“I—” The fat man clamped his mouth shut. He said to himself: I must have known down deep the Brink’s truck was taking the payroll over to the yard every Thursday, but honest to God—
Lieutenant Reardon had gotten his point across, at least to his own satisfaction, and was now disregarding the sweating, pale fat man. He turned to the manager.
“As I was saying, who knew about the payroll other than the people here? Including him?”
“Well,” Milligan said, determined not to leave anyone out after seeing Reardon at work, “the Brink’s people know, of course. They pick up the payroll at—” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Around now. They should be here any minute. And the shipyard people know, of course; it’s their payroll. I don’t know how many people there are involved in the payment over there, but it would be easy enough to find out. And of course our people downtown know, in the main office and in the insurance section.” He considered a moment and then nodded his head. “That would be about all, I think.”
“About all?” Reardon studied the red-haired young man a moment and laid down his notebook. It looked as if half the town could have known about the payroll and the Brink’s pickup and, for all he knew, did. Not to mention the neighborhood, including other merchants. After all, a Brink’s truck stopping to make a pickup at a weekly schedule—how much brains did it take to figure out they weren’t stopping for lunch at three-thirty in the afternoon? Well, at least Wheaton’s death would give him plenty of people to work on the case; a cop’s death in the line of duty took precedence over everything else in Homicide. As well as in all other departments. And it would take an army of men to check out everyone who might have been involved.
Reardon sighed. He swung around, considering the gaping faces still shocked at his treatment of the fat man, disregarding their censure. A cop was killed, he tried to tell them silently, and then knew they could not understand.
“All right, folks. What else can you tell me?”
Whereas before nobody wanted to speak, now they all started to talk at the same time.
“They wore gray suits and wide-brimmed hats, all just alike, like triplets, like in the old Edward G. Robinson movies, like in Little Caesar—”
“The man with the machine gun spoke real polite, but I’d hate to get him mad at me—”
“The one at the front door sounded like he came from the South—”
“They were in here exactly three minutes—”
“They were wearing these rubber gloves,” the fat man said, anxious to erase the previous encounter and prove his good intentions. “Like doctors put on before they make you bend over and—”
Reardon held up his hand abruptly. “Hold it! One at a time! What did you say, ma’am?”
The woman, one of the tellers, said, “I said, they were in here exactly three minutes, maybe a few seconds less. I was watching that clock on the wall there.” She pointed a bony finger. “I didn’t want to even look at that gun!”
“Three minutes? You’re wrong, Alice! It had to be at least ten!”
“It had to be a lot longer than that! Ten minutes! That’s a coffee break!”
Reardon looked at Mike Krysak. The guard said, “I don’t figure it was much more than three minutes, Lieutenant. They were organized and they knew what they wanted.”
“Apparently it was long enough,” Reardon said, and frowned. “Which brings up another question. What happened to your silent alarm? It rang at the Bay View Station after the robbery was over.”
“A damned good question!” the manager said bitterly. “Ask the girls why none of them stepped on an alarm button!”
The girls—mostly in their late forties or early fifties—reacted with normal indignation.
“I happened to be over at the file cabinets near the billing machine checking this gentleman’s balance—”
“I didn’t happen to be near a button. They put them in such ridiculous—”
The last teller to speak was the one who had noticed the clock. She said, “The man said, ‘Don’t move,’ and he had that gun in his hand so I didn’t move.” She made it sound like one-plus-one-equals-two.
“On the other hand,” Reardon said to nobody in particular, “I suppose if there were alarm buttons on the floor near the file cabinets and everyplace else, the girls would be stepping on them accidentally a dozen times a day, which is about all we need. In any event, it took the patrol car five minutes to make it here, so the chances are the robbers would still have gotten away.” He surveyed the group. “What else? What did they look like?”
The former hostages looked at each other for help. Someone said, “They were—well, they were all about the same size.…” Another added, “Wearing the same clothes …”
“Triplets?” Reardon asked sarcastically.
“Well, I guess maybe the guy with the machine gun was a little taller,” the guard said.
“Look,” Reardon said with a patience he was about to lose, “let’s say they were all exactly the same size to the quarter of an inch, and they all weighed the same to within a pound. Now, let me try again: were they as big as King Kong or smaller than a breadbox?”
“Oh!” The idea finally came across.
“He was a little bigger than me, the guy who put the gun on me,” the guard said. “Maybe five eleven, or six feet.”
“At last!” Reardon said fervently, and wrote it down. “Fat or skinny?”
“Medium,” Krysak said firmly.
“Thank you,” Reardon said, and turned to the manager. “How about that camera? How long does it take to develop the film?”
A note of pride crept into the manager’s boyish voice. It was as if he were trying to salvage some small bit of comfort from a very bad situation.
“We’re miles ahead of either still cameras or even movies, Lieutenant,” he said, “at least at the Farmers & Mercantile. That’s a TV camera up there, with an instant-replay tape attachment. We can look at the tape replays anytime you want in my office.”
“Good,” Reardon said heartily and meant it. “Then let’s, shall we?”
He moved into the small office followed by the manager. Milligan started to close the door but Reardon stopped him.
“Let them all see it. Maybe it will bring something to mind.”
“Oh. Sure. Sorry.” Milligan went over to a complicated machine in one corner; the last of the stragglers crowding into the office could be seen in bluish light on one of the twin screens on the machine. The second screen was blank. The manager checked his watch, set a timer on the dial panel, and pressed a button. There was a brief second’s whirring and suddenly sound blared in the small room. The manager instantly twisted a knob and the racket subsided to tolerable levels. Reardon studied the machine admiringly.
“Sound too, eh?”
“Oh, sure. Next year they’ll have color, they say.” The manager sounded as if he thought the police probably used smoke signals for communications. He reached for a button. “Ready?”
There was a small disturbance at the main door of the bank and the police officer stationed there came over to the office and poked his head in. He was followed by a burly man in a semi-police outfit, although the revolver he carried was official-looking enough.
“Brink’s truck is here, Lieutenant.”
Reardon looked at the manager. Milligan looked past the policeman to the Brink’s driver.
“We had a holdup, Charley. You’ll have to pick up the payroll at the main office in town. They’re making it up now.”
The Brink’s man shrugged and left. The romance of a robbery missed him completely; besides, it wasn’t his money. In fact, after all the years of toting the stuff from one place to another, he had long since convinced himself it wasn’t money at all, but only bits of colored paper. He felt this to be a far healthier attitude, especially for a man with a big family and a small income.
The manager returned to his electronic pride and joy, the replay machine. Reardon gave him a nod; Milligan pressed a bu
tton. The second screen sprang to life. The guard bit his lip as he watched himself walking so innocently toward the man who had pulled the gun on him. What on earth had he been dreaming of not to have seen the man, not to have been prepared for an emergency like that? On the other hand, he reminded himself, he could well be dead now, like that cop outside, and went back to watching the film.
The tape faithfully reproduced the action that had passed. The second gunman moved to the center of the room; the drape was drawn and the submachine gun uncased and raised, sweeping the room. The TV camera had miraculously adjusted its lens to accommodate the change in lighting when the drape had been closed; the scene rolled on with perfect visibility.
“Nobody move and nobody gets hurt.…”
They all watched the small screen as if seeing the action for the first time with their own roles in the drama being taken by strangers. The man guarding the door could be seen to turn, foreshortened a bit by the acute angle of the camera.
“Customah. Guess Ah closed fo’ the day too soon.”
One of the women tellers suddenly spoke.
“I remember now. I thought it was funny how none of them sounded as if they came from the same place.”
Reardon spoke without taking his eyes from the screen. “Did any of them sound as if he came from around here?”
“Here?” The woman thought about it a moment and then shook her head. “Here they sound like they come from all over.” Which, Reardon thought, was on a par with the other help he’d gotten, although he could not deny that the woman was merely speaking the truth.
A second chipped in. “Like I said before, the one at the door sounded like he was from the South. Like he did just now.” The voice faded dubiously as nobody complimented her on the contribution.
The film continued. The gunman from the basement vault appeared with the suitcase; together with the man carrying the machine gun he backed up to meet the third at the door. The pistol was raised, and then the camera was merely recording the momentary tableau before everyone started to move, everyone except the fat man who continued to stand in shock. The manager flicked off the screen and looked at Reardon.
“Any help?”
Reardon was staring at the blank screen. He said, almost to himself, “A sense of humor …”
Milligan frowned in nonunderstanding. “I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing,” Reardon said and came back to the present. “It might help, the tape, I mean.” The clothing the three men had worn had looked familiar; now he remembered where he had last seen it. It was the type of hat and suit worn in the old gangster movies, circa 1930. Shades of early Cagney, he thought; someone had a sense of humor. But there was something else about the film he had just seen that was also familiar, other than the clothes, and this he could not place. Probably something I saw recently on television, he thought; it’ll come to me. He put the thought aside. “I’ll want that tape, of course. Down at the Hall we’ll make voice-graphs. You’d be surprised how accurately we can spot a man’s home just from voice-graphs. They’re like fingerprints, and just as useful in catching and convicting people.”
It was, of course, so much garbage; the fact was that even when, once in a blue moon, the voice-graph helped in finding a criminal, juries still looked at this evidence in much the manner that juries looked at fingerprints in the days of Bertillon. But Reardon tossed the statement in for the benefit of the small group before him. If any one of them was involved, let him sweat a bit. The lieutenant came to his feet.
“I’d appreciate one more bit of co-operation from all of you, if you don’t mind, and then you’ll be free. I’d like each one to take a pencil and paper and write down your name, address, and phone number. Then I’d like you to put down exactly where you were and what you were doing at the time of the robbery, as well as an accurate description of what happened as you saw it. And any ideas you might have about the robbery. When you’re finished, give them to the officer at the door. He’ll get them to me.”
The manager had the tape machine open. He pressed buttons; spindles spun, a footage meter connected with a timer clicked along madly. The manager checked the timer, snipped, reeled, snipped again, and handed a spool of the wide tape to Reardon.
“Do you people have the proper equipment to replay this tape?” The manager sounded very dubious.
“If we don’t, we’ll try to get it,” Reardon said dryly.
Milligan sighed. “I just hope they do some good.”
“As do we all.” Reardon dropped the spool of tape into his pocket and edged his way past the others out of the office. He paused at the front door to explain to the officer there why everyone was so busy with penmanship and went out into the bright sunlight. He walked to the curb, reminding himself he would have to cancel his dinner date with Jan; in fact, it would probably be a long time before he would be able to have a leisurely meal, with or without Jan. He would also have to explain to Jan that the reason for the cancellation was that a cop had been killed, and then face a repetition of all her fears for him. He sighed and refused to think about it further. Time enough to think about it when he was actually listening to that reproachful voice.
And, of course, he would have to call Porky Oliver as soon as possible. On the way back to the Hall of Justice, he decided. Porky was one person he never called through the switchboard.
Dondero and the uniformed policeman were standing by the patrol car watching the remnants of the spectators, a few curious kids. The radio inside the car was scratching out its usual static-filled messages. Reardon wondered, as always, why we could put men on the moon—or develop instant-replay TV cameras for branch banks—but still were not able to make a patrol-car radio sound like anything except a worn 1916 label of an old Caruso recording. The brains in the sound lab kept talking about sunspots, but Reardon refused to believe them.
Dondero saw the inquiring look on the lieutenant’s face as he approached; he shook his head. “Nothing.”
Reardon shrugged and turned to the policeman. “Your partner’ll be out in a few minutes. He’ll have some papers I want. After you drop them off at the Hall, you can go back on patrol.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dondero gave the policeman a small wave and followed Reardon across the street. He climbed into the lieutenant’s Charger on the passenger side. He waited until Reardon had slid behind the wheel and closed the door.
“Anything inside, Jim?”
“TV camera with instant replay,” Reardon said. “I just saw a rerun of the whole thing.” Dondero stared. “About as useful as pockets on a shroud,” Reardon added, and swung the car into traffic.
CHAPTER 3
Thursday—3:35 P.M.
“Cracker looks bad,” Grube said. He was in the back of the car, his hat and mask out of sight behind the seat, his jacket serving as a pillow for Cracker Mullin, stretched unconscious on the car floor under a car robe. The suitcase from the bank was also under the robe, wedged between Mullin’s leg and the seat; Gilchrist had not permitted any stops to transfer it to the trunk. Grube straightened up from his cursory examination of the wounded man. He sounded worried. “I don’t like the way he’s breathing.”
The driver, Max Glass, and the fourth man, Will Gilchrist, were seated in the front of the car, hats and jackets also off, shirt collars open. To a casual observer the three men visible in the car might have been out for a leisurely drive, possibly headed for one of the golf courses in the area for an afternoon threesome.
“He’ll make it,” Glass said confidently. “He’s come out of worse.”
“Worse than what?” Grube asked, irked by the easy assurance in the other’s voice. “Cracker never even got scratched in the Nam! How soon do we get to your place, Gil?”
“If Cracker’s bad, then it’s too far,” Gilchrist said flatly. He turned his head, looking toward the back seat. “And don’t keep ducking down to look at him like that. Lean back and relax. There’re other cars on the road you know.”
“But, damn it, we’ve got to do something! Don’t you know any doctors around here? This is supposed to be your stamping ground!”
“I know at least six doctors near here,” Gilchrist said evenly, and looked back at Grube curiously. “What would you suggest? That we bust in ahead of the line-up in the waiting room? And then slaughter them all in making a getaway? Plus the doctor and the nurse and any witnesses we run into in the hall? Or would you rather we drive up to the nearest hospital and hand ourselves over to the cops who are undoubtedly waiting in every emergency room within fifty miles?” He turned back to watch the road. “It’s Cracker’s own damned fault. I said no shooting. If he hadn’t wasted time taking that potshot at that cop, we’d have been home free.”
“If that cop hadn’t shot all of us,” Glass pointed out.
Gilchrist said, “That cop wouldn’t have hit the side of a barn if you know how to drive. His first shot was in the air. We should have been long gone before he got off the others.”
“In the meantime,” Grube said desperately, “Cracker’s dying, I tell you. So what do we do? Let him die?”
“No,” Gilchrist said slowly, “but we use our heads, whatever we do. And we don’t panic. If we can’t take him to a doctor or a hospital, we’ll just bring a doctor and a hospital to us.”
Glass frowned over his shoulder. “And just how do we do that?”
Gilchrist paid no attention to the question. He stared out at the passing scenery, if the solid concrete walls of the underpass they were traversing could properly be called scenery. Under his direction they had taken the freeway from the Bay View section north toward the center of San Francisco, and then turned abruptly back onto Interstate 280, the Alemany. At the moment they had just passed the Ocean and Geneva Avenue off-ramps and were approaching the Daly City exit. Gilchrist ran through his plan once again in his mind and came to his decision, turning to the driver.
“Max, get off here and find us a phone booth.”
The car dutifully and immediately swung up the Mission Street ramp. Glass slowed at the top, looking at Gilchrist questioningly.
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