The Gremlin’s Grampa

Chapter 7

Thursday — 9:05 a.m.

The morning had dawned as beautifully as Lieutenant Reardon had so accurately predicted the evening before, and even the Weather Bureau, in face of that boundless optimism, had not found it in its heart to disagree. The sun was large and smiling, the air clear and sparkling, the sky a deep friendly blue with only a few puffy clouds hanging far in the west over the black-green Pacific as if to remind the natives that what had been in the way of poor weather, could be again. The lieutenant, whistling gaily and tunelessly beneath his breath, swooped into the curb with a happy swoop, and drew to a halt at his usual illegal spot before the Hall of Justice. When the new Hall of Justice had first been opened, Lieutenant Reardon — then Sergeant Reardon — had been assigned a space in the huge basement garage, but after suffering a dented fender the first day and a horrendous scratch the length of a door the second, he had abandoned that sanctuary as being somewhat less than reliable, and now parked elsewhere, preferably — when there was space — in front of the building. It had the advantage of being close, and besides, the municipal parking lot to the rear facing Harrison charged money.

He climbed down, closed the door, and trotted up the steps of the building, pleased with the sunshine, the warm breeze, the pleasant looks — in general — on the faces of passersby, pleased with life and, of course, with himself. He pushed through the heavy doors as if they were weightless, waved with bonhomie in the general direction of the information counter, and even failed to be irked by the creeping pace of the elevator. His good nature endured down the corridor to his office; it was not until he had opened his door that his whistle faltered a bit. Sitting on a chair beside his desk, dressed in civilian clothing, was Sergeant Thomas J. Bennett.

It was not the mere presence of the sergeant alone that made the lieutenant’s whistle go even further off key and eventually disappear; it was the attitude of his visitor. The elderly gray-haired man sat on his chair stiffly, as if posing for a portrait, and his expression was both unhappy and a trifle accusing.

Reardon walked back of his desk and sat down. He straightened the papers on his desk a bit perfunctorily, realizing two things: one, he could not postpone the inevitable interview with Bennett very long by fussing with papers on his desk; and two, the day was probably not going to be as glorious as he had anticipated. He brought his eyes up to the blue ones staring at him, forcing his voice to be impersonal.

“You wanted to see me, Sergeant?”

The sergeant cleared his throat; speaking almost seemed to be painful for him.

“You told the captain I was drinking, didn’t you, Lieutenant?”

“That’s right.” Reardon steeled himself to stick to his principals, although at the moment they seemed to him to be a bit shabby. In light of the happy mood in which he had wakened, and which had remained with him until this moment, he wondered what on earth had made him shoot off his big mouth to the captain the night before. You’re a moody bastard, Reardon, he told himself; you’re going to have to watch that sort of thing. He returned his attention to the man seated beside him. “I’m sorry if I caused you any trouble, Sergeant, but you know as well as I do the hazards of drinking on duty. Especially for a patrol car driver.”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant’s tone was fatalistic; he made no attempt to excuse his conduct. “The captain asked me if I’d really been drinking and I didn’t deny it. He took me off my car. Temporarily, he said.” There was a slight pause. “I’m supposed to work with you.”

“You’re supposed to work with—?” Reardon sighed. “All right, Sergeant; there’s certainly enough work to be done. Go down and get yourself some coffee while I go through these reports. I’ll have something for you when you get back.”

“Yes, sir.”

The elderly sergeant came to his feet. He hesitated a moment as if to say something further, possibly excusing his conduct the day before, but then he turned abruptly and left the room. Reardon looked after him, shook his head helplessly, and turned to his paper work, but the thought of going through a pile of reports to learn facts he could pick up in a few minutes conversation with Dondero, struck him as foolish. He pushed to his feet, walked down the hall to the detective bullpen, and pushed through the door. Dondero was holding forth to two or three other men there. Reardon was about to interrupt, but Dondero’s excited tone caused him to pause and listen.

“—like a netted fish, I’m telling you. One hundred and God knows how many feet up in the air, swinging in the breeze like a baby in a hammock. The painters saw him first when they come to work. This one painter says he saw the smear on the railing and figured somebody did a jump, and he looks over the edge and there he is, just a couple of feet down in the safety net. They brought him up and he’s dead as they come, so they figured he couldn’t be a jumper, because you can’t kill yourself falling ten feet into a net. Unless you scare yourself to death thinking of those rocks a couple of hundred feet below—”

“What happened?” Reardon asked.

Dondero turned at the interruption. “Oh, hello, Jim. I was just telling the guys — they found a guy in a safety net under the Bay Bridge. He’s down in the morgue right now.”

“Who’s assigned to it?”

Dondero shrugged. “I haven’t the slightest. I don’t think they even know yet if it was homicide or not. A guy could die of a heart attack jumping even a couple of feet, if he really thought—”

“Yeah.”

Memory struck Dondero. “Hey, I forgot. They were paging you a while ago. Captain Tower wants to see you as soon as you come in.”

“And I’ll bet I know what for.” The lieutenant started to leave and then stopped. “By the way, Don — when I get back I want to know all about your job last night.”

“You mean checking garbage?” He turned to the other men. “Hey, you guys know I moonlight for the sanitation department now? You ought to get a piece of the action. Overtime, and all the tin cans you can eat.” He came back to Reardon. “I wrote it all up, Lieutenant.” His voice held the hint of reproof; it implied that if spending half your life writing reports was an essential of detective work, why did the other half need to be devoted to delivering those same reports verbally? “It’s on your desk.”

“I know. I’d rather hear it.”

Reardon walked from the room before outright mutiny could be registered; he came to the end of the long corridor, turned a corner and entered an anteroom whose secretary was missing at the moment. Probably, he thought, having coffee or teasing her hair. What had happened to the beauty of the day? He rapped on the door; Captain Tower’s deep voice answered.

“Come in!”

Reardon turned the knob, entered and closed the door behind him. Captain Tower was standing at the window, staring out over the city to the distant hills of Oakland, brown under the strong autumn sun. Reardon wondered at the expression on his superior’s face; it was solemn, even, he thought, a bit worried. Over Bennett? It was odd for the captain to be anything but completely self-assured, especially where men in the department were concerned. Reardon cleared his throat.

“Good morning, Captain. You wanted to see me?”

Captain Tower swung around. “Good morning, Jim.”

“About Bennett, Captain—”

Captain Tower held up one of his huge hands, cutting off the lieutenant’s comments. “Jim, they found a body caught in a painter’s safety net under the Bay Bridge this morning, a few hundred yards past the tunnel on Yerba Buena Island—”

“I know. I heard Dondero talking about it.” Reardon pulled a chair close to the desk and sat down, wondering; the captain also seated himself and picked up the stub of his cigar, smoldering in an ashtray, but instead of smoking it, he merely rolled it in his thick fingers, staring at it gravely, as if it might contain some badly wanted answers.

“Yes,” he said at last. “Well, identification just came through a few minutes ago; from his fingerprints, because there weren’t any papers on him and all the labels in his clothes were gone. But even without the fingerprints we’d have made him just from his face. It was Ray Martin. Number three on my list. He handled all the gambling for the mob. But you know all that.” His eyes went to the list; Reardon noticed it now lay on top of the glass instead of beneath it. “Number three... It’s too much for coincidence this time.” His eyes came up, looking at Reardon flatly. “It’s one more for you, Jim. They all have to be tied together, part of the same deal.”

“I’d agree, sir.” Reardon nodded and then frowned. “But what’s your idea, Captain? A mob housecleaning?”

“I don’t have any thoughts. It sounds like a mob affair, but it certainly doesn’t look like the way they work. On the other hand, maybe they’re working differently these days. There’s no law says they have to mow people down with machine guns like they did in the old days.” His fingers drummed on the desk. “What about that so-called suicide of Pete Falcone last night?”

“Well,” Reardon said, “there was a girl with him when he jumped — in his apartment, I mean. My guess is she helped him jump, probably without his even asking her to. And I agree with you, Captain; I never heard of the Syndicate using women for muscle.” He smiled faintly. “Although with Women’s Liberation, you can’t tell these days. Maybe they demanded equal rights.” His smile faded. “Well, it’s one more thing to look into. What was the story on Martin?”

“I’ll see you get a copy of the autopsy report,” Captain Tower said. “There’s no sense on going into half-details when the report will give you the full story. And I’ll send along the patrol car’s report on how he was found and all that — as soon as I get it myself, that is. The painters called the troopers at the toll plaza; they’re state, of course, and it takes a while to get a report out of them.”

“Yes, sir.” Reardon paused and then looked up, frowning. “Captain, one more question — what about John Sekara? He’s number four on that list of yours.”

“What about him?”

“Well—” Reardon hesitated a moment. “I mean, do we give him protection? If we’re right, and I’m fairly sure we are, then somebody’s decided to wipe out the bunch. Is crime prevention part of our job where a hood like Sekara is concerned?”

Captain Tower crushed out his cigar stub and frowned across the desk.

“It’s a good question. You’d think the mob could furnish protection as good as ours, if not better. On the other hand, if this is a housecleaning, then any protection he got from the Syndicate might be somewhat less than satisfactory. From his standpoint, that is. But to answer your question as to whether crime prevention is part of our job where hoods are concerned, the answer is crime prevention is part of our jobs, period.” He smiled coldly. “Still, I’d talk to the man before I furnished him any protection. Maybe he doesn’t agree with our theory; maybe he feels safe. Or maybe he would prefer not to be seen tagging around with a cop on his heels. He might feel it would damage his image.”

“Well, let’s hope so,” Reardon said, and came to his feet. A thought came to him. “Captain, what about Bennett?”

“I’ve taken him off his car for a while, at least until we can see if his drinking is really a problem.” He shook his head. “Tom Bennett never was a drinker, not even a social one. It’s a pity... At any rate, you’ll be needing all the hands you can get, and Tom is one of the better ones. Don’t underrate him.”

“No, sir. I won’t.”

“Good. All right, get to it and let me know what’s happening.”

“Yes, sir.”

Reardon left the office and returned to his own. He sat down and swiveled his chair, facing the city across Harrison Street, subconsciously wondering as always how San Francisco always seemed to be so clean, even in its slum areas, all neatly painted in bright pastels. It was a happy city, he thought, and wondered why there was so much unhappiness there. He put the concept away, at least for the moment, and tried to concentrate on the three deaths he was assigned to solve.

Every one was a freak in one way or another — the knifing of Capp probably the least freakish of them all, but still... That getup with the beard and mustache and shades... Then the Falcone deal, with the girl wiping the glasses for no reason at all, and cleaning any fingerprints from the windowsill, almost as if to point up that the death of Falcone was a murder and not a suicide and let nobody make any mistake! Weird... And the removal of all the identifying labels and papers from Martin’s clothing, when there wasn’t the faintest possibility of concealing his identity for five seconds. Although, to be honest, if the body had fallen into the bay and not been washed up for a week or two, possibly the identification wouldn’t have been so simple. Still, the captain had said it had been dropped a few hundred yards from the tunnel mouth, and that was a long way from water, so the body would have struck on land if it hadn’t been for the net, and identification would have been routine. Also weird. No attempt to make it look like a suicide, even granting that hitting the net was just bad luck on the part of the killer. No car, and who — even a suicide — would walk that far across the bridge to jump? Miles and more miles. And who would walk on the lower level, which was limited to vehicular traffic? No; somebody brought the body there and tossed it over, just like that, and they either didn’t care — or wanted everyone to know — that the question of possible suicide didn’t enter into it. As in Falcone’s case...

All very screwy, Reardon thought, and all pointing more and more away from the mob. It was all very well to kid about Women’s Lib and all that, but the fact was that the mob didn’t use women for muscle. To do so would have required imagination, and that was the one commodity the Syndicate lacked in profusion. Still, all three of the victims had only one thing in common that was apparent, and that was their connection with the mob, so it was a little early to toss that one aside. He frowned. Someone hankering to take over? All at the same time? And one of them a woman? Stop trying to figure it out without facts, Reardon, he told himself sternly, and reached for the telephone.

He dialed, spoke, hung up and waited. In a few minutes Dondero appeared, followed by Bennett. Reardon motioned both the sergeants to chairs.

“Don, what about that alley search last night?”

Dondero sat down and dragged out a cigarette, lighting it and tossing the match toward the wastebasket. It missed. He shook his head.

“James, mon lieutenant, we went through every ashcan in the neighborhood, and the result was nothing. Zero. Zilch. I did find out that we’re living in a wasteful age, but I knew that before. People throw out things in better condition than some of the stuff I had to wear or eat when I was a kid — and I wouldn’t call the Embarcadero at Berry the swankest neighborhood in the world. You know, Jim, you can get a pretty good idea of people from studying their garbage. I’m surprised sociologists haven’t thought of that before. Now, you take that area—” He suddenly seemed to realize that the sociological aspect of his report wasn’t exactly what the lieutenant wanted. He brushed ash from his cigarette into an ashtray and went on. “Anyway, you know the place, a couple of bars, mostly warehouses, a couple of old flophouses, a couple of diners open days, closed nights, mostly. Anyway, we went through everything, basements, stairwells, the works. I’m surprised none of those old tenements fell down on us.”

“How about across the Embarcadero?”

“Ferguson checked all the containers for at least three blocks each way — nothing. There were a couple of truck drivers sleeping on the pullman in their cabs, and all we got out of them in the way of information was to be told go away and let them sleep.”

“Ships?”

“The Pacific Rancher is at Pier Forty-Two and the Hawaiian Banker at Forty-Four. The Rancher had a watchman on deck at the time, but he says he was aft punching clocks. The Banker, nobody.”

Reardon frowned. “So if he didn’t cross the Embarcadero — and it seems to me he’d be taking a big chance of being seen crossing, and also he’d be trapping himself if he was chased that side of the street — where did he disappear to?”

Dondero held up a hand. “Don’t get excited. Who said he disappeared? He walked out and nobody saw him afterwards, that’s all. He didn’t exactly go up in a puff of smoke.” He puffed furiously on his cigarette a moment, thinking. “Let’s say you’re right, and he’d stick to the south side of the Embarcadero. Then we have to assume he went down one of those alleys. And if he did, he could have come out almost anyplace. They got a maze there. The city fathers forgot about that end of the Embarcadero, I fear me, James, when they were handing out slum clearance funds.”

“Or he could have gone down Berry itself—”

“Or he could have gone up in a puff of smoke,” Dondero said. “I know I ruled it out before, but I could be wrong.” He sighed mightily and took a drag on his cigarette. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that we didn’t find anything to help.”

“Great.” Reardon tapped his fingers restlessly on the blotter of his desk. He looked at Bennett and then swung his chair to face Dondero. “Incidentally, you might be interested to know that man they found dead in that painter’s net on the Bay Bridge was Ray Martin—”

There was an intake of breath from Bennett. Dondero’s eyebrows shot up.

“The same Raymond Martin I’m thinking of?”

“That’s the one,” Reardon said without expression. “And while we’re on the subject, I’m sure you must have heard that Pete Falcone either dove, or was helped to dive, out of his apartment window last night. While you were sifting garbage,” he added.

“There really wasn’t so much garbage as there was trash,” Dondero said, bringing the thing into perspective, and went on, returning to the subject. “I heard about Falcone when I checked out last night, but Ray Martin, too?” Dondero suddenly smiled. It was a puckish grin. “Now, if only Johnny Sekara decides to go swimming too soon after lunch wearing a concrete tank suit, let’s say — we could probably knock down overtime in the police department by a good half, at least.” His smile turned to a wicked grimace. “Hey, incidentally, where was Captain Tower last night? Maybe we can wind this case up quick, like.”

Reardon was forced to smile.

“Captain Tower can do a lot of things, but I can’t see him jamming himself into an evening gown and batting his eyes at a guy in a bar. He has trouble jamming himself into a suit—”

“He doesn’t have any trouble batting guys,” Dondero said. “Maybe not eyes, but guys.”

“—but I’m afraid we’re going to have to look elsewhere.” Reardon acted as if he hadn’t even heard the interruption. “I think we ought to have a chat with Mr. John Sekara, maybe. Possibly he has some ideas as to why all of his old co-workers are suddenly getting themselves killed. Because I sure as hell don’t. After all, they all worked for the same outfit, one way or another.”

“It’ll be a pleasure to speak with the man,” Dondero said with enthusiasm, and crushed out his cigarette. “When do we see him? With any luck, maybe we’ll be too late.”

“We’ll see him pretty soon.” Reardon came to his feet. “Right now I’ve got a personal job to do.” He paused. “Incidentally, Sergeant Bennett is going to be working with us on this.” He waited for some comment from Dondero, but the sergeant knew when to keep quiet. “While I’m gone, I’d suggest you bring him up to date on the Capp killing. I know he was there, but show him the reports. And I’d also suggest you both bring yourselves up to date on the others. Stan should have his report in on Falcone. I haven’t seen it yet myself, but it should be in that pile of garbage over there.” He pointed to his desk.

“Don’t mention that word.” Dondero shuddered.

“Sorry. And the autopsy report on Martin will be up soon, and the report from the state trooper who was called by those painters. Bone up on those. Maybe you’ll be able to tell me who did it by the time I get back.”

“I’ll be very happy to solve the case for you while you’re away, Lieutenant,” Dondero said magnanimously. “When will you be back?”

“A couple of hours at the most,” Reardon said quietly, and moved to the door.

“More than ample time,” Dondero said expansively. “Have a good time. Don’t rush.” And he reached for the pile of papers on the lieutenant’s desk with a slight flourish.