Bank Job

by Robert L. Fish

  “All of that theorizing, of course,” he said, “is based on there being some strong tie-in between the four, a tie-in you figure came about in the army. What if they just happen to be four local tough guys who saw too many Green Beret movies and picked up the language and movements from the screen?”

  Reardon shook his head. “I keep coming back to those different local accents, Captain.” He looked down at his wrist-watch. “We ought to be getting the voice-graphs soon, and maybe the brains in the sound lab can give us a better picture. You can tell, just listening to that tape, that they’re from different parts of the country. And where is the most logical place for people from different parts of the country to meet and get friendly enough to establish a gang? In the army, as I know only too well.”

  “As we all know pretty well,” Captain Tower said, and frowned. “Not that I can see it helps us greatly.”

  “It also doesn’t particularly hurt us,” Reardon said. “And we have to start somewhere.”

  Captain Tower leaned forward to check the tape recorder; there was ample tape left on the spool. He leaned back again.

  “All right, let’s go on. What are the possibilities that someone, either in the bank or the shipyard—or connected with someone in the bank or the shipyard—tipped off the job?”

  “That one’s going to be tough,” Reardon said slowly. “I’ve got Dondero and Ferguson over at the shipyard now, trying to find out who knew about the payroll. Also who might have been fired lately, and may have had a grudge against the yard—”

  “Everybody who worked at the shipyard must have known about the payroll,” Tower pointed out dryly. “Who forgets payday? Do you?”

  “No, sir, but I haven’t a clue as to where our checks are made up. For all I know, angels deliver them twice a month, direct from cloudland. As far as the shipyard payroll is concerned, not everybody necessarily knew that the bulk of the payroll—the main dough, the bills—came from that particular branch of that particular bank or that it was made up at that particular time each week and picked up by Brink’s. Remember, the timing of this robbery was practically split-second.” Reardon shrugged. “Maybe we’ll know more when Dondero gets back. And I’ll also be getting the stories of the people who were in the bank at the time of the robbery.” He glanced at his watch again, more from habit than to know the time. “They ought to be in my office now.”

  He saw the querying look on Tower’s face and explained.

  “I had everyone there put down in writing what they thought happened. Somebody may write down a suspicion they wouldn’t care to voice publicly, and I didn’t want to waste the time to interview each one in private at that moment. If anything looks interesting in their homework, then I guess I’ll have to, whether I like it or not.”

  Tower nodded, understanding. “Anything else?”

  “Well, I have the word out with a contact, and I’ve been in touch with the local FBI to check the m.o. There may have been other bank jobs handled like this one; they’d have a file on them.” Reardon tried to think of anything else he’d done, but couldn’t at the moment. “I guess that’s about it so far.”

  “It’s about as much as you could do in the time, I guess,” Tower said, and nodded his head. “If you need more men, or if you need anything else, as far as that goes, let me know. How many men do you have on it so far?”

  Reardon considered.

  “Well, the sound-lab people are practically working solely for us at the moment, and there’s Dondero and Ferguson at the shipyard, and I’ve got Lundahl and Merchant checking door to door in the area of the bank in case somebody around there saw something.” He sounded aggrieved. “Although why you have to drag information out of people individually like this, damned if I know. Why can’t somebody volunteer something useful once in a while?” He seemed to hear his own words for the first time and suddenly grinned. “That old army training I was just talking about, I guess. If it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t move, pick it up; if it’s too big to pick up, paint it—and never, never volunteer for anything. Don’t get involved. The new motto of the American people: hear no evil, see no evil, report no evil.”

  Captain Tower studied the younger man a moment. He looked down at the moving tape-recorder, came to the conclusion he didn’t want his next statement on record, and turned the little machine off. Then he leaned back and considered Reardon.

  “You know, Jim,” he said quietly, “there’s a big difference between thinking and brooding. One is vital to our work, but the other is counterproductive. Try to remember that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Reardon said woodenly, and wondered if the old man really knew what he had been trying to say.

  “And one more thing,” Tower said in the same quiet tone. “We work on this case as hard as we work on all cases, maybe a little harder because of Tom Wheaton, but we get our rest, too. No heroics like forty-eight hours on duty at a stretch. Dopey officers result in dopey police work, and we can’t afford that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Reardon said, and came to his feet. “Anything else?”

  “That’s all,” Tower said.

  Reardon nodded and went to the door. When he looked back, Captain Tower had swiveled his chair and was staring morosely out of the window. I’m sure he knows what I’m talking about, Reardon suddenly thought, probably better than I do myself. After all, he takes the beating for the whole department, I just have me and my little docket to worry about. He looked back at the gray head a moment and then went out, closing the door softly behind him.

  Thursday—4:55 P.M.

  Sergeant Jennings, also of Homicide, looked up when Reardon walked into the office they shared. He tilted his head toward the lieutenant’s desk. “Some patrol cop left you a stack of papers, Lieutenant.”

  “Good,” Reardon said with no great enthusiasm, and made no attempt to look at them. Instead he noted the time on the wall clock and reached for the phone. He dialed the familiar number on an outside line, hoping Jan hadn’t decided to make it to the beauty parlor before their dinner date, although why Jan ever needed a beauty parlor was something he would never understand. He waited while the switchboard operator at Jan’s office rang through on her extension.

  As always, he felt that little touch of excitement as he waited for her to come on the line. He could picture her inner office, her desk covered with calculations, the drafting table behind her piled high with blueprints that made sense to her but were a complete mystery to him. How did a dumb cluck like him—or, rather, a comparatively uneducated cluck, for he wasn’t dumb and knew it—ever manage to get a girl like Jan? A brain well hidden behind a wondrous facade; a girl who could cook or make love with equal skill and abandon—

  “Hello?”

  He brought his mind back to business. “Jan?”

  “Hello, darling.”

  Reardon warmed at the tone. He said: “About tonight—I’m afraid I’ll have to cancel dinner.”

  “I know, darling. One of our draftsmen likes to listen to the radio while he works. He heard about the robbery on a flash and about the policeman being killed. I assumed you’d be tied up with it.” There was the briefest of pauses. “He said the policeman’s name was Wheaton. Was he—was he an older man?”

  Reardon knew exactly what Jan meant. He stared at the map on the opposite wall stonily as he answered, his voice without expression.

  “No. He was twenty-nine years old, married with two kids, one of them an infant.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “Jan?”

  The lecture Reardon had been expecting on the dangers of the profession was strangely not forthcoming. Instead, Jan’s voice was unexpectedly understanding.

  “I hope you get the men who did it, Jim.”

  Reardon smiled, relieved. “We will.”

  “But take care.”

  “Don’t worry, sweet.”

  “And call.”

  “I will. Good-by, sweet.”

  Reardon put his ph
one back into its cradle and sat down at his desk, reaching for the first of the handwritten reports. How was it he had never been able to talk Jan into getting married? From her attitude on the phone just now, maybe she was changing her mind about marrying a cop. Maybe she was beginning to realize a lieutenant in Homicide worked an eight-hour day—usually—the same as an accountant, or a floorwalker, and that the job—usually—was no more dangerous. Maybe if he brought the subject up once again, say when this job was over, maybe—

  Maybe you ought to get to work and stop daydreaming, he thought, or the job could go on until St. Swithin’s Day. He started reading.

  CHAPTER 5

  Thursday—5:35 P.M.

  Lieutenant Reardon put down the second scrawled report and reached listlessly for the third, realizing there were still some five to go and wondering quite sincerely if they still taught penmanship in schools, or whether everyone learned writing from discarded doctor’s prescriptions. Between the typewriter and the telephone, the need for calligraphy was fast disappearing, and he calculated that future archaeologists would stare in wonder at the few examples they discovered and be even more confused when they attempted to decipher them. Maybe, he thought, the best idea would be to send them down to some code department, or maybe just toss them into the wastebasket. He was saved from making a decision by the ringing of his phone. He reached for the instrument gratefully.

  “Reardon, here.”

  “Communications, Lieutenant. Chief Merrick of the Daly City Police wants to speak with you.”

  “Put him on,” Reardon said, and pushed the papers to one corner of his desk, happy to have an excuse for doing so.

  “Reardon?” Chief Merrick’s deep voice was on the line. Reardon had met the chief of the neighboring town several times and both liked and respected the man. “They tell me you’ve asked all the departments down the Peninsula for their co-operation on the Wheaton case. Well, you have ours, of course, without asking.”

  Reardon said, “Thanks, Chief,” and waited.

  “They also tell me you’ve asked all departments to let you know of anything unusual, especially anything unusual regarding hospitals or doctors. I can understand why, of course. Well, I think it’s possible we may have something for you.”

  “Good!” Reardon said fervently, and dragged his pad closer, picking up a pencil.

  “Mary’s Help Hospital,” Merrick said, “the one here, not in San Francisco, reported a few minutes ago that one of their ambulances was missing.”

  Reardon frowned. “How do you mean, missing?”

  “How it sounds. It’s been gone on a call for over an hour now, and in a town this size that’s just too damned long. And they haven’t called in to say they were having any trouble.”

  “What call did they go out on?”

  “Well,” Merrick said, “it seems some guy called the phone company operator saying there was a bad accident and wanting the number of the hospital. So she connected him to the hospital directly. And the operator at the hospital switchboard connected him to the ambulance section—”

  “Did the man say where the accident took place?”

  “Not to either operator. If he said anything to the driver-well, hell, he’d have to tell the driver where the accident took place, but there wasn’t anything on the log sheet.”

  Reardon made no attempt to bite back the nasty word that came to mind. “Those drivers are supposed to log the numbers they’re called from!”

  “Maybe they’re supposed to,” Merrick said, “but this one didn’t. The way I hear it, if it’s an emergency they like to get to the accident as fast as possible and fill in the paper work later, when they get back. And like I said, it’s been an hour, and that’s too long in this town.” He paused a brief moment and then continued. “It could be a dope snatch, of course, but I doubt it. We had a couple of those, so now the ambulances only carry maybe one or two ampoules of morphine. Since the hopheads found that out, they’ve laid off.”

  Reardon nodded. “So you figured it might be a smart way to get help to a wounded man, is that it?”

  “On the button,” Merrick said.

  Reardon looked down at the paper he had been writing on. Outside of the words “hospital,” “missing,” and “dope,” the sheet was covered with little doodles. “Did the phone company operator at least keep a record of the number he called from?”

  “That, yes. It was a phone booth on San Jose, just off the Alemany. Which is another thing: there wasn’t any accident anywhere near the booth, or at least none that was reported, because we checked. And that’s pretty near downtown.”

  Reardon had that old feeling of something breaking. “Hold it, Chief.” He came to his feet, carrying the phone, dragging the extra-long cord, and crossed the small room to the wall map opposite. Sergeant Jennings had come to his feet and was watching. Reardon studied the map, locating the approximate area where the phone call was made, as well as the nearby site of the hospital. He nodded to himself, satisfied that he was right, and spoke into the phone.

  “I’d say, from looking at the map, that they probably directed the ambulance somewhere up in the San Bruno Mountains, wouldn’t you?”

  “That was my guess.”

  “How isolated is it up there?”

  “A lot more isolated than you’d figure for something practically in the middle of six or eight towns. I’ve got a car on its way up there, but I figured—”

  Reardon’s finger had found something he had been looking for on the map. “Don’t they have a helicopter pad up there near the top of Radio Road?”

  “That’s right,” Chief Merrick said with heavy humor, “but we can’t search with a pad. They don’t have a helicopter stationed there.”

  “Oh,” Reardon said. “Well, I’ll get a chopper up there as soon as I can. And I’ll be along, too.”

  “Good,” the chief said. “We can keep in touch through your Communications.”

  “Right,” Reardon said briskly, and hung up. He swung around, pleased to be doing something, anything, rather than reading the reports. “Jennings, arrange a patrol car and driver in front of the building on the double.” He had a police radio in his Charger, but no siren and, of course, no top light with flasher, and he had a feeling he might need both.

  “Yes, sir!” Jennings bent instantly to the phone. Reardon returned to his own, clicking the switch impatiently. Communications came on almost at once; they had been waiting for his instructions.

  Reardon said, “Who’s this?”

  “Sergeant Silvestre, sir.”

  “All right, Sergeant. Where are our helicopters?”

  “Just a second, sir.” There was a brief pause as Silvestre scanned the board. “One is over the bay, near Angel; one is on the Park pad; one is out at the International Airport pad—”

  “That’s enough,” Reardon said, satisfied. “I want the one from the airport over the San Bruno Mountains as quickly as possible. He’s looking for an ambulance that’s disappeared. He should look in the area of the few roads they have up there; the ambulance is suspected of having been hijacked, so it shouldn’t be more than a few hundred feet off the road at the most, and the cover is poor up there. I’ll be in a patrol car—”

  “We just called in Mission Three for you, sir.”

  “Good. I’ll want to be in touch with the pilot of the helicopter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Reardon dropped the phone into the cradle, carrying it back to his own desk. He set it down and looked at Jennings. “You stay here. Anything of importance comes in, I’ll be in Mission Three on my way to Daly City.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A further thought occurred to the lieutenant. It was a dirty trick to play on Jennings, but somebody had to do it. “And while you’re sitting here, see if you can get any ideas by going through these papers.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jennings said dolefully. He had watched the lieutenant’s expression as Reardon had dug his way through the first two and did
not look forward with pleasure to taking up the job.

  Reardon said, “In fact, see if you can even read them,” and went out the door.

  He walked swiftly down the corridor to the elevator bank, took one look at the indicators, and took to the steps, running down them. He marched across the marble lobby, pushed through the heavy glass doors, and trotted down the steps. Mission Three, its top light rotating and flashing red and white, stood at the curb. Reardon ran around the front and climbed in beside the driver, pleased to see it was an old friend, Pilcher, at the wheel.

  “Hello, Mac. Daly City, and on the double!”

  “Right, Lieutenant.” Pilcher was away from the curb smoothly, gathering speed. He turned at the first corner, heading for the skyway south. He opened his mouth to ask Reardon if he wanted the siren, but the lieutenant was already leaning forward, switching it on. The keening rose.

  “Don’t be afraid of tickets,” Reardon said flatly, and reached for the glove compartment and the detailed maps of the area he knew the sergeant kept there.

  Thursday—5:55 P.M.

  From his low altitude of only three hundred feet above the winding Guadaloupe Road, cutting north and south through the San Brunos, Johnny Calgary, pilot of SFPH-5, rotated his head from side to side, searching. Calgary had spent many hours in helicopter searches and could, from a low altitude, watch the terrain without running into it, a skill not all helicopter pilots learn in mountainous country. So far there had been nothing to see. He spoke, his throat mike eliminating the roar of the engine.

  “Nothing yet, Lieutenant.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Just coming over the crest on Guadaloupe Road, heading northeast.”

  Reardon considered the map in his lap. Pilcher, following instructions, had slowed down and turned off the siren; they were almost at the foot of the San Brunos. Reardon made up his mind.

  “All right. Keep following Guadaloupe Road until you come to the intersection of Radio Road. You know it?”

  “I know it.”

  “Good. I’ll cut over to Guadaloupe Canyon Parkway. You take Radio Road. If you don’t have any luck you can try the Parkway and the rest of Guadaloupe later.”