“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.
Chapter 4
Wednesday — 11:05 p.m.
The famous list beneath the glass covering Captain Tower’s desk was typewritten on a small square of paper; it was slightly fading with age and dated from the days of Captain Tower’s promotion to head up Homicide. Being beneath his eye daily he could scarcely avoid being aware of it, either consciously or subconsciously, and in either case it always had the ability to irritate him. To the captain it represented, among the many successes of the police department, at least a partial list of its failures, although it did have the advantage of keeping him from becoming too complacent about his work, or the work of his department. Here were the names of four men who were walking the streets when they should have been occupying cells in San Quentin; while they were not directly guilty of homicide as such, Captain Tower knew very well that their activities had caused more than one death.
The names on the list were four, and the captain actually didn’t need the square piece of paper to remember them, or the long list of reasons he would have liked to see them put away. From beneath the glass, there peeked at him constantly:
Jerry Capp
Porfirio Falcone
Raymond Martin
John Sekara
The captain leaned back in his chair, raised the glass by one corner, and managed to ease the small square of paper out, using the eraser on his pencil to pull it toward him. He reversed the pencil and drew a heavy line through the first name, and then replaced the list beneath the glass. He straightened the pane to square it with the desk top, and then methodically replaced the ashtray, the telephone and the In and Out basket with its papers. He swiveled his chair, looking out the window into the night, speaking to Reardon without looking at him.
“It’s enough to make you wonder, Jim.” His deep voice was soft, almost reminiscent. He tented his fingers and stared across them at the fog. “Five long years I’ve been after that bastard, ever since he came up from being a nobody to being a big shot in this town, but I could never pin a conviction on him. He and his stable of lawyers have been giving us the laugh for years. Blackmail, loan-sharking — and now, you tell me, an honest businessman on the side, which is hard to believe, but never mind—” He sighed and swung his chair back to face his subordinate. “Jerry Capp...” His voice was musing. “Nee Jerome Kaplan, alias Jack Culp, alias John Carpenter. All our organization and brains and we can’t touch him. And now some punk in a cheap bar sticks a knife in him in an argument, and just like that he’s off the list.” He shook his head; the light blue eyes beneath the bushy graying eyebrows studied Reardon. “I tell you, Jim, it really makes you think.”
“Yes, sir,” Reardon said. He spread his legs and leaned back in his chair, relaxing. It was late, and he had had a late night the night before, and he was tired. He fought down a yawn and came back to the subject of the conversation. “Actually, though, it really didn’t sound to me like too much of an argument.”
“It seems to have been enough,” Captain Tower said sardonically.
“I mean, it sounds as if it wasn’t really caused by an argument at all,” Reardon said, a trifle stubbornly. “It sounds to me as if the guy came in there looking for Capp and intending to get him. You know how most bar fights go, Captain — one guys says something, the other guy comes back with a nasty answer, words go back and forth for a while, then the pushing starts and that goes on awhile, and then — then the real trouble starts. If it starts at all.” He smiled faintly. “Most bar fights give the bystanders or the bartender plenty of time to break it up. Or we’d have corpses all over the place.”
“True,” the captain conceded. “On the other hand there are bar fights where one word is enough. And we do get corpses all over the place.”
“I’m not arguing that, but those are rare cases. And in this case I don’t think so. The bartender claims that Capp was there every Wednesday, which means that anyone could have known it.”
“Anyone who frequented the bar, but you say nobody recognized the killer.”
“Not in that outfit,” Reardon said. “With that getup, they wouldn’t have recognized their own mothers. Which is another reason I think the thing is phony.”
Captain Tower frowned at him. “First you say nobody recognized the man because you think his getup was a disguise, and then you say it had to be a disguise because nobody recognized him. Or words to that effect.” He smiled. “You can’t lose, can you?”
Reardon refused to be baited.
“Look, Captain. The fact is that nine bar fights out of ten are settled with fists. This man came prepared with a knife—” He saw the look of incredulity on the captain’s face and flushed slightly. “Yes, sir. I know half of the town carries a weapon these days, but still. Nobody in the place remembers what kind of a knife it was, but the doctor says it was a thin, long blade, which rules out a switchblade or a kitchen knife. So who goes around with a stiletto on the offhand chance somebody might get smart with him in a bar? They’re hard to conceal and damned awkward to carry. And it had to be something like that to go through Capp’s jacket and shirt and still kill him.”