by Will Rayner
“Okay, it’s been a week since this Fenton got done in. During that time, you pair of private sleuths have been doing a fair amount of sleuthing into a murder case without letting the Hall of Justice into your inner sanctum. I take it T.J. went to Turlock and went through the victim’s things. How did he dig up the address, by the way?”
“Asked around the neighbors on Buchanan, used the phone book.”
“Yep, the neighbors. Routine stuff. We’ve checked the hotel room and we’ve checked Fenton’s former abode, but we weren’t looking for anything specific and I guess we didn’t really care whether he had any relatives. But the Floods cared. Tell me, Samuel, exactly why did Mr. Wallace D. Fenton whisper sweet nothings into young Thomas’s shell-like ear and not mine?”
The elder Flood shrugged. Let Jimbo figure it out for himself.
“Because Packy Shannon, who I’ll bet my department pension is your client, and The Greek and Fenton are all connected. What exactly does Shannon want you to find out, Samuel?”
“C’mon Jimbo, you know that information is confidential. We’re not called private investigators for nothing. All I can say is, we’ve been hired to produce a result and we’re doing our best to achieve our client’s wishes.”
“If that’s not a load of bushwa, I don’t know what is. Be that as it may, however, I’m sure you and Thomas have had plenty of time to figure out exactly what all the numbers and letters and instructions on this piece of paper mean.”
“Well, it’s a coded agenda of some sort, a blueprint for a plan of action. What that plan is, we have no idea. The triangle, I think, is an elementary rendition of a simple map. Three geographic points, perhaps, labelled by the first three letters of the Greek alphabet. The first three entries on the list also correspond to those letters, I’d guess.”
“And the letters being Greek, and The Greek being Greek would suggest he had something to do with drawing up the list.”
“Probably, but I don’t attach too much significance to it,” Sam said. “Those points could just as easily been labelled Able, Baker, Charlie or X, Y, Z and serve the same function. I think The Greek was making a minor ethnic statement, nothing more.”
Bracken closed the folder with a soft slap. “Okay. We’ll try to get some fingerprints, maybe get lucky. And my boys will try to figure out what these entries really mean. It looks to me like somebody was supposed to do something with somebody and do it again somewhere else, before everything went to hell in a handbasket. I suppose I should thank you, Samuel, for letting homicide in on this little development, but the fact remains ...”
Bracken was interrupted by the harsh ring of his phone. “Was he, then!” he exclaimed into the mouthpiece. “I’m on my way.” Hanging up and grabbing his hat, the lieutenant turned to Sam. “That elevator operator at 230 California, the dwarf, has been plugged right between the eyes with a .22. You’ll forgive me if I don’t escort you to the door.”
Sam Flood knew better than to ask to tag along on police business. He’d get the details eventually. Besides, a more urgent priority was to find out whether his client had an alibi.
Chapter 22
The encounter between T.J. Flood and the two great apes from vice was short and sharp. It also proved to be quite productive, as T.J. would realize later. He was in Emrick’s, on Sutter, one of his favorite watering holes, having a pleasant lunch of draft Pabst, pickled eggs, smoked bratwurst and English cheese from the free lunch on the counter when Pat and Mike loomed up on either side of him.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Flood,” Mike said. His voice and manner were pleasant, but T.J. noted his eyes were as black and empty as two bullet holes. “It’s a good thing you, ah, bumped into us. We’ve been looking all over for you.”
“I’ve been around,” T.J. said. He noticed his glass was almost empty, so he drank down the last of the beer and signaled the barkeep for another one.
“Ah, better not, Mr. Flood. We would like you to come with us to the Hall of Justice for a little chat.”
“Like right now, this very minute?” T.J. protested.
“You gotta problem with that, Mr. private detecative?” Pat asked, baring his teeth in what T.J. assumed was a grin. They were yellow and snaggled, he noticed. Not exactly an endorsement for San Francisco’s finest.
“Please humor us, Mr. Flood,” Mike said. “Just a little chat. It’s all routine.” The vice cop’s grip on T.J.’s left biceps was almost painful.
“Not when you’ve got hold of me like that,” T.J. gritted. Mike didn’t answer, but his hand fell away. “Well, do you mind if I finish my lunch on the way?” T.J. asked in a more normal tone. Quickly, he built a sandwich out of bratwurst, cheddar and two slices of rye bread. As he walked out of the saloon, with the two detectives on each side, T.J. started taking dainty bites out of his sandwich. It was the nearest he could come to dumb insolence on the spur of the moment.
A nondescript Ford sedan was parked outside. Four doors, black, no distinguishing marks. Standard department issue, T.J. knew. “Where’s your shiny Oldsmobile?” he asked as Pat guided him none too gently into the back seat.
Neither cop answered, but T.J. noticed Mike had stiffened slightly at the question. Score one for me, he thought. Now they know that I know they have fancier transportation than this heap. As Mike pulled into traffic, T.J. concentrated on his sandwich once more. Wedged in alongside Dipstick, he had to keep his elbows in close, but he had no problem finishing off his lunch. And he didn’t try to be neat about it, letting crumbs fall onto his lap, then brushing them off onto the floor. As a form of protest, it probably went right over Pat’s head, but T.J. felt better just the same.
After a moment, he noticed Mike had swung off Sutter onto Grant rather than Kearny and they were now in Chinatown. “Just a little errand to take care of,” Mike said as the Ford came to a stop in front of a narrow Chinese storefront. “Pat here likes his own special brand of tea.”
“Stay where you is at, Mr. private detecative,” Pat warned as he heaved himself out of the car. He had to turn his body sideways and duck his head to gain entrance to the tiny shop. The small window, T.J. observed, was almost completely devoted to the establishment’s name. ‘Fortune of Harmonious Promise Shipping Co. — Green Tea Our Specialty,’ it said, with a string of Chinese characters underneath. Mike and T.J. waited in silence for a few minutes, until Pat squeezed himself out of the shop carrying a small paper sack. Then they headed for 750 Kearny.
*
Sam Flood took out Packy Shannon’s private number from its secure resting place. It was time to give his client another phone call. Agnes, however, saved him the trouble.
“A Mr. Shannon’s here to see you,” she announced breathlessly on the phone. Apparently being in the same room as an underworld figure had Agnes all agog. Shannon was sharply dressed, his hair was gleaming and he carried an expensive panama negligently in one hand. He sat down carefully in one of the client chairs, crossed his legs and made sure the sharp crease in his trousers was not being compromised.
“Where’s the boy?” he asked.
“Not back from lunch yet,” Sam said. He found Shannon’s reference to T.J. as a ‘boy’ mildly irritating, so he responded with a gentle jab of his own. “Where’s yours?”
“Vido’s downstairs with the car. We don’t figure anybody will be making a move on me up in this joint of yours.” Shannon idly inspected his panama for a moment. “That gnome working the cage in my building has just been popped.”
Sam wasn’t surprised Shannon knew about the murder. Mob bosses had lots of informants. “I just learned about it myself,” he said. “In fact, I was with Jimbo Bracken when he got the call. He’ll be leaning on you again pretty soon.”
“He already is. I can’t get away from the homicide squad. They know they can’t pin any of these jobs on me, but they want to nail one of my boys. We’re gonna have to come up with a dozen alibis. A dozen alibis times three.” He paused. “Times four, now.”
“They’
re figuring you gave the orders and one of your button men did the dirty work. That makes you just as guilty.”
“I want a progress report,” Shannon demanded. “How close are you? The coppers are hanging around so much, my girls are getting upset. All this is bad for business.”
“We’ve got one lead that might take us somewhere. T.J.’s working on that. I talked to your elevator operator myself; it was obvious he was hiding something. Somebody probably didn’t like that and shut him up for good.”
“I didn’t even know that stupid dwarf, or this Fenton character. It won’t matter to Bracken. He thinks I’m starting a crime wave. I’ve got other fish to fry. I don’t need to be knocking off elevator operators or half-assed accountants.”
Sam reached for his pipe and carefully filled it with tobacco. “This deal between you and The Greek is still the angle we have to concentrate on,” he said. “We think the two of you were trying to pull off a big drug score.” Shannon started to respond, but Sam kept talking. “I know, I know, you don’t want to spell anything out, but if we find the goods, I think we’ll find the guilty party. Tell me, Mr. Shannon, have your boys checked out Penny Heaven?”
“Forget Penny Heaven. We’ve gone through it completely.”
“Even the, uh, horse room upstairs?”
“Forget the horse room, too. You ever been in a wire joint, Flood? There’s phones, there’s wires, there’s ticker tape, there’s people. There’s no room to stash anything in one of those places.” Sam lit his pipe and waited. There was more coming.
“Alright, here’s the straight dope on what I wanna do,” Shannon said. “I want to take over The Greek’s horse room, open up business again. The bookies in town are going crazy. They can’t get any info, any odds. So are the horse players. They can’t get a bet down at Santa Anita or any of the big eastern tracks. It’s a gold mine, but I can’t move until someone gets put away for doing The Greek. Otherwise, the cops will think I bumped him off so I could muscle in on his operation. Get the picture, Flood?”
Yes, I get the picture, Sam thought, but his mind had veered off in a new direction. “Tell me about the Amber Dawn,” he said.
Shannon gave him a blank stare. “Fisherman’s Wharf, where your boys picked up The Greek,” Sam prompted.
“Ah, the Amber Dawn. I didn’t know it was The Greek’s boat. It’s supposed to be a fishing boat, but it doesn’t really look like one. I’m told it has two supercharged marine power plants and one of our, ah, competitors used it during the old days, before he got bumped off.” Translation: rumrunner, Sam thought. “I’ve never been on it and I didn’t know The Greek had latched onto it. I saw her a couple of times in the old days — going like a bat outta hell, she was. You think the Amber Dawn has something to do with this caper?”
“Just a thought,” Sam answered. “An angle we might look into.” Dollars to doughnuts Shannon knew more about the boat than he let on, Sam told himself. The Amber Dawn would be too valuable an asset not to be used during a pickup operation — if there was ever going to be a pickup operation. He was beginning to doubt whether Packy Shannon’s ‘goods’ even made it to the bay in the first place.
Shannon stood up and placed the panama firmly on his head. “Just keep looking, whatever angle you come up with, Flood,” he growled. “Results are what count.” Abruptly he headed for the door. “I’ll see myself out.”
Watching the smoke curl away from his pipe, Sam Flood pondered the coded map Thomas had brought back from Turlock.
*
“Grab yourself a pew,” Mike said, squeezing himself behind his desk into an oversized chair. There were two normal chairs in the detective’s office and T.J. took one of them. They’re not going to get much out of me, he thought crabbily, wondering at the same time how much they knew about his relationship with Wallace Fenton. Behind T.J., Pat leaned casually against the open doorway; in fact he obliterated it.
“Now, Mr. Flood, the situation we have here is that we believe Benny the Bundle was connected with what is known as an illegal substance,” Mike continued. “We were hoping he would tell us, but then he got himself killed in your place of business.”
“That was a fluke,” T.J. said. “Someone was gunning for him and caught up with him at our place. They could have done him anywhere.”
“But you are connected, you see. We know that and you know that. We also know you were connected with this accountant fellow, the late Mr. Fenton.”
“The only connection I have with little Wally Fenton is the fact he...”
“Howja know he was so liddle?” Pat rasped from the doorway.
“Because I saw him poke his nose out of his office on California Street the day you two gorillas pushed me around. I could tell he was just a little squirt. And I saw his body at the Seaboard.” Dumb cop, he thought.
“But you talked to him,” Mike said.
“On the phone, yeah. He wanted to meet me at the Seaboard, and you know what happened there. Somebody iced him before I arrived.” T.J. didn’t know whether vice and homicide would be comparing notes, but made sure he didn’t deviate from what he and his dad had told Jimbo Bracken, just in case.
“Then you sort of disappeared for a few days. Made yourself scarce. We were wondering, Mr. Flood, whether Mr. Fenton told you anything on the phone, or in person, for that matter. About, uh, a certain item in his possession, perhaps? Then maybe you took a powder and went looking for this item.”
“Sorry, boys, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m not going to do your job for you. Don’t tell me you didn’t search room 28, or his Buchanan Street place, or his old office.”
“That’s police bidness, Mr. private detecative,” Pat said from the doorway.
“Yeah, well, if it’s the same sort of business which includes hauling a law-abiding citizen away from his lunch for a bunch of stupid questions, then it’s a crummy business.”
“Watch your tongue, Mr. Flood,” Mike said. “All this is strictly voluntary. We’re just trying to get some help in finding something that has gone missing. If you’d let us know where you’ve been for the past few days, it would help.”
“Well I won’t. And if this is voluntary, I’m un-volunteering myself right now.” T.J. stood up quickly, sending his chair crashing to the floor.
“You ain’t going nowhere, Mr. private detecative,” Pat said, straightening up and baring his yellowed teeth.
T.J. picked up the chair. “Get out of my way, you big tub of Polack lard, or I’ll wrap this around your thick skull!”
Mike Wales reached over and seized T.J.’s arm, effectively immobilizing him. “Take it easy, the both of you. Assaulting an officer of the law is a serious offence, Mr. Flood. I don’t think you want to get involved in anything like that. You may leave any time you wish, of course you can. Pat, my boy, stand aside for Mr. Flood here.”
Reluctantly, the big detective moved. T.J. carefully set the chair down, tugged at his vest, picked up his hat and made a dignified retreat. Then he spoiled the effect by turning in the hallway and telling Pat, “Hey, enjoy your tea, Dipstick.”
Imagine a big galoot like that drinking tea from China, T.J. told himself as he came out onto Kearny. Specially blended, too, I suppose. His memory dwelled for a moment on the little shop on Grant Street — and he stopped dead on the sidewalk. Those Chinese characters. He’d seen some of them somewhere before, on the fourth floor at 230 California.
Chapter 23
“You’re late,” Sam Flood barked. “This habit of extended lunch hours has got to ...”
“Take it easy, Pop,” T.J. interrupted as he sat down. “I’ve been over at the Hall getting grilled by Pat and Mike. They hauled me away from my lunch at Emrick’s.”
“That means you were arriving at 750 Kearny just as I was leaving.”
“Yeah, like two felons passing in the night,” T.J. grinned.
“That’s not funny,” Thomas,” Sam retorted. “Being escorted to police headquarters like a common criminal is n
ot a humorous matter. Be serious for a minute and tell me what they wanted.”
T.J. rolled his eyes, then proceeded to fill Sam in on his confrontation with the two vice cops — including the near-violent encounter with Dipstick. “I’m going to clean that dumb Polack’s clock one of these days,” he threatened.
“Just take it easy for a moment,” Sam said. “If the vice squad is so interested in your whereabouts, they’ve been either following you and lost you, or are staking out this building. Then, when you didn’t show for a few days, they became curious.”
“It wouldn’t be Pat, he’s too dense to tail anybody,” T.J. said. “Perhaps Mike could lose himself in a crowd, but I dunno. At any rate, I’ve saved the best for last. Pat’s little side trip to Chinatown has given us a break.” He peered over at Sam’s desk. “If that’s the Turk Street file you’ve got there, dig out that little sketch I made of the Chinese characters. I think a couple of them are the same as something I saw at the tea shop.”
Sam found the required exhibit and handed it over. “Yep, that one right there,” T.J. said. “It was on the window. Maybe one of the others, too, but I’m not sure. The Chink outfit called itself ‘Harmonious Fortune Shipping Company,’ something like that.”
Sam picked up the office copy of Fenton’s evidence. “The word, ‘fortune,’ fits. Option number one, ‘Procure Lasting Fortune.’ I can give Wellington Koo a call and get him to translate this whole string of characters.”
“Naw, don’t bother him with that, especially late on a Friday afternoon like it is,” T.J. said. “I’ve a yen for Chinese food coming on. I’ll take the sketch to my favorite chicken flied lice joint, the Hong Palace. I’m pretty pally with one of the waiters there.”
Sam acknowledged his son’s plan with a nod, although he winced inwardly at his son’s ethnic humor. “The ‘Fortune’ reference is also the Gamma point on the map. So that could be 230 California, where the containers were stored. And I’ve an idea Option number three — the Beta point — might be the Amber Dawn.”