Bank Job

by Robert L. Fish

  “Yes?”

  “Lieutenant? Sergeant Esposito, Communications, here. I hate to wake you—”

  “I wasn’t sleeping. What is it?”

  He tried to keep his voice as close to a whisper as possible and still be intelligible to the sergeant at the other end of the line, but when he looked over at Jan again, he could see her eyes were open, watching him steadily. He relaxed, winked at her, and waited.

  “You left orders you wanted to hear about anything real unusual anywhere around here,” the sergeant said. “Well, we get lots of screwy calls all the time, of course, but this particular one involved a black car, and the call came from the Burlingame cops, not from some nut, so—”

  Reardon sat up in bed. “What was it?”

  “Watchman on a pier down there,” the sergeant said. “Old abandoned freighter tied up there. Anyways, a couple of guys drove up in this black car, one in front, one in back, which is unusual in itself, and they sapped the old man for no apparent reason. Took his keys and then didn’t use them, didn’t roll him for any of his dough. Watchman doesn’t know the make or year of the car, but it was black. Doesn’t know the plates, either. Anyway, one of the investigating officers down there thought it should be reported, and you said you wanted to hear, any hour.”

  There were several moments of silence as Reardon considered the facts. Jan’s eyes never left his face. The Communications sergeant wondered what had happened.

  “Lieutenant? You still there?”

  “I’m still here. I’m thinking. What dock was it?”

  “Windsor. I’m looking at it on the bay map.” The sergeant’s liquid voice contained a shrug. “Nothing much of a dock, according to the investigating officer. That freighter I mentioned is the only ship tied up there. The watchman was just there to prevent stripping.” A sudden thought struck the sergeant. He added, “But I suppose it could still be a great place for guys on the run to hide out.”

  “It might be,” Reardon said dryly, “if they didn’t have to eat. Or if you didn’t mind hiding out in a blind alley. I doubt anyone is going to slug a watchman for a place to sleep out of sight, and certainly not the boys who shot Wheaton.” He shook his head as if the sergeant could see him, chiding Esposito for his lack of thought. “What the hell, nobody knows what they look like. They could check into the Mark Hopkins and be done with it.” He added, “They could sure afford it.”

  “Yeah,” the sergeant agreed, “except for that dead hood’s body.”

  Reardon stared at the phone, silently apologizing to the sergeant for his earlier cavalier tone. It was true; the Mark Hopkins probably had a policy about people checking in with dead bodies. He found himself picturing the scene at the reception desk and forced his mind back to business. An abandoned freighter. Fifty million places, probably, where a body could be hidden for months, if not years. If not forever. Reardon made up his mind, swinging his bare legs over the side of the bed.

  “Whereabouts is this Windsor Dock?”

  “It’s at the end of a small unpaved road that dead-ends at the bay, called Bailey Lane on the map. Leads in from Seaside Avenue, just past Bangalor heading south. You know Burlingame, Lieutenant?”

  “No,” Reardon said, engraving the directions in his skull, “but I’ll find it. Wake up Dondero and tell him I’ll pick him up in ten minutes. And tell the Burlingame investigating officer to stay there. I’ll meet him at the dock as soon as I can make it.”

  “Right,” Esposito said. “Anything else?”

  “That’s it for now,” Reardon said, and hung up. He yawned deeply and scratched his chest, winked at Jan and came to his feet. He padded over to the chair in the corner that served as his wardrobe at night, pulled on his trousers and a turtleneck sweater, drew on his socks one at a time, standing awkwardly as he did so, and slid his feet into loafers. He took his belt holster and gun from the dresser, checked it from force of habit, and clipped it in place. He pulled on his jacket and combed his hair with his fingers. Jan was watching him from the bed, her face expressionless.

  “When will you be back?”

  “I’ll probably go right to the Hall from there,” Reardon said, and walked back to the bed, bending down for a kiss. Jan turned her cheek to him; Reardon kissed it, his eyebrows raising. Situation back to normal, he thought, and straightened up. “How about dinner tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” Jan said slowly. “You’ll be tired. And you probably won’t be free, anyway.”

  Reardon grinned, moving toward the door.

  He said, “Well, clear it through Captain Tower. He seems to be my social secretary this season.” He blew her a kiss. “Go back to sleep.”

  Jan didn’t smile. Instead she said, “Take care of yourself.”

  Reardon’s smile disappeared. He looked at her a long moment, as if trying to memorize the sight of those small shoulders, the perfectly rounded breasts, the solemn pert face, the tousled hair. “I will,” he said, and closed the door behind him softly.

  He trotted silently down the wide stairs to the large front door and let himself out into the deserted street. The first faint hint of dawn was tinting the sky to the east. Reardon took a deep breath and walked quickly to the Charger, unlocking it and slipping behind the wheel. Already the worries that had kept him awake a good part of the night were dissipating. This hour of the day, for Reardon, was the best; even the latest of revelers had given up and gone home, leaving the city a few precious hours for recuperation. The salt tang in the breeze from the Golden Gate and the endless ocean beyond was free, if only for a short while, from the acrid bite of exhaust fumes. The night air was sweet, the silence lovely.

  Reardon backed from his angled parking space, turned up Hyde, and stepped on the gas. The chances were probably a thousand to one he was wasting his time going down to Burlingame, but at least he was doing something, which had to be better than just staring at a ceiling he could scarcely see, looking for the solution he couldn’t see at all.

  Dondero was leaning against the front of his rooming house, tossing small pieces of gravel at a fire hydrant. As the Charger drew to the curb he dropped the balance of his ammunition back onto the pile left by some contractor, dusted his hands on his trousers, and walked over. He climbed in and closed the door.

  “What’s up?”

  Reardon checked the approaching nonexistent traffic over his left shoulder from force of habit and then gunned the car in the direction of the nearest freeway ramp.

  “Maybe nothing,” he said. “In fact, probably nothing. But there was something queer happen down in Burlingame. One chance in a million it has anything to do with the Wheaton case, but it ought to be checked out.” He gave Dondero the information that had been reported to him by Communications. “An abandoned freighter,” Reardon concluded. “It wouldn’t be a bad place to hide a body.”

  “It wouldn’t at that,” Dondero agreed. He was a stocky man built a good deal like Reardon, with black spiky hair and dark, brooding eyes. A second-grade detective, he had worked with Reardon on many cases; their friendship extended beyond office hours and put aside any difference in rank, at least as far as addressing each other was concerned. Dondero stared through the windshield at the empty streets rushing by. “I worked the boats when I was a kid, you know.”

  Reardon glanced sideways a moment in surprise. He hadn’t known. “You did? Including freighters?”

  “That’s where you start, unless you start on a fisherman out of the wharf. And I didn’t care for the smell.”

  “So what made you a cop?”

  “Freighters don’t always smell so good, either,” Dondero said, and grinned. His grin faded. “Even the cops don’t always smell so good …”

  Reardon disregarded it. He was driving automatically, without paying particular attention to the wheel, the traffic, or the route. “Answer me something, Don. Where would you hide a dead body on a freighter?”

  “If it was me? Probably the same place I would on a passenger liner, like the Qu
een Mary, I guess.” Dondero thought a moment. “Well, if it was me, I’d probably drop it into one of the fuel bunkers through the personnel hatch. Even if it had only a little oil, and if he was weighted even a little, he’d still be there a hundred years from now. Guy once told me oil works like embalming fluid; keep air away from a body and it would last for years. Also less chance he’d float in oil than in water.”

  “And if the tanks were bone dry? If the owners pumped them out before they put the ship up?”

  “I doubt they’d pump them all that dry,” Dondero said. “Anyway, it’s the first place I’d look. And if he wasn’t there, I’d check the bilges; you’d be surprised at the room between the bottom-hold deck and the keel. Or in the engine room after the drive-shaft stuffing box, the last one before the screw. You could hide a guy there and he’d never be found. Or in one of the boiler fire boxes, and if they ever fired up again, all the better. Or you could drop him down the main stack, if you could get him up there. He’d lay on the stack screen forever before he was found. You wouldn’t even smell him there.” He shrugged. “Hell, there are lots of places.”

  Reardon sighed. “It looks like a job, searching for our boy. If they ducked his body there, that is.”

  “It is a job, a hell of a job.” Dondero looked down at his suit and shook his head dolefully. “I wish I’d known what you were up to,” he said. “I’d’ve worn old clothes.”

  Reardon glanced over at him. “You mean you’re not?” he asked, surprised.

  “Funny, funny,” Dondero said without expression, and then suddenly grinned.

  Friday—5:15 A.M.

  Burlingame Patrol Car Four was waiting for them as they bumped and swayed down Bailey Lane and came to a stop before the gatehouse. The two men climbed out and walked over to the patrol car. In the growing light of dawn the headlights of both cars spread faint pools of yellow on the paved apron of the dock.

  Osterman was standing beside the right front fender watching them approach; the sergeant at San Francisco Communications had informed him that the lieutenant would undoubtedly arrive in a red Charger, but Osterman was familiar with Reardon’s face from the newspapers. Gunther got out of the patrol car hurriedly, holding up a large baby-fattish hand.

  “Look, Lieutenant,” he said before anyone else could speak, “don’t blame me for getting you down here at this horseshit hour on a wild-goose chase. That was strictly Joe’s idea.”

  Osterman frowned blackly, but decided that any differences within the Burlingame Police Department should not and would not be resolved in front of an outsider. They had instructions to co-operate with the lieutenant, and they would, but that didn’t mean washing departmental dirty laundry in front of him. Osterman filed Gunther’s remark in his memory bank and stepped forward.

  “I’m Joe Osterman, Lieutenant. This is Officer Gunther. About the call, I just thought—”

  “You thought right,” Reardon said, liking the man at sight, and held out his hand. Osterman took it and shook it, his grip dry and firm. Reardon tipped his head over his shoulder. “This is Detective Dondero.” He looked around and then looked back. “Pretty isolated out here, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Osterman said. “Real isolated. You’d never know there was a city back of you.”

  “How’s the watchman?”

  “Concussed. I just checked with the hospital a few minutes ago. They don’t know how bad, yet. They want an expert from Frisco to check the X rays in the morning.” He paused and then added, “He didn’t have anything new to add to his statement to me.”

  Reardon nodded and stared up at the prow of the big freighter. Dawn had broken at last and across the bay San Leandro could be seen, faint in the mist shimmering above the flat water. To the south high stands of reeds hid a rocky shoreline that curved out of sight to the west; to the north the freighter blocked a view of the distant International Airport, where runway lights still glimmered in the growing light. Reardon turned to Osterman again.

  “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d like the whole story again, right from the beginning.”

  Osterman repeated it. He had a good officer’s ability to report accurately and succinctly, and Reardon was pleasantly surprised to see that Osterman did not resort to normal policese, where “perpetrator” takes the place of “crook,” and “apprehended” replaces the simple word “caught.” When Osterman was finished, Reardon nodded.

  “Good. Nobody’s looked inside the ship yet?”

  “No, sir. I had an extra car come out here, but then I figured if it had anything to do with that bank job up in town, I ought to wait for somebody with authority from the San Francisco police to get here. We were instructed to cooperate with you people in every way, and since the guys who slugged Gus were driving a black car—”

  Gunther had listened to the same story too many times. He had never been noted for his patience, in any event.

  “You and that damned black car!” he said in disgust. “Like it was the only black car ever built!” Reardon turned his attention to the pudgy officer, looking at him in silence. “What I mean,” Gunther went on more evenly, “I don’t know what you people figure you’re going to find inside that freighter, anyways. Anybody want anything from that hulk, they would have got it and gone before we even got here. They had over an hour, for Christ’s sake! I said that when we first got here.”

  “You’re probably right,” Reardon said. “But they wouldn’t need too long to leave something, I shouldn’t think.”

  Gunther stared. “Leave something?”

  “Like a dead body,” Reardon said.

  Gunther appeared stunned. “A dead body!” He stared at Osterman with resentment. “That ain’t what you figured!”

  “No,” Osterman admitted. “It isn’t.” He brightened. “But it’s a hell of a thought, by God!”

  Dondero had been studying the long lines of the abandoned freighter.

  “A big bastard,” he said sadly. “I was hoping maybe it was a Liberty or one of those jobs they kicked out of the Canadian yards during the war, but this thing’s a monster. Well, we better get a gang out here and get going if we want to finish this year. And they’ll have to bring Colemans or something for light, unless this thing’s electricals are fit to tie into a shore line, which I would doubt like hell.”

  Osterman looked at Reardon. “How many men, Lieutenant?”

  Reardon passed the look on to Dondero. Dondero looked the freighter over in the dawn light and shrugged. “Eight, minimum. More if you can get them. People who know the difference between a ship and a coal mine, if possible.”

  Osterman said, “I’ll call in.”

  “Hold it a second,” Reardon said suddenly. Something was itching him. “Let’s think a minute.”

  He stared over the chain fence at the high prow of the freighter and followed the dipping line of the rail along the bow to the bridge high above. Then, making up his mind, he walked to the gatehouse, through it, and out onto the pier. The others followed. Reardon passed the thick rope cables still holding the ship to the dock stanchions after all these years and approached the gangplank that angled steeply up to the hidden deck above. He stopped before the stairway and looked up. Rusty rivets pockmarked the curved overhanging surface; paint peeled from the large warped plates. The drop cables holding the gangplank to a fixed davit above looked as if they had been there since steel had been invented. Reardon frowned and turned to Osterman.

  “How come they’ve left the gangplank in place? If they’re worried enough about the ship being stripped to leave a watchman, why not simply leave the gangway on the dock? Or on the deck?”

  Osterman’s expression accepted the logic of the question.

  “First, there’s no winch power to raise it and lower it all the time. And more important, there are the regulations.” He looked up. “If a fire ever started aboard, up there, it could get out of control before the fire department could ever get a hose up there.”

  “But—” Rea
rdon clamped his lips shut. He ought to know there was no sense arguing with regulations. Another thought took the place of the one he had stifled, coming to his mind almost unbidden. He looked at the elderly patrolman. “You told me before that whoever rapped him on the head took Halversen’s keys from his belt, but that they didn’t use them. Do any of those keys fit any particular locks aboard this ship? For example, the engine room? Or any one of the holds? Or the hatch covers? How about the bridge?”

  Osterman was staring at him.

  Reardon said more quietly, “What I mean is how do you know he didn’t use them?”

  “I just figured they didn’t use them,” Osterman said a bit nervously, wondering if maybe he had figured wrong. “I don’t know for sure, but I don’t know what they’d use them on, because none of them are for any locks aboard this thing.”

  Reardon looked at him questioningly. Osterman explained:

  “Our police went over this ship together with the ship’s agents and the insurance company when the agents were trying to figure out if locks were cheaper than watchmen. The insurance company wouldn’t go for locks; there was that thing about fires, you see. And we wouldn’t go for locks, either. We figured that anyone wanting to strip this ship sure wouldn’t be held back by any two-bit lock.” He shook his head decisively. “Outside of the gate and the gatehouse, I imagine the rest were his personal keys. His house, maybe his car if he owns one, though he always took the bus to work. Maybe a toolbox.…”

  He brought the keys from his pocket and offered them to Reardon. The lieutenant studied them a moment but didn’t accept them. Instead he said, “Then why did they bother to take them off his belt?” The question was more to himself than to the others.

  Gunther thrust himself into the conversation, anxious to redeem himself.

  “Maybe it wasn’t anything to do with this tub,” he said. “I never thought it did anyways, like I said. Maybe they wanted to get into Gus’s house; maybe they just took impressions—”