“Hi, Casey,” he said. “Some better than a hotel room, huh? There’s even a place out back in the alley to park.”
“Looks comfortable,” Denver agreed. He said to the desk clerk as the boy lowered his bags to the floor, “Can we get papers delivered?”
“Yes, sir. Morning or evening?”
“Both,” Denver told him.
He flipped him a coin and the boy departed.
Sam McCabe was up early the next morning to go shopping. By the time he returned loaded down by two huge grocery bags, Denver had showered, shaved and dressed, too. He watched as the burly redhead packed the refrigerator. Two dozen eggs, a pound of bacon, butter, a loaf of bread, some instant coffee, canned milk and sugar was all the food the two heavy bags contained. The rest of the weight was bottled beer and a quart of bourbon.
“At least we won’t go thirsty,” Denver said drily.
“I’ll cook some breakfast,” McCabe offered. He opened a beer. “Want one?”
“Before breakfast?” Denver asked. “I want to live to spend my share of the four million.”
The morning paper’s account of the shooting was as brief as that of the evening before. Denver and McCabe lolled around the apartment all day, going out only for lunch and dinner and returning as soon as they finished. The evening paper was in front of their door when they got back from dinner.
Denver spread open the paper in the front room while McCabe mixed a pair of drinks in the kitchen. The item was on the second page, but it got as good a spread as Denver had hoped for. It was headed: ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT MADE ON FORMER BATISTA AIDE.
“Listen to this,” Denver called to McCabe. “‘A shooting at the Beverly-Hilton, reported in yesterday’s paper, may prove to have international significance. The victim of the assassination attempt, which took place in the Hilton’s main bar at 3:00 P.M. yesterday, was Casey Denver, at the time a guest of the hotel. The management reports he has since moved out. Today, this paper learned by cable from its Havana correspondent that Casey Denver is a fugitive of the former regime of ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista, now in exile in the Dominican Republic, and that Denver is under indictment in Cuba for war crimes and atrocities. Denver, a United States citizen, was a major in the Cuban army under Batista for three years, according to government sources in Havana. He is charged with ordering the murder of 120 rebel fighters, with the torture of prisoners, including some women, and with the burning of two rebel villages.’”
Denver paused to grin wryly at Sam McCabe, now standing in the kitchenette doorway with two drinks in his hands. “Rudolfo really came to bat, didn’t he? He almost outdid himself.”
The redhead brought one of the drinks to Denver, seated himself on the sofa with the other. “Go on,” he said, taking a sip of his drink.
“‘Witnesses to yesterday’s shooting describe the assailant as Latin in appearance. He was heard to shout, “Viente y sets Julio” Spanish for “Twenty-six July,” just before shooting. As this phrase was the rallying cry of the Cuban rebels, police theorize that some rebel sympathizer made the attempt. Denver insists he did not know his attacker, and can think of no motive anyone would have to kill him.’”
Denver paused again, took a sip of his drink and scanned the rest of the item quickly. “That’s the gist of it,” he said. “The rest is just biographical data about me they got from Geneva.” Folding the paper, he tossed it across the room to McCabe, who merely caught it and laid it on the sofa next to him.
“That ought to get a nibble, if this Bianca really likes to help out fleeing Batista men,” the burly redhead said. “Think it’ll make the wire services and get Cassino in trouble?”
Denver shrugged. “In abbreviated form, maybe. It’ll probably just refer to me as a former Batista aide, if they pick it up at all, and not list my atrocities. The public must be pretty sick of long lists of Batista atrocities by now. If Castro or any of the other Cuban wheels who knew us run across it, they’ll probably think the press just got twisted what side I was on.”
McCabe drained his glass and rose to fix another drink. “How long you figure it will take Bianca to bite?”
Denver shrugged again. “Tonight, possibly, if he reads the papers. He won’t have any trouble tracing me here. I left a forwarding address at the Hilton with instructions to give it to anyone who asked for it.”
His guess was right. The phone call came at ten-thirty P.M.
DRAGNET: THE CASE OF THE COURTEOUS KILLER (Novel Sample)
If you’re a fan of the original Dragnet radio and TV shows, this is the book for you. You can hear almost hear Jack Webb’s voice in every word.
INTRODUCTION, by Richard Deming
Because of the popularity of the “Dragnet” TV show, the Los Angeles police officer has become symbolic of all municipal police officers. Simultaneously the show has enormously increased the public’s interest in police work and its respect for policemen.
In doing the research for this book, it was my privilege to spend considerable time working with the Los Angeles police department and studying its methods. Prior to this assignment my only knowledge of the department was what I had seen of it on the “Dragnet” TV show, and I approached the study with the preconceived notion that the TV interpretation was probably a highly glamorized one. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I am not a novice at this type of survey. Los Angeles was the fourth major city in which I had made similar police studies. I know what to look for beneath the public-relations hand-outs in order to get a true picture of how efficiently a department functions. I talked and worked with policemen of all rank levels. I drew them out on their feelings about their work, the department, and their superior officers. And I came away from Los Angeles convinced that it probably has the finest, most modern, and most efficient police department in the country, and possibly in the world.
I base this opinion not only on its superb police equipment and up-to-the-minute methods of investigation and law enforcement, but also upon such intangibles as department morale. I was surprised and pleased to discover that the average Los Angeles policeman’s attitude toward the department is approximately equivalent to a career Marine’s feeling for the Marine Corps. Everywhere, from uniformed policemen to deskbound captains, I found an almost fierce loyalty to the department, a deep pride in membership, and an unshakable conviction that Los Angeles has the best force in the world.
Much of the credit for this must go to Chief W.H. Parker, a dedicated police officer who has been with the department for thirty years and who instituted many of its modern methods. Part of the credit must go to the people of Los Angeles themselves, however, for their recognition that policemen, like other citizens, have to eat and pay rent and buy clothing for their children. J. Edgar Hoover has called the salary levels of this country’s major police forces a national disgrace. This condemnation doesn’t apply to Los Angeles, where, on the principle that you get what you pay for, the police salary scale is above that of many other cities.
The result is what you might expect: a high caliber of applicants, and a resulting high caliber of officers.
The reader may be assured, therefore, that in reading this book he is not being given a glamorized picture of police in action. This is the way the Los Angeles police actually operate, and the way they did actually operate in the case presented. As in the “Dragnet” TV shows, the case you are about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Grateful acknowledgment for their co-operation in helping me obtain the material for this book is made to Chief W. H. Parker; Chief of Detectives Thad Brown; Captain Stanley Sheldon, Commander of the Public Information Division; Ray Pinker, Chief Forensic Chemist of the Criminalistics Laboratory; and the many other police officers who put up with my prying into their work methods. Last, and most important, acknowledgment is made to Jack Webb, the creator of “Dragnet.”
&nb
sp; CHAPTER I
It was Wednesday, June 19th. It was warm in Los Angeles. We were working the night watch out of Homicide Division. My partner’s Frank Smith. The boss is Captain Hertel, and the night watch commander is Lieutenant Newton.
My name’s Friday.
Nine men are on duty with the Homicide night watch. In addition to the watch commander, there are three sergeants, four policemen, and one civilian hearing reporter. In a city that averages only one murder every three days, this may seem like a lot. It isn’t. Homicide Division has twenty-two separate functions in addition to murder investigation. It’s responsible for the investigation of kidnapping, train wrecking, treason, rape, bigamy, and unlawful assembly, to mention a few. Some of these may sound unrelated to our basic function of homicide investigation, but we get them for the sound reason that murder may stem from such cases, and if it does, we’re in on the ground floor. Bigamists, for example, sometimes try to dispose of extra wives by violent means. By getting in on bigamy cases from the start, we’re a jump ahead when and if a body turns up.
Some nights we wish we had eighteen men. Other nights we sit around and look at each other. Wednesday, June 19th, was one of the latter.
Until 12:28 a.m.
There is no swing shift in Homicide Division. From 12:30 a.m. until the day watch starts, homicide calls are taken in the Detective Headquarters Unit. If Homicide officers are needed, they’re routed out of their beds at home. For this reason we don’t much like after-midnight activity. But we get it. People go on committing crimes twenty-four hours a day.
Which means police officers have to be on call twenty-four hours a day, even when they’re asleep.
The Homicide gang detail, which cruises in undercover cars, had already made its final check-in by radio and had been ordered out of service for the night. The sergeant in charge of the gang detail had closed his log and gone home. The civilian reporter had left. The lieutenant was in his office, across the anteroom from the squad room. Frank and I sat in the squad room waiting for the last few minutes of the watch to tick off.
The deadliest phase of police work is waiting for something to happen. After eight hours of inactivity, we’d exhausted all possible subjects of conversation. Frank had even stopped complaining about traffic. He lives in the Valley with his wife, Fay, and two kids, and has to fight the four-to-five-P.M. traffic on his way to work each day. Next to fishing, it’s his favorite subject of conversation.
At 12:28 a.m. we heard the phone ring in the lieutenant’s office. Frank gave me an inquiring look.
“Must be a personal call,” I said. “Anything urgent would come over that.”
I nodded toward the hot-shot speaker on one of the tables. The hot-shot speaker is tied into a special panel on the complaint board. When a call concerning Homicide comes in, the policeman on the board flips a switch and we hear the phone conversation over the loud-speaker as it takes place, then hear any messages issued to radio units.
Frank said, “Uh-huh.”
I glanced at my watch, saw it was 12:29, and stood up. “Let’s call it a night,” I said.
Frank stood up, too. We both had our hats on when Lieutenant Newton crossed the anteroom between his office and the squad room and grinned at us from the doorway.
Frank said, “Oh, no, Lieutenant. Not after nothing stirring all night.”
“You’ve had your rest,” the lieutenant said. “Now you can earn your salary. Just got a call from the new Central Receiving Hospital.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Woman brought in a man with a fractured skull. She was in a state of mild shock. They assumed it was an auto accident, and didn’t ask questions until they’d given both emergency treatment. She’s quieted some now, and they’ve just learned it was no accident.”
I asked, “What was it?”
“On purpose. Somebody bounced a pistol barrel off his skull.”
That made it our baby. Battery is one of the twenty-two things aside from murder that Homicide Division investigates.
“Let’s roll,” I said to Frank.
* * * *
12:52 a.m. Frank and I drove over to the new Central Receiving Hospital at Loma and Sixth Streets. The Hospital Division duty officer told us that the injured man, a Mr. Harold Green, was still in Emergency, but that the woman who had brought him in, a Mrs. Wilma Stenson, would be available for questioning shortly. He said the doctor in charge had decided her state of shock was not severe enough to require hospitalization, and she was being released. We could see her as soon as she finished being checked out.
Just off the intake desk was a little alcove, which had been furnished with chairs, sofas, and smoking stands to serve as a waiting room. Frank and I waited there.
Frank looked around approvingly at the brand-new furniture and shining, modern smoking stands. “Everything in this building is brand spanking new,” he said. “They didn’t move a bit of the old equipment over from Georgia Street. Pretty nice, huh?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Most modern hospital equipment you can get throughout the building. They even got conductive floors and furniture in the operating rooms.”
“Huh?” I said.
“Drains off static electricity,” he explained. “Ordinary floors and furniture, the surgeon’s apt to build up a lot of static electricity in his body. Spark jumps from him to the patient, and bingo.”
“How you mean?” I asked.
“Ether. Inflammable. The guy’s lungs are full of a mixture of ether and oxygen. Spark hits it, the flame travels right down into his lungs. He goes off like a bomb.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Where’d you learn all this?”
“Couple of weeks back. June 6th. Day the hospital was dedicated. Fay and I came to the ceremony.”
I looked at him. “You taking in hospital openings for kicks now?”
“Well, Fay wanted to see it. She worries about Armand.” Armand is the cross Frank has to bear. He’s Frank’s brother-in-law, and as nearly as I can tell from what Frank says, he’s never held a job for more than a few days at a time. He floats from relative to relative, making his living by sponging. Currently it was Frank’s turn to support him.
I said, “What’s Armand got to do with it?”
“Well, when he’s out late, Fay always thinks he’s been run over or something. He never has been, but Fay says you never can tell. Now that this place is open, accident victims will be brought here instead of to Georgia Street. She wanted to see what kind of treatment he’d get.”
I didn’t say anything. Frank didn’t either for a moment. Then he said broodingly, “Probably never happen.”
The Hospital Division duty officer came along the hall accompanied by a slim, attractive brunette of about thirty-five who had a definite air of wealth about her. This was indicated not so much by her dress as by her soft, well-cared-for look, which suggested little work and much expensive beauty treatment. There wasn’t a line in her face or a sag in her body. She wasn’t satisfied just to be well-preserved, though. She was one of those women who fight chronological age as hard as they fight physical age. She wore a cotton print suitable for a teen-ager and had her hair done up in a pony tail.
Frank and I rose when they neared. The duty officer said, “These police officers want to talk to you, Mrs. Stenson.” Then he said to me, “Want to use the Hospital Division room, Sergeant?”
“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll make out here.”
The Hospital Division is a branch of the Detective Bureau, and has a man on duty at Central Receiving on all watches. It was the duty officer who had made the preliminary investigation and had called Lieutenant Newton. Now that we were there, we were in charge of the case, however.
When the duty officer had moved off, I said to Mrs. Wilma Stenson, “My name’s Friday, ma’am. This is my partner, Officer Smith.”
“Want to sit down, Mrs. Stenson?” I suggested, indicating one of the sofas.
“Will this take long?” she asked. “I really ought to be getting home.”
“Depends,” I told her. “Sooner we get your story, sooner we’ll know how long you’ll be held up.”
She thought this over, obviously wondering what I meant by “held up.” Finally she decided to take my invitation, and seated herself on the sofa. Fumbling in her bag, she brought out a silver cigarette case, selected a gold-tipped cigarette and put it between her lips. I held a match to it for her.
“Thanks,” she said, after inhaling deeply and blowing thin streams of smoke from her nostrils. “What is it you gentlemen want to know?”
I said, “We understand this Mr. Harold Green you brought in was hit over the head by a gun. Like to know what it’s all about.”
She took two nervous puffs on her cigarette before saying, “There is a kind of delicate problem connected with this—ah—is it Lieutenant Friday?”
“Sergeant, ma’am.”
“Well, Sergeant, I’ll have to have your guarantee that I won’t be dragged into this as a witness before I can tell you anything.”
I said, “We can’t guarantee anything at all, Mrs. Stenson, until we hear your story.”
She shook her head determinedly. “Then I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse to co-operate. I can’t possibly have my name connected with this.”
I said patiently, “Afraid you’ll have to co-operate, ma’am. Our information is that a crime’s been committed, and that you’re a witness. We don’t put innocent people’s names in the paper if we can keep them out, but if you’re the only witness, you may have to appear in court.”
She raised her nose a trifle. “And if I refuse?”
“Afraid we’d have to take you over to the Police Building and hold you as a material witness until we can find out what happened from somebody else.”
The Richard Deming Mystery Megapack Page 34
