The Gremlin's Grampa

by Robert L. Fish

  “I don’t know. Possibly.”

  “I suppose it could be,” the bartender said deprecatingly. “But they got so many guys with real beards and mustaches going around today, who ever thinks of a fake brush?”

  The third member of the group at the end of the bar had remained silent. He was an old man, slightly bent with age, with large knobbly work-hardened hands and extremely bright blue eyes. White stubble dotted his chin; he had a long hand-knitted scarf wrapped several times around his throat for protection against the fog and dampness. He suddenly spoke up.

  “He had on real shiny shoes,” he said.

  Reardon stared at him, frowning. “He had what?”

  “The guy with the lumber jacket, his shoes were real shiny. I seen them.” The old man sounded proud of himself.

  “What else did you see?”

  “Nothing else. I was looking down, like. I seen his shoes. By accident, like. They were real shiny.”

  “Did you see him stab the man in the chair?”

  “I seen they were having some sort of ruckus and I turned away. I don’t want no grief; I stay away from that kind of stuff. My wife knows there’s trouble in any tavern I’m in, she won’t like me dropping in no taverns, and I don’t want that. I been retired six years now and she ain’t stopped me yet, but that don’t mean she won’t. I didn’t see nothing of any stabbing. I keep my nose clean.”

  Reardon sighed and turned back to the bartender. Alfred Sullivan had been listening to this exchange with his little head tilted to one side, birdlike. His head straightened up, alert, as Reardon continued with the questioning.

  “All right, let’s go on. What happened after the stabbing?”

  “Well,” Sullivan said, “this guy pulls the knife out of Mr. Capp and walks over to the door, see. Quick, like, and sort of crouched over, like maybe he was wondering did anybody see him, but of course everybody seen him. He—”

  “I didn’ see nothin’.”

  Sullivan disregarded the interruption. “He stands there for just a minute—a second, I mean—holding up the knife like he’s threatening anybody tries to get in his way, or maybe anyone who follows him. But nobody’s nutty enough to do that, and besides it happened so quick nobody had a chance. Then he ducks out the door and slams it behind him. I come out from behind the bar and first I check Mr. Capp, of course, and then I open the door to see maybe I can see where he goes—”

  Dondero interrupted, frowning, his pencil poised over his notebook. “How come you didn’t call a doctor, or an ambulance?”

  Alfred Sullivan shook his small head positively. “Man, I may not look it, but I did thirty-two months in the Pacific in the big one, jumping islands. With the medics. I don’t know lots of things, but one thing I know for sure is when a guy is dead.”

  Reardon sighed and mentally shook his head. And I wonder, he thought, how many people in this world have died needlessly because the first man who checked them out knew for sure when a guy was dead? Still, he had to admit from the position of the body and the fact that it obviously hadn’t moved since it took the tablecloth half down with it—at least without the help of the young doctor—that it was quite possible that Jerry Capp had, indeed, been dead at the time. In any event, he was certainly dead now. He returned to his questioning.

  “The report had it you didn’t hear or see a car. What about that?”

  “If he had a car, he didn’t have it around here. Maybe over on Berry, or even around the corner on Second. I didn’t see one or hear one start up. Anyways,” he added explanatorily, “the cops have been getting tough on cars parking around this side of the Embarcadero. They usually park eight feet off the curb and louse up traffic.”

  As if that would stop a premeditated killer, Reardon thought, and then paused a second to reconsider. It might not stop a man from killing, but if he had cased the place thoroughly enough to properly plan a murder he certainly wouldn’t take a chance on running out of the scene of a murder to find a cop ticketing his car.

  “Go on, Alfred.”

  “Right. So I come outside and start looking for a cop, and I go down Berry and I see this patrol car in this gas station and the sergeant he comes back with me, and that’s the story.”

  “So where do you figure the killer disappeared to?”

  Alfred Sullivan frowned. He unconsciously picked up a towel and started to swab the bar; a few passes and he realized what he was doing and tossed the towel aside. He leaned over the bar, pointing to a wall.

  “They’s an alley next to the bar this side, cuts over to King, runs parallel to the Embarcadero, but they’s a couple of other alleys runs off it partway down. He could have ducked down there and ended up anyplace. And of course he could have made it across the street before I got outside and got around them trucks and them containers—or even onto one of the piers, though they ain’t working neither Forty-two or Forty-four right now.”

  “Yeah.” Reardon thought a moment. The young doctor was sitting idly at a table awaiting transportation back to the Hall of Justice; the man working with Wilkins was dismantling his camera equipment. Wilkins had a pad out and was sketching on it; a tape measure, stretching from the side of the sprawled body to the nearest wall, was fastidiously located so as to avoid the hardening blood trails. Looking at the Technical men at work gave Reardon an idea. He turned back to Alfred Sullivan. “Did the man touch anything while he was in here that you saw? The chair? The table? He wasn’t wearing gloves, was he?”

  “Jeez, let me think …”

  “Yes,” said the man with the spectacles, and pushed them into place. “He was wearing gloves. He had on a new pair of cotton work gloves. I didn’t even think of it, you see them so often on the docks. His were new. White. They don’t stay that way very long hustling crates,” he added sadly.

  “I suppose not.” Reardon tried to think of other questions but none came. He looked from Sullivan to the three men at the end of the bar, and then—not demanding but asking, friend to friend—he said, “Damn it, somebody had to finger him, or the chances are they did. Didn’t anybody come in here while Capp was here? Other than the regulars?”

  There was a small shrug from Alfred Sullivan. “Like I said, Mr. Capp comes in every Wednesday around this time. Anybody could have known.”

  “But he could have missed a Wednesday, too, and nobody would have died of surprise. If I was going to—” He broke off. There was no sense in discussing the case in detail. “Did anyone come in here when Capp was here, anyone who didn’t usually come in here?”

  There were several moments’ silence, as if everyone was too embarrassed at not having any definite clue to give the stocky lieutenant. Then the old man with the scarf and the blue eyes spoke up.

  “They was that girl,” he said slowly.

  “Girl?”

  The ex-pug came to life, his eyes brightening. It must have been the way he looked when he recalled the few triumphs of his ring life. “Yeah,” he said. “Her I remember. She was somethin’!”

  Reardon looked at Alfred Sullivan. “What girl?”

  Sullivan shrugged. “Some dame comes in I never seen before. We don’t get many dames in here, except maybe sometimes a guy brings his old lady in for a brew. That’s why we got the tables, see? Anyway—”

  “Sadie comes in,” the ex-pug said, objecting to the flatness of the statement.

  “Who’s Sadie?”

  “A barfly hangs around,” Sullivan said. “Too old to work a house, goes with sailors. Anyway, it wasn’t Sadie, and I don’t figure she’s a dame anyway. Sadie was here earlier, but anyhow, this dame comes in—young, good-looking chick—asks how to get to Pacific and I tell her to hang onto the Embarcadero and she goes out. That’s all they was to it. And she don’t even look over at Mr. Capp.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “I told you. Young, good-looking, big chest, brown hair. But hell, she wasn’t here more than a minute, if that. Less.”

  “That’s the best description
you can give?”

  “Mister,” Sullivan said, shaking his head, “that’s all the description I can give. That’s all the description there was. Hell, I wouldn’t know her if I seen her on the street tomorrow. She wasn’t here but a couple of seconds.”

  “Yeah.” Reardon thought a moment more and then motioned Dondero to the far end of the bar, out of earshot of the others. He lowered his voice. “This is a goddam waste of time, Don. You stick around. Get the names and any other dope you can on the guys who were here who ducked out—any that these people remember. Maybe one of them saw more than these four did; maybe one of them even knows who the girl is. This isn’t the neighborhood for girls to stop and ask directions. I’ll send a few men down to help you; I want to go through any ashcans in those alleys, all of them, hear? Any he might have reached through any of the alleys.”

  “Looking for the knife?”

  “Looking for the knife, naturally, but also looking for a red plaid lumber jacket, and a hunting cap. Or a fake beard and mustache. Or the sunglasses.” He thought a minute. “You might also hit any basements he might have gone into—”

  Dondero looked at him in surprise. “You think after killing a guy, this guy would waste time ducking into a basement or a warehouse to stash away a pair of gloves or a fake brush? If it was fake, that is?”

  “He might just duck into a basement or a warehouse to stash himself away,” Reardon said drily. “And I want a check on those containers across the street. And even if they’re not working those piers, maybe they have a watchman on deck who might have been taking the air—” He knew it was doubtful in that fog, but it had to be done. “Hell, Don, you know what I want.”

  “I know.” Dondero nodded and tucked his notebook away. “Will do.”

  Reardon glanced at his watch. “I’m going back and talk to Captain Tower. Maybe if you get done, you can get a lift back with the ambulance when it gets here. If it gets here at all tonight, that is.”

  “Oh gosh, gee-whiz, and thanks, mister,” Dondero said sarcastically. “I finally get a chance to ride with Mr. Capp, the big shot. In the back seat with him, too, I’ll bet.”

  “If you’re lucky,” Reardon said equably, and headed back to his car.

  CHAPTER 4

  Wednesday—11:05 p.m.

  The famous list beneath the glass covering Captain Tower’s desk was typewritten on a small square of paper; it was slightly fading with age and dated from the days of Captain Tower’s promotion to head up Homicide. Being beneath his eye daily he could scarcely avoid being aware of it, either consciously or subconsciously, and in either case it always had the ability to irritate him. To the captain it represented, among the many successes of the police department, at least a partial list of its failures, although it did have the advantage of keeping him from becoming too complacent about his work, or the work of his department. Here were the names of four men who were walking the streets when they should have been occupying cells in San Quentin; while they were not directly guilty of homicide as such, Captain Tower knew very well that their activities had caused more than one death.

  The names on the list were four, and the captain actually didn’t need the square piece of paper to remember them, or the long list of reasons he would have liked to see them put away. From beneath the glass, there peeked at him constantly:

  Jerry Capp

  Porfirio Falcone

  Raymond Martin

  John Sekara

  The captain leaned back in his chair, raised the glass by one corner, and managed to ease the small square of paper out, using the eraser on his pencil to pull it toward him. He reversed the pencil and drew a heavy line through the first name, and then replaced the list beneath the glass. He straightened the pane to square it with the desk top, and then methodically replaced the ashtray, the telephone and the In and Out basket with its papers. He swiveled his chair, looking out the window into the night, speaking to Reardon without looking at him.

  “It’s enough to make you wonder, Jim.” His deep voice was soft, almost reminiscent. He tented his fingers and stared across them at the fog. “Five long years I’ve been after that bastard, ever since he came up from being a nobody to being a big shot in this town, but I could never pin a conviction on him. He and his stable of lawyers have been giving us the laugh for years. Blackmail, loan-sharking—and now, you tell me, an honest businessman on the side, which is hard to believe, but never mind—” He sighed and swung his chair back to face his subordinate. “Jerry Capp …” His voice was musing. “Nee Jerome Kaplan, alias Jack Culp, alias John Carpenter. All our organization and brains and we can’t touch him. And now some punk in a cheap bar sticks a knife in him in an argument, and just like that he’s off the list.” He shook his head; the light blue eyes beneath the bushy graying eyebrows studied Reardon. “I tell you, Jim, it really makes you think.”

  “Yes, sir,” Reardon said. He spread his legs and leaned back in his chair, relaxing. It was late, and he had had a late night the night before, and he was tired. He fought down a yawn and came back to the subject of the conversation. “Actually, though, it really didn’t sound to me like too much of an argument.”

  “It seems to have been enough,” Captain Tower said sardonically.

  “I mean, it sounds as if it wasn’t really caused by an argument at all,” Reardon said, a trifle stubbornly. “It sounds to me as if the guy came in there looking for Capp and intending to get him. You know how most bar fights go, Captain—one guys says something, the other guy comes back with a nasty answer, words go back and forth for a while, then the pushing starts and that goes on awhile, and then—then the real trouble starts. If it starts at all.” He smiled faintly. “Most bar fights give the bystanders or the bartender plenty of time to break it up. Or we’d have corpses all over the place.”

  “True,” the captain conceded. “On the other hand there are bar fights where one word is enough. And we do get corpses all over the place.”

  “I’m not arguing that, but those are rare cases. And in this case I don’t think so. The bartender claims that Capp was there every Wednesday, which means that anyone could have known it.”

  “Anyone who frequented the bar, but you say nobody recognized the killer.”

  “Not in that outfit,” Reardon said. “With that getup, they wouldn’t have recognized their own mothers. Which is another reason I think the thing is phony.”

  Captain Tower frowned at him. “First you say nobody recognized the man because you think his getup was a disguise, and then you say it had to be a disguise because nobody recognized him. Or words to that effect.” He smiled. “You can’t lose, can you?”

  Reardon refused to be baited.

  “Look, Captain. The fact is that nine bar fights out of ten are settled with fists. This man came prepared with a knife—” He saw the look of incredulity on the captain’s face and flushed slightly. “Yes, sir. I know half of the town carries a weapon these days, but still. Nobody in the place remembers what kind of a knife it was, but the doctor says it was a thin, long blade, which rules out a switchblade or a kitchen knife. So who goes around with a stiletto on the offhand chance somebody might get smart with him in a bar? They’re hard to conceal and damned awkward to carry. And it had to be something like that to go through Capp’s jacket and shirt and still kill him.”

  Captain Tower remained silent, watching him. Reardon took a breath and went on.

  “Secondly, they scarcely say two words before the knife comes out and Capp gets stabbed, and even those two words aren’t in any angry tones or loud tones, because nobody even knew they were arguing. Third, this girl that came in could have been checking to find out if Capp was there this particular day, fingering for the killer. Where does a person usually go for directions when they’re lost? Nine times out of ten to a gas station, and there’s one not very far away. Damned seldom to a bar, especially a crumb joint in that neighborhood. Fourth, that beard and jacket and glasses and all—that still sounds like a disguise to
me, someone who didn’t want to be recognized, and there had to be a reason for that.” He shrugged. “It could have been because he didn’t want the witnesses to be able to identify him, but it could also have been because he wanted to get near enough to Capp without Capp getting suspicious.”

  “You think Capp would have recognized him?”

  “I don’t know; I merely say it seems to me to be a possibility.”

  “He could have used a gun, you know—knocked Capp off from outside, without all that disguise business,” Captain Towers pointed out.

  “He could have,” Reardon admitted, “but bullets are easier to trace than a knife the killer takes away with him. And actually, what real chance was he taking? TV on in a bar, everyone drinking and talking; hell, he wasn’t there ten seconds. And all anyone remembers is what he wants them to remember, a brush, sunglasses, a loud lumber jacket. He could have shed them and walked back in, five minutes later, and nobody would have known the difference.”

  There were a few minutes of silence. Captain Tower reached into a drawer and brought out a cigar. He lit it, rolling it in his thick fingers, puffing it into life. The spent match was discarded.

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Captain Tower said at last. He puffed, letting the thick smoke eddy from his lips. “I’m sure there are plenty of people who aren’t going to cry into their beer just because Jerry Capp went and got killed. Any one of them might have done it, and with reason. Still, our job is to find that someone. And unless we have something else to go on, we have to use what little we have—which is a beard and a red lumber jacket and a pair of sunglasses.” He looked at Reardon steadily. “Because if we don’t have those, what do we have?”

  “Not very much,” Reardon admitted. “Of course, we all know Capp had enemies, but the question is also which particular enemy did Capp get exceptionally riled up recently? After all, he’s been a bad boy for a long time, and nobody knocked him off until tonight.”