The Gremlin’s Grampa

Chapter 3

Wednesday — 10:15 p.m.

It was a small bar with sloping floor, smelling of stale beer and with a faint background odor of urine, dimly lit, with thick dusty curtains across the two front windows preventing any view of the street. The mirror back of the bar was stained with flaking mercury, black slivers missing like gaping teeth; before it an irregular line of bottles, all cheap brands, stood at ease. One of the pictures on the wall was an autographed photograph of an ex-ring champ, crouching over, his gloves raised defensively, but unfortunately not enough to block the camera. The other pictures were fly-specked prints of old sailing ships, with one aerial view of San Francisco that must have been taken about the time of the earthquake. If the tavern dated from the time of that particular photograph, it was a very old tavern indeed.

An ancient jukebox flanked the door on one side; on the other side a line of small wooden tables with cheap plastic checkered tablecloths ran along the stamped metal wall, ending in a partition separating the front of the saloon from the rear area. Here, toward the partition, the odor of rancid fried cooking mingled with the smell of beer and urine. An old-fashioned cash register stood on the end of the bar; behind the bar and above it a brass ship’s bell in need of polishing hung askew on the wall. Flies droned restlessly in the damp air and haunted the musty window curtains.

The body lay where it had fallen, undisturbed by either civilian or official. It had apparently slid from the chair, attempted momentarily at least to gain some support from it, and had then brought the chair down with it in its final collapse. The crooked legs were sprawled awkwardly in death beneath the small, scarred wooden table; one arm was flung wide, still holding the corner of the plastic tablecloth it had dragged with it, while the other arm cushioned the tilted head. The expression on the dead man’s face was more pained than painful, as if the corpse couldn’t really see the necessity of murdering an upstanding, fine fellow such as he had been, and rightfully resented it. Blood had run from one corner of the slightly petulant mouth to join another thicker rivulet which had flowed from beneath the extended arm, but both branches had congealed in a brownish puddle along a fold of the crumpled tablecloth. The patrolman stepped away from the corpse at the entrance of the two plainclothes detectives. He stood at attention. Reardon nodded to him.

“Did the patrol car sergeant call in your change of duty?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Reardon tipped his head. “You take the outside duty. The patrol car’s back in service. Keep people moving along.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said, and went about his new job. Dondero marked the man’s badge number in his notebook and leaned back against one of the bar stools, lighting a cigarette.

Reardon studied the man’s face a moment and then squatted down beside the body, paying no attention to the other occupants of the room. He fumbled a wallet free from a trouser hip pocket without disturbing the delicate balance of the tablecloth, leafed through the papers there a moment, and then slid the wallet into his side pocket, coming to his feet. He nodded to Dondero.

“It’s our boy, all right.”

Dondero flicked ashes on the floor. “I know.”

Reardon turned toward the waiting bartender and then paused as several men came through the door weighed down with photographic equipment; the medical man followed, his black bag dangling, his young face the picture of disgust. And what do they expect me to find this man dead of? his expression seemed to ask — Dipsomania? Old age? Flat feet? He looked around the room in a bored manner, and then bent over the cadaver, obviously displeased with the man and the trouble he was causing.

Sergeant Frank Wilkins of the Technical Squad nodded to Reardon and then turned to consider the body over the doctor’s kneeling form. Wilkins was a heavyset man in his late forties; a frying pan across his face during the arrest of a drunken husband years before had squashed his nose beyond repair; it made his voice nasal and made him appear to be sneering when in fact he was the most modest and shy of all men. He was also succinct in speech, possibly because it gave him less opportunity to display his vocal handicap.

“Report said Jerry Capp.”

“Report was right.”

Reardon dug out the billfold and handed it over. Wilkins tucked it into one of his cavernous pockets without looking at it. Later, as Reardon knew, the contents would be carefully cataloged with all other personal effects and included in the final Technical Squad report on the murder. Frank Wilkins was an extremely capable officer. He studied the body for several more seconds in an impersonal manner and turned to Reardon once again.

“Who do we thank?”

“A good question,” Reardon conceded, and turned to the bartender as the doctor sighed unhappily and rolled the body over on its back. The tablecloth, dragged along by the clutching fingers of the dead man, tumbled down, covering the corpse. (“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Wilkins demanded nasally. “We haven’t taken pictures yet. All you’re supposed to do is to make sure he’s dead, right now. You can play with him later.” “Oh?” said the young doctor. “You need a medical man to tell you this stiff is dead? Well, don’t get your lower tract in an uproar, daddy. I’ll put him back for you. Grab the other end of this tablecloth, will you?”)

Wilkins, still grumbling under his breath, shoved the cloth back in place while his assistant began setting up the photographic equipment for pictures. Three men, apparently customers of the tavern at the time of the stabbing, watched silently and a bit owlishly from the end of the bar, well out of the way. Reardon studied the bartender.

“What’s your name?”

“Alfred Sullivan.” He was a small, dapper, elderly man with a hairline mustache, a pink shirt whose sleeves were held up with old-fashioned armbands, gray hair combed stiffly back in military style, and wearing suspenders. Reardon thought that with a jacket on he would look much more like a river-boat gambler than a bartender in a cheap saloon.

“All right, Sullivan. I’m Lieutenant Reardon of Homicide.” Sullivan did not look surprised. “What happened?”

“I told the sergeant from the patrol car—”

“Tell me all over again,” Reardon said quietly. “Everything. Stuff you forgot to tell the sergeant.” Dondero had his notebook ready and was waiting.

The small, dapper bartender wasn’t at all put out by the request; he would have been amazed had it been otherwise. “Well,” he said, “like I told the sergeant, this character comes in—”

“How big was he?”

“Bigger than me, but—” Alfred Sullivan shrugged, to indicate that the fact that most people were bigger than him, but that it didn’t really bother him greatly. He had other attributes. He pointed to Dondero. “About his size; maybe a little smaller.” He waited for more questions; the lieutenant remained silent. Dondero made a note in his book; his height was five-nine. Sullivan went on.

“Anyway, he comes in but he doesn’t head for the bar; he turns like he was going to the back room, like. We got a toilet there, and a phone on the wall, guys come in sometimes to use. So I don’t think nothing of it, see? Anyway, he goes by them tables and he bumps into Mr. Capp, like it was kind of an accident, see? And Mr. Capp says something to him, and then he says something back, and then before Mr. Capp can say anything else, this guy pulls this knife, see — and wham. That’s all there is to it. He shoves it into Mr. Capp, just like that. For no reason.”

“You were watching?”

“I was,” Alfred said equably. “I was looking at Mr. Capp, because I was wondering if maybe he wanted something to drink, see—”

Reardon frowned. Dondero looked up, getting into the act.

“If this Capp character didn’t want anything to drink, what was he doing in here? Don’t tell me he wanted to go to the john, or use the phone, not sitting at a table...”

“Oh, Mr. Capp? Well, he owns the joint, see—”

Dondero stared. “A guy with Capp’s scratch owns a crummy saloon like this one? You got to be joking.”

Alfred Sullivan brought himself up to his full height of five-three.

“Maybe there are things you don’t know about bars, huh, copper? You think those fancy-dan joints in the big hotels or over in the ritzy neighborhoods make dough? Half of them got their tongues hanging out. They got too big a nut, see? And they aren’t open the right hours, neither. A joint like this, no overhead, steady bunch of guys from the docks that don’t drink no drinks it takes a half hour to make — here’s where the dough is. And where the dough is, that’s where Mr. Capp puts his investments, see? He ain’t no dope. I mean...” He slowed down and stopped. His eyes strayed unconsciously to the corpse.

“So go on,” Reardon said quietly.

“Yeah, like I was saying: Mr. Capp, he comes in here every Wednesday around this time, more or less, just to check up, I guess. Sometimes he takes a drink, sometimes he don’t; I got some decent stuff under the bar. Sometimes he just sits and watches the action a bit, or checks the register — though that don’t mean nothing. He’s got a regular accountant keeps an eye on the dough part. Anyways,” Sullivan said flatly, “nobody never gypped Mr. Capp.” He stared down at the body as he said it, as if to prove both his honesty and his loyalty to the dead man.

“Maybe not, but I think he’d have preferred being gypped.” Reardon continued to watch the bartender. “What did he say?”

“Who, the character with the bush? I didn’t hear what he said.”

“How about Capp?”

“After he got stuck? He didn’t say nothing. He just took a dive. Oh — you mean what did he say to make this nut pull out a shiv and stick him? I ain’t got no idea. They was too much noise. I couldn’t hear what neither one of them said. They was a racket in here — from the television, from the guys at the bar—”

Reardon looked up at the television set, now turned off in deference to the dead man, but still keeping a milky, sightless eye on the proceedings from its Big Brother position on a pedestal in one corner; he turned and glanced at the three men waiting at the end of the bar. The three had been watching the doctor and Wilkins trying to rearrange the tableau of the death scene with almost morbid pleasure; if they were also listening to Reardon questioning the bartender, they were doing it without giving it much attention. In the silence that suddenly fell, however, they looked down the bar at the bartender and the police, their three heads turning together, as if mounted on a mutual swivel. One of the men was holding an empty glass and apparently had been holding it for some time; he seemed to become aware of it for the first time and placed it on the bar self-consciously, wiping his hands nervously on his trousers. All three looked as if they would have liked nothing better than to order another drink, but felt it would probably be denied in the circumstances. Reardon turned back to the waiting Alfred Sullivan.

“There were just these three men in here?”

“No, sir. They was at least half a dozen more, watching the TV and having a brew, but they beat it.” He shrugged apologetically. “You know how it is.”

“I know how it is.” Reardon knew only too well how it was. He gave the three men at the end of the bar his attention. “All right. How come you three stuck around?”

One of them looked at Reardon with more than a touch of defiance; he looked as if he had been waiting for just that question. He was a short man with wide shoulders and a cauliflower ear. His nose was almost as flat as Wilkins’, with a scar tissue lumped over his eyes, making him appear almost simian.

“I didn’ even know nothin’ happen’n’ until th’ cop is here an’ he says stick aroun’.” He sounded put upon, as if the whole affair was just one more unfair decision in a world made up of crooked managers, lying newspapermen and blind referees.

“Did you see the killing?”

“Me? I didn’ see nothin’.”

“I saw it, Lieutenant.” It was a thin man with spectacles held together with a piece of dirty adhesive tape, the one who had been holding his glass so long. He shoved his glasses up on his nose; a replacement for the adhesive tape would be required before long. “I was looking at the door, you see, no reason, and I saw this man come in. I was watching him, you see, no reason, and I saw him bump into the man at the table — him” — he pointed — “and I saw them saying something to each other, and then I saw him stab him. That’s all there was. A couple of words between them, and he sticks him with the knife.”

“What kind of knife was it? Switchblade?”

“I really don’t know. I know it wasn’t a banana knife, because I’ve used those on the docks, but they aren’t good for stabbing, anyway. What difference does it make?”

“I was only wondering,” Reardon said. “It had to be quite a blade to go through a jacket and a shirt and still penetrate enough to kill a man with one stroke.”

“I imagine you’re right,” the man said, thinking about it. He shrugged apologetically. “But I’m afraid I didn’t notice.”

Reardon looked around; nobody had anything further to offer on the knife. He returned to the man with the spectacles.

“And what did he look like?”

“Like what Al told the first policeman that was here, that sergeant from the patrol car. He was a middle-sized man with a beard and sunglasses, wearing one of those lumber jackets, you know. You see a lot of them down on the docks this kind of weather. I have one myself. Didn’t wear it today...” He trailed off and them came back to life. “Oh, yes; and he had on a cap.”

“With flaps,” the bartender added. He sounded as if he didn’t like being left out of interrogations in his own bar. “He had the flaps down, but not buttoned down, know what I mean? Loose, like.”

Dondero was taking it all down. Reardon went on.

“Was he fat or thin?”

There was a couple of moments silence before Alfred Sullivan answered. “Them lumberjacks, it’s hard to tell...”

“True,” said the man with spectacles philosophically.

“How about the sunglasses? What were they like?”

“Like?” Everyone fell silent again; then the little ex-pug spoke up for himself.

“Me? I didn’ even see the guy...”

There was a flash of light as Wilkins’ assistant finally started to take pictures. Alfred Sullivan finally answered Reardon’s question.

“They was regular sunglasses, is all. Dark, see. They wasn’t them real orange kind like soup plates you see nowadays, and they wasn’t like flying glasses neither, you know? They was like the kind you get in the five-and-dime, you know. Regular sunglasses. Cheap shades.”

Reardon gave up on the shades. “Tell me about the beard and mustache. What color was it?”

“Black.” The man in spectacles answered; Sullivan bobbed his tiny head in agreement. “Black, like black ink. Like it was dyed, you know? Or as if he might have used shoe polish on it. Some people do,” he added, almost defensively, as if his word might be doubted.

“Or like it was fake?”

They all pondered this. The ex-prizefighter opened his mouth as if to deny ever having seen the guy, and then shut it. He looked as if he might have forgotten what he had been about to say. The man with the spectacles shoved them up on his nose and screwed his eyes shut, trying to remember. He opened them at last, shrugging.

“I don’t know. Possibly.”

“I suppose it could be,” the bartender said deprecatingly. “But they got so many guys with real beards and mustaches going around today, who ever thinks of a fake brush?”

The third member of the group at the end of the bar had remained silent. He was an old man, slightly bent with age, with large knobbly work-hardened hands and extremely bright blue eyes. White stubble dotted his chin; he had a long hand-knitted scarf wrapped several times around his throat for protection against the fog and dampness. He suddenly spoke up.

“He had on real shiny shoes,” he said.

Reardon stared at him, frowning. “He had what?”

“The guy with the lumber jacket, his shoes were real shiny. I seen them.” The old man sounded proud of himself.

“What else did you see?”

“Nothing else. I was looking down, like. I seen his shoes. By accident, like. They were real shiny.”

“Did you see him stab the man in the chair?”

“I seen they were having some sort of ruckus and I turned away. I don’t want no grief; I stay away from that kind of stuff. My wife knows there’s trouble in any tavern I’m in, she won’t like me dropping in no taverns, and I don’t want that. I been retired six years now and she ain’t stopped me yet, but that don’t mean she won’t. I didn’t see nothing of any stabbing. I keep my nose clean.”

Reardon sighed and turned back to the bartender. Alfred Sullivan had been listening to this exchange with his little head tilted to one side, birdlike. His head straightened up, alert, as Reardon continued with the questioning.

“All right, let’s go on. What happened after the stabbing?”

“Well,” Sullivan said, “this guy pulls the knife out of Mr. Capp and walks over to the door, see. Quick, like, and sort of crouched over, like maybe he was wondering did anybody see him, but of course everybody seen him. He—”

“I didn’ see nothin’.”

Sullivan disregarded the interruption. “He stands there for just a minute — a second, I mean — holding up the knife like he’s threatening anybody tries to get in his way, or maybe anyone who follows him. But nobody’s nutty enough to do that, and besides it happened so quick nobody had a chance. Then he ducks out the door and slams it behind him. I come out from behind the bar and first I check Mr. Capp, of course, and then I open the door to see maybe I can see where he goes—”

Dondero interrupted, frowning, his pencil poised over his notebook. “How come you didn’t call a doctor, or an ambulance?”

Alfred Sullivan shook his small head positively. “Man, I may not look it, but I did thirty-two months in the Pacific in the big one, jumping islands. With the medics. I don’t know lots of things, but one thing I know for sure is when a guy is dead.”

Reardon sighed and mentally shook his head. And I wonder, he thought, how many people in this world have died needlessly because the first man who checked them out knew for sure when a guy was dead? Still, he had to admit from the position of the body and the fact that it obviously hadn’t moved since it took the tablecloth half down with it — at least without the help of the young doctor — that it was quite possible that Jerry Capp had, indeed, been dead at the time. In any event, he was certainly dead now. He returned to his questioning.

“The report had it you didn’t hear or see a car. What about that?”

“If he had a car, he didn’t have it around here. Maybe over on Berry, or even around the corner on Second. I didn’t see one or hear one start up. Anyways,” he added explanatorily, “the cops have been getting tough on cars parking around this side of the Embarcadero. They usually park eight feet off the curb and louse up traffic.”

As if that would stop a premeditated killer, Reardon thought, and then paused a second to reconsider. It might not stop a man from killing, but if he had cased the place thoroughly enough to properly plan a murder he certainly wouldn’t take a chance on running out of the scene of a murder to find a cop ticketing his car.

“Go on, Alfred.”

“Right. So I come outside and start looking for a cop, and I go down Berry and I see this patrol car in this gas station and the sergeant he comes back with me, and that’s the story.”

“So where do you figure the killer disappeared to?”

Alfred Sullivan frowned. He unconsciously picked up a towel and started to swab the bar; a few passes and he realized what he was doing and tossed the towel aside. He leaned over the bar, pointing to a wall.

“They’s an alley next to the bar this side, cuts over to King, runs parallel to the Embarcadero, but they’s a couple of other alleys runs off it partway down. He could have ducked down there and ended up anyplace. And of course he could have made it across the street before I got outside and got around them trucks and them containers — or even onto one of the piers, though they ain’t working neither Forty-two or Forty-four right now.”

“Yeah.” Reardon thought a moment. The young doctor was sitting idly at a table awaiting transportation back to the Hall of Justice; the man working with Wilkins was dismantling his camera equipment. Wilkins had a pad out and was sketching on it; a tape measure, stretching from the side of the sprawled body to the nearest wall, was fastidiously located so as to avoid the hardening blood trails. Looking at the Technical men at work gave Reardon an idea. He turned back to Alfred Sullivan. “Did the man touch anything while he was in here that you saw? The chair? The table? He wasn’t wearing gloves, was he?”

“Jeez, let me think...”

“Yes,” said the man with the spectacles, and pushed them into place. “He was wearing gloves. He had on a new pair of cotton work gloves. I didn’t even think of it, you see them so often on the docks. His were new. White. They don’t stay that way very long hustling crates,” he added sadly.

“I suppose not.” Reardon tried to think of other questions but none came. He looked from Sullivan to the three men at the end of the bar, and then — not demanding but asking, friend to friend — he said, “Damn it, somebody had to finger him, or the chances are they did. Didn’t anybody come in here while Capp was here? Other than the regulars?”

There was a small shrug from Alfred Sullivan. “Like I said, Mr. Capp comes in every Wednesday around this time. Anybody could have known.”

“But he could have missed a Wednesday, too, and nobody would have died of surprise. If I was going to—” He broke off. There was no sense in discussing the case in detail. “Did anyone come in here when Capp was here, anyone who didn’t usually come in here?”

There were several moments’ silence, as if everyone was too embarrassed at not having any definite clue to give the stocky lieutenant. Then the old man with the scarf and the blue eyes spoke up.

“They was that girl,” he said slowly.

“Girl?”

The ex-pug came to life, his eyes brightening. It must have been the way he looked when he recalled the few triumphs of his ring life. “Yeah,” he said. “Her I remember. She was somethin’!”

Reardon looked at Alfred Sullivan. “What girl?”

Sullivan shrugged. “Some dame comes in I never seen before. We don’t get many dames in here, except maybe sometimes a guy brings his old lady in for a brew. That’s why we got the tables, see? Anyway—”

“Sadie comes in,” the ex-pug said, objecting to the flatness of the statement.

“Who’s Sadie?”

“A barfly hangs around,” Sullivan said. “Too old to work a house, goes with sailors. Anyway, it wasn’t Sadie, and I don’t figure she’s a dame anyway. Sadie was here earlier, but anyhow, this dame comes in — young, good-looking chick — asks how to get to Pacific and I tell her to hang onto the Embarcadero and she goes out. That’s all they was to it. And she don’t even look over at Mr. Capp.”

“What did she look like?”

“I told you. Young, good-looking, big chest, brown hair. But hell, she wasn’t here more than a minute, if that. Less.”

“That’s the best description you can give?”

“Mister,” Sullivan said, shaking his head, “that’s all the description I can give. That’s all the description there was. Hell, I wouldn’t know her if I seen her on the street tomorrow. She wasn’t here but a couple of seconds.”

“Yeah.” Reardon thought a moment more and then motioned Dondero to the far end of the bar, out of earshot of the others. He lowered his voice. “This is a goddam waste of time, Don. You stick around. Get the names and any other dope you can on the guys who were here who ducked out — any that these people remember. Maybe one of them saw more than these four did; maybe one of them even knows who the girl is. This isn’t the neighborhood for girls to stop and ask directions. I’ll send a few men down to help you; I want to go through any ashcans in those alleys, all of them, hear? Any he might have reached through any of the alleys.”

“Looking for the knife?”

“Looking for the knife, naturally, but also looking for a red plaid lumber jacket, and a hunting cap. Or a fake beard and mustache. Or the sunglasses.” He thought a minute. “You might also hit any basements he might have gone into—”

Dondero looked at him in surprise. “You think after killing a guy, this guy would waste time ducking into a basement or a warehouse to stash away a pair of gloves or a fake brush? If it was fake, that is?”

“He might just duck into a basement or a warehouse to stash himself away,” Reardon said drily. “And I want a check on those containers across the street. And even if they’re not working those piers, maybe they have a watchman on deck who might have been taking the air—” He knew it was doubtful in that fog, but it had to be done. “Hell, Don, you know what I want.”

“I know.” Dondero nodded and tucked his notebook away. “Will do.”

Reardon glanced at his watch. “I’m going back and talk to Captain Tower. Maybe if you get done, you can get a lift back with the ambulance when it gets here. If it gets here at all tonight, that is.”

“Oh gosh, gee-whiz, and thanks, mister,” Dondero said sarcastically. “I finally get a chance to ride with Mr. Capp, the big shot. In the back seat with him, too, I’ll bet.”

“If you’re lucky,” Reardon said equably, and headed back to his car.