I eyed him narrowly for a moment, then signaled the bartender for two more beers. I said, “Now give me the pipe dream.”
“Pipe dream?” he asked.
“You mentioned your interest in the case was a kind of pipe dream. You think there’s some connection between the two cases?”
Nels took a sip of his fresh beer and shook his head. “I’m sure there isn’t. Not between the two muggers anyway. Maybe a kind of psychological connection.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well,” the sergeant said slowly, “I figure the case twelve years ago was just what it seemed to be. A guy unexpectedly jumped Hummel, and Hummel killed him defending himself. So was the case today, I guess. With a slight difference. Maybe this time Hummel killed deliberately when he was jumped.”
“You mean he deliberately lured Garcia into attacking him?”
“Think back over the testimony,” Nels said. “Remember how surprised the great lawyer looked when the witness said Hummel had followed Joe in?”
“There was even something about Garcia remarking he had run into Hummel in another tavern. But why? What would be Hummel’s motive?”
Nels was silent for a moment. Finally he said, “I checked back over unsolved homicides for the past twelve years, and seven of them were guys with records as muggers. They were found dead in alleys, some strangled, some broken necks.”
“My God!” I said.
“That makes nine he could have killed.”
For a moment I couldn’t speak. “But why, for God’s sake?”
Without inflection Nels said, “Twelve years ago I imagine Robert Hummel was just a normal guy. Or at least I imagine any abnormal urges he had were merely latent. Then he killed in self-defense. My pipe dream is that maybe he discovered he enjoyed it. You’ve heard of psychopathic killers.”
“But... but...” I stuttered.
“But what? A guy flashes a roll in dives. There any law to stop him? A mugger tails him for an easy roll. The guy kills the mugger, and if nobody sees it, he just walks away. If he gets caught in the act, he merely tells the truth and the law gives him a pat on the back for defending himself against attack by a criminal. It’s a psychopath’s dream. He’s figured a way to kill legally.”
“But...” I whispered. “But... he couldn’t possibly again...”
“The law says you can use whatever force is necessary to resist attack on your person or property. If you use more than necessary, theoretically you’re guilty of manslaughter. In the case of a farmer shooting a kid stealing watermelons, we can prove unnecessary force, but how do you prove it in a case like today’s? And even if we established beyond reasonable doubt that Hummel deliberately enticed a robbery attempt... which we couldn’t do without a confession, no matter what we suspect... he still has a legal right to defend himself.”
“You mean you intend to do nothing about a homicidal maniac?”
“Sure,” Nels said calmly. “Next time we’ll put a white light in his face and hammer questions at him until Marcus Prout walks in with a writ of habeas corpus. But unless we get a confession that he used more force than necessary to protect himself, he’s safe even if he kills a man every week.”
He laughed without any humor whatever, “Beyond picking him up and questioning him every time he kills, there isn’t one damned thing in the world to stop him.”
The “N” Man
by Don Lowry
Karl Gortoff was a sly and careful man in a brutal, dangerous business. But Padgett took the challenge... and the game was on.
“The narcotics squad? N Men? The law? What the hell do I care about that heat! I’ve got half the junkers in this town on my tail and you’re worried about your phone being tapped. And the stuff I put out to them came from you — every powdered sugar cap of it, Gortoff. You know what it’s like to have a wolf pack of junkers tailing you? A mob of half-sick, half-crazy hopheads screaming for one of three things: good stuff, their money back, or my blood? I’m calling from a coin box on Rincon Hill near the Bay Bridge, and,” Tony Bello looked over his shoulder, through the booth’s glass, “I’ve got to get the hell out of here — a car just pulled up. I’ll call back.”
It was too late. Karl Gortoff had already slammed his desk phone down on its cradle. “I’ll feed him to the sharks out in the Bay,” the kilo man with a corner on the San Francisco narcotics traffic screamed. “If that simple-minded pusher thinks he can put the heat on me, I’ll have him pushing coal in hell.”
“What’s the pitch, Karl?” a blonde asked from the other end of a room corner sectional chesterfield. She toyed with a silk-covered pillow with a naked toe. With the other nylon-clad foot she stretched out to caress Gortoff’s naked back as he dialed another number on the phone at the chesterfield’s end table.
“The pitch,” he snarled over his shoulder at the half-dressed sexpot, “is that we’re getting the hell out of here — fast. Bello put out a day’s supply of caps yesterday that were overloaded with powdered sugar. For all I know they didn’t have any H in them at all — probably quinine to make like a bitter taste. Anyway, according to Bello, every junker in town’s after him. And the crazy bastard calls me. He blows his top on a tapped line. The N Men have more electronic snoopers in this pad than they have in the visiting room over on the Rock.”
“Get me a cab,” he spoke into the phone, “and have it wait in the basement.”
“You leaving the convertible downstairs?” the blonde asked.
“I’m leaving everything in this building right where it is, except you, baby. Get dressed and don’t bother to pack. That crazy Bello is liable to show up here in a minute. And I don’t want any tape recording of what he’ll cry about. I can’t dump him here or I’d do just that. All I got is trouble now. I don’t want the DA writing me up on a murder indictment.” Gortoff buttoned a white silk shirt and pulled up a tie. “Come on,” he turned to the blonde who hopped on one foot as she cupped a spike-heeled shoe on to the other.
“My mink!” she cried and dashed back to a wardrobe closet.
“We’re not leaving the gaw-damned continent. Come on!”
“OK, OK, OK, darling!” Marie Hein shrilled back in a high C, “I’m coming.” She dragged a mink stole across the apartment’s carpetted floor, trying to close a bulky purse while she ran. “When I kicked my way out of that kick line into your life I didn’t bargain for this fire house routine.”
“Sausalito,” he ordered the cab driver. Gortoff pressed back in the taxi’s seat as the car pulled up the ramp from his apartment’s basement garage. He relaxed when he saw the fog.
“Helluva night for driving, boss. You in a hurry?”
“Take your time,” Gortoff shrugged. “Who wants to hurry?” He pulled the blonde to him. “My baby doesn’t like to hurry.”
But Tony Bello hurried through another patch of the impenetrable San Francisco fog. He ran to his car from the phone booth and tore at the handle of its right hand door. He lurched inside and was swiftly and violently torn right through the front seat and out the left hand side. His forehead bounced off the steering wheel as claw-like hands grabbed at his lapels and propelled him to the pavement. One lone, yellow sodium-vapor light spotlighted the beating.
“Don’t kill him — yet. We want some answers,” a guttural voice reached Bello’s one good ear. The other hung in shreds from a pistol-whipping slash of a.38 revolver.
“You pushed a lot of sugar this afternoon, Bello. We want H. A little cut, sure. We expect that. But when you fill a lot of caps with sugar and add a little quinine to make it taste like the real stuff, you’re getting ready to fill a grave — a watery one. Who the hell you think you are, trying to get away with that kind of fraud? You’re lucky we found you instead of those sick bastards down on Geary Street. They’d pull you to pieces and ask questions later. Before we pull you to pieces, come up with our dough or some good stuff. Now!”