“Right,” Calgary said. He tilted the small chopper, dipping with the terrain, his head moving evenly from side to side with the knack of long experience. A sudden flash of white almost got him to speak; he thought better of it and wheeled around, cutting away from the road, checking before reporting. A good three hundred yards into the hills, young faces looked up at him in friendly curiosity; a few hands waved. Calgary grinned as he banked away from the campsite and the white pup tents. Back to Guadaloupe Road.
The intersection with Radio Road was reached; he swung the whirlybird in a wide circle and then spiraled in closer. Nothing in the immediate area. He shrugged and started up Radio Road to where it ended in a maze of electronic gear well protected by heavy chain fencing. Nothing.
“Lieutenant? Radio Road’s a washout.” Calgary paused, thinking. “How about over Brisbane way?”
Reardon checked his map. “Too far. They wouldn’t go there.”
“Then how about over toward Crocker Avenue?”
Reardon found it on the map. He shook his head as if the helicopter pilot could see him. “I doubt it. That’s practically in the city.”
“That may be how it looks on a map,” Calgary said, “but there’s plenty of empty space over there.”
Reardon considered. They were running out of places to look. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ll take the Canyon Road and be there in a few minutes.”
“Like I said, you can’t trust those maps,” Calgary said. “On the map it looks like the two roads run into each other, but they don’t. You’ll have to go back and go around.”
Reardon said something rude and looked at Pilcher. The big sergeant had already swung the wheel and was bringing up the speed. The siren went back into action.
In the air Calgary tilted the blades; the chopper bent northward, coming over a ridge and hovering along Crocker Avenue just beneath the northern ridge. To his left the sun glinted from the roofs of the last houses to climb along the road; beyond them the turnoff to the hilltop water tanks was passed. Calgary was about to suggest the possibility of an ambulance being hidden in one of the garages of the deserted houses, when there was the sudden reflection of the late afternoon sun glinting in his eye. He grunted in satisfaction. Glass! A window in most parts of the city, but almost surely a windshield up here. He only hoped it wasn’t an abandoned car; he’d seen plenty of those in his searching experience. He bent the helicopter in a tight circle, relocating the reflection, and then nodded as the white body with the painted red cross came into view. He spoke, feeling the throat mike vibrate. It was hard to keep the triumph from his voice; it was always that feeling at the end of a search, whether the results were fortunate or tragic.
“Lieutenant? I’ve got her for you. Ambulance, nobody around her. Half in a grove of eucalyptus, off Crocker.”
“Good!” Reardon said with deep satisfaction. “Where on Crocker?”
“Where are you?”
“Just hitting Altavista.”
“Keep going west,” Calgary said. “You’ll hit Crocker. Don’t turn, just bear left. Then maybe a mile further along. I’ll hang right over it.”
“Right,” Reardon said, and changed the tone of his voice. “Communications? Did you hear that? Get in touch with Chief Merrick of Daly City and pass it on.” He went back to the pilot. “Could you set down there?”
“Easy as pie—” Calgary’s voice changed, reacting. “Hey! The back door of the ambulance just popped open, a guy fell out. He’s lying on the ground, looks hurt. I’m going down.”
Reardon looked at Pilcher. The patrol car leaped forward under the pressure of that big foot on the accelerator. They roared past the intersection of Ardendale and South Hill Boulevard and then were forced to slow down as the uneven surface of Crocker met them. A few hundred yards past a sharp curve and they could see the helicopter in the distance, its blades still, settled beside the road. Pilcher braked beside it and the two men came out of the car on the run, trotting over the rocky ground toward the ambulance. The pilot was kneeling down, tearing adhesive tape from the mouth of a squirming redheaded man. Reardon came up, panting.
“You all right?”
The young intern’s eyes were wild; he struggled to get his wrists loose. “Get the man inside!”
Pilcher had already moved swiftly to the ambulance. He leaned in, pulling the slumped body there around to reach the head and brutally ripped the tape from the pale face. The head sagged to one side; the stench of vomit filled the air. Pilcher resolutely picked up the body and placed it on the ground. The intern, hands and feet now freed, stumbled over and crouched beside the man on the ground. He shoved a finger into Jimmy’s mouth, clearing it, dragging the tongue free, and then rolled him over, straddling him, instantly beginning artificial respiration.
Reardon clenched his jaw as he said it, but he felt he should. “How about mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?”
It wasn’t the idea that disgusted the intern; it was the ignorance behind the statement. He spoke without easing up on his task. “No good in this case. Lungs full of solids.”
Pilcher stepped up. “Let me do that,” he said. “I’ve done it before.”
He dropped to his knees beside the red-haired doctor, sliding his hands alongside the doctor’s smaller ones so he could take over the job without missing a stroke. The exchange was made; the intern came to his feet and staggered to the ambulance. He dragged his bag free and dug into it. He fixed an injection, came back, and pressed it into Jimmy’s inert arm and then got to his knees, checking the still body with his stethoscope. In the breathlessly hot air the stench of vomit being forced from the driver’s lungs was overpowering.
“He’s gone,” the redhead said bitterly.
“Maybe not,” Reardon said.
The redhead looked up at him as if to ask on what basis the police lieutenant made medical judgments, but he said nothing. Sergeant Pilcher continued his rhythmic pressure: push, pause, sudden release; push, pause, sudden release. Calgary, the helicopter pilot, stood next to him, ready to take over as soon as the large sergeant showed the least sign of tiring. Both men had seen recoveries after many, many long minutes. There was the faint sound of a siren coming up Crocker from the west; it struck Reardon for the first time that not one car had passed them since their arrival. The siren would be Merrick, Reardon thought. He touched the angry-faced intern on the arm.
“Let’s go over to the car and talk,” he said. He saw the look the intern gave both the figure on the ground as well as the man crouching over him, pushing and releasing with mechanical regularity. “Don’t worry,” Reardon said quietly. “They know what they’re doing. And they won’t stop.”
“They’re wasting their time,” the intern said dully, but he followed the lieutenant away from the smell.
Thursday—7:30 P.M.
Reardon rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand to ease some of the tension there, forced his shoulders as far forward as he could and then released them, stretching the muscles, waiting for his telephone call to be completed. He heard the instrument at the other end raised at last.
“Captain Tower? Sorry to disturb you at dinner—”
“That’s all right, Jim. What is it?”
“I’m in Chief Merrick’s office in Daly City. We found the ambulance up in the San Brunos. Actually almost on the edge of town, but in a very deserted place. There isn’t any doubt it was the boys from the bank; the intern with the ambulance saw the bag in the back seat. The driver of the ambulance was dead when we got there—”
“Dead? They killed him?”
“They did the same thing,” Reardon said wearily. “They taped his mouth with adhesive tape. To a mouth breather, that’s as bad as strangling. Or to anyone else, for that matter, if they happen to get sick to their stomach. This driver threw up and strangled on it.”
Captain Tower remained silent, Reardon waited a moment and then went on.
“Anyway, he’s dead, which makes two so far. The doctor w
ho was with him in the ambulance is putting his story on tape—”
Behind him he could hear the young voice, bitter with memory, speaking into the cassette recorder. “I pulled off the car robe, and tossed the suitcase that was between his legs onto the back seat. The man was lying on the floor of the back seat, with his legs folded up, on his side. I cut through his jacket—” Reardon went on with his report to his superior.
“The car was a black Chevy, he thinks last year’s model. Four-door sedan. License plates were covered with some rags. He says he doesn’t think there was anything particularly distinguishable about the men or their clothes or their speech, except he says he doesn’t think they sounded like thugs, whatever that means—”
“How does he think thugs sound?”
“Like in the movies, I guess—”
Captain Tower dropped it. “What about the hood Wheaton shot?”
“Jeez!” Reardon stared at the phone, honestly surprised. “Didn’t I mention that? I must be tired. He was dead. Wheaton did a good job. Chief Merrick has as many men as he can spare out looking to see if maybe they dumped the body up there in the San Brunos, and I loaned him one of our helicopters with a good pilot for as long as the light lasts, but I think that’s a waste of time. I think it’s all a waste of time. I think we’ll sweat before we find that body—for all the reasons we went through this afternoon.”
“Maybe,” Tower said noncommittally. “Anything else?”
“Well,” Reardon said, “the intern says the gang had on these masks and zoot-suit outfits, and he doubts he could pick them out of any line-up without them—and what defense attorney is going to give him a chance to pick them out of a line-up in them?—but he thinks he might recognize the leader’s voice if he heard it again.” He paused and frowned. “Which reminds me—what about those voice-prints? There ought to be a report from the lab by now.”
Captain Tower cleared his throat self-consciously. It was his normal preliminary to bad news.
“I got my copy of their preliminary report before I left the office, Jim. It’s not very positive. It seems the masks changed the graph curves. They think they’ll still be able to give us some idea of where the men come from, but they don’t feel the visual graphs will be sufficient to take to court.”
“Hell,” Reardon said with relief, “you had me scared there for a minute. I’ll worry about a case for the courts after we get our hands on the bastards, not before. When will the lab have something more definite?”
“They promise it by morning.”
“Good God! What do they work? Union hours? I thought they were computerized. Well, all right.” Another thought came. “Captain, do you know if Dondero is back from the shipyard yet?”
“He’s back. He left a report on your desk and went home. He came in here to see if you were in here. He says he left you a list of about forty names—”
“That’s all?” Reardon could not help the sarcasm.
“That’s all,” Captain Tower said dryly. “People who knew details of the payroll make-up, people who were recently fired from the yard and might have had a special gripe, people there with previous police records—”
Reardon sat a bit more erect. “There’s a thought!” He added a bit lamely, “Which I should have had myself sometime ago.”
“I’m having the sergeant in Identification dig out the files, the ones that are locals,” Tower said, “but I wouldn’t place a lot of hope in them. Nobody with any serious record can get hired on a job at the yard; these are mostly traffic violations probably. But they’ll be on your desk in the morning. Right now I want you to go home and get some rest. As I told you this afternoon—”
“But, Captain, it’s only seven-thirty!” Reardon stared at the phone.
“I know the time,” Tower said shortly. “If you go back to the Hall, you’ll be there half the night. The Chief has called a meeting on this thing for tomorrow morning at nine, and I want you awake for it. If you want to come in a little earlier tomorrow, fine; but right now you can stand some rest. So go on home. That’s an order.” Tower hesitated a moment. “And stay home. If anything urgent comes up, I don’t want to be looking all over town for you.”
Reardon’s amazement mounted. “I always let the Hall know where I am when I’m working, Captain. You know that.”
“Well, tonight go home,” Tower said abruptly.
Reardon shrugged. “You’re the boss, Captain.”
“That’s what it says on my shield,” Captain Tower said evenly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir,” Reardon said, and hung up. I guess even police captains have their hang-ups, he thought; I wonder who in hell put a hair across Tower’s butt? He shrugged again and climbed to his feet.
CHAPTER 6
Thursday—8:20 P.M.
Lieutenant Reardon stood on the stoop of the house where he lived, an old gabled mansion on Hyde just up from Chestnut, watching Sergeant Pilcher wheel the patrol car smartly down the steep decline. The brake lights flared briefly in the darkness as the car slowed for the intersection of Bay Street far below.
The irritating thing about everything, Reardon was thinking with a scowl, was that he and Jan could easily have had their dinner date. If the captain had told him earlier, he could have gotten a couple of steaks and Jan could have come up and cooked them. Still, he added to himself in an attempt to be philosophical, the captain had to know what he was doing, because he was the captain, wasn’t he? And that was the theory of line command, to which we are irrevocably committed, wasn’t it? Yes.
On the other hand, maybe the captain was right, and an evening of celibate rest was exactly what he needed, although just what was restful about watching television or reading a garbled account in the papers of Tom Wheaton’s death was hard to see. And it was impossible to try and relax with a book with the case on his mind. He watched Pilcher’s car disappear around the corner into Bay and then unlocked the outer door. He shut it firmly behind him and slowly trudged up the wide stairs to that small portion of the subdivided burrow he was quite happy to pay rent on.
A second key gained him entrance to his particular apartment and he paused, frowning. Had he possibly gone to work that morning and left the lights in the kitchen on? He knew very well he had not. With a sudden grin he marched across, shoved open the door to the kitchen, and stood there. Jan looked up from the stove, smiling at him.
She said, “Cheese it, the cops!”
“You mean, ‘Cheese it, the thirsty cops,’” Reardon said, and grinned at her, his admiration for her in his eyes. Jan was a small girl in her late twenties, but an architect with a growing reputation in the highly competitive jungle of San Francisco design. She had a body which Reardon had once claimed could not have been proportioned better by Frank Lloyd Wright, which Jan refused to accept as a compliment. She preferred to think of herself as being a bit less angular, more on the style of Peruzzi, with ample, if small, curves; but since the only Peruzzi Reardon knew was a patrolman working out of the Potrero Station, they had dropped the matter. Jan had short hair which she wore carelessly combed, a pert face with wide spread hazel eyes, and a pug nose which might have looked out of place on anyone else’s face, but which, in Reardon’s opinion, looked just fine where it was. He walked over and planted a kiss on the back of her neck.
“Bribery, eh?” Jan said, and grinned at him over her shoulder. “They’re in the refrigerator.”
“Everybody’s a detective,” Reardon said with simulated disgust, and walked over, opening the refrigerator door and taking out the mason jar which was standard mixing equipment in the menage. He held it up to the light and studied the level critically for a moment. “You’ve barely left me enough to drown my sorrows.”
“Just walk them in up to their knees,” Jan said, and turned back to the stove. “How are you coming on the case?”
Reardon looked surprised; as a general rule Jan hated to hear anything of his work. He poured himself a drink and sat down, straddling
a kitchen chair.
“Slow,” he said. “The mob that hit the bank sent in a false call for an ambulance for the wounded man.” He looked up. “One of the robbers was wounded; we think it was the one who shot Tom.”
“I know,” Jan said quietly. “It was on the radio.”
“Oh. Of course. Well, anyway, it seems the man died before the ambulance got there. Unfortunately, they took him away, so we’re no closer than we were before. And they killed—or caused to be killed—the ambulance driver before they took off.”
Jan frowned at him. “What do you mean, caused to be killed?”
Reardon wrinkled his nose. “Let’s leave it. It’s not mealtime conversation.”
“It was bad?”
“It wasn’t good.” Reardon tossed the martini off and poured the remainder of the mason jar into his glass. “What’s for dinner?”
“Plain, old, everyday stew. It’s very healthy.”
“It’s one of my favorites, but it takes hours—” Reardon stopped abruptly. “Wait a minute,” he said with a frown. “Who called who?”
“What do you mean, dear?”
“I mean, before, when I came in, you should have said, ‘Cheese it, the thirsty stupid cops.’ Did you call Captain Tower and suggest that a good home-cooked meal was just what old, tired, overworked Lieutenant Reardon needed for his morale? Or did he call you?” He snorted at his own obtuseness. “I should have known something was queer when the good captain suddenly insists I go right home at seven-thirty! On a clear day he’d just as soon work my fingers to the bone!”
“You mean your brain, dear,” Jan said innocently, and stirred the stew.
“I guess I mean my brain at that,” Reardon said morosely, and drank his drink. He put the glass down and shook his head. “Although if Captain Tower wants to matchmake, he won’t get any argument from me. I’m on his side. He doesn’t need subterfuge.”
Jan said, “Captain Tower thought this case was important and extremely critical, to the department and to you, and he didn’t want you to wear yourself out the first day. He said that when things started to come together there would be plenty of times you’d have to work all hours, and he didn’t want you exhausted then. So he felt you should relax tonight.”
Bank Job Page 6