He leaned over, speaking in a sotto voce that undoubtedly carried up the elevator shaft to the County Jail on the sixth floor.
“Hi, Lieutenant. Is she dangerous? If you want I could hold her while you handcuff her …”
Reardon paid no attention, pushing the button for the second floor.
“If she’s armed,” Dondero offered, “I could search her …”
“Don, shut up!” He shook his head, beaten. “Oh, all right! Miss Wilkinson, this is Sergeant Dondero.”
“Charmed,” Dondero said and grinned. Penny merely stared at him without expression. The door slid open at the second floor. For a moment the three stood looking at each other; then Reardon put his finger on the button to hold the cab in place.
“Municipal Court is on this floor, Penny,” he said. “Just turn right after you leave the elevators. They’ll have the list of cases—the docket—on the bulletin board outside. His name will be on it; Ralph Crocker. You just walk in and sit down and wait for his case. He should be one of the first; it won’t last long. We’re asking the court for a continuance. We haven’t had a chance to look the car over yet.”
Dondero frowned at him. “What do you mean we haven’t had a chance to look the car over yet? Are you still sticking your nose into this, Jim?”
Reardon disregarded him. “He’s a tall, thin man. Anyway, they’ll announce the case.”
The girl looked at Reardon helplessly. “Aren’t you going to come in with me?”
“No. I have a lot of work to do. Anyway, it isn’t necessary. You’ll be fine.”
“And you just want me to look at him?”
“That’s right. Watch him, study how he moves, what his voice sounds like. I know you said you’d never heard Bob Cooke mention Crocker by name, but I’d like you to really look at him. See if you can remember Bob Cooke ever describing anyone like him, or talking to him anywhere. In a bar, or on the dock, or anywhere at all.”
Penny looked at him curiously. “You think he ran Bob down on purpose, don’t you? Why would he do a thing like that?”
Dondero interrupted. “Because if he didn’t, then Lieutenant James Reardon has no business messing about with the case at all.”
Reardon shook his head impatiently. “I don’t know what I think. I just know I hate automobile accidents and useless deaths.” He patted her arm. “Anyway, you go into that court and sit down and wait. Nobody will stop you; it’s free territory. And afterward come up to my office and tell me what you think. Do you remember my office? On the fourth floor?”
“I’ll take her into the courtroom and bring her back,” Dondero said, and took her arm protectively. His former facetiousness was gone. “A girl could get lost wandering around this place.”
For a moment Reardon looked as if he were going to object, but apparently the look on Dondero’s face changed his mind. He nodded.
“All right, Don. I’ll see you later, Penny.”
The elevator door closed behind the two; he rode alone to the fourth floor and turned in the direction of his office with a smile. That Dondero! Though it was pretty hard to blame a man for being smitten with Penny Wilkinson, even on first meeting. Still, it was doubtful that anyone would make much headway with the girl so soon after the death of her boy friend. On the other hand, the sooner she let herself become interested in someone else, undoubtedly the better. And Dondero could be quite a lad when he felt like it. He pushed through the door to his office smiling to himself. Why not quit the Ann Landers bit, Reardon? he asked himself; both Penny and Don are adults.
He hung up his jacket and dropped into his chair, looking at his In-basket, just as the telephone rang. He realized the reprieve from the stack of papers waiting for him was only a temporary one, but still better than nothing. He reached out, picking up the phone.
“Yes?”
“I’d like to speak with a Lieutenant James Reardon.” It was a deep voice, pleasant sounding, but still with a tone suggesting the speaker was accustomed to a degree of authority.
“This is Lieutenant Reardon. What can I do for you?”
“Oh. Well, my name is Harry Thompson, and I’m the chief purser on the S.S. Mandarin. I’ve just read in the papers—”
“Mr. Thompson. I was going to call you.” When, as, and if I’d remembered, Reardon thought with a shake of his head and went back to listening.
“Oh. Well, anyway, I read the article in the paper today. It’s a goddamned shame. Bob was a good man. One of the few I had working for me who could find his ass with both hands. Usually, as soon as I get someone halfway decent, the exec. on this bucket drags him out of my department by both feet and hands him over to any damned deck officer who wants him.”
“Yes. Well—”
“Anyway,” Thompson continued, almost without pause, “that’s water over the dam. About the body—I spoke to the company brass here, after I saw the newspaper. Bob always talked about being buried at sea—he had no family, I guess—and the brass have no objection. He was a good kid; I hate to think of him going over the rail.”
Reardon stared at the instrument in his hand in surprise.
“I’m rather amazed. I should have thought that most cruise passengers wouldn’t exactly relish anything as gruesome as a burial at sea during a pleasure trip.”
Thompson snorted.
“Then you would have thought wrong. You just don’t know cruise trips and the kind of passengers they draw, Lieutenant. Ghouls, the lot. The average age of the passengers on one of our Oriental cruises must be between seventy-five and a hundred and six. Hell, you’ve got to be older than God to be able to afford ’em. And the huge majority hate anyone younger than them, and nothing will give them a bigger kick than seeing a young man of twenty-eight, in the prime of life, take the deep six. Most of them wouldn’t even mind if he was alive when he went. The company could sell tickets, I’ll bet, like for Bingo, or horse races, or daily mileage. They’re a bunch of ghouls, I tell you!”
“Yes,” Reardon said shortly. “About the body—”
“I was coming to that. Whenever you feel you can release the body, you can send it down to the ship. Or we can arrange to pick it up if you want. We can bring it down in the laundry wagon.”
“I’ll have it sent down,” Reardon said. “We’re a little better equipped than laundry wagons. But do you have facilities for a dead body on board? I mean—?”
“You mean, a morgue?” Thompson’s deep voice sounded as if Reardon had asked him if they carried an anchor. “Of course we do. When you carry passengers the age of ours, Lieutenant, there’s damn few trips when one of them doesn’t drop dead. Usually from overeating or trying to drink the ship dry—which is tough to do—or from trying to make it with one of the stewardesses like he was a mere sixty or something. Anyway, we have to keep them on ice until we get home and turn them over to the authorities for release, to make sure they weren’t poisoned by their cribbage partners; and also not to deprive their relatives the extreme pleasure of burying them, themselves.”
Despite his knowledge of the work he had before him, the garrulous purser amused Reardon. He grinned at the telephone. “You make your cruises sound like a fun-deal all around.”
“Oh they are,” Thompson assured him. “Especially for the purser’s office.” He hesitated a moment, considering. “Or they would be, that is, if we didn’t carry people. However, it’s the only job I know, so I guess I’m stuck with it until they put me over the rail.” He sighed deeply. “Anyway, I didn’t call you to do a selling job for our cruises. When do you think Bob Cooke’s body can be released?”
“Probably right now,” Reardon said, thinking a moment. “They don’t intend to do an autopsy, and our medical examiner is just as happy to get rid of extra bodies as soon as he can. In this town we have enough fresh ones to take their place.”
“Sounds like the S.S. Mandarin,” Thompson said, with the satisfaction that comes from shared misery. “Well, send him down any time you want. If I’m not here, tell
whoever delivers him to ask for the assistant purser. Somebody’s always on call. I’ll set it up with the staff here, and also with the doctor, if I can find him. The icebox is his.”
“Good enough,” Reardon said and made a note on his pad. “Where are you docked?”
“Pier 26.”
Reardon noted it and put aside his pencil. “Right. If it isn’t today we’ll make it tomorrow morning. I understand there’s no rush. I’m told you’re in port for four days.”
“That’s right. We sail Saturday.” Thompson’s voice turned bitter; Reardon had the cold feeling he had opened a Pandora’s box of complaints. “Four lousy days in port and every bastard and his mother heads over the side for fun and games—but the purser’s office?” He made a rude noise with his lips. “Service with a smile twenty-four lousy hours a day, plus twelve more at night.”
“Right,” Reardon said hastily, and was about to find some excuse to hang up when a further thought came to him. “Mr. Thompson, do you mind answering a few questions about Bob Cooke while I’ve got you on the phone?”
“With pleasure,” Thompson said and sounded as if he meant it. “I’m on the ship, and while I’m on the line, it’s tied up, so no sorry son-of-a-bitch can use it to give me grief. Because nobody calls the purser of a ship unless he wants to give the purser grief. I mention this vital fact in case you’re interested, although why in the name of Christ you should be, only his Father knows.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“I gather you mean Bob Cooke, not God. Like I said, he was a good boy. Even the captain liked him, and the captain on this tub hates everybody, especially passengers, although not quite as much as me. Not that I have anything against the captain,” he went on hastily, “except he disappears every night and I get stuck with the social amenities for these clowns. As well as looking after baggage they misplace—”
“Mr. Thompson. About Bob Cooke—”
“—wiping their noses,” Thompson continued inexorably, “seeing to it they stagger into the right room when they poop out at 9 P.M., giving them back their lost keys and false teeth, and things like that. It’s my fault the stupid bastard natives in Bankok don’t speak English, and if one of our bright lights gets his pocket picked in Manila, I’m supposed to find the miscreant who did it, spank him, and bring back the loot. The least the captain could do would be to take a drink with them a little more often.” He sounded put out; Reardon sighed, knowing full well the man could not be cut off. “Eighteen years on this job it’s a wonder I’ve got a liver left! But if you don’t let some eighty-year-old dame in a miniskirt buy you a drink, she complains to the brass like she’s been raped. Or like she hasn’t been raped. Take your choice.”
“Mr. Thompson—”
“Well,” Thompson added, aware he had been overlong in his dialogue, “enough about Harry Thompson and his meteoric rise to degradation. What did you want to know about Bob Cooke, Lieutenant?”
“Anything you can tell me.”
“Like I said, he was a good boy. It was a damned shame he stepped off that curb.” Thompson sounded puzzled. “Funny, too, because he was as wide-awake on the job as they come.”
“How did he get that scar on his lip? I heard it was an accident on board ship. That doesn’t sound like he was so wide-awake.”
“That’s when he was wider awake than ever!” Thompson resented the imputation. “A davit thole pin shears off with a couple-of-ton-load on the hook coming out of the forward hold, and four guys standing below right underneath it, talking about something important, like how to goof off or something—and Bob, without thinking, almost, jammed a small timber between the davit base and the deck engine that was driving it. It didn’t stop the load from going down, you understand, but it slowed it down for maybe ten seconds, which was time enough for those goops to get the message and scatter. Otherwise the four were mush. Anyway—well, the timber split, which was no surprise, considering, and one piece caught Bob in the kisser. He lost a ton of teeth and wound up with that scar; but he could have been killed. No; he was a wide-awake lad.”
Reardon frowned. “On the night he was hit and killed—last night—could he have had a drink?”
“Not many bars around dockside where we are, I don’t believe. I don’t know too much about San Francisco; every time we’re here I’m usually working. He could have had one in his cabin before he left the ship, I suppose, but if he did it would only have been one. He never drank on duty, and he had a date with that girl from the shop, and he wasn’t the type to get slopped before a date.”
Nor would anyone with any sense, Reardon thought; not a date with Penny. He went on, “As you know, he’d changed from his uniform into civvies. Did you find his wallet in his cabin? He didn’t have it—or any personal identification on him when he was killed.”
“Is that so? The newspaper didn’t mention that. Anyway, I had a man go through his things and pack them,” Thompson said. “I don’t know if there was a wallet or not. I know he usually carried his bills in a money clip, and I know he didn’t have any credit cards—and neither do I—and he didn’t own a car, and I don’t either because who needs it, so he wouldn’t have to carry his driver’s license.”
“No credit cards?”
“Seems hard to believe, eh? Well, you never get rich working the ships, and credit cards are like funny money when you’re in a foreign country. You take a credit card to Tokyo and walk down the Ginza, and you’ve blown about eight months’ pay before you get back. But cash? That’s different.” He paused, calculating. “I can have his stuff unpacked and find out, if you want.”
“I don’t suppose it’s really important. I was just wondering. What about his family?”
“I looked over our copy of his application blank after I saw the squib in the paper, and his nearest-of-kin line was just scratched through. That’s one of the reasons the brass gave permission for the sea burial. Nobody else to give him to.”
“What about his possessions?”
“Well,” Thompson said, “he had a bankbook he kept in the ship’s safe. He had about six hundred in savings in a bank back home—that’s Honolulu. And he was paying on a two-room shack there—away up in the hills and not worth too much, I’d say, although housing in Honolulu is something criminal today, believe me.”
“Did he leave a will?”
“If he did we don’t have it. I doubt it. What did he have to will, and who to? It’ll be up in the courts in Hawaii what happens to the little he had, but my guess is it’ll end up with the state.”
Reardon tried to think of other questions that could give him a better picture of Bob Cooke alive, and then wondered why he wanted a better picture. One final question did occur to him.
“Did you ever have a passenger on one of your cruises named Crocker? Ralph Crocker? A tall thin man, about thirty-three years old?”
“Thirty-three? I doubt it. Make it a hundred and thirty-three and I’d say there was a chance.” Thompson decided to be serious. “I’ve been on this ship since she was commissioned in 1952, and a lot of people have ridden it. But I can find out easy enough; we keep a file of all old passenger lists in the print shop. I’ll look it up. How do you spell it?”
Reardon spelled it for him. “When you look it up, if you find it or not, give me another ring, will you?”
“Sure. Who’s Crocker?”
“He’s the driver of the car that killed Bob Cooke.”
There was a moment’s pause as Thompson digested this. Reardon could almost see the other frowning at the telephone. “I thought it was supposed to have been an accident …”
“It was. Supposed to be, I mean.” Reardon sighed. “I don’t know what I mean. It undoubtedly was an accident. It’s just—well, I’m the curious type. I’d just like to know if Crocker was ever on the ship.” A further thought came to him. “Or ever worked on the ship.”
“Oh,” Thompson said, “you can find that out easier than I can. They have the records at the
company offices on Market Street. American-Oriental Steamship Company. Ask for a Mrs. Halloran; use my name if you want.”
“I think she’ll tell me without it,” Reardon said dryly.
“Oh. Yeah. I forgot you were the cops. Anything else before I hang up and get back to arranging a Maypole for the next bunch of senile monsters that are going on our—you’ll pardon the expression—Fun-Filled Cruise to the Flamboyant East?”
Despite the time he had spent getting remarkably little information from the talkative purser, Reardon could not help take advantage of the offer.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said with a smile. “One day when you’re in port and have the time, I’d like you to repeat your general description of a cruise on your ship for the benefit of my girl friend, Jan. She thinks anything is better than being a cop lieutenant, and she thinks living and working on ships must be as close to heaven as you can get. She figures it’s a continuous vacation, and you get paid for it too.”
“So you’ve got a weird girl friend,” Thompson said. “She probably has some compensating qualities, though, like two heads. However, any time you want her brainwashed, let me know. I can lecture on the subject for three days without taking breath.”
“Good enough,” Reardon said. “And thanks.”
“A pleasure. Any time,” Thompson said heartily and hung up.
Reardon placed the receiver back on the hook with a grin. Thompson, despite his long-windedness, seemed like a right guy. Then he remembered the basic reason for the chief purser’s call. He rang the morgue, gave them the necessary information, was informed the body would go out within an hour as there had been a tenement fire and they needed all the file cabinets they could use. The pleasure he had felt in listening to Thompson’s exaggerations disappeared instantly; in addition to automobile accidents, Reardon also hated fires, especially in tenements. He hung up and pulled his In-basket closer; Dondero and the girl walked in the door just as he did so. He looked at his watch in surprise; he hadn’t known he—or rather, Thompson had talked so long.
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