The Gremlin’s Grampa

Chapter 2

Wednesday — 9:50 p.m.

The call came in routine fashion from patrol car Potrero Six to Communications, on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice just down the corridor from Reardon’s office. The voice was distorted in that metallic, scratchy, static-filled manner of all patrol car broadcasts:

“Bennett here, Potrero Six, fatal stabbing in a tavern, address Seven twenty-eight Embarcadero, just before the end, on the corner of Berry — repeat, Seven two eight Embarcadero between Pier Forty-two and Pier Forty-four. Rough description of killer given by witnesses: medium-sized man, Caucasian, with a heavy black beard and mustache, wearing dark sunglasses, dressed in a reddish-colored plaid-design lumber jacket and hunting cap. Victim tentatively identified by bartender as Jerry Capp...”

At Communications the time was formally noted and a tape recording of the patrol car’s report was taken. The report further stated that the bartender had run from the tavern to try to see where the assailant might have disappeared to, had seen nobody running — or even moving — on the Embarcadero, had then run down Berry, seen nothing, turned into Second and had seen the patrol car parked in the apron area of a gas station and the driver, Sergeant Bennett, had returned with him. Arriving at the scene with the bartender, Sergeant Bennett had verified the fact of death in the victim and had called it in. No sight or sound of a car starting up or leaving the scene by those who had witnessed the slaying, led to the belief that in all probability the killer disappeared on foot.

The responsibilities at headquarters were rapidly divided in accordance with long practice: the assailant’s description was handed to a telephone desk man for transmittal to all patrol cars and bike men, with special attention suggested to those in the Potrero and Central areas, as well as for all cars of all sections in areas the killer could reach on foot in a relatively short time. Arrangements were made for all foot patrolmen and all foot sergeants to be informed at their regular call-ins, or informed by any passing or encountering patrol cars. An ambulance was dispatched from Mission Emergency at San Francisco General Hospital — or, rather, was ordered dispatched; ambulances were busy vehicles and given any choice at all invariably elected to let the dead wait in favor of the living — a practice that at times resulted in several hours’ delay. All radio-taxicab garages were contacted and requested to pass the information on to their drivers. The medical examiner’s office was contacted and asked to have a doctor prepared to leave at once with the Technical Squad. Captain Tower, in charge of Homicide, was reached at home; even as the other steps were being taken the captain was arranging the departure of the Technical group, with instructions to pick up the doctor at the first-floor morgue office on the way. This matter handled satisfactorily, the captain flicked the telephone button several times impatiently.

“Sir?” The switchboard in Communications was on the line.

“Who’s there from my department tonight?”

“Lundahl, Ferguson, Green. And Sergeant Dondero and Lieutenant Reardon are in the building.”

“Reardon? Dondero? What are they doing there?”

“I don’t know, sir, but their In lights are up on the board. They’re around the building someplace, I’m sure.”

“Well, good. See if you can get me Reardon, will you?”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain waited, one eye on the silent mouthings from the TV screen; he had turned the volume down as soon as the telephone had rung. Across from him his wife waited, her face expressionless, but feeling all the tautness of all police wives at a night call. A telephone rang at the far end, rang once again, and was finally answered.

“Hello?” Could this possibly be Jan? Reardon thought. Calling to apologize?

“Jim?”

The deep voice was instantly recognized, exploding a dream. The swivel chair that had been turned to allow the lieutenant to lie back and stare out of the window in search of a solution to his problems, was reluctantly swung back to face the desk. The musing reveries were put aside.

“Yes, Captain.”

Captain Tower took a deep breath. “Jim, there’s been a fatal stabbing in a tavern on the Embarcadero on the corner of Berry. Seven two eight Embarcadero. Tom Bennett was parked nearby and he called it in. It looks as if the killer got away on foot; there’s a search on for him now. Take a man with you and get down there in a hurry. A Technical car should be on the way soon if it hasn’t already left. I’ll be down to the hall as soon as I can make it. Got that?”

“Yes, sir...”

Reardon frowned. There was an urgency in the captain’s voice that was very unusual for a tavern knifing; unfortunately, tavern knifings in themselves were not unusual at all. The captain to leave home at night, and a dank, wet night at that, to come downtown for a wino killed in an Embarcadero bar? Captain Tower stared at the phone a moment, as if he could read the lieutenant’s mind and could understand his wonder; then he spoke, quietly and slowly.

“Keep your eyes open on this one, Jim. It isn’t as simple as it sounds. Tom Bennett says the tentative identification on the victim is our old friend Jerry Capp.”

Reardon’s eyes widened, understanding dawning at last. He came to life, his argument with Jan forgotten, or at least relegated to his subconscious for the time being. His swivel chair came down with a crash.

“Yes, sir!”

He hung up, reached into his drawer for his revolver and clip-on holster, and came to his feet in a hurry, hastily attaching the weapon to his belt and tugging his jacket closed about it. He dragged his raincoat from a hook behind the door and walked through the outer office to the corridor. One door down he went in and looked around; two men in their shirt sleeves looked up at him in surprise, but he paid them no attention, returning to the corridor just in time to almost collide with Sergeant Dondero, carefully balancing a cup of coffee. He looked at Reardon reprovingly.

“Watch it, James. These things spill.”

“Come on, Don. Let’s go.” Reardon shrugged himself into his raincoat; Dondero edged past him.

“Go? Go where?” Dondero put the coffee on a desk and began to tug the lid loose.

“Damn it, let’s go!” Reardon glared.

“All right, all right! Don’t get excited!” Dondero put the coffee aside, reached for his coat and slipped into it. “Hey, you guys. Leave this alone.”

One man, Ferguson, looked up. “Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry, he says,” Dondero muttered, and straightened his coat. “Twenty cents down the drain!”

“Your stomach will thank you,” Reardon said coldly, and walked rapidly down the long corridor to the elevator bank with Dondero hurrying to catch up. The two waited impatiently for the automatic elevator to arrive; Dondero opened his mouth to question the reason for their hasty departure, and then closed it, choosing instead to light a cigarette and flip the spent match in the general direction of the sandbox between the elevator doors. There was a hard look on the lieutenant’s face that told him questions were best postponed until they were in Reardon’s car and the lieutenant could take out whatever was bugging him on the gas pedal, the traffic lights, the traffic itself, or any pedestrian silly enough to challenge the lieutenant to the right-of-way. One thing, Dondero calculated, this hasn’t anything to do with Jan, or I’d still be drinking my coffee...

The elevator arrived at long last; it dropped them to street level at its usual frustrating, inching speed, somewhat like a coffin being lowered in quicksand by a group of overcautious gravediggers. The two men waited while the door eased open as slowly as its designers could contrive, and then they were walking quickly across the mottled marble floor under the curious eyes of the uniformed men behind the long angled information counter, their footsteps echoing hollowly and rapidly in the deserted lobby. They ducked under the night rope, pushed against the one door left open at night, and trotted down the broad steps of the building, crowding into Reardon’s souped-up Charger parked illegally at the curb. Reardon had the engine racing before Dondero could get properly seated. The sergeant’s head snapped back as Reardon clashed gears, glancing over his shoulder at the oncoming traffic, and then he cut into the street with a roar of the engine, quite as if the path behind him had been clear. The agonized wail of a horn screamed from behind him as he shot down Bryant; behind him a swearing driver was trying to control both his car and his temper and succeeding with neither. Reardon paid him no attention.

Dondero turned, reaching for the retractable half of the seat belt hidden at his side. Driving with Jim Reardon was always nerve-wracking, but never quite so much as when the lieutenant was in a particular hurry. Nor, Dondero thought, did the yellow fog, the damp pavement and the eerie reflection of streetlamps on the glistening roadway help at all.

“A guy could get whiplash driving with you,” he complained, fumbling for the strap. “What’s the large rush?” He spoke around the stub of his cigarette, both hands occupied.

“A killing,” Reardon said tightly.

“I figured it wasn’t some kids got caught swiping candy,” Dondero said drily, and finally managed to fasten the seat belt. He drew it up tightly, crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray, and looked over at Reardon. “Who, why, what and where?” An essential omission occurred to him. “Plus when, of course.”

“A stabbing in a tavern down on the Embarcadero,” Reardon said flatly. He sped past a cab double-parked, discharging passengers, barely missing an occupant emerging from the street side of the cab. There was a faint curse, fading behind them in the night. “A few minutes ago.”

“So there’s no reason getting our own selves killed getting down there,” Dondero said in a reasonable tone of voice. “If the guy’s dead, he’ll wait for us.”

“This one won’t”

Dondero’s eyebrows raised. “He walks on water?” A sudden possible explanation for hurrying to a mere tavern knifing came to him. “Who caught it? A cop? Somebody we know?”

A traffic light suddenly turned crimson before them. Reardon stepped on the brake abruptly, muttering nasty sounds under his breath, skidding to a precarious stop, engine panting to be off. The automobile he had cut off in front of the Hall of Justice came to a halt beside him, its driver prepared for argument. One look at the tough, rigid face of the driver of the Charger, plus the benign but hard face of the man beside him, and he subsided, grumbling to himself. Reardon paid no heed to the car at his side, gauging instead the chances of making it through the line of cars crossing the intersection before him. He correctly judged it would be suicidal, to the profound relief of Sergeant Dondero, who was reading his mind; the lieutenant settled back to wait, his eyes glued on the traffic light, his fingers tapping the steering wheel restlessly.

“I asked you a question,” Dondero said impatiently. “Was it a cop? A little politeness, sometimes, goes a long way, you know.”

Reardon risked taking his eye from the traffic light long enough to glance over at his companion, and then as quickly returned to his vigil. “Jerry Capp,” he said quietly.

“What!” It wasn’t a question as much as a negation. Dondero sat as erect as the seat belt permitted. “Are you sure?”

“That’s what they tell me down at the office.”

Dondero frowned in patent disbelief. “What would a big-time hood like Jerry Capp be doing down in some crummy bar down on the Embarcadero, for crissakes? That ain’t his sort of beat.”

“He was probably having himself a drink,” Reardon said drily. He leaned forward, glaring up at the light, willing it to change. “What do you go to taverns for?”

“Yeah, but that’s me,” Dondero said. “I ain’t Jerry Capp. The day I collect the kind of dough that guy has, I don’t go to crummy joints for a brew, believe me! That day comes, I drink only pink champagne — imported — and I only do that at the Top of the Fairmont, or—”

He broke off abruptly to reach frantically for the support of the dashboard as the lieutenant’s foot traded the brake for the gas pedal in answer to the changing of the light. Reardon tramped down viciously; the special engine responded instantly. They shot across the intersection, swaying desperately around a bus that had elected to turn into the street at the last moment. Dondero hung on tightly and swallowed convulsively, looking across the car.

“Hey, for crissakes, Jim! Take it easy!” He shook his head. “And to think I turned down a job with the fire department because I figured a guy could get killed riding a hook and ladder!” He attempted to use logic on the mad driver. “Anyway, so what if it is Jerry Capp? That cheap bum! I mean, that bum — because cheap he wasn’t; that you got to give him. He took from the poor and gave to the rich — himself. Anyway, what I mean, we ought to be out celebrating, not trying to get ourselves killed.”

“We’re hurrying because the captain said for us to hurry.” Reardon’s tone made no attempt to disguise the sarcasm. To prove his own loyalty to the captain’s orders he tried to squeeze a few more miles per hour out of the Charger. “We can celebrate later.” He shrugged; his strong hands on the wheel rested there lightly, controlling the speeding car perfectly. “Maybe the captain wants us to catch the killer in a hurry so he can pin a medal on him.”

Dondero hadn’t heard a word said; he was too busy hanging on.

“Anyway,” he went on stubbornly, “who ever claimed it was Jerry Capp in the first place? I still don’t see him hanging around any cheap gin mill. And will you please for crissakes watch how you’re driving?”

Reardon cut around a slow-moving truck, narrowly missing a brace of taxis whose drivers were riding side by side, screaming at each other through open windows, one man leaning across the seat, steering with one hand. Dondero wiped his brow. They approached First Street; ahead in the mist muffled lights glowed in the sky, outlining the skeleton form of the Bay Bridge, fading mysteriously into the fog, as if the bridge were incomplete, its girders ending in space, leading unwary travelers into limbo.

“Potrero Six was parked in a gas station somewhere around the corner,” Reardon said. He swung the wheels; they turned into First with their tires protesting. “Tom Bennett was in it. This bartender comes out of the tavern, looks for a cop, spots Bennett and comes back with him. Bennett checks out the body. He calls it in, saying it’s Jerry Capp.” In the interest of true accuracy he modified his statement a bit. “Or at least he said that the tentative identification makes it out to be Jerry Capp.”

“Tentative!” Dondero snorted. “How do we know Tom even knows what Capp looks like?”

Despite the necessity of concentrating on the wet road and the traffic racing along with him and against him, Reardon took the time to look over at Dondero in astonishment. He instantly brought his attention back to the road; the glance had been a purely reflex action, occasioned by his surprise at the statement.

“You’ve got to be purely kidding,” he said. “Anybody in the department who doesn’t know the four hoods on Captain Tower’s personal garbage list has to be deaf, dumb and blind these past many years. And Bennett’s been in the department a long time.” He paused a moment, as if for effect. “And Jerry Capp’s been on that garbage list a long, long time.”

“Yeah,” Dondero said, defeated, and fished in his pocket for another cigarette.

“Not to mention the newspapers every now and then having articles about our captain’s pet peeve. Or peeves,” Reardon said. He thought a moment. “Usually around election time,” he added a bit callously.

“Yeah. I guess the names of our captain’s four pet hoods aren’t any great secret to the San Francisco reading public.” Dondero changed the subject. “Did anyone see this guy coming out of the saloon?”

“I don’t know. The report didn’t say, or if it did, I didn’t hear it. But enough guys saw the killing in the bar, from what I gather.”

He swung the wheel sharply, pulling into the wide Embarcadero. Across the street from them gray ghosts of ships rose like walls between the warehouse slips; battered yellow metal containerized shipping crates vied for space with trucks parked for the night and helter-skelter piles of wooden shipping mats. The air was heavy, wet; the piercing shrieks of sea gulls interspersed the throaty hooting of foghorns echoing from the bay. Reardon saw the patrol car ahead; he pulled to the right and cut into the curb behind it.

The flasher on Potrero Six was turning, wiping alternate smears of red and white against the front of the sagging building; Sergeant Bennett was standing before the steps leading to the tavern door, keeping one or two idle bystanders at bay but still close enough to his car to hear the static of his radio. Reardon and Dondero climbed down and walked over. The sergeant raised a hand in a half salute; he was an elderly, dignified-looking man with grizzled hair showing around the edge of his uniform cap.

“Hello, Lieutenant. Hi, Don.”

“Hello, Bennett. Why aren’t you inside with the body?”

“I whistled up a foot man; he’s inside. He’ll see to it nobody touches anything.”

Reardon looked around. “The Technical boys aren’t here yet? And where’s the ambulance?”

“You know ambulances for stiffs, Lieutenant,” Bennett said. “But it doesn’t make any difference. There’s sure no rush. He’s dead, all right.” He grunted. “Real dead.”

Reardon looked at him. “Are you sure of your identification?”

Sergeant Bennett scratched the white stubble on his chin and shrugged.

“He looks like his mug shots, and the bartender says it’s him and he sounds like he knows. I didn’t check his pockets, not with you and the Technical Squad on the way down here.”

“Did you see the man who did the stabbing when he ran out of the tavern here?”

“No, sir.” Bennett broke off to move over and stop a man intent upon entering the tavern. “Out of bounds tonight. Some other time,” he said to the man, and returned his attention to the lieutenant. “I was around the corner in that gas station. I’d just used the john there, and I was coming out when this man—”

“All right.” Reardon suddenly stepped closer to the sergeant and leaned forward a bit. He frowned. “Sergeant, would you mind stepping over here a moment? Don, keep them moving for a minute, will you?” He walked the sergeant to the curb beside the car, out of earshot of the curious. “Bennett, have you been drinking?”

The elderly man flushed. “I’m not a drinking man, Lieutenant.”

“Maybe not, but you smell like a brewery right now.”

“I... I took some cough medicine a while ago.” Bennett swallowed. “Maybe that’s what you smell.”

Reardon stared at him hard. Bennett held the lieutenant’s eyes a bit defiantly for several moments and then looked up and down the street as if searching for something there. He apparently didn’t find it, because he finally ended up staring at the ground.

“All right,” Reardon said. His voice was expressionless. “I’d suggest you lay off cough medicine from now on when you’re supposed to be on duty, understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. You can take your car back into service. We’ll take it from here.”

“Yes, sir.” Bennett escaped into the patrol car, closing the door quickly behind him, reaching for the microphone to relay his return to service to Communications. He hung up when finished and pressed the starter; the engine caught, the patrol car swung in an arc across the Embarcadero, heading past the empty, darkened pier fronts toward the center of town. The siren caught for a second and was instantly turned off; Bennett had pushed the wrong button.

Dondero had been listening. He shook his head as Reardon walked back to him.

“You were a little rough on the man, weren’t you, Jim?”

“He shouldn’t drink on duty.” Reardon’s voice was cold, as much in anger at himself as in anger at Bennett. It was Bennett’s fault that he, a younger man, had to pull rank, and he blamed the sergeant bitterly for it. “Let him save it for when he’s home.”

Dondero almost said, Like you do, but decided against it.

“The guy practically doesn’t have a home anymore. Wife died not too long ago, four kids, one of them bad. I guess maybe it gets a little too much for him at times.”

“A lot of people have problems at home,” Reardon said abruptly. He sounded as if home weren’t the only place a person could find grief. “Bennett’s a patrol car driver. All he needs — or all the police department in general needs — is for one of the citizenry to report him for drinking while driving. Just once. Then Sergeant Bennett would have real problems, and so would we all.” He frowned blackly down the Embarcadero after the disappearing taillights of the patrol car. “That’s probably what he was doing in that gas station john — having a nip. If he hadn’t, he might have been where he could see something, like that killer coming out of the bar.”

“Oh, come on!” Dondero shook his head in surprise. “He was probably doing what everyone else does in a john, for crissakes! They don’t build toidies in patrol cars, you know. And if he hadn’t been there, he’d probably have been on a patrol somewhere around Army, fifteen blocks away at the time. And you know it.” He paused a moment. “Jim—”

“What?”

“You’ve got to quit taking out your personal problems on guys you run into—”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean your scrap with Jan about drinking tonight,” Dondero said stubbornly.

“You think my — discussion — with Jan had anything to do with my chewing Bennett out for drinking?” Reardon waited, staring at Dondero belligerently. Dondero wisely kept quiet. “I said he shouldn’t be drinking on duty, and he shouldn’t and I know it and you know it and he knows it. So what does my having a few drinks at dinner have to do with the thing?”

There was a moment’s silence. Then,

“Nothing, I guess,” Dondero said quietly. His eyes came up, unfathomable. “You going to report him?”

“I don’t know.” Reardon ran a hand through his tousled hair and shook his head in disgust at things in general. “I don’t know.” He sighed. “Ah, to hell with it! Let’s go in and go to work.”

“Yeah,” Dondero said quietly, and led the way.