The Case of the Crime King

Chapter 8

The letter read:

The other letters were in the same vein. Sometimes they were merely chatty, discussing books the writer had read, movies he had seen, or current news items. Other times there were obscure references to the “operation” that would make him well and to “postoperative business plans.” One thing stood out in all of them, although it was entirely negative: There was not the slightest intimation as to where the writer was located.

When I finished reading the last letter, I looked at Frank. Frank said, “Looks like we stumbled onto something, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Right up our alley, too. Supermarkets.”

“What do you think, Joe? I mean, how do you take all that double talk?”

“Somebody’s planning a gang operation. A big one.”

Frank nodded. “Way I got it. You catch that reference to the ‘Los Angeles franchise’?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like we’re only part of it.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Looks like Frisco gets dealt in, too.”

“Maybe more than that.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Sounded to me like they were planning a statewide operation.”

7:03 p.m. We went downstairs, found the landlady seated in the front room alone, and thanked her for letting us look at the room. I told her we would inform the next of kin of her roomer’s death, and suggested she lock the room until she heard from him what disposition was to be made of the effects left by the deceased. Then we left the house, taking the letters with us.

Earlier Frank had phoned Fay to tell her he had to work late and wouldn’t be home for dinner. As we were close to New Chinatown, we picked a Chinese place to eat.

After we had ordered and were waiting for our food, Frank said, “Be nice if we had the envelopes so we could tell where those letters were mailed.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Guy seems to be in a hospital somewhere, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

Our dinners came then, and we tabled conversation to eat. It wasn’t until we got to the dessert that Frank spoke again. Then he said, “Pretty well-educated guy wrote those letters.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Kind of rings a bell.”

He got that withdrawn, half-frowning expression on his face he gets when he is trying to dig into his memory. I let him work on it without interrupting.

Eventually his expression brightened. “Hey, Joe, remember that guy who used to ghost speeches for businessmen?”

The question immediately touched a vagrant memory. But it took me a few moments to pin it down. We’d handled more than a hundred robbery cases since the arrests of Big Julie Martin and Harry Strite, and they get mixed up in your mind.

“The guy who wrestled alligators,” I said finally. “Big Julie Martin.”

Frank drained his tea and stood up. “Guess we’ve still got work to do,” he said. “Back to the Golden Horseshoe.”

8:16 p.m. According to his package in R & I, Big Julie was still serving time. He would be eligible for parole at the end of March. No one named Gerald Federson was listed among his known associates.

When we had finished poring over the record, Frank said, “Let me see those letters again, Joe.”

I took them out of my inside breast pocket and handed them to him. For some minutes he studied the most recent one.

“You know what, Joe?” he said finally.

“What?”

“I think all this operation and hospital stuff is code. He isn’t in any hospital.”

“Not if he’s Big Julie,” I said. “He’s in the Joint.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “And listen to this sentence: ‘The ambulance is all lined up, and the motor will be running at the proper time.’ He’s talking about a getaway car.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly.

“He’s planning a break,” Frank said. “With outside help.”

I gave him a dubious headshake. “When he’s eligible for parole in a couple of weeks?”

“Maybe he was denied parole.”

“It would still be only a matter of months. He got only a year.”

“Nine months,” Frank said. “Some guys hate the Joint so much they’d go over the wall to escape six.”

I slid Big Julie’s record back into its manila folder. I said, “We’re not even sure Martin wrote those letters. And we can’t find out tonight. There won’t be anyone in Handwriting at this time.”

“It all fits,” Frank insisted. “The initial M. And how many cons write like that?”

“Maybe the writer isn’t a con. Maybe he is in a hospital somewhere.”

Frank rose from the table. “Well, we can’t do any thing about it till morning, anyway.”

“One thing we can,” I told him.

“What?”

“Phone San Quentin and find out Big Julie’s status.”

“Tonight?”

“Why not?” I said. “Maybe tonight’s when he plans the break.”

8:32 p.m. We went down to the Robbery Division squad room and got off a teletype to San Francisco asking the police there to inform Gerald Federson’s next of kin of his death. Then I phoned the State Penitentiary and got hold of the assistant warden.

After explaining who I was, I said, “I’m calling about a prisoner named Jules Martin, sir. Could you tell me his status?”

He left me holding the phone for five minutes while he went to get the prisoner’s record.

When he came back, he said, “O.K., Lieutenant. I have all the dope in front of me. What’s your interest in Martin?”

“I’m not sure we have any,” I said. “Depends pretty much on his status there.”

“Well, according to his file he’s one of our model inmates,” the assistant warden said. “Marvelous job of rehabilitation.”

“That so?” I asked.

“Yes. He’s assigned to the prison library. Seems to be a man of considerable talent.”

“Oh? In what way?”

“In writing. He’s taken up writing since he’s been here. True-crime stuff. This place is a gold mine of material for that sort of thing, of course. Gets his cases by talking to the other prisoners, and does his stories from their point of view. Rather a unique approach for true-crime stuff, since most of the stories you see in magazines are based on research done with the police. Editors seem to like it. He’s sold two stories at two hundred dollars apiece.”

When I didn’t say anything, he went on. “His plan after his release from here is to continue freelancing. We approve it heartily. He’s had letters from two editors requesting more material, and it looks as though he’ll be able to make a substantial living from his new career. We believe he’s capable of becoming a useful, law-abiding citizen.”

“When’s he due for release?” I asked.

“In about ten days. He’s being paroled March twenty-ninth.”

I said, “I guess he’s not the man we’re interested in, then, sir. Sorry I bothered you.”

When I hung up, I noticed Frank was just setting a phone in its cradle, too. I said, “Bet a Coke that tomorrow morning Handwriting tells us Big Julie didn’t write those letters.”

“No bet,” Frank said. “I was listening on an extension.”