“And you figure the killer isn’t any more stupid than you?”
“Right!” Dondero said, and then considered. “Unless he was a nut, of course, and I’m thinking this character was a nut less and less as time goes on.”
“I’m not sure Mr. Sekara agrees with you,” Reardon said, and fell into thought. He looked up at last. “All right, Don. There are a few other people to be checked out, but I’ll go with you on them. Just a second.” He reached for the telephone, dialed for an outside line, and then dialed again. The call was answered almost immediately, the voice exuding helpfulness.
“Telephone company. May I help you, please?”
“Mr. Jamison, please.”
Dondero crushed out his cigarette and leaned back in his chair, watching the lieutenant and waiting. The extension at the other end of the line was finally lifted; a brusque voice answered.
“Jamison, here.”
“Jamie? Jim Reardon—”
“Jimmy, my boy!” The brusqueness disappeared. “What’s on your mind?”
“I need an address and telephone number for an unlisted person on Greenwich Street. The name is Lillian Messer.”
“What’s the matter, James? Jan given up on you?”
“Jamie, when I have time for trading gags with you, I’ll call you at home. This is business. Get off your duff and get me the information I want before I cancel my subscription.”
“Temper, temper,” Jamison said chidingly, and put the telephone on his desk with a click that was audible to Reardon. The lieutenant waited patiently; there was a slight delay before the sound came of the receiver at the other end being lifted from the desk.
“Hello, James? We have a listing for an L. Messer at 539½ Greenwich. Dames are finally getting smart and listing under initials—”
“And the number?”
“The number is 889-5642,” Jamison said, “but if you make any obscene calls, I ought to warn you we catch them pretty quick. And, besides, I’ll tell Jan. I’ve had my eye on her for a long time—”
“Good-by, you old goat. And I suppose I should say thanks.”
“Don’t strain,” Jamison said. “Take care.” The line was disconnected.
“Visit number one,” Reardon said with satisfaction, and glanced at his watch. “Assuming we catch L. Messer in, we can wrap this one up before dinner, and handle the other one afterwards.”
“Jim—”
Reardon had started to rise, pleased with the information he had received and with the fact that at long last at least there was someone to interview, if nothing else; but something in Dondero’s tone made him pause. He sank down into his chair again.
“Yes?”
“About tonight—” Dondero seemed a bit embarrassed. “I’m afraid I’ll have to call off our double date. If you want, I’ll call Jan and explain in person, but I’m sorry. I can’t make it.”
“Why? Just because we disagreed about something?” Reardon shook his head. “Come on, Don! Forget it. Sure, sometimes I think you talk out of turn, but I’ve got a lousy temper and we both know it. You know I don’t mean anything by it. Hell, you’re entitled to your opinion.” He suddenly grinned. “As long as you don’t voice it, that is …”
Dondero didn’t respond to the grin.
“It isn’t that, Jim. It’s—well, it’s just that something else has come up. Something I feel I ought to do.”
“Oh? What?”
“Well,” Dondero said, looking his superior in the eye, “if you really must know, Tom Bennett is having a surprise birthday party tossed for him tonight—”
Reardon stared at him. “How did you find out?”
“He told me.” Dondero shrugged, but there was a bit of defiance in the shrug, as well. “You keep thinking the old man is stupid, Jim, and I keep telling you he isn’t. He figured it out because his daughter is staying home from work today—undoubtedly to do the cooking—and because when he checked the cupboard where they keep the birthday candles, they weren’t there.” He smiled suddenly. “And also, I guess, because they’ve had a surprise party for him each birthday for the past five years.”
“Logical,” Reardon said, his face and voice expressionless.
“Anyway,” Dondero said, “he asked me to drop in and—well, I said I would.” He looked rueful. “I’ll make my excuses to Jan. And whoever she had lined up for me.”
“You make it tough for me,” Reardon said soberly, and came to his feet. “However, Jan instructed me to pull rank on you, if necessary, to get you to come; and you feel I pull rank around here too much as it is. Well, it might be a good lesson for you both if I don’t insist.” He smiled forgivingly. “Anyway, that’s tonight. Right now we have a job to do …”
He put a friendly arm on Dondero’s shoulder and led the way from the room, grinning inwardly.
CHAPTER 12
Friday—4:20 p.m.
Greenwich Street sloped murderously upwards from Columbus to terminate in Telegraph Hill with its Coit Tower protected by ancient railings and surrounded by grass which, at the moment, looked nearly as old. Lieutenant Reardon, turning into it from Jones Street and driving up in ultra-low gear, searching for a place to park, came to the firm conclusion that Lillian Messer, if she did her shopping afoot at the bottom of the hill, had to turn out to have a pretty good figure, if nothing else. Greenwich Street, here in the upper reaches beyond Mason, had not been built for fat people; either they moved away or they quickly changed the fat to muscle.
He saw an open space before a private garage, clearly marked No Parking, and pulled into it with a grunt of satisfaction. He set the brake and swung the wheels sharply in order to at least confuse the Charger if it sought to escape by rolling; the two men climbed down and twisted their necks gazing upwards sharply along the vertical pink stucco front of the apartment building. Dondero brought his head down, rubbing his neck and grimacing.
“I’ll never figure people who like to climb four flights of stairs just to finally get to the first floor,” he said. His tone seemed to indicate the sharp incline of the terrain had been put there for the sole purpose of irritating him.
“Don’t exaggerate.”
“Well, to climb three flights, then,” Dondero said grudgingly, “just to reach the basement.”
“That’s better,” Reardon said approvingly, and rang the bell.
There was a delay, but before he could repeat the performance there came the clank of an ancient lever-operated door opener being activated from somewhere above. He pushed into a dim interior followed by Sergeant Dondero, only to find a second door confronting him. He frowned and tried it; it was not only locked, but sturdy. His eyebrows rose; on Grant Street in the old days the situation would have served as an excellent threatening scene from some Yellow Peril Threat movie script, but here? A disinterred voice issued from an old-fashioned speaking tube projecting from the wall. It seemed to take its metallic timbre from the faded brass of the contraption.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
“Miss Messer?”
The voice neither denied nor accepted; it merely repeated. It might have been a recording.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
“Police. We’d like to speak with you.” Reardon kept his voice cool; impersonal. His profound relief at having found her at home at all, was not allowed to show.
There was a brief pause; when the voice came again it was tinged with suspicion.
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“I have a sergeant of police with me. I’m Lieutenant Reardon.”
“I never heard of you.”
“I never heard of you until this morning,” Reardon said. “Open up.”
“How do I know you’re the police?”
Reardon, never known for an excess of patience, bit back his first reply; from her standpoint, Lillian Messer undoubtedly had an argument. He looked at Dondero; the sergeant merely shrugged. Reardon turned back to the mouthpiece. His voice assumed an official har
dness.
“Look, Miss Messer, if I have to go to the trouble of getting a warrant, and then go to the extra trouble of breaking down this door to get in and prove to you that we’re from the police, then I’d be damned irked. And I’m pretty sure neither one of us wants that or has anything to gain from that. I merely want to ask you a few simple questions.”
“What about?”
“Damn it!” Reardon snapped. “Open the door and talk to us face to face. Good God! If I wanted to telephone you, I could have done it from the Hall of Justice!”
“Oh?” The thin metallic voice became just the slightest bit calculating, almost amused, as if at some inner thought. “And just what telephone number would you have used?”
“I’d have used 889-5642,” Reardon said flatly. “You don’t really think unlisted telephone numbers are kept secret from the police, do you?”
There was silence for several moments as the woman above apparently pondered this statement; then, at long last, another clang resulted in the heavy door swinging inward. A well-lighted and carpeted staircase led upwards. The two men climbed it slowly, Reardon wondering to himself why the police were apparently welcome—or if not exactly welcome, at least not forcibly excluded—whereas common citizens without badges were quite obviously barred. Not quite the standard attitude for the ideal suspect in a murder case, he thought a bit despairingly; nine will get you thirteen we’ve hit another blind alley. He paused on the landing to stare at the woman who had let them in.
“Miss Messer?”
“Mrs. Messer.” Her voice, freed from the confines of the brass speaking tube, was low, cultured and pleasant. Her eyes were light gray, almost colorless, and, at the moment, very careful. “Could I see your identification, please?”
She examined the two warrant cards held out to her with what was quite evidently sufficient knowledge to determine their authenticity, and then nodded, satisfied, and led the way into a sitting room. Reardon was not surprised to find it both comfortable and well appointed, with good furniture tastefully and decoratively upholstered, and with either originals or excellent reproductions on the walls. The woman herself had been the surprise; once this surprise had been accepted, the apartment, its furnishings and all else followed quite naturally from it. Madames have changed a bit from the days of the Barbary Coast, I guess, he thought, and studied the woman before him. Mrs. Messer was a smallish lady in what seemed to be her middle forties; she was dressed in a mannishly cut suit and looked far more like a buyer for a woman’s shop than a madame in one of Falcone’s houses. Her hair was tinted a slight shade of gray, and neatly put up in a bun; her hands were small and faintly veined, the nails well manicured and covered with light pink polish. The lace from her cuffs peaked from beneath the suit sleeves, starched and white.
She seated herself in a straight-backed chair and waited politely for the two police officers to arrange themsleves in easy chairs on either side of her. Reardon felt himself sink deeply into the cushions; he looked up to find the woman eyeing him with faint amusement.
“Are you comfortable?”
Reardon struggled to a sitting position, feeling slightly foolish. He was sure the woman had selected the chairs for this purpose, and had led them to sit in them. “Quite,” he said, and managed to rest himself on the rim of the chair frame.
“Good. Well, gentlemen? What can I do for you?”
Reardon did the questioning. Dondero left his notebook in his pocket.
“Is there a Mr. Messer?”
“There was, but he died many years ago.” Her look of amusement increased. “Were you looking for him? He’s buried in Los Altos, if you care to exhume him …”
Reardon didn’t waste the time to comment. “That’s quite an armory you have down below. Do you feel you need that much protection?”
“Lieutenant, those doors and those door openers were installed when this house was built—well over seventy years ago. More, in fact—before electricity. Believe me, I didn’t put them in.” She looked at him archly. “Why? Are you gentlemen from the building inspector’s office? You led me to believe—”
Reardon cut in abruptly. “You used to work for Pete Falcone, didn’t you, Mrs. Messer?”
The lady facing him merely nodded in lieu of answering. Her face was calm, her eyes twinkling.
“Could I ask what you did?”
“Certainly. A type of personnel work,” she said easily. She smiled. “You might say I handled some of his employees for him.”
Reardon didn’t bother to argue the semantics; it made no point in any event. “You’ve heard of his death?”
“Of course. I read the papers.”
“Did the fact of his death surprise you?”
“No.”
Reardon waited for more, but when nothing further was forthcoming, and the lady merely relaxed slightly in the tall, hard chair, he prodded a bit. “Just, no?”
“No, it didn’t surprise me, Lieutenant. As you say, I worked for Mr. Falcone for a long time, and I knew him well. At times—too often, in fact—he did things that earned him enemies. Apparently this time he did it once too often, and made an enemy who was able to strike back.” She shrugged enigmatically. “And did.”
“I see. You know, of course—from the newspapers—that the evidence indicates that a woman was involved in his death?”
Mrs. Messer smiled almost condescendingly.
“It’s quite evident, Lieutenant, that you’ve heard of my quarrel with Mr. Falcone, and are drawing some rather far-fetched conclusions from it. Are you asking me if I killed him?”
Reardon nodded complacently, not at all put out by her question. “Or, of course, if you paid someone else to have him killed.”
Mrs. Messer crossed her well-formed legs in ladylike fashion, straightening out her skirt and smoothing the creases carefully. She folded her small hands on her knee and leaned forward a bit. Her voice was quiet and musical.
“Lieutenant, if you are as familiar with the story of my quarrel with Mr. Falcone as you think you are, then you know he did something to me that was quite unforgivable. If you wish the truth, I’m very happy that he’s dead, although I feel merely falling fifteen stories was scarcely punishment enough for him.” Her face was expressionless. “However, I and my daughter suffered enough at Mr. Falcone’s hands. I wouldn’t give that dreadful man the satisfaction—even dead—to see me get into trouble over him.”
“Still,” Reardon said in a tone that merely asked for reasonable consideration, “I’d like to know where you were the night before last—Wednesday—around eleven o’clock at night. Just for the record, you understand.”
“Of course.” Her light gray eyes widened in a smile; in anyone younger it might have been coquettish. “Actually, I was with my daughter.”
Reardon also smiled, the polite smile of companionship. “And that, of course, was going to be my next question. Your daughter—by the way, what’s her name?”
“Marianne. Marianne Bradley. It was my maiden name.”
“And Marianne, I suppose, was with you.” His smile widened, asking to be taken into Mrs. Messer’s confidence. “Now, Marianne wouldn’t just happen to be a rather tall girl, would she, with long brown hair, and a rather well-developed body? With a rather husky voice?”
“She’s tall,” Mrs. Messer agreed readily. She sounded as if she were merely voicing a normal mother’s pride in her offspring. “And her hair is long, or at least longish. I don’t know that I’d call it brown, exactly, but I suppose that would depend to a degree on your definition of ‘brown’.” She paused, frowning, trying to recall the rest of the description. “Oh yes. Yes, she’s well built. After all,” she added, smiling at him brightly, “she’s almost twenty.”
“And she drinks Gremlin’s Grampas?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I asked, what does she drink?”
“Oh, Marianne doesn’t drink at all.” She sounded more amused than shocked at the idea. “Drinking for young
people now is about the same as smoking—not the in thing, you know. No, it wasn’t drinking that got her into her trouble with Pete. It was gambling.” She leaned forward, her voice confidential. “And you know, I never had the faintest idea! And then she tried to borrow money—”
“I’ve heard all about it.” Reardon’s stiff smile disappeared. “All right, Lily! Fun’s fun, but yours is about at an end. Where were you Wednesday night at eleven o’clock? And where was your daughter?” He snorted. “And don’t try to tell me ‘together’ or we’re apt to finish this session at the Hall of Justice!”
There was unbridled spite behind the tight smile of the faintly lined face. The veneer of utter respectability was beginning to crack; the tension had been great.
“You really want to know, Lieutenant? All right, I’ll tell you—with pleasure. We were at the Carmelite convent in San Jose. I spent the night at the Holiday Inn there, and my daughter stayed at the convent. At eleven o’clock, I think, we were with a Sister Bernadette.” She leaned back. “Anyway, you can check.”
Reardon kept his voice even, his face straight, hiding his disappointment. And yet, it really wasn’t disappointment. I knew beforehand she’d be clean, he said to himself; she wouldn’t have opened the door without a warrant, not this dame with her experience, despite that Whistler’s Mother’s act, not if she was really afraid of the police. I should have grabbed those nine-to-thirteen odds I was offering before. Nonetheless, he plowed on; there was little else to do to justify the steep climb up that hill.
“Were there any other sisters there with you, or were you just with this Sister Bernadette?”
There was even less attempt to hide the sneer in her voice now.
“Sister Bernadette is the mother superior of the convent. Of course there were other nuns there, as well! Or do you think the mother superior of a convent would send them all downtown for a beer while she fixed up an alibi for a murderer?”
The Gremlin's Grampa Page 13