The Gremlin's Grampa

by Robert L. Fish

  “Don! Where are the lights?”

  Dondero’s hand found the switch; the two men ran to the back of the large hanger. A security guard lay there, trussed in wire, gagged with a rag. His eyes were raging. Dondero started to work on the wire as Reardon worked the gag loose. The man rolled over, spat, and then glared up at Reardon.

  “Police,” Reardon said abruptly. “What happened?”

  “You Lieutenant Reardon?”

  “That’s right. What happened?”

  “What in hell kind of message was that you gave me? Why in hell didn’t you say there were four of them? And that they were armed? You made it sound as if you wanted them to wait so you could go along, too. For Christ’s sweet sake!”

  “Squawk later,” Reardon said, angry with himself. The man’s accusation was all too true. “Right now, just tell me what happened.”

  Dondero had the wire loose. The guard came to his feet, rubbing his wrists and then brushing himself off. He looked up.

  “What happened? They’re out at the end of Runway Two-seventy right now, if they haven’t already taken off. They were just climbing into the plane when I come up in my jeep. I told them you wanted them to wait until you got here, and the next thing I know Tom’s got a gun jammed in my gut and I’m being wound up like a top.” He glared at Reardon. “Some goddam way to send a message! If you wanted them held, why in hell didn’t you say so? Or say there were four of them? With a gun? If that’s the way the cops in town work, all I can say is—”

  “I know, I know!” Reardon stared across the field. “Can they take off without filing a flight plan? Without clearance?”

  “Can you drive a car through a red light?”

  Reardon barked. “Can you answer a question without asking one?”

  “Of course they can take off without clearance! For Christ’s sake!” The security guard had been rubbing his wrists; now he raised one hand. “That’s them now. I know that Beech.”

  A small, neat twin-engine plane was coming down the runway in their direction, picking up speed, its landing lights tiny puddles against the stained concrete runway. It seemed dwarfed by the huge airliners drawn to each side of the runway; it was halfway down the wide concrete strip before the sound of its engines could be heard. Even as they watched, spotlights operated from the tower picked up the small, illegally flown plane. The double empennage raised slightly, and then the plane was airborne, lifting feather-light from the land. It banked slightly over their heads, its registration number visible; and then it had straightened out, heading out over the water, its navigation lights blinking steadily in the night. The landing lights flicked off; the plane drew beyond the limit of the land-based spotlights. Reardon pulled his eyes from it and turned to the security guard.

  “Get me up to the control tower right away, can you?”

  “Sure.” The security guard seemed to have recovered from his justified anger. He climbed into the jeep, reaching for his walkie-talkie while Reardon and Dondero piled in the back. He started the engine, shifting gears and backing from the hanger as he spoke into the hand radio. “Cassell here,” he said in a low monotone. “Get me Mr. Warren on this thing …”

  He shifted gears and swung the jeep around, heading down the row of hanger aprons, easily swinging the jeep to clear baggage carts, ladders, tractors and gasoline trucks. His one hand managed the jeep while the other held the walkie-talkie steady at his ear.

  “Mr. Warren? Cassell here. Yes, sir, I know the Beech took off. It wasn’t my fault. I’m with the police right now. They want to get to the tower right away. To talk with the plane, I imagine. What?” He turned to Reardon speaking over his shoulder. “Mr. Warren will meet us there.” He spoke into the mouthpiece once again. “I was talking to Lieutenant Reardon. Yes, sir. Right. In a couple of minutes.”

  He put the walkie-talkie aside and stepped on the gas.

  Saturday—2:15 a.m.

  From the height of the control tower pyramided above the main passenger terminal, the runways spread out fan-wise, the ribs running down to the edge of the water to intersect a cross-runway there. Each of the wide concrete strips was clearly edged in lights, with the areas between them black shadow inhabited by unlighted planes. As Reardon watched, twin landing lights suddenly flashed on in the sky above, bathing the field in lights; a huge 747 slowly began to settle toward the ground.

  In the darkness of the room, men’s faces were lit only by radar screens; at that hour of the morning, traffic was exceptionally light, especially for the busy International Airport of San Francisco. Mr. Warren, a tall thin man, his face impassive, stood staring at one of the screens, a microphone in one hand. His voice was low, impersonal, in the static-filled room.

  “Beechcraft 715, come in, please. Beechcraft 715, come in, please.”

  He stopped speaking, waiting, staring at the blip on the radar screen slowly moving outward from the center, caught in each sweep of the radar arm. Reardon, out of his element, waited beside the airport manager, nervous with the strain. Warren spoke again, his voice mechanical, the essence of patience.

  “Beechcraft 715, come in, please. Beechcraft 715, come in, please.”

  There was a sudden sputter from one of the speakers above the radar screen. A voice came on, faded, and then came on again, strong and clear. It seemed to dominate in the room.

  “This is Beechcraft 715. What do you want?”

  Reardon reached over, taking the microphone. “This is Lieutenant Reardon, Tim. Let me speak with your father.”

  “Why?” There was a brief pause. “Consider he’s resigned from the department, Lieutenant …” There was the sound of unintelligible chatter, coupled with static; then Tim was back. “Hold it—” There was another brief pause, again static-filled, and Tom Bennett was on the radio. His tone, distorted as it was, indicated complete calm.

  “This is Tom Bennett, Lieutenant. When the man told us you wanted us to wait for you, I figured you finally got smart. What was the tip-off?”

  “A whole lot of things, Tom. Come on back and I’ll explain the whole thing to you.”

  “I imagine you’d like that, Lieutenant, but I’m afraid not. Not and stand trial for wiping out that bunch. They could get away with anything and I could care less, but when they attacked my own family, that was a bit too much. At first we figured to just kill Sekara, because it was through him that little Tommy went on drugs—but then we figured we wouldn’t be any more guilty killing the bunch, and it would point lots of places away from us.” There was a brief pause; when Tom spoke again he sounded more curious than put out. “I still can’t figure out how you pinned it on us. Or were you just lucky?”

  The little blip edged its way southward on the screen. Reardon stood watching it appear each sweep of the arm. From the outer edge of the screen another blip appeared, heading in the same direction. A man in the room picked up a microphone and began speaking into it. Reardon continued with the Beechcraft.

  “Tom, don’t be a fool. You might have a chance if you came back and put that confession on paper. After all, you did have a grievance, and they weren’t very good guys …”

  There was a harsh bark of laughter.

  “Lieutenant, you ought to give up the police and go in for selling! Only you aren’t selling us.”

  “Tom!” Reardon sounded impatient. “Don’t be a fool. You know you can’t get away. Every airport within your range is being notified at this moment, including Canadian and Mexican fields. You don’t have a chance; come down and give yourselves up. It’s the only way.”

  The blip was halfway to the edge of the screen, moving steadily south. Tom Bennett came back on the line.

  “Sorry we can’t accommodate, Lieutenant. And do you really think we planned this thing so well and didn’t figure on a safe landing spot? You’ve got to be kidding! We—”

  The sound stopped. The radar arm swept past; the blip stood still.

  “Tom, listen to me—”

  There was a garbled noise from th
e speaker, as if many were talking. Then Tom’s voice came through the loudest, barely heard above the others. “Tim, what in hell—?”

  The sound disappeared once again. The speaker across the room suddenly came to life. “Tower, this is United 612. A small private plane below us appears out of control, seems to be spinning in. Repeat, this is United 612. A small private plane below us is spinning out of control. You can spot it from our location—”

  “We’ve spotted it.”

  The radar arm passed the blip; instead of two there was only one, and that one was approaching the field.

  “He hit in the water, half-mile from shore.” The words were flat. “I doubt survivors …”

  Reardon stared at the green light of the screen a moment and then straightened up. He handed the microphone back to the manager silently and looked at Dondero.

  “Let’s go,” he said quietly, and edged past the radarscope toward the door.

  Saturday—3:10 a.m.

  The night sky above the ancient Victorian mansion was clear; the stars seemed to hang low, each a reminder of the navigation lights of the small Beechcraft disappearing into the night from the field. Reardon, his jaw clenched tightly, mounted the wooden steps slowly, his face reflecting both his great weariness and a bewilderment at the resolutions of life.

  He let himself into the darkened hallway and closed the door behind him, standing in the silence and the darkness a moment, and then began to climb the worn carpeted steps toward his apartment, not bothering to turn on the light, his hand sliding along the smooth railing in fatigue. Seven hours before he had sat at Tom Bennett’s table, a guest, envying the man his life and his family. Seven short hours … He sighed and opened the door to his flat.

  Jan was sitting on the couch, dressed in his robe, her legs tucked under her, waiting for him. Her face was sympathetic under the glow of the lamp. He stared down at her, his face expressionless.

  “I heard,” she said softly. “It was on the radio. I couldn’t sleep.”

  Reardon took a deep breath and dropped into a chair facing her, staring in near exhaustion.

  “I know,” Jan said with quick understanding. “I know how you feel about the police department; and I know how you feel about people taking the law into their own hands …”

  Reardon came to his feet and walked across the room. He settled himself on the floor at her side, taking comfort from the rug, putting his head against her knees, closing his eyes. In his imagination he could suddenly see the plane, spinning out of control, crashing into the black waters of the sea. He opened his eyes abruptly.

  Jan stroked his head. “Poor Gabriella, and poor Tim. And poor Billy.” A sigh came and went. “And poor Tom Bennett, too, I suppose …” She glanced down at Reardon’s bent head and then leaned over, kissing it “You must be exhausted. Let’s go to bed.”

  “Yes,” he said, and there was a deep sadness in his voice, but he made no motion to rise, nor did he stop staring almost blindly at the wall across from him.

  Poor Tom? Poor Tim? Poor Billy? Poor Gabriella? Who knows …? Four murders and four deaths to pay for them, and was anything gained? There would be replacements for the four hoods in a matter of days; would there be replacements for the Bennett family? Tom Bennett, thirty-two years on the force, four individual citations, wounded in the line of duty twice—a murderer who caused his family to become murderers … To be or not to be a policeman …

  “Jim?”

  “Yes,” he repeated and reached for her legs, holding them, squeezing them a moment, and then releasing them. “Yes,” he said for a third time, and climbed slowly to his feet.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Lieutenant Reardon Mysteries

  CHAPTER 1

  Thursday—2:58 P.M.

  According to the first of the after-the-fact witnesses, the car was a black Chevrolet, three, maybe four years old. The second witness thought it might have been black, although he would have called it dark green himself, but it was definitely a Pontiac, not a Chevy, and no more than two years old at the most. So of course the third witness knew it to be a dark-bluish Mercury, practically brand-new, almost like the one he owned himself—or had owned, that is, until the company had repossessed it. About the only thing all three witnesses agreed upon was that it wasn’t a polka-dot horse-drawn buggy or a subchaser painted with stripes.

  In any event, the car pulled up before the front door of the Jerrold Avenue branch of the Farmers & Mercantile Bank on the edge of the Bay View section of San Francisco just two minutes before closing. Three men got out; the driver remained. The hats of the three were pearl-gray in color, wide-brimmed, and pulled low over their foreheads, leaving their faces in shadow, and they wore almost identical double-breasted gray suits. One of them carried a briefcase, a bit deeper than most. They walked without haste into the bank and one of them took a stand near the door. The second, reaching casually into his jacket pocket, moved evenly in the direction of the uniformed guard who was on his way to stand at the bank door until the exact minute of three o’clock, at which time he punctually locked the door against any potential late customer. The guard’s mind was on the element of time; when he looked up he was struck at first by the odd lack of any expression on the pasty face approaching and realized too late that he was staring at a plastic mask. The Saturday-night special seemed to appear in the masked man’s hand at the same instant, and the guard froze.

  The man at the front door slipped the lock over and drew down the shade that indicated the bank had closed for the day. The third man walked toward the large front window facing the street, drew the drapes, and opened his briefcase in almost the same motion. He removed a Thompson submachine gun and swung it about. It was a flat type, available at most surplus stores, and had a short support and a serrated silencer.

  He said, “Nobody move and nobody gets hurt.”

  His voice was not particularly loud. Although muffled by the tightness of the mask, the words were sufficiently clear to command instant attention. Behind the plastic the man’s lips quirked an instant and then straightened. Banks—especially branch banks—were like libraries or cathedrals; anyone raising his voice in one seemed almost sacrilegious. The man maintained the same calm tone.

  “We’re not interested in your pocket money, so just stand still. And I do mean still.”

  Everyone remained absolutely still, staring at the man. There had been only one customer in the bank, an elderly man at the teller’s counter. There were three tellers back of the new-style unencumbered counter, all women of various ages. A girl sat at a typewriter outside of an empty office in one corner. At the command her fingers went rigid on the typewriter keys; she looked like an exhibit in a waxworks. The man with the submachine gun moved it in her direction.

  “Up and with the others. But this side of the counter. Next to the old man.”

  She seemed to feel her being selected for separate action was a bad omen. She tried to rise, but couldn’t.

  “Up,” the man said in a deadly tone and bobbed the muzzle of the gun to give emphasis to the statement. The girl found herself next to the counter without having been conscious of moving. The man with the machine gun nodded his approval and spoke over his shoulder.

  “Let’s move out.”

  The man facing the guard had removed the .38 police positive from the guard’s holster and dropped the weapon into his jacket pocket. If the action told the guard anything at all, it told him the stub-nosed pistol the other was holding was real, loaded, and in working order; not that the guard had seriously doubted that fact before. The gunman raised the pistol slightly, aiming it at the lettered MICHAEL KRYSAK pinned in a neat rectangle to the uniformed blouse.

  “Downstairs,” he said.

  The guard was a retired cop who had put in thirty years’ duty on the Oakland force. He was no hero, but his many years in uniform made him at least give it a try.

  “The vault’s already locked up for the night,” he said, trying to sound both
sincere and serious. “Lock’s automatic. Can’t be opened before nine tomorrow morning.”

  The gun shifted slightly, coming higher, wavering between a spot under the right eye and the bridge of the nose, as if the gunman hadn’t made up his mind yet which was the better target. The muffled voice was almost bored.

  “Downstairs. Last time.”

  The ex-cop tried to read something in the eyes that stared back at him through the narrow slits of the mask, but there was nothing to be read, not even impatience. Not even, in fact, color; the man’s eyes were shadowed by the stretch of the opaque plastic between cheekbones and forehead. Michael Krysak shrugged and moved to the steps that angled their way from one corner of the room to the basement vault below. He wasn’t paid to be a martyr. And the bank had ample insurance, which was more than he had. As the two started to descend, there was a sudden sharp rattle at the front door of the bank. Krysak paused in unexpected hope, but a sharp stab with the revolver muzzle sent him stumbling a step or two before he could regain his balance. After that he went the rest of the way without the need for further inducement.

  The gunman at the bank door spoke without turning his head.

  “Customer,” he said. It was the first time he had spoken. The word came out ‘customah’ with a deep southern accent. “Guess mebbe Ah closed fo’ the day too soon.”

  The rattling was renewed; an impatient eye tried to see past the edge of the drawn shade.

  “Let him in,” the man with the submachine gun said.

  “Mah guest,” said the man at the door accommodatingly, and unclipped the lock, opening the door. He stood slightly to one side, his hand in his pocket firmly holding his revolver.

  A short, fat man bustled through the door without paying attention to whoever had opened it for him. He was sniffing audibly at this unjustified jumping of the clock on the bank’s part. He headed toward the teller’s counter, fishing in his pocket for his bankbook, dragging it out. It was filled with bills, checks, and a deposit slip. He slapped it down on the formica counter-top, frowned in irritation at the lack of attention he was receiving, and turned about abruptly to see what more important matter than accommodating him could possibly be occupying the teller’s attention.