“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?”