by Will Rayner
“So you think engaging our agency would somehow move this mountain of inertia?” Sam asked.
“In a way, yes,” Atherton said. “By all reports you are competent, tough-minded and thorough. At the very least, you will substantially speed up the pace of the investigations.”
“One little point, before we reach a decision to join you,” Sam said. “You will be engaging the Flood Agency as an entity, but if each of us is given separate, concurrent assignments, our agreed daily rate would be doubled.”
Pop, you are one canny old fox, T.J. told himself. You just put the kibosh on any two-for-one deal. The prospect did not seem to bother Atherton, however. After a moment, he nodded his head and said: “Agreed.”
So Samuel and Thomas Flood climbed aboard. There was still the paperwork to be taken care of, but the agency was now about to snoop into the conduct of the San Francisco Police Department. After a few more pleasantries, father and son escorted Edwin Atherton to the front door.
“There goes one long-winded crybaby,” T.J. said as they returned to Sam’s office.
“I must say I have to agree,” his father answered. “However, he is engaged in a legitimate enterprise and we have been asked to help produce a positive result. We don’t necessarily have to like our clients.”
Chapter 16
Father and son were on a dinner date. “We should have done this a lot earlier,” T.J. Flood said as he parked the Essex on Union Street. “Agreed,” Sam Flood said, “but the pressure of business—”
“Yeah, blah, blah, blah,” T.J. finished. “You go and collect the widow Parmalee and I’ll keep the motor running.” He put the brake on and gazed across the pavement at the Crespo/DeFiore mansion. It looked quiet and innocent now, he thought, but not too long ago there were cops and fire trucks and the most excitement Union Street had witnessed since the earthquake.
Women of a certain age have a limited wardrobe, but Mrs. Stanford Parmalee chose well. She was wearing a tailored grey ensemble with a daffodil-colored blouse and a brooch at her throat. Sensible shoes. The Floods wore their best business suits, with clean shirts and collars. Sam helped their guest onto the rear bench of the sedan and gently but firmly closed the door.
“Good evening, Thomas,” Mrs. Parmalee said. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine, ma’am,” T. J. said as he executed a slow U-turn and started down the Union Street hill. They were headed for a seafood dinner at one of the restaurants on Fisherman’s Wharf. Along the way, the trio amicably rehashed the afternoon the Floods showed up looking for Sharon Greenberg. Sam and T.J. brought Mrs. Parmalee up to date on developments in the case. The man she knew as Crespo was actually named DeFiore and he was a white slaver, she was told.
“How awful!” their passenger exclaimed. “Turning people into slaves and then, what, selling them? In this day and age!”
“It is a not uncommon practice, apparently,” Sam said. “In some circles, people are treated like a commodity, to be bought and sold. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation doesn’t mean much to the more unsavory elements of our society.”
At the restaurant, the Floods chose the stuffed salmon, while Mrs. Parmalee settled for a bowl of seafood chowder. Wine was a bottle of chilled rose. “Just half a glass,” Mrs. Parmalee said. “I mustn’t get too giddy.”
“Tell us about your husband,” T.J. said as they started on their meal.
“Stanford?” Mrs. Parmalee sighed. “Stanford was an insurance broker. He was kind and loving and a good provider, but he was, oh, so dull. All he thought about was insurance. We’d have people over and all the men ever talked about was actuarial risk, maturity, riders, things like that. You know what happens at these gatherings. The men all cluster in the kitchen and talk business or sports or whatever. At my house they talked insurance.”
“I daresay he made sure his own coverage was more than adequate,” Sam said.
“Oh, yes. And Stanford passed away accidentally, so that doubled some of the payout. I believe that is the word: ‘payout’.”
“Car accident, or a mishap at the office, something like that?” Sam asked.
A quirk of mischief appeared briefly at one corner of the widow Parmalee’s mouth. “Stanford predicted the stock market crash of 1929,” she said. “He sold most of his shares and bought gold coins. Gold was safe, he said. He had two big, canvas sacks of coins and was taking them down to the basement to put them in a secure place when he tripped and fell. Broke his neck.” She watched with amusement the strangled looks on the Floods’ faces. “Go ahead and laugh, gentlemen,” she said. “I know you want to. Everybody else did. I even laughed a little myself, when the shock wore off.”
Father and son started chuckling together and ended up with outright laughter. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Parmalee,” Sam said. “It is just so … so bizarre.”
“I know, I know,” Mrs. Parmalee said. “Poor Stanford had everything figured out – and then, bam!”
“As a trained investigator,” T.J. said with a straight face, “I would have to ask myself one question: did he fall or was he pushed?”
The comment caught Mrs. Parmalee by surprise. In rapid succession, she looked startled, stricken and, finally, amused. “You are a naughty boy, Thomas,” she said.
“T.J. likes to be provocative, now and then,” Sam said. “Private investigators don’t get involved in homicides unless requested by private citizens. One has to be very careful when tracking down a murder suspect.”
“Oh my, is it really dangerous?”
“It can be,” T.J. said. “A couple of years ago, we were tracking two murderers and pop here got tossed into the drink not far from this very spot. Most of the time, though, it’s very quiet, very routine.”
“And Thomas got shot at with a crossbow just the other day,” Sam said.
“A crossbow!” Mrs. Parmalee said. “Like, in the Middle Ages? What an exciting profession you have!”
“Most of the time, it’s very quiet, very routine,” T.J. said smoothly. He thought it best not to dwell on dead bodies on hardwood floors, scrawled death threats, private lunches with crime lords, confrontations with armed adversaries – the spicier entrees on Flood and Flood’s menu of the past few years.
Suddenly, dinner was over, the desert tray ruefully rejected and the last drop of wine drained from Mrs. Parmalee’s glass. Sam settled the bill and they headed for Union Street.
“I want to thank you both for a lovely evening,” Mrs. Parmalee said in the cozy confines of the Essex. “A lovely dinner and two stimulating companions. Wait until I tell the girls at my bridge night. They’ll be all agog!”
As T.J. brought the sedan to a halt on Union, Mrs. Parmalee pointed to her neighbor’s house. “Ethel – Ethel Barton’s light is still on in her living room,” she said. “Why don’t we drop in and say hello?”
The Floods fell silent for a moment. Did we really want to drag out the evening, each of them was thinking? However, it would be rude to refuse, and the widow Parmalee deserved to be indulged. “What a nice idea,” Sam responded, and they headed up Ethel Barton’s flagstone walk in single file.
“Ethel is almost blind, the poor dear,” the widow Parmalee said. “Cataracts, but she gets along quite well. Her daughter in Dubuque is coming out to live with her as soon as her husband gets his transfer. He’s with the telegraph company.”
At Ethel Barton’s front door. Mrs. Parmalee rang the bell. They waited for several seconds, with no response. She gave the bell handle another hard, almost vicious twist and held it for several beats. This time the door opened promptly. Mrs. Barton peered up at her visitor. “Doreen, is that you?” she said. “Land’s sakes, yes it is. Come, come in.” Mrs. Barton was quite short. After the Floods had followed Mrs. Parmalee inside, she nodded vaguely and shook hands with neighbor Doreen’s two friends, who were “just visiting for the day.”
“Let’s all go into the parlor,” Mrs. Barton said. “I was making myself a cup of cocoa. Would you all like a nice cup of c
ocoa?”
“That would be delightful,” Mrs. Parmalee said. “Most delightful,” echoed Sam Flood. T.J. kept quiet. Cocoa? What I want right now is a cold bottle of Pabst. I wonder if there’s any in the house, he asked himself.
Mrs. Parnalee went into the kitchen to help Ethel, and soon the pair returned, bearing trays of cocoa and some oatmeal biscuits. “When you didn’t answer the door right away, I thought you might have fallen, Ethel,” Doreen Parmalee said after they were all seated again.
“I’m fine, my dear,” Mrs. Barton said. “I was on the telephone. All the way from Dubuque! And my daughter’s voice was as clear as a bell! It was bad news, sort of. Well, not really bad. Paul’s transfer has been held up by the telegraph company. They said they need him more, right where he is, for now. Thelma said we’d have to wait a few more months. But I’m doing fine and there’s no rush, I guess.”
“You know you have neighbors to help you, if you need them, Ethel,” Mrs. Parmalee reminded her. Mrs. Barton turned to her visitors sitting on the sofa. “What trade are you gentlemen in?” she asked.
Sam had his answer ready. “We’re in real estate,” he said. “That Crespo house across the street is prime property and it is available. We met … ah … Doreen here, when we first came to look at it.”
“Oh, the Crespo house! That was quite a kerfuffle a while back. With all the police and fire engines and all. Doreen told me all about it. Now, you gentlemen must promise me the new owners are law-abiding and very nice, you hear?” Everybody had a quiet chuckle at Mrs. Barton’s firm instructions.
Walking the widow Parmalee back to her own home, Sam remarked that Mrs. Barton seemed to be coping well. “Yes,” Doreen Parmalee said, “but she can’t be on her own forever. I do hope her family will get here soon.”
T.J. drove his father to the Flood residence on Vallejo and then took the agency’s heap to the garage. Now, he told himself as he headed for Emrick’s, it’s time for a beer. Actually, he admitted to himself, the cocoa wasn’t all that bad, but it wouldn’t compete with a cool Pabst on a warm summer evening. His first bottle gave birth to a few more and T.J. was beginning to enjoy himself when the beat cop walked in, brushed by him and disappeared through a door in the rear. A few minutes later, the copper came back and left the saloon.
“Whaddya got going upstairs, Rusty?” T.J. asked the bartender. He knew the upstairs room at the back could be made available for a price, but this was the first time he had seen the fuzz get involved.
“Ah, the boss has rented it out to a guy running a couple of card tables,” Rusty said as he wiped down the bar in front of T.J. “Strictly penny-ante, but it helps pay the rent.”
Helps fatten the pocket book of a greedy patrolman on the take, too, T.J. thought. He wondered if Emrick’s was on Edwin Atherton’s hit list. He hoped not; he liked the joint and didn’t want it shut down.
On the way back to his Geary Street digs, T.J. knew that the dingbat dame out to rattle his bones could easily be lurking in any one of a dozen dark corners. However, his evening’s intake of a good meal and more than a few bottles of Pabst had softened his normally acute sense of his surroundings and he didn’t even try to stay alert. There should be a cop shop watcher or two around, anyway.
At the entrance to his hotel, the warm glow of over-indulgence abruptly changed. He felt something penetrate his mood. He felt a pair of eyes on him which were not official San Francisco Police Department issue. Miss Jane Brown was close, and she was watching him. He went up to his room, leaving the boys from Kearny Street in charge of any counter-surveillance gambit. If they spot her, though, he told himself , they’d better move fast. That chick is slipperier than a Louisiana catfish.
Chapter 17
“Someone please explain to me,” T.J. Flood said aloud to his empty office, “why the King of England is in such trouble for making google-eyes at an American dame? I thought kings could do anything they wanted.” He laid down the Chronicle and pulled out his pack of Old Golds. A quiet morning at Flood and Flood, with the boss man away for the day. Then the phone rang. T.J. put his cigarettes aside and answered it.
“Someone from the chief’s office wishes to speak with you,” Agnes Wilkins said.
“Chief who? Chief Wampum? Chief Bottle Washer?”
“The Chief of Police, silly,” she said. “Our chief of police. Shall I put him through?”
“Yeah, put him through, kiddo.” T.J. wondered whether the call was connected to their Atherton investigations – or maybe it was a job offer. “Special Assistant to the Chief Bottle Washer.” It had a certain ring to it.
“Do you know Opera Alley, Mr. Flood?” a whispery voice asked.
“Sure. It’s a dead-end drag, runs off Third and Mission.”
“Do you know there’s a substantial bookmaking operation there?”
“No comment,” T.J. said. “Say, who are you? You sure as hell don’t sound like His Nibs. ”
“Never mind my name. You might be interested to know that the gambling squad is going to raid that establishment at one o’clock today. No-one knows. There will be no advance warning this time. No tip-off. The squad will be operating on its own hook.”
“Wait a minute, just wait a minute, fellah. What do you mean, ‘no-one knows’? Does the chief know, does the … ah … proprietor know? And why tell me?”
“Because you have connections. I’ve heard the Floods work both sides of the street and I don’t like the reason this raid is being carried out. Captain Hoertkorn of the Southern District is doing this on his own. He is in really big trouble for accepting those payoffs and he’s trying to show he hasn’t sold out to the criminal element. You’ll know what to do.”
“Why doesn’t the chief just call it off? Or does he want to look good, too?”
“The chief doesn’t know anything and he doesn’t want to know anything as long as that peeper from LA is in town. Remember, one o’clock today.”
The whispery voice hung up. Why does he think I care, T.J. asked himself? I’m supposed to be a good guy and these are the bad guys. Let ’em beat up on each other. But when one bad guy double-crosses the other bad guy, that makes him a really, really bad guy. Besides, I kinda like Packy Shannon and it would be nice to stay on his good side. T.J. asked himself another rhetorical question: Did I know that bookie joint was in Opera Alley? You bet I did. It’s Shannon’s main horse room – the biggest wire operation in the city. T.J. pulled out his watch. Just past 9:30. Packy will have to move fast. From memory, he dialed the crime boss’s number.
As usual, the guy on the other end of the line growled: “Yeah?”
“This is T.J. Flood. Give me the boss. We have an emergency.” Silence on the line. T.J. waited. This time, however, the wait was minimal.
“What emergency, shamus?” Packy Shannon’s voice said without preamble.
“The fuzz are gonna bust your Opera Alley horse parlor at one o’clock today precisely.”
That news brought another brief silence. “Where did you pick this up, Flood? Who told you?”
“Some guy, says he was calling from the chief of police’s office. Says the Southern District captain – some guy named Hoertkorn? – is pulling it off by himself. No tip-off, no nudge in the ribs.”
“Is this snitch in the chief’s office reliable?”
“How in hell should I know?” T.J. said. “He didn’t send me an engraved business card. He said he was ticked off because this Southern District captain was trying to pull a swifty so he could look like a real copper rather than a crooked one.”
“Georgie Hoertkorn!” Shannon exploded. “That two-bit, two-timing weasel! He’s been on the arm for years and now that he’s ass-deep in trouble, he’s stabbing me in the back! Thanks, Flood. I’ll take care of this.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Do? I’m going to tidy up Opera Alley. My boys can break down a wire room in less than two hours. No phones, no tickers, no wires. Not even a scrap of paper. All that sonofabitch Ho
ertkorn will find is an empty cage and a couple of ticket windows.”
Shannon hung up. You’re welcome, T.J. told himself. Maybe I’ll ankle over and watch the fun. Should be quite a production. But that’s quite a hike over to Third Street and one o’clock would cut into my lunch hour, anyway. Let the flatfeet play without me.
****
Sam Flood had lunch with Edwin Atherton at his domicile on Hyde Street. Atherton had a spacious suite of rooms in the swank Keystone Building on Nob Hill. The furnishings made Sam a little uncomfortable. This seems ostentatious for a humble private investigator, he thought. And the city’s taxpayers are paying for it – I’m paying for it.
After their catered lunch of cold cuts and salad was cleared away, Atherton got down to business. “We’re having problems with witnesses,” he said. “There aren’t very many who have the gumption to come forward and testify. These poor saps are highly vulnerable because most of them have police records. Even if they don’t, those damn clever defense lawyers – shysters, in my view – treat them with scorn and contempt.”
“To them, it’s just a job,” Sam said. “A well-paying job. And there’s a certain segment of the legal profession which treats law and order as a game. A competition to be won, no matter what the truth is.”
