The Gremlin's Grampa

by Robert L. Fish

  Reardon skipped it. The one thing he didn’t feel like doing was getting involved in a religious argument. “What were you doing there?”

  “Trying to get them to take Marianne back.” For the first time the sweetness was gone from the cultured voice. “We had to tell the sister the truth—about the gambling, and Pete and everything, and it was no fun, believe me—”

  “About you, too?”

  The tiny jaw hardened. “No. But about Marianne.”

  “What made you decide to go down there at that late hour?”

  “Because I sat here and tried to talk some sense into that kid’s thick head for hours and hours, and when I finally got her to agree to give the convent another chance, I didn’t waste any time. I called them and talked to the sister right then. I said I wanted to get Marianne back there before she changed her mind, and I thought it would be better—”

  “To be sixty miles away from San Francisco and the Cranston Hotel when Pete Falcone went out the window?”

  There were several moments of silence during which Reardon stared at the metamorphosis of a sweet old lady turning into a madame of a pleasure palace with years of experience dealing with non-payers, louts, weirdos and, of course, police. He could not have known, of course, that Lily Messer’s patience was on a par with his own.

  “Listen, copper,” Mrs. Messer said at last, and the final pretense of gentility had been wiped away completely. Her voice was no longer modulated or cultured, and her eye and face were equally hard. “Listen and listen good, and try to get it straight! Like you said yourself, I was sixty miles away when that son of a bitch died, and so was my daughter, and you can check with the convent and take their word for it, or shove it, for all I care! And the next time you come visiting, you better bring a warrant, for luck if for nothing else, because you’ll get a load of buckshot if you try to fool with those doors without one, and you can write book on it! Understand?”

  “Speaking of those doors again,” Reardon said easily, happy that the masquerade was over at last, “why the need for all the protection?” He raised a hand. “I know they were here before you, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the fact that apparently you feel you need protection. It can’t be from the cops, since you let us in.”

  “Of course it can’t be from the cops!” Mrs. Messer rolled her eyes in supplication. “Dumbhead!”

  “Then who?”

  Mrs. Messer sighed hopelessly. “I could tell you to drop dead,” she said unfeelingly, “but you’re so goddam stupid you’d probably do it, and the bright sergeant here would take me in for manslaughter, or something. If you have any brains, you’d know why all the protection. Somebody knocked off Pete. Pete had friends. Some of his friends might just be as dumb as you and figure because I had a fight with him, I killed him. So—” She shrugged.

  “Or,” Reardon suggested conversationally, “a smart dame like you, with lots of experience around cops—good and bad—might just figure that would make a good story to tell the dumb flatfoots when they finally got around to questioning you.”

  She shook her head, as if in disgust with his ignorance. Reardon started to come to his feet, convinced they were wasting their time, when Dondero got into the act by clearing his throat significantly. Reardon sank back in his chair as Dondero leaned forward, speaking in a quiet voice, his tone even.

  “How long since you saw Sadie Chenowicz?”

  She swung her head sharply, wary of this attack—if it was an attack—from her flank.

  “Who?”

  “Sadie Chenowicz. A hooker.”

  She shook her head. “Never heard of her.”

  “Oh, come on, Lily,” Dondero said in a friendly, almost joshing voice. “You must have. In your spot you must have known every pro in the business. What’s the harm in admitting it? Of course, she never had your class; she probably never worked a house in her life. Strictly a pavement-pounder. Come on, you’ve got to know her! She works the bars on the Embarcadero mostly, nowadays. Sailors or dockers, you know. A blowsy blonde, getting fat, a barfly, about your age—”

  Mrs. Lillian Messer’s eyes flashed.

  “About my age? Why, you blind bastard, Sadie Chenowicz has ten years on me if she has a day! A month after my mother died—God bless her—at the age of sixty-seven, she looked better than Sadie does right now! My age! Good Christ where do they get their cops from, today? The Braille Institute?”

  “So now that you finally managed to remember her,” Dondero said with consummate patience, “when’s the last time you saw her?”

  “Who knows?” Lily Messer’s shrug also said, Who cares? “It’s got to be twenty years, at least.”

  “And when you last saw her—twenty years ago—your mother, God bless her, looked better than Sadie does today? Come on, Lily. When did you see Sadie Chenowicz last? Last week? The day before yesterday? Which was the day Jerry Capp got hit, in case you forgot?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about when you saw Sadie last. Because she was in that bar where Jerry Capp got hit.”

  “What!” Her face whitened; she sat erect in her hard-backed chair.

  “Surprise, surprise!” Dondero’s voice turned from mockery to cajolery. “Look, Lily, all I have to do is ask her, and she’ll tell me. You know Sadie. For two bucks, or for a couple of drinks of damn near anything, Sadie wouldn’t only tell me that you paid her to finger Jerry Capp, but she’ll tell us how much. To the dime. To the number of seven-and-sevens it bought, if it came to that—”

  “You bastard! What are you driving at?”

  “Me? Nothing? However,” Dondero went on philosophically, “when you deal with a barfly like Sadie Chenowicz, you ought to know beforehand the chance you’re taking—”

  “You miserable, lying, stinking—!”

  “Not to mention what muscle actually did the shiv job personally. If she knew, that is.” Dondero sighed. “Funny, the bunch of nuts you run into on the Embarcadero nights. Days, it’s not too bad, but nights?” He shuddered dramatically. “Weird … What did it cost, Lily? Money—hard cash? Or your lily-white body? Yes,” he added thoughtfully, studying her up and down, “you’ve got it over Sadie like a tent. Whether you’re both the same age or not …”

  Lily Messer bit back her first reply. There were several moments during which the two police detectives were once again treated to the Jekyll-Hyde act of Lily, the Madame, turning back into Mrs. Lillian Messer, mother and widow. When at last she spoke she was once again the calm, controlled, cultured woman with the evenly modulated voice they had first met. She was the lady who, in the course of entertaining guests, had unfortunately found them overstaying their welcome—but who knew how to handle the situation. She came to her feet, brushed a bit of offending lint from her skirt with meticulous care, folded her hands before her, and looked at them steadily, unemotionally.

  “Well, gentlemen! It’s rather a pity I don’t have a recording device around, because those last statements certainly sounded to me like a threat to suborn a witness. A bribe to Sadie Chenowicz to have her say anything you want her to say.” She shrugged delicately. “However, it’s on your conscience, not mine.”

  “Look, Lily, get smart—”

  “My name isn’t Lily to you—just to my friends. To you I’m Mrs. Messer, and my attorney is Daniel Farbstein of Gorman, Farbstein and Finch. You’ll find their address in the telephone book. From now on they’ll answer all questions for me.”

  Reardon stepped in, speaking as friend to friend.

  “Look, Lily—I mean, Mrs. Messer. You call me stupid; well, don’t be even more stupid. Somebody did kill Jerry Capp and Pete Falcone and Ray Martin. They didn’t die of heart failure, and we didn’t make up their obits. Those three are dead and somebody killed them. If you really had nothing to do with their deaths, then you should be as interested as we are to find the killer. To take the pressure off you—”

  “Daniel Farbstein, of Gorman, Farbstein and F
inch. They’re in the phone book.”

  “You don’t like to live behind locked doors. Who does? You might as well be in jail. Give us a hand—”

  “Daniel Farbstein,” Mrs. Messer said in her well-controlled lady’s voice. She turned gracefully, leading the way politely to the door and the staircase landing. She might not have heard a word Reardon had said. “Of Gorman, Farbstein and Finch. They’re in the phone book …”

  Friday—6:00 p.m.

  Reardon sat in the parked Charger, staring through the windshield at the sharp drop down Greenwich Street, but not really seeing it. Instead, he saw the smirk, the folded hands, the sharp, clever glint in the almost colorless gray eyes; heard again the soft but vicious voice. He sighed and turned to Dondero.

  “What do you think?”

  Dondero shrugged. He reached for a cigarette and lit it; he puffed deeply, as if for sustenance, exhaled, and then paused to pick a bit of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. He stared at the offender a moment and then flicked it away, too big a man to make an issue of the matter. These chores attended to, he leaned back.

  “God knows,” he said wearily. “I wouldn’t put a little matter like a killing past Sister Mary upstairs, here, and I can see her buying and paying for professional clout without the slightest qualm. And I can also see her setting herself an alibi at the convent at the time. But in that case I can’t see her locking herself in like this.”

  “Why not?” Reardon asked, sure that Dondero had a good answer. He enjoyed watching the swarthy detective sergeant use his sharp intelligence. “If, as she said, she thought some of Pete’s friends might think she had a hand in his killing and came after her? I’d say if she did the killing, or was responsible for it, she would have a very good reason for locking herself in. Tightly.”

  Dondero shook his head stubbornly.

  “You’re not thinking clearly, Jim. You say your pigeon told you this morning that these killings aren’t inspired by the mob, and I buy that. But you can’t tell me that if your pigeon knows it, and you know it, and I know it, that Mrs. Lillian Messer doesn’t know it. And that she’s also damn sure that Pete’s friends know it.”

  Reardon stared at him with a frown. “You lost me about four blocks back, pal. If Lillian Messer had a hand in getting Pete Falcone knocked off, that doesn’t make it a gang kill. Quite the opposite.”

  Dondero sighed and flicked ash through the car window.

  “You still don’t see it,” he said patiently. “Look at it like this: You say you don’t believe in coincidence. Well, in that case either Lillian Messer killed all three of those goons, or she didn’t kill any of them. Because it would really be some coincidence if she killed one and somebody conveniently picked the same evening to knock off the other two; or if she killed two of them—let’s say Capp and Falcone for the sake of argument—and somebody picked that particular evening to kill Ray Martin.” He looked over at his companion steadily. “How do we stand? Are you with me so far?”

  “So far.”

  “Good,” Dondero said with satisfaction, and flipped his cigarette away, getting down to business. “Then let’s take the case that she killed all three—or, rather, had them killed by others, since she has an alibi for the actual time of the killings. We’ll check it with the hotel and with the convent, of course, but I seriously doubt she’d try lying about something like that—”

  “Agreed.”

  “So here she is, then, down in San Jose at the Carmelite convent with her daughter while three separate killings are being undertaken, at her orders. And then, the following morning, she leaves the convent and returns to her apartment and locks herself in—” He looked at Reardon. “Are you still with me?”

  “I’m way ahead of you,” Reardon said slowly, and shook his head in disappointment with himself. “If she was at the convent at the time of the killings and knew they were taking place, would she have left that nice, safe haven and gone to a hotel—and then the next morning go back to her apartment after enough time had elapsed for the news to be all over town? Gone back to her apartment where those so-called friends of Pete Falcone might well be waiting for her to step out of a taxi? No, she just wouldn’t do it.”

  “Right,” Dondero said, pleased his friend finally had seen the light. “Which means she couldn’t have known of the killings until after she got back to town. Then she locked herself in. Which means she didn’t do any of the killings. QED.”

  “She was still lucky,” Reardon said slowly. “The mob might not have figured things out as neatly as you just did; she still might have had a reception committee waiting for her.”

  Dondero shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. “You saw that dame—ice water for blood. She might have knocked Falcone off in a fit of temper; she might have even paid to have him knocked off. But Capp? And Martin? She’s too smart for that. And the mob would have heard of Capp’s death as quickly as they did Falcone’s, and they’d know she didn’t have a hand in that one.”

  “Why not? Outside of our other arguments?”

  “Because I don’t believe it,” Dondero said simply. “And if I don’t believe it, Pete’s friends won’t, either. I only met the dame once; those who knew her longer, or more intimately, would know it wasn’t her bag. No, mon lieutenant, scratch Mrs. Messer.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.” Reardon sounded sad; he leaned over and twisted the ignition key. The engine sprang to life; he backed more fully from the No Parking space and spun the wheel, shifting gears, starting down the steep incline with a foot on the brake. “We’re running out of suspects.”

  “What do you mean, running out? When did we ever have any?”

  “We’ve had lots of them,” Reardon said, “only they don’t make sense.” He turned into Jones Street. “I’m beginning to think our first guess was the closest—three people killing the three men. Don’t ask me why, because right now I couldn’t even guess.”

  “I won’t ask you why because I don’t have the time.” Dondero glanced at his wristwatch. “Better drop me at my place. I want to pick up my car and get moving if I’m going to get to Tom Bennett’s in time for his birthday dinner.”

  “I’ll take you there,” Reardon said absently. “That’s where Jan and I are having dinner, too.”

  Dondero frowned across the car and then nodded his head.

  “So that’s why you were so sweet and didn’t pull rank on me! I should have known.” His frown deepened. “Although I’m a bit surprised. Does Tom know you’re coming?”

  “Why should he?” Reardon asked, and shifted gears as he started uphill again. He grinned. “After all, it’s supposed to be a surprise party, isn’t it? There ought to be a little surprise …”

  CHAPTER 13

  Friday—8:00 p.m.

  Reardon frowned and glanced at Jan across the car.

  “The house is dark.”

  “Of course it’s dark, silly. All surprise-party houses are dark until the proper moment, which is when the surprise comes. And don’t park here, you idiot; drive down the block further, or maybe even around the corner.”

  “Even I know that much about surprise parties,” Dondero said with disdain from the back seat. “Didn’t you ever have a surprise party, James?”

  “Never,” Reardon said shortly, and shook his head. “I still don’t get it. Tom Bennett’s in a dark house waiting to be surprised?”

  “My love, you really are stupid!” Jan said. “Sergeant Bennett is next door at a neighbor’s, trying desperately to get away, because she’s bending his ear, but she’s gabby enough to hold him there—or at least until we get inside and get hidden, at which time he will be rescued by a phone call from an irate daughter wanting to tell him that not only will his dinner be cold if he doesn’t hurry home, but that the fuse has blown and where did he hide the candles?”

  “And Tom knows all this and goes along with it?”

  “Of course,” Jan said quietly. “He’s a good surprisee.”

  “Live an
d learn,” Reardon said, and finally found a spot sufficiently distant from the Bennett home to earn Jan’s approval as a potential surprise-party parking space. We should plan our police work as carefully as this party, he thought with a touch of bitterness, and tried to think of something more pleasant. Maybe the cop on the beat will collar us when we try to walk into that darkened house. He grinned at the thought and felt better, wondering why on earth he should have felt bitter a moment before …

  Friday—9:45 p.m.

  Now, several hours later, with several strong Bloody Marys and a wonderfully cooked meal beneath his belt, Reardon had to admit that surprise parties were fun, and that this particular one had been a huge success. He was very glad he had come. Tom Bennett, no longer a subordinate but a man being given a surprise party by his grown-up children, had been suitably surprised. Reardon smiled at the memory of Bennett entering the darkened house from the talkative neighbor’s, and calling out in a thick brogue, acquired, apparently, for the occasion.

  “You mean nobody fixed the fuse yet? Gabriella? Billy? Tim? A foin bunch of useless spalpeens, I must say! Ah, well, if the old man doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done. Now, where are those candles, eh?” And the utter amazement: “Here! The lights are on! And who are all these people? My my! I think we could all stand a drink on that one, eh? Tim, my boy—suppose you do the mixin’.”

  Reardon’s smile faded, the bitterness returned, recognizable, now, for what it was. It was simple jealousy. No, he had never had a surprise party given him in his life; apparently he had never been thought worthy of it. Oh, he had had surprises enough in his youth, all right, but none of them had been pleasant. And he had had birthdays, but they passed as all other days passed, being different only in that they more clearly marked the nearing of the day when he could escape into adulthood. Maybe that was why he couldn’t rightly understand a man who had all this, drinking on the job when one out of four kids went bad. On the other hand, he thought suddenly, maybe the loss of a kid going bad to a man who did have all this, was even greater a blow. Reardon sighed. Well, he’d probably never know what it was to either have all this or to lose any part of it—not the way Jan stuck to her stubborn ideas about marriage …