us.

I said in a low voice, “Lieutenant Friday and Sergeant Smith,” as we mounted the steps.

All the shades in the house were drawn, but we could see light behind the ones in the front-room windows. The two windows to the left of the door, presumably to a dining room or bedroom, were dark. Frank stood to one side of the door, his hand on his gun, while I pressed the bell.

Nothing happened immediately. Then, from the corner of my vision, I saw the edge of one of the front-room shades move back. I turned my head and looked squarely at the window. The shade fell back in place.

I pressed the bell again. This time a porch light went on over our heads. Then the door opened, but only as far as its burglar chain would permit. The plump face of a woman in her twenties peered out.

“What is it?” she asked in a fearful voice.

“Miss Martha Gerrold?” I inquired.

“Yes.”

“Police officers, ma’am.” I held my ID up to the crack. “May we come in, please?”

“Why?” she asked in panic. “What do you want?”

“To come in,” I said. “Go ahead, ma’am. Open the door.”

I heard a low whisper behind her, but was unable to tell whether it was a man’s or woman’s voice. Martha Gerrold said in a voice that cracked with fear, “You got a warrant?”

Her manner dispelled all doubt in my mind about Tony Ramirez’s hunch. If the woman wasn’t harboring her old boyfriend, she had someone or something in the house she didn’t want the police to see.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “But the place is surrounded by police. It won’t do you any good to insist on a warrant. Just delay matters. Nobody in there could get out while we’re getting one.”

She stood staring at me mutely, her face pinched with fright. There was a motion behind her, a hand reached out and shoved the door shut. A spring lock clicked.

I stepped aside fast just as a pistol sounded three times from inside. Splinters ripped from the door as the bullets gouged through it at belt-buckle height.

I took two steps along the porch, drew my gun, and smashed a hole in the upper pane of the nearest front-room window. As I reached through it to unlatch it and throw up the window, I heard glass smash from the opposite end of the porch. Frank was working on one of the windows there.

I had the window up when a gun sounded twice more from inside. Two little holes appeared in the drawn shade. I could feel their heat; they had missed my throat by an inch.

As I flattened myself against the front of the house, another gun sounded from the room Frank was trying to enter. I glanced toward him and saw that he, too, was flattening himself against the clapboard.

One of the officers crouched in front of the porch said, “You get hit, Lieutenant?”

“We’re okay,” I said.

I motioned to Frank, and we made a dash for the protection of my Ford. All lights in the house and the porch light went out just as we crouched behind it.

Sergeant Walker was on one knee behind the car, resting the butt of his tear-gas gun on the asphalt.

I held out my hand for the gun and said, “Better bring your car up and get some light on the subject.”

He faded away. Up and down the street doors began to open and people began to gather on porches. There was no sign of life from the dark house in front of us.

I called to the officers still crouched by the bushes, “Better move aside, men. We’re going to light things up.”

We could see them drift off to either side.

Walker drove his F car up behind mine, and his searchlight suddenly bathed the front of the house in a bright glow. One of the drawn shades started to move. Frank put a bullet through it, and it stopped moving.

I leaned against the front fender of the Ford, steadied my elbows on its hood, and aimed the tear-gas gun at the broken front-room window. I fired, and the window shade disappeared as the bomb carried it right along into the room with it.

I put another into the front room, then sent two more through the window Frank had broken. I handed the gun back to Walker, and we all stood waiting. A mist of tear gas began to drift from both windows.

“Probably shut themselves in the kitchen now,” Frank said.

“Do ’em a lot of good,” Walker said. “The boys back there got a tear-gas gun, too.”

Even as he spoke, we heard the distinctive burp of a tear-gas gun from behind the house as the men there followed our lead.

The woman was the first one out. The front door flew open, and she stumbled down the porch steps into the yard, where she fell to her knees, choking and sobbing, her hands to her face. A cloud of gas followed her out the door.

A tall, thin man came out next, his hands raised high over his head. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he was coughing uncontrollably.

Frank and I started to move forward with drawn guns, then stopped when a third figure appeared, a squat, thick-set man with a squashed-in nose. He reeled down the porch steps, tripped, and fell full-length on the lawn. He pushed himself to a sitting position and started to cry.

Frank and I moved forward again. Walker’s spotlight lighted the scene brilliantly, and we could see all three faces clearly.

“Well, well,” Frank said. “A double-header. Looks like we netted both Salty and Harvey Daniels.”

9:42 p.m. We waited for the tear gas to clear, then searched the house. No one else was in it. We found two .38-caliber pistols lying on the front-room floor, but no other weapons. There was no money in the house except approximately eleven dollars in a coffee jar in the kitchen. A shake-down of the suspects disclosed that none possessed more than a few dollars.

I said, “Looks like we’re going to have to net Big Julie before we recover any of the holdup loot.”

We took the suspects down to the Police Building. There we gave them more thorough shakedowns than we had at the scene. We discovered that the two men had supplied themselves with fake identities. Papers in Edward Saltenson’s wallet identified him as George Hall. His heavy-set partner was going under the name of Ralph Perkins.

We questioned the suspects separately, starting with the tall, birthmarked man. He looked at us defiantly when I pointed to a chair in the Robbery squad room and told him to sit down.

“What’s this all about?” he inquired. “You guys got nothing on me.”

I said, “Your fake papers aren’t going to work, Saltenson. We’ve got you made on three supermarket jobs and a payroll robbery in Los Angeles alone. Plus a half dozen jobs in other parts of the state.”

“Saltenson?” he said. “I knew it. I knew it was going to happen.”

“What?” Frank asked.

“Minute I saw that drawing in the paper, and how much it looked like me. Knew it was going to cause me trouble.”

I said, “If you’re the innocent victim of mistaken identity, why’d you fire on police officers?”

“That wasn’t me,” he said. “Perkins must of gone nuts. I don’t know why he tried to shoot it out. You’ll have to ask him.”

“We won’t bother,” I said. “We’ve got so much stuff on both of you, we’re not even interested in statements about the jobs you pulled. That’s not why we’re talking to you.”

“Yeah? Why, then?”

“Where’s the rest of the gang holed up?”

“How would I know? You’re making a mistake. Biggest shock I ever had when I saw that drawing in the paper.”

“Don’t doubt that,” I said.

“No fooling. You check my fingerprints against your records. You won’t find a thing on me. I never had a record nowhere.”

“Don’t let that bother you,” I said.

“Huh?”

“You’ll have one now.”

We continued to question the suspect, but were unable to get any information from him. He stuck to his story of mistaken identity. We had him led out and had his heavy-set partner brought into the squad room.

Harvey Daniels made no attempt to deny his real identity. With his fingerprints on file, he realized it would be futile. His attitude was one of sullen resignation.

“Sure you got me made,” he told us. “Why fight it? But you’re gonna have to prove it. You get no statement from me.”

“We don’t need one,” I said. “You’re made all down the line without it. Let’s talk about something else.”

“What?”

“The rest of the gang. Where are they?”

“Think I’m nuts?” he said. “They’re my hole card.”

“How’s that?” Frank asked.

“You don’t think Big Julie is gonna leave us in the can, do you? He’ll bust us out just like he did Maury.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yeah. You guys don’t know it, but you’re up against a brain. You ain’t got a chance.”

“How’s he going to swing it?” Frank asked.

Daniels shrugged. “Who knows? But he will. You watch and see.”

“We will,” I assured him.

Further questioning got no more from the suspect. He refused to discuss the whereabouts of the rest of the gang or their future plans. He denied knowing anything about any plans for financing a Honduran revolution.

We had him taken out and had the woman brought in.

Martha Gerrold was not unattractive in a slightly over-plump sort of way. She had a round, even-featured face and a shapely body. At the moment her natural attractiveness was somewhat marred by reddened eyes and an expression of total woe.

When she was seated, I said, “You know you’re in trouble, don’t you, ma’am? Harboring wanted criminals is a pretty serious offense.”

“I couldn’t help it,” she said tearfully. “They made me, mister. I didn’t want to, honest. They said they’d kill me if I didn’t go along.”

“Both of them said that?” Frank asked.

“Not Eddie,” she said. “He wouldn’t hurt me. We was going to get married after this was all over.”

“Just Daniels threatened you, then?” I said.

“Well, not him so much, either. Big Julie, mainly. He was always telling me if I stepped out of line, I’d end up in the ocean.”

“He used your place as a hideout, too?”

“Off and on. They all did at different times. But you can see I couldn’t do anything about it. I’d of been killed.”

Frank said, “How’d you start holing them up?”

She touched a handkerchief to her reddened eyes and sniffed. “Eddie was already staying there before he got in with the gang. After they got hot, he brought Big Julie around. Julie decided it would make a good hideout for the whole gang. I couldn’t stop them. Honest, mister.”

“Know any of their other hideouts?” I asked.

She said she didn’t, although she knew they had several alternate ones in various parts of the state. Questioned about the gang’s plans for Honduras, she readily admitted that she knew about them.

“Eddie was supposed to take me with him,” she said sadly. “We was going to be married down there and live on a big estate, with servants and everything. But I guess that’s all off now.”

“Afraid it is, ma’am,” I told her. “Didn’t these plans strike you as a little fantastic?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes I thought Julie was crazy. Particular when he got that funny light in his eyes and talked about himself as the Crime King.”

“The Crime King?” Frank said.

“Yeah. That’s what he calls himself. And he’s got the other guys calling him sir. Just like he’s already dictator of Honduras. Except for Maury Wey. He does what Julie tells him, but he don’t bow down to him a bit.” She added wistfully, “Even if it was a screwy idea, it was something to dream about. I never even seen a big estate with servants.”