The Laughing Gorilla

by Robert Graysmith

  Anna passed beneath a peaked roof like that of a little Swiss chalet, the canopied entrance of the Bay Hotel. Shaking rain off, she entered the lobby of the most ignoble type of hotel with the most transitory type of clientele. The Bay Hotel was cheap, shabby, and scattered with potted ferns, tattered chairs, functional couches, and sand-filled urns. The ceiling was peeling, and the elevator was barely serviceable. Signs at the reception desk advised “Please Keep Your Door Locked” and “The Key Must Be Turned in the Lock.” Good advice at the Bay Hotel.

  The desk was uninhabited, though the hotel register lay open. Where was the manager, Mr. T. L. Selchaw? Otto von Feldman, the night porter, had already gone. The former German army officer, reserved and polished, would not be back. By now he was halfway to San Diego. John Smeins, the night clerk, had gone home at 7:00 A.M. Anna was irritated. “It’s dangerous to leave the lobby unattended,” she thought as she hung up her coat and tied on her apron. “Anyone could have come and gone without being seen.” She called out. There was no answer except for her echo.

  Anna swept the threadbare carpet, then began cleaning the vacated rooms on the second floor and checking whether any of the hotel’s property was missing. Selchaw considered that her most important duty. Around 10:00 A.M., Selchaw returned from some mysterious errand and closeted himself in his office. Before Anna knew it, the morning had passed. Like most of the working poor in San Francisco, she put in a twelve-hour day for less than a dollar. Selchaw checked in a few walk-ins and returned to his office. “Hotels are home to lonely people,” he thought.

  It was now 2:00 P.M., but so dim and gray out that electric lights were still burning in the lobby. Along Sacramento Street, streetlights flickered, reflected on the wet streets. The Bay Hotel’s exclamation point sign shone down onto an unbroken line of black autos. Anna heard the hiss of water from tires and the complaint of metal as cable cars made the sharp turn onto Sacramento. In his office, some forgotten item was nagging at Selchaw. He walked to the desk, consulted the open register, and discovered John Smeins’s note. Now he remembered. When Smeins left at the end of his graveyard shift, he had remarked, “The bloke in #309 said to give them a wake-up knock about 10:00 A.M.” Selchaw called out—“Anna? Anna, go up to #309 and see if you can rouse them. If they don’t mention it don’t say anything about being late. And clean #315 and #317. They’re vacant now.”

  Dutifully, Anna pushed a linen cart bristling with brooms, dustpans, and bottles to an accordion gate and worked it. The elevator, rattling and clicking twice at each floor, rose slowly. She exited into a narrow corridor. Lights were on in room 309. They had to be blazing because the crack beneath the door cut a brilliant slash onto the worn carpet. She knocked and, receiving no response, continued along the hall.

  At room 315, Anna scooped up a tray, picked a wadded napkin from a cup, changed the linen, and dumped the ash trays. In her apron pocket she carried a spray bottle of carbon tet (with a little ice it got out gum) and a carton of cornstarch (with a little cold water it got out blood). She cleaned 317 to the haunting chime of the Ferry Clock Tower, so close it was as if it were in the room with her. Just past 3:00 P.M., she returned along the dusky passage. Another tentative rap on door 309. No response. A lumbering shadow or a trick of the eye, stirred by the elevator door. “Mr. Selchaw?” No answer. She sniffed—the faint smell of musk? The dampness of rain? Another knock. No answer.

  Anna fiddled with her key ring, found the passkey, gave the knob a turn, and released the catch. Inside the odor was stronger, mixed with whisky, the lingering smell of beer, cigarettes, cigars, and—a sweet smell—jasmine—gardenia—roses. Someone had crushed a rose corsage underfoot. She stepped over the broken petals. Two naked bulbs illuminated the small room in stark relief. The searing vibration revealed every detail. The bed was neatly made. But it was not what Anna smelled or saw that etched the scene into her memory. It was what she heard—her heart beating, the ticking of a watch pinned to her apron, the faint squeak of her cart, and her feet breaking the brittle nap of the carpet. Where the carpet was thin her step was soundless. Across the room, Anna heard a torrent rushing through a drainpipe welded to the building and the relentless whoosh and splash of passing cars below.

  Someone had drawn the curtains by pulling two vertical cords passing around pulleys but left the window open. Rain was pummeling the sash, the upper pane, and a broad fire escape a few windows down. As she worked the balancing weights, her hip bumped the back of a chair where hung a woman’s cheap brown print dress, a tattered black cloth coat, and a folded dark sweater. On the seat lay a red purse and small green felt hat with a bright feather. Under the chair were black pumps with three-inch heels.

  Over her shoulder Anna observed an old-fashioned wooden bureau with several knobs missing. The tilted plate mirror reflected a bra, panties, and jewelry strewn on the dresser top. She turned toward the made bed. The blanket was drawn up to the metal headboard, but a few strands of long red hair showed. The woman on her back was still as a marble statue, both arms stiffly outstretched. It was odd for a guest to still be in bed this late even at the Bay Hotel. Anna approached calling out, “Ma’am? Ma’am?”

  Anna tugged the upper bed covers down. Beneath was a terry cloth towel wrapped around the woman’s face. The corners of the towel had been tucked under a pillow to hold it in place. Anna unwound the towel. Underneath was a lived-in face with deep scratches (such as animal claws might make) crisscrossing both cheeks. Dark bruises surrounded her eyes where fists had blackened them. Long nails had dug three deep scratches into her dimpled chin. Anna couldn’t see the woman’s mouth. It was taped shut with three strips of adhesive. On her extraordinarily white throat the swollen contours of a huge pair of hands were outlined in black.

  The cover fell to the nude woman’s chest, which was hacked. Her abdomen was discolored and bruised, and her stomach sliced to the pubic arch. But where was the blood? There should have been more. An autopsy had been conducted on the body. As a cable car rumbled by, Anna saw a breast on the night stand quivering from the vibrations. The maid’s education was not vast. She knew that the nation was in the grip of a terrible economic depression and just shaking itself loose and that the police were on the take, but she knew virtually nothing of criminal history. She was familiar, though, with the Bible-spouting lodger who had a “down on whores” and walked foggy streets like San Francisco’s decades ago in London’s Whitechapel, an East End district like the Embarcadero. The Ripper had sought out women on the lowest rung of society (like the poor creature before Anna Lemon), nonpersons whose identities he further erased. Anna had no more knowledge of the Ripper than that. If she had, she would have recognized his last and most horrendous murder had been re-created in this cheerless room.

  The room had not been disarrayed at all. If anything it was too orderly. If the strangler had taken the time to cover the redhead completely, fold her clothes, and tidy the room then he might still be . . . her eyes darted toward the bathroom door, which was slightly ajar. Through the crack she saw a naked overhead light and a washbasin with open plumbing. She heard the slow trickle of water—rain or a gurgling in the trap of the basin. It might be someone washing his hands of blood. Anna backed up, stumbling over her cart and without waiting for the elevator flew down three flights of stairs and into the arms of T. L. Selchaw, who, stretching and yawning, was coming out of his office.

  “Mr. Selchaw. Mr. Selchaw!” she screamed. “A woman’s been murdered!”

  Selchaw thought she was joking. “Oh, is that so, is it, Mrs. Lemon?” He grabbed her by both shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Calm yourself. . . . Murdered? Where? Calm down. . . . Tell me where.”

  “The third floor, sir.” She blurted, then fainted. Selchaw made her comfortable on the couch and took the elevator to the third floor. He saw the door standing open, the carpet bathed in light. One glance confirmed Anna’s story. Selchaw retreated to his office. Anna was sitting up by now. “You were right, Mrs. Lemon,” he sa
id. “This is bad, all right, real bad, but just keep quiet. We don’t want to alarm any more guests than we have to. Hush now, Anna, while I phone the police.” Selchaw’s hands were still quivering when he went outside to wait under the neon sign shaped like an exclamation point.

  FOURTEEN

  Those who kill a single person usually have a personal relationship with the victim, if only a perception that they have specific attributes which torment them.

  —PSYCHOLOGY TEXT OF THE PERIOD

  INSPECTOR McGinn activated his cruiser’s siren by pulling a wire. It always took time to take hold and growled until it did. That’s why they called cop cars “growlers.” The wire broke, as it often did, and the car kept growling until McGinn, fumbling, could reattach the wire. By then he and his men had made the half mile trip from the HOJ at Clay and Washington streets to the Bay Hotel in record time. The cruiser threw up a wall of water as it hauled up in front. Its throaty growl died away to a snarl. Selchaw quickly stepped back. McGinn piled out onto the walk followed by Inspectors Michael Desmond and Bart Kelleher. The car doors banged behind. McGinn, the only inspector not wearing a trench coat, turned up his collar and growled. He hated the wet. He hated the darkness and cold. He especially hated this rundown hotel where he had been a hundred times before on vice raids. The Bay Hotel had the reputation of being a “riding academy,” a place hookers took their Johns. McGinn tugged his handkerchief from the inside band of his hat, blew his reddened nose, and tucked it back.

  McGinn was in a foul mood. He still hadn’t gotten over being bounced as head of the Death Squad. He dropped back beneath the canvas awning, lifted the wide brim of his hat, and studied the back of the enormous billboard next door which stood as a black, coffin-shaped rectangle in the dimness. He stepped into the rain to observe the Bay Hotel window by window. Slowly his eyes rose to an open third-floor window where lights were blazing adjacent to the first red neon letter O in the word ROOMS. He thought he saw someone pull back the water-soaked drapes. Just then Inspector Harry Husted and Sergeant C. J. Birdsall roared up in an unmarked, plainclothes “eleven car” and distracted McGinn. Husted climbed out, then Birdsall, a patrol sergeant a full head taller than McGinn, planted his size thirteens on the pavement. When McGinn looked up again, the window was empty. He blinked his eyes. Possibly the wind had stirred the drapes or they had doubled back on themselves from the weight of water.

  All five detectives, led by Selchaw who was trembling, took to the stairs, peering nervously into every shadowed corner and listening intently. They heard only silence, as if only the dead occupied the Bay Hotel. When they reached the third floor, Selchaw was afraid to remain and went back down by elevator. McGinn stationed Birdsall at the open door of number 309. Before they entered the room, they extinguished their cigarettes, then, all but McGinn, who was wearing gloves, buried their hands in their pockets to avoid leaving prints.

  McGinn was a homicide veteran with over two hundred murders under his belt, most of them in this region of fog and long shadows, of seedy hotels, seedier sailors, and loose women. But what met his eyes in that shabby room with its flocked wallpaper and tint of rain was far beyond his ken. McGinn habitually pushed his oversize hat back on his forehead when he was puzzled. He did that now as he walked to the dresser side of the bed, leaned forward and gently drew back the section of blanket still covering the woman’s legs. McGinn dropped the coverlet as if it were hot. “I have never seen such wanton and sadistic fury vented on a victim,” McGinn said later. “In addition a crude autopsy has been attempted on the corpse.”

  One leg was crumpled beneath her, and except for a pair of torn black silk stockings, she was nude. Her lower legs shone as a mass of black and blue bruises, all inflicted by what must have been gigantic hands, certainly larger than he had ever seen.

  Desmond, Husted, and Kelleher edged around to get a better look, then thought better of it. Husted was going to be sick. Kelleher murmured to himself and stepped into the hall. Desmond took off his steel-frame glasses and polished them briskly with his handkerchief, then went to the window, pulled back the blue curtains and stared absently into the rain outside and began to polish his glasses again. The downpour became a roar in his ears.

  McGinn steeled himself to keep a detached viewpoint. “Seek the evidence; find the offender,” he repeated.

  He would call on the limited resources of his time, that of the rough science of the 1930s, and its basic psychology, which was still in its infancy. He would call on his men, whom he understood even as he did not understand what had motivated the savagery of the assailant. For the sake of his detectives, and even the big sergeant outside, McGinn outwardly remained coldly factual. Inside, he was seething and pumped with adrenaline. “There are just two answers to such a thing as this,” he told his men evenly. “This is either a revenge murder or the work of a sadistic fiend such as I have never seen before. In either case this is going to be a plenty tough nut to crack.”

  He extracted a small notebook with a spiral binding from his jacket pocket, wet the tip of a pencil, and began printing. His hand was unsteady, but he plugged on. McGinn was never afraid of writing too much because his whole case might stand or fall on what he jotted down now. He noted the time he had arrived at the Bay Hotel, the date, and described the weather conditions—“bleak and rainy.” He detailed a description of the dead body: “hair color dark red, short pageboy haircut, dark lipstick”; age: “early thirties”; build: “stocky”; clothes: “cheap print dress, cloth coat, small hat, underwear, pumps.” Had the killer, in straightening and folding the clothes left behind traces of himself? He didn’t see any. Were there prints on the three pieces of adhesive tape over her mouth? There almost had to be. Perhaps LaTulipe’s tests for stains, tears, prints, and identifying marks would provide the answer. McGinn suspected the killer had concealed the body in a cocoon of coverlets as if ashamed of what he had done. Did this mean he knew her?

  Nothing could be moved until the forensic photographer took his pictures and in all the excitement he had yet to be summoned. Slapping his notebook shut, McGinn shouted to the sergeant in the hallway, “Birdsall, call the HOJ and get the photographer.”

  Without touching the clawed and cut body, McGinn made mental notes on what he could see of the awful injuries themselves. First he studied the marks around her throat. In exerting manual pressure, the killer had left perfect impressions of his hands—strong, gripping fingers with unusually square thumbs and long nails that had bitten deeply into the flesh on both sides. He studied the victim’s nails. Had she managed to scratch or even bite her assailant? LaTulipe would find out when he got there. There had been another case like this, but McGinn was loath to call it to mind. He reopened his notebook and entered his findings.

  Husted and Desmond fanned out to search the hotel, and McGinn retrieved the steel tape kept in the growler. He took the room’s exact dimensions, like a tailor preparing to make a suit. He drew a sketch of the corpse in situ on the bed, noting the relationship of the chair to the bed and chest, the location of the window to the chair, and so on.

  McGinn held up her dress by two corners, then turned her purse out. Several tawdry keepsakes fell onto the wooden dresser top—a pair of tarnished earrings, a gold-plated clasp pin, a string of cheap pearls, a cheap compact, two or three loose cigarettes, a lipstick, 27¢, a mirror, and a skeleton key to some as-yet unknown house—the remnants of a sad, pathetic life. She carried no identification, but that was not unusual for the Bay Hotel and its clientele. McGinn studied the white-gold ruby ring on her left index finger.

  It looked valuable, yet the killer had left it behind. Robbery was not the motive nor was this a sex crime, at least as understood by the psychology of the time. Nor, as McGinn suspected, were any of the other traditional propelling motives: greed, revenge, jealousy. If there was a motive it was one McGinn had not encountered before. “Then what the hell was his intent?” McGinn asked himself. The hat went back farther on his head. He scratched his ba
ld scalp. He was at a loss to explain such brutality.

  The victim on the bed was no beauty, yet some killer had sought her out and in his fury gone beyond the borders of civilization. The crime had to be premeditated. The killer had brought along tape to bind her and a sharp cutting implement to dissect her. Obviously, he preyed on the lower strata of life, those he had believed would never be missed. But the killer had miscalculated. His crime had been too blatant, too horrifying. It had to have been to shake such a veteran as McGinn. The press would call it “a sadistic orgy of violence in which a woman was horribly slashed and mutilated in the most ghastly manner.” Regardless of the victim’s station in life, she was a human being and as such was valuable. In the end, the thrust of McGinn’s grim work was to prove each life important, even sacred. And like every victim, the woman on the bed deserved justice. No matter how long it took he was determined she was going to get it.

  “Should we fingerprint her?” asked Desmond, who had returned.

  “There will be plenty of time for that later,” snapped McGinn. “She’s not going anywhere.”

  He checked his watch. Everyone was waiting on the photographer, the coroner’s deputy, Tony Trabucco, and Frank LaTulipe. McGinn couldn’t even roll the body until they arrived. The weapon might be beneath it. Having done all he could, McGinn went to the open window. He watched the downpour striking the fire escape three windows away. Had the killer escaped the locked room that way and climbed up to the roof with its giant billboard? No, it was an impossible climb, though Bernstein’s roof was even with the third floor. If he could fly, the murderer might be leaning against the big billboard and waiting even as they waited.