The Gremlin’s Grampa

Chapter 12

Friday — 4:20 p.m.

Greenwich Street sloped murderously upwards from Columbus to terminate in Telegraph Hill with its Coit Tower protected by ancient railings and surrounded by grass which, at the moment, looked nearly as old. Lieutenant Reardon, turning into it from Jones Street and driving up in ultra-low gear, searching for a place to park, came to the firm conclusion that Lillian Messer, if she did her shopping afoot at the bottom of the hill, had to turn out to have a pretty good figure, if nothing else. Greenwich Street, here in the upper reaches beyond Mason, had not been built for fat people; either they moved away or they quickly changed the fat to muscle.

He saw an open space before a private garage, clearly marked No Parking, and pulled into it with a grunt of satisfaction. He set the brake and swung the wheels sharply in order to at least confuse the Charger if it sought to escape by rolling; the two men climbed down and twisted their necks gazing upwards sharply along the vertical pink stucco front of the apartment building. Dondero brought his head down, rubbing his neck and grimacing.

“I’ll never figure people who like to climb four flights of stairs just to finally get to the first floor,” he said. His tone seemed to indicate the sharp incline of the terrain had been put there for the sole purpose of irritating him.

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“Well, to climb three flights, then,” Dondero said grudgingly, “just to reach the basement.”

“That’s better,” Reardon said approvingly, and rang the bell.

There was a delay, but before he could repeat the performance there came the clank of an ancient lever-operated door opener being activated from somewhere above. He pushed into a dim interior followed by Sergeant Dondero, only to find a second door confronting him. He frowned and tried it; it was not only locked, but sturdy. His eyebrows rose; on Grant Street in the old days the situation would have served as an excellent threatening scene from some Yellow Peril Threat movie script, but here? A disinterred voice issued from an old-fashioned speaking tube projecting from the wall. It seemed to take its metallic timbre from the faded brass of the contraption.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

“Miss Messer?”

The voice neither denied nor accepted; it merely repeated. It might have been a recording.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

“Police. We’d like to speak with you.” Reardon kept his voice cool; impersonal. His profound relief at having found her at home at all, was not allowed to show.

There was a brief pause; when the voice came again it was tinged with suspicion.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“I have a sergeant of police with me. I’m Lieutenant Reardon.”

“I never heard of you.”

“I never heard of you until this morning,” Reardon said. “Open up.”

“How do I know you’re the police?”

Reardon, never known for an excess of patience, bit back his first reply; from her standpoint, Lillian Messer undoubtedly had an argument. He looked at Dondero; the sergeant merely shrugged. Reardon turned back to the mouthpiece. His voice assumed an official hardness.

“Look, Miss Messer, if I have to go to the trouble of getting a warrant, and then go to the extra trouble of breaking down this door to get in and prove to you that we’re from the police, then I’d be damned irked. And I’m pretty sure neither one of us wants that or has anything to gain from that. I merely want to ask you a few simple questions.”

“What about?”

“Damn it!” Reardon snapped. “Open the door and talk to us face to face. Good God! If I wanted to telephone you, I could have done it from the Hall of Justice!”

“Oh?” The thin metallic voice became just the slightest bit calculating, almost amused, as if at some inner thought. “And just what telephone number would you have used?”

“I’d have used 889-5642,” Reardon said flatly. “You don’t really think unlisted telephone numbers are kept secret from the police, do you?”

There was silence for several moments as the woman above apparently pondered this statement; then, at long last, another clang resulted in the heavy door swinging inward. A well-lighted and carpeted staircase led upwards. The two men climbed it slowly, Reardon wondering to himself why the police were apparently welcome — or if not exactly welcome, at least not forcibly excluded — whereas common citizens without badges were quite obviously barred. Not quite the standard attitude for the ideal suspect in a murder case, he thought a bit despairingly; nine will get you thirteen we’ve hit another blind alley. He paused on the landing to stare at the woman who had let them in.

“Miss Messer?”

“Mrs. Messer.” Her voice, freed from the confines of the brass speaking tube, was low, cultured and pleasant. Her eyes were light gray, almost colorless, and, at the moment, very careful. “Could I see your identification, please?”

She examined the two warrant cards held out to her with what was quite evidently sufficient knowledge to determine their authenticity, and then nodded, satisfied, and led the way into a sitting room. Reardon was not surprised to find it both comfortable and well appointed, with good furniture tastefully and decoratively upholstered, and with either originals or excellent reproductions on the walls. The woman herself had been the surprise; once this surprise had been accepted, the apartment, its furnishings and all else followed quite naturally from it. Madames have changed a bit from the days of the Barbary Coast, I guess, he thought, and studied the woman before him. Mrs. Messer was a smallish lady in what seemed to be her middle forties; she was dressed in a mannishly cut suit and looked far more like a buyer for a woman’s shop than a madame in one of Falcone’s houses. Her hair was tinted a slight shade of gray, and neatly put up in a bun; her hands were small and faintly veined, the nails well manicured and covered with light pink polish. The lace from her cuffs peaked from beneath the suit sleeves, starched and white.

She seated herself in a straight-backed chair and waited politely for the two police officers to arrange themsleves in easy chairs on either side of her. Reardon felt himself sink deeply into the cushions; he looked up to find the woman eyeing him with faint amusement.

“Are you comfortable?”

Reardon struggled to a sitting position, feeling slightly foolish. He was sure the woman had selected the chairs for this purpose, and had led them to sit in them. “Quite,” he said, and managed to rest himself on the rim of the chair frame.

“Good. Well, gentlemen? What can I do for you?”

Reardon did the questioning. Dondero left his notebook in his pocket.

“Is there a Mr. Messer?”

“There was, but he died many years ago.” Her look of amusement increased. “Were you looking for him? He’s buried in Los Altos, if you care to exhume him...”

Reardon didn’t waste the time to comment. “That’s quite an armory you have down below. Do you feel you need that much protection?”

“Lieutenant, those doors and those door openers were installed when this house was built — well over seventy years ago. More, in fact — before electricity. Believe me, I didn’t put them in.” She looked at him archly. “Why? Are you gentlemen from the building inspector’s office? You led me to believe—”

Reardon cut in abruptly. “You used to work for Pete Falcone, didn’t you, Mrs. Messer?”

The lady facing him merely nodded in lieu of answering. Her face was calm, her eyes twinkling.

“Could I ask what you did?”

“Certainly. A type of personnel work,” she said easily. She smiled. “You might say I handled some of his employees for him.”

Reardon didn’t bother to argue the semantics; it made no point in any event. “You’ve heard of his death?”

“Of course. I read the papers.”

“Did the fact of his death surprise you?”

“No.”

Reardon waited for more, but when nothing further was forthcoming, and the lady merely relaxed slightly in the tall, hard chair, he prodded a bit. “Just, no?”

“No, it didn’t surprise me, Lieutenant. As you say, I worked for Mr. Falcone for a long time, and I knew him well. At times — too often, in fact — he did things that earned him enemies. Apparently this time he did it once too often, and made an enemy who was able to strike back.” She shrugged enigmatically. “And did.”

“I see. You know, of course — from the newspapers — that the evidence indicates that a woman was involved in his death?”

Mrs. Messer smiled almost condescendingly.

“It’s quite evident, Lieutenant, that you’ve heard of my quarrel with Mr. Falcone, and are drawing some rather far-fetched conclusions from it. Are you asking me if I killed him?”

Reardon nodded complacently, not at all put out by her question. “Or, of course, if you paid someone else to have him killed.”

Mrs. Messer crossed her well-formed legs in ladylike fashion, straightening out her skirt and smoothing the creases carefully. She folded her small hands on her knee and leaned forward a bit. Her voice was quiet and musical.

“Lieutenant, if you are as familiar with the story of my quarrel with Mr. Falcone as you think you are, then you know he did something to me that was quite unforgivable. If you wish the truth, I’m very happy that he’s dead, although I feel merely falling fifteen stories was scarcely punishment enough for him.” Her face was expressionless. “However, I and my daughter suffered enough at Mr. Falcone’s hands. I wouldn’t give that dreadful man the satisfaction — even dead — to see me get into trouble over him.”

“Still,” Reardon said in a tone that merely asked for reasonable consideration, “I’d like to know where you were the night before last — Wednesday — around eleven o’clock at night. Just for the record, you understand.”

“Of course.” Her light gray eyes widened in a smile; in anyone younger it might have been coquettish. “Actually, I was with my daughter.”

Reardon also smiled, the polite smile of companionship. “And that, of course, was going to be my next question. Your daughter — by the way, what’s her name?”

“Marianne. Marianne Bradley. It was my maiden name.”

“And Marianne, I suppose, was with you.” His smile widened, asking to be taken into Mrs. Messer’s confidence. “Now, Marianne wouldn’t just happen to be a rather tall girl, would she, with long brown hair, and a rather well-developed body? With a rather husky voice?”

“She’s tall,” Mrs. Messer agreed readily. She sounded as if she were merely voicing a normal mother’s pride in her offspring. “And her hair is long, or at least longish. I don’t know that I’d call it brown, exactly, but I suppose that would depend to a degree on your definition of ‘brown’.” She paused, frowning, trying to recall the rest of the description. “Oh yes. Yes, she’s well built. After all,” she added, smiling at him brightly, “she’s almost twenty.”

“And she drinks Gremlin’s Grampas?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I asked, what does she drink?”

“Oh, Marianne doesn’t drink at all.” She sounded more amused than shocked at the idea. “Drinking for young people now is about the same as smoking — not the in thing, you know. No, it wasn’t drinking that got her into her trouble with Pete. It was gambling.” She leaned forward, her voice confidential. “And you know, I never had the faintest idea! And then she tried to borrow money—”

“I’ve heard all about it.” Reardon’s stiff smile disappeared. “All right, Lily! Fun’s fun, but yours is about at an end. Where were you Wednesday night at eleven o’clock? And where was your daughter?” He snorted. “And don’t try to tell me ‘together’ or we’re apt to finish this session at the Hall of Justice!”

There was unbridled spite behind the tight smile of the faintly lined face. The veneer of utter respectability was beginning to crack; the tension had been great.

“You really want to know, Lieutenant? All right, I’ll tell you — with pleasure. We were at the Carmelite convent in San Jose. I spent the night at the Holiday Inn there, and my daughter stayed at the convent. At eleven o’clock, I think, we were with a Sister Bernadette.” She leaned back. “Anyway, you can check.”

Reardon kept his voice even, his face straight, hiding his disappointment. And yet, it really wasn’t disappointment. I knew beforehand she’d be clean, he said to himself; she wouldn’t have opened the door without a warrant, not this dame with her experience, despite that Whistler’s Mother’s act, not if she was really afraid of the police. I should have grabbed those nine-to-thirteen odds I was offering before. Nonetheless, he plowed on; there was little else to do to justify the steep climb up that hill.

“Were there any other sisters there with you, or were you just with this Sister Bernadette?”

There was even less attempt to hide the sneer in her voice now.

“Sister Bernadette is the mother superior of the convent. Of course there were other nuns there, as well! Or do you think the mother superior of a convent would send them all downtown for a beer while she fixed up an alibi for a murderer?”

Reardon skipped it. The one thing he didn’t feel like doing was getting involved in a religious argument. “What were you doing there?”

“Trying to get them to take Marianne back.” For the first time the sweetness was gone from the cultured voice. “We had to tell the sister the truth — about the gambling, and Pete and everything, and it was no fun, believe me—”

“About you, too?”

The tiny jaw hardened. “No. But about Marianne.”

“What made you decide to go down there at that late hour?”

“Because I sat here and tried to talk some sense into that kid’s thick head for hours and hours, and when I finally got her to agree to give the convent another chance, I didn’t waste any time. I called them and talked to the sister right then. I said I wanted to get Marianne back there before she changed her mind, and I thought it would be better—”

“To be sixty miles away from San Francisco and the Cranston Hotel when Pete Falcone went out the window?”

There were several moments of silence during which Reardon stared at the metamorphosis of a sweet old lady turning into a madame of a pleasure palace with years of experience dealing with non-payers, louts, weirdos and, of course, police. He could not have known, of course, that Lily Messer’s patience was on a par with his own.

“Listen, copper,” Mrs. Messer said at last, and the final pretense of gentility had been wiped away completely. Her voice was no longer modulated or cultured, and her eye and face were equally hard. “Listen and listen good, and try to get it straight! Like you said yourself, I was sixty miles away when that son of a bitch died, and so was my daughter, and you can check with the convent and take their word for it, or shove it, for all I care! And the next time you come visiting, you better bring a warrant, for luck if for nothing else, because you’ll get a load of buckshot if you try to fool with those doors without one, and you can write book on it! Understand?”

“Speaking of those doors again,” Reardon said easily, happy that the masquerade was over at last, “why the need for all the protection?” He raised a hand. “I know they were here before you, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the fact that apparently you feel you need protection. It can’t be from the cops, since you let us in.”

“Of course it can’t be from the cops!” Mrs. Messer rolled her eyes in supplication. “Dumbhead!”

“Then who?”

Mrs. Messer sighed hopelessly. “I could tell you to drop dead,” she said unfeelingly, “but you’re so goddam stupid you’d probably do it, and the bright sergeant here would take me in for manslaughter, or something. If you have any brains, you’d know why all the protection. Somebody knocked off Pete. Pete had friends. Some of his friends might just be as dumb as you and figure because I had a fight with him, I killed him. So—” She shrugged.

“Or,” Reardon suggested conversationally, “a smart dame like you, with lots of experience around cops — good and bad — might just figure that would make a good story to tell the dumb flatfoots when they finally got around to questioning you.”

She shook her head, as if in disgust with his ignorance. Reardon started to come to his feet, convinced they were wasting their time, when Dondero got into the act by clearing his throat significantly. Reardon sank back in his chair as Dondero leaned forward, speaking in a quiet voice, his tone even.

“How long since you saw Sadie Chenowicz?”

She swung her head sharply, wary of this attack — if it was an attack — from her flank.

“Who?”

“Sadie Chenowicz. A hooker.”

She shook her head. “Never heard of her.”

“Oh, come on, Lily,” Dondero said in a friendly, almost joshing voice. “You must have. In your spot you must have known every pro in the business. What’s the harm in admitting it? Of course, she never had your class; she probably never worked a house in her life. Strictly a pavement-pounder. Come on, you’ve got to know her! She works the bars on the Embarcadero mostly, nowadays. Sailors or dockers, you know. A blowsy blonde, getting fat, a barfly, about your age—”

Mrs. Lillian Messer’s eyes flashed.

“About my age? Why, you blind bastard, Sadie Chenowicz has ten years on me if she has a day! A month after my mother died — God bless her — at the age of sixty-seven, she looked better than Sadie does right now! My age! Good Christ where do they get their cops from, today? The Braille Institute?”

“So now that you finally managed to remember her,” Dondero said with consummate patience, “when’s the last time you saw her?”

“Who knows?” Lily Messer’s shrug also said, Who cares? “It’s got to be twenty years, at least.”

“And when you last saw her — twenty years ago — your mother, God bless her, looked better than Sadie does today? Come on, Lily. When did you see Sadie Chenowicz last? Last week? The day before yesterday? Which was the day Jerry Capp got hit, in case you forgot?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about when you saw Sadie last. Because she was in that bar where Jerry Capp got hit.”

“What!” Her face whitened; she sat erect in her hard-backed chair.

“Surprise, surprise!” Dondero’s voice turned from mockery to cajolery. “Look, Lily, all I have to do is ask her, and she’ll tell me. You know Sadie. For two bucks, or for a couple of drinks of damn near anything, Sadie wouldn’t only tell me that you paid her to finger Jerry Capp, but she’ll tell us how much. To the dime. To the number of seven-and-sevens it bought, if it came to that—”

“You bastard! What are you driving at?”

“Me? Nothing? However,” Dondero went on philosophically, “when you deal with a barfly like Sadie Chenowicz, you ought to know beforehand the chance you’re taking—”

“You miserable, lying, stinking—!”

“Not to mention what muscle actually did the shiv job personally. If she knew, that is.” Dondero sighed. “Funny, the bunch of nuts you run into on the Embarcadero nights. Days, it’s not too bad, but nights?” He shuddered dramatically. “Weird... What did it cost, Lily? Money — hard cash? Or your lily-white body? Yes,” he added thoughtfully, studying her up and down, “you’ve got it over Sadie like a tent. Whether you’re both the same age or not...”

Lily Messer bit back her first reply. There were several moments during which the two police detectives were once again treated to the Jekyll-Hyde act of Lily, the Madame, turning back into Mrs. Lillian Messer, mother and widow. When at last she spoke she was once again the calm, controlled, cultured woman with the evenly modulated voice they had first met. She was the lady who, in the course of entertaining guests, had unfortunately found them overstaying their welcome — but who knew how to handle the situation. She came to her feet, brushed a bit of offending lint from her skirt with meticulous care, folded her hands before her, and looked at them steadily, unemotionally.

“Well, gentlemen! It’s rather a pity I don’t have a recording device around, because those last statements certainly sounded to me like a threat to suborn a witness. A bribe to Sadie Chenowicz to have her say anything you want her to say.” She shrugged delicately. “However, it’s on your conscience, not mine.”

“Look, Lily, get smart—”

“My name isn’t Lily to you — just to my friends. To you I’m Mrs. Messer, and my attorney is Daniel Farbstein of Gorman, Farbstein and Finch. You’ll find their address in the telephone book. From now on they’ll answer all questions for me.”

Reardon stepped in, speaking as friend to friend.

“Look, Lily — I mean, Mrs. Messer. You call me stupid; well, don’t be even more stupid. Somebody did kill Jerry Capp and Pete Falcone and Ray Martin. They didn’t die of heart failure, and we didn’t make up their obits. Those three are dead and somebody killed them. If you really had nothing to do with their deaths, then you should be as interested as we are to find the killer. To take the pressure off you—”

“Daniel Farbstein, of Gorman, Farbstein and Finch. They’re in the phone book.”

“You don’t like to live behind locked doors. Who does? You might as well be in jail. Give us a hand—”

“Daniel Farbstein,” Mrs. Messer said in her well-controlled lady’s voice. She turned gracefully, leading the way politely to the door and the staircase landing. She might not have heard a word Reardon had said. “Of Gorman, Farbstein and Finch. They’re in the phone book...”

Friday — 6:00 p.m.

Reardon sat in the parked Charger, staring through the windshield at the sharp drop down Greenwich Street, but not really seeing it. Instead, he saw the smirk, the folded hands, the sharp, clever glint in the almost colorless gray eyes; heard again the soft but vicious voice. He sighed and turned to Dondero.

“What do you think?”

Dondero shrugged. He reached for a cigarette and lit it; he puffed deeply, as if for sustenance, exhaled, and then paused to pick a bit of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. He stared at the offender a moment and then flicked it away, too big a man to make an issue of the matter. These chores attended to, he leaned back.

“God knows,” he said wearily. “I wouldn’t put a little matter like a killing past Sister Mary upstairs, here, and I can see her buying and paying for professional clout without the slightest qualm. And I can also see her setting herself an alibi at the convent at the time. But in that case I can’t see her locking herself in like this.”

“Why not?” Reardon asked, sure that Dondero had a good answer. He enjoyed watching the swarthy detective sergeant use his sharp intelligence. “If, as she said, she thought some of Pete’s friends might think she had a hand in his killing and came after her? I’d say if she did the killing, or was responsible for it, she would have a very good reason for locking herself in. Tightly.”

Dondero shook his head stubbornly.

“You’re not thinking clearly, Jim. You say your pigeon told you this morning that these killings aren’t inspired by the mob, and I buy that. But you can’t tell me that if your pigeon knows it, and you know it, and I know it, that Mrs. Lillian Messer doesn’t know it. And that she’s also damn sure that Pete’s friends know it.”

Reardon stared at him with a frown. “You lost me about four blocks back, pal. If Lillian Messer had a hand in getting Pete Falcone knocked off, that doesn’t make it a gang kill. Quite the opposite.”

Dondero sighed and flicked ash through the car window.

“You still don’t see it,” he said patiently. “Look at it like this: You say you don’t believe in coincidence. Well, in that case either Lillian Messer killed all three of those goons, or she didn’t kill any of them. Because it would really be some coincidence if she killed one and somebody conveniently picked the same evening to knock off the other two; or if she killed two of them — let’s say Capp and Falcone for the sake of argument — and somebody picked that particular evening to kill Ray Martin.” He looked over at his companion steadily. “How do we stand? Are you with me so far?”

“So far.”

“Good,” Dondero said with satisfaction, and flipped his cigarette away, getting down to business. “Then let’s take the case that she killed all three — or, rather, had them killed by others, since she has an alibi for the actual time of the killings. We’ll check it with the hotel and with the convent, of course, but I seriously doubt she’d try lying about something like that—”

“Agreed.”

“So here she is, then, down in San Jose at the Carmelite convent with her daughter while three separate killings are being undertaken, at her orders. And then, the following morning, she leaves the convent and returns to her apartment and locks herself in—” He looked at Reardon. “Are you still with me?”

“I’m way ahead of you,” Reardon said slowly, and shook his head in disappointment with himself. “If she was at the convent at the time of the killings and knew they were taking place, would she have left that nice, safe haven and gone to a hotel — and then the next morning go back to her apartment after enough time had elapsed for the news to be all over town? Gone back to her apartment where those so-called friends of Pete Falcone might well be waiting for her to step out of a taxi? No, she just wouldn’t do it.”

“Right,” Dondero said, pleased his friend finally had seen the light. “Which means she couldn’t have known of the killings until after she got back to town. Then she locked herself in. Which means she didn’t do any of the killings. QED.”

“She was still lucky,” Reardon said slowly. “The mob might not have figured things out as neatly as you just did; she still might have had a reception committee waiting for her.”

Dondero shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. “You saw that dame — ice water for blood. She might have knocked Falcone off in a fit of temper; she might have even paid to have him knocked off. But Capp? And Martin? She’s too smart for that. And the mob would have heard of Capp’s death as quickly as they did Falcone’s, and they’d know she didn’t have a hand in that one.”

“Why not? Outside of our other arguments?”

“Because I don’t believe it,” Dondero said simply. “And if I don’t believe it, Pete’s friends won’t, either. I only met the dame once; those who knew her longer, or more intimately, would know it wasn’t her bag. No, mon lieutenant, scratch Mrs. Messer.”

“I’m afraid you’re right.” Reardon sounded sad; he leaned over and twisted the ignition key. The engine sprang to life; he backed more fully from the No Parking space and spun the wheel, shifting gears, starting down the steep incline with a foot on the brake. “We’re running out of suspects.”

“What do you mean, running out? When did we ever have any?”

“We’ve had lots of them,” Reardon said, “only they don’t make sense.” He turned into Jones Street. “I’m beginning to think our first guess was the closest — three people killing the three men. Don’t ask me why, because right now I couldn’t even guess.”

“I won’t ask you why because I don’t have the time.” Dondero glanced at his wristwatch. “Better drop me at my place. I want to pick up my car and get moving if I’m going to get to Tom Bennett’s in time for his birthday dinner.”

“I’ll take you there,” Reardon said absently. “That’s where Jan and I are having dinner, too.”

Dondero frowned across the car and then nodded his head.

“So that’s why you were so sweet and didn’t pull rank on me! I should have known.” His frown deepened. “Although I’m a bit surprised. Does Tom know you’re coming?”

“Why should he?” Reardon asked, and shifted gears as he started uphill again. He grinned. “After all, it’s supposed to be a surprise party, isn’t it? There ought to be a little surprise...”