Richard Deming

The Case of the Crime King

For

Phillip and Milla

Foreword

Everyone knows that “Dragnet” stories are taken from actual cases in the files of the Los Angeles Police Department. But because of the famous tag line “The names were changed to protect the innocent,” many people are unaware that the police officers appearing in the stories, with the exceptions of Lieutenant Joe Friday and Sergeant Frank Smith, Captain Peters, and Sergeants Art Haney and Tom Johnson, are real persons. Only the names of suspects, victims, and witnesses are changed.

The only major departure from fact in the typical “Dragnet” story is that Joe Friday and Frank Smith are substituted for the police team that actually handled the case. Obviously this fictional device is necessary to give the series continuity. But it creates an odd situation — the secondary-role officers who appear in the case get a measure of recognition in being identified by name, whereas the officers who enacted the primary roles in real life receive no mention at all. They become, in the story, Friday and Smith.

For dramatic reasons this is unavoidable. (What would a “Dragnet” story be without Joe Friday and Frank Smith?) Nevertheless it has always seemed to me unfair. So, in this foreword I want to give credit to the police officers who actually worked on this case.

This was a long, complicated case covering several years of activity. But for technical reasons the time element in the fictionalized version has been telescoped considerably. Three different teams of police officers handled various phases of the investigation. But in the book Lieutenant Friday and Sergeant Smith duplicate the work of all three teams.

The six officers whose exploits Joe Friday and Frank Smith re-enact in the following story are Sergeants Jack Crowley, Harry Killeby, Robert Perry, and J. P. Brady; Officers Dee Lightner and Stanford (Sam) McCaleb. All six, like Friday and Smith in the story, work the day watch out of Robbery Division.

I am indebted to these officers for the time they took to give me considerable background material about the case, much of which I could not have gotten from a mere study of impersonally written case records.

Grateful acknowledgment for their cooperation in helping me obtain material for this book is also made to Los Angeles Chief of Police W. H. Parker; Chief of Detectives Thad Brown; Captain Stanley Sheldon, Commander of the Public Information Division; Ray Pinker, Technical Director of the Criminalistics Laboratory; and the many other officers who gave of their time. The latter is too long a roster to list. It includes most of the Robbery Division, most of the Homicide Division, and individual officers scattered through a half dozen other divisions. It is only lack of space, not lack of appreciation, that precludes listing all their names.

Finally, and most important, acknowledgment is made to Jack Webb, the creator of “Dragnet.”

— Richard Deming

Chapter 1

It was Monday, December 2nd. It was cool in Los Angeles. We were working the day watch out of Robbery Division. My partner’s Sergeant Frank Smith. The boss is Captain Peters.

My name’s Friday.

In a city of nearly two and a half million there is lots of crime. Sociologists estimate that at least five per cent of the total population is “socially maladjusted,” a textbook way of saying “bad.” Statistically, Los Angeles should have 125,000 of these potential criminals. Adequate policing and efficient prosecution deter a large portion from stepping over the line.

Enough remain unimpressed to keep us busy.

Larceny is the commonest major crime. Burglary is next, then auto theft. None of these are violent crimes, however.

The commonest crime of violence is aggravated assault. In most cases this is an unplanned crime. Two people get in an argument; one reaches for a club.

Robbery is the most common planned crime of violence. Los Angeles averages between eight and nine robberies a day.

There are forty-five men in Robbery Division to cope with this problem. Thirty-two of them are assigned to the day watch. These are divided into ten details, each specializing in certain types of robbery. Frank and I were working the Market and Jewel Robberies Detail.

In some divisions there are periods of rush, then periods of inaction. Homicide, for instance, may have days of quiet, then suddenly be so flooded with work, all time off is canceled. In Robbery it’s different.

It’s always a madhouse.

All day long the Robbery Division squad room buzzes.

The phones jangle constantly. The hot-shot speaker sounds off. Teams rushing out on calls pass other teams bringing in handcuffed suspects. Officers are getting out bulletins, writing reports, discussing the strategy of investigations. It’s about as quiet as a city newsroom on the day of a major disaster.

At 9:00 a.m. Frank and I were sitting across a table from each other. I was completing the write-up of a case we had closed the day before. Frank was reading the daily bulletin. Frank said, “Listen to this, Joe.”

I looked up. “Yeah?”

“Guy tried to knock over a delicatessen last night. Proprietor grappled with him, pushed the gun up in the air. It went off.”

When he paused to grin to himself, I said, “So?”

“Bullet went through the ceiling. The owner’s apartment was upstairs. His brother-in-law had his head in the ice box, fixing himself a snack.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Caught him right in the seat of the pants.”

Frank looked up from the bulletin with a grin of pure enjoyment. He has definite feelings about brothers-in-law. His wife’s brother, Armand, makes his living by sponging on relatives, and Frank is his favorite customer.

I said, “Hurt him bad?”

He glanced back at the item. “Just a flesh wound. Proprietor overpowered the bandit and called the police.”

I went back to my paper work. After a moment Frank said in a reflective voice, “Wonder if he’d of called in if he’d known what had happened upstairs.”

Tom Johnson, on the desk, called out, “Joe!”

I glanced in that direction, then rose and went over to the desk. After looking that way, too, Frank got up and followed.

Three people stood before Tom’s desk. The one in the middle was a man of about forty-five, short and plump, with a round, good-natured face and lips that at first glance seemed to pout. On second glance I saw that they were swollen. The skin around his mouth and across his plump cheeks was reddened, as though an adhesive bandage had been ripped off recently. The man seemed on the verge of collapse from exhaustion.

A young woman stood on either side of him, each in her early twenties. One was a very light, blue-eyed blonde, the other a dark-skinned, dark-eyed brunette. In their individual ways they were both beautiful, the blonde cool and crisp and queenly, the brunette languorously sultry. Though I’d never seen either before, some indefinable quality that seems to surround all professional show people classified them instantly. I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on this quality. Maybe it’s a brightness of manner, or a tendency to perform even offstage, or simply a matter of meticulous grooming. At any rate, I knew they were either movie starlets or TV actresses.

Tom said, “Got a market robbery for you, Joe.” To the man he said, “Lieutenant Friday and Sergeant Smith will take care of you.”

The two girls gave us bright, show-business smiles. The man merely waited tiredly.

I said, “Let’s find a place to sit down,” and led the group to a relatively quiet corner.

When I indicated chairs, the man flopped into his like a dropped sack of grain. The girls sat protectively on either side of him. Frank sat across from them with a pencil poised over a complaint form. I remained standing.

I said, “You got a market robbery to report, sir?”

He gave a tired nod. “My store. Dehelvey’s Supermarket on Sunset.”

“Your name’s Dehelvey?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. James Dehelvey.”

I glanced at Frank long enough to see that he was taking down the information, then looked at the girls.

“Our names aren’t necessary,” the blonde said brightly. “We just brought Mr. Dehelvey in. We don’t even know him.”

I looked from her to the brunette, got another bright smile, and tabled the matter of names for the moment.

“When did this happen?” I asked Dehelvey.

“A little before midnight last night.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You’re open at that time on Sunday?”

“No, no,” he said. “I’m not open at all. They forced me to open the rear door.”

“Maybe you’d better start at the beginning,” I suggested.

“Well,” he said, “Saturday’s my big day, you know. Which is why they planned it for Sunday, I guess. They knew the safe would be loaded.”

I said, “Uh-huh.”

“They must have been checking my movements. Knew I’d be coming out of Planter’s about eleven thirty p.m.”

“Out of what?”

“Planter’s Tavern. Couple of blocks from where I live. Every Sunday night I stop in there about ten thirty. Have a couple of drinks, leave about an hour later.”

“You always keep that same schedule?”

He gave an emphatic nod. “Yes, sir. Believe in regular habits.” He paused, then added, “I’m a bachelor. Got no woman around to upset my schedule.”

The two girls looked at him with amused smiles.

I said, “What happened when you left the tavern, sir?”

A pained expression crossed James Dehelvey’s face. “Two men were waiting at my car. In the parking lot. Planter’s has its own lot, you see.”

“Uh-huh.”

“They stuck guns in my side. Told me to get in the car and drive. I had to do it. Couldn’t go up against two guns.”

I said, “We understand,” and Frank asked, “Can you describe these men?”

“Sure. They weren’t masked or anything. One was a great big fellow. Must have gone two-fifty and stood about six-four. No fat on him, either. Powerful-looking man.”

“What about his face?” I asked.

“Full face. Rather heavy features, but sort of scholarly looking. Talked real educated, too. Used a couple of words I didn’t even know what they meant. Ambulatory, for instance.”

Frank said, “What?”

“That was later,” Dehelvey explained. “When they taped me up. The big fellow said, ‘Sorry to have to do this, but we can’t have you ambulatory.’”

I grunted, then asked, “How about the other man?”

“As little as the big fellow was big. They were like Mutt and Jeff. Only about five and a half feet, and around one hundred thirty pounds. He had a hooked nose and a straight, real thin mouth.”

Frank asked, “How’d he talk?”

“No better than you or me. Not as good even. Used a double negative once.”

“Yeah?” Frank said.

“Said, ‘There ain’t no rush. We got all night.’ To his partner. That was at the store, too.”

I asked, “How old were these men?”

“Around thirty. Both of them. Couple of years either way.”

“Anything else you can tell us about them?”

“Well, they were polite enough. Didn’t push me around any. Except to tape me up. Didn’t talk at all tough. But they were.”

“How do you mean?”

“Showed their true colors just before they left. Politeness didn’t mean a thing.”

I said, “Go on.”

“Told me what would happen if I went to the police.”

“What?”

“Big fellow said he’d come back and kill me.”

Chapter 2

9:32 a.m. We continued to question the victim. He rounded out the descriptions of the bandits, including color of hair and type of clothing.

Dehelvey said the two men had forced him to drive to the rear door of his supermarket, unlock it, and open the safe. They had taken more than three thousand dollars from the safe, had ignored a stack of checks. Through some peculiar oversight they had not emptied his wallet, which had contained some hundred and fifty dollars.

The suspects had then bound and gagged their victim with adhesive tape. They had not bothered to shut the rear door when they left. Dehelvey had inched his way out into the alley. He estimated it had taken him more than an hour to make that few feet, and by then he’d been too exhausted to attempt inching the several hundred feet to the street. He’d lain in the alley until nearly 8:00 a.m., when the two girls had driven through it and spotted him.

Frank said, “What’s the make and license number of your car?”

Dehelvey said, “That won’t do you any good.”

“What?” Frank asked.

“It’s still parked behind the store. They must have had their own car stashed near-by.”

That seemed to be all the victim could tell us. I turned to the two girls. I said, “May we have you ladies’ names now, please?”

“What for?” the blonde asked. “All we did was pick Mr. Dehelvey up, take him to a doctor, and then bring him here.”

“Like ’em anyway,” I said. I added, “You got some reason to conceal them?”

The girls looked at each other. Finally the brunette smiled, said, “Maybe it would be good publicity. Or should we call Max first?”

Frank asked, “Who’s Max?”

“Our agent,” the brunette said. “We never make a move without him. Not since the time we got ourselves arrested for going into a night club in bathing suits.”

James Dehelvey had started to fall asleep in his chair. Rousing himself, he stared at the brunette.

“In bathing suits!” he said.

“We thought it would be a cute publicity stunt. Max didn’t. He’d be furious if we got our names in the paper again without his O.K.”

“You’re actresses?” I asked.

“TV. We were headed for Casting when we saw Mr. Dehelvey.” She glanced at the wall clock. “We’re out of luck today. If there was anything listed for our types, it’s gone by now.”

I said, “Afraid we’ll have to have your names, ma’am. You’re witnesses.”

The blonde said enthusiastically, “Oh, will we have to appear in court?”

“Possibly,” I said. “We can’t guarantee you’ll be called.”

Her face fell. She said to the brunette, “At least we could get our names in the paper. Max couldn’t object. After all, it’s good publicity.”

The brunette said dubiously, “You know how he is when he doesn’t plan it.”

“Sure. But we can tell him the police forced us. Gave us the third degree.”

“You ladies are strictly volunteer witnesses,” Frank said firmly. “Don’t go around saying we forced you to do anything.”

Dehelvey said in a tired voice, “You through with me? Can I go home and get some sleep?”

I said, “Like you to look at some pictures first.” Then I turned back to the girls. “You ladies performed a fine civic duty by aiding this man. Nobody could possibly criticize you for it. Not even your agent. But we do have to have your names.”

The girls looked at each other again. Then the blonde shrugged, looked up at me and said, “I’m Sandra Joyce.”

Frank was writing this down when I asked, “Stage name?”

“Well, yes. You’re not going to put our real names in the paper, are you?”

“We want them for the record.”

The brunette said, “You’re not putting my real name in the paper.”

Sandra Joyce looked at her and giggled. The brunette frowned at her.

Sandra said to me, “It wouldn’t do us any good to have our real names in print. Nobody’d know who we were. Couldn’t the papers just say, ‘The witnesses gave their names as Sandra Joyce and Evelyn King’? That wouldn’t be exactly a lie.”

Frank wrote down the second name. I said patiently, “Usually the press uses the stage names of actors and actresses. If it was a big story, they might use both. But it will only be a mention.”

Both girls pouted a little at this. After a momentary hesitation the blonde, Sandra, said, “My real name is Janet Wilson.”

Frank cocked an eyebrow at her. I could almost read his mind. I was having the same thought: What was so wrong with the name Janet Wilson that she had to change it?

The brunette said in a low voice, “I’m Myrtle Kaltwasser.”

Frank didn’t cock an eyebrow at her. He just wrote the name down. Then he asked for their addresses and wrote those down, too.

There was nothing more the girls could give us. They offered to wait around until we were through with James Dehelvey and then drive him home, but we told them we’d see that he got home. After a final admonition from the blonde to give their stage names to the press, they left.

10:01 a.m. The victim stated that he was on the verge of collapse and was more interested in sleep than in catching the suspects. We explained that it had already been ten hours since the robbery, and every extra hour gave the suspects that much more chance to get away with it. However, we didn’t want to be unreasonable. As it would take us a little time to run the suspects’ descriptions and MO through the Stat’s Office, and then run whatever names Stat’s turned through R & I, we arranged for him to get an hour’s nap while we were doing this. We put him in the room off the officers’ locker room, in the basement, which has a couple of cots in it.

The Stat’s Office maintains a file of punch cards on every criminal who has been under Los Angeles jurisdiction. These cards are only 3½ inches by 7½ inches, but enough information can be coded on them to fill a file folder.

We gave the descriptions and MO of the suspects to a girl on duty in the Stat’s Office. The speed and efficiency of the punch-card-machine workers have always fascinated me. I watched over the girl’s shoulder as she checked a mimeographed list of code numbers and jotted down the numbers she selected.

In addition to routine information, such as the DR number, date and location of occurrence, there are twelve categories of information coded on the cards. Each of these categories is broken down into specific items, and each item has an individual code number.

For example, from just her mimeographed list of “trademarks” the girl jotted down nine code numbers based on the scanty information we had been able to give her. Quicker than it takes to tell it, she selected 015, 025, 033, 035, 042, 081, 088, 095, and 157. Watching the code sheet over her shoulder, I saw that these numbers represented “Bound victim with tape,” “Forces victim into car,” “Victim parking car or leaving parking place,” “Chain store,” “Familiar with victim’s habits,” “Kidnap,” “Makes victim drive suspect,” “Makes victim open safe,” and “Threatens victim if he reports robbery.”

After selecting other code numbers from a list detailing bandits’ descriptions, the girl rose and went into the file room. There all the code numbers she had selected would be keyed into an electronic sorting machine, which would automatically pick out from the thousands of cards on file the ones of suspects on record with similar descriptions and MO’s. We didn’t follow her in to watch this process, as both of us had seen it many times.

In less than fifteen minutes the girl was back with a typed list of thirty-six possibles.

Out in the hall Frank and I looked over the list together. Neither of us recognized any of the names.

“Next stop, the Golden Horseshoe,” Frank said.

The Golden Horseshoe is R & I. It’s a huge room with shelves on three sides, in the shape of a U. All criminal “packages” are filed here. Every person within Los Angeles jurisdiction who has a criminal record has his individual manila envelope. These are stacked upright, like books, on the shelves. The yellow color of the envelopes gives the shelves a golden cast. Somebody dubbed the place the “Golden Horseshoe,” and the name stuck.

Packages can’t be taken from the room. In the area between the shelves there are tables at which officers can examine the packages they are interested in. Frank took eighteen of them and I took eighteen.

Within fifteen minutes we had reduced the possibles to six. The rest were all dead, serving time, definitely known to be elsewhere than Los Angeles, or too far from the victim’s descriptions of his assailants.

11:16 a.m. We had James Dehelvey brought back to the squad room to look at mugg shots. He was still sleepy-eyed but refreshed enough from his hour’s nap to cooperate. He said he was sure none of the six men whose pictures we showed him was one of his assailants.

For another hour the victim looked through the mugg books. He was unable to pick out either suspect.

Frank and I drove the victim home. We took Sergeant McLaughlin from Latent Prints along with us and stopped at the supermarket en route to check the scene of the crime with the victim.

The safe and other places in the rear of the store that might have been touched by the suspects were dusted for latent prints. None were found that did not belong either to the victim or to store employees.

The victim’s car, still parked in the alley, was also checked. No prints were found other than those of James Dehelvey.

Chapter 3

The next morning, Tuesday, December 3rd, I arrived at the Police Building early enough to have breakfast in the eighth-floor cafeteria before checking into Robbery Division. I was on my coffee when Frank came in and joined me.

“Sick?” I asked, eyeing the sweet roll and cup of coffee he carried over to the table.

He looked surprised. “Me? Why?”

“You usually have more than that for breakfast.”

Frank gave me a self-conscious grin. “Fay fixed me breakfast. Ham and eggs, fried spuds, toast and jelly. This is just dessert.”

When I smiled very slightly, he said in a defensive tone, “Well, she only fixed three eggs.”

Sergeant Tom Anderson of Homicide Division came over to the table and began to unload his tray.

I said, “Hi, Andy.”

Frank, his mouth full of sweet roll, just nodded.

Andy said, “’Morning, gentlemen. Seen the daily bulletin yet?”

We both shook our heads. Andy sat down, pushed his tray to one side, and spread a paper napkin on his lap. “You boys put out an APB on a pair of market bandits yesterday, didn’t you?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Descriptions match a pair we want.”

I said, “Oh?”

Andy spread jelly on a piece of toast. “Not for homicide. Just assault and battery. Night watch handled it, but LaMonica and I have got the follow-up.”

Frank asked, “What happened?”

“Your big boy — if it’s the same one — put two guys in the hospital. Tavern brawl.”

I said, “What time was this?”

“Around midnight. Place over on Main Street. The report was that this big fellow and a smaller companion — same descriptions as on your APB — came in drunk. The big guy said he could clean anybody in the place. He got no takers. Couple of customers tried to walk out. Suspect pulled a gun, ordered everybody back to the bar. Then he tossed his gun to his pal, who pulled one of his own and held both on the crowd while the big guy methodically beat two men into unconsciousness.”

There was silence. Then Frank said, “Nice way to get kicks.”

“Yeah,” Andy said. “This is a real congenial pair.”

“Any leads?” I asked.

“Got some pretty good descriptions. They were gone, of course, before the police arrived.”

“Stat’s turn anything?”

Andy shrugged. “Report hadn’t come down yet when I checked in. Should be there by the time I get back to Homicide.”

8:02 a.m. Frank and I rode the elevator down to Third with Tom Anderson. We checked in at Robbery, gave the message book a quick look, and found nothing in it for us. We crossed the hall to Homicide. We found Andy and Joe LaMonica glumly examining a list of seventy-four possibles from the Stat’s Office.

Joe LaMonica is tall and dark and rangy and seldom smiles. He turned his lean face toward us as we entered the squad room and said, “I can’t see it, Joe.”

“See what?” I asked.

“These guys we’re looking for being the same ones you want. Doesn’t make sense.”

“Descriptions match, don’t they?”

“Yeah, but they don’t act alike. Your boys were smooth. Victim even described ’em as polite, didn’t he?”

“Well, if you call it polite to threaten to come back and kill a guy.”

LaMonica said, “You know what I mean. They didn’t knock him around any. But our suspects were about as rough as you find them. Beat the two victims up for no reason at all.”

Frank said, “Drunk, weren’t they?”

“Uh-huh,” LaMonica said.

“Well, you know how some drunks are. Nice as pie sober, but go crazy after a couple of drinks. Used to have a neighbor like that. Nicest person you ever met sober. Take a couple of drinks, and whammo! Spouse ended up in the hospital every time.”

“He beat her up?” Andy asked.

“Not him,” Frank said. “She beat him up. This neighbor was a woman.”

8:26 a.m. The four of us went down to R & I and began the deadly dull chore of checking out the seventy-four names. Forty-five minutes passed in nearly complete silence, the only sound being an occasional disgusted grunt as one or another of us tossed aside a package.

Then Frank emitted a grunt of a different sort. It had a note of triumph in it. The rest of us looked at him.

“Listen to this,” Frank said. “Jules (Big Julie) Martin. Age, twenty-eight. Weight, two-forty-five. Height, six-four-and-one-half. Occupation, wrestling alligators.”

“Alligators!” I said.

Frank studied the case for a moment. “At that alligator farm outside of town. Used to put on demonstrations for tourists.” In silence he read some more, finally said, “Looks more and more like our boy.”

“How’s that?” LaMonica asked.

“Uses exceptionally good grammar. Unusually large vocabulary. Had a year of college at U.C.L.A. Made his living ghosting speeches for businessmen for a while.”

Andy asked, “What’s his record?”

“One arrest, one conviction,” Frank said. “Aggravated assault while drunk. Same circumstances, except he was alone this time. And didn’t pull a gun. Offered to clean anybody at the bar, got no takers, so he picked a guy out. Drew eighteen months in the joint and served a year of it.”

Frank tossed the suspect’s mugg shot over to Andy. Andy studied it for a moment, passed it to LaMonica, who in turn handed it to me when he was through looking at it. Jules Martin was a heavy-featured man with beetling brows and a dour expression. He looked about as tough as they come.

9:17 a.m. We pulled the packages of all known associates of Jules Martin. None of them matched the description of the smaller suspect.

We returned to the third floor. While Andy and LaMonica were phoning their witnesses in the assault-and-battery case, we phoned James Dehelvey at his store and asked if he could come down to the Police Building to look at some more pictures. He said he would be over immediately.

10:17 a.m. James Dehelvey arrived at the Police Building. He was shown a group of mugg shots that included the suspect’s picture. The first time through he gave no indication of recognizing any. The second time he went through more slowly, paused when he reached Jules Martin’s picture, and tentatively set it aside. When he had shuffled through and rejected the rest, he picked up Martin’s mugg shot and studied it carefully.

“I don’t think this is the man,” he said finally. “But he has very similar features. You could almost use this picture on a ‘wanted’ poster.”

I said, “If he looks so much like him, what makes you think it isn’t him?”

“This character is an out-and-out tough,” Dehelvey explained. “You can tell just by looking at him that he’s a coarse, brutal type of person. The man who held me up looked like a scholar. It’s hard to explain, but they’re just different types.”

“Maybe it’s the photography,” Frank suggested. “Mugg shots aren’t very flattering.”

Dehelvey gave his head a positive shake. “I’m sure it isn’t the same man.”

We told Dehelvey that we were putting out a want on the suspect anyway, and that if he were apprehended, we would like him to view a show-up. Dehelvey said he would be glad to.

Later that day muggs of Jules Martin were shown to the bartender of the tavern where the assault had taken place, to three customers, and to the two victims. The latter were still hospitalized, one with a broken jaw and the other with three broken ribs. All six witnesses positively identified the suspect.

A local and an APB were gotten out on Jules Martin. His mugg shot was reproduced in quantity and distributed to the outside members of the force. Word was passed down to police informers to be on the lookout for him.

Unless he had fled this part of the country since the assault, it was now only a matter of time until he was apprehended.

We sat back to wait.

Chapter 4

Thursday morning, December 5th, a phone call came for me at Robbery Division.

When I said, “Friday speaking,” a hoarse voice said, “This is Smoky, Lieutenant.”

Smoky Fallon, alias seven other names, was a police informer.

I said, “Yeah?”

Smoky said, “Hear you’re looking for Big Julie Martin.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Well, I can’t tell you where he’s holed up.”

I waited for him to go on, and when he didn’t, said sourly, “Then why are you wasting my time?”

“Thought you might like to know I saw him last night.”

“Where?”

“Pinto’s on Third. Him and a pal.”

“What pal?”

“Little guy,” Smoky said. “Never saw him before.”

“Pinto’s a regular hangout of Big Julie’s?” I asked.

“Naw. He’s got no regular places. He likes to hit all the bars when he’s on the town.”

“You don’t know who his pal was, huh?”

“Tried to find out,” Smoky said. “Asked the barkeep who he was, after they went out. He didn’t know. One thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“The little guy has quite a nose. Big, and kind of hooked. Guess that’s how he got his nickname.”

I said, “Huh?”

“Big Julie called him ‘Beak.’”

10:02 a.m. Frank and I went up to the Stat’s Office and had the nickname “Beak” run through the moniker file. Stat’s surprised us by turning only seven possibles. Apparently it wasn’t a very common nickname.

From Stat’s we went to the Golden Horseshoe, and immediately hit pay dirt. The first package we checked was that of Harry (Beak) Strite, age twenty-nine, five feet seven inches, a hundred thirty-five pounds. He exactly fitted the descriptions of both the second market bandit and the companion of the assault suspect.

Harry Strite had a longer record than Jules Martin. He had spent seven of his twenty-nine years behind bars. He had arrests for ADW, grand theft-auto, armed robbery, simple assault, and narcotics. He had two convictions, one for the armed robbery, the other on the narcotics charge. All the other charges had been dropped for lack of evidence.

We took the suspect’s mugg shot down to Homicide and showed it to Tom Anderson and Joe LaMonica. They immediately began to phone their witnesses to come in and look at Strite’s picture.

Frank phoned James Dehelvey at his store for the same purpose. When he hung up, he looked puzzled.

“Says he can’t come over,” Frank told me.

“Then well go over,” I said.

“It’s not just that, Joe.”

I looked at him. “No?”

“Acted like he didn’t want to look at any more pictures anywhere.”

10:58 a.m. We arrived at Dehelvey’s Supermarket. The victim greeted us with marked lack of enthusiasm and led us over to a corner near the vegetable rack, where we were out of earshot of clerks and customers.

I handed him a stack of mugg shots that included the suspect’s picture. He barely glanced at any of them as he shuffled through the stack. He handed it back.

“Don’t see either man in there,” he said.

Neither Frank nor I said anything. We merely looked at Dehelvey without expression on our faces.

“Well, if that’s all, I’ll get back to work,” he said uncomfortably.

“It’s not quite all,” I said. I separated Harry Strite’s mugg shot from the rest and held it in front of his nose. “Ever see this man before?”

He gave the picture one frightened look and averted his eyes. “No, sir. Never.”

I put all the pictures in my pocket. Frank and I exchanged glances. Then I looked back at Dehelvey.

“What was it?” I asked. “A phone call?”

“What?” he said, startled.

“Somebody got to you.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Dehelvey said uneasily.

“I’ll spell it out. Somebody phoned you a threat.”

“No, no,” he protested. “Nobody phoned me.”

“You mean he showed up in person?” Frank asked.

Dehelvey licked his lips and gazed from one to the other of us. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I said, “Come off it, Mr. Dehelvey. You’ve been threatened and you’re scared. We don’t blame you. But you haven’t thought things through.”

“I haven’t been threatened,” he insisted.

“Look,” I said. “These men can’t hurt you from prison. We know who they are, and we’re bound to get them. Until we do, we’ll furnish you a police guard.”

“I don’t need a guard,” he said, with the beginning of anger. “I just don’t recognize any of those pictures.”

We continued to talk to the victim for some time, but were unable to shake his story. The more we argued, the more determined he became. We finally gave up and returned to the office.

2:17 p.m. Sergeant Anderson came over to Robbery Division with the news that all six of Homicide’s witnesses had positively identified the second suspect. We told him of our experience with our witness, and of our belief that he had been threatened bodily harm if he identified his assailants. Andy said that apparently there had been no such threats in the assault case.

8:27 p.m. The phone was ringing when I returned to my apartment from having dinner out. It was Frank calling.

“I was just going to hang up,” Frank said, in a relieved tone. “It rang so long, I thought you were out.”

“I was,” I said. “Just walked in as it was ringing. What’s up?”

“Andy just phoned me. He got an informer’s tip on where Big Julie and Strite are holed up.”

“Yeah?”

“Some woman’s apartment over in the MacArthur Park area. Andy wants us to meet him at the southeast corner of the park in a half hour.”

“The place staked out meantime?” I asked.

“No. Andy’s tip said the suspects never start out for an evening before ten. We’ll have it staked out ourselves before that.”

“Check,” I said. “See you in half an hour.”

Chapter 5

9:02 p.m. Frank, Joe LaMonica, and I met Andy at the place he had designated. We had each come in a separate car, and now we left two cars parked there and doubled up. Frank rode with me in my Ford, LaMonica with Andy.

Andy led the way up Seventh to the west edge of the park, turned left and turned left again at Eighth. Halfway down the block he parked in front of an apartment building. When I pulled in behind him and cut my motor and lights, Andy came back and leaned in the driver’s-side window.

“This doesn’t have to be a fancy stakeout,” he said. “They shouldn’t be expecting anything. We’ll just wait till they walk out, then move in for the arrest.”

“Which apartment is it?” I asked.

“Second-floor right front. With the drawn shades. They must be home, because the lights are on. They’ll be coming out that door.” Andy pointed to the street entrance to the apartment house.

Frank and I glanced that way. Frank said, “The place is rented by some woman?”

“Strife’s girlfriend,” Andy said. “My stoolie didn’t know any more about her, except her first name. Marie.”

I said, “Why don’t we go in and get them instead of waiting out here?”

“Easier this way. My informer says the two guys start out on the town about ten every night. Sometimes alone, sometimes with the woman. Better to catch them in the open than go in and maybe have to break down a door.”

He went back to his own car. Frank and I settled back, lit cigarettes, and waited.

Fifty-five minutes and three cigarettes later, Frank said in a soft voice, “Joe.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Their lights just went out.”

I leaned over him to peer out his side of the car and saw that, as he said, the windows of the second-floor right front apartment were now dark. I flicked my lights on and off once to alert the other car, got the momentary flash of red taillights in acknowledgment. Both Frank and I tossed our cigarettes away.

The apartment-house street-entrance door opened, and three people stepped out. Even in the darkness it was pretty certain that two of them were our suspects. Their silhouettes against the lighted entranceway showed that one was huge, the other short and slightly built. A woman was between them.

Frank and I slid from the car on either side. After a quick sidewise glance to make sure Andy and LaMonica were following suit, we moved in rapidly.

The four of us had the suspects boxed from both sides before they knew what was happening. The woman’s mouth popped open when she saw our four guns.

“Police officers,” I said. “Throw up your hands.”

The woman was a dyed blonde of about thirty. Her arms shot high overhead instantly. The two men responded more slowly, raising their hands with sullen deliberation, and raising them only to shoulder height.

Big Julie was to the woman’s left, which made him Frank’s and mine. I could see why James Dehelvey, even before he had been frightened out of testifying, had been unable to identify his picture. The features were the same, but the expression was totally different than in the mugg shot. He had a calm, intelligent face. You might have taken him for a banker or college professor. It was hard to imagine him, even drunk, senselessly beating up two complete strangers.

Putting away his gun, Frank moved in to give Big Julie a shakedown while I kept him covered. From the corner of my vision I was conscious that LaMonica was shaking down the other suspect while Andy kept him covered. LaMonica moved faster than Frank. He had captured a .38 revolver from beneath Harry Strite’s arm and was cuffing the suspect’s hands behind him before Frank reached for Big Julie’s armpit.

Frank lifted a .45 automatic from Big Julie’s shoulder holster and stuck it in his pocket. Then he stooped to check for leg weapons.

Julie’s big hands flashed down, grabbed Frank by both shoulders, and hurled him at me.

The sudden move caught us all flat-footed. Andy had put away his gun and was leading Harry Strite to the car. LaMonica was checking the woman’s purse for weapons. Frank’s body, lifted entirely off the ground by the big man’s powerful heave, smashed into me and knocked me down. My gun flew a half dozen feet away.

LaMonica moved first. Dropping the purse, he made a flying leap at Big Julie and grabbed his right arm with both hands just as the suspect made a break for the street. This didn’t stop him, but it slowed him enough for Andy to get there and put a clamp on his other arm.

Frank and I made our feet just as Big Julie swung his arms together. The two men clinging to him crashed into each other. Both emitted grunts but managed to keep their grips. Then I had a grip on the suspect’s right wrist and Frank had his left.

The next few seconds left no doubt in my mind that Big Julie was more than a match for any alligator. He had all four of us flopping around like rag dolls. Then LaMonica’s shoulder caught my chin with a jolt that broke my grip and drove me backward with my ears buzzing. Big Julie took several ponderous steps toward the street, dragging the other three officers right along with him.

I abandoned wrestling in favor of a tried-and-tested standard police hold. Shaking the cobwebs from my brain, I moved in behind the suspect. I stooped to grab both ankles and simultaneously butted him in the back with my shoulder.

Big Julie dropped on his face like a falling timber, dragging everybody with him.

It was all over then. LaMonica whipped the man’s right arm behind his back, Andy forced his left backward, and I snapped on the cuffs.

Frank said, “Ugh!”

It wasn’t until he grunted that I realized Frank had ended up beneath Big Julie’s two hundred and fifty pounds. When we pulled Julie to his feet, Frank lay there for a moment before painfully rising. He felt of his various joints and let out a sigh.

“Guess it just knocked the wind out of me,” he decided. “Thought I heard bones snapping all over my body.”

The woman was still standing where she had been when all the action had started. My gun had landed right at her feet, but she’d been too scared to notice it. I picked it up and put it away.

Andy and LaMonica were hustling Big Julie toward Andy’s car. I looked around.

“Hey!” I said to Frank. “Where’s Strite?”

Apparently the woman thought I was speaking to her. In a scared voice she said, “He ran back inside.”

Five minutes later we found him cowering in the back of a closet in the apartment, his hands still cuffed behind him.

With the woman’s permission we gave the apartment a thorough shakedown. In a shoebox on a closet shelf we found $2,660 in currency. The woman insisted it was hers. We suspected it was the remaining part of the loot from the market holdup.

We marked the box and took it along as evidence.

10:41 p.m. We drove the suspects to the Police Building. We took them to the Homicide squad room for questioning, because it was quieter there than in Robbery.

Frank and LaMonica uncuffed the two men, and I pointed to chairs in a corner. They sat and began rubbing their wrists. I pointed to another chair and said to the woman, “Want to sit down, ma’am?”

She gave me a frightened look, then moved the chair close to Harry Strite, as though seeking the little man’s protection, and seated herself.

“Let’s do this fast and get it over with,” I said to the two men. “We’ve got six makes on you, so you haven’t got a chance of beating either rap. Want to tell us about it?”

“Six makes for what?” Harry Strite asked.

“We’ll start with assault and battery and work up to armed robbery later,” I said. “How about it?”

Big Julie delicately patted a yawn. “I don’t recall committing any such crimes. Do you, Harry?”

Harry gave him a cocksure grin. “They must be talking about two other guys.”

Andy said, “Knock it off, boys. You’re made all along the line. We don’t want to drag this out all night.”

Big Julie grinned. “Why not? I have no other plans.” Frank said to me, “Let’s break this up and try them separately.”

“Think that will accomplish anything?” Big Julie asked.

I said, “We don’t know, mister. We’ll try it and see.”

“Suit yourself,” Martin said with a shrug. “But I’ll make you a bet, Officer.”

“Yeah?”

“First, do you mind telling us precisely what we’re suspected of?”

LaMonica said, “The lieutenant already told you.”

“Just the genera of the crimes, not the species.”

“Huh?” LaMonica said.

Harry Strite gave his big partner an admiring look. “He talks like that all the time,” he told us. “Better get some educated cops in here if you want to understand him.”

I said, “We understand you both. You better start understanding us, mister.”

Big Julie said, “I merely asked what specific crimes were suspected of. Where and when?”

“We’ll spell it out,” I said. “Last Sunday night you knocked over Dehelvey’s Supermarket on Sunset. The next night you got in a drunken barroom fight and put two men in the hospital. Got alibis for around midnight either night?”

“You must be confused, Lieutenant,” Martin said. “Supermarkets aren’t open on Sunday.”

I turned to Andy. “Frank and I will take the big guy over to Robbery. You can work on his partner here. Better break him and his woman friend up, too.”

“Don’t you want to hear what the bet is, Lieutenant?” Big Julie asked.

“Not particularly. Let’s go.”

“I’ll tell you anyway. You’ll never convict us on either count. Ten to one.”

I looked at him. “If you did it, we will, mister.”

He gave his head a slow shake. “Not even if we did it, Lieutenant.”

Andy stepped in fast. He said, “You knocked over Dehelvey’s and beat those guys up, huh? But you’re too smart to get rapped for it.”

Big Julie gave him a sunny smile. “You’re half right, Officer. I’m too smart to get rapped. Particularly by trick questions.”

None of us missed the personal pronoun he used. He hadn’t said, “We’re too smart.” He’d said, “I’m too smart.” His tone relegated his smaller partner to the position of follower. Big Julie was the self-appointed boss of the pair.

Harry Strite didn’t seem to mind. There was nothing but admiration in the grin he gave Big Julie.

Frank said, “A master criminal, huh?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” the big man said in a patronizing tone. “If I were a criminal, I’d be what you refer to in your pedestrian way as a master criminal. You and your whole department would never make me even on a misdemeanor.” He smiled at Frank. “Just happens I haven’t committed any crimes.”

Frank and I exchanged glances. We don’t mind suspects bragging. San Quentin is full of people who had no intention of confessing but couldn’t resist telling interrogating officers how smart they were. And ended up describing their crimes in detail to prove their smartness.

I said, “On your feet, Martin. We’re going over next door.”

As it turned out, separating the suspects accomplished nothing. After we took him across the hall to the Robbery squad room, Big Julie’s ego continued to show. But he was careful to make no damaging admissions. He denied any knowledge of the money found in the flat. He also denied any connection with either the robbery or the assault, but managed the denials in such a way that they were dares rather than protestations of innocence. In effect he was saying, “Sure, I’m guilty. But prove it.”

After a time we realized he was actually enjoying the situation. He seemed to get some kind of peculiar kick out of matching wits with the police. It became more and more apparent that he really regarded himself as a master criminal.

He was smart in a twisted sort of way. We tried pampering his ego, we tried throwing evidence at him, we tried every trick in the book. Over and over he would pretend to rise to the bait, then neatly sidestep and grin with enjoyment at his own cleverness.

Eventually I said to Frank, “Let’s knock it off. We’ll make him at the show-up.”

Andy and LaMonica had done no better with Harry Strite, it turned out. As soon as he had been separated from his partner, he had clammed up and refused to answer any questions at all. In his way, he was playing it smart, too. Strite knew that without Big Julie present to guide him, he was no match for his questioners, and that his best defense was silence.

We took the two male suspects down to the Felony Section and booked them on carrying concealed weapons, suspicion of robbery, and suspicion of assault and battery. Then we went to work on the woman.

The woman identified herself as Mrs. Marie Winters, divorced. She admitted harboring the suspects, but insisted she had no knowledge of their criminal activities. She said she was engaged to marry Harry Strite.

R & I had no package on her. As we could not shake her story, she was released from custody.

We informed her that if the money found in her apartment was not established as holdup loot, it would be returned to her. But that meantime it would have to be held as evidence.

Chapter 6

The next morning Frank and I got together with Andy and LaMonica. It was decided to hold a special show-up that night. The two Homicide officers got on separate phones to line up their witnesses. Frank and I thought it best to make a personal visit to James Dehelvey.

The supermarket owner wasn’t any happier to see us than he’d been the previous day. The news that both suspects were in custody didn’t seem to cheer him any.

He said, “If it’s those same men whose pictures you showed me, there’s no point in me coming tonight. I know they’re not the ones.”

“Look, Mr. Dehelvey,” I said. “We know you’ve been threatened, and we don’t blame you for being scared. But these men can’t hurt you from prison. You cooperate, and we’ll put them away for years.”

“I’m cooperating,” he said testily. “I’ll come down to your show-up, or whatever you call it.”

His tone meant that he’d humor us that far, but he was sure it was a waste of time. Frank and I examined him in silence for so long he began to grow uncomfortable.

“It’s all very well for you guys,” he said querulously. “You carry guns, and you’ve got a whole police department behind you.”

I said quietly, “It’s behind you, too, Mr. Dehelvey. It’s behind every honest citizen.”

“Yeah. If I end up on a slab, you’ll track down my killer.” This was his first real admission that he’d been threatened. But we didn’t pounce on it, for fear that he’d clam up again.

Frank said in a tone as quiet as mine had been, “They can’t hurt you from jail.”

“They can’t, no.”

As soon as the words were out, he looked as though he wished he hadn’t said them. His jaws clamped shut with an audible click of teeth. It was time to pounce.

I said, “It was somebody other than the suspects who threatened you, huh?”

He looked from me to Frank, then merely gave his head a sullen shake.

“You know who it was?” I persisted.

“Nobody!” he yelled. “Why do you keep pestering me?”

A woman pushing a grocery cart stopped to stare at us. Dehelvey gave her an abashed smile, and she moved on. Frank said, “Can you give us a description?”

Dehelvey emitted a weary sigh. “I’ve been pretty patient, Officers. But I don’t have to take this badgering. For the last time, I haven’t been threatened. For the last time, the men who robbed me weren’t in any of the pictures you showed. Now I have to get back to work.”

There was no point in trying again. He’d made up his mind. I said, “You will appear at the show-up, though?”

“Sure,” he said. “But it won’t do any good. What time?”

“Eight o’clock,” I told him. “In the auditorium on the first floor of the Police Building.”

Outside the store Frank looked at me and I looked at him. “What do you think, Joe?” he asked.

I said, “I think he’s not going to break. Ever.”

Back at the office we went into conference with Andy and LaMonica again. They said that there had been no indication from any of their four assault witnesses or the two victims that pressure had been brought to bear on them.

“The victims will be here, too,” Andy said. “They’re still bandaged up, but they’re out of the hospital.”

8:04 p.m. The special show-up was held. James Dehelvey, the four assault witnesses, and one of the assault victims were present. The one with the broken ribs had discovered at the last minute that, even tightly bandaged, it was too painful for him to sit erect in a car.

Ten men were led out on the stage. Without hesitation the assault victim and the four assault witnesses picked out Big Julie and Harry Strite from the group.

James Dehelvey stated that he had never seen any of the men before.

Afterward, when the suspects had been returned to the Felony Section and the witnesses had all been sent home, Andy and LaMonica, Frank and I went up to the cafeteria for coffee. Frank and I must have been wearing glum expressions, because Andy gave us a sympathetic look.

“At least we’ve got them on carrying and on assault,” he said. “They’ll go up for a while.”

I said, “Don’t be too sure.”

Andy raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

“We think some third person threatened our victim. Some pal of the suspects. Maybe he’ll get to your witnesses, too.” Andy frowned. “No indication of it yet.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“How you figure?”

“The show-up was just tonight.”

“So?” Andy said.

“Until now the suspects’ pal probably didn’t know who the assault witnesses were.”

Saturday morning, December 7th, Frank and I met with Captain Peters, a representative of the D.A.’s office, and Chief Brown in the latter’s office. In the face of James Dehelvey’s refusal to identify the suspects, it was decided we had no choice but to withdraw the robbery charge.

“What about the money?” I asked the chief.

“We’ll hang onto it as possible evidence as long as possible,” he growled. “She’ll probably have a lawyer demanding it back quick enough without our reminding her of it.”

During the following week Frank and I worked on three other robbery cases. We were too busy to wonder how Homicide was coming along with its assault case.

Monday morning, December 16th, Frank and I met in the cafeteria before check-in time. I noticed that Frank was having nothing but coffee.

“Had breakfast at home, huh?” I said.

“Toast and jelly is all,” he said listlessly.

I looked him over. “Don’t you feel good?”

“No.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“Armand,” Frank said, “He’s supposed to visit Fay’s sister over the holidays.”

“That makes you feel bad?” I asked incredulously.

“Made me feel good until this morning.”

“Oh?”

“Got a wire from Fay’s sister this morning.”

“Bad news?” I asked.

“Yeah. One of her kids has got measles.”

Andy came over and took a seat next to Frank. He said, “’Morning, gentlemen. Got all your Christmas shopping done?”

“Haven’t even started,” I told him. “We’ve been up to our ears.”

Andy pursed his lips. “Only seven more shopping days.” Frank said, “This time of year we’re lucky if we get a couple of hours sleep a night, let alone time for shopping. You Homicide guys have got a snap.”

Andy stirred his coffee. “How you figure that?”

“Season of good will. Not so many people go around killing each other.”

“We get enough,” Andy said dryly.

“Not like we get robberies. They take a jump.”

“Just before Christmas?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Always.”

Andy raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “Why?”

Frank asked, “Got your Christmas shopping done?”

“Sure. What’s that got to do with anything?”

Frank said sourly, “Heisters have to get theirs done, too. And it takes money.”

Andy gave him a quizzical look, suspecting Frank was kidding. He wasn’t. We always do get an increase of business at holiday time. It’s one of the unfortunate side effects of the over-commercialization of Christmas. A lot of the robbers we catch at this time of year confess that their motive was to get money for presents.

I switched the subject by asking Andy, “How’d you make out with that assault case?”

Andy’s mouth corners turned down. “Out the window. We’re getting them on carrying. Period.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“What you warned us about. Somebody got to all six witnesses. Scared their pants off.”

Neither Frank nor I said anything.

“We played it cozy, too,” Andy said. “LaMonica and I got to thinking about what you said. So we put all six under surveillance. None of the stakeouts spotted a single out-of-the-way contact. But they all went back on their identifications. Couldn’t budge a single one.”

After a moment of silence, Frank said, “Fine thing. Here we know these guys are guilty of two crimes. And they get off clean on both.”

“Well, at least you’ve got them on carrying,” I said. “Nobody’s going to scare four police officers out of testifying.” Andy snorted. “Some deal. If they didn’t both have felony records, it’d only be a misdemeanor. Thirty to sixty days. With their previous falls, we may get them a year each in the Joint, but what’s that? Six to nine months, with time off for good behavior.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Lot of work for nothing.”

“How you mean?” I asked.

“You think a few months in the Joint is going to reform these characters?”

I shook my head. “Not likely.”

“I’ll give you a maximum of nine months,” Andy said. “Then we’ll have it to do all over again.”

Chapter 7

Christmas and New Year’s passed. January drifted into February and February into March.

On Wednesday, March 19th, at 3:32 p.m., Frank and I were driving down Sunset Boulevard on our way back to the office after interviewing a robbery witness in Hollywood. Frank was just slowing for the stop at Vermont Avenue when the radio sounded off.

“Attention, all units. All units in the vicinity of Vermont Avenue and Fountain Avenue. Two-eleven in progress at Dane’s Liquor Store, corner of Vermont and Fountain avenues. Witness reports lone WMA armed with pistol holding up store. Units Six-A-Seventy-seven and Six-A-Eighty-six handle the call. Attention, all units—!” Frank gave his horn button a push and swung right through the stop. At the same moment I pulled the transmission microphone from its bracket and called in, “Unit Nine-K-Two to Control One. Nine-K-Two to Control One.”

“Go ahead, Nine-K-Two,” the reply came.

“We are answering call at Vermont and Fountain avenues. We are one block from the scene.”

“Control One to Nine-K-Two. Roger.”

I hung up the microphone just as Frank swung into the curb a dozen feet this side of the liquor store. As we spilled out of either side of the car, a man wearing a tan leather jacket walked rapidly from the door of the establishment. He was of medium build, with a thin, weak-chinned face. He was about thirty years old. One hand was thrust inside the opening of his jacket.

Frank and I simultaneously drew our guns. I called, “Police officers, mister. Hold it right there.”

His hand came from inside his jacket, gripping a small-caliber revolver. I dropped to one knee just as he fired, felt the bullet pluck at the crown of my hat. My answering shot was echoed by one from Frank’s gun a microsecond later.

Both bullets hit the suspect, their impact causing him to trot backward on his heels for several steps. Then he sat heavily, let out a groan, and toppled over on his side.

I got to the man first. With one foot I kicked his fallen gun to Frank, who scooped it up and dropped it into a pocket. I knelt over him just as two radio cars screeched to a halt from opposite directions.

By the time I rose again, Frank had identified himself to the four uniformed policemen who had come in the cars, and they were putting their guns away.

I said, “He’s dead.”

Frank looked at the dead man and slowly holstered his gun. “Which one was it, Joe?” he asked in a low voice.

“Which what?”

“Which bullet?”

I looked at him, and saw that while his face was expressionless, it was slightly pale.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe both.”

The proprietor of the store came outside then, but it was some minutes before he calmed down enough to give us a coherent story. Meantime, a crowd was gathering. The four uniformed policemen began to disperse the crowd while Frank called in a report over the radio and I questioned the proprietor.

There wasn’t much to the story. The liquor-store owner said the suspect had entered the store about ten minutes earlier, had asked for a bottle of whisky, then had pulled a gun and held him up. The owner had given him seventy-two dollars from the cash register. He said he had never before seen the dead man, and had no idea who he was.

A check of the body disclosed that the suspect had thrust the seventy-two dollars into one of his jacket pockets. There was also three dollars in his wallet and a little change in another pocket. Papers in the wallet identified him as Gerald Federson and gave his address as a rooming house near New Chinatown.

An ambulance arrived to pick up the body. Frank and I climbed back into Unit 9K2 and resumed our trip to the Police Building.

We drove along in silence for a few moments. Then Frank said tentatively, “Joe?”

“Yeah?” I said.

“You think maybe we could have taken him alive?”

“How?” I asked.

“Well, shot at his arm, for instance. It all happened so fast, I aimed right for his belt buckle.”

“So did I,” I told him. “Think you could have hit his arm?”

Frank was silent for a time. Then he said, “What bothers me is I didn’t try.”

“Both bullets were in his chest,” I said. “We both shot high. If we’d tried for his arm, we’d have missed him altogether.”

Frank glanced sidewise at me. “That right?”

“Yeah.”

Belatedly remembering the bullet that had plucked at my hat, I took it off and looked at it. It had two neat holes in the crown, one at the front and one at the back. I stuck my finger through the front one from inside and held it up for Frank to see.

Frank didn’t say anything when he glanced at it. But he suddenly looked relieved.

4:17 p.m. Back at the Police Building, we checked the name Gerald Federson through R & I. We drew a blank. We got off a teletype to C.I.I. in Sacramento to have them check it.

Ordinarily a liquor-story robbery would have been the business of Sergeant Henry, who was in charge of the Gas Station and Liquor Store Detail. But we don’t hold rigidly to our particular specialties in Robbery Division. If a purse-snatching case came in while Frank and I weren’t busy, and the Street Jobs Detail was up to its neck, we’d take it. If we were snowed under, the other details would give us a hand. In cases where a team of officers accidentally got in on the ground floor of a crime that was actually the business of some other detail, it was customary for them to follow it through instead of transferring it to the proper detail. So Gerald Federson remained our case.

Behind a cellophane window in the front of the dead mans wallet was an identification card that had apparently come with the wallet. It had been filled out in ink. One of the sections was headed In Case of Accident or Serious Illness, Notify:

In the space below this was written the name Lester Federson and a San Francisco address.

We did not immediately wire San Francisco, however. First we had to establish that the dead man was actually Gerald Federson, and had not simply been carrying the wallet of another man. We climbed back into 9K2 and drove over to the rooming house listed as the suspect’s address.

A plump, untidy-looking woman of about sixty answered our ring. It was now past 5:00 p.m., so presumably she’d been up all day, but she was still wearing a soiled housecoat. If it hadn’t been for her abundant but sagging bosom, we might have taken her for a man, for her hair was cropped short in a masculine cut and she had a noticeable mustache.

I showed my ID and said, “Police officers, ma’am. You the landlady here?”

She studied the ID suspiciously before nodding. “What’s the trouble, Officer?”

I said, “This is my partner, Sergeant Smith. My name’s Friday. May we come in?”

“Why not?” she inquired. “I got nothing to hide. I run a respectable place here.”

She led us into a dim sitting room furnished with Victorian furniture, littered newspapers, and dust. It looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned for a month. The woman introduced herself as Miss Martha Gresher, emphasizing the “Miss.” She offered seats, but we decided it would be more sanitary to stand.

“You have a roomer named Gerald Federson staying here, ma’am?” I asked.

Martha Gresher considered the question before saying, “Well, yes and no.”

“How do you mean, ma’am?”

“His clothes are staying here, but he’s not at the moment. His door’s locked.”

I said, “I don’t think I follow.”

“He’s two weeks back in rent,” the woman explained. “If he shows up with some money tonight, he’ll be staying here again.”

Frank and I exchanged glances. Frank said, “Can you describe him, ma’am?”

“Why?” she asked. “What’s he done?”

“We’re just making an inquiry,” Frank said. “Can you describe him?”

The woman shrugged. “Why not? About thirty. Average build. Thin face with hardly any chin. Think he was wearing a leather jacket when he left this morning. What’s this all about?”

I said, “Would you mind getting dressed, ma’am, and riding down to the Hall of Justice with us? We won’t keep you long.”

“The Hall of Justice?” she said. “That’s not where Police Headquarters is.”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “It’s where the morgue is.”

6:32 p.m. We took the landlady to the morgue in the basement of the Hall of Justice and had her observe the suspect through the viewing window. She identified him as Gerald Federson. We then drove her back home. With her permission we made a routine search of the dead man’s room.

It was Frank who found the letters. They were in the top bureau drawer. He stood reading them in silence, then said, “Joe.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Take a look at these.”

I crossed the room and he handed me a sheaf of about fifteen pages of letter paper. Creases in the paper indicated that they had been folded to go into envelopes and after being received had been straightened out and packed flat in the drawer. Apparently the envelopes they had come in had been destroyed, as there was no sign of them in the room.

There were five letters all together, all in the same handwriting and all addressed to “Dear Gery,” who presumably was Gerald Federson. Because the envelopes were missing, there was no way of telling from where they had been mailed. The letters were signed simply with the initial M.

The script was even and highly legible, the lines moving across the pages with mathematical precision even though it was unlined paper. The writing was highly literate. The grammar was perfect and the vocabulary unusually good. And not strained, as though the writer were parading his education. Complex words and phrases were used with easy naturalness.

The possibility that someone other than the addressee might accidentally see the letters had obviously occurred to the writer. They weren’t exactly in code, but their meaning had been obscured as much as possible by reference to matters an outsider wouldn’t know about.

I read the letter on top of the stack first, which was the one most recently received. It was dated only two weeks earlier.

Chapter 8

The letter read:

Dear Gerry:

The time grows nearer and nearer. In a couple of more weeks my present indisposition should be over, and I’ll be back among the living. The doctor hasn’t yet informed me of the exact date of the operation, but it’s scheduled for sometime shortly after the Ides of March. The ambulance is all lined up, and the motor will be running at the proper time. Let’s hope the operation is a success. It will be good to get out of these hospital clothes and into civilized clothing for a change.

Concerning our postoperative business plans, they are still definite. As soon as the chairman of the board completes his vacation — which should be at the end of the month — we’ll all meet at a place he has promised to designate before I leave here. Incidentally, he’s quite adamant about restricting the operation to supermarkets only. He didn’t at all care for your suggestion to widen the field of activity. To quote him: “This is the era of specialization. The bankruptcy courts are full of businessmen who tried to over-expand.”

Tentatively our franchise is to cover the Los Angeles area, though there may be transfers of personnel back and forth between L.A., Frisco, and other sales areas, just to confuse identification. The ideal setup would be never to use the same sales team twice in a row. And with six salesmen on the job, we should be able to work out quite a confusing variety of combinations. However, this is a detail that can be worked out in staff conference.

I’ll be seeing you before long. I hope.

The best always,

M.

The other letters were in the same vein. Sometimes they were merely chatty, discussing books the writer had read, movies he had seen, or current news items. Other times there were obscure references to the “operation” that would make him well and to “postoperative business plans.” One thing stood out in all of them, although it was entirely negative: There was not the slightest intimation as to where the writer was located.

When I finished reading the last letter, I looked at Frank. Frank said, “Looks like we stumbled onto something, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Right up our alley, too. Supermarkets.”

“What do you think, Joe? I mean, how do you take all that double talk?”

“Somebody’s planning a gang operation. A big one.”

Frank nodded. “Way I got it. You catch that reference to the ‘Los Angeles franchise’?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like we’re only part of it.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Looks like Frisco gets dealt in, too.”

“Maybe more than that.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Sounded to me like they were planning a statewide operation.”

7:03 p.m. We went downstairs, found the landlady seated in the front room alone, and thanked her for letting us look at the room. I told her we would inform the next of kin of her roomer’s death, and suggested she lock the room until she heard from him what disposition was to be made of the effects left by the deceased. Then we left the house, taking the letters with us.

Earlier Frank had phoned Fay to tell her he had to work late and wouldn’t be home for dinner. As we were close to New Chinatown, we picked a Chinese place to eat.

After we had ordered and were waiting for our food, Frank said, “Be nice if we had the envelopes so we could tell where those letters were mailed.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Guy seems to be in a hospital somewhere, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

Our dinners came then, and we tabled conversation to eat. It wasn’t until we got to the dessert that Frank spoke again. Then he said, “Pretty well-educated guy wrote those letters.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Kind of rings a bell.”

He got that withdrawn, half-frowning expression on his face he gets when he is trying to dig into his memory. I let him work on it without interrupting.

Eventually his expression brightened. “Hey, Joe, remember that guy who used to ghost speeches for businessmen?”

The question immediately touched a vagrant memory. But it took me a few moments to pin it down. We’d handled more than a hundred robbery cases since the arrests of Big Julie Martin and Harry Strite, and they get mixed up in your mind.

“The guy who wrestled alligators,” I said finally. “Big Julie Martin.”

Frank drained his tea and stood up. “Guess we’ve still got work to do,” he said. “Back to the Golden Horseshoe.”

8:16 p.m. According to his package in R & I, Big Julie was still serving time. He would be eligible for parole at the end of March. No one named Gerald Federson was listed among his known associates.

When we had finished poring over the record, Frank said, “Let me see those letters again, Joe.”

I took them out of my inside breast pocket and handed them to him. For some minutes he studied the most recent one.

“You know what, Joe?” he said finally.

“What?”

“I think all this operation and hospital stuff is code. He isn’t in any hospital.”

“Not if he’s Big Julie,” I said. “He’s in the Joint.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “And listen to this sentence: ‘The ambulance is all lined up, and the motor will be running at the proper time.’ He’s talking about a getaway car.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly.

“He’s planning a break,” Frank said. “With outside help.”

I gave him a dubious headshake. “When he’s eligible for parole in a couple of weeks?”

“Maybe he was denied parole.”

“It would still be only a matter of months. He got only a year.”

“Nine months,” Frank said. “Some guys hate the Joint so much they’d go over the wall to escape six.”

I slid Big Julie’s record back into its manila folder. I said, “We’re not even sure Martin wrote those letters. And we can’t find out tonight. There won’t be anyone in Handwriting at this time.”

“It all fits,” Frank insisted. “The initial M. And how many cons write like that?”

“Maybe the writer isn’t a con. Maybe he is in a hospital somewhere.”

Frank rose from the table. “Well, we can’t do any thing about it till morning, anyway.”

“One thing we can,” I told him.

“What?”

“Phone San Quentin and find out Big Julie’s status.”

“Tonight?”

“Why not?” I said. “Maybe tonight’s when he plans the break.”

8:32 p.m. We went down to the Robbery Division squad room and got off a teletype to San Francisco asking the police there to inform Gerald Federson’s next of kin of his death. Then I phoned the State Penitentiary and got hold of the assistant warden.

After explaining who I was, I said, “I’m calling about a prisoner named Jules Martin, sir. Could you tell me his status?”

He left me holding the phone for five minutes while he went to get the prisoner’s record.

When he came back, he said, “O.K., Lieutenant. I have all the dope in front of me. What’s your interest in Martin?”

“I’m not sure we have any,” I said. “Depends pretty much on his status there.”

“Well, according to his file he’s one of our model inmates,” the assistant warden said. “Marvelous job of rehabilitation.”

“That so?” I asked.

“Yes. He’s assigned to the prison library. Seems to be a man of considerable talent.”

“Oh? In what way?”

“In writing. He’s taken up writing since he’s been here. True-crime stuff. This place is a gold mine of material for that sort of thing, of course. Gets his cases by talking to the other prisoners, and does his stories from their point of view. Rather a unique approach for true-crime stuff, since most of the stories you see in magazines are based on research done with the police. Editors seem to like it. He’s sold two stories at two hundred dollars apiece.”

When I didn’t say anything, he went on. “His plan after his release from here is to continue freelancing. We approve it heartily. He’s had letters from two editors requesting more material, and it looks as though he’ll be able to make a substantial living from his new career. We believe he’s capable of becoming a useful, law-abiding citizen.”

“When’s he due for release?” I asked.

“In about ten days. He’s being paroled March twenty-ninth.”

I said, “I guess he’s not the man we’re interested in, then, sir. Sorry I bothered you.”

When I hung up, I noticed Frank was just setting a phone in its cradle, too. I said, “Bet a Coke that tomorrow morning Handwriting tells us Big Julie didn’t write those letters.”

“No bet,” Frank said. “I was listening on an extension.”

Chapter 9

The next morning when I checked in at 8:00 a.m. I found a reply to our inquiry to C.I.I. in my box. Gerald Federson had a record of four arrests and two convictions in San Francisco. Three of the arrests were as a juvenile: one for ADW, one for grand theft — auto, and one for forced rape. He’d been convicted of the last only, and had served two years at Preston for it. As an adult he’d taken a five-year fall for armed robbery. He’d served three of the five.

Frank came in, said, “’Morning, Joe,” and started to check the message book.

I said, “I already caught it, Frank. Nothing.” I handed him the report from C.I.I.

Frank looked it over, grunted, and handed it back. “Been to Handwriting yet?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Just pulled in. Let’s see what they can tell us.”

Handwriting is on the same floor as Robbery Division, at the opposite end of the hall. We found Keith Woodward alone there. Woody is a stocky, dark-haired man with the soft-spoken manner of a bank teller. I handed him the stack of letters and asked him to check them against Big Julie Martin’s 5.7.

A Form 5.7 must be made out by all persons arrested in Los Angeles except drunks and traffic violators. On the front of the card, in his own handwriting, the suspect writes in his name, address, place and date of birth, occupation, where employed, name and address of nearest relative, and the date he completed the form. This would seem to be enough to give an adequate handwriting sample, but there are more spaces for him to fill in on the reverse of the card. Here, in addition to items of physical description, there are spaces in which he must write the complete alphabet in longhand, both in capitals and small letters. There is also a space in which he must write the numbers one to twenty.

Woody pulled Big Julie’s 5.7 from a file cabinet and briefly compared it to the letters. It didn’t take him more than thirty seconds to come to a conclusion.

Shaking his head, Woody said, “Sorry, Joe. Martin didn’t write them.”

Frank asked, “Any chance he could of dictated them to somebody?”

Woody gave him a quizzical look. “You think we’re miracle men around here?”

“I’ve seen you pull some near miracles,” Frank said. “I just wondered.”

The challenge seemed to appeal to Woody. Seating himself behind his desk, he quickly scanned all five letters. Then he singled out one sheet, read it carefully, and finally examined it with a magnifying glass.

“For what it’s worth,” he said presently, “my opinion is that it’s unlikely they were dictated.”

“What do you base that on?” I asked curiously.

“The writing, the spelling, and the punctuation all match the vocabulary. You noted the unusually good vocabulary, didn’t you?”

Frank nodded, and I said, “Yeah.”

“If it was dictated, the writer was as highly educated as the person who did the dictating. There isn’t a single hesitation mark, as there would be if he’d had to stop and ask how to spell a word. And no mistakes in punctuation. You got some reason to believe they were dictated by Martin?”

“Just a hope,” I said. “Would have made things easier. Now we’re nowhere.”

“Larry will be along any minute,” Woody said. “Want his opinion, too?”

He referred to Larry Sloan, the other handwriting expert.

“Naw,” I said. “We gave up long ago trying to catch you guys in a mistake.”

8:28 a.m. We got off a teletype to San Francisco requesting a list of Gerald Federson’s known associates. Then we took the letters into Captain Peters’ office and showed them to him.

The captain decided they were important enough to show Chief Brown. We followed him up the hall to the chiefs office.

Deputy Chief of Police Thaddeus Brown is in charge of the 653 officers and 39 civilian personnel of the Detective Bureau. He’s a dedicated police officer with more than thirty years on the force. He is a solidly built man with a level gaze, a strong jaw, and a deceptively quiet manner of speaking. Deceptive, because he can be as tough as a Marine drill sergeant if he has to.

When we walked into his office, he looked up from a report he was reading, said, “’Morning, gentlemen,” and pointed to chairs.

We all sat down, and Chief Brown looked inquiringly at the captain.

“About this robbery suspect Friday and Smith had to shoot yesterday,” Peters said. “You know about it, don’t you?”

“I saw the report.”

“Well, in a routine shakedown of the suspect’s room, they ran across these.” Captain Peters handed him the letters.

Some minutes passed in silence as the chief read them over. When he finished, he took off his dark-rimmed glasses, laid them on the desk, and frowned at me.

“Looks like somebody’s planning a major gang operation,” he said.

“What we figured, sir,” I said. “Statewide.”

“Any idea who the writer is?”

“We thought it might be a con named Big Julie Martin. Due for parole the end of this month. But he was checked out clean by Handwriting. Federson, the guy the letters were addressed to, has a package in San Francisco. We’re waiting for a kickback on Federson’s known associates now.”

The chief was still frowning. “This Federson have any next of kin?”

“A Lester Federson in San Francisco,” I said. “Don’t know what relation. We asked the San. Francisco police to get in touch with him.”

“Suppose eventually he’ll be along to make funeral arrangements,” the chief said thoughtfully. “And clean the personal effects out of the suspect’s room.”

I said, “We haven’t heard from him yet.”

“The letters imply that there were to be six in this gang. We have to consider the possibility that this Lester Federson could be one of them. Or at least could be in contact with members of the gang.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, wondering what he was getting at.

“If there’s no sign of the letters in the room, it might tip off the gang we knew their plans. Or at least make them suspect we might know.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “See what you mean.”

“So suppose we photostat them and put them back for Lester Federson to find.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir. That’s probably a good idea.”

“Have sufficient copies made to send to all major communities in the state. Maybe we can nip this in the bud.”

I said “Yes, sir” again, and the chief put his glasses back on, indicating that the session was over.

Captain Peters remained in the chief’s office to discuss another case when Frank and I left. Outside in the hall, Frank said, “Corner Pocket’s pretty sharp, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“That gimmick of putting the letters back so we don’t tip our hand would never of occurred to me.”

“Me, either,” I said.

“Probably why I’m a sergeant and he’s a deputy chief,” Frank said musingly.

9:27 a.m. We had a couple of dozen photostatic copies of the letters run off, then drove over to Gerald Federson’s rooming house with the originals. The landlady made no objection to our seeing the room again. She gave us the key and remained downstairs.

Frank put the letters back in the dresser drawer, exactly where he had found them.

We heard the doorbell ring as we went down the stairs.

When we reached the hall, the landlady was opening a telegram. She looked up from it and said to me in a relieved tone, “Well, looks like I’ll be able to get that room cleared out tomorrow.”

“Oh?” I said.

She exhibited the telegram. “From his brother, Lester, in San Francisco. He’ll be down tomorrow to make funeral arrangements and pack up Gerry’s stuff.”

I said, “Like to do us a favor, ma’am?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’m always willing to co-operate with the law.”

“Don’t mention to Federson’s brother that we had a look at his room.”

“Sure,” she said agreeably. “I don’t mind telling a little white lie as a favor to the law.”

“You don’t have to lie,” Frank said. “Just don’t mention it.”

“I’ll do better than that,” the woman told him. “If he asks if the law was around, I’ll tell him no.”

Chapter 10

11:17 a.m. When Frank and I reported back to the office, we found a teletyped reply from San Francisco to our earlier request. Three relatives and seven known associates of Gerald Federson were listed. The two relatives besides the dead man’s brother, Lester, were married sisters.

I phoned all the names to R & I, and learned that four of the associates had local records. When the clerk at R & I asked if we wanted the packages pulled, I said, “Later, maybe. We’ll be down if we do.”

There was no point in having them pulled before we’d been to Handwriting. All we wanted to know at the moment was which of Federson’s associates had local records, so we could have Handwriting check them out.

As Frank and I walked down the hall toward Handwriting, Frank said gloomily, “Don’t suppose well be lucky enough to have one of them match, do you?”

I shrugged. “We’re about due for a break.”

“Overdue. Shouldn’t we wire Frisco for handwriting samples of those who haven’t got records here?”

“If none of these match,” I said.

But for once we got our break. When Woody checked the second of the four 5.7.’s against the photostated letters, he said, “Bingo.”

“Turn something?” I asked.

“Just your letter writer.” He tossed the card across the desk to me.

Even to my unskilled eye it was apparent that the writing on the card was the same as that in the letters. The suspect was a Maurice (Maury) Wey, aged thirty-one, and the charge listed was armed robbery.

“Even the initial fits,” Frank said in a pleased voice. “The M wasn’t for Martin, it was for Maury.”

We went downstairs to the Golden Horseshoe and pulled Maurice Wey’s package. According to it, he was serving twenty years on four counts of armed robbery, and had already served five.

Maury Wey’s mugg shot showed a handsome, smooth-featured man with a straight nose, clear wide-spaced eyes, and an intelligently high forehead. His description said he was five feet ten and a half inches and weighed one hundred seventy-two pounds.

Frank said dissatisfiedly, “Nothing in here about him being well-educated. He didn’t even finish high school.”

“He’s been five years in the Joint since this was written up,” I said. “Maybe he spent it studying.”

We copied off a list of Wey’s known associates for future reference and turned the package back in. Then we returned to the squad room and went over the letters again in the light of our new knowledge that their writer was an inmate of San Quentin. It now seemed more evident than ever that reference to the “operation” was code for a planned prison break.

“Guess we’d better phone the warden and drop a warning,” I said.

Frank was still examining one of the letters. “Listen to this, Joe. ‘As soon as the chairman of the board completes his vacation — which should be at the end of this month—.’ What do you make of that?”

“That Wey isn’t the boss of the gang. Somebody else is.”

“Yeah. Somebody he’s in close contact with. He writes as though he has frequent conversation with him.”

I thought this over, said slowly, “Which means he’s in San Quentin, too. And up for release at the end of this month.”

“Uh-huh. Fits Big Julie Martin, doesn’t it?”

“It’s an angle,” I admitted. “Little too easy, though.”

Frank hiked his eyebrows. “How’s that?”

I said, “We only looked in Big Julie’s direction in the first place because the letters were so well-written. And he checked out on that. We don’t have a thing to connect him with any of this.”

Frank gave a reluctant nod. “Guess it is a little hopeful. Things don’t come that easy.”

“At least we’ve got a pretty good idea the leader of this gang gets out at the end of the month. When I phone the prison, I’ll ask for a complete list of men up for parole about then.”

12:02 p.m. I phoned San Quentin and got hold of the assistant warden again.

After identifying myself, I said, “I’m calling about another man this time, sir. Got a tip for you.”

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“A Maurice Wey. We have reason to believe he’s planning a break.”

There was a moment of silence, then the voice said wearily, “Wish you’d had that tip when you phoned last night, Lieutenant.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Looked at your bulletin board recently?”

I glanced in the direction of the squad-room bulletin board, said, “About an hour ago.” It’s automatic to check the board whenever you enter or leave the building. Frank and I had glanced it over on our return from Gerald Federson’s rooming house, but hadn’t checked it since.

The assistant warden said, “If you check it again, you’ll probably find an escape bulletin on it. Wey was missing at nose count this morning.”

A feeling of frustration grew in me. We’d missed by so little.

“How’d he swing it?” I asked.

“He was in the hospital section. Supposedly with an appendicitis attack. We assume now it was feigned. How he made it to the courtyard is still under investigation. All we really know is that we found a dummy of rolled-up blankets in his bed this morning. We think he must have had outside help to get over the wall. Probably someone tossed a rope with a grappling hook over to him. There was probably also a car waiting and a change of clothes. It was a carefully planned break.”

I asked if there was any chance that Big Julie Martin had played any part in the escape plan.

“No,” the assistant warden said definitely. “Not only is there no indication of it, Wey wouldn’t have asked his help.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Prison custom. Even convicts have a code of sorts. Men up for parole are never dragged into escape or riot plans. So as not to jeopardize their chances of parole.”

“Were they friends?” I asked.

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact. They were in the same cell block. But Wey escaped from the hospital, not his cell block, so Martin could hardly have had anything to do with it. What makes you think he might have?”

I told him about the letters, and our suspicion that the boss of the proposed robbery gang was a San Quentin inmate about due for release.

“Sure you’re interpreting those letters right?” the assistant warden asked dubiously. “Maury Wey isn’t the sort of man to let anyone else be boss.”

“Oh?” I said.

“He’s a real bad one. Not at all amenable to discipline. And among his prison associates he was always a leader, not a follower.”

“Maybe this guy he refers to as ‘chairman of the board’ has a stronger personality,” I suggested.

“It would take more than that. Wey seemed to have a sort of contemptuous attitude for most of his prison associates. He’s the sort of man who has to respect another man before he permits him to boss any operation he’s a part of. Mere toughness wouldn’t he enough. They don’t come any tougher than Maury Wey. I doubt that he’d be afraid of any man on earth.”

“He respect Julie Martin?” I asked.

“Possibly,” the assistant warden said reluctantly. “Most of the prisoners do, as a matter of fact. Martin’s not only highly intelligent, he has a tremendously outgoing personality, you know. He’s a born leader. But he can’t possibly be the man Wey referred to in the letters.”

“Why not?”

“He’s too intelligent to get involved in anything like that,” he said. “I told you how well he’s done. It would be stupid for him to go back to robbery, when he can make an adequate living writing crime stories.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But he was stupid once before.”

“How’s that?”

“He was making an adequate living ghosting speeches when he picked up a gun last time.”

We talked for some minutes more, during which the assistant warden gave me some background on Maurice Wey. He described him as a “brilliant but warped personality.” He said Wey had devoted himself to the study of law during the five years he had been in prison, and knew as much about it as any lawyer.

“It must show in those letters how extremely well-educated he is,” he said. “And all as a result of his studies in prison.”

“Yeah, it shows,” I told him.

“Incidentally, is there any information in the letters as to how he smuggled them out? They certainly couldn’t have passed the prison censor.”

“No,” I said. “Sorry.”

“One of our worst problems,” the assistant warden said. “With the security system we have, you’d think it would be impossible to smuggle anything in or out. But they figure new ways as fast as we break up the old. Can you mail me copies of those letters?”

I said I would, and asked in return if he’d mail me a list of the inmates scheduled for release during the next few weeks.

When I hung up, Frank said, “Bad news, huh?”

Instead of answering, I took his elbow and steered him over to the bulletin board. The escape bulletin had been posted since we last looked. It was headed Escape Bulletin Number 42, California State Penitentiary, San Quentin, California. It didn’t have any information in it that I hadn’t already gotten from the assistant warden.

After reading it over, Frank said, “Where’s that leave us?”

“With a job to do,” I said. “Let’s get busy.”

“Before lunch?” he asked. “It’s getting chafed.”

“What is?”

“My stomach,” Frank said. “From rubbing against my backbone.”

Glancing at my watch, I saw it was nearly twelve thirty. “We’ll take a twenty-minute break,” I decided.

1:07 p.m. We addressed copies of the photostated letters to the police chiefs of the state’s larger cities and towns, and enclosed a covering letter to each explaining them. I also mailed one to the assistant warden at San Quentin.

An APB and a local were already out on Maurice Wey. Since the letters indicated the suspect had intended to meet Gerald Federson in Los Angeles after his break, we got out a supplemental containing this information. We also arranged for Federson’s rooming house to be staked out, as it was possible Wey did not know of his death and might show there.

Then we had another conference with Captain Peters.

As a result of this conference, it was decided to put under surveillance all local known associates of the deceased Gerald Federson and to request the San Francisco police to cover his friends in that city. Orders had already been issued to cover Maurice Wey’s associates.

Captain Peters said, “Between the two of them, maybe we can get a lead on who the other members of this proposed gang are. The only one we know for sure is this Maurice Wey.”

“And Gerald Federson,” I said.

He looked at me. “We won’t worry about dead men.”

Frank said, “We know the leader is still in the Joint.”

“Which leaves three besides Wey on the loose,” the skipper said. “If we can finger them from among Federson’s and Wey’s friends, maybe we can break this up before it starts.”

I said, “It’s possible none of them are on the loose.”

“Huh?” the captain said.

I said, “Federson had been out of the Joint only six months when he was killed. In the records Wey isn’t listed as a friend until they met in prison. And until now Wey hasn’t been out since they met.”

“Yeah,” the captain said thoughtfully. “I see what you’re getting at. This whole thing could have been whipped up in prison.”

“We know the proposed leader’s still there,” I said. “We can be pretty sure Wey and Federson were recruited there. There’s at least a good chance the other three were, too.” Frank said, “If they were, they must all be guys up for release. Or already released.”

“Not necessarily,” I said.

Frank hiked his eyebrows. “Why not?”

“Wey wasn’t up for release. Maybe there’s another break in the works.”

Chapter 11

The following afternoon, Friday, March 21st, Gerald Federson’s landlady phoned to tell us that the dead man’s brother had cleared all personal effects from the room. She said he had not inquired about police visiting the room, and she had volunteered no information.

The next day, Saturday, the information the assistant warden at San Quentin had promised me arrived. It listed twenty-three inmates who either had been released recently or were due for release within the next few weeks. I noted that both Big Julie Martin and Harry “Beak” Strite were on the list.

The assistant warden had taken the trouble to include the record of each parolee. Thirteen were white-collar criminals. These we eliminated from our calculations immediately, as it was unlikely that a robbery gang would attempt to recruit this type of man. It was equally unlikely that a white-collar criminal would have anything to do with armed robbery.

The remaining ten men all seemed good prospects as possible members of the gang. Four were already out of prison. One had a Los Angeles address, one lived in San Diego, and two were from San Francisco. We arranged for a stakeout on the local man and teletyped requests to San Diego and San Francisco to have the other three covered.

We also contacted the sheriff’s office of Marin County, in which San Quentin is located, and arranged for tails to pick up the six men due for release the moment they walked out the prison gates. Sheriff’s deputies would turn over this detail to local officers as soon as the men reached their home towns.

When Frank and I had completed all these arrangements, we met with Captain Peters and Chief Brown in the latter’s office to make a complete report of our activities.

Chief Brown nodded when we finished. “Looks like you’ve covered all possible angles. Don’t see how this gang could commence operations without our knowing about it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Gives you a funny feeling, though.”

“How’s that?”

“Like sitting on a powder keg in the center of a ring of guys with torches. And trying to look every way at once to see who’s going to light the fuse.”

Because the gang was expected to operate statewide, law-enforcement measures against it were coordinated by the Criminal Investigation Section of the State Attorney General’s office. Captain Peters was the liaison officer in this, Frank and I remained in charge of the Los Angeles end. The A.G.’s office was to act primarily as a central information center for all police departments and sheriffs’ offices throughout the state. Any activity suspected to be that of the gang was to be reported to the A.G.’s office at once. However, police investigation would be handled by the local police where the activity took place. The code name “Operation Statewide” was to be used on all communications concerning the gang.

On March 29th Jules Martin and Harry Strite walked out of prison and rented a small apartment in downtown Los Angeles. Strite obtained a truck-driving job. Martin rented a typewriter and worked at home on true crime stories. Both men were under round-the-clock surveillance.

Maurice Wey was still at large.

A month passed without any sign of gang activity. Martin and Strite made no attempt to contact old underworld associates. Their parole officer reported that Martin had sold two more stories and that Strite was doing well in his job. As they could not be kept under surveillance indefinitely, the stakeout was lifted.

Over Frank’s and my objections.

We put up a strong argument to Captain Peters. I brought out the photostats of the letters written by Maurice Wey and pointed out the evidence that someone other than Wey was the gang’s proposed leader.

“We’ve gone over the records of all possibles,” I told the captain. “A couple of dozen men altogether. Big Julie is the only one who fits.”

“How do you figure that?” he wanted to know.

“This Maurice Wey is head and shoulders above most of these guys in intelligence. The assistant warden described him as brilliant. Says he could pass the bar examination if he had a chance to take it. He’s just not the type of man to take orders from some lunkhead. He’d be the boss himself.”

“I see. You figure the boss would have to be at least as brainy as Wey for Wey to accept him.”

“Doesn’t that figure?”

The skipper gave a reluctant nod. “Maybe. But we can’t tie up men forever. Particularly when all evidence indicates Martin and Strite are now law-abiding citizens.”

Frank said, “You ever see an habitual change, skipper?”

“No,” the captain admitted. “But I never knew an habitual with Martin’s talent, either. He doesn’t need a gun any more.”

I shook my head. “You know better than that, skipper.”

“Huh?”

“We’ve had guys in here with enough money salted away in safety vaults to retire for life. Yet they keep using a gun till they’re caught. Just to keep their hands in.”

“Yeah, I know,” Peters said wearily. “So does the Corner Pocket. But how long can you keep a stakeout just on the off-chance that something may happen? Six months? A year?”

“It’s only been a month.”

“Uh-huh. Without a sign that either Martin or Strite has any connection with the robbery gang. There’s no point in arguing. The chief says lift the stakeout.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I’ll make you a bet.”

“What?”

“Eventually Big Julie and Strite will decide to keep their hands in.”

The captain shook his head. “No bet.”

During the next few days information came down from the C.I. Section of the A.G.’s office that stakeouts on all the other suspects throughout the state had also been pulled. With the exception of relatives and known associates of Maurice Wey. The general assumption was that Operation Statewide would have started long ago if it was going to materialize at all, and that the gang must have abandoned its plans. However, the escaped convict’s associates would continue to be covered indefinitely until he was recaptured.

Wednesday, April 16th, started off even more quietly than most days. Frank and I signed in at Robbery Division at 8:00 a.m., checked the message book, looked over the bulletin board, and read our mail. Aside from some stand-up muggs from C.I.I. of some jewel-robbery suspects, there was nothing of importance in either of our boxes. Even the muggs weren’t very important, as we’d managed to get makes on the jewel-robbery suspects the day before, and wants were already out on them.

Frank said, “Know what, Joe?”

“What?”

“This is the first time in six months we’ve had a clear slate.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Hardly seems possible. Not a thing to do but sit around.” Frank tilted back his chair, put his feet on another chair, and lit a cigarette.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” I advised.

“Why not? I’m not superstitious.”

I gave him a puzzled look. “What?”

“Some people think climbing in the bathtub makes the phone ring. I don’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This is the same idea,” Frank said. “You think if I get comfortable it will make something happen.”

I grinned at him. “Bet you something does.”

Frank raised his eyebrows. “You really that superstitious, Joe?”

“I’m not superstitious at all.”

“Then why do you think something will happen?”

“Because it always does,” I said.

The buzz of conversation in the squad room suddenly ceased as the hot-shot speaker sounded off: “Attention, all units in the vicinity of West Sixth and Bixel. Two-eleven and a shooting at Grammon’s Supermarket. Officers need help. Two officers involved in a gun duel with two suspects. No descriptions of suspects available. Units One-A-Fifty-four and One-A-Eighty-one handle the call. Code Three. Repeat: Attention, all units—”

Frank’s feet hit the floor with a bang. In the same movement he crushed out his cigarette and came erect. Even though I had a standing start, he caught me at the door.

As we hurried toward the elevator, Frank said, “Me and my big mouth.”

“Huh?” I said.

“I should have stayed out of the bathtub.”

Chapter 12

West Sixth and Bixel is only a dozen blocks from the Police Building. It took us two minutes to get from the third floor to the garage, and about another two and a half minutes to reach the scene with our siren wide open. I barely had time to report in by air that we were answering the call before we were there.

Radio cars, their sirens screaming, were converging from all sides when we braked to a halt in front of the supermarket. Usually sirens bring an avalanche of curious onlookers, but in this case the gun duel had driven bystanders to cover. There wasn’t a soul in sight on the street except for two uniformed policemen. One lay on the sidewalk on his stomach, the other knelt over him. The kneeling officer’s right arm hung limply at his side, and his shoulder was bright with blood.

His face was white with shock when he looked up as Frank and I leaped from the car with drawn guns.

“They headed south on Bixel not thirty seconds ago,” he said. “Two men. Black fifty-eight Mercury sedan. California license KXT-Two-Oh-Nine.”

We didn’t wait to hear any more. By now two other police cars had arrived, so there would be plenty of aid for the wounded men. Frank and I jumped back into the car and roared off down Bixel.

Lifting the microphone from its bracket, I said, “Nine-K-Two to KMA-Three-Six-Seven, Control One.”

A voice from the speaker immediately replied, “Go ahead, Nine-K-Two.”

“We are proceeding south on Bixel from Grammon’s Supermarket, at West Sixth and Bixel. A pair of two-eleven suspects drove from the scene about thirty seconds ago in a black fifty-eight Mercury sedan, California license KXT-Two-Oh-Nine. No description of suspects. We do not have car in sight. Two officers were wounded by suspects. Over.

“Control One to Nine-K-Two. Roger. Attention, all units. Two suspects in black fifty-eight Mercury sedan, California license KXT-Two-Oh-Nine, proceeding south on Bixel from Sixth. Suspects are armed and have wounded two officers. Code Three. All units not in pursuit maintain radio silence.”

Bixel ends at Seventh Street. We jogged left, then right again onto Golden Avenue, which is virtually a continuation of Bixel. By now we were nearly to Olympic. Frank cut the siren and began to brake as an accident scene appeared ahead. A low-slung sports car was crosswise in the center of the street, its left rear fender crushed and its left rear wheel broken, so that the car canted at an angle. A man wearing a loud sport coat was dazedly climbing from behind the driver’s wheel.

The left front fender of a black sedan rested against the rear of the sports car. The sedan’s right front wheel was up on the curb.

I peered ahead at the sedan’s license plate as Frank slowed. “That’s the car,” I said.

We were now less than a quarter block away, and I reached for the door handle to jump from the car as soon as Frank came to a full stop. Suddenly the sedan’s motor roared, and it backed from contact with the sports car. Then it surged forward over the curb and onto the sidewalk. After rolling along the sidewalk for a dozen yards, it shot out into the street again between two parked cars.

There wasn’t room to get past the sports car on either side. Frank followed the sedan’s route, bumping up over the curb, running along the sidewalk, and bumping down off the curb again between the two parked cars. The black sedan swung left on Olympic just as we reached the street.

I had been too busy keeping my head from slamming into the windshield to reach for the microphone. But as we reached an even keel, I grabbed it from its bracket.

“Nine-K-Two to Control One,” I said.

“Go ahead, Nine-K-Two.”

“Have sighted Mercury sedan. Just turned east on Olympic from Golden. Wanted car was just involved in an accident and is now damaged on left side. We are in pursuit.”

Our siren, and the screeching of tires as we rounded the corner, all but drowned out the acknowledgment of our message.

Hanging up the mike, I drew my gun and leaned from the window. Our siren had halted traffic, clearing the way for both us and the fleeing Mercury. The sedan had a half block lead on us when we turned onto Olympic. By the time we neared Figueroa, we had closed the gap to a quarter block. But there were too many cars pulled over to the curb on both sides of the street to risk a shot.

A block and a half ahead a police car appeared, coming toward us with its siren wide open. The Mercury did a dirt-track turn and roared south on Figueroa. Frank wheeled right after it in an equally perilous turn, and a moment later the other police car shot around the corner and joined the parade.

For some miraculous reason there was no traffic at all on Figueroa at the moment, affording me my first chance for a clear shot since the chase had begun. I took careful aim and squeezed off two shots at the right rear tire.

Both missed.

I was aiming for a third shot when an arm reached out from the right front window of the car ahead. The companion of the driver was on his knees in the front seat, facing the rear, and there was a gun in his left hand. I saw his muzzle flash just before I squeezed the trigger.

There was a sound similar to that made by a cork being pulled from a bottle, and simultaneously something stung my cheek. It deflected my aim just enough to make me shoot high. I could see the mark made by the bullet as it plunked into the Mercury’s trunk.

The car ahead made another dirt-track left turn into Pico. As Frank spun us around the corner after it, I glanced at our windshield and saw what had made the popping sound. There was a neat hole in the center of the windshield. I touched my cheek and felt a drop of blood where a fragment of glass had hit my face.

We were right on the Mercury’s tail now. Aiming carefully, I squeezed off another shot. This time I was rewarded by seeing the car ahead swerve crazily, right itself, and swerve again. Frank nearly put me through the windshield as he slammed to a halt to avoid crashing into the Mercury’s rear.

There was a little more traffic on Pico than on Figueroa, but not much, and what little there was had stopped in obedience to our siren. The Mercury missed a motionless car facing us by a hair, barely missed a lamppost as it jolted up on the right-hand curb, careened along the sidewalk, and came to a halt with its right front fender crunched against the side of an office building.

Frank jerked on the emergency brake in the middle of the street, and we tumbled from either side of the car. Both front doors of the Mercury were flung open first, though. The two suspects were ducking into the areaway between two office buildings before our feet hit the street.

I got a bare glimpse of both from the back just before they disappeared. One was of average size, the other slim and only about five feet six or seven. Both wore tan jackets, tan slacks, and brown hats.

As the trailing police car screeched to a halt behind us, Frank and I headed for the area way at a dead run. I got there first, just in time to see the smaller suspect round the corner into the alley at the far end.

We made the alley in time to spot the smaller suspect astride an eight-foot board fence on its other side. I got a bare glimpse of his face. He had an oversized nose and wore horn-rimmed glasses. He dropped out of sight before either of us could snap a shot at him.

We both holstered our guns, ran toward the fence, leaped to grip the top and pull ourselves up. A bullet slammed into the boards immediately beneath me as I swung a leg over.

I didn’t take time to use the approved method of completing my trip across the fence. That would have left me a stationary target too long. Instead of reversing my handhold, throwing my legs over, and letting my grip cushion my fall, I dove off my perch head first. Fortunately my hands hit soft dirt, I tucked my head under and started a gymnasium roll.

Unfortunately, my angle of descent was too steep. I completed the roll, but the back of my head smacked sickeningly against the ground as I somersaulted. If I hadn’t been wearing a hat, I probably would have brained myself. As it was, I bounced erect just as you’re supposed to at the end of the roll, ran two steps, and fell heavily to my hands and knees. I dug my fingers into the dirt as the ground heaved back and forth under me like the deck of a small boat in a storm.

After a moment my giddiness passed enough for me to raise my head and take a groggy look around. Ahead of me was a driveway running alongside a house to the street. There was no sign of the suspects.

I had been conscious of Frank straddling the fence at the same time I did, but had lost track of him while doing my unsuccessful acrobatics. Now I glanced over my shoulder to see him lying on his back at the base of the fence.

Shaking my head to clear it, I lurched to my feet and reeled back to Frank. As I reached him, he pushed himself to a sitting position and groaned.

“Hit?” I asked.

He shook his head, but instead of speaking, merely gulped in air and wheezed it out again.

I said, “Hurt?”

He shook his head again, finally managed to gasp, “Landed flat on my back. Knocked the wind out of me.”

Apparently Frank, too, had decided not to remain a sitting target, and simply had let himself fall off the fence.

“Go on after them,” he said. “I’m not going to be able to move for a while.”

It was good advice, but I wasn’t in very good shape to take it. My rap on the head had left me so dizzy I was supporting myself against the fence with one hand.

I tried, though. Giving my head another shake, I drew my gun and started down the driveway at a staggering trot.

The drive came out at Cameron Lane. I looked in both directions.

There was no sign of the suspects.

Chapter 13

The gunfire had brought a number of people from their homes along Cameron Lane. Most were housewives, as it was only about nine in the morning and the men were off at work. A young woman on the porch to the right of the driveway stared at my gun from wide eyes.

I was beginning to recover from my blow on the head. Putting my gun away, I said to the woman, “Police officer, ma’am. Did you see a couple of men in tan jackets?”

“Both with big noses and glasses?” she asked. She pointed west. “They ran up that way.”

Frank limped up behind me then, and at the same moment the police car that had been trailing us came around the corner to the east of us. I waved it forward and into the curb. Only the driver was in the car.

Going over to the car, I showed my ID and asked, “Where’s your partner?”

“Left him covering the suspects’ car, sir. They got away, huh?”

I said, “They headed west on foot. Two men, one of average build, the other slim and short. Five-six or seven. Both have large noses and wear glasses. Both are wearing tan jackets, tan slacks, and brown hats. Get it on the air and get this whole section blocked off.”

The officer said, “Yes, sir,” and reached for his microphone.

Frank didn’t look as though he was in shape to climb the fence again. We got back to our car by walking to the corner and around the block.

A small crowd had collected around the wrecked Mercury, but the uniformed stakeout was making people keep their distances.

I showed the man my ID and asked if he’d touched anything in the Mercury.

“No, sir,” he said. “Thought there might be fingerprints. There’s a briefcase in the back seat.”

Frank and I both peered into the back seat. The briefcase lay on the seat, and it was so full, it bulged.

Frank said, “Looks like they abandoned the loot.”

“We’ll hope,” I said. I told the uniformed officer to stay with the Mercury and let no one touch it until someone from Latent Prints arrived.

There was no point in our sticking around for the manhunt. Within minutes police units would surround the entire area and begin to close in. The search would be conducted according to standard procedure, and our presence would add nothing. We could be more useful at the robbery scene.

I reported the location of the wrecked Mercury by radio, requested a man from Latent Prints, and told Control One that we were returning to Grammon’s Supermarket for investigation.

9:17 a.m. We arrived back at Grammon’s Supermarket. By then both Frank and I had pretty well recovered from our ungraceful tumbles off the board fence.

The street in front of Grammon’s was no longer deserted. Now that the shooting was over, hordes of curious onlookers had spilled from nearby buildings. Five black-and-white radio cars and two F cars were drawn up in front of the market. Traffic officers were diverting traffic at either end of the block, and other uniformed officers were attempting to disperse the crowd, with only partial success. But they had managed to keep the area immediately in front of the market clear of all but officers and witnesses.

In front of the market Captain Peters was talking to a round little fat man who wore a white apron. Frank and I went over to them.

“Friday, Smith,” the captain said, nodding to us. “Any luck?”

“Just a near miss,” I said. “They’re on foot and may be bottled up.” I glanced at a dark stain on the sidewalk where the wounded officer had lain. “How bad was he hit?”

“D.O.A.,” Peters said bitterly.

No one said anything. Then Frank asked in a low voice, “Who was he, skipper?”

“Kid named Art Ferguson. Twenty-six years old. Wife and two kids.”

After another moment of silence, I asked, “How about his partner?”

“Sergeant named Blake. Got a busted shoulder, I think. Walked to the ambulance, so he ought to make out.”

The Captain turned to the round little man he had been talking to and introduced him as Herman Grammon, the owner of the supermarket. Grammon solemnly shook hands with both Frank and me.

“Terrible thing,” he said. “Wish now I hadn’t done it. Should’ve just let them take the money and go. Terrible thing. Have it on my conscience the rest of my life.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I was just telling the Captain about it when you arrived.” He looked at Peters. “Want me to go on from there, or start over?”

“Lieutenant Friday and Sergeant Smith will be in charge of the investigation,” Captain Peters said. “Better take it from the beginning.”

Grammon looked back at me. “Well, sir, they were waiting out front when I opened. In a car. We open at nine, understand, but I get here about twenty after eight. Unlock the door, then lock it again from inside.”

I said, “Uh-huh.”

“My clerks start arriving about eight thirty. They come in at different times, because it takes longer to set up some departments than it does others. The fresh-vegetable clerk arrives first. Has to check all the vegetables, you see, and dress up the display a bit. Pull wilted leaves off lettuce, throw away soft tomatoes. Stuff like that.”

I said, “We understand.”

“Point is, there’s about ten minutes between eight twenty and eight thirty when nobody’s here but me. They must have watched and found that out. Caught me just as I put the key in the door. Stuck guns in my back.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t make any resistance. You can always make more money. But you’ve only got one life.”

“Yes, sir. You did right.”

“Did what they told me. Took them back to the safe, opened it, and gave them the money. About two thousand in cash. They stuffed it in a briefcase. Didn’t bother with checks or silver.”

I said, “You’ll probably get your money back. They left a briefcase in their getaway car.”

“They did?” he asked in a pleased voice. Then he looked worried. “Where is it?”

“It can’t be moved until Latent Prints goes over the car. A police officer is watching it.”

“Oh,” he said in a relieved tone.

Captain Peters said, “What happened after they took the money?”

“The little fellow pulled out a roll of adhesive tape and told me to cross my hands behind me. Guess he meant to tape me up. But he changed his mind.”

I asked, “Why was that?”

“The police arrived. The two bandits saw the car stop out front and the two officers get out. They told me to lie on my stomach on the floor, then they ran up near the front of the store and crouched down behind a couple of displays. The two policemen pulled their guns, and one of them opened the door.”

When he paused, I said, “Go on.”

“That’s as far as he got. Just opening the door. Never even stepped inside. The little fellow fired, the officer staggered back and fell to the sidewalk. Then everybody began shooting. Both bandits and the remaining officer. Nobody got hit, though. Just my windows.”

I glanced at the windows and saw that a good deal of glass was missing.

Grammon went on, “After the first flurry of shots, the officer scuttled back out of sight. Behind his car, I think.”

Captain Peters put in, “That’s probably when he called in for help.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Grammon said. “Anyway, the two thugs took advantage of it to try for the rear door. Only it was padlocked and the key was in my pocket. I guess they were in too much of a hurry to ask me about it. Instead they made a break for the front. There was some more shooting out there, but I couldn’t see what was going on. Then I heard a car drive away fast.”

Frank said, “While back you said something about your conscience. What’d you mean?”

Grammon’s round face turned doleful. “That young officer would still be alive if it wasn’t for me. I had to play smart.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, these fellows didn’t have the job cased as good as they thought.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“My safe’s equipped with a silent burglar alarm. Connects into police headquarters.”

“Oh?”

“There’s a hidden switch you’re supposed to throw before you open the safe. To cut off the alarm.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We know the type.”

“I didn’t throw the switch.”

Chapter 14

We continued to talk to the victim. His descriptions of the suspects conformed pretty well to the estimates of height and weight Frank and I had made from our brief glimpses of the two men. Grammon judged the larger man to be about five feet eleven and a hundred eighty pounds, the smaller one to be about five-six and a hundred thirty.

He said he was unable to describe their faces.

“Why not?” I asked. “They weren’t masked, were they?”

“Not exactly. But you know those false noses attached to glasses frames that you can buy in dime stores?”

“Yeah,” I said, beginning to understand something that had been puzzling me ever since I had seen the smaller suspect astride the fence. I had wondered why a heist artist with such a prominent and easily identifiable nose hadn’t bothered to cover it with a mask.

“They were wearing those. Pretty smart disguise, too.”

Frank said, “How’s that?”

“Well, they change a man’s whole appearance.”

“So does a handkerchief mask,” Frank said.

“Yeah, but you could spot a masked man a block away. With these things, even a passerby might not notice you unless he happened to look right in your face.”

9:52 a.m. We returned to the office. By then D.M.V. had identified the Mercury as one that had been reported stolen the previous evening. Its owner was a prominent Jewish rabbi, who obviously could have had no connection with the robbery.

The suspects had not yet been apprehended, and there was as yet no report from Latent Prints on the Mercury.

A half hour later a motorist reported in by phone that two men answering the descriptions of the suspects had commandeered his car at gunpoint only a block from Decameron Lane. They had forced him to drive them to Hollywood, and had pushed him from the car near Hollywood and Vine.

Both men had been wearing dime-store false noses attached to glasses frames.

A want on the commandeered car was put on the air to all units. Within fifteen minutes it was found abandoned at Hollywood and Sunset.

And there the trail ended.

11:03 a.m. Sergeant McLaughlin of Latent Prints phoned that all but one of the fingerprints lifted from the wrecked Mercury had checked out as belonging to the rabbi owner. A single unidentified print had been lifted from the briefcase handle. The briefcase, incidentally, had still contained the robbery loot.

A single print is good enough for identification purposes if you have a definite print to compare it with. But it is useless for running a check against the complete fingerprint files. It takes at least three prints to make a search of the files feasible.

I asked McLaughlin if he had yet been informed of the car abandoned at Hollywood and Sunset. He said Bill Tucker of Latent Prints was already on his way there, and he’d phone me as soon as he had a kickback from Tucker.

When I hung up, Frank said, “I’ve been thinking about that adhesive tape, Joe.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So have I.”

“It ring the same bell with you?”

“Loud and clear,” I said. “So does one of the descriptions.”

“Uh-huh. The little guy. But the other one sure wasn’t Big Julie.”

“No,” I agreed.

“Think maybe Operation Statewide has finally started?”

“I know one way to check it out.”

“How’s that?”

“Let’s make a visit to Latent Prints.”

We found Sergeant McLaughlin alone in 208. McLaughlin is a dark, lean, good-looking man with a thin black mustache. He resembles a juvenile-lead actor more than a policeman.

I handed him the list of all the suspects we had considered as possible members of the robbery gang. There were twenty-four names on the list.

“Be much trouble to check these against that briefcase print?” I asked.

McLaughlin was in the process of making a run on some other case. “In a hurry?” he inquired.

“Well, yes.”

“Give me an hour,” he said. “I’ll phone you at Robbery.”

11:17 a.m. We had barely gotten back to Robbery Division when Sergeant McLaughlin phoned.

“That was easy, Joe,” he said. “Wish they were all that simple.”

“Get a make?” I asked.

“First name on the list. Guy named Maurice Wey.”

11:28 a.m. We got out a local and an APB on Maurice Wey. We also sent an Operation Statewide teletype to the Criminal Investigation Section of the Attorney General’s office.

When these routine matters were taken care of, I said to Frank, “Let’s roll.”

He didn’t have to ask where. He knew I meant the apartment of Big Julie Martin and Harry Strite.

Martin and Strite had a small furnished apartment on Seventh Street. It was on the second floor of a three-story building that had no elevator. It wasn’t exactly a slum tenement house, but it wasn’t the Beverly Carlton, either. It was a plain brick building with bare but reasonably clean halls. It housed about twenty units of three or four rooms.

We could hear a typewriter going when we stopped in front of the apartment door. The sound ceased the moment I knocked. Frank stood to one side of the door with his hand on his gun as footsteps approached from inside.

The precaution proved unnecessary. When the door opened, Big Julie Martin stood there in shirt sleeves, his sleeves rolled to expose hairy forearms and his hands empty.

“Well, well,” he said with a friendly grin containing no element of surprise. “The lieutenant and his perennial satellite. I’m honored.”

I pushed past him into the living room and gave a quick glance around. No one but Martin was in it. Near the window was a card table with a portable typewriter and a pile of manuscript on it.

Frank followed in behind me, and gave Big Julie a quick shakedown.

“He’s clean,” Frank said.

I jerked my head toward the kitchenette, and Frank went to check it. I checked the bedroom and bath. The bedroom was furnished with twin beds, both neatly made. The bath was old-fashioned, but clean. No one was in either.

Back in the living room I glanced at Frank and he said, “Nothing.”

“Where’s your partner?” I asked Big Julie.

He raised his eyebrows. “At work, I presume. He left for there at seven a.m.”

Frank said, “What’s the name of that place he works again?”

“Wilshire Coal and Wood Yard.”

Frank said, “Don’t mind if I use your phone, do you?”

Big Julie grinned at him. “As a parolee, do I have any choice?”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s your castle.”

“Be my guest,” the big man said graciously, gesturing toward the phone on a corner end table.

Frank went over to the table and began thumbing through the book. I walked over to the typewriter and glanced at the sheet of paper in it. It was numbered page fifteen. The top line was the continuation of a sentence from the previous page, and read: “screeched to a halt fifty yards from the roadblock, spun wheels in reverse, slewed the car around and roared back in the opposite direction.”

“Still grinding it out, huh?” I said.

“Six days a week. I can hardly keep up with my commitments.”

Across the room Frank said into the phone, “Like to speak to Harry Strife.”

There was a pause, then he said, “What time’d he go out?” He listened, then grunted thanks and hung up.

“Out in his truck,” Frank said to me.

I moved toward the door, and Frank followed. I opened it and stood aside for Frank to go out first. I paused to look back at Big Julie.

“Thanks for the use of your phone,” I said.

“Any time at all, Lieutenant.”

I said, “You’re not very curious.”

“No,” he agreed.

“Couple of police officers came looking for my partner, I’d wonder why.”

“I do wonder.”

“Yeah?”

“Naturally, Lieutenant. But you know something?”

“What?”

“I never ask questions of a cop.”

I looked him up and down. Then I said, “I’ve got a different theory.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“You know why we’re looking for him.”

We walked downstairs and outside before Frank said anything. Then he said, “Strite’s boss says he took out his first delivery at seven thirty. Checked in empty at ten, went out again with another load and is still out.”

I grunted.

“Seems to clear him, doesn’t it?”

“Not yet.”

“Hardly seems a reputable businessman like his boss would lie for him.”

“Not likely,” I said. “But there’s one thing about a job like Strite’s that’s perfect for setting up alibis.”

“Yeah?” Frank said. “What?”

“You can park a truck, knock off a job, and get back to the truck again. Who’s to say you haven’t been working all the time?”

“Uh-huh,” Frank said thoughtfully. “Guess we better check it out all the way.”

Chapter 15

As it was now well past noon, we stopped at a coffee shop for lunch before visiting Harry Strite’s employer. It was 1:15 p.m. when we arrived at the Wilshire Coal and Wood Yard.

The company’s manager was a thin, mournful-looking man with the largest Adam’s apple I ever saw. It moved up and down his long throat whenever he spoke, and sometimes even when he wasn’t speaking, creating the impression that he had swallowed a yo-yo. His name was Manfred Thornton.

We found Thornton in a glass-enclosed office next to the truck entrance to the yard. When we identified ourselves and told him our business, he frowned.

“I hope Harry isn’t in trouble,” he said. “He’s a good worker.”

“We’re just making a routine check, sir,” I told him.

“What’s he suspected of?”

“Nothing yet,” I said. “Maybe he’ll check out clear.”

Thornton’s Adam’s apple rose and fell again. “You mean you’re just checking on him because he’s on parole? Some crime’s been committed that you can’t solve, so you’re hounding Harry. Just because he made a mistake once. I knew it would happen.”

His tone was suddenly so angry, I let my own voice become cautious. “Knew what would happen, sir?”

“You fellows never let a man forget his past. Harry’s paid his debt to society. Why can’t you let him alone?”

I said, “We’re not bothering him. If your answers to a few questions check him out clean, we won’t even talk to him.”

“Well, I resent the whole procedure. I told the parole officer how I felt about it the first time he came to see me. When he came to check on whether I was actually willing to give Harry a job. Harry wasn’t even out of prison yet, and already they were hounding him.”

Frank said, “Verification that Strite had a job waiting was part of the parole officer’s job, Mr. Thornton. Strite couldn’t have been paroled without it.”

The Adam’s apple bobbed again. “That’s what all you people say. It’s part of your job. How’d you feel if someone went to your employer asking questions about you every time some candy store was robbed?”

I said mildly, “You’re pretty fond of Harry, huh?”

“Not particularly. It’s just a matter of common justice. I’m a champion of the underdog.”

I said, “As police officers we appreciate the importance of men like you, Mr. Thornton. Not every employer is willing to take a chance on an ex-con. There’d be a lot fewer repeat offenders if more employers had the same confidence in rehabilitation that you do. But some ex-cons do repeat, which makes it tough on all of them. We have to make this check.”

This seemed to mollify him. He said grudgingly, “I suppose I have as much of a duty to society as I have to my employees. What do you want to know?”

I told him we merely wanted to verify Harry Strite’s movements that morning. Thornton pulled some dispatch slips from a spindle, sorted through them, and separated several.

“Well, he checked out in his truck at seven thirty,” he said. “Had three deliveries of firewood on it.” He read off the addresses, and Frank wrote them in his notebook. “Pulled back in at ten, loaded up again and took off. Should have completed those deliveries about one p.m. Imagine he’s stopped for lunch now, and will be back about two.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“This clear Harry of whatever you suspect him of?”

“It may,” I said.

His Adam’s apple slid up and down a couple of times. “Listen,” he said, with a slight air of embarrassment. “Maybe I sounded off too much when you first came in. But I’ve always resented the police persecuting people.”

Frank said, “We’ve been policemen a long time. And never persecuted anybody yet.”

“Maybe you haven’t. But lots of policemen do. I know.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“They drove my younger brother to his grave.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Kid made a mistake, paid for it, and tried to straighten out. But you think the police would let him? Every time somebody knocked over a filling station, they were around asking where Dave was at the time.”

“That what he took his fall for?” I asked. “Knocking over a gas station?”

“Yeah. But it was just a kid stunt. He was only eighteen the first time.”

“Oh,” I said. “He did it more than once, huh?”

“Sure, when they kept hounding him. Guess he figured as long as he had the name, he might as well have the game.”

“You say he’s dead now?”

Thornton’s Adam’s apple made a mournful bob. “Two years ago. Got shot by a filling-station proprietor.”

2:26 p.m. With the aid of a street map of Los Angeles, we figured out the probable time Strite should have taken to reach his first delivery point. It worked out to about twenty minutes, which should have gotten him there at 7:50. A check with the customer disclosed that the delivery had been made, and that Strite had left the place around 8:00 a.m.

The first delivery point was no more than a five-minute drive from West Sixth and Bixel. It would have been possible for Strite to meet Maurice Wey, slip out of his coveralls and be at Grammon’s Supermarket at the time of the robbery.

A check with the second customer put a hole in this theory. The wood had been delivered at 8:45 a.m., about the time the two suspects were commandeering a car a block from Decameron Lane.

Frank said, “Think maybe they pulled a real fast one, Joe? Like having a confederate drive the truck while Strite and Wey made the hit?”

“Worth checking out,” I said.

We contacted the second customer again. We were unable to prove or disprove Frank’s suggestion. The place was a private home. When ordering the firewood, the customer had left instructions for it to be piled in the yard. His wife had seen the truck back into the driveway and leave again, but had not gone outside. She could give no description of the driver.

Back at the office there was a note in the message book to phone Sergeant McLaughlin. When I called, he reported that the car abandoned at Hollywood and Sunset had been wiped clear of prints.

3:14 p.m. We went into Captain Peters’ office to report what we had.

When we finished, he said, “You really think they’d be cute enough to switch truck drivers?”

I said, “I think so.”

Peters shook his head. “Seems awfully complicated.”

“Why? It’s just the devious kind of stuff a guy who regarded himself as a master criminal would pull. And Big Julie has enough ego to regard himself as a master criminal.”

“You’re convinced he planned this, huh?”

“Not convinced,” I said. “Let’s say strongly suspicious. Behind his polite exterior, he was laughing his head off at us when we visited him today. He’s the kind of guy who would get a lift out of making the police run around in circles.”

“Uh-huh,” the captain said. “Maybe we’d better pull Strite in for a little talk.”

“We wouldn’t get anything,” Frank said. “He probably wants to be pulled in so he can spring his alibi.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Let them think we swallowed Strife’s alibi. And put the stakeouts back on Strife and Big Julie.”

The captain nodded. “I’ll speak to the chief. Maybe one of them will lead us to Maury Wey.”

“Or to something better.”

“What?”

“Maybe we’ll catch them in the act when they try to make their next hit.”

Chapter 16

As a result of Captain Peters’ conference with Chief Brown, Martin and Strife were put back under round-the-clock surveillance. A search warrant was obtained, and their apartment was given a thorough shakedown for weapons and for the false noses with attached glasses frames that the bandits had worn.

Nothing was found. The surveillance had no result, either. It was almost as though the suspects knew they were under close observation and were carefully refraining from making contact with their confederates.

Captain Peters also talked by phone with the Attorney General’s office. It was decided to resume the original stakeouts on all the suspects throughout the state who were on the list of possible gang members.

Unfortunately only about half of them could now be located.

On Saturday, April 19th, a robbery team consisting of one man of average size and one tall, lean man about six feet one hit two supermarkets in downtown Los Angeles within an hour, both at closing time. One of the markets closed at 8:00 p.m., the other at 9:00. In both cases the manager was accosted as he approached his car after locking up for the night, was forced at gunpoint to reopen the door and open the safe.

Also, in both cases the suspects wore false noses attached to glasses frames, and bound their victims with adhesive tape before leaving. It was some hours after the crimes before the victims struggled loose from their bonds and reported the robberies.

The total take from both scores came to $7,000.

The physical descriptions of neither man came anywhere close to Big Julie or Harry Strite. Besides, they had iron-clad alibis for the period in question. They had been dining together in a restaurant under the eyes of a police stakeout.

One suspect fitted the description of Maury Wey. The other, the tall, lean man, was described as having a large purple birthmark on the left side of his neck. Stat’s turned a number of possibles who had similar marks, but all checked out clean.

None of the twenty-four men on the list of possible gang members we had compiled fitted the description.

It was Frank who came up with the idea that gave us our only real lead. We had just checked in on Monday morning when the thought hit him.

“Hey, Joe,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Remember way back when Martin and Strite pulled that first supermarket job? The place on Sunset. What was the guy’s name?”

“Dehelvey,” I said. “James Dehelvey.”

“Yeah. And remember how sure we were that some pal of Martin and Strife’s had gotten to Dehelvey and scared him out of testifying?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, doesn’t it seem logical that a guy who was that good a friend of theirs would be a member of this gang?”

“Possibly. What are you getting at?”

“Maybe we ought to pay Mr. Dehelvey a visit.”

“Why?” I asked. “He wouldn’t talk before.”

“He might now if we offered him immunity. Told him we just wanted the dope off-the-record, and wouldn’t pull him into court to testify.”

After mulling this over, I said, “Worth a try, anyway. Let’s roll.”

9:01 a.m. We found James Dehelvey giving instructions to his meat-cutter when we arrived. He greeted us with polite surprise, then asked us to wait until he finished his instructions. When he was finally through with the meat-cutter, he turned to us and said briskly, “Well, Officers? What is it this time?”

“Afraid it’s the same old thing, sir,” I said. “We’d like to talk to you about your robbery again.”

He frowned. “I thought that was finished and done with long ago.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “We’re not going to rake up the case again. But we have reason to believe the same men are responsible for several similar recent crimes. It might help if you gave us some off-the-record information.”

“About what?”

“About whoever it was who threatened you.”

He thought this over. “You guarantee I won’t have to testify to anything in court?” he asked.

Frank said, “All we’re after is information for our own use.”

“But if I told you, even after all this time, that the two men you arrested were really the robbers, wouldn’t you have to bring them to trial and call me as a witness?”

“Yes, if you admitted it,” I told him honestly.

“Then I won’t admit it.”

Frank said patiently, “We’re not asking you to admit anything. All we want is information about the man who threatened you. We’ll keep it confidential.”

He thought some more, finally said, “I guess that’s fair enough.”

He told us the whole story then. He said that shortly after his visit to the Police Building on the occasion he had tentatively picked out Big Julie Martin’s picture, he got a phone call at the store. A man’s voice he did not recognize told him to go to the front door and look across the street. Then the man hung up.

Puzzled, Dehelvey had gone to the front door, opened it, and looked in all directions. At first he saw nothing out of the way. Then he glanced upward and got a shock. Above the store immediately across the street were some apartments. A rifle barrel protruded from one of the windows, aiming straight at him. Dehelvey said he had stood rooted to the spot, unable to move. Then the rifle was drawn back inside, and a man’s face appeared at the window. It was a lean, dark face, but from that distance Dehelvey couldn’t tell much more than that about it. The man merely stared at him without expression, then drew back from the window.

Dehelvey said he had stumbled back inside and made straight for the phone to call the police. But it rang before he got there. It was the man who had phoned him before.

“You don’t want to yell copper,” the voice said. “It might be fatal.”

Dehelvey said he had been too frightened to do anything except stutter.

The man went on in a cold voice, “We just wanted to show you how easy it would be to put a slug in your skull. When you come out of work — when you leave your flat in the morning — any place. You’d never know when it was coming. Or where.”

Dehelvey managed to ask, “What do you want?”

“Nothing. Just for you to forget all about your robbery. Don’t identify no pictures, don’t identify nobody at a show-up. You’ll do us that favor, won’t you?”

“Why?” Dehelvey asked.

“Because then we’ll do one for you.”

“What?”

“Let you live,” the man said, and hung up.

I interrupted the story long enough to ask him to point out the window the man had been in. Dehelvey led us over to the door and pointed across the street to a second-story window immediately above the street entrance to the flats.

I said, “Excuse us a minute. We’ll be right back.”

Frank and I crossed the street. There was not only no lock to the street entrance, there was no door. It was merely an open doorway leading to the stairs. We climbed to the second floor and walked back along the upper hall to the window. It wasn’t a room window. It overlooked the street from the end of the hallway. On the wall a few feet from it was a pay telephone.

Frank grunted. “Could have been anybody,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “All he had to do was walk in.”

We returned to the supermarket. James Dehelvey continued with his story.

All the rest of that day he had struggled with the problem of whether to risk reporting the incident to the police. Finally he decided to sleep on it. But when he got home he found the decision had been made for him.

In his front room he found the man he had glimpsed in the window. He was comfortably seated on the couch, with his feet on the cocktail table. He had a gun in his hand. Dehelvey said that he had nearly fainted.

“See how easy it would be?” the man said. “You wouldn’t stand a chance. Now, if my friends go up, you know what’s going to happen to you?”

All Dehelvey could do was mutely shake his head.

“You’re going to die,” the man said without emotion. “And if you think you can beat the rap by telling the cops about me, just try it. Even if they got to me, you’d be done. I got friends, too, you see. All the cops in the world couldn’t save you. Got it?”

Dehelvey said, “Yes, sir.”

“That’s all,” the man said. “See you around — you better not hope.”

He rose then, and leisurely left the apartment. Dehelvey said he had never seen him again, but had gotten two more phone calls from him. All the voice said on both occasions was, “We’re still watching you, friend.” Then he hung up.

When Dehelvey finished the story, I started to open my mouth to explain that such threats were seldom carried out and that he should have phoned us immediately. Then I decided it was too late to amend what had already happened, that it was the sort of incident that would probably never again occur to him, so I’d be only wasting my time.

Instead I asked, “Can you describe this man?”

“Sure,” the market owner said. “I’ll never forget that guy as long as I live. He was about thirty years old and tall and thin. I’d say about six-one, and no more than a hundred fifty or sixty pounds. A long, lean face with a dark complexion. Black hair and eyes. And, oh yeah—”

“What?” Frank asked.

“Had a big mottled birthmark on the left side of his neck.”

9:42 a.m. James Dehelvey agreed to come back to the office with us and look at mugg shots. We ran the description and MO of the suspect through the Stat’s Office, and they came up with twenty possibles that they hadn’t given us on the previous run.

Dehelvey said none of them was the man who had threatened him.

He spent another two hours going through mugg books with equal lack of result. We asked if he would be willing to work with Ector Garcia, our Crime Lab artist, in drawing a composite.

“How long will it take?” he wanted to know.

“Depends,” I said. “Sometimes they go fast, sometimes they take hours. You could have some lunch in the cafeteria here, and go to work with him right afterward.”

“Well, if it will help,” he said. “I guess I owe you men something for letting you down last time. They can get by at the store without me for one afternoon.”

We took him upstairs and bought him some lunch, then took him to the Crime Lab and left him with Garcia.

3:31 p.m. Ector Garcia and James Dehelvey came into the squad room. Ector was carrying a completed composite drawing-

Handing it to me, Garcia said, “Says it’s a good likeness.”

The face in the picture was thin, with sunken cheeks. The eyes were close-set and narrow. It wasn’t a pleasant face. If it really resembled the suspect closely, it wasn’t surprising that Dehelvey had been impressed. The man wouldn’t have had a bit of trouble in Hollywood getting villain roles.

We thanked Dehelvey and had him driven back to the supermarket. Then we sent the composite upstairs to be reproduced in quantity and distributed to outside members of the force, to other police departments, and to C.I.I.

On Tuesday, April 21st, two supermarket robberies took place in San Francisco. Again one of the suspects was a tall, lean man with a purple birthmark on the left side of his neck. But this time his companion was a short, heavy-set man. Both, as usual, wore false noses with attached glasses frames.

Three of the names on our list of possibles fit the latter description. All three were among those whose trails couldn’t be picked up when the order to resume the stakeouts on a statewide basis went out.

On Wednesday teletypes came in reporting two more robberies by men wearing false noses attached to glasses frames: one robbery was in Stockton and one in Sacramento. The team combination in the first holdup was the tall man and the one we believed to be Maury Wey. In the second it was the tall man and the heavy-set man again.

Tuesday afternoon at 3:32 Chief Brown called an emergency meeting in his office. Captain Peters, Captain Hertel of Homicide Division, Frank and I were present.

Chapter 17

Chief Brown had a serious expression on his face as we all took seats.

He opened the meeting by saying, “Gentlemen, this Operation Statewide thing is unique in my experience as a police officer.”

“How’s that, sir?” Captain Hertel asked.

“In my thirty-some years of police work, I can’t recall another case in which we’ve had so much information and so few results. We had considerable information about this gang nearly two months before it ever tried to score. We knew the general plan of operation. We knew definitely one of the members — Maury Wey. If Friday and Smith’s theory is right, we know who the leader of the gang is and we know at least one other member. Both of them are under around-the-clock surveillance. We have a good description and a composite drawing of one of the remaining two members, and a general description of the fifth man. Yet these people have managed to go into operation under the noses of police throughout the state. To date the total loot exceeds forty thousand dollars. And worse than that, a police officer has been murdered and another wounded.”

Captain Peters said, “They have made us look kind of silly up to now.”

“That’s an understatement,” the chief snapped. “They’ve made police all over the state look like Keystone Kops. What action other cities are taking is beyond our control. But in Los Angeles I want this ring smashed. And smashed fast.”

After a moment of general silence, Captain Hertel said diffidently, “We all want that, sir. Any suggestions?”

“Yes. Information bulletins describing the gang’s tactics have already gone to every supermarket manager in the Los Angeles area. Managers have been requested never to open or close their stores when alone. They’ve been asked to arrange to have several employees around at those two crucial times. I’ve requested Metro to follow up with personal visits by beat officers to make sure store managers have read the bulletin and are following its advice. Metro is also collecting data on opening and closing hours, and will have radio units make spot checks of as many stores as possible at the times hits are most likely.”

“That ought to help,” Captain Peters said. “So far they haven’t hit any time except just before opening or just after closing.”

“Yeah,” Chief Brown said. “I considered putting plainclothes stakeouts on some of the larger stores during the most probable hit periods. Until I checked the yellow section of the phone book and saw how many there were.”

He caught the beginning of a grin on my face and said, “You’ve checked, too, huh, Friday?”

“Often,” I said. “Between seven and eight hundred grocers in the Los Angeles area.”

“Uh-huh. There’s something you and Smith can do, though.”

“Yes, sir?” I said.

“Set up a pin map. See if you can develop some kind of directional trend in their MO.”

“There have been only three hits here,” I objected. “Hardly enough to show a directional trend.”

“Yeah, I know,” the chief said. “But I have a hunch.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Before long you’ll have plenty of pins in your map.”

4:07 p.m. Frank and I mounted a large map of Los Angeles on the Robbery squad-room wall and stuck a colored pin in it at the point each of the robberies had taken place. All three were in the downtown area.

Frank regarded the map dubiously. “Not much of a directional trend, is there, Joe?”

“May be, if the Corner Pocket is right.”

“Yeah. But you know what?”

“What?”

“For once I hope he’s wrong.”

4:32 p.m. Captain Peters, who ordinarily never raises his voice, startled everyone in the squad room by suddenly booming from the doorway of his office, “Friday! Smith!”

He turned around and strode back into his office without waiting for us to rise from our chairs. When we entered the office, he was seated behind his desk, his hands spread palms down in front of him as though he were considering heaving himself erect again and performing some violent act. His usually calm face was dark red.

“Both Big Julie and Strite just shook their stakeouts,” he announced in a barely controlled voice.

This didn’t seem to call for any comment. Frank and I just waited.

The captain went on thickly, “Strite checks out of work at four p.m. Takes a bus home. Usually has a ten-minute wait at his transfer point, and spends it over a cup of coffee in a drug store. Today the stakeouts got sloppy. Couldn’t find a parking spot where they could see into the store, so they parked back a ways where all they could see was the entrance. The rider in the stakeout car should have walked up for a look, but he didn’t. Strite used a side door. The stakeouts didn’t tumble until the bus came and went, without Strite getting on.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “What happened with Martin?”

“Same type of shake. Took a taxi from home to a dime store on First. This time the rider went after him on foot but lost him in the crowd. There were a half dozen doors he could have gone out of.”

Frank said, “No question about them being deliberate shakes, huh?”

Peters shook his head. “Not the slightest.”

“Then they must have known they were being covered. Think maybe they’re off to a meeting of the gang?”

“Who knows? Maybe they’re planning to make a hit.”

Frank said dubiously, “If they know we’re on them, it’s hardly likely they’d do anything as foolish as trying to score.”

The captain was beginning to calm down. He looked at me and said, “What do you think, Joe?”

“I think Frank’s a little optimistic.”

Peters frowned. “You think they’d be crazy enough to pull a job when they know we suspect them?”

“You’d have to know Big Julie to understand,” I told him.

“Well, explain him then.”

“He’s an egomaniac,” I said. “I think he’d prefer to make a hit under circumstances like this. With us knowing he’s the guy but unable to prove it. Just so he can laugh in our faces.”

Captain Peters’ face began to redden again. “Who’s this character think he is? Robin Hood?”

“He acts like it, skipper. But one thing he hasn’t figured.”

“What?”

“We’re a little more efficient than the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

4:48 p.m. We got out a local and an APB on both suspects, requesting their pickup for questioning. Metro was tipped off to have all radio units watch for men of the suspects’ descriptions anywhere near supermarkets.

Frank phoned home and told Fay not to hold dinner as he probably wouldn’t be home until late. We ate in the eighth-floor cafeteria, then returned to the squad room and waited for something to happen.

Chapter 18

7:14 p.m. We were still waiting for a report on the suspects.

Frank lit the fourth cigarette in an hour and said, “Kind of hard to decide which would be better.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“To have ’em spotted and picked up on the street, or hope they try to score.”

When I didn’t say anything, he went on, “Picking them up might save somebody from getting killed tonight.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“On the other hand, there’s nothing to charge them with. No crime to shake a cover. Particularly when you’re not supposed to know you’re being tailed.”

I grunted.

“Kind of hope they don’t get picked up,” Frank decided.

“Why?”

“Just postpone the fireworks to another time.”

8:32 p.m. The hot-shot speaker came to life as whoever was taking a call on the complaint board cut in the line to Robbery Division in order to let us hear the phone conversation.

The complaint-board officer’s voice said, “Now will you repeat that again, sir?”

An excited male voice said, “It’s a regular gun battle. I’ll bet there’s been ten shots. You’d better hurry.”

“Where is this?” came the calm voice of the man on the complaint desk.

“Right across the street. From inside Morton’s Self-Service Market. I’m phoning from a tavern.”

“What’s the address? Of the market, I mean.”

“The number? Gosh, I don’t know. Beverly Boulevard, a few yards west of Alvarado. That good enough?”

“Yeah,” the complaint man said. “What is it? A robbery?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. You can see people milling around in there. There’s a big glass window. I’m not going close enough to find out.”

“Let’s roll,” I said to Frank, and we headed for the door. Probably the unhurried voice of the complaint-board officer had given the man who phoned in the impression that his call wasn’t getting very fast action. But what he didn’t know was that while the complaint-board officer was recording the essential information on a complaint form, an officer on the dispatcher’s mike was also listening in. The instant he heard the location of the trouble, he would pass it on to the communications girl whose board covered that area. The girl would glance at the map board in front of her showing the location and status of every radio unit in her territory by means of colored lights. Each color had a specific meaning, letting her know at a glance which cars were out of service, which were on other investigations, and which were free. While the complaint-board officer was taking down the witness’s name and getting more detailed information about the incident, she would be putting the essential first data on the air and assigning units to investigate.

As Frank and I reached the hall, Sergeant Tom Anderson and Joe LaMonica hurried from the door of Homicide Division.

Andy gave us a surprised look and said, “You fellows stuck for the night watch now, too?”

Without slowing down, I said, “Just working overtime. Headed for Beverly Boulevard and Alvarado?”

Andy grunted an affirmative.

8:36 p.m. We shot out of the First Street exit from the parking lot with Andy and LaMonica right on our tail. It was a straight run to the supermarket after Frank swung right. First runs right into Beverly Boulevard, joining it at such a slight angle, you might think they were the same street if you weren’t familiar with the town and weren’t watching street signs.

I called in that we were answering the call and asked for additional information.

“No additional information as yet,” the communications girl’s voice said. “Shots fired, possible Two-eleven at Morton’s Supermarket, Beverly Boulevard and Alvarado. Units One-A-Fifty-one and One-A-Eighty-one have been dispatched to the scene— Wait a minute. One-A-Fifty-one is calling in now.” There were a few seconds of silence. We were crossing over the freeway when the girl’s voice said, “Control One to Nine-K-Two.”

Picking up the mike, I said, “Nine-K-Two. Go ahead.”

“I now have additional information on the incident at Morton’s Supermarket. Two-eleven and a shooting. Two suspects engaged in a gunfight with the store manager during an attempted robbery. One clerk killed, one wounded. Neither suspect believed hit. Suspects observed driving from scene in a blue 1956 Buick sedan, license not known. Headed east on Beverly Boulevard approximately three minutes ago. Descriptions: both WMA, twenty-five to thirty-five years old. Dressed in tan leather jackets, tan slacks, brown hats. One well over six feet, weighing two-twenty-five to two-fifty The other five-six or seven, weighing one-twenty to one-twenty-five. Both were disguised with false noses attached to glasses frames. Unit One-A-Eighty-one is in pursuit. One-A-Fifty-one is standing by at scene.”

“Roger,” I said, and hung up the mike.

Frank said, “Sure sounds like Big Julie and Harry Strite, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Hardly seems possible they’d be that crazy.”

I grunted.

“Well, it is a crazy stunt if it’s them,” Frank said. “They can’t possibly get away with it.”

“Strite did once before.”

“Well, with that fancy alibi, sure. But the way these descriptions match, what chance they got?”

“Make you a bet,” I said.

“On what?”

“Martin and Strite come up with even fancier alibis this time.”

8:46 p.m. We arrived at Morton’s Self-Service Market. As in the previous shooting at West Sixth and Bixel, the gunfire had drawn a crowd of onlookers. A half-dozen radio units were at the scene, and uniformed officers had herded the crowd to the opposite side of the street. An ambulance was just pulling away.

Andy and LaMonica parked their car behind ours, and we entered the market together. In addition to two uniformed policemen, the store manager and two male clerks were inside. Only one of the clerks was on his feet, though. The other, a young man somewhere in his mid-twenties, sprawled on his back in one of the aisles, his mouth open and his eyes staring sightlessly upward. The small hole over his left breast hadn’t bled very much, indicating he had died almost instantly.

I showed my ID to one of the policemen and asked, “What’s the score?”

“Attempted robbery, Lieutenant. They didn’t get anything. Mr. McQuary had a gun in his belt under his apron.”

He indicated the store manager, who gave me a cocksure smile suggesting that he was extremely proud of himself for shooting it out with a pair of bandits. He was a stocky, powerfully muscled man of about forty, with hair-matted forearms and a nearly totally bald head.

I tabled him for the moment to get the rest of the officer’s report. He quickly rattled off what he knew, most of it a recapitulation of what the store manager and remaining clerk had told him.

The bandits had departed from their usual MO by forcing their way into the store just as the manager started to lock it from inside, instead of waiting until he had left and catching him at his car. The smaller suspect had kept the three clerks covered while the larger one had herded the manager toward the office, which contained the safe.

Halfway to the office the manager had suddenly jumped behind a display counter, pulled his concealed gun, and started firing. Altogether he had gotten off five shots, breaking a few bottles, puncturing some cans, but hitting neither suspect. The return fire, estimated to have been ten or twelve shots, killed one of the clerks and wounded another in the leg. The latter had been in the ambulance that had pulled away as we drove up.

“The suspects ran out and jumped into a car parked out front,” the officer concluded. “The clerk who was wounded tabbed it as a blue fifty-six Buick sedan, but couldn’t catch the license.”

While the officer was talking, Andy kneeled over the man on the floor to check for some sign of life. He rose shaking his head.

“Use your phone?” he asked the store manager.

“Sure,” the stocky man said. “Back in the office.”

Andy said to me, “I’ll phone in for a photographer,” and walked back to the office.

I turned to the store manager. “Your name’s McQuary, sir?” I said.

He nodded. “Howard J. McQuary. You know, these punks who go around sticking guns in people’s faces aren’t so tough when they get a gun stuck back at them.” He stuck out his powerful chest and patted the slight bulge made by the gun under his apron.

I looked at him, then said, “Can you describe the suspects?”

His descriptions were the same as we had heard broadcast over the air. The false noses and glasses frames had prevented him from getting anything but the vaguest impression of their faces. And in all the excitement he hadn’t tried to notice such features as he could see. He had no idea, for instance, what their mouths or chins looked like. Questioned about their voices, he said there was nothing distinctive about them.

“Neither one said more than a few words,” he said. “Little fellow said, ‘Get over there,’ to my clerks. Big fellow just said to me, ‘Head for your office, mister.’ Shooting started before they could say anything else.”

“Notice the color of their hair or eyes?” LaMonica asked.

McQuary looked thoughtful, then shook his head. He glanced at his clerk, a youngster of about nineteen. The boy swallowed and said, “I was too scared to notice much.”

I asked, “What’s the name of the man who was killed?”

He said it was Emmet Doyle, that he had been twenty-five, and had lived with his mother in an apartment on Hoover. The clerk who had been taken to Central Receiving was an Edward Coles, age thirty-five, and with a wife and three kids. Both Frank and LaMonica wrote this information in their notebooks.

“Good thing it wasn’t Eddie who got it,” McQuary said, with a shake of his head. “Being a family man and all. Don’t think he was wounded bad. Shed a lot of blood, but he could still walk on his leg. Must have been just a flesh wound.”

Frank said, “You think it was better the kid there got it, huh?”

Nobody but someone who knew Frank as well as I did could have detected the sharpness in his question. His voice was as quiet as ever, but I could detect the edge to it. He was staring at Howard J. McQuary with no expression on his face at all.

McQuary didn’t catch Frank’s disapproval. Taking the question at face value, he said, “Too bad about that, too. Don’t know what his mother will do now. She’s not very well, and the kid was her sole support. Probably had some insurance, though.”

Frank’s face turned a little red. I shook my head at him, and he didn’t say whatever he had intended to. Andy came from the office at the rear of the store and said, “Photographer will be along.”

I nodded acknowledgment and returned to McQuary. “How’d you happen to be carrying a gun?”

He let his chest swell again. “Been ever since your bulletin came out. Figured if this bunch tried to knock me over, I’d give ’em something to think about.”

LaMonica said, “Got a permit, Mr. McQuary?”

“Sure,” he said. “Had one for years. I’m responsible for making the night deposits, see. Ordinarily only carry it on the way to the bank. But since your bulletin I’ve been carrying it all the time.”

I said, “Didn’t you read all of our bulletin?”

He gave me a puzzled frown. “Sure. Why?”

“Part of it was what to do in case of a stickup. Remember?”

“You mean that bull about not resisting? Just handing over the cash?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

He emitted a disgusted snort. “That’s for the birds. More merchants did what I did, these punks would think twice before sticking anybody up. Punks don’t scare me. They got guns. Okay, I got one, too. And you notice I wasn’t afraid to use it.”

“We noticed,” I said, and glanced at the body on the floor.

He reddened a trifle. “How’d I know they’d shoot so wild? Or that Emmet wouldn’t have sense enough to fall flat? You can’t blame me for that.”

“I’m not,” I said. “But somebody else may.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“His mother.”

Chapter 19

9:48 p.m. We left Andy and LaMonica waiting for the coroner’s ambulance and the civilian photographer, while we drove back to the office. As we pulled away from the supermarket, Frank shook his head.

“Always has to be a hero,” he said.

“Not always,” I said. “Most people follow what our bulletins say to do.”

“I suppose,” he conceded. “But this guy didn’t even seem sorry. Acted proud of himself.”

“Well, of course he didn’t get the kid killed on purpose. No question about him having the legal right to defend himself.”

“Hope that lets him sleep better,” Frank said sourly.

We rode along in silence. Then Frank said, “Didn’t our want on Martin and Strite describe them as wearing dark suits?”

“Yeah.”

“Suspects wore tan jackets and slacks. And if they’d gone home to change, they’d have been picked up by the stakeouts.”

“Doesn’t mean much,” I said.

“How you figure?”

“You don’t necessarily have to be home to change clothes.”

We got a surprise when we walked into the squad room. Under the watchful eye of a uniformed officer, Big Julie and Harry Strife sat side by side in a corner. Both wore dark-blue suits, white shirts, and dark ties. Big Julie grinned when he saw us, and lifted one large hand in a lazy salute.

I recognized the policeman as one who worked the downstairs desk. I gave him a questioning look.

“They were picked up on a business dispute at a foreign-film theater on Wilshire,” the officer said. “Place called the Odean.” He looked at a complaint form in his hand. “At nine thirty-two p.m. Just a half hour ago.”

Frank and I looked the two men over without saying anything.

“Arresting officer recognized them from your want,” the policeman went on. “Probably would just have warned them and let them go otherwise. Instead he brought them in.”

I said, “What was the disturbance?”

Big Julie answered before the officer could speak. “It was hardly a disturbance, Lieutenant. We just wanted our money back. It was a lousy show.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“‘An orgy of sex,’ the blurb said. I warned the ticket seller when we went in that we’d demand our money back if the show didn’t live up to its ad. She guaranteed that it would. But it was about as sexy as a Donald Duck cartoon.”

“Was, huh?”

“Most boring thing I ever attended. All in French, with British subtitles. There ought to be a law against such misleading advertising.”

I said in a bored tone, “Suppose you still have your stubs.”

Big Julie simulated surprise. “I don’t know. Probably dropped them on the theater floor.” He made an elaborate search of his pockets, finally came up with a ticket stub from the last one he looked in. “I did happen to save it,” he said in a pleased voice.

Harry Strife had been searching his pockets, too. He said, “Whata’ya know? I happened to save mine, too.”

I took both stubs, glanced at them, and dropped them into a pocket.

“Let’s go,” I said to the suspects.

“Where?” Big Julie asked.

“Down to the Felony Section.”

“For what?” he demanded. “You can’t hold us for a little thing like this.”

“We aren’t,” I told him.

“Then what’s the charge?”

“Couple of minor things.”

“Like what?”

“Suspicion of armed robbery,” I said. “Plus suspicion of murder.”

10:24 p.m. We took the suspects down to the Felony Section and booked them. Then we went back upstairs to see Lieutenant Bud Newton, the night-watch commander in Homicide Division. We asked him to tell Andy and LaMonica when they returned that the suspects were in custody and to request them not to start questioning them that night.

“Why not?” Bud asked.

“They’ve built a fancy alibi,” I said. “We’re going out to see if we can break it down. Like to have some of the answers in advance before anyone starts throwing them questions.”

“Okay,” Bud said. “I’ll tell Andy and LaMonica.”

We left the Police Building and drove over to the Odean Theater. The Odean was one of those movie houses that specialize in foreign-made films that heavily emphasize sex. The advertised feature was “Summer Lust,” and it was billed even more sensationally than Big Julie had indicated. All he’d quoted was the last part of the ad. In full it read: Passion at its basest. Lust without love. The savage story of a man and woman who hate each other’s souls, but whose bodies crave each other. An orgy of sex.

Frank said, “Sounds pretty strong, huh? Didn’t know they allowed pictures like that.”

“They don’t,” I said. “Ever been to one of these places?”

Frank looked at me. “Think I’d ever get Fay to a movie like that?”

“All the sex is in the ads,” I told him. “You wouldn’t have to worry.”

“What you think,” Frank said. “One look at the ads, and she wouldn’t fix me Swedish meatballs for a year.”

As the last show was well under way, there was no one in the box office. A ticket taker was still on duty, however, apparently for no other purpose than to keep latecomers from sneaking in to see the last part of the show free. He told us the girl who sold tickets was in the manager’s office. We found her there helping the manager check the night’s receipts.

She was an attractive blonde of about twenty named Sharon Strawser. The theater manager was a sleek, oily-haired man of about forty with a hairline mustache and sideburns just a shade longer than the average man wears. He introduced himself as Henry Thomas.

I said, “We’re checking on a business dispute you had about nine thirty, Mr. Thomas. Like to ask you and your cashier a few questions.”

The theater manager raised his eyebrows. “Seems a lot of fuss over a minor incident.”

I said, “We have reason to believe that the men involved were deliberately creating an alibi to clear them of a serious crime. It’s important to establish whether or not they really were in the theater during the time they claim.”

“Oh,” Thomas said. “Sure, Officers. We’ll do anything we can to co-operate.”

I handed the girl the two ticket stubs. “Can you tell by the numbers on these about when they were sold?”

She checked them against the first number on the remainder of the roll of tickets that had been used that night. “They were issued for the show starting at seven thirty,” she reported. “You really didn’t need these, though. I remember the two men buying them. It was about twenty-five after seven.”

Frank said, “How’d you happen to remember them, ma’am?”

Sharon Strawser didn’t exactly blush, but she looked as though she was on the verge of it. “The big man kidded around some when he bought the tickets. It held up the line for a minute.”

“How do you mean, ‘kidded around’?” I asked.

“Well, before he bought tickets, he said, ‘You sure this show’s all right for innocent young men to see? We don’t want to lose our Bible-class pins.’ The way he said it, it was a lot funnier than it sounds. I mean he was such a big fellow, and looked so sophisticated and sure of himself, like he’d been around a lot. The kind of fellow a girl would know at first glance it wouldn’t be safe to park with. That’s what made it so funny.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Well, I cracked right back at him. I said, ‘If you ever had a Bible-class pin, I bet you pinned it to some girl in Lovers’ Lane.’ He laughed, then looked serious again and said, ‘Honest, does the show come up to its billing? Is it really hot?’ I told him we had the air-conditioner turned up double to cool off the audience. He said, ‘It better be. I’m a congenial character myself, but my pal here has a nasty temper. Hates to be cheated. He’ll be out here yelling for his money back if the show’s no good.’ The little fellow with him grinned at me, so I figured the big guy was still kidding. I told them we guaranteed satisfaction, and gave them their tickets. Then I forgot all about them until the show broke two hours later.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“They came out with the rest of the crowd. There were a couple of people waiting to buy tickets for the next show, but the little guy pushed right in front of them and said, ‘Okay, baby. We gave you fair warning. We want our money back.’ At first I thought he was just trying to be funny, but customers were waiting and I didn’t have time for jokes. I told him to please step aside. Instead he planted himself right in front of the window and announced that no one at all was going to buy a ticket until he and his friend got their admissions back. One of the men in line started to push him out of the way, but his big friend tapped him on the shoulder and sort of shook his head. The man gave him one look and decided not to interfere. The little fellow started to tell everyone in line what a lousy show it was and how much the ads lied. I saw I couldn’t handle it, so I closed the box-office window and went for Mr. Thomas.”

I looked at Henry Thomas and asked, “What’d you do about it?”

The theater manager frowned. “I went out to the box office and tried to reason with them. They became abusive. Or at least the little man did. The big man just stood there and grinned. I’d have returned their money just to quiet them down if the little guy hadn’t been so insulting. But he made me mad. I came back in and called the police.”

Frank said, “Any way they could have left the theater and gotten back in again later?”

“They could have left at any time by one of the fire exits,” Thomas said. “But they’d have had a hard time getting back in. They don’t open from outside. And our ushers are instructed to keep a sharp eye on them to prevent kids from sneaking in. Whenever one’s opened, light shines in from outside. I’m sure they would have been spotted if they’d tried anything like that.”

“How about the washroom windows?” I asked.

“There aren’t any. It’s an inside room.”

By now it was past 11:00 p.m. As the last show broke at 11:30, we waited until the house was clear, then examined the fire exits. There were two on each side of the house, all clearly visible from the back of the room.

There were three ushers on duty. We questioned them all, and all three assured us that they would have spotted the suspects trying to re-enter the theater by that route.

One of them said, “When one of those doors opens, it throws light all over the house. You couldn’t miss its opening, even if you weren’t looking that way.”

We also questioned the ticket taker. He was of no help at all. He didn’t recall seeing anyone of the suspects’ descriptions either enter or leave.

“It’s pretty dark there by the door,” he explained. “And when they come in, the light from the lobby’s right in my face. They all look just like dull blurs to me. Don’t think I’d recognize my own mother.”

When we left the theater, we stood on the sidewalk in front, thoughtfully looking the building over. Suddenly I got an idea.

“Think I got it,” I said to Frank.

“Yeah? You’re one up on me.”

I pointed to the ticket cage. It faced the street, bulging out onto the sidewalk for a couple of feet. On either side of it were two pairs of double doors into the lobby.

“You buy your ticket there,” I said. “Then what do you do?”

Frank gave me an odd look. “Go inside and hand it to the ticket taker, I guess.”

“Yeah. First crossing the lobby. Once you enter the lobby, the box-office girl can’t see you any more. And the ticket taker doesn’t see you until you open the door into the theater.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The box-office girl also can’t see those two end doors. Unless she cranes her neck. Big Julie and Strite bought their tickets, walked into the lobby by one of the center doors, walked right out again by the end door. Two hours later they came back in again by the same door, presented their tickets to the ticket taker, spent about five minutes in the theater and came out with the crowd when the show broke.”

After mulling this over, Frank said, “Could be. Only one thing.”

“What?”

“Why present their tickets at all? They could tear them in half themselves, and just pretend to be coming out with the crowd. That way they wouldn’t risk the ticket taker remembering the time they turned them in.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “And maybe that gives us a break.”

“How’s that?”

“If the other halves of their stubs aren’t in the ticket box, it will prove they never entered the theater.”

We went back inside and asked the manager if he minded sticking around for a few more minutes. He said he’d be glad to. When we told him what we wanted, he asked his other employees to stay over to help. So all together there were seven of us to check the numbers on the stubs in the ticket box.

It took us about a half hour. And the only result was to make the suspects’ alibis stronger.

Both ticket stubs were in the box.

Chapter 20

12:29 a.m. Andy and LaMonica had returned to Homicide Division by the time we got back to the Police Building. They reported that a blue ’56 Buick sedan, believed to be the one used in the robbery, had been found parked a dozen blocks from the robbery scene. D.M.V. had identified it as a stolen car.

It had been wiped clear of prints.

They also told us that twelve bullets had been recovered from food tins and boxes in the grocery store. These, and the gun belonging to the store manager, had been turned over to the Crime Lab.

We told Andy and LaMonica about the suspects’ alibi, Andy’s reaction was a sour grin. LaMonica gave his head a disgusted shake.

“Their tickets were actually in the box, huh?” LaMonica said.

“Yeah,” I said. “They didn’t miss a bet.”

Frank said, “Probably did what you suggested first, Joe. Handed in their tickets a couple of minutes before the show broke, then walked back out with the crowd when it did break.”

“What do you think, Joe?” Andy asked. “They got us beat again?”

I looked at him. “We won’t give up just yet.”

“How you going to stick them? Our own stakeouts will have to testify that at four p.m. they were dressed exactly as they are now. The bandits were dressed entirely different. Sure the alibi’s phony, but how you going to break it? We’ve all had enough previous dealings with them to know how far we’ll get with just questioning. On the evidence we’ve got, the D.A. wouldn’t issue a complaint in a thousand years.”

“Then we’ll get more.”

“How?” Andy asked.

“For one thing, we can hold a special show-up tomorrow night. Dress them as the robbers were dressed and put false noses on them. Show them with a few other men about their sizes dressed in the same way. It’s a long shot, but there’s at least a chance we’ll get positive makes.”

Andy screwed up his nose. “What’s another thing?” he asked.

I turned to Frank. “You got the stakeout reports on Martin and Strite?”

“Over in the office,” he said.

“How about bringing them over?”

Frank crossed the hall to Robbery Division and returned with a sheaf of papers. I thumbed through them.

“Nothing in here about them attending the Odean prior to tonight,” I said.

LaMonica said, “What you mean?”

“The same show’s been on since Sunday. According to the stakeout reports, they weren’t near the Odean before tonight.”

An understanding light grew in LaMonica’s eyes. “You mean maybe they don’t know what the show was about?”

“Unless they saw it tonight, they’re going to have a tough time describing it.”

Andy shook his head. “As cute as they’re playing this, they wouldn’t slip on a detail like that. They could have had some other member of the gang see the show and describe it to them.”

“Imagine they did,” I said. “But you can’t get all the details of a show from somebody else’s description. You fellows got anything on tomorrow afternoon?”

LaMonica shook his head and Andy said, “Nothing I can’t get out of.”

“Then meet us at the Odean at one p.m. We’ll take in a matinee.”

The following morning, Wednesday, April 23rd, Frank and I checked with the Crime Lab. Four of the recovered bullets had been identified as from the store manager’s gun. Of the remaining eight, five were .45 caliber and three were .38. It was one of the .45-caliber slugs that had killed the clerk.

Ray Pinker, technical director of the Crime Lab, told us that the murder bullet was in good enough shape for comparison purposes, in the event we ever turned the weapon it came from.

Later that morning we arranged for a special show-up that evening. We contacted Howard J. McQuary, who agreed to close his store an hour early in order to get himself and his clerks to the auditorium by 8:00 p.m. He said both clerks could be there. The wounded man had proved to have only a flesh wound, which had incapacitated him for work, but was not serious enough to keep him from the show-up.

At 1 p.m. we met Andy and LaMonica at the Odean and spent two hours watching “Summer Lust,” plus a selection of shorts.

3:32 p.m. We had the two suspects brought upstairs for questioning. At the moment there was less going on in Homicide than in Robbery, so we questioned them in the Homicide squad room.

We had Strite and Martin take chairs in a corner of the room. Andy seated himself on a table facing them. LaMonica slouched against the wall with his hands in his pockets. Frank and I remained standing.

Big Julie ran his eyes over the circle of faces around him and said, “Seems like a lot of inquisitors for a minor offense like creating a disturbance.”

“We’re movie fans,” LaMonica said. “Like to hear what the show at the Odean was about.”

Big Julie raised his eyebrows. “Why? Too cheap to buy tickets?”

“Save the gags,” I said. “Did you see the show?”

“You saw our stubs, didn’t you?”

I turned from him to Harry Strite. “Outline the plot for us, Harry.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I said so. Were not going to play games with you, mister. You know why were asking. Here’s your chance to pin down your alibi. Either take it, or you go back in the can until you get a chance to talk in court.”

Big Julie said, “Why do we need an alibi? You haven’t told us what we’re suspected of yet. We could have been out of here by now if we’d insisted on calling a lawyer. We preferred to cooperate.”

“Okay,” I said. “On your feet. We’ll go back downstairs.”

“Wait a minute,” Strite protested. “If you want to know what the show was about, we’ll tell you.”

“Then do it.”

“Can I have a cigarette first?”

I gave him one. LaMonica shook one from his pack for Big Julie. Each of us struck a match and held it to a cigarette. Strite blew out a stream of smoke and comfortably crossed his legs.

“It’s kind of a long story,” he said.

“We’ve got all day, mister,” I told him.

“Well, the thing takes place on a little farm in France. It’s a French-made picture, you know, with English subtitles.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s this girl Lucette, and her mother, and a guy named Jacques on the farm. Lucette’s mother and Jacques’s father were married. Only the kids aren’t no blood relation. They’re both from previous marriages, and they’re jealous of each other. Grew up hating each other’s guts. But all this happened before the picture starts, see. You find out about it from what they all say to each other.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Go on.”

“When the picture opens, the old man is already dead. It was the old lady who owned the farm, so Jacques didn’t inherit nothing. He’s sort of in the spot of being just a hired hand, only he don’t get no salary because he’s also a member of the family. He don’t like any part of it, and he’d take off, except there ain’t no place to go. The old lady don’t like him any better than Lucette does. She’d kick him out, except she needs him to run the farm.”

Frank said, “What was the old lady’s name?”

“Ceil,” Strite said without hesitation. “Anyway, the kids are about twenty when the picture starts. And all they do is battle. It comes summer, and one day they’re in the barn together doing chores. They have their usual argument, and she slaps him. He grabs her, they struggle around some, and all of a sudden something happens. He finds himself kissing her.”

I said, “What was the argument about?”

“Huh?” Strite asked. “Oh, just one of those things. Anyway—”

“What was the argument about?” I repeated.

Strite glanced at Big Julie, who smiled mockingly and said, “You’re telling the story.”

The smaller man shrugged. “I don’t remember. They was always arguing about something. Anyway—”

“What color dress did Lucette have on in the barn?” I asked

He looked blank. “Color?”

“Didn’t you notice it was in Technicolor?”

“Well, sure—”

“You damned fool!” Big Julie said. He gave me a companionable smile. “Harry was about half drunk, Lieutenant. I’m surprised he remembered as much as he did. The picture was in black and white.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, and motioned the two men to their feet.

“What now?” Big Julie asked.

“Back to the Felony Section.”

“Don’t you want to know how the picture came out?”

“We saw it,” I told him.

Frank and I took the two suspects back downstairs. As we went down the steps, Frank said, “You’re not having much luck for a master criminal, are you, Julie?”

The big man glanced sidewise at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, the way you louse these jobs up,” Frank said cheerfully.

“What jobs?”

“Well, the one at Grammon’s Supermarket, for instance. Guess you planned that. And muffed it because you forgot to check about the burglar alarm. Poor stupid little Strite here set himself up for the gas chamber by killing a police officer, and didn’t even get any loot.”

Strite said, “Hey, I never killed anybody in my life!”

We reached the bottom of the stairs, and Frank rang the buzzer to the Felony Section. The electrical lock buzzed, and he pushed it open. All four of us passed through the door.

Frank said, “Then take last night, for instance. First job you’ve pulled personally, and you muffed it like an amateur. Wouldn’t be surprised if the gang kicked you out and got a boss with brains.”

Big Julie’s face started to redden. He opened his mouth, then closed it again and let a slow smile form on his face. He shook his head chidingly.

“Huh-uh, Sergeant,” he said. “It’s not going to work.”

“What?” Frank asked.

“Making me mad. I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

Chapter 21

8:04 p.m. We held the special show-up in the auditorium. We picked three police officers of about Big Julie’s size to stand up with him, and three civilian employees of Harry Strife’s general height and build to stand with him. We had to settle for civilian employees because there weren’t three police officers as small as Strite available.

All eight were dressed in tan jackets, tan slacks, and brown hats, similar to what the bandits had worn. And each wore a false nose attached to glasses frames.

One by one the eight men were told to move forward from the height chart and stand in the yellow circle in the center of the stage. The sergeant at the control panel at the rear of the auditorium asked the standard questions over his microphone. These were questions of a general nature, designed not so much to obtain information as to allow witnesses to hear the suspects’ voices. They included such things as age, place of birth, and whether or not the suspect drove a car. The same routine questions are asked all suspects at all show-ups.

The suspects replied without the aid of an electronic amplifier. The acoustics of the auditorium were designed so that the normal speaking voice of anyone standing in the yellow circle can be heard clearly all over the room.

The show-up was a dud. The wounded clerk tentatively picked both Big Julie and Strite as the robbers, but wasn’t certain of either identification. The other clerk was unable to decide on anyone. Howard J. McQuary confidently picked one of the civilian employees as the smaller bandit. He pointed out the man he believed to be the larger one with equal lack of hesitation.

It was Sergeant Brady of Robbery Division.

Frank muttered to me disgustedly, “Shall we ask Brady for his alibi?”

We made one last try. After the show-up we had the suspects brought upstairs again and questioned them for an hour in separate rooms. This time Frank and I took Harry Strite and left Big Julie to Andy and LaMonica.

We got no admissions of any sort from either of them.

After returning the suspects to the Felony Section, we all met in the small coffee room downstairs to compare notes.

Andy said, “Kind of a bust, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Frank said, “Not much doubt from the performance this afternoon that they never saw that show.”

I said, “Not in my mind.”

“Only thing is, would it stand up in court?”

“No,” I said.

All three of them looked at me.

I said, “That was just to satisfy us. A good lawyer could knock it to pieces. All he’d have to do is keep them off the stand. And let the theater personnel testify. Martin and Strite couldn’t even be asked what they remembered about the show.”

Frank said, “The prosecution could call us. Our testimony that, on questioning, the suspects didn’t know the details of the show ought to carry some weight.”

I shook my head. “You know the standard defense tricks. ‘Did they seem to know the general story line, Officer? Yes? Well, now, Officer, do you recall all the details of every movie you ever saw?’”

LaMonica sighed. “Yeah. I’ve been in that spot. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s on trial. The defendant or the arresting officer.”

Andy said, “They’re gonna best us again, huh?”

“We’ll throw it in the chief’s lap tomorrow,” I said. “Ask him to talk it over with the D.A. But you know what the D.A. will say.”

“I’m afraid so,” Andy said. “But tell us anyway.”

“He’ll say, ‘turn ’em loose.’”

Thursday, April 24th, at 8:31 a.m., we met with Captain Peters and Chief Brown in the latter’s office. When we finished outlining the case — or rather, lack of case — Chief Brown’s mouth hardened into a straight line.

“You’re absolutely convinced these men committed the crime?” he asked.

I said, “Why else would they deliberately build an alibi?”

The chief said, “Seems incredible that they’d flaunt it in our faces this way. Is this Big Julie crazy?”

“It’s the way he gets his kicks,” I said. “He plays it like a game. He wouldn’t be happy just to pull a job and let us wonder who did it. He wants us to know he did it and dare us to prove it.”

“Strite has the same attitude?”

Frank said, “Strite just follows Big Julie’s lead, sir. He’s just a small-time punk who thinks Julie is the smartest man alive.”

It isn’t often that Chief Brown gets angry. And even when he does, it may not be apparent to anyone who doesn’t know him well. Now his face darkened ever so slightly and his voice turned frigid. A casual observer might have assumed he was mildly irked. We, who knew him, realized he was on the verge of rage.

“As I see it, the situation boils down to this, then,” he said coldly. “We’re relatively certain that Harry Strite was one of the bandits who murdered Officer Ferguson. We’re virtually sure that Martin and Strite pulled this last job, which involved another murder. And you’re telling me that we can’t do a thing about either case?”

Peters said uncomfortably, “Friday and Smith have done everything they can, sir. I can’t see that they’ve missed a trick.”

Chief Brown stared at the captain, then picked up his phone and called the district attorney. He spoke to him for several minutes, outlining the situation as Frank and I had explained it. His eyes were bleak behind their glasses when he hung up.

“He wouldn’t touch it,” he said. “We’ll have to release them.”

We started to rise, and the chief said, “One thing isn’t going to happen again.”

“What, sir?” I asked.

“The stakeouts getting shaken.”

He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have to. We all knew what he meant. The next stakeout who lost Big Julie or Harry Strite was going to be an ex-cop.

I said, “We’ve still got one outside chance on this.”

“What?”

“They had to change their clothes somewhere. Probably at the pad of some other member of the gang. Maybe Maury Wey’s. If we could locate the pad, maybe find the murder gun and some false noses—”

“Got a plan for locating it?”

“Well, Big Julie and Strite together make a pretty striking pair. Him being so big and Strite so little. We could run a check of rooming houses and hotels to see if a pair like that was spotted visiting somebody.”

The chief grunted. “Worth a try, I suppose. You’ll need a lot of help.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll check the various divisions and assign you as many plainclothes men as I can. Peters, can you spare anybody from Robbery?”

“Couple of teams, maybe. We’re up to our necks, as usual.” He turned to me. “Take Killeby and Perry, Lightner and McCaleb.”

“Thanks, skipper,” I said.

Chief Brown said, “I’ll have the others report to you within the next hour.”

9:02 a.m. As we walked back into the squad room, Frank went over to the map on the wall and stuck a colored pin in it at Beverly Boulevard and Alvarado. Then he stood back and examined the map sourly.

“See any directional trend yet?” he asked.

“Well, it’s a little west of the others,” I said.

“Yeah. And the second two were a little east of the first one. Know how I think they’re picking them?”

“How?”

“Opening the classified section of the phone book to ‘Grocers, Retail,’ closing their eyes, and jabbing with a pin.”

“Could be,” I said. “Well, let’s get it over with.”

“What?”

“Corner Pocket said to turn Martin and Strife loose.”

I picked up a phone and started the procedure for the suspects’ release.

9:34 a.m. Eight teams of officers in addition to the two from Robbery reported to us from other divisions, giving us a total of eleven, counting ourselves.

The Bunco-Fugitive Division maintains a mimeographed list of rooming houses and hotels, arranged geographically. We borrowed a copy of it and divided the list into eleven sections.

Frank glumly looked over our list.

“You know, Joe,” he said, “I like working with you except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You always do it, every case we get.”

“Do what?”

“Talk us into some leg work.”

Chapter 22

The section Frank and I drew was in the Hollywood district. We spent the rest of that day trudging from rooming house to rooming house, asking landlords and landladies if they had seen two men of Big Julie’s and Harry Strife’s descriptions on the afternoon or evening of Tuesday, April 22nd.

At 4:00 p.m. we stopped for a break in a little coffee shop on Franklin. We sat at the counter and ordered coffee.

As Frank stirred his coffee he said, “These are a couple of guys I’ll never forget.”

“Big Julie and Strife?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We’ve showed those pictures to so many people and have reeled off their descriptions so many times, I could draw a composite of ’em twenty years from now.”

“Didn’t know you could draw,” I said.

“As a matter of fact, I’m pretty good.”

“That so?”

“I have an outstanding natural talent. Just needs development.”

“Oh? Never heard you mention it before.”

Frank said, “Just found it out recently.”

“How was that?”

“Well, I was lighting a cigarette one day, and happened to notice an ad on the match folder. The Bon Ton Art School. Advertised a free talent test. There was a picture of a girl’s head on the folder, and all you had to do was copy it in enlarged form on a piece of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven paper and mail in the drawing. No obligation.”

I said, “You mailed one in, huh?”

“Sure did. And you know what?”

“What?”

“The director of the school wrote me back personally. Said he usually left that to subordinates, but mine was such an unusual case he was writing me himself. Said I had about as much natural talent as he’d ever seen. Suggested I take their correspondence course.”

“For how much?” I asked.

“Only twenty-five bucks. For the beginning course.”

I said, “So now you’re getting the development you need, huh?”

“Well, no,” Frank said. “I talked it over with Fay. She asked what I intended to do after I finished the course. Quit the department and open a studio? Hadn’t occurred to me I wouldn’t have much use for it.”

“So you decided not to invest, huh?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “But I’ve still got that natural talent.”

When we finished our coffee we went back to work. We decided to complete Franklin Street, which would take us until about 5:00, and knock off for the day.

4:33 p.m. We rang the bell of a rooming house not much different from a hundred others we had seen that day. It was a neat, two-story frame building, old but well kept up. A sign in a front window said no vacancy.

A thin, sorrowful-looking woman of about sixty came to the door. Before I could open my mouth she said in a tone more reproachful than sharp, “Didn’t you see the sign in the window, young man?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “We’re not looking for a room. We’re police officers.” I showed my ID. “This is my partner, Sergeant Smith. My name’s Friday.”

Her eyes spread in shock. “Don’t tell me you’ve found him after all this time.”

I said, “Who, ma’am?”

“My husband. I thought you’d have forgotten about it by now. Where is he?”

I said, “Afraid we’re not here about that, ma’am. Just want to ask if you saw a couple of men in the neighborhood last Tuesday.”

Her surprise evaporated, but she looked more relieved than disappointed. “You gave me a turn. Suppose I should have known it wouldn’t be that, though. Don’t imagine you keep people on your missing list more than a few months.”

“Little longer than that, ma’am,” Frank said. “What happened to your husband?”

“Why, he just went down to the corner for a paper and never came back.”

“And you reported it to the police?”

“The very next day.”

I said, “When did he disappear, ma’am?”

“April ninth, at seven p.m.”

“That isn’t months ago,” I said. “It’s only a couple of weeks.”

“Good gracious, young man,” the woman said. “This was April ninth, 1936.”

I glanced at Frank. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, held it to his face, and coughed slightly. His face was completely expressionless when he put the handkerchief away. The woman said, “Now, what was it you officers wanted?” We described the two suspects and showed her the two mugg shots. She examined them interestedly and handed them back.

In a matter-of-fact tone she asked, “What is it you want with Mr. Brown and Mr. Jones?”

I recovered first. “You know them, ma’am?” I said.

“Only met them once, Officer. Last Tuesday, I believe. When they visited Mr. Smith.”

Frank said, “Mind if we step in and talk to you a minute, ma’am?”

4:46 p.m. The landlady said her name was Mrs. Jennie Burdette. The roomer whom the suspects had visited on Tuesday was a Ralph Smith, who had the second-floor room immediately at the top of the stairs. He was not at home at the moment, and she didn’t expect him for some time.

“He works the second shift,” Mrs. Burdette said. “As a printer at one of the papers, I believe he said. Don’t recall which one, if he ever told me. He usually sleeps till noon, goes out about one, and doesn’t come home until evening. Never before seven or eight, sometimes as late as one or two in the morning. Except for last Tuesday. He was here all evening that night.”

Mrs. Burdette said she had met the suspects on the stairs about 6:00 p.m. Tuesday as she was going up and they were coming down. When she asked what they wanted, they told her they had been visiting their friend Mr. Smith and were just leaving. Ralph Smith had come to the door of his room then and called down, “It’s all right, Mrs. Burdette. They’re friends of mine.” After the men went out, she asked Smith who they were and he told her their names were Brown and Jones.

Frank said, “How were they dressed, ma’am?”

“In tan jackets and slacks. Believe they had hats in their hands, too. Brown ones.”

“Did they return again later?” I asked. “Possibly about nine P.M.?”

Mrs. Burdette shook her head. “If they did, I didn’t see them. Course I’m not always out front here.” She thought, then said, “Matter of fact I was out that evening. Went to a movie.”

Frank said, “What’s this Ralph Smith look like?”

“Oh, he’s quite a nice-looking man. About average size. Five-ten or eleven, I should say, and perhaps a hundred and seventy to a hundred and eighty pounds.”

“What type of face?”

“Quite handsome. Except for his little mustache. I don’t like that. My husband had one just like it, you see.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Frank said. “About how old is he?”

“Around thirty, I’d guess. He’s really quite a nice man. And very well-educated. You should hear some of the big words he uses.”

Frank and I exchanged glances. I said, “Would you mind letting us take a look at Mr. Smith’s room, ma’am?”

She looked at me as though I’d suddenly grown an extra head. “Without him there? Certainly not, young man!”

I said, “We won’t disturb anything, ma’am. And you’d be present to see that we don’t.”

“But why?” she asked. “If those other two men are some type of criminal, I’m sure Mr. Smith doesn’t know it. Certainly you don’t suspect him of anything, do you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “It’s quite possible he’s a man we’re looking for.”

“Mr. Smith! Why he’s such a nice man.”

“We’d still like to look at his room, ma’am.”

A little reluctantly, she finally decided to agree. She rose and started to lead us toward the stairs.

I said, “If you don’t mind, ma’am, we’d like to go up without you first to make sure he’s not home. If you’d just lend us your pass key and tell us which room it is. As soon as we’re sure the room’s empty, we’ll call to you to come up.”

Her mild indignation began to be replaced by trepidation. “You mean there might be some trouble?” she asked in a shaky voice.

“There might, ma’am.”

Without argument she handed over a pass key. “First door to the left at the top of the stairs,” she said.

She watched us from the bottom of the stairs as we went quietly up them. Halfway up I glanced back and saw that her eyes were wide and her mouth hung slightly open.

Frank and I drew our guns and took up positions on either side of the door. I reached out and knocked. When there was no response, I tried the knob without getting my body in front of the door. The door was locked.

Slipping the key in the lock, I turned it, slammed the door wide, and jumped into the room, my gun raised and ready.

The room was empty.

I put my gun away and nodded to Frank, who stood in the doorway covering me. He re-holstered his gun and called, “All right, Mrs. Burdette. He’s not home.”

When she joined us in the room, her face had become quite pale. “What’s he done?” she asked. “He must be a dangerous criminal, or you wouldn’t behave like this. What’s he done, Officers?”

“Several things, if he’s the man we think,” Frank said. “But don’t worry, ma’am. We won’t leave you until we’ve had a chance to talk to him.”

We made a quick but thorough shakedown of the room while the landlady stood in the middle of the floor wringing her hands. In the closet we found four tan jackets, four pairs of tan slacks, and four brown hats. One set was about the size Big Julie would wear, one about Harry Strife’s size, and one about the size of the room occupant as Mrs. Burdette had described him. The fourth set consisted of a size 40 jacket, slacks with a 36-inch waist, and a size 7 hat, which meant it was for a man broader than the room occupant but smaller than Big Julie.

In a dresser drawer we found four false noses with attached glasses frames and four guns. Two were .45-caliber automatics, two were .38-caliber revolvers.

There was not a cent of money in the room.

I said to the landlady, “Could we use your phone, ma’am?”

“Of course,” she said. “There’s a pay phone right out in the hall.”

Although it was now past 5:00, I caught Captain Donahoe before he left the office. When I got him on the phone I said, “Friday, Skipper. We just hit the jackpot.”

“Yeah?” he said. “What’s up?”

“Found the pad where Martin and Strife changed clothes. Four sets of tan jackets, tan slacks, and brown hats in it. Four false noses with attached glasses frames. And four guns.”

“Where is it?”

I gave him the address. “The tenant’s out and probably won’t be back before 7:00 p.m. at the earliest. We’re sticking now, though, in case he makes it earlier. Better get the place staked out. And put out another pickup order on Martin and Strife. Oh yeah, will you phone Frank’s wife and tell her he’ll be late again?”

“Sure,” the captain said. “Anything else?”

“Might send us over a riot gun. And a mugg shot for the landlady to look at to see if she can identify her roomer.”

“Whose mugg shot?”

“Maury Wey’s,” I said. “The description fits all along the line.”

Chapter 23

Only a few moments after I hung up and returned to the room, the phone rang. Mrs. Burdette went to answer it.

We heard her say, “Hello.” There was a pause, then she said in a high, shaky voice, “Mr. Smith? Why... why, I don’t know if he’s here or not. What did you — I mean, wait till I see.”

I made the hall a hair ahead of Frank. Mrs. Burdette stood with the receiver still to her ear, looking toward me with a frightened expression on her face. I made a frantic gesture for her to drop the phone and walk away from it.

Instead she said in a piercing whisper, “It’s a call for Mr. Smith, Officer. What shall I—”

I was to her then, and had clapped a palm over the mouthpiece. I took the handset from her unresisting hand and put the receiver to my ear. The line was still open, but after a moment there was a click and I heard the dial tone.

I hung up slowly. Mrs. Burdette looked at me from stricken eyes. “I did that all wrong, didn’t I?” she said. “I gave you away.”

“It’s all right, ma’am,” I said.

She put her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, I feel terrible. I said ‘Officer.’ He heard me, didn’t he?”

“It was a man, huh? Recognize his voice?”

She shook her head.

“Could it have been Mr. Brown or Mr. Jones?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It was just a man. I’ve spoiled everything, haven’t I?”

Frank said in a kindly tone, “This sort of thing isn’t something you’re used to, ma’am. Don’t worry about it. Could have happened to anybody.”

I left the job of soothing her feelings to Frank, while I dropped coins and dialed Madison 5-7911 again. A moment later I had Captain Peters.

“We had some bad luck, skipper,” I said. “A phone call came for the suspect a minute ago. The landlady answered the phone. She got rattled and accidentally gave away that the police were here. It may have been some guy who had no connection with the gang, but I doubt it.”

“Why?” he asked.

“An innocent caller would have asked what was up. This guy hung up.”

“Doesn’t sound good,” the captain agreed. “I’ve already sent a team after Big Julie and Strite. Let’s hope they get there before your caller tips them off. Or they may realize the jig is up and come out shooting.”

“With what?” I asked. “We’ve had their place shaken down often enough to know they haven’t got any guns at home.”

“Well, yeah. But they might make a break for it.”

“They staked out?” I asked.

“Had tails when they left here. With instructions to commit hara-kiri if they lost them.”

“One thing could make it bad,” I said.

“What?”

“If the caller was Big Julie or Strite.”

5:34 p.m. The reinforcements sent by Captain Peters arrived. Three men, all from Robbery Division, reported. They were Sergeant Brady, Sergeant Reed, and Officer Bently.

Brady told us that radio units were in place all around the block. He had brought a walkie-talkie with him so that we could be in constant communication with the outside stakeouts and get advance warning if the suspect approached the house. He had also brought along a disassembled riot gun and a mugg shot of Maurice Wey.

Mrs. Burdette identified the man in the mugg shot as the roomer she knew as Ralph Smith.

I assigned Reed and Bently to stay downstairs with Mrs. Burdette in her first-floor apartment. Her kitchen was at the end of a long hall that ran alongside the stairway, and the kitchen door faced the front door. By leaving the kitchen door slightly ajar, Reed and Bendy could see everyone who entered the house.

They were instructed to allow the suspect to go upstairs if he entered, then to move up and cover the stairway. They were not to attempt to take him, however. We would do that when he entered the room.

Sergeant Brady stayed in the room with us. Brady, one of the biggest men in Robbery Division, was the stand-in Howard J. McQuary had picked out at the show-up. He wasn’t quite so heavy as Big Julie, weighing only about two-thirty to Big Julie’s two-fifty, but his weight was so distributed that they seemed to be the same size.

While Brady was extending the aerial of his walkie-talkie and testing out its performance, I assembled the riot gun and loaded it. Brady seemed to be having some difficulty.

“Testing — one, two, three, four,” he kept saying, as he adjusted the antenna’s length and tried it in various parts of the room. He wasn’t getting any response.

“Don’t think it’s going to work with the antenna inside,” he finally decided.

He went over to the window, unhooked the screen, and removed it. Then he moved a chair next to the window, and sat in it with the instrument in his lap and the aerial protruding outside at an angle. He tested again, listened for a reply, and nodded in satisfaction.

“Okay,” he said into the speaker. “Receiving you at strength five.”

Frank said, “If he comes from the east and happens to glance in the areaway as he walks past, he could spot that antenna sticking out.”

“That’s easy,” Brady told him. “I’ll pull it in when he gets close.”

We were now all set. All we could do was sit back and hope that whoever had phoned had not been able to get a warning to Maury Wey.

6:18 p.m. We were still waiting. The outside stakeouts had twice alerted us when possibles had appeared in the area, but under closer observation both men had checked out not to be the suspect.

Suddenly Brady said, “Joe.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Skipper’s out there. Wants to talk to you.”

I was seated to one side of the door with the riot gun across my lap. I leaned it against the wall and crossed to the window. Brady handed me the earphone and mike.

“Friday,” I said.

“Peters, Joe,” the reply came. “Had some more bad luck.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Apparently that was Big Julie who phoned. Stakeouts spotted him making a call from a drugstore about that time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Drugstore right across from his flat. Then he went back home, he and Strite came out a minute later and jumped in a cab.”

“Before the arresting officers got there?”

“Yeah. The stakeout car tailed them, of course. Martin and Strite had the taxi take ’em to a car-rental service. Rented a new Plymouth. Drove around aimlessly for a few minutes — the stakeouts figure so they could spot the car tailing them. Then went to a pawnshop. Strite stayed in the car while Julie went in. Came out again after about five minutes. That’s when they took the stakeouts by surprise.”

“How’s that?”

“Made a U-turn and drove right by the stakeout car slow. As they passed, Big Julie shot out both front tires, then they took off like a breeze. Caught the officers flat-footed.”

“Where the devil did they get the gun?” I asked.

Captain Peters said, “That’s why the officers were caught short. Never expected them to be armed. This Big Julie is real cute.”

“Yeah?”

“He bought it in the pawnshop.”

Captain Peters said there was an APB and a local out on the suspects, but so far there were no leads. The rented car had already been found abandoned in North Hollywood.

“At least it’s out in the open now,” he said. “Once we land them, there won’t be any more fake-alibi stuff to beat.”

“If we land them,” I said.

Another voice suddenly cut in. “Excuse me, Captain. Young here, stakeout point number three. Possible approaching on foot.”

“I’ll check out,” Captain Peters said.

I said, “Okay, point three, we got the message,” and handed the speaker and earphone back to Brady.

About a minute and a half passed, with no sound except the occasional crackling of Brady’s earphone and grunted acknowledgments from him. Suddenly Brady drew the antenna inside and set the walkie-talkie on the floor.

“Just made positive identification,” he said. “It’s our pigeon.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Walking east on Franklin, this side of the street. He’s about fifty feet from the house.”

I went over and picked up the riot gun.

Chapter 24

There was no sound in the room during the next few minutes. I took up a stance next to the door, on the side of the knob. Frank stood on the other side of the door, his pistol in his hand. Brady faded to a corner with his gun trained on the door.

It grew so silent in the room I could hear the breathing of all three of us.

The downstairs door slammed, and we could hear footsteps ascending the stairs. A key slipped into the lock.

We let him get all the way into the room. He was pushing the door shut behind him when I thrust the muzzle of the riot gun into his stomach.

“Get ’em high, mister,” I said. “Police officers.”

Maury Wey was even handsomer than he appeared in his mugg shot. The picture hadn’t shown his smooth, clear complexion or the long, silken lashes, which any woman would have envied. As an attempt at disguise he had grown a thin mustache, and had bleached it, his hair, and his eyebrows to an ash blond.

Beyond a slight narrowing of his eyes, Wey showed no emotion whatever. Slowly his hands rose to shoulder height. He glanced at Brady as the big sergeant moved forward, flicked another glance over his shoulder at Frank, then returned his gaze to me. There was no fright in his eyes. There wasn’t even surprise. They were as cold and unblinking as a coral snake’s.

I understood what San Quentin’s assistant warden had meant when he said Maury Wey probably wasn’t afraid of any man on earth. Even a brave man is likely to have some reaction if a riot gun is suddenly thrust against his stomach. At the very least you would expect a start of surprise.

Maury Wey didn’t turn a hair. He seemed almost psychotically indifferent to the guns around him.

In a cold voice he said, “You’re in luck. I haven’t got anything to go with.”

In spite of myself I felt a chill touch me at his total lack of fear. His words weren’t meant as a brag. He was simply informing us matter-of-factly that if he had been armed, he would have shot it out despite the odds against him.

It wasn’t normal. A really brave man is one who is able to overcome his natural fear in an emergency. Maury Wey didn’t have any to overcome. His type of courage is common in certain institutions.

In mental hospitals.

Frank moved in and gave the suspect a slower shakedown than he usually does. He did it carefully and thoroughly.

I wasn’t the only one Wey’s reaction had affected. He’d given Frank a chill, too.

Frank said, “He’s clean,” drew the suspect’s hands behind him, and snapped on the cuffs.

8:31 p.m. We took the suspect down to the Police Building. Frank and I interrogated him in the Robbery squad room. It’s probably indicative of the impression he had made on us that we didn’t uncuff him during the questioning period. If he was uncomfortable sitting with his hands shackled behind him, you couldn’t have told it from his attitude. He lolled in his chair with the appearance of perfect ease.

I started the ball rolling by saying, “Guess you know what we want from you, mister.”

“I assume I was wanted for prison break,” he said indifferently.

“That’s just part of it,” I said. “We’ve got you made cold on enough market robberies to put you away forever. With all the evidence we found in your room, you couldn’t beat the rap in a million years.”

He raised his blond eyebrows. “What evidence?”

“The four slacks, jackets, and hats, for instance. The uniform your gang wears on all its jobs. The four false noses and glasses frames.”

“They’re left over from Halloween,” he said. “I threw a masquerade party.”

“Real funny,” I said. “It’ll be even funnier if one of those guns you were storing matches up as the one that killed a police officer. You can laugh all the time the cyanide pill is rolling down the trough into the acid.”

“That would be a joke,” he said. “On me, unfortunately. Because I haven’t killed any police officers.”

Frank said, “Either you or Strife did. On that Grammon’s Supermarket job. Which one would you rather it be? You or Strife?”

Wey gave him a bleak smile. “You know the law better than that, Officer.”

“Huh?” Frank said.

“If I was on the job you mention — understand, I said if — it’s a purely hypothetical supposition — it wouldn’t make any difference who killed the officer. We’d both be guilty of murder. I don’t believe I know anyone named Strife.”

I said, “Come off it, mister. You knew Harry Strife in the Joint.”

“Oh, that Strife. Haven’t seen him since I left Q’s delightful hospitality. Is he out now?”

I said, “Listen, mister, we haven’t got you here to put on an end-man act with you. When it comes to police officers being murdered, we’ve got no sense of humor at all. Now you settle down and start answering our questions straight.”

He gave a slight shrug. “Go ahead and ask them.”

“All right. First we want the names of the other members of your gang.”

“What gang?”

Frank said, “The one Big Julie organized. You know all about it. There’s five of you all together. Right?”

“Big Julie who?”

I gave him an exasperated look. Frank held up a hand to me and said, “Where’s the main hideout, Wey?”

“Main hideout for what?”

“Where the money is. We know it’s not at Big Julie’s flat, or your room. They’re clean. And none of you have been spending the stuff. Where is it?”

Wey said, “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

In a cold voice I said, “You’re headed straight for the gas chamber, mister. You better grab at every break you can get. The authorities might feel a little better about you if you steer us to the rest of the gang. And to the money.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You’re offering a deal?”

I said, “You know better than that.”

“So what’s all the double talk? What are you offering?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Except we write ‘cooperative’ on the report.”

He snorted. “You can write on your report, ‘Saw nothing, heard nothing, said nothing.’ Like the three Chinese monkeys. And you can add, ‘Knows nothing.’”

We continued to question the suspect for another hour, without result. He denied membership in the robbery gang and denied having participated in any robberies since his escape. The sole admission he would make was that he had known Big Julie Martin and Harry Strite in prison.

Eventually we gave up. We took him down to the Felony Section and booked him on prison break, suspicion of armed robbery, and suspicion of homicide.

Meantime the four guns had been turned over to the Crime Lab for ballistics tests to see if they included the murder weapons that took the lives of Officer Ferguson and store clerk Emmet Doyle. A team from Latent Prints had been dispatched to Maury Wey’s room with instructions to lift all prints found there. It was hoped that the two so-far unidentified members of the gang had visited the suspect at some time or other, and might be identified by prints they had left.

As there was nothing more we could do that night, Frank and I knocked off and went home.

The following morning Frank and I visited the Crime Lab immediately after checking in. De Wayne Wolfer had just arrived, too, and hadn’t yet had a chance to check the guns found in Maury Wey’s room.

“We’re just getting ready to fire them,” he told us. “Stick around and I’ll make the comparisons right away.”

We followed him into the ballistics lab to watch the firing. Just inside the door of ballistics is a long, narrow, upright tank that resembles a hot-water tank with no top. A technician was standing on a single step next to the tank with a tagged .45 automatic in his hand.

The opening at the top of the tank was covered with a piece of inner tube that had a slit in its center. The technician thrust the gun muzzle through this slit so that the gun pointed straight downward into the six-foot column of water in the tank.

The technician pulled the trigger, and the gun fired. I knew how the contraption worked, because Wolfer had once explained its principle to me. Water offers a tremendous amount of resistance when a bullet hits it, but cannot exert enough pressure to distort the slug. The column of water slows the bullet’s downward course so rapidly that by the time it reaches the bottom, it settles gently upon the screen grid there, completely undamaged.

The only purpose of the slit piece of inner tube was to prevent gases and smoke from coming back into the room.

The technician withdrew the gun and pulled downward on a slim chain that ran over a pulley attached to the ceiling and then down into the tank. This pulled the screen grid to the surface, where the slug could be picked up by the technician without even getting his hand wet.

It took only a few minutes to fire all four guns. Then we waited while Wolfer put the slugs, one by one, under a comparison microscope and examined them against the bullets recovered from the bodies of Officer Ferguson and Emmet Doyle.

Wolfer grunted, rose, and left the room. In a few moments he returned with Ray Pinker. I knew this meant Wolfer thought he had a make, for it’s customary when a technician thinks he has a make to have it verified by Pinker or one of the other technicians. If it hadn’t been at least a very close match, Wolfer wouldn’t have bothered to get Pinker’s opinion.

Ray Pinker examined the two slugs Wolfer indicated under the comparison microscope.

“Not very smart people,” he commented when he had completed his examinations.

“Get a make?” I asked.

“Both of them.” He tapped his index finger against one of the tagged .38’s. “This killed Ferguson.” Then he touched one of the .45’s. “This one got Emmet Doyle. Not very smart people.”

Frank said, “For not getting rid of the guns?”

“Yeah.”

I said, “If they were smart, they’d never have used them in the first place.”

From the Crime Lab we went to Latent Prints. Sergeant McLaughlin and Bill Tucker were both working on the files.

I said, “Turn anything in Maury Wey’s room?”

McLaughlin looked up and said, “Hi, Joe. Frank. Yeah, maybe.”

Pushing closed the file drawer he had been checking, he went to his desk and picked up a report. Glancing down at it, he said, “Except for Wey’s and the landlady’s, there wasn’t a set of prints in the room good enough for a file check. But we brought out four singles. I ran them against that list of possibles you gave me.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Big Julie’s right index finger was one of them. None of them were Harry Strite’s. One was your thumbprint, and one I couldn’t identify.”

“How about the fourth?” I asked.

“He was on your list of possibles. Fellow named Harvey Daniels.”

Chapter 25

Latent Prints is right next door to R & I. We walked out one door, in another, and had Harvey Daniels’ record pulled.

There wasn’t much doubt from the suspect’s description that we finally had a make on the squat, heavy-set member of the gang. He was described as five feet eight inches tall and weighing two hundred and two pounds. He was thirty-four years old, and his record went back twenty years. His first arrest had been for stealing a bicycle at the age of fourteen.

Since then he had managed to get himself arrested seventeen times, for everything from vagrancy to suspicion of homicide. He had five misdemeanor convictions and had drawn hard time twice, both times for armed robbery. On the first conviction he had done three out of five, on the second five out of five-to-life. Currently he was wanted for parole violation.

His mugg shot showed a wide, sullen face with a squashed-in nose that looked as though it had been broken repeatedly and never set.

“Little more progress every day,” Frank said with satisfaction. “Now if we can get a make on that guy with the birthmark, we’ll have every member of the gang pegged.”

We went upstairs to Robbery and got out the necessary bulletins on the suspect.

No leads developed on any of the gang members over the weekend.

On Monday, April 28th, the district attorney issued a complaint against Maurice Wey. The following day the suspect was held to answer at a preliminary hearing in Division 34 of the Municipal Court. He was bound over for the charges filed against him and transferred to the County Jail in the custody of the sheriff. His arraignment in the Superior Court was set for Monday, May 12th.

On Wednesday, April 30th, the first of a new series of robberies by the gang occurred in San Francisco. All four of the gang members still at large participated in the payroll robbery of an armored truck. The usual false-nose disguises were not used, and Big Julie, Harry Strite, and Harvey Daniels were positively identified from their mugg shots by the victims. The fourth suspect was the man with the birthmark, but no identification could be obtained.

The loot from the payroll robbery amounted to $150,000.

During the following week the gang hit five more times in widely separated parts of the state. For these jobs they again split into teams of two. They had now abandoned all attempts at disguise, and had also abandoned their previous MO of hitting only supermarkets.

The two robberies in the northern part of the state, one a supermarket and the other a loan office, were staged by Big Julie and Harry Strite. The three in the southern part of the state were the work of Harvey Daniels and the tall man with the birthmark. Targets included a drive-in theater, a restaurant, and a supermarket. Only the last was in the Los Angeles area.

The total score for the gang since the beginning of Operation Statewide now amounted to this: eleven successful robberies, with an aggregate take of nearly a quarter of a million dollars; two unsuccessful robberies, with no take; two homicides and two victims wounded.

An all-out effort was begun to locate the suspects. Their pictures and descriptions were circulated in newspapers throughout the state. All known sources of underworld information were tapped. Known associates and former associates of the three identified suspects were placed under surveillance, and many were brought in for questioning.

Until Tuesday, May 6th, none of these maneuvers had had the slightest result. The suspects struck, then disappeared as though swallowed up by the earth. It was theorized that they had several alternate hideouts throughout the state, but we were unable to get leads on any of them through underworld informers.

The suspects were behaving with unusual discipline for a robbery gang. Apparently they were spending none of the money. Between jobs they remained discreetly in hiding.

At 11:14 a.m. on May 6th, Mrs. Marie Winters, the blonde who had been with Big Julie and Strite the evening we had first picked them up, was brought to Robbery Division for questioning. We had not brought her in earlier because she was now listed in the record as only a “former associate” of Harry Strite. We knew that she had broken with Strite while he was in prison and had refused to resume their old association after he was released. However, we were now scraping the bottom of the barrel in our attempts to get some kind of lead, and we weren’t passing up anyone who had ever had the slightest association with any of the suspects.

We offered the woman a chair, and she nervously seated herself.

I said, “I guess you know why we want to talk to you, ma’am.”

“About Harry?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s what I figured,” she said. “But you know he’s not my boyfriend any more, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I had enough of that stuff,” she said. “My old man was the same way.”

“Your father?” Frank asked.

“Naw. My former. Jack Winters. In and out of the can all the time. I told Harry when we got engaged that his first fall would wash us up. I’m not about to mark time for some jerk who’s sitting behind bars. Not after doing it once. I like my men around.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Then you don’t have any contact with Harry any more?”

“I didn’t say that,” she said. “He used to phone me once in a while. He’s still carrying the torch, I guess. But I wasn’t having any. I got a guy now who keeps his nose clean. And that’s the way it’s going to stay. I don’t owe Harry nothing. I saved his money for him and gave it to him when he got out—” She stopped abruptly and touched fingers to her mouth in a gesture of fright.

Frank said quietly, “That was Harry’s money we found at your place, huh? Not yours.”

“Not that money,” the blonde said in a weak voice. “Just a few bucks I was holding for him.”

I said, “If that was holdup loot, and you covered for Strite and Big Julie, you could still get in a lot of trouble, Mrs. Winters.”

“Honest, it wasn’t that,” she said quickly. “That was mine. A final settlement from my former. You ask him.”

“Where do we find him?” Frank asked.

“He moved up north. Seattle, I think. Last I heard, he was thinking of going to Alaska.” The thought seemed to relieve her, for she visibly relaxed.

There didn’t seem much future in this line of questioning, even if we eventually got the woman to admit she had lied about the money being hers. If she had turned it over to Harry Strite, it wasn’t recoverable. Anyway, it seemed obvious that she was going to stick to the story that the money was hers, and without a confession it would be impossible for us to prove differently.

I said, “You have any idea where Harry is now?”

She shook her head. “The letter he wrote me was postmarked Sacramento, but he was probably just passing through.”

“What letter?” I asked sharply.

“The one I got the other day. I thought you might want to see it, so I brought it along. I want to cooperate, see. I got nothing to hide.”

She fumbled in her purse and produced an opened envelope.

The letter was postmarked May 1st — the same day, incidentally, that Strite and Big Julie had knocked over a Sacramento loan office. It was written in ink on a double sheet of lined foolscap. I held it so that Frank could read it at the same time I did.

It read:

Dear Marie:

Just a line to let you know yours truly is still alive. Guess you been reading about me in the papers. Ain’t that some picture they printed? Them mugg shot photographers know about as much about picture taking as monkeys.

Baby, I know how you feel about guys sticking there necks out for hard time. But when we finish this caper I’ll be set for life and safe. So don’t do nothing foolish like marrying somebody else. I’ll have a proposition for you before long that’ll knock your hat off. I can’t say much about it but how’d you like to be the wife of a governor’s ade? Live on a big estate with servants and everything. Safe in a foreign country where the law can’t touch me.

I’m not bulling. Big Julie ain’t no small time punk. He’s got ideas so big they’d knock you for a loop. And he knows how to pull them off too. It ain’t just dreaming. He’s got a deal lined up it’s going to take a half million to swing. Not just planned, but all set. And when it breaks he’ll be right in the driver’s seat. The head dicktator in a foreign country. The rest of us will be his cabinet. Can you imagine the U.S. trying to extrydite the head of another country and his personal ades? We’ll laugh rite in their faces.

Nobody but Julie could pull a caper like this. Particular with the guys working with us. Salty’s not so bad, but Harvey’s always grousing about why we don’t splurge some of the loot on living it up. He don’t give Julie no lip though. Nobody better try that. Makes me laugh to see them turn over there take and then stand like little kids while Julie doles out cigarette money. They don’t try to hold none out either. They know better.

Well, baby, remember what I said about waiting. You’ll hear from me when everything is set.

Lots of love,

Harry

P.S.: Burn this letter.

Chapter 26

I gave Frank an inquiring look. He raised his eyebrows in a gesture meaning it was beyond him. I turned to the woman.

“What did you make of this, Mrs. Winters?”

“Just a lot of bull. Big Julie was always filling Harry with big ideas. Only they never came to nothing.”

I said, “Do you understand what he’s talking about? Did he ever mention anything like it before?”

She shook her head. “You know as much about it as I do. Know what I think?”

“What?”

“Big Julie’s sold them all a bill of goods. He’s a real con artist, you know. He’s got them so built up over some farfetched plan, they’re all turning their money over to him. When he’s ready, he’ll skip and leave them holding the bag.”

Frank said, “The name Salty mean anything to you? Or Harvey?”

“Why, I guess Harvey is Harvey Daniels.”

“You know him?”

She shook her head again. “Got his name from the papers. His picture was printed along with the rest. I guess Salty is the one you don’t know who he is. The guy they just printed a drawing of.”

I said, “You know who he is?”

“Well, back when I was engaged to Harry, he mentioned a guy named Salty a couple of times. Think they were kids together. But I never heard his last name or met him.”

We continued to question the woman, but she was unable to give us any more information. We let her go home after asking her to phone us immediately if she heard from Harry Strite again. She promised that she would.

On the chance that Salty might be a surname instead of a nickname, we ran it through R & I. There was no one on record with that surname. We then had Stat’s run it through the moniker file, but drew another blank.

We took the letter to Captain Peters’ office. After reading it he suggested we all go to Chief Brown’s office and show it to him.

Thad Brown frowned when he finished reading the letter. “How do you take this, Friday?” he asked.

“Hard to say. Strite’s ex-girlfriend thinks Big Julie is pulling some kind of con act on his pals and intends to abscond with the whole bundle.”

“You think that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “If Big Julie is playing it straight, you could take it that they’re planning to finance a revolution somewhere. Maybe in some small South American country.”

“Yeah,” the chief said. “Impression I got. You know, it would be a fine situation if they actually pulled it off.”

Captain Peters grimaced. “I got a picture of us trying to extradite the president of Guatemala to face robbery and murder charges.”

The chief said, “It’d be an embarrassing situation no matter what country it was. Odds are it’s either a con act on Big Julie’s part, or a pipe dream that couldn’t possibly come off. But I don’t think we better take a chance.”

“What do you mean, sir?” I asked.

“I’m going to turn this letter over to the F.B.I.”

12:21 p.m. Frank and I went to the cafeteria to have lunch. Spotting Sergeant Anderson at one of the tables, we carried our trays over to eat with him. Sergeant Harney of Homicide Division’s Gang Squad was at the table with Andy.

When we had settled ourselves, Andy said, “Any leads on Operation Statewide yet?”

“Got part of a name for our birthmarked friend,” I said. I told him about the letter.

“Salty,” Andy said musingly. “Sounds more like a nickname than a surname.”

Frank said, “We checked it out both ways. Nothing.”

Sergeant Harney said, “That name rings a bell with me.”

Art Harney is a slim, well-built man in his thirties, with clean-cut features and a perpetually serious expression that hides a dry sense of humor. He’s in charge of the Gang Squad, and he must know his business, because the squad has had almost unbelievable success in maintaining order among the approximately two hundred juvenile gangs in the Los Angeles area.

Homicide’s Gang Squad is primarily an intelligence unit rather than a law-enforcement unit. Its business is to keep a close eye on juvenile gangs, compile up-to-the-minute data on them, and head-off trouble before it starts. Of course many so-called gangs are really little more than kid clubs, and get in little trouble with the police. But at least fifty of the two hundred, most of them in underprivileged areas, are potential troublemakers, which makes it a sizable problem. Harney has eleven men under him to handle the problem.

Los Angeles, like all big cities, has juvenile crime. But surprisingly little of it is organized juvenile crime. It used to be, years back. We had our share of gang fights and mass vandalism. Then, about a decade ago, Sergeant Karl Lee, now a captain with the Harbor Division, organized the Gang Squad. From the beginning he decreed that its first function was crime prevention. Apprehension after the act was only a secondary role.

By the time Art Harney took over, results were already beginning to show in reduced trouble between gangs. Today, under Harney, we still have an occasional clash between rival groups, but generally they are abortive and involve only a few kids on each side. The old-time wars in which up to two hundred youngsters met on a vacant lot and fought it out with zip guns, shivs, and chains are practically unknown. Wars still get as far as the planning stage, but the trained officers on the Gang Squad know the symptoms too well to let them materialize. A brief but blunt talk with the rival gang leaders, informing them that the police know exactly what’s brewing, and who, specifically, is going to end up in jail if it comes off, usually brings about a peace treaty.

The Gang Squad maintains complete card files on all known gangs. There are four separate files, cross-indexed — an area file listing all juvenile gangs by geographical location, an alphabetical file of gang names, a name file with a separate card for each known member, and a nickname file. Because the files include all known members, even those who have no juvenile records and have never even been picked up for questioning, they are often of help to other divisions. Several times, when neither Stat’s nor R & I could turn anything for us, we have made identifications of robbery suspects from Gang Squad records. This is because Stat’s and R & I have records only on people who have been arrested at least once.

I said to Harney, “Think there may be something in one of your files?”

Frank said, “This guy isn’t a juvenile.”

“Juveniles grow up,” Harney said. “Our files go back ten years. How old is he now?”

“Described as around thirty,” I said. “Could be a couple of years either way.”

“Make him eighteen to twenty-two ten years ago,” Harney mused. “Some of our so-called juveniles are still running with their gang at thirty. Cases of arrested development.”

“Think you remember somebody named Salty?” I asked.

“Remember the name. Couldn’t say whether it’s a surname or a nickname. I’ll check right after lunch and let you know.”

1:04 p.m. Art Harney came into the Robbery squad room. He said, “Think I’ve got a make for you, Joe.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“It was a nickname. Edward Saltenson. Belonged to the Paloma Gang about ten years back. A real rough bunch. He’d be twenty-eight now.”

“Any record on him?” Frank asked.

Harney shook his head. “I phoned R & I. If he ever took a fall, it wasn’t here. Afraid there’s no mugg shot available.”

I said, “Got a description?”

“One ten years old. Five feet eleven inches tall, only a hundred and thirty-five pounds. May have grown a couple of inches since, though, and filled out some.”

“Two inches?” I said dubiously. “Most kids have got all the height they’re gonna get by eighteen.”

“Not always,” Harney said. “Couple of things make it look good.”

“What?”

“Our name cards give a lot of dope. Including identifying marks. Salty had a big birthmark on the left side of his neck.”

“Yeah?” Frank said. “What’s the other thing?”

“I checked the other members of the gang at that time. Harry Strite was one of them.”

Chapter 27

We went over to Homicide with Harney to take a look at the file card. The ten-year-old address listed was a tenement house that long since had been torn down as part of the city’s slum-clearance program. The suspect’s parents were listed as Amos and Jean Saltenson.

There was no Saltenson listed in either the phone book or the city directory.

“Must of moved out of town,” Frank said.

“Uh-huh.” I turned to Harney. “The Paloma Gang still in existence?”

“Sure,” he said. “They keep pulling in young kids as new members as fast as the older ones drop out.”

“Whose district is it?”

“Central. That’s Ramirez and Emlet.”

“Could you have them do a little digging?”

“Sure. That’s their job.”

I said, “See if they can find anybody who remembers Saltenson. Try to find out where his parents moved. And if he had a girl he might have given a picture to. Even a ten-year-old picture would be some help. They might inquire about Harry Strite, too. We don’t need his picture, but just possibly some kid might come up with a lead.”

“Will do,” Harney said. “Ramirez and Emlet check in about six p.m. I’ll have them start digging tonight, and tell them to leave a note in your box before they check out.”

We went back to Robbery Division and got out an APB and local supplements reporting that the last member of the gang had now been identified as Edward Saltenson. We also teletyped C.I.I. and wired the F.B.I. in Washington for record checks.

The following morning I found a note in my box from Tony Ramirez of the Gang Squad. It said that he and Emlet had found widespread awareness among the members of the Paloma Gang that Saltenson and Strite were former members, and some pride that their former members had gained statewide publicity. But none of the present members had been able, or willing, to furnish any leads.

There was also a teletype from C.I.I. saying there was no record on Saltenson.

At noon a wire came from the F.B.I. saying there was no record on him in Washington, either.

During the following week there was no activity on the part of the robbery gang, and no new leads developed. On Monday, May 12th, Frank and I had to appear in the Superior Court for the arraignment of Maurice Wey.

The master-calendar courtroom, where the suspect was to be arraigned, is on the eighth floor of the Hall of Justice. As we rode up on the elevator, Frank said, “Funny thing, Joe.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“They all end up here, one way or another. In this building, I mean.”

“Who’s that?”

“The wrong ones,” he said. “Some of ’em make the eighth floor.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The rest make the morgue in the basement.”

The arraignment was set for 9:00 o’clock. We arrived a few minutes early and took seats in the front row. Gradually the rest of the room filled with witnesses, spectators, and lawyers until there were few vacant seats. Then a team of sheriff’s deputies brought in Maurice Wey and turned him over to a court bailiff. The suspect was dressed in neatly creased blue slacks and a light-blue sports shirt.

A plump, vaguely untidy-looking man in a wilted brown suit rose from a rear seat and approached the suspect and bailiff. He spoke briefly to the suspect, who nodded.

“Who’s that?” I asked Frank.

“Marcus Quade,” Frank said. “Could have gotten himself a better lawyer.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Been up for disbarment twice. Beat both raps, but the Bar Association is still out to get him. Gives the whole profession a bad name.”

“What’d he do?”

“Suborned a witness once. Case of mine, when I used to work Bunco-Fugitive, which is how I know about him. Then he barely skinned out of a blackmail mess.”

“Sounds like a nice fellow,” I said.

A voice from the front of the room said, “All rise, please,” and there was a general stirring as everyone in the courtroom got up for the judge’s entrance. The judge stepped up to the bench and said, “You may be seated.”

Eight cases came up before Maurice Wey’s. It was ten thirty when his name was finally called.

Marcus Quade stepped up to the bench and asked for a week’s delay to enter a plea.

“I was just engaged for the case, Your Honor,” he said. “I haven’t yet had time to study it.”

The judge’s reply made it plain that Wey’s attorney was not held in high esteem by his fellow members of the bar. The judge had just granted a similar delay to another attorney on the identical grounds.

“Three days should be enough to enter a plea,” he said testily. “You won’t be preparing a complete defense. Adjourned until May fifteenth. Next case.”

To one side of the courtroom there was a steel-grilled detention bullpen to which prisoners who were finished in court were herded to await transfer back to jail. As the bailiff led the suspect toward this, Frank looked after them ruefully.

“Means another morning shot,” he said.

The bullpen door clanged behind Maurice Wey.

The next prisoner had been called forward, and it was now too late to rise and leave until his case had been disposed of. It took only a few moments. This man, too, was granted a delay and was led toward the bullpen.

Frank and I rose and started to move toward the aisle next to the wall. Just as we reached it, a commotion on the opposite side of the room swung us around.

The bailiff who had been escorting the last prisoner to the bullpen sat on the floor. The bullpen door hung wide open, and all ten prisoners were rushing out into the courtroom. Apparently they had made a concerted rush at the door the moment the bailiff unlocked it.

Instantly the courtroom became a madhouse. Three prisoners jumped up on counsel tables and looked around wildly for the nearest exits. Bailiffs, lawyers, and spectators grabbed at them, got in each other’s way, and converted the whole front of the courtroom into a free-for-all. Other prisoners headed for side doors, found them locked, and tried to battle their way back through the crowd. Struggles simultaneously broke out all over the room.

I spotted Maury Wey coolly trotting up the center aisle toward the main door, stiff-arming people out of the way with the expertness of a broken-field runner.

Because of their proximity to prisoners, courtroom bailiffs aren’t armed. And although numerous officers besides Frank and me were armed, none dared fire into that milling crowd.

Shoving through the disorganized spectators was like running through glue. Maury Wey had disappeared through the main door before we were halfway to it. By the time we reached the hallway, we could hear his feet clattering on the stairs a full floor below us.

A glance at the elevator indicators showed no cars within three floors of the eighth floor. There was nothing to do but take the same route down that the suspect had. We plunged down the stairway, three steps at a time, just as a whole horde of other officers and bailiffs burst from the courtroom in pursuit.

At the seventh-floor landing we shot past two girls who were flattened against the wall with startled expressions on their faces. At the next landing a dazed lawyer sat spraddle-legged with an open briefcase in his lap and papers from it spilled all around him. We leaped over his legs and sped on.

We were both panting by the time we reached the fourth floor, but we didn’t let it slow us down. The rapid clatter of footsteps below us was becoming fainter by the moment. The suspect was steadily increasing his lead. He must have been an expert stair-runner, because we weren’t doing any dallying. By the time we reached the main floor, we had left the horde following us two floors above.

Both of us were winded when we burst out of the Spring Street entrance with drawn guns. We halted, gasping for breath, and looked hurriedly around in all directions.

There was no sign of the suspect.

Moments later a dozen officers and bailiffs swarmed out of the building behind us. They came to a halt in a ring around us, panting heavily and eyeing us questioningly.

I said to Frank, “Start this bunch questioning every pedestrian on the street to find out which way he ran. I’ll get it on the air.”

I went back inside to the nearest phone and called Communications.

10:49 a.m. Within minutes radio units surrounded the area. Two hundred police officers searched the Civic Center on foot, checking every building and looking behind every bush. A room-by-room search of the Hall of Justice was started, on the chance that the suspect might have doubled back.

This search was abandoned when a pedestrian declared he had seen the suspect’s getaway. The witness’s description left no doubt that it had been Wey. The suspect had come racing out of the Hall of Justice and had leaped into a black sedan parked at the curb with its motor running, and the car had immediately moved off at normal speed. The witness had not noticed the license number and wasn’t sure of the make of the car. He could describe it only as new enough to have tail fins.

He said that an unusually big man had been driving the car.

Maurice Wey was the only prisoner among the ten who made good his escape. None of the others even got as far as the courtroom’s only unlocked door. Questioning disclosed that Wey had managed to stir them up to attempt the break in only the few minutes that had elapsed between when he was ushered into the bullpen and when the bailiff unlocked the door to admit the next prisoner. They all insisted there had been no advance planning while they were in the County Jail.

Radio units throughout the city were informed of the escape and asked to be on the lookout for the black sedan and the two suspects. An APB and a local were also gotten out.

No trace of either suspect was found.

1:03 p.m. We had a conference with Captain Peters about the escape.

“If it was Big Julie driving that car, it was a planned break,” the captain said. “Julie would have had to get word to Wey in jail that the car would be there. Find out what visitors he had.”

“We already phoned the sheriff,” I said. “Nobody saw him except his lawyer.”

Captain Peters frowned. “Hardly likely an attorney would be party to a jailbreak.”

Frank said, “Marcus Quade won’t be an attorney long if the Bar Association can help it. He’s hardly representative of the profession.” He repeated to the captain what he had told me in court.

The captain was scowling when Frank finished. “If he was Wey’s only visitor, guess we have to assume he was the messenger.”

“Want us to pull him in for questioning?” I asked.

After considering this, the captain shook his head. “You’d never get him to admit it in a million years. Why waste time? We’ll just pass on our suspicion to the Bar Association so they’ll have a little more ammunition when they finally get on target.”

Chapter 28

During the following week the gang struck four more times, twice in the northern and twice in the southern part of the state. In both northern jobs the robbery team was identified as Harvey Daniels and Edward Saltenson. One of the southern jobs was pulled by men answering the descriptions of Big Julie and Maury Wey, the other by men positively identified as Wey and Harry Strite. Apparently the individual teams of the gang had switched areas of operation.

Aggregate take from the four jobs was $37,000. None of them occurred in Los Angeles.

On May 22nd a brazen daylight robbery of an armored payroll truck was made; the take was $75,000. All five members of the gang participated. Then they dropped from sight, leaving no leads.

Friday, May 23rd, when we returned from lunch, Frank and I found a notice in the message book to report to Chief Brown’s office. Two men were with the chief when we got there. One was a smooth, well-dressed man of middle age. The other was a small, olive-skinned man with coal-black hair and piercing black eyes. He was faultlessly dressed in a blue serge suit, white shirt, and conservatively dark tie.

Chief Brown introduced the larger man as Thomas Henderson of the F.B.I., and the dark man as Senor José Martinez.

After a polite exchange of greetings, F.B.I. man Henderson said in an easy voice, “Senor Martinez is with the Honduran Embassy, gentlemen. We just flew in from Washington.”

“British Honduras?” I asked Martinez.

He flashed white teeth in a rueful smile. “No, Senor. Jus’ Honduras. My country is so small, many Americans do not even know there is a plain Honduras. They have hear of British Honduras, and they think we are that, too.”

“Can’t understand that, sir,” Frank said. “You’ve got five times the area of British Honduras and twenty times the population.”

We looked at Frank with varying expressions. The chief’s and mine were surprised. Thomas Henderson’s was merely politely interested. Senor José Martinez’s was delighted.

“You know my country, Senor?” he asked.

“Never had the pleasure of visiting it,” Frank said. “Know a little about it. Suppose you live in Tegucigalpa, if you’re in government service?”

“In your Washington, D.C., jus’ now, Senor. At home in Tegucigalpa, of course. Though the city of my birth was Amapala.”

“Uh-huh,” Frank said. “Down south, on the Pacific Coast.”

Henderson smoothly broke up what was promising to become an old-home-week reunion by interjecting, “Senor Martinez and I are interested in that letter your chief sent us, Lieutenant Friday. The one from a man named Harry Strite.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and glanced at the chief.

“Mr. Henderson and Senor Martinez think it may be a lead to a problem concerning both our governments,” Chief Brown said. “But they can explain it better than I.”

Senor Martinez obviously was not yet ready to tear himself away from Frank. But he had a diplomat’s politeness. With reluctance he wrenched his mind to business.

“As you gentlemen may know,” he said, “there is at the moment a serious threat of revolution in my country.”

I, for one, didn’t know it. While I wasn’t guilty of being one of the “many” Americans whom the Honduran thought confused his country with British Honduras, about all I knew of it was its name and general location on the map. If a possible revolution had been mentioned in the news, I’d missed it.

Apparently this was one item Frank wasn’t up on, either. He said, “Hadn’t heard about that, sir.”

“As a matter of fact, the threat has been with us for some years,” Martinez went on. “But until recently it was only — how do you say? — to be taken with a grain of salt.”

“Senor Martinez means it wasn’t considered a serious threat,” Henderson interpreted.

“Exactly,” the Honduran agreed. “The leader is a notorious bandit chief of the name Diego Lopez. An illiterate man, half-Indian, who rules a ragged band of outlaws that calls itself an army. He has a mountain stronghold near the Nicaraguan border. For years Lopez has been calling himself ‘The Liberator,’ and promising to deliver the people from oppression.” He drew his small frame erect and snorted indignantly. “Oppression, indeed! We are a democratic republic. Our constitution guarantees as many liberties as yours of the United States. It is Lopez who wishes to become the oppressor, by overthrowing the legal government and making of himself a dictator.”

Frank said, “So far, it’s been just talk on this Lopez’s part, huh?”

“Exactly,” Martinez said. “He had not a sufficiency of arms to create real trouble. He had barely enough to defend his mountain stronghold against army attack. You will understand how little that was when I tell you a few rifles could hold any of those volcanic passes against any force. The place is a natural fortress. But certainly he never before possessed sufficient arms to attempt a coup.”

I said, “And now he has them, sir?”

“Not quite enough, yet. But our agents report that more come all the time, smuggled across the Nicaraguan border. American-made arms. Springfield rifles, machine guns, grenades, even some small obsolete artillery pieces. It is also rumored that a trained American army officer, a man of military genius, is to arrive with the last shipment of arms. And this man is to general the coup.”

I looked at Frank. He frowned and scratched an ear. I said to Martinez, “You believe the plans described in that letter may explain where the guns are coming from?”

Henderson answered the question. “We’ve pretty well established that the actual source of arms is a notorious international gunrunner named Henri DuBois. Maintains secret agents in half the ports of the world, including New York City and San Francisco. Until your letter came to us, we hadn’t the slightest lead on the source of the money that paid for the arms. Except an assumption that the so-called ex-army-officer-military-genius probably either furnished it or raised it.”

“Big Julie Martin never had any military training,” I said.

Frank said, “Year of R.O.T.C., Joe. He went to U.C.L.A., remember?”

I looked at him, then said thoughtfully, “Yeah. And he’s quite a snow artist. Don’t doubt he could convince an illiterate mountain bandit that he was a military genius. Only question is, how’d he ever get in contact with Lopez?”

“That’s easy,” the F.B.I. man said. “Diego Lopez was in this country for two weeks last November. Was this Martin man in prison then?”

I shook my head. “He took a fall for carrying in December.”

“Well, the Honduran Embassy asked us to keep an eye on him to see what he was up to. Seemed to be just a vacation trip. But one thing ties him in with the letter from Strite.”

“What?” I asked.

“He spent the whole two weeks in Los Angeles.”

We continued to talk with Martinez and Henderson for some time. Chief Brown promised that when and if Big Julie and his gang were apprehended, the F.B.I. would be informed immediately and the suspects would be made available for questioning. Henderson also asked that he be informed of any exceptionally large scores the gang made, since if the gang actually was purchasing the guns, such scores would probably immediately precede gun shipments.

“Gunrunning is strictly a cash business,” Henderson said. “DuBois won’t be making any shipments without cash in hand.”

“They’ve taken over a hundred thousand in the past week,” I told him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been following the papers. We’ll be on the lookout for a shipment in the near future.”

When we finally left the chief’s office and started back toward Robbery, Frank said, “Think Big Julie really is the guy they want, Joe?”

“Figures,” I said. “Sure sounds like what Strite described in his letter.”

“But the letter said Big Julie meant to be boss of the country. From what Martinez said, this fellow Lopez means to be the dictator.”

“If Julie could snow him enough to let him general the revolt,” I told him, “he probably figures he can snow him out of the top spot, too.”

“Or maybe plans to bump him at the right moment,” Frank said.

“Yeah. Incidentally, how you happen to be so up on Honduras?”

“Television,” Frank said.

“Huh?”

“Last Tuesday, on ‘The $64,000 Question.’ Had on an expert on Central America. Asked him a half dozen questions about Honduras and British Honduras, and he answered every one right.”

Chapter 29

The following morning when I checked in I found Frank frowningly examining the wall map. There were now six pins in it.

“’Morning, Joe,” Frank said. “You know, I don’t think that May twenty-second pin ought to be in there.”

“No?” I said.

“Throws the whole thing off. Other five are all supermarkets. Last one’s a payroll truck.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean, they had to hit the markets where the pins are. Supermarkets don’t move around. But that truck had a four-and-a-half-mile run from the bank to the plant.”

“Yeah.”

“They could have hit it anywhere. Pin could be quite a distance from where it is if they’d hit it at another spot.”

“Bothers you, huh?” I asked.

“Yeah, it does.”

“Know what I’d do, Frank?”

“What?”

I said, “I’d take it out.”

Frank looked at me with pursed lips, then shrugged and removed the pin. He frowned at the map again.

“Know what, Joe?”

“What?”

“Doesn’t help a bit. Thing still doesn’t show any directional trend.”

During the next few days no hits were made by the gang. Not only did no new leads develop, but there were none of the usual reports from private citizens that they had seen members of the gang in various places.

Any time criminals receive wide publicity, particularly if their descriptions or pictures appear in the papers, they are reported seen in a wide variety of places. Some of these reports are by well-meaning citizens who honestly believe they have spotted the suspects. Others are by cranks seeking publicity.

Ever since we had released publicity on Operation Statewide, we had been flooded with the usual number of tips. Most of these checked out as false alarms. In a few cases it was never definitely established one way or the other who the persons reported seen were. Peculiarly, in not a single instance was the person reported definitely identified as a member of the gang.

There could be only one explanation for this. All five of the suspects were known to like night life. If they were appearing in night clubs or restaurants anywhere in the state, we would have been bound to get at least one informer’s tip about it. The only possible answer was that they weren’t appearing in public at all. Big Julie was keeping the gang under iron-handed discipline. They were emerging from hiding only to pull jobs, then immediately getting under cover again.

We hoped that boredom would drive one or more of them to revolt against this discipline. The more time that passed, the better the chance that this might happen. On the other hand, the more time that passed, the closer the gang got to the half-million-dollar goal Harry Strite’s letter had mentioned. And presumably once that was reached, the gang would head for Honduras.

We had to stop them before they reached their goal.

On Wednesday, May 28th, at 8:37 p.m., I was sitting at home in my Westlake apartment watching television. The phone rang. It was Tony Ramirez of the Gang Squad.

He said, “Joe, there’s a chance Emlet and I have stumbled onto the hideout of one of your Operation Statewide suspects.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Jack and I have been regularly sounding out members of the Paloma Gang whenever we get a chance,” he said. “Finally hit something tonight.”

“What?”

“Ran across an ex-member who knows Saltenson. Kid about twenty-five years old who joined the gang a couple of years before Saltenson dropped out. Told us Salty’s old girlfriend’s name. Said he doubted that Salty had seen her for years, but was pretty keen on her years back. Thought she’d probably have some old pictures of him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Took a drive by her place. She’s got a little four-room house over on Lake Street. Jack stayed in the car while I went up to the door. We didn’t figure on any trouble, see.”

“I understand.”

“Shades in the house were all down. Somebody pulled one aside to peek out before answering the door. When a woman finally did answer, she left the chain on. Acted scared when she asked what I wanted.”

“Uh-huh.”

“All of a sudden I got a hunch. Don’t know why. This kid we talked to seemed sure Saltenson had broken up with the woman years ago. But I just got a feeling he was in the house.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know the feeling.”

Tony said, “So I played it cute.”

“How’s that?”

“Didn’t tell her I was a police officer. Said I was an insurance salesman. She stopped looking scared and got nasty. Slammed the door in my face.”

“Think she was suspicious?” I asked.

“Naw. Just mad. Emlet’s got his eye on the place while I’m phoning.”

“What’s the address of this house?” I asked.

He gave me the Lake Street address, and also the location of his and Emlet’s undercover car, which was parked a block away. He said the woman’s name was Miss Martha Gerrold.

I told him to stand by while I phoned in for enough men to surround the place, and that I’d meet him at his car in twenty minutes.

As soon as Ramirez hung up, I phoned Frank. Then I phoned Robbery Division and got hold of Lieutenant Arroyo, the nightwatch commander.

When I explained the situation, Arroyo said he would get the house staked out immediately. He asked how many men I wanted.

“If this place is one of the Operation Statewide hideouts, we can’t afford to miss,” I said. “Better get the whole area blocked off, and send at least a dozen close-in men. And don’t forget the tear gas.”

“Check,” he said. “I’ll put Walker in charge of the detail. Look for him when you get there.”

“Have him meet me at Ramirez’s and Emlet’s car,” I said, and gave him its location.

8:56 p.m. I arrived at the point Tony Ramirez had designated. Frank was not yet there, as he had to drive all the way from the Valley. Ramirez and Emlet were quietly sitting in their undercover car smoking cigarettes. I went over and leaned in the window.

I said to Emlet, “Thought you were keeping an eye on the house?”

His teeth flashed in the darkness. “Hi, Joe. Got too crowded.”

Jack Emlet is lean and hard and wears his blond hair in a crew cut. His partner, Tony Ramirez, is a dark, good-looking man with a well-muscled body.

Tony said, “What’d you do? Call out the whole department?”

“It’s already staked out, huh?” I said. “Good. Seen Sergeant Walker?”

“Right here, Joe,” a voice said behind me.

I turned and found the sergeant standing there. “Everything set?” I asked.

“Radio units all around the area. Got three men on each side of the house. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Frank’s on his way, too,” I said. “Since they’re bottled up, we’ll wait. Where’s the house?”

Ramirez said, “Block up the street. Get in and we’ll drive past. We can be back before Frank gets here.”

Walker and I climbed in the back seat. The undercover car Tony was driving was a ’55 Chevrolet, indistinguishable from hundreds of other cars driving the streets.

We drove past the small frame house at a normal speed. It was only one story, and a narrow porch ran the full width of the front. It was a dark, moonless night. Street lamps lighted the street well, but penetrated only dimly back as far as the porch. I could barely make out the dim shadows of men crouched by bushes on either side of the porch. And in the darkness on either side of the house it was impossible to make out the stakeouts at all.

We circled the block to our starting point. A few minutes later Frank arrived. Quickly I briefed him on the situation. Frank said, “What’s the strategy? Knock and inquire?”

“What else?” I asked. “For all we know, Miss Gerrold is home alone watching television. We’re just playing Tony’s hunch. We can hardly start breaking in doors and windows.”

“Okay,” Frank said. “Let’s go knock and inquire.”

Jack Emlet said, “Need us any more?”

“I guess we’re set,” I said. “You can get back to your own jobs. Thanks for the help.”

“Don’t mention it,” Tony said. “Any time you Robbery boys get stumped, feel free to call on the Gang Squad.” With a grin he put the car in gear and drove away.

Frank, Walker, and I climbed into my Ford. I drove up the block and parked right in front of the house. We all got out.

I said to Sergeant Walker, “You might as well use the car as cover. Bring a tear-gas gun?”

“In the car,” he said, and nodded toward an F car parked a few yards down the street.

“Well, get it and stand by. We’ll hope we don’t need it.”

I nodded to Frank, and we walked together toward the front porch.

Chapter 30

The men crouched by the bushes on either side of the porch were in uniform. They both turned to look at us.

I said in a low voice, “Lieutenant Friday and Sergeant Smith,” as we mounted the steps.

All the shades in the house were drawn, but we could see light behind the ones in the front-room windows. The two windows to the left of the door, presumably to a dining room or bedroom, were dark. Frank stood to one side of the door, his hand on his gun, while I pressed the bell.

Nothing happened immediately. Then, from the corner of my vision, I saw the edge of one of the front-room shades move back. I turned my head and looked squarely at the window. The shade fell back in place.

I pressed the bell again. This time a porch light went on over our heads. Then the door opened, but only as far as its burglar chain would permit. The plump face of a woman in her twenties peered out.

“What is it?” she asked in a fearful voice.

“Miss Martha Gerrold?” I inquired.

“Yes.”

“Police officers, ma’am.” I held my ID up to the crack. “May we come in, please?”

“Why?” she asked in panic. “What do you want?”

“To come in,” I said. “Go ahead, ma’am. Open the door.”

I heard a low whisper behind her, but was unable to tell whether it was a man’s or woman’s voice. Martha Gerrold said in a voice that cracked with fear, “You got a warrant?”

Her manner dispelled all doubt in my mind about Tony Ramirez’s hunch. If the woman wasn’t harboring her old boyfriend, she had someone or something in the house she didn’t want the police to see.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “But the place is surrounded by police. It won’t do you any good to insist on a warrant. Just delay matters. Nobody in there could get out while we’re getting one.”

She stood staring at me mutely, her face pinched with fright. There was a motion behind her, a hand reached out and shoved the door shut. A spring lock clicked.

I stepped aside fast just as a pistol sounded three times from inside. Splinters ripped from the door as the bullets gouged through it at belt-buckle height.

I took two steps along the porch, drew my gun, and smashed a hole in the upper pane of the nearest front-room window. As I reached through it to unlatch it and throw up the window, I heard glass smash from the opposite end of the porch. Frank was working on one of the windows there.

I had the window up when a gun sounded twice more from inside. Two little holes appeared in the drawn shade. I could feel their heat; they had missed my throat by an inch.

As I flattened myself against the front of the house, another gun sounded from the room Frank was trying to enter. I glanced toward him and saw that he, too, was flattening himself against the clapboard.

One of the officers crouched in front of the porch said, “You get hit, Lieutenant?”

“We’re okay,” I said.

I motioned to Frank, and we made a dash for the protection of my Ford. All lights in the house and the porch light went out just as we crouched behind it.

Sergeant Walker was on one knee behind the car, resting the butt of his tear-gas gun on the asphalt.

I held out my hand for the gun and said, “Better bring your car up and get some light on the subject.”

He faded away. Up and down the street doors began to open and people began to gather on porches. There was no sign of life from the dark house in front of us.

I called to the officers still crouched by the bushes, “Better move aside, men. We’re going to light things up.”

We could see them drift off to either side.

Walker drove his F car up behind mine, and his searchlight suddenly bathed the front of the house in a bright glow. One of the drawn shades started to move. Frank put a bullet through it, and it stopped moving.

I leaned against the front fender of the Ford, steadied my elbows on its hood, and aimed the tear-gas gun at the broken front-room window. I fired, and the window shade disappeared as the bomb carried it right along into the room with it.

I put another into the front room, then sent two more through the window Frank had broken. I handed the gun back to Walker, and we all stood waiting. A mist of tear gas began to drift from both windows.

“Probably shut themselves in the kitchen now,” Frank said.

“Do ’em a lot of good,” Walker said. “The boys back there got a tear-gas gun, too.”

Even as he spoke, we heard the distinctive burp of a tear-gas gun from behind the house as the men there followed our lead.

The woman was the first one out. The front door flew open, and she stumbled down the porch steps into the yard, where she fell to her knees, choking and sobbing, her hands to her face. A cloud of gas followed her out the door.

A tall, thin man came out next, his hands raised high over his head. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he was coughing uncontrollably.

Frank and I started to move forward with drawn guns, then stopped when a third figure appeared, a squat, thick-set man with a squashed-in nose. He reeled down the porch steps, tripped, and fell full-length on the lawn. He pushed himself to a sitting position and started to cry.

Frank and I moved forward again. Walker’s spotlight lighted the scene brilliantly, and we could see all three faces clearly.

“Well, well,” Frank said. “A double-header. Looks like we netted both Salty and Harvey Daniels.”

9:42 p.m. We waited for the tear gas to clear, then searched the house. No one else was in it. We found two .38-caliber pistols lying on the front-room floor, but no other weapons. There was no money in the house except approximately eleven dollars in a coffee jar in the kitchen. A shake-down of the suspects disclosed that none possessed more than a few dollars.

I said, “Looks like we’re going to have to net Big Julie before we recover any of the holdup loot.”

We took the suspects down to the Police Building. There we gave them more thorough shakedowns than we had at the scene. We discovered that the two men had supplied themselves with fake identities. Papers in Edward Saltenson’s wallet identified him as George Hall. His heavy-set partner was going under the name of Ralph Perkins.

We questioned the suspects separately, starting with the tall, birthmarked man. He looked at us defiantly when I pointed to a chair in the Robbery squad room and told him to sit down.

“What’s this all about?” he inquired. “You guys got nothing on me.”

I said, “Your fake papers aren’t going to work, Saltenson. We’ve got you made on three supermarket jobs and a payroll robbery in Los Angeles alone. Plus a half dozen jobs in other parts of the state.”

“Saltenson?” he said. “I knew it. I knew it was going to happen.”

“What?” Frank asked.

“Minute I saw that drawing in the paper, and how much it looked like me. Knew it was going to cause me trouble.”

I said, “If you’re the innocent victim of mistaken identity, why’d you fire on police officers?”

“That wasn’t me,” he said. “Perkins must of gone nuts. I don’t know why he tried to shoot it out. You’ll have to ask him.”

“We won’t bother,” I said. “We’ve got so much stuff on both of you, we’re not even interested in statements about the jobs you pulled. That’s not why we’re talking to you.”

“Yeah? Why, then?”

“Where’s the rest of the gang holed up?”

“How would I know? You’re making a mistake. Biggest shock I ever had when I saw that drawing in the paper.”

“Don’t doubt that,” I said.

“No fooling. You check my fingerprints against your records. You won’t find a thing on me. I never had a record nowhere.”

“Don’t let that bother you,” I said.

“Huh?”

“You’ll have one now.”

We continued to question the suspect, but were unable to get any information from him. He stuck to his story of mistaken identity. We had him led out and had his heavy-set partner brought into the squad room.

Harvey Daniels made no attempt to deny his real identity. With his fingerprints on file, he realized it would be futile. His attitude was one of sullen resignation.

“Sure you got me made,” he told us. “Why fight it? But you’re gonna have to prove it. You get no statement from me.”

“We don’t need one,” I said. “You’re made all down the line without it. Let’s talk about something else.”

“What?”

“The rest of the gang. Where are they?”

“Think I’m nuts?” he said. “They’re my hole card.”

“How’s that?” Frank asked.

“You don’t think Big Julie is gonna leave us in the can, do you? He’ll bust us out just like he did Maury.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yeah. You guys don’t know it, but you’re up against a brain. You ain’t got a chance.”

“How’s he going to swing it?” Frank asked.

Daniels shrugged. “Who knows? But he will. You watch and see.”

“We will,” I assured him.

Further questioning got no more from the suspect. He refused to discuss the whereabouts of the rest of the gang or their future plans. He denied knowing anything about any plans for financing a Honduran revolution.

We had him taken out and had the woman brought in.

Martha Gerrold was not unattractive in a slightly over-plump sort of way. She had a round, even-featured face and a shapely body. At the moment her natural attractiveness was somewhat marred by reddened eyes and an expression of total woe.

When she was seated, I said, “You know you’re in trouble, don’t you, ma’am? Harboring wanted criminals is a pretty serious offense.”

“I couldn’t help it,” she said tearfully. “They made me, mister. I didn’t want to, honest. They said they’d kill me if I didn’t go along.”

“Both of them said that?” Frank asked.

“Not Eddie,” she said. “He wouldn’t hurt me. We was going to get married after this was all over.”

“Just Daniels threatened you, then?” I said.

“Well, not him so much, either. Big Julie, mainly. He was always telling me if I stepped out of line, I’d end up in the ocean.”

“He used your place as a hideout, too?”

“Off and on. They all did at different times. But you can see I couldn’t do anything about it. I’d of been killed.”

Frank said, “How’d you start holing them up?”

She touched a handkerchief to her reddened eyes and sniffed. “Eddie was already staying there before he got in with the gang. After they got hot, he brought Big Julie around. Julie decided it would make a good hideout for the whole gang. I couldn’t stop them. Honest, mister.”

“Know any of their other hideouts?” I asked.

She said she didn’t, although she knew they had several alternate ones in various parts of the state. Questioned about the gang’s plans for Honduras, she readily admitted that she knew about them.

“Eddie was supposed to take me with him,” she said sadly. “We was going to be married down there and live on a big estate, with servants and everything. But I guess that’s all off now.”

“Afraid it is, ma’am,” I told her. “Didn’t these plans strike you as a little fantastic?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes I thought Julie was crazy. Particular when he got that funny light in his eyes and talked about himself as the Crime King.”

“The Crime King?” Frank said.

“Yeah. That’s what he calls himself. And he’s got the other guys calling him sir. Just like he’s already dictator of Honduras. Except for Maury Wey. He does what Julie tells him, but he don’t bow down to him a bit.” She added wistfully, “Even if it was a screwy idea, it was something to dream about. I never even seen a big estate with servants.”

Chapter 31

Martha Gerrold was a cooperative witness. She answered all questions fully, holding nothing back. The trouble was that she knew very little aside from what she had already told us. She believed most of the robbery loot to date had already been spent for arms to be used in the planned revolution. Recently she had heard talk of another arms shipment going out. She knew no details, but had caught mention of a ship named the Gloria May.

She knew nothing of the gang’s future robbery plans. Nor had she any idea when the other members of the gang next planned to use her home as a hideout. She said she never got advance notice. The various members moved in and out as they pleased, without consulting her.

We took the two male suspects down to the Felony Section and booked them on suspicion of armed robbery. In view of the woman’s statement that she had acted under duress, it was decided not to charge her with harboring wanted criminals. She was booked as a material witness and sent to the Women’s Jail.

We arranged for stakeouts on the Lake Street house in case any other members of the gang showed. I phoned the local office of the F.B.I. and informed them that we now had definite information that Big Julie and his gang were behind the planned Honduran coup. I also gave them the tip about the Gloria May.

After getting off a teletype to the Attorney General’s office informing them of the suspects’ apprehension, Frank and I closed up shop for the night.

On Thursday, May 29th, the district attorney issued complaints against Edward Saltenson and Harvey Daniels. The following day their answer was received in the private chambers of the judge of Division 34 of the Municipal Court. They were bound over for the charges filed against them and transferred to the County Jail in lieu of the posting of $50,000 bond each. Because of Harvey Daniels’ boast that Big Julie would break them out of jail, they were placed under twenty-four-hour security guard.

The cooperation of the press was requested in withholding the news of the suspects’ arrests, in the hope that other members of the gang might appear at the Lake Street hideout.

The maneuver didn’t work. On Monday, June 2nd, witnesses in the three supermarket robberies and the payroll robbery began to receive telephone threats warning them not to testify against the suspects. It was obvious that Big Julie had somehow learned of his confederates’ arrest.

The news ban was lifted and the story appeared in papers throughout the state. Police guards were assigned to all witnesses who had been threatened.

No more threats were reported, and there was no other activity by remaining members of the gang. They seemed to be marking time. A week passed.

On Tuesday, June 10th, I received another night call at my apartment, this time at 11:40 p.m. It got me out of bed.

“Hello,” I said sleepily.

“Joe,” Sergeant Tom Anderson’s voice said. “If you were asleep, get your pants on and get ready to roll.”

“What’s up?” I asked, coming fully awake.

“Big Julie fell off the wagon.”

“Huh?” I said.

“He and Strite just wrecked Pinto’s Tavern on Third. Tore the joint apart. Put the bartender in the hospital and banged up three other customers badly enough to require medical attention!”

“Got a line on them?”

“Have we!” Andy said gleefully. “An informer was in the place. Guy named Smoky Fallon.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s a contact of mine.”

“Well, he didn’t know how to reach you at night, so he called us. He tailed them from Pinto’s. Said he wouldn’t have dared but they were so drunk he didn’t think they’d notice. Got close enough to hear them discussing plans for the rest of the night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“They plan to spend it in a cat house on Fifth. Smoky knew the place they were talking about. Place called Belle’s. He gave us the address.”

“Got it staked out?”

“In the process. Smoky’s phone call wasn’t ten minutes ago. By the time I hang up, the whole area ought to be sewed up tight.”

“What’s the address?” I asked.

He gave it to me, and designated a spot a half block away for us to meet.

“How about phoning Frank, too,” I said. “I’m gonna be rushed for time.”

“Will do,” Andy said. “Incidentally, Smoky’s tip clears up another case, too.”

“What’s that?”

“Vice Squad didn’t know the place was a cat house.”

12:03 a.m. I arrived at the corner Andy had designated. I found him and LaMonica standing in the recessed doorway of a clothing shop.

“Everything under control?” I asked.

“Better than that,” Andy said. “Must be two hundred officers staked out in the area. And not a peep of suspicion from the house. They’re definitely in there, too.”

“How you know?”

“First stakeouts got here so fast they spotted them walking in the door. This ought to be easy. If they’re as drunk as Smoky says, — they’re probably sound asleep by now.”

“Sounds too easy,” I said. “I can’t see taking Big Julie without trouble.”

LaMonica said, “We hand it to him on a platter, and he still complains. It should be a cinch. We don’t even have to bull our way in.”

“How you figure?” I asked.

“Well, it’s a cat house, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

LaMonica said, “No reason a couple of officers couldn’t get inside by pretending to be customers.”

A few minutes later Frank arrived and we worked out the strategy of attack. It was decided that Frank and I would undertake the role of customers. Andy said that according to Smoky Fallon, Belle, the madam, had three girls working for her. He didn’t know two of them, but one went under the name of Flora. We would ask for her.

Andy and LaMonica led us up the street to the house. Every doorway and every recess we passed had a uniformed officer standing in it. Across the street from the house two F cars were parked, ready to turn their spots on the building on an instant’s notice.

Andy said, “Couple of cars in the alley out back, too. Anything goes wrong, we can light the place up like a Christmas tree.”

The building was a flat-roofed, two-story place with a yellow-stucco front. It looked as though it might house three to four large rooms downstairs, and anywhere up to six bedrooms on the second floor. There were lights in all the downstairs rooms and in one upper room.

When we had given it a thorough looking over, I drew a deep breath and said, “Okay, Frank. Let’s go.”

Andy said softly, “Good luck.”

He and LaMonica faded back into the darkened doorway of a shop. Frank and I crossed the street, climbed a short flight of steps, and knocked on the door.

A curtain over the glass upper portion of the door pulled back, and the rouged face of a fat woman of about fifty peered out inquiringly. I gave her an expectant smile.

The curtain fell back in place, and the door opened a crack. The woman was wearing a green evening dress.

“Hi, Belle,” I said genially. “Flora working tonight?”

She looked me up and down, searching her memory. “You been here before?’’ she finally asked.

“Sure,” I said. “With Jack. The tall fellow with dark hair. Remember?”

“Jack,” she said, groping in her memory again. She looked Frank over.

“I don’t remember you,” she said to Frank.

“No, ma’am,” Frank said. “Never been here before. I’m with him.” He nodded toward me, then gave her a fatuous grin.

Apparently Frank’s grin decided her that we were harmless. She pulled the door wide. We followed her through a hallway containing an open stairway to the upper floor, and into a large parlor. An archway off this led to what originally had been the house’s dining room, but now was furnished with sofas and chairs as a second sitting room. A door at the end of this room led to what was probably a kitchen.

Two hard-faced women in their late twenties, attired in gaudy kimonos, sat in the front room. They threw us bright, mechanical smiles.

“Flora is busy just now,” the fat madam said. “But these girls are free if you don’t want to wait.”

Frank threw me a questioning look.

As there didn’t seem to be any sleeping quarters on the first floor, Martin and Strite were obviously upstairs. Now that we were inside the house, we could have simply produced our IDs, ordered the women to be quiet, and gone upstairs to look. But both Frank and I once worked the Vice Squad. We’d been on enough raids to know how unpredictable some women can be when they see a police badge. Prostitutes aren’t prone to hysteria, but they are prone to anger. It was quite possible all three women would start yelling invective at the tops of their lungs. I felt it was best to keep things quiet until we got upstairs.

I looked the girls over and crooked my finger at the redhead. She rose languorously and walked over to me with an exaggerated sway of hips.

“You won’t regret not waiting, hon,” she said, and took my hand.

Frank gave the other girl an uncertain look and smiled shyly. She didn’t need any more invitation. She bounced erect, grasped his hand, and led him after me and the redhead.

The redhead and I reached the bottom of the stairs just as a shirt-sleeved figure appeared at the top. The man drunkenly supported himself by leaning one hand on the top stairpost and yelled, “Hey, Belle! Got any whisky around here?” Then he saw me and made a grab for his hip.

The man was Harry Strite.

Chapter 32

I grabbed the redhead’s shoulder and spun her across the hall toward the front-room door. Frank and the blonde were just coming through it. Frank neatly sidestepped, and the redhead crashed into the blonde. They fell into the front room in a tangle of arms and legs just as Strite’s pistol went off.

I had started to throw myself sidewise and draw the instant after I’d propelled the girl out of the line of fire. Strite’s bullet cut air where I had been a microsecond before. Then I was drawing and squeezing the trigger even as I brought the gun up.

My shot was echoed by one from Frank’s gun. The suspect let out a yell as a slug caught his left arm. I could see the round, dark spot appear against the white of his shirt sleeve just above the elbow.

Strite reeled backward and out of sight. We could hear him running down the hall, yelling, “Julie!” I started up the stairs three at a time with Frank right behind me. I reached the top just as Big Julie burst from a room at the end of the hall. He was in his undershirt and his hair hung over his forehead in disorder. He didn’t look like a scholar tonight. His face was bloated with drink, and his expression was the same as he wore in his mugg shot. He looked like a wild animal at bay. A .45 automatic was gripped in one huge fist.

Harry Strite sped right past him into the room Big Julie had just left. Julie leveled his gun at me and was squeezing the trigger when I fired. He staggered backward just as his gun went off, and the bullet went high over my head. I fired again, he gave a grunt and reeled out of sight into an alcove in the wall directly opposite the room where Strite was.

Frank was alongside me then, and we crouched side by side, our guns ready. There was no protection in the hall, but neither suspect could attempt a shot without exposing himself to our fire.

A door alongside of us cracked open, and the terrified eyes of a girl looked out. Undoubtedly the busy Flora, interrupted in the middle of her date. When she saw our guns, the door slammed and a bolt shot home.

I inched forward until I could see at an angle into the alcove where Big Julie was. My view was too restricted to see him, but I could make out that the alcove was a stairway to the roof.

I called, “Give it up and throw out your guns. You haven’t got a chance.”

The gunfire had alerted the outside stakeouts. The hallway suddenly grew brighter as spotlights from both the street in front and the alley out back hit windows at either end of the hall. Simultaneously there was a pounding on the door downstairs.

Harry Strite’s scared voice called, “Julie, I’m hit! We better give it up.”

“So am I, you chicken little runt,” Julie growled back from across the hall. “We’ll fight it out.”

“I can’t, Julie! I’m bleeding.” The little man’s voice contained an edge of panic. “Hey, Friday! I’m coming out. Don’t shoot!”

Julie yelled, “You stay where you are, chicken! You’re not running out on me.”

Strite made no reply. His gun skidded out into the hall, hit the mop board, and caromed toward us. Then he stepped through the door, his right arm held high and his bloodstained left arm dangling limply at his side.

“Why, you double-crossing little punk!” Big Julie’s thick voice said.

Strite glanced toward the roof stairs, and his expression grew terrified. “Don’t, Julie!” he whispered. “Don’t!”

Two thunderous shots sounded, and the little man slammed backward against the wall. His raised arm dropped to press against his stomach, and he slid slowly to a sitting position, his gaze fixed in shock and disbelief on the man he had regarded as a demigod.

The shots were still echoing when I ran forward and snapped a quick shot into the stairway alcove. It missed, and I jerked back out of the line of fire just as Julie fired back.

Momentarily we were stalemated, neither of us willing to risk exposure in order to get in another shot.

Then Frank and I heard the rasp of hinges as Julie heaved open the door to the roof. Frank and I both raced forward and leveled our guns just as the big man started to turn around again.

He never made it. Both of us fired point-blank while he was still half facing away from us. He tried to bring his gun around the rest of the way, emitted a deep groan, and tumbled head first down the stairs to land at our feet.

I kicked his dropped gun aside and knelt over him.

There was a clattering on the stairs, and Andy and LaMonica suddenly appeared in the upper hallway with drawn guns. They halted and lowered the guns when they saw Frank putting his away. I rose and put mine away, too.

“He’s dead,” I announced generally.

Frank was bending over Harry Strite, who still sat on the hall floor with his back against the wall, his good hand clutched to his stomach. Red was seeping between his fingers.

Frank said, “He’s still alive. But I think he’s dying.”

I leaned over the wounded man, too. I said, “Can you hear me, Harry?”

He looked at me dully. “Julie did it. I never thought—”

“You haven’t got much time, Harry,” I interrupted. “Want to go out clean?”

“We shouldn’t of come in,” the dying man whispered. “We shouldn’t of left Whittier.”

“Where in Whittier, Harry?” I said. “Is that where Maury Wey is?”

I seemed to reach him finally. His eyes momentarily cleared, and he looked directly into my face. “Arnold Watson’s on Firebird Avenue,” he said. “Be careful you don’t hurt the kids.”

His head drooped to his chest.

“He’s dead,” Frank said, and rose to his feet.

12:47 a.m. From a phone in the downstairs hall I called Detective Headquarters to report Harry Strite’s dying words. Al Shambra, who took the report, said he would get the information to the Whittier police immediately.

“What do you think he meant by ‘Be careful you don’t hurt the kids’?” he asked.

“I’d guess he meant there were some kids in the house,” I said. “Better advise the Whittier police not to rush in until they find out.”

When I hung up, Andy and Frank were standing in the hall. Andy said, “Want us to wind things up here, Joe, and let you and Frank get some sleep?”

Frank answered for both of us. He said, “Sure appreciate it, Andy. I been spending so many nights out, Fay wonders why I don’t transfer to the night watch.”

The next morning Frank and I met in front of the elevators. As we rode up to third, Frank asked, “Heard how they made out with Maury Wey?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Nothing in the morning paper. Something else interesting, though.”

“What?” I asked.

“Customs agents knocked over a ship in San Francisco Harbor. Arrested the skipper and a couple of other guys. Confiscated the cargo.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Ship named the Gloria May. With a cargo of contraband guns.”

7:58 a.m. We checked in and found a message in the book that the captain wanted to see us.

“Friday, Smith,” he said when we walked into his office. “Got a chore for you.”

Frank nodded, and I said, “Yes, sir.”

“Whittier police, with an assist from sheriff’s deputies, have got Maury Wey corked up like a moth in a bottle. Had him staked out all night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But there’s another man, a woman, and two kids in the house with him. They’re afraid to move in for fear of their getting hurt.”

Frank said, “We were afraid of something like that.”

“They’d just wait for Wey to come out,” the captain said. “But he might take a week. So they’ve asked for help.”

“What kind of help?” I asked.

“They figure you and Frank know Wey better than anybody. They’d like you to run out there and see if you can figure a way to get him out of the house.”

Chapter 33

9:17 a.m. We arrived at Whittier. The area around the staked-out house was blocked off by police and sheriff’s deputy cars. We were stopped at one of the roadblocks. When we explained who we were, the officer who stopped us got on his radio. Shortly afterward we were joined by a Lieutenant Goss, who was in charge of the stakeout.

Lieutenant Goss said that he had forty men deployed around the house.

“In daylight?” I said. “How are they keeping out of sight?”

“We asked the neighbors’ cooperation,” he said. “Some of them are in houses on either side of the Watson house, some in houses across the street. The rest are hidden in underbrush behind the house.”

“I see,” I said.

“Wey hasn’t tumbled yet. We’re afraid if he does, he’ll try to use the woman and children as hostages.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Mrs. Watson and her two kids. Seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl. Watson isn’t there. We’ve got him in custody.”

“Oh?”

“He started to drive to work at eight thirty. One of the roadblocks stopped his car.”

“What’s he say?”

“That he’s been hiding out the gang under duress. Maury Wey’s a distant cousin. Says the gang just moved in and told him if he went to the police, they’d take it out on his family.”

“I mean, what’s he say about the situation inside?”

Lieutenant Goss shrugged. “Says Wey’s capable of anything. Begged us to wait until Wey comes outside before we make a move. Which is impossible.”

“Why?”

“Watson says Wey hasn’t stepped out of the house in a week.”

Frank said, “Just what is it you want with us, Lieutenant?”

“You and Friday know this man. Hoped you’d be able to think of a method of smoking him out.”

I said, “I was thinking on the way down. Willing to take a chance?”

“On what?” Goss asked.

“Letting him know he’s surrounded. He’s bound to tumble eventually anyway.”

“You mean deliberately let him know?”

“I thought about phoning the Watson house and talking to him,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Wey has enough guts to shoot it out,” I said. “But he’s no hothead. Doubt that he has an emotion in him. If he thought he didn’t have a prayer, I think he’d weigh the odds. There’s a good chance he’d give up without a struggle.”

Lieutenant Goss wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea, but he accepted it because he didn’t have a better one. We decided the best place to phone from was one of the Watsons’ next-door neighbors.

We reached the house next to the Watson place by climbing several backyard fences and finally entering a side door that could not be seen from the Watson home. Frank and I looked out a window at the place next door before I phoned. It was a neat, one-story frame house with an immaculately kept lawn.

Goss looked up the number for me, and I dialed it.

The phone rang three times before a pleasant feminine voice said, “Hello?”

“Mrs. Watson?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“This is Lieutenant Friday of the Los Angeles Police. Will you tell Maury Wey I’d like to speak to him?”

There was a gasp, then silence.

“Mrs. Watson?” I said.

The silence continued. The line wasn’t dead, but there was no sound whatever. I guessed that the woman had clamped a hand over the mouthpiece and was relaying what I had said.

A full minute passed before a cautious male voice said, “Yeah?’

“Joe Friday, Maury,” I said pleasantly. “How are you?’

“What’s the caper?” he demanded.

“I’m right next door, Maury. With ten other officers. There’s ten more in the house on your other side, ten in houses across the street, and ten in the underbrush out back. All armed with riot guns, machine guns, and carbines. Plus a little tear gas.”

After a considerable silence he asked coldly, “Think you can take me?’

“Don’t think you’ll make us,” I said. “After you think it over. I think you’re smart enough to weigh the odds. If you try to shoot it out, you’re dead. If you give up, there’s always another chance. How about it?’

“You must be nuts, Friday.”

“Consider it,” I suggested. “Which would be easier — breaking past fifty guns or making a jailbreak?”

There was another long silence. Then he said, “Keep talking.”

“You’ve made it out of maximum security twice, Maury. There’s always the chance you could make it again. But you’ll never get past this setup.”

After another silence, he said, “What’s your number there, Friday?”

I read it off the phone dial.

“Give me ten minutes,” he said. “I’ll either phone you back or come out shooting.”

Only eight minutes passed before the phone rang. I picked it up and said, “Friday speaking.”

I heard a long sigh. “For a cop, you’re a convincing guy, Friday.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“You win. I’ll give you five minutes to spread the word not to shoot. Then I’ll throw out my gun and come out the front door backward.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Lieutenant,” he said, in a suddenly diffident voice.

“Yeah?”

“You said you thought I was smart. Was that bull, or do you really mean it?”

“You’re being smart about this,” I said.

“You know what I mean. In general.”

“You want me to be frank?” I asked.

“Sure, Lieutenant.”

I said, “Smart people don’t end up in prison.”

The story you have just read is true. The names were changed to protect the innocent.

The following is a summary of the disposition of the case officially known as Operation Statewide but usually referred to in the press as the “Crime King Case.”

Gerald Felix Federson — Killed by police officers on March 19th.

Harry Glenn Strite and Jules Byron Martin — Killed in a gun battle with police officers on June 10th.

Harvey Kent Daniels and Edward Lee Saltenson — On August 4th trial was held in Department 92, Superior Court of the State of California, in and for the County of Los Angeles. The suspects were tried and convicted of robbery in the first degree, four counts, and received sentence as prescribed by law. Robbery in the first degree is punishable by imprisonment in the State Penitentiary for a period of not less than five years on each count. Harvey Kent Daniels and Edward Lee Saltenson are now serving their terms in the State Penitentiary, San Quentin, California.

Maurice Lester Wey — On August 18th trial was held in Department 92, Superior Court of the State of California, in and for the County of Los Angeles. The suspect was tried and convicted of homicide in the first degree, with a recommendation for life imprisonment. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in the State Penitentiary, San Quentin, California.

On October 8th the suspect escaped from San Quentin by means of a simulated pistol fashioned from soap and shoe blacking, his third escape from maximum security. On October 10th he is alleged to have killed a special police officer during an attempted robbery in Chicago, Illinois. On November 5th he was captured by F.B.I. agents, after a gun battle during which both the suspect and an F.B.I. agent were wounded, in Detroit, Michigan. He was extradited to Illinois on a charge of murder.

On February 4th the suspect was tried and convicted of first degree murder in Cook County, Illinois. He was sentenced to die by electrocution at the Illinois State Penitentiary, Joliet, Illinois.

Maurice Lester Wey is now awaiting execution at Joliet, Illinois.

Glossary of Police Terms and Abbreviations

ADW — assault with deadly weapon.

APB — all Points Bulletin.

Business Dispute — Argument between customer and merchant.

1.1. — Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation.

Code 3 — Emergency (red light and siren).

Code 2 — Urgent (no red light or siren).

Corner Pocket — Deputy Chief of Detectives Thad Brown.

M.V. — Department of Motor Vehicles.

DOA — dead on arrival.

DR Number — Division of Records number (case number).

F Car — Felony car.

Hard Time — Time served for a felony conviction.

Hot Shot — Telephone connected with the Communications Division where Emergency calls are relayed to proper division.

ID — Police officer’s identification.

The Joint — San Quentin penitentiary.

KMA367 — call letters of Metropolitan Area Station.

Make — Identification of suspect or car.

MO — Modus operandi (method of operation).

R & I — Records and Identification Section.

Stakeout — Fixed post of surveillance, either in anticipation of a crime or in anticipation of arrival of person who has committed a crime.

Stand-Up Muggs — Pictures showing full length of suspect. Stat’s Office — Statistics Section.

211 — Radio code for robbery.

White-collar Criminal — Bunco artist, forger, counterfeiter, or other criminal who specializes in nonviolent crimes.

Wma — white, Male, American.

Content

Richard Deming
The Case of the Crime King

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Glossary of Police Terms and Abbreviations