The Gremlin’s Grampa

Chapter 6

Thursday — 12:55 a.m.

It was rare, indeed, that a parking space appeared within a quarter-mile radius of Reardon’s apartment, and in fact he had often thought some of the car owners represented in his neighborhood bought cars for the sole purpose of taking potential spaces from him, and never drove them, but tonight he was pleasantly surprised to find an empty space almost immediately in front of his door. With the rightful suspicion of the native San Franciscan, he glanced down the steep hill, more than half expecting that the car that had been parked there had escaped its brake and rolled down the sharp incline, but nothing seemed to be amiss below. With an inner hope that the event foreshadowed good luck in general for a while, he set the emergency, swung the tires sharply into the curb, and descended, yawning. Below him the fog was clearing rapidly; tomorrow, he was suddenly sure, would be a good day in all respects.

He climbed the steps to the front door of the old Victorian mansion, let himself in, and then climbed another flight to his own small share of the ornate old house. He let himself in, switched on a lamp, and stared about. Compared to Pete Falcone’s pad at the Cranston it wasn’t much, but on the other hand he was alive to enjoy it, which was more than could be said for Pete. He shucked his jacket and raincoat, dropping them haphazardly onto a chair, unclipped his belt holster and laid it together with his revolver on an end table. He loosened his necktie, slipped it over his neck, and then wandered into the kitchen, unbuttoning his shirt. The refrigerator offered little; he opted for a glass of buttermilk, poured it and drank it slowly, savoring the sharp flavor. He put aside the empty glass and sat down in a kitchen chair, bending down to unlace his shoes and kick them off. For some reason he didn’t feel any great urgency to climb into his lonely bed; he considered turning on the small radio and trying to catch the one o’clock news, but rejected the notion. He knew all the news he needed to know at the moment. He wiped a hand wearily across his face and came to his feet; he really couldn’t put off going to sleep forever, especially not as tired as he was, and particularly when tomorrow promised to be as busy as today, if not more so. He clicked off the kitchen light and shed the rest of his clothes in the living room, dropping them in small piles; he thought of brushing his teeth and decided to let it go. He switched off the light, padded in the darkness to the bedroom in his shorts, and opened the door.

It was his instinct rather than any specific sound or movement that instantly warned him the room was occupied. He dropped to the floor without conscious thought, rolling over as soundlessly as he could, hitting his elbow painfully on the edge of the dresser and forcing himself to stifle the grunt that automatically came to his lips; and then he was outside the room, still rolling, reaching up in the darkness and scrabbling for the holster on the small end table. The revolver slid free, comforting to his hand. He came to his feet slowly, cautiously, now completely wide awake, and edged back through the darkness to the now open door. There was that old, familiar feeling, that small thrill that always came to him when something was breaking in a case; obviously, whether he thought he had made progress or not, somebody had the idea he was making waves and didn’t like it. With one swift movement his hand snaked in and switched on the overhead light; one cautious eye came around the doorjamb, preceded by a steadily held police revolver. A sleepy Jan stared at him a bit resentfully from beneath the covers of the large double bed.

“You aren’t the quietest person in the world,” she said, and then seemed to notice the revolver for the first time. She raised one hand above the covers. “Don’t shoot. I’ll come quietly.”

Reardon shook his head slowly in a combination of wonder and disgust with himself. He walked back into the living room, refitted the gun into the holster, and returned to the bedroom, rubbing his sore elbow. Jan was wrinkling her nose at him.

“You sounded like a bowling alley,” she said. “If that’s your idea of sneaking up on someone, I’d suggest some more practice. What would you have done if there really had been somebody in here who had it in for you?”

“Shot him,” Reardon said succinctly. “And any more comments on my police work and I’ll go back and get the gun and demonstrate. Or, better yet, maybe I would have spanked him. I think—”

“Don’t dream it, Lieutenant!” Jan tightened the covers about herself. “And how about turning off the light? I was in the middle of a beautiful dream. You had left the police department and were an interior decorator, and doing very well, too—”

Reardon laughed and reached over, stretching to switch off the light. He sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling her body move with the sinking of the mattress, feeling it press against his thigh through the quilt. Suddenly he felt relaxed, happy. Like coming home, he thought — like really coming home, and smiled at her invisible face in the darkness.

“What happened to your date with what’s-her-name? Gabriella?”

“Oh, we sat around for a while and talked. She rinsed out some stockings and I sat on the bathtub and watched her. She’s a nice girl. You know, Jim, we should have introduced her to Don at the restaurant tonight—”

“We?”

“I mean I should have. Maybe we can all double-date sometime.”

Reardon stared at her, even though he couldn’t see her.

“If I live to be a million — that’s assuming I’m not shot, stabbed, or beaten to death in the meantime,” he said in amazement, “I shall never understand the mental gyrations of women. Will you kindly explain to me why, if your matchmaking urges are apparently getting out of hand in typical feminine fashion, why you don’t let them work on you?”

“But Gabriella’s different,” Jan explained, as if everybody knew that. “And I know she’d like you and Don.”

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“I mean, she’d like Don.”

“Actually,” Reardon said, “I’m sure she’d love the two of us, one at a time or all together, but what makes her so different?”

“Her father’s a policeman,” Jan said. “He drives a patrol car. His name is Bennett. Maybe you know him.”

Reardon shook his head in disgust with himself. “Gabriella will adore me, I guarantee. I think I just got her old man busted tonight. He’d been drinking,” he added as if in justification.

“Oh, Jim!”

“Sorry, darling. You should have told me at dinner.” He reached down and rubbed his hand through her short hair. “How late did you stay there?”

“Oh, just a short time. She had a date and had to get ready. And that handsome brute of a pilot brother of hers—”

“You leave that handsome brute alone.”

“That handsome brute left me alone. He was sleepy and went to bed. And her other brother is in graduate school and had to study for exams—”

“So having run through the entire list, you were forced to come here.”

“Right.” Jan bobbed her head. “So I came here and when you weren’t here I called all the strip joints on Broadway—”

“Which one did you find me in?”

Jan disregarded him. “And when that didn’t work, I called the Hall of Justice and they told me you had gone in and gotten yourself involved in your usual fashion and that you’d probably be working late—”

“So?”

She yawned convincingly. “So I came here to wait for you, and then I got tired, so I looked around, and the floor was too hard and the sofa was too soft, but the bed was just right, so—”

“So now that the bear is home, Goldilocks, aren’t you supposed to jump out the window?”

“That’s the old version,” Jan said scornfully, and put her hand up to catch his and squeeze it. Reardon pulled loose and came to his feet. Jan sat up in bed in alarm. “What’s the matter? Are you still angry about tonight? Don’t you want me here?”

“It’s not that, honey,” Reardon grinned and moved toward the bathroom. “It’s only that now I’ve got to brush my teeth.”

“Well, I should hope so,” Jan said indignantly, and snuggled down in the bed again, content.

Thursday — 2:55 a.m.

The fog here, on the lower level of the Bay Bridge halfway between Yerba Buena Island and Emeryville on the Oakland side of the bay, was lessening a bit, although it was still sufficiently thick to advertise the rare passage of traffic as much by the sucking sound of tires against the wet pavement as by the hazy glow of headlights struggling to provide illumination in the murky night.

The dark four-door sedan slowed as it came through the island tunnel with its overhead bands of fluorescent lights; the car edged into the extreme right lane and continued at its even speed until the lights from the tunnel had disappeared. The window was rolled down; the driver, head tilted sharply, was listening acutely for the sound of any other car approaching from behind. The steady eyes were fixed on the side-view mirror, searching the darkness toward the tunnel. There was nothing to be seen or heard, but the driver was well aware that a car could appear from the direction of San Francisco in a matter of seconds. Still, parked in the lane next to the railing with the headlights extinguished, there was a good chance a car might even pass without seeing the sedan, the driver’s attention focused on the dim roadway. Or, even if a passing motorist should notice the apparently abandoned car, who was going to stop at that lonely spot at that hour of the morning? The most anyone would do would be to report it to one of the collectors at the toll plaza, and by the time anyone could respond to such advice, the job would be done and the sedan long gone. There was, of course, the chance that a passing trooper might stop to investigate an apparently abandoned car parked in apparent distress in an outside lane without lights, but that was a chance the driver had known had to be taken from the start.

This was the place — not too far from the tunnel, but still well beyond the scope of the fluorescent lights there. The car was braked to a sudden stop and the headlights extinguished. The driver was out of the car in an instant, moving around the front to the far side next to the railing, prepared for instant concealment behind the sedan’s body at the first sight or sound, but the night remained quiet and dark, the fog damp against the face. A deep breath as if to bolster resolution and the rear door of the sedan was swung open; one moment’s hesitation — involuntary, for the driver well knew the need for economizing each precious second — and then the gloved hands reached in, scooping under the dead man’s arms, dragging him from the floor of the rear seat. There was a sound, or the thought of a sound, and the driver froze, but it had been either the rustle of a sea gull passing, or the breaking of waves against the distant rocks magnified by overacute senses, or it might merely have been imagination. The mind was blanked to the possibility of interruption; a swallow, another deep breath, and the body was pulled to the railing. There was a straining, tugging at the flaccid form, and then the body was finally upended. It seemed to teeter an agonizingly long time on the railing, as if trying its poor best to delay its fall as long as possible, but then at last it conceded defeat and slid over, disappearing into the black void below.

A sigh of relief went with it. Despite the urgent need to leave the scene as quickly as possible, the driver could not help but put two gloved hands on the railing and lean over a moment, wasting precious seconds to listen for some sound from below. There was nothing. Would the thud of a body striking the rocks below be carried to this height? Possibly the fog reduced sound; possibly the sound was missed by overanxiety to hear it. Ah, well, it must have struck long since; at least the job was done. The driver moved back to the far side of the car, got in and removed the gloves, tossing them into the rear seat, and started the engine. The lights were put on and the car pulled into the center lane, heading for the discharge end of the long bridge. Behind the dark sedan a car came whispering from the island tunnel, yellow fog lights weakly attacking the mist. The driver of the dark sedan started to speed and then slowed down instead, allowing the car to pass. Fifteen seconds earlier and the oncoming motorist might well have seen the whole scene outlined in his yellow headlights, but he hadn’t and that was that.

The ungloved hands held the wheel easily; the face was calm and resolute. The toll plaza was approaching; a coin was procured for the Exact Change booth; no toll collector was going to be able to recall the complexion or expression of the driver if it could be helped. The coin was dropped; it seemed minutes rather than seconds before the advance light turned green, and then the car was through. The driver did not relax; there was still the return to the city. At the first exit the sedan left the throughway, swung to a stop before a red light, waited for it to turn, and then went up a ramp and across the throughway, descending on the far side. Another wait for another traffic light, this time with a car alongside, its driver looking over incuriously, with the brief wonder of encounters at that hour, and then the light changed and the sedan was rolling back to the toll plaza, this time in the opposite direction. It approached another Exact Change booth on the upper level of the bridge, now, with the car’s shadow skittering elongatedly from light pole to light pole. Across the bay in the distance San Francisco glowed against the dark sky, its lights trapped in the low overcast. A coin was dropped, the light at last turned green, and the car was through and accelerating toward the city.

It was not until the dark sedan was once again in the Yerba Buena tunnel that the driver happened to look down under the brilliant glare of the fluorescent lamps there. The front of the red plaid lumber jacket was smeared with paint...